ONT Re: Signs Of Pragmata -- Discussion
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SOP. Discussion Note 3
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HT = Hugh Trenchard
Re: SOP 1. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05410.html
HT: I get confused (or more confused) when he talks about a sunflower being
a representamen of the sun. Is the sunflower in this case a property
of the sun -- a thing which triggers an image of the sun; something
which implies the sun? If so, I can't help but think again of Borges'
story in which the jaguar implies the deer the jaguar ate, the grass
the deer ate ... the universe (or that idea), and I question the
proximity of the relationship. A sunflower may conjure images
of the sun, but isn't a closer representamen of the sun
a circle and bright skies?
I will go ahead and use the word "sign" for the general case,
and if I want to talk specifically about a "mental sign",
I will just call it that.
I used to worry a lot about whether a sign of something
is a property of something, and vice versa, but this is
really a separate issue, and discussing it would depend
on picking a particular theory of what a "property" is,
which we don't really have to get into, just yet, not
in order to understand the bare essentials of what
a sign relation is.
Peirce says that a sunflower is a sign of the sun, to another sunflower,
so the speak -- more exactly, as interpreted in the inspired performance
of another sunflower -- and only with the proviso that you can imagine
a certain very unlikely condition as holding true, just because the
3-place relation of the sun O, sunflower s_1, and sunflower s_2
fits the definition of a sign relation that he more or less
gives in various places.
HT: Also, if a person is involved in the perception of the object, isn't
the person himself part of the relationship? It sounds like we have
object, sign, and interpretation of sign=meaning. But what about the
physical system (i.e. the brain) which facilitates this transformative
process? Isn't this a quadratic relationship? (he-he-heaven forbid --
anything but a triad! Bring out the crucifixes and the wooden stakes!
Sweep up the stars, dismantle the sun!)
I think that most of the things that you are talking about are covered by
the concept of an "interpreter", and we can go ahead and use that word in
a broad enough sense to cover any sort of interpretive system, whether an
individual agent, a whole community of interpretation, Gaia, Global Brain,
Over Soul, or whatever. Again, this is just the standard system-theoretic
attitude with regard to the agent, "representative point", "test particle",
it's names are legion. It doesn't really matter much what imagery you find
most catalytic of fruitful ideas, since we are really only talking about the
forms that we see from a particular perspective. From that outlook, what we
care about is the effect on the system, and that effect is the interpretant.
Jon Awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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