Changes

=====5.2.11.5. Of Signs and the Mind=====

=====5.2.11.5. Of Signs and the Mind=====

In the process of trying to clarify my initial description of inquiry, I worked my way back through several modern animadversions, credulous and critical at turns, to an original classical source for many of the ideas that are involved in it.  In the process of attempting to understand this text, encountered as a foundation stone in the discussion of sign relations, I found myself invoking, almost reflexively, a number of distinctions, for instance, that between ''figure'' and ''letter'', as they are used to mark a manner of interpretation, and that between ''form'' and ''matter'', as they concern the content of an indication, and each distinction in its turn seemed to be necessary just in order to outline a sufficient indication of what I sense to be a proper reading of this text.

In the process of trying to clarify my ID of inquiry, I worked my way back through several modern animadversions, credulous and critical at turns, to an original classical source for many of the ideas that are involved in it.  In the process of attempting to understand this text, encountered as a foundation stone in the discussion of sign relations, I found myself invoking, almost reflexively, a number of distinctions, for instance, that between "figure" and "letter", as they are used to mark a manner of interpretation, and that between "form" and "matter", as they concern the content of an indication, and each distinction in its turn seemed to be necessary just in order to outline a sufficient indication of what I sense to be a proper reading of this text.

But the mere formation and the occasional invocation of these words, no matter how familiar the sound of them, is of little benefit to my reader if I cannot explain the sense of them, whether long established meanings or any new gleanings that I intend, and the instrumentality intended for these distinctions can be of little use to anyone unless I can say, with regard to each conceivable distinction, how it is made or how I make it.  In accordance with this reflection on the making of distinctions, I am thus led to ask:  Who makes these distinctions, and how are they made?  Are they made before us, by us, or after us?

But the mere formation and the occasional invocation of these words, no matter how familiar the sound of them, is of little benefit to my reader if I cannot explain the sense of them, whether long established meanings or any new gleanings that I intend, and the instrumentality intended for these distinctions can be of little use to anyone unless I can say, with regard to each conceivable distinction, how it is made or how I make it.  In accordance with this reflection on the making of distinctions, I am thus led to ask:  “Who makes these distinctions, and how are they made?  Are they made before us, by us, or after us?”

I think I began innocently enough, with no predominating desire either to dispatch or else to vindicate any particular line of thought, but simply to trace the effects of certain ideas, and this means tracking them down to their sources, in whatever places they are to be found, whether ancient or modern, as well as trying to deduce or to foresee their consequences in theory or in action, whether for good or for ill.  And now this form of investigation, more like a process of divestiture, brings me to an array of questions that I have only the slightest clues how to answer.

I think I began innocently enough, with no predominating desire either to dispatch or else to vindicate any particular line of thought, but simply to trace the effects of certain ideas, and this means tracking them down to their sources, in whatever places they are to be found, whether ancient or modern, as well as trying to deduce or to foresee their consequences in theory or in action, whether for good or for ill.  And now this form of investigation, more like a process of divestiture, brings me to an array of questions that I have only the slightest clues how to answer.

For instance, consider the distinction between form and matter.  

For instance, consider the distinction between form and matter.  

No matter what distinction forms the interest of the moment, there is that which discerns, draws, finds, follows, grasps, makes, sees, or seizes the distinction in question, an experimental agency that might as well be called an "interpreter", a "maker", or an "observer" of that distinction.  With regard to any form of distinction, the agency of a "distinguisher" or a "former" is a role that seems to suit what the Greeks fairly often described, but just barely hinted at, under the name of an "entelechy".  In general, this is a somewhat mysterious designation, stemming from a complex of terms whose various connotations are commonly translated as "actuality" or "reality", and often as "actualization" or "realization", seeming to suggest "actualizer" or "realizer" for the duty of this agent.  Sticking more literally to its etymology, the function of an "entelechy" can be taken to mean "that which has or is its end in itself", and thus "that which exists for its own sake" or "that which is complete as it is". Whether the interpreter actively creates the distinction as it is drawn or passively discovers the distinction as it is traced is not yet the issue of interest, and I leave this matter to a future distinction.

No matter what distinction forms the interest of the moment, there is that which discerns, draws, finds, follows, grasps, makes, sees, or seizes the distinction in question, an experimental agency that might as well be called an ''interpreter'', a ''maker'', or an ''observer'' of that distinction.  With regard to any form of distinction, the agency of a ''distinguisher'' or a ''former'' is a role that seems to suit what the Greeks fairly often described, but just barely hinted at, under the name of an ''entelechy''.  In general, this is a somewhat mysterious designation, stemming from a complex of terms whose various connotations are commonly translated as ''actuality'' or ''reality'', and often as ''actualization'' or ''realization'', seeming to suggest ''actualizer'' or ''realizer'' for the duty of this agent.  Sticking more literally to its etymology, the function of an entelechy can be taken to mean “that which has or is its end in itself”, and thus “that which exists for its own sake” or “that which is complete as it is”. Whether the interpreter actively creates the distinction as it is drawn or passively discovers the distinction as it is traced is not yet the issue of interest, and I leave this matter to a future distinction.

The relevance of the distinction between form and matter can be traced, not solely by way of illustration, to another passage from Aristotle:

The relevance of the distinction between form and matter can be traced, not solely by way of illustration, to another passage from Aristotle:

One should not let the phrases "tertium quid" or "third something" lead one astray, going so far as to think that an additional essence, a new kind of material, or a novel substance is implied, when it might be only a third way of being, mode of existence, degree of freedom, dimension of motion, or an extra role in a relation that is actually required.

One should not let the phrases ''tertium quid'' or ''third something'' lead one astray, going so far as to think that an additional essence, a new kind of material, or a novel substance is implied, when it might be only a third way of being, mode of existence, degree of freedom, dimension of motion, or an extra role in a relation that is actually required.

To this seminal account of interpretation the pragmatic theory of signs adds an array of general and specific elaborations, equipping it with a fully developed corpus of formal, instrumental, and material features.  Since the pragmatic line of development is in some sense an alternative track to what is usually called the modern line, the naive enlightenment, or the cartesian tradition, and yet shares many aims and basic methods with this still current mode of inquiry, it is necessary to distinguish these different trends, to detect their different impacts on the present scene, and to discern their different imports for the future of inquiry.  The accidental, intentional, and specific differences that the pragmatic theory of sign relations, in its currently developing form, is able to deploy over and above the ancient account, along with the differential circumstances that exist in the context of its present day applications, are taken up next, starting with the most salient augmentations and the most significant extensions of its overall lines of growth.

To this seminal account of interpretation the pragmatic theory of signs adds an array of general and specific elaborations, equipping it with a fully developed corpus of formal, instrumental, and material features.  Since the pragmatic line of development is in some sense an alternative track to what is usually called the modern line, the naive enlightenment, or the cartesian tradition, and yet shares many aims and basic methods with this still current mode of inquiry, it is necessary to distinguish these different trends, to detect their different impacts on the present scene, and to discern their different imports for the future of inquiry.  The accidental, intentional, and specific differences that the pragmatic theory of sign relations, in its currently developing form, is able to deploy over and above the ancient account, along with the differential circumstances that exist in the context of its present day applications, are taken up next, starting with the most salient augmentations and the most significant extensions of its overall lines of growth.

Some of the most important general features that mark out the pragmatic theory of sign relations from its original material are instrumental in character and arise largely due to changes in the "technological base", formally speaking, between the ancient and the present times, that is, by innovations in the formal languages and the technical methods that are made available for carrying out the discussion.  Three of these general instrumental features are taken up next.

Some of the most important general features that mark out the pragmatic theory of sign relations from its original material are instrumental in character and arise largely due to changes in the technological base, formally speaking, between the ancient and the present times, that is, by innovations in the formal languages and the technical methods that are made available for carrying out the discussion.  Three of these general instrumental features are taken up next.

1. In conformity with the modern facility for thinking of relations in general in extensional terms, as collections of ordered n tuples of domain components that belong to the relation in question, current versions of the theory of signs render it easiest to think of each given sign relation as a particular collection of ordered triples.  Elements of a sign relation are called "elementary sign relations" (ESR's), and the data of each given element of the sign relation can be represented as an ordered triple, of the form <o, s, i>, that names its object, sign, and interpretant, respectively.

# In conformity with the modern facility for thinking of relations in general in extensional terms, as collections of ordered n tuples of domain components that belong to the relation in question, current versions of the theory of signs render it easiest to think of each given sign relation as a particular collection of ordered triples.  Elements of a sign relation are called ''elementary sign relations'' (ESRs), and the data of each given element of the sign relation can be represented as an ordered triple, of the form <math>(o, s, i),</math> that names its object, sign, and interpretant, respectively.

 

# Among the other props on the modern stage, the pragmatic theory of sign relations can make especially good use of the bounteous ''logics'' of relations and ''algebras'' of relative terms that are currently available, as expressed in any one of several symbolic calculi with approximately the power of predicate logic.  Indeed, many of these algebras, calculi, and logics of relations received their first &ldquo;modern&redquo; formulations in the work of C.S.&nbsp;Peirce, and in the very process of trying to deal with the problems presented by the classical theory of signs.  As it happens, this coincidence of origins and this parallelism of derivations may help to account for the appearance of a quality of pre-established harmony that is presently manifested between the general subject of relations and the special subject of sign relations.

2. Among the other props on the modern stage, the pragmatic theory of sign relations can make especially good use of the bounteous "logics" of relations and "algebras" of relative terms that are currently available, as expressed in any one of several symbolic calculi with approximately the power of predicate logic.  Indeed, many of these algebras, calculi, and logics of relations received their first "modern" formulations in the work of C.S. Peirce, and in the very process of trying to deal with the problems presented by the classical theory of signs.  As it happens, this coincidence of origins and this parallelism of derivations may help to account for the appearance of a quality of "pre established harmony" that is presently manifested between the general subject of relations and the special subject of sign relations.

# Developments in other fields in the intervening times have caused the prevailing paradigms to shift a number of times.  For starters, the lately recognized inescapability of participatory observation, and the multitude of constraints on knowledgeable action that the necessity of this contingency implies, that ought to have always been clear in marking the horizons of anthropology, economics, politics, psychology, and sociology, and the phenomenological consequences of this unavoidability that have recently forced themselves to the status of physical principles and tardily made their appearance in the symbolic rites of the attendant formalities, against all the fields of reluctance that physics can generate, and in spite of the full recalcitrance that its occasional ancillary, mathematics, can bring to heel.  These cautions leave even the casual observer nowadays much more suspicious about declaring the self evident independence of diverse aspects and axes of experience, whether assuming the disentanglement of different features of experiential quality or presuming on the orthogonality of their coordinate dimensions of formal quantity, for instance, as represented by the aspects of particles versus waves, or the axes of space versus time.  Features and dimensions of experience that appear as relevant or arise into salience at one level of action, exchange, or observation can disappear from the scene of relevant regard at other stages of participation and weigh imponderably on other scales of transaction.  In relation to one another, aspects and axes of experience that appear unrelated just so long as they are considered at one level of interaction and perception may not preserve their appearance of indifference and independence if the scales of participation under consideration are radically shifted, whether up or down in their order of magnitude.  As a result, the sort of consideration that makes a line of experience conspicuous as it falls on one plane of existence is seldom enough to draw it through every plane of being.  In a related fashion, the brand of consideration whose bearing on an intermediate scale of treatment causes one to regard two features or dimensions of experience as ''moderately independent'' or as ''relatively orthogonal'' is rarely ever relevant to all levels of regard and is almost never enough to justify one's calling these aspects ''absolutely independent'' or to support one's calling these axes "perfectly orthogonal".

 

3. Developments in other fields in the intervening times have caused the prevailing paradigms to shift a number of times.  For starters, the lately recognized inescapability of "participatory observation", and the multitude of constraints on knowledgeable action that the necessity of this contingency implies, that ought to have always been clear in marking the horizons of anthropology, economics, politics, psychology, and sociology, and the phenomenological consequences of this unavoidability that have recently forced themselves to the status of physical principles and tardily made their appearance in the symbolic rites of the attendant formalities, against all the fields of reluctance that physics can generate, and in spite of the full recalcitrance that its occasional ancillary, mathematics, can bring to heel.  These cautions leave even the casual observer nowadays much more suspicious about declaring the self evident independence of diverse aspects and axes of experience, whether assuming the disentanglement of different features of experiential quality or presuming on the orthogonality of their coordinate dimensions of formal quantity, for instance, as represented by the aspects of particles versus waves, or the axes of space versus time.  Features and dimensions of experience that appear as relevant or arise into salience at one level of action, exchange, or observation can disappear from the scene of relevant regard at other stages of participation and weigh imponderably on other scales of transaction.  In relation to one another, aspects and axes of experience that appear unrelated just so long as they are considered at one level of interaction and perception may not preserve their appearance of indifference and independence if the scales of participation under consideration are radically shifted, whether up or down in their order of magnitude.  As a result, the sort of consideration that makes a line of experience conspicuous as it falls on one plane of existence is seldom enough to draw it through every plane of being.  In a related fashion, the brand of consideration whose bearing on an intermediate scale of treatment causes one to regard two features or dimensions of experience as "moderately independent" or as "relatively orthogonal" is rarely ever relevant to all levels of regard and is almost never enough to justify one's calling these aspects "absolutely independent" or to support one's calling these axes "perfectly orthogonal".

Next, I examine the more specific features of the pragmatic theory of sign relations, focusing on attributes that are augmented in the degrees of their development and that acquire a distinctive emphasis along with the extension and growth of this theory.  These features happen to be material in character, that is, they concern the contents of individual sign relations, affecting the aspects of relational structure and the orders of relational complexity that become especially conspicuous from the pragmatic point of view.  Two of these specific material features are taken up next.

Next, I examine the more specific features of the pragmatic theory of sign relations, focusing on attributes that are augmented in the degrees of their development and that acquire a distinctive emphasis along with the extension and growth of this theory.  These features happen to be material in character, that is, they concern the contents of individual sign relations, affecting the aspects of relational structure and the orders of relational complexity that become especially conspicuous from the pragmatic point of view.  Two of these specific material features are taken up next.