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

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 4

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JP = Jim Piat

Re: AIR-DIS 3.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/002390.html
In: AIR-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/thread.html#2386

JP: I think of a symbol as incorporating both iconicity and indexicality
    in that an interpretant has both a connotative and denotative component.

There's a distinction between the issues of iconicity and indexicality and
the issues of connotation and denotation.  In one of Peirce's formulations
he says that an icon connotes without thereby denoting, an index denotes
without thereby connoting, and a symbol denotes by connoting (CE 1, 272).
Thus a symbol has a degree of coordination between its connotation and
its denotation that neither the icon nor the index can per se enjoy.

JP: After all, what the symbol stands for is some qualitative or iconic aspect
    of an an object which (by virtue of being an object as opposed to some 
    disembodied mere potential) is necessarily indexed in time and space.

>From the discussion that took place earlier with respect to
imputed qualities, I suspected that there might be some such
misunderstanding as this, but I was not sure.  It might do us
good, tomorrow, to go back and read slowly through some of the
passages from 1865-1866 where Peirce is working out his notions
of attributed, imputed, or represented qualities, and try to see
exactly what is going on here.  One of the reasons that I prefer
the early material is precisely because of its rambling quality,
where each problem is taken up numerous times and from slightly
different points of view.  Oddly enough, there are times when
the New List is almost too elegant and succinct for the sake
of easily tracing its consequences.

Jon Awbrey

JP: In addition, however arbitrary we might imagine our choice
    of an object to serve or function as a symbol (be it a sound,
    scribble, gesture, or whatever), my guess is that there is some
    trace (however remote or subliminal) of inconicity and indexically
    in the object selected.  Well I'll go further -- seems to me the mere
    fact that symbols exist requires or creates a world in which everything
    can be interpreted -- which in turn requires that everything actually is
    or can become connected or continuous.

JP: Reminds me of a favorite Sartre comment from the closing pages of his 
    autobiography, 'Words'.  Summing up himself he says something like --
    So in the end what am I?  A man like all men.  Good as any, better
    than none.

JP: Such is the continuity of all symbols.

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