[Inquiry] Re: Peaceful Easy Feelin

[Jon Awbrey]

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PEF.  Note 6

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BU = Ben Udell
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: PEF 4.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002581.html
In: PEF.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2578

Ben,

Every now and then I have to Google a phrase
just to remind myself of how the hoi polloi
talk these days.  Most of the web pages
that I got for "naturally fit" are not
fit to print or even to link to, but
here's yet another interesting one:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/210903.htm

As far as I know I've never said anything bad about icons or indices,
except that they fall short of world domination.  Nothing about the
existence of atoms, so far as their conception is useful, excludes
the existence of molecules on the one hand or quarks on the other.
The existence of primes does not negate the existence of composites,
indeed, they're all beautiful in their own way.  And I've never made
any claim that "symbols are all you need".  As far as I can tell, all
of the examples of hybrid varieties of symbols involve compound signs,
at least as complex as propositions, or signs that are interpreted by
propositions, and it requires what Peirce called "pure symbols", like
the operators 'not', 'and', 'or', 'if-then', 'of', and a small host
of others, to bind the components of these propositions together.

Jon Awbrey

Previously:

JA: Really, now.  We can well say that human beings are naturally fit for life
    in the temperate zones of the planet Earth, but that hardly means that all
    of them live in the middle latitudes, or none can go to the moon and stars.

JA: Make it so ...

BU quoth:

| Will it be Captain Picard or Syd Barrett?  More incidental lyrics --
| 
| Lime and limpid green, a second scene, the fight between the blue you once knew
| Floating down, the sound resounds around the icy waters underground
| Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda, and Titania
| Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten
| 
| Blinding signs flap flicker flicker flicker blam
| Pow pow
| Stairway scare Dan Dare who's there
| 
| Lime and limpid green, the sounds surround the icy waters underground
| Lime and limpid green, the sounds surround the icy waters underground
| 
| -- Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd, "Astronomy Domine"

BU: Seriously, what's confusing me in this discussion is the question of the ROLE
    of Jon's kind of analysis, and whether that ROLE is the agreed subject of the
    argument.  I disbelieve that a mind's semiosis could consist entirely in symbols
    and remain grounded or in touch with reality.  Does that mean that one can't do
    symbolic semiotic and that one can't simply bracket the iconic and indexical
    aspects? I don't see why one can't -- except in regard perhaps to mathematical
    diagrams (which I don't regard as qualitative semblances of objects anyway).
    But can such a study be at the root or foundation of semiotics?  I doubt that
    it can be at the root of the study of semiosis as any kind of complex process
    such as might actually happen.  It could be prior to such a study -- it would
    be more abstract, something spread in the soil.  It's not really according to
    the strict defiinition of the symbol -- the symbol is defined by the effect
    which it will (by grown habit) have on the interpretant, full stop.  It is
    not defined by the effect which it will have on the interpretant such that
    said effect is itself just a symbol -- that's a much narrower criterion,
    the symbol as a separate species rather than a separate "gender" of sign.

BU: Is the argument about whether there's any kind of role at all
    for Jon's kind of pure symbolistic, or is there some particular
    role in the architectonic of semiotic research, regarding which
    the argument is about the pure symbolistic's suitability?

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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