Waiting to exhale

From: Cunningham, Donald (cunningh@indiana.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 05 2001 - 19:19:42 PDT


My sense is that everyone is off reading Chapter 2 and preparing themselves
for the discussion to follow. I am away tomorrow through Sunday, off to
collect an undeserved but very appreciated recognition. I have enjoyed the
discussion and look forward to the rest. I have to say I already have a
considerable nit to pick with YE's treatment of Peirce. For example, YE's
assertion that Peirce's concept of sign is "purely mental" is akin to saying
that Vygotsky overlooks the importance of mediation.

"I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else,
called its object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I
call its interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by
the former. My insertion of "upon a person" is a sop to Cerberus, because I
despair of making my own broader conception understood. (Peirce, 1908)".

The interpretant is an effect that may or may not be on a person. The sun as
a sign is determined by the object food and determines the effect on a
sunflower as it moves (interpretant) to maximize its exposure to the sun.
Even in the case of a person, the effect may not be mental in the sense that
YE is using the term.

As to the Peirce's interest in the pure form of sign, this is true only to
the extent that Peirce saw semiotic as logic and worked hard to lay our its
architecture. But throughout his career he asserted that if his model did
not apply to ordinary experience, it was of little value.

But this may take us too far afield. For myself, one of my motivations for
reading LBE is to explore the fruitful points of contact between semiotics
and activity theory. I believe there are many.

Cheers..........djc



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