Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 23:50:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Inna Runova Semetsky <irs5-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Have you ever seen this? (bit-parts)


the symbol is third.
peirce was against Kant's thing-in-itself as unknowable - precisely
because he-CSP- moved from dyadic logic to triadic, signs can be known via
their relation to other signs--  here of course is the danger of infinite
regress but Peirce partially solved this too -through habit-change.
i.
On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Chris McMahon wrote:

> Dear Mark,
> 
> I think we have hit some fascinating stuff re: Peirce here. And I am not 
> really disagreeing with your analysis.
> 
> >But, Chris, that 'feeling' IS what comes first for
> >Peirce.
> 
> That's what we are talking about. Yes. Does, for CP, some relation of an 
> effective nature (e.g. feeling) precede any relation of a "resmeblance" 
> sort? Now my feeling is that it must. But does CP see it that way? I think 
> it is interesting that he lists the Symbol first. The Icon first. And then 
> Sinsign first. And in the ur-series the ontology of the sign comes before 
> anything, before the relation of sign to world or function of sign in the 
> world. But inside the ontology of the sign (sign, object, interpretant) 
> there are these relations. And they are not relations of resemblance, but 
> ... "feeling" (anyway, some inexplicable causal relations). It is as if the 
> idea of Icon, Index & Symbol reinjects at the molecular level of the sign's 
> ontology. The ontology of the sign cannot come before the sign's 
> relationalities and the relationalities are only possible thanks to the 
> sign's ontology. Its chick'negg time? I get the sense that CP works via the 
> great tradition of the object-in-itself first and then the relations, but he 
> can't talk about the object-in-itself (the sign) wihtout understanding it in 
> terms of relations, and he is aware of this. But he sticks to the program, 
> because what else can you do. Its the "way in" that he has inherited, and 
> is, after all so typically American, not just a "Medieval" approach, but an 
> "Edisonian" approach to semiotics? It's really beautiful, actually. I'm not 
> really critiquing CP and saying "it can't be so, etc.", or "it is founded on 
> undemonstrated premises" because the premises are "demonstrated" (or at 
> least remarked upon) in the second and third tripatite series. So you can 
> just work backwards, or from the middle out, and find the same utterly 
> reversible (and finally inexplicable - as Kant would understand) 
> consistency. Its wonderful.
> 
> >"Signs are are divisible by three trichotomies; FIRST,
> >according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is
> >an actual existent, or is a general law ... A
> >QUALISIGN is a quality which is a sign. It cannot
> >actually act as a sign until it is embodied ... A
> >SINSIGN (where the syllable 'sin' is taken as meaning
> >'being only once', as in single ...) is an actual
> >existent thing or event which is a sign. It can only
> >be so through its qualities ... A LEGISIGN is a law
> >that is a sign... It is not a single object, but a
> >general type which, it has been agreed, shall be
> >significant. Every legisign signifies through an
> >instance of its application, which may be termed a
> >*Replica* of it... The replica is a sinsign. Thus
> >every legisign requires sinsigns" (from the fifth
> >section of Peirce's syllabus for his 1903 Harvard
> >lectures, CP 2.23-72, called "Nomenclature and
> >Division of Triadic relations, as Far as They are
> >Determined" in _The Essential Peirce_ vol.2
> >(EP2)p.291).
> 
> I think this citation bears out what I'm saying? To paraphrase:
> "In the beginning there is the thing not the word. But the thing comes to us 
> only as a word. It is called, as it comes to us, "Sinsign". Now this 
> thingness of the Sinsign is its substrate, in which qualities can inhere or 
> become corporeal. There is no such thing, except in the abstract as a 
> disembodied quality. Okay "events" make it tricky. But events are things, 
> embodied in time? Okay? But qualities can be abstracted. So the name of 
> these abstracted qualities is "Qualsign". You will object that a Sinsign is 
> composed of Qualsigns? Fair cop. But you must remember there is no such 
> thing as a disembodied quality. Like the smile of the Cheshire cat has to be 
> a smile on something, otherwise its a Sinsign of itself, and not a 
> diembodied quality at all. Anyway, socially speaking, though all signs order 
> reality, and the order of reality appears to us via signs, some signs are 
> agreed upon as more important for this ordering than others. I call them 
> "Legisigns". But boiled down, Legisigns are really just Sinsigns and 
> Sinsigns are only known to us as compots of Qualsigns and all Qualsigns are 
> thus potential Legisigns. The main thing about Legisigns is that they are 
> selected on some kind of social basis, which is ultimately like a Symbol, 
> arbitrary and contingent. But there is not the same degree of arbitrariness 
> and social contingency with respect to Sinsigns, which are really Icons of 
> things, or in Qualsigns which are really Indexes that tell us that a certain 
> kind of thing is there."
> 
> >So, I think Peirce DOES "see this progression"!
> 
> Yes. I suspect he does. But I suppose what I'm saying is there is a formal 
> beginning place and a less formal one, which gets behind the formal one (and 
> at the same time says: the formal beginning is not really the beginning).
> 
> >I think there's maybe a different conception of
> >'image' here than the medievals had (though I'm
> >inadequately informed about them).
> 
> Not really. It's just the idea of resemblance. The trick to naturalizing 
> mimesis is seeing that x looks like y. Yes it REALLY does! No, you cannot 
> deny it. x looks just like y.
> 
> But once it gets going mimesis can sustain and survive application to 
> thingslike diagrams, etc. ... "That does not look like y!" ... "Okay, but it 
> does really. Its the same relation of resemblance. Just a useful likeness 
> not a good likeness". And in the end is any really good likeness useful?
> 
> Consider Deleuze's
> >intriguing statement that "We do not yet know what
> >relationship Peirce proposes between the sign and the
> >image. It is clear that the image gives rise to the
> >sign" (_Cinema 1: The Movement Image_ 69).
> 
> Dig it.
> 
> IMAGE
> What was that?
> Did you see that? [Index?]
> What was it?
> What did it look like? [Icon?]
> It had the qualities of a dog. [Qualsigns!]
> I think it might have been a dog.
> Me too, looked like a dog. [Icon!]
> No it didn't. [Indexes?]
> yes. It did.
> It was a dog. [Symbol!]
> SINSIGN
> 
> Resemblance gets the last word. But it begins with something nonmimetic. As 
> I said, I agree with this story. But that's not what's really at stake. What 
> GD is remarking upon is how the SYMBOL (which is the nonmimetic sign) 
> develops from the ICON (the mimetic sign). So the stroy begins when we say 
> "It was a dog". yet before that story there is another, which begins with 
> "What was that?". And yet the whole question, "what was that", which will 
> arrive at the Icon, already presumes the Icon. The world of the Icon has 
> already been formed. A similar tale can now be told of the way the question 
> that is put to the Icon will presume and give rise to the Symbol (and of the 
> long struggle of the Icon to free itself from the Symbol).
> 
> Dog.
> SINSIGN
> Dogs stink. [Index]
> Dogs look like dogs. [Icon]
> QUALSIGN.
> I hate dogs.
> Dog's perform a range of useful social functions.
> LEGISIGN.
> 
> >"A sign by Firstness is an image of its object and,
> >more strictly speaking, can only be an *idea*. For it
> >must produce an interpretant idea: and an external
> >object excites an idea by a reaction on the brain...
> >First firstnesses, are images; those which represent
> >the relations, mainly dyadic ... are diagrams; those
> >which represent ... a parallelism in something else,
> >are metaphors" (from the third section of his 1903
> >syllabus on "Speculative Grammar", EP2 273-274).
> 
> I think that's consistent with the shaggy dog story?
> 
> >I don't think you're associating Peirce with "the
> >medievals" (he ripped some of them, adopted others),
> >but.. Once embodied one is already postlapsarian?
> 
> No. Not really. I'm just being lazy. I don't mean "postlapsarian" in the 
> theorlogical sense, which does not apply to CP. But the medievals - some of 
> them - longed after tha Adamic language, where every thing had a proper 
> name, its real name, essential to it (though added later by Adam) because 
> Adam's mind was not yet corrupted. So we can ask: How can Sartre want to say 
> things precede signs? How could they not? And yet you want to be intimate 
> wit things? Bypass signs? As though you are not already doing that? As 
> though you could?
> 
> >I'm intrigued by Peirce's position on Leibniz:
> >
> >"The diety of the _Theodicee_ of Leibniz is as high an
> >instinctive mind as can well be imagined; but ... by
> >making its knowledge Perfect and Complete, he fails to
> >see that in thus refusing it the powers of thought and
> >the possibility of improvement he is in fact taking
> >away something far higher than knowledge" (from the
> >2nd chapter of _Minute Logic_, CP 7.380, EP2 519 note
> >27).
> 
> Yeah. Cool quote. There is the Adamic language and then there is the 
> "postlapsarian" or "social" degeneration/illogic/misrecognized vision which 
> is also so creative/improving/developing/perfecting. Felix culpa.
> 
> >However, as Deleuze points out (sounding very much
> >like the play between Peirce's qualisign and sinsign):
> >"Leibniz's monads submit to two conditions, one of
> >closure and the other of selection... it could be said
> >that the monad, astraddle over several worlds, is kept
> >half open as if by a pair of pliers... what always
> >matters is folding unfolding refolding" (_The Fold_
> >last page -- but, I'm pushing ahead of myself ;) Mark
> 
> Gee. I wouldn't mind you explaining how this system of selection and closure 
> (which I imagine as keyholing "before and after" where each "after" creates 
> a new "before") works re: CP. Are you saying that CP sees the Qualsigns as 
> locking into Sinsigns, closing off possibilities, but creating new 
> "openings" thereby? I think that's what you mean? In any case, its a cool 
> way of doing semiotics, even if its not a very "scientific" generalized 
> ontology.
> 
> By the way, when I teach CP, it is always a struggle, but ALWAYS worthwhile 
> getting the students to get out of this sort of catgorical approach:
> "X is an icon"
> to a relational approach:
> "There is an iconic relation between x and y but also an indexical relation 
> between x and y, ..."
> 
> :) Chris
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