[Xmca-l] Re: The Semiotic Stance.pdf

Thu Jun 30 17:42:55 PDT 2016

Thanks David.

Tony Whitson captures the trouble with Peirce's terms (esp. "mind") in the
following:

"Finally, Peirce's use of the term mind in the previous quotation demands
some comment. Peirce sometimes spoke of the interpretant as being produced
by a mind or by a person who is interpreting the representamen; but he
himself referred to this usage as a compromise he made in "despair of
making my own broader conception understood" (Letter to Lady Welby,
December 14, 1908, in Kardwick, 1977, pp. 80-81). A more adequate
expression of Peirce's broader conception can be seen in his references to
signs as being used not only consciously by human persons, but used as well
by any kind of 'scientific' intelligence, that is to say, by an
intelligence capable of learning by experience' (2.227 [c. 1987])"
(Whitson, p. 103).

I think this speaks to the sense in which a sunflower can be an
interpretant for Peirce.

But in reading his chapter, I am unclear why there is a need to turn back
to Saussure? The essay says that it is a "complement" but is it a necessary
complement? What is lost if we don't add Saussure?

(my fear is that Saussure necessarily turns back the gains that Peirce's
triadic view of the sign has to offer and returns us to the dualism that
Tony was trying to get away from. Tony's figure 7.3 makes me doubly anxious
about this since it seems to suggest that the object and the representamen
exist in different realms. I'm fine with that kind of dualism in a
dualistic account, but it seems not quite right to have such a dualism as
part of an account whose goal is non-dualism).

-greg

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 3:24 AM, Ma, James (james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk) <
james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk> wrote:

> Many thanks David
> James
> ________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
> Sent: 30 June 2016 19:07:35
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Semiotic Stance.pdf
>
> James,
> Tony Whitson gives a wonderful exposition of semiotic theory--supported by
> accessible examples and neat graphics--in this chapter. Some of those
> examples address your questions about the interpretant. Tony's chapter
> begins on page 97.
> David
>
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=w3yRORQocjwC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=whitson+%22cognition+as+a+semiosic+process%22&source=bl&ots=a5Eej451uH&sig=7I1LbYsnZGkxTbyaOX5n30WKpr8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo-c_JptDNAhXky4MKHaN-At8Q6AEIKzAD#v=onepage&q=whitson%20%22cognition%20as%20a%20semiosic%20process%22&f=false
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Ma, James (
> james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk)
> Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 12:17 PM
> To: Martin John Packer; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Semiotic Stance.pdf
>
> Hi Larry, yes, I think it's a fascinating piece too (I first came across
> his work 11  years ago while doing a postdoc and later on quoted "the
> semiotic stance" in my article for MCA in 2014).  What's more fascinating -
> I've just found that there's a whole list of his publications downloadable
> via http://www.envorganism.org/Essays.html
>
>
> I've got a question for Martin - when speaking about Kockelman's idea of
> the interpretant being "not" necessary mental, you gave an example of a
> plant react ingto sunlight by turning its direction - which you considered
> to be an interpretant. However, to me, this is a plant's natural response
> to the stimulus produced by the sun - it is similar to what Jung called IRM
> (instinctual releasing mechanism) as a result of human organisms' (as well
> as non-human organisms') behavioural adaptation to the environment through
> evolution. I'm still wondering why you think this is an interpretant.
>
>
> James
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> Sent: 30 June 2016 16:46
> To: Martin John Packer; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Semiotic Stance.pdf
>
> Not sure if others are reading this fascinating article on the semiotic
> stance.
> The first few pages offer multiple examples of *thirds* that illuminate
> the complexity of this notion for interpretation.
> When discussing Peirce's thirds as 3 components that are a single
> phenomenal unit, it is equally important to focus on Peirce's further
> discussions of the iconic component as dividing into (image-icons)
> (diagrammatic-icons) and (metaphoric-icons) Image icons are qualitative
> imitation Diagrammatical icons are structural analogy Metaphoric icons
> refer to parallelism.
>
> Icon images will have some objective correspondence with the signifier
> (representamen) and the signified (object)
>
> Diagram icons will also have some objective correspondence with signifier
> and signified.
>
> With Metapor icons the correspondence may be (perceptually) or
> (experientially) constituted on the basis of a parallelism.
>
> Franson Manjali indicates Percean *units* as *thirds* form a continuum
> starting from those having a maximum of objective correspondence between
> the object and the (spatial/temporal) form of the signifier/representamen
> as in the case of the image-icon, and moving by degrees to the *arbitrary*
> or (law-like) symbol, where such an objective correspondence is almost
> absent.
> In this continuum the metaphor-icon occupies a middle position, the nature
> of the correspondence being a parallelism that is subjectively (felt).
>
> The iconicity of the metaphor is thus part OBJECTIVE and part SUBJECTIVE.
> The via media way.
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
> From: Martin John Packer
>
>

-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson