[Inquiry] Re: Attribute, Impute, Represent -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 22

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

Cf: AIR-DIS 21.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002594.html
In: AIR-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2566

JA: But practical necessity for a human interpreter is not
    logical necessity for a sign, as a theoretical construct.
    You may have heard of this "unpsychological theory of logic"
    that some old geezer was wont to go on about.

JR: Oh, I see!  You are construing this as a dispute about what Peirce was
    referring to in speaking to Victoria Welby about his "sop to Cerberus",
    the sop being the special case of the use of the symbol with accompanying
    auxiliary iconic and indexical functions, the more recondite truth being
    that symbols require no such appeal to interpreting minds.

No, Peirce recommended the un-or-non-psychological view of logic from
the very beginnings of his writings on that subject, as you well know.
This placement of logic within semiotic depends on the methodological
distinctions between (1) descriptive semiotics in general, involving
a concept of signs determining interpretants with respect to objects
in general, (2) the descriptive semiotics of a particular species of
interpretive agents, what Dewey dubbed, speaking of his own species,
"How We Think, and (3) formal, normative, quasi-necessary semiotics,
more affectionately known as "logic".  The "Sop to Cerberus" story
is meant to remind us of how to convert references to interpreters
into references to interpretants, along with the formal advantages
doing so, it's not an attempt to dismiss interpretation whole dog.

JR: This surprises me.  I had not been thinking of that as the issue at all.
    Your assumption is apparently that the mere invoking of the iconic and
    the indexical as co-operative specializes the symbol while at the same
    time relativizing it to its application to semeiosis involving a human
    mind.  That possibility hadn't so much as occurred to me, Jon.  Why?
    Because indexicality and iconicity are as generic to semeiosis as
    symbolism is, as I understand it.  They are defined at the generic
    level, with all three of them defined in a coordinated way:  develop
    the most rarefied sense of symbolism you can, using the basic semeiotical
    conceptions construed as abstractly as you can,  and you will be required
    to develop along with that equally rarefied conceptions of iconicity and
    indexicality.  That is simply what the theoretical structure requires.

I read your arguments as you stated them.  The fact that I participate in
higher order sign relations of whatever variety to discuss sign relations,
simpliciter, does not mean that higher order sign relations of these very
varieties must be constituents of the sign relations that I am discussing,
any more than the fact that I am constrained by, well, more like guided by
the syntax of English grammar in discussing quarks or quasars means that
the physical universe obeys the rules of English grammar.  Nor will my
argument that logic does not reduce to neuroscience become one bit
more "persuasive" if I remove my brain to make it.  At any rate,
that's my hypothesis, and I don't plan to do the experiment.

JR: I don't see any sop being thrown to Cerberus in the New List,
    where the most basic development of the conceptions is located,
    assuming due respect for Peirce's own claims about the adequacy
    of the New List.  Are you putting that into question?  You can
    certainly do so, of course, or at least purport to do so, but
    whether you can actually make a plausible case for identifying
    the introduction of mentalism as identical with or entailed by the
    coordinated defining of the symbol, the index, and the icon, as in
    the New List, is another matter.  I don't see how, and I don't see
    what would motivate you to attempt to do so.  And I also fail to
    see how that can be equated with drawing a distinction between
    symbols that do and symbols that do not require iconic and
    indexical assistance in order to do their job.

This is your interpretation of the New List.
I don't see any any testimonials from Peirce
as to the adequacy of your interpretation,
so we'll just have find another way to
decide the question.

Jon Awbrey

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