SUO: Re: Semiotics Formalization
Adam Pease wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> You bring up some interesting issues. Someone who is more familiar than
> I with Shannon's information theory may be able to help. However, I think
> we can address the issues of Information and Signs without delving into how
> to represent uncertainty in information and signs. If you agree, maybe you
> could come up with an English definition for Sign to augment the few terms
> I proposed earlier?
>
> Adam
>
> <...>
>
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Adam,
Now that I've read you Peirce's definition of a Sign, and perhaps you think
that I just read you the "Radical Indeterminacy Of Translation" (RIOT) Act,
I will make an effort to translate Peirce's text into a contemporary idiom.
I took the trouble to quote two complete versions of the sign definition
in order to make a special note of the following points:
1. The relationship that Peirce asserted between logic and semiotics,
by which logic is derived from semiotics by mathematical reasoning:
| It is from this definition [of a sign], together with a definition
| of "formal", that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic.
2. The relationship that Peirce asserted between logic and psychology,
by which logic is more general and independent of 'how we think'.
| A definition of a sign will be given which no more refers to
| human thought than does the definition of a line as the place
| which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time.
But now that these points of orientation are staked out, we can focus on the
core of the sign definition itself. From my point of view, I am looking at
"sign relations" as a particular class of mathematical objects, like graphs
or groups. For my purposes, these sign relations are "almost" adequately
defined by the following definition from Peirce:
| Namely, a sign is something, 'A',
| which brings something, 'B',
| its 'interpretant' sign
| determined or created by it,
| into the same sort of correspondence
| with something, 'C', its 'object',
| as that in which itself stands to 'C'.
|
| CSP, NEM 4, pages 20-21, & cf. page 54, also available at:
| <http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm>
The reason that I commonly describe this as "almost" a definition
is that it needs to be supplemented by suitable definitions of the
notions of "correspondence" and of "determination" that it calls on,
but only by what its author meant by these subordinate terms, and not
just by whatever readings are currently in the air. Otherwise, people
tend to jump to a couple of hasty conclusions: (1) that the mention of
"correspondence" is mixed up with a "correspondence theory of truth",
and (2) that the mention of "determination" invokes a doctrine of
determinism that reigns over the flow of signs. Nothing could be
further from Peirce's way of thinking about sign processes.
The "correspondence" that is being invoked here is just the
whole sign relation itself, a form that persists through time
and that continues to govern the transits of the sign process.
The "determination" that is taken to be in force here is just
the way that something makes something be other than it would
otherwise be, as a drop of rain determines a rock to be wet,
but only if it is not already drenched with the prior rain.
We would typically describe this today as constituting
a fairly modest form of "constraint" or "influence".
Well, I ran way over my allotted time for today,
so it looks like this parsing, explication, and
translation of Peirce's sense may take another
pass or two.
Jon
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