From: open1-AT-execpc.com
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 11:57:26 -0700
Subject: Re: PLC: Sign Time  [was, skull, bones and lions]


Reg Lilly wrote:
> 
> Like Saicho, I think Howard has done a pretty good job of pointing to
> the non-identity of sign and intention -- the "Chicago School"
> (Wimsatt, and Beardsley, Hirsch, et al) also have made this point
> pretty effectively from an analytic approach with what they call the
> "intentional fallacy," and Derrida and others have made this rather
> evident from a non-analytic approach in reading Husserl.  What, Dennis,
> is the intentionality behind the reading found in  _The Farmer's 
> Almanac_ -- very woolly caterpillars mean a cold winter?  What can a
> 'sign of the times' be or  mean for one who doesn't believe in god or
> secular simulacra of god (eg. Hegelian Geist)  

Is this supposed to be problematical?? I suppose that this is supposed to 
be an incisive refutation of intentionality, but for me is is simply an 
ordinary example of intentionality in action.

Considered as a communication, "very woolly caterpillars mean a cold 
winter" is no different than "vulcanic ash in the atmosphere means a cold 
winter" or "an El Niņo means a mild winter in the Midwest" - as I read 
recently.  There is nothing profoundly theistic in any of these 
statements.  All make a claim that a prediction can be based on a certain 
kind of observation.  The intent of the author, if he or she is not 
intending to deceive, is that there really is such a connection and a 
wish to communicate it.

The intent of the reader will depend in part on the habit of assent which 
the reader has with respect to the author or group that the author 
represents, i.e on the authority of the author for the reader - as we 
recently discussed.  It will also depend in part on the extent, if any, 
to which the reader has internalized the hypothetico-deductive method 
(HDM) and what he or she knows of supporting or falsifying evidence.

All of these factors (the author's belief and intent to communicate or 
decieve; the reader's habit of assent and internalization of the HDM, 
knowledge of, and credence granted to, supporting or falsifying evidence) 
are inescapably intentional.

Or is the problem posed to raise the question of teleology in an 
atheistic mentality?  If the latter is the case, I do not see that it is 
problematical.  Most people who reject the "teleology" as a label have no 
trouble in accepting it as a fact.  Science takes as a background 
assumption that there are natural tendencies consequent on the category 
in which objects fall.  Neutrons have a natural tendency to decay with a 
half-life of about 13 mins. Substances with low pHs tend to disolve 
unprotected iron.  So, why cannot catapillers have evolved a natural 
tendency to develop a woolly fuzz under conditions typically preceding a 
cold winter?  Whether thay have or not must be decided on the evidence.

> To say that the sign's
> meaning is solely in the intention of the 'reader' is of course
> to make of us all windowless monads -- and without the benefit of
> pre-established harmony! Or, one must accord an independent
> functioning of the signifier.

This seems a profoundly silly dichotomy.  This in not nuclear physics.  
Meaning is two-fold.  There is the meaning intended by the author - what 
the author is trying to create in the mind of the audience - and there is 
a meaning, if any, occasioned in the mind of the audience taken 
distributively.  To the extent that the two meanings are functionally 
equivalent, the communication has been successful.  To the extent that 
they are not, it has failed.  

The failure to communicate does not mean that the social interaction 
might not be fruitful in some other way, for it often is.  I recall going 
to talk a problem over with colleges on several occasions, and before I 
had fully acquainted them with the problem, the solution occured to me, 
and I thanked them and left.  So the mere process of articualtion without 
communication may be intentionally fruitful.

A signifier existing independantly, unnoticed has no operational 
functionality.

>    Ironically, though I suspect Dennis would rue the consequence, 
> to reduce the sign to intentional acts, as does Husserl, enables
> students to say irrefutably, in response to criticisms of their writing
> -- "Well, that's what I meant!"

    It may be or it may not be. We have not direct access to 
intentionality, and that is the way of the world.  The desire for control 
is not always satisfiable.  My typical response would be to point out 
what an absurd claimed meaning would imply.  That often brings clarity 
(or repentance?) to the student.

>    One consideration that I think has been left out (or presumed) is
> the time of the sign.  Dennis seems to what to have his cake and eat 
> it too, to have the originating intention both in an originating past,
> hence in some important respect absent, but have this past fully
> present in the reception of the sign as the authentic meaning of the
> sign. Or, in other words, the sign is something fundamentally temporal
> and Dennis, along with Aristotle and/to Husserl, is conceiving of
> signification within an atemporal presence where past present and
> future are all (indifferently) present.  This presconception, which is
> falsified by the experience of writing and speaking (hence has no
> scientific validity!), has been the stumbling stone for the theorizing
> of the sign ever since Aristotle.
> Reg
> rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu

Well I am glad to learn what my true intentionality is!  I had always 
thought that I regarded signs as being origniated at one time and 
received at another, later time.  How could I have been so wrong about my 
own beliefs?

See, I used to think, that between the time a sign was authored and the 
time it was received that there could be a change in context that could 
result in a loss of the author's intent.  I used to think that when I did 
not understand why Aristotle made a statement it was because I did not 
live in his culture and was not privy to the discussions that were taking 
place in the Academy or in the Lyceum at the time.  But, now I see that 
that was not what I thought at all!

I see clearly now that I live in an atemporal Platonic realm of pure 
intelligibility.  Ah, the grandeur!  Why did I ever study physics?

Gratefully,
Dennis Polis