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

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 12

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FK = Frances Catherine Kelly

Re: AIR 4.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002411.html
Cf: AIR.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/thread.html#2383

Frances,

It will take me some time to work through your remarks,
as I am plodding along in a piecemeal fashion at present,
trying to track down some of the papers and lectures where
Peirce shows his work for what he eventually polished off in
the New List.  But maybe I can start with the statements that
Peirce makes in 1865 to the effect that "All is representation"
and "What is, is representation".

If I read these statements in an overly stark fashion, as saying something
like "Everything is a sign", then that does not make sense to me, at least,
not on my current understanding of sign relations.  So my next guess would
be that Peirce is saying something like "What we know is representable".
This is tantamount to a tautology if we consider knowledge to be a form
of representation.  On this reading, Peirce is just making the point
that "We have no conception of what is not conceivable".  In more
general terms, "We have no symbol for what is not symbolizable".
Or, "We have no representation of what is not representable".

As usual, the best way to figure out what Peirce means,
having pondered the matter a bit on my own, is to take
in the larger contexts of these and similar statements.

So I will turn to that task next.

Jon Awbrey

FK: Here are some sobering thoughts on representation and representamen,
    that are culled by me from various Peircean sources on the subjects,
    which passages are surely familiar enough.  My motive in presenting
    these concoctions is an attempt to sort out all the apparent ambiguity
    surrounding the subject of representation and representamen, and invite
    a correction or a further interpretation. The seeming task for logicians
    would then be to construct logical signs in say the logic of relations or
    relativity to find out if this notion on the plurality of representation is
    somewhat right.

FK: Representation is reported by Peirce to be globally a part of all
    phenomena and of all phanerons or "phanerisms" including a part of
    all signs and semiosis and semiotics, where phenomenal representation
    is also vast in its presence there.  The real action of representation
    in which all phenomena engage, seems to flow back to representamen in
    evolutionary synechastics, where it is implied by Peirce that there
    are first "continuent" representamen that are not signs and then some
    "existent" representamen that are signs.  What originally determines
    representation in primordial phenomena is initially the action of them
    standing for their own self solely alone for themselves in an inner
    act of "auto" representation.  Presumably, this would account for
    the sporting evolution of preparticulate neutrinos or quarks inside
    the particles of atoms.  What is sensed by sentient beings like
    normal humans through their own mental representation or "signing"
    is that "signers" who say make and use signs can therefore be any
    sort of existent "phanerisms" from mechanisms of matter to organisms
    of life.  Those representamen that grow to be signs are thus sensible
    existent objects, which in semiosis and semiotics might best be called
    immediate "representants" whose very being as signs is determined by
    the immediate "referent" objects they stand for.  These neologisms
    of mine might consequently more clearly differentiate "synechastic
    representamen" from "semiosic representants" and thus possibly make
    realist representation in general less confusing.

FK: This revised approach of mine to semiosis also means that the initiate
    existent object that determines the "fact" of an object acting as a sign
    is a synechastic object, and not the immediate existent object or "static"
    referent that determines the very "being" of a "representant" sign nor the
    "intermediate" existent object or dynamic and energetic "referent" that
    determines the main "kind" a representant sign will be, which is as an
    icon or index or symbol.  This "intermediate" stage of semiosis would
    hence be pivotal to all of semiosis and its representation.  Here there
    are referred phenomenal qualities acting as "representant" signs, and
    referred phenomenal facts acting as "referentant" objects, and referred
    phenomenal laws acting as interpretant effects.  The factual object
    determines the qualitative sign, and this sign then determines the
    lawful effect.  The sign and object lay in a ground as correlates
    that try to conform to one another, while the effect attempts to
    control this conformity, providing some assurance that a deluded
    illusion does not emerge.

FK: One thorn for me here is whether "referention" or representation
    should be held as the dominant factor in semiosis and semiotics.
    My feeling is that "referention" or reference is the subordinate
    factor, because "semiosic" reference should properly be a "species"
    of synechastic representation as the greater genus.  These topics
    have likley been discussed on the list in the past, so a fuller
    search of the archive will be done by me.

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