[Inquiry] Re: Sign Relations -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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SR.  Discussion Note 18

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Charles Pyle wrote:
> 
> Eugene Halton says, "You need to state how direct unmediated
> knowledge is possible, given Peirce's devastating criticism
> of it."
> 
> You. Meaning me. I need to. Which is quite surprising.
> 
> I can rely on previous quotes entirely.
> 
> Since this is not a new debate. This debate has been going on for
> many years in this very forum. And Eugene Halton has taken part in it.
> And in the context of this debate, it is all the more notable that his
> assertion makes so many debated presuppositions, ignoring this context,
> that it is all the more difficult to reply.
> 
> To speak to one point, I deny, as others have denied in this forum, that
> Peirce made a criticism of unmediated knowledge, let alone a devastating
> criticism. On the contrary. I cite, for example, the following quotes from
> Peirce, which appear on the face of it to assert the validity of direct,
> unmediated knowledge, from an email of April 17, 2001 to this forum sent
> by Jean-Marc Orliaguet [jmo at medialab.chalmers.se] as a turn in an extensive
> debate. (I extract the essential point following the quote):
> 
> Peirce: "our knowledge of things in themselves is entirely relative, it is true;
> but all experience and all knowledge is knowledge of that which is, independently
> of being represented" 6.95
> 
> knowledge of that which is, independently of being represented
> 
> I paraphrase:  knowledge independent of representation

Charles,

That is not a good paraphrase.

The "independently" modifies the "is", not the "knowledge".
More precisely, "independently"  modifies the relation
between "is" and "represented", not the relation
between "knowledge" and "represented".

Thus we have:

"knowledge" <--- dependent ---> "representation"
           ^                   ^
            \   independent   /
             \               /
              "that which is"

There is something of a good puzzle that remains here --
having to do with whether there is an asymmetric
sort of independence relation that we have to
imagine, or whether that is not necessary.

None of this can be understood without knowing
what Peirce meant by "independent", which is
a form of relationship that is not at all
the same thing as "disconnected from",
"exclusive of", or "unmediated by",
indeed, all sorts of things that
are connected by long chains of
mediation can nevertheless be
independent, both of those
chains and of each other.

Jon Awbrey

> Peirce: "Effort is effort by virtue of its being opposed; and no third
> element enters. Note that I speak of the experience, not of the feeling
> of effort. " 8. 330.
> 
> no third element enters
> 
> I paraphrase: experience independent of signs
> 
> Peirce: "Secondness is the most prominent of the three. This is not a
> conception, nor is it a peculiar quality. It is an experience. It comes out
> most fully in the shock of reaction between ego and non-ego. It is there the
> double consciousness of effort and resistance. That is something which
> cannot properly be conceived. For to conceive it is to generalize it; and to
> generalize it is to miss altogether the hereness and nowness which is its
> essence." 8.267
> 
> something which cannot properly be conceived
> something which is not a conception
> 
> I paraphrase: something prior to signs
> 
> So, I don't think it is necessary that _I_ need to state how unmediated
> knowledge is possible. I am convinced that this is already one of Peirce's
> premises. Firstness and secondness are prior to thirdness, which is the
> realm of signs.
> 
> Charles Pyle
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eugene Halton [mailto:Eugene.W.Halton.2 at nd.edu]
> Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 1:19 PM
> To: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sign Relations
> 
> Charles Pyle stated:  The crux of Zen and Tao is that one can only truly
> know by direct unmediated experience. Whatever knowledge is mediated is not
> true knowledge. As Huang Po said, "All signs are no signs."
> 
> Dear Charles et al,
> 
>              Huang Po, as quoted here, had a faulty semiotic, too
> nominalistic. Zen and Tao would also be false, as you characterize them, in
> my view. c, as Peirce showed so clearly in
> 1868 papers. You need to state how direct unmediated knowledge is possible,
> given Peirce's devastating criticism of it. You also need to state why a
> Zen or Taoist master would be interested in unmediated knowledge, or any
> kind of knowledge, as something worth more than the being in and of the
> moment. Being in and of the moment is aesthetic, not knowledge. Awareness
> is not reducible to knowledge or even self-consciousness.
> 
>              Descartes also attempted to meditate the world and all signs
> away, and thought he had succeeded with "I think, therefore I am." But he
> could not have been thinking without a medium of thought, which was,
> unfortunately, already doubted away by him. Peirce's thought: The very idea
> that one is thinking is an inference occurring in time, not an immediate
> intuition of the very present in which it takes place.
> 
>              Losing the conceptualization of an activity does not mean that
> the activity is not a fluid flow of signs, only that they are not
> conceptual signs. All activity involves a medium of the activity.
> Perception is inferential, all inferences are signs, but not all signs are
> concerned with knowing.
> 
>           In my view, the Buddhist idea of Enlightenment is a becoming
> iconic with experience. Perhaps a Zen master might say, with an invisible
> wink, that "All signs are Noh signs."
> 
> Gene Halton

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