SUO: Re: Sign Relations & Communication
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
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>
> JA = Jon Awbrey
> SR = Seth Russell
>
> Anyway, it seems that there are still a couple of things about
> the basic concept of a sign relation that need to be clarified
> before we can go any further.
>
> 1. The term "interpretant" in the pragmatic theory of signs is short
> for "interpretant sign", so an interpretant has all of the other
> properties that any sign might have, and is distinguished solely
> by its role in the particular triples of the form <o, s, i> that
> reside in the particular sign relation L c OxSxI in question.
Well I would agree, except for your restraint of *solely* .. for if there is
no distinction, then why bother with the extra element in your form? So
that I agree that were we to analyze separately the contents of either of
the domains i or s formally, then we contrive not to find any distinctions
in the texture of that analysis .... yet when we put them together in one
analysis (or picture) we will certainly be putting different things in each
domain the differences illustrating the various roles of three domains.
> 2. Think of what I have been saying as a claim about the "minimal
adequate database"
> or the "minimal adequate symbol parsing table" that one needs either
to model or
> to specify a significant fragment of a real, not-excessively-trivial
communication
> process. Just by way of a catchy title, let's call it the Rosetta
Stone Hypothesis.
Perhaps I can get you to just blurt out this Rosetta Stone ... huh? ....
perhaps yes?
> Applying this to the Computer question -- a section of my dissertation is
on this,
> and so I assure you that I have been and will continue to take it quite
seriously:
Yes I did get the drift that you had been all over this territory ...
perhaps you can guide me ... bearing in mind of course that I am not without
my own intentions as to my final destination.
> There will be a sign relation L that can be said to capture a significant
aspect
> of what the "computer", that is, a physical system under the control of a
program,
> is doing with formal syntactic domain S. Here, S will be a formal
language over
> some alphabet A, that is to say, S c A* = the set of all finite strings
over A.
What (relation ?) does your sign 'c' stand for ?
> Like I said once before, in these formal contexts we will almost always
> have S = I, so the Sign and Interpretant columns will be filled with
> elements from the very same formal language S = I c A*.
Elements, yes perhaps, but content ... no, I don't think so .. not at least
if they are parts of the *same* picture and are analyzing *collectively*
some particular conundrum ... for then (as in my comment above) we would
not need the extra column at all. You have swept it away.
Seth Russell