SUO: Re: Re: Sign Relations & Communication
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
> SR: 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.
>
> No, I mean that quite literally, and it is one of the most important
aspects
> of pragmatic semiotics that the interpretant sign really is a sign in
relation
> to its own interpretant sign, and so on, ad in/finitum, that is, achieving
its
> own form of closure in ways that are bounded or unbounded, finite or
infinite.
>
> Being an object, a sign, or an interpretant sign is not an essential
attribute.
> It is an accidental, contingent, incidental, pragmatic, relational role
that
> a thing happens to be playing at a particular moment of relation,
expressed
> as an "elementary relation" or a 3-tuple transaction of the form <o, s,
i>.
Ok but my emphasis here is on *role* and how things look relative to each
other. So that if we are to take a snapshot of any given predicament, that
snapshot (that mentograph) will show different things in the different
domains. And when we do this, showing these domains in relationship to each
other to describe some particular predicament, we must picture the contents
as being different. Sure we can morph (rotate) our viewpoint of that
predicament around so that the same object appears in different domains ...
and that is a useful thing to do ... but in any given snapshot if we wipe
out one of the domains, we are no longer using Piece's insight.
> At another moment, as embodied in <o', s', i'>, the very same things may
> be playing entirely different roles. Don't bother trying to stop me if
> you heard this one, but the "Daffy Duck Theory Of The Semiotic Universe"
> (D^2 TOTSU) is a perfectly sensible, if somewhat mystical notion to the
> Peircean way of thinking, to wit, the idea that the "Whole Universe" (WU)
> is quite literally a sign of itself to itself, and thus that the ultimate
> cosmic sign relation contains a triple <o, s, i> = <WU, WU, WU>. Really!
Cool! But at any given moment from some particular point of view that some
process can actually take the contents of the elements <o, s, i> are
different.
> More generally speaking, this is what relational thinking is all about.
> There need be nothing at all that distinguishes the relational domains
> as sets. Think of the permutations of a set X = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}.
> Such a permutation is a bijective function f : X -> X, in other words,
> a special sort of relation F c X x X. There are 6! = 720 distinct such
> functions f or relations F, but the functional or relational domains are
> exactly the same X. Indeed, there are higher levels of abstraction that
> are mounted in group theory where we forget all about X and just preserve
> the structure of the group of 6! elements, Aut(X) = {automorphisms of X}
> or Sym(6) = {symmetries of a set of 6 elements}.
Yes but we are not talking about a bijective function. There really are
three separated domains when we restrain ourselves to a particular point of
view that some process can actually take at any given moment in time. I
fail to see how taking a God's eye view of this is going to be usefule to us
here ... nor can you or I actually that that point of view in any reality
that we can share.
> SR: 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.
>
> Pragmatic Agon: "The winning of our dis/content falls mainly in the O
domain."
I refuse to take sides .... I want all three for the purposes of our
analysis ... and while I'm not familure with Mr Agon, I also love the
natural world where these pretentious Os seem to exist. These Os which now
are their own things independant and of themselves alone, and now become
signs for other Os, and now again are refelected in the thoughts darting in
my memory.
Seth Russell