Author: gnox

Type, sign and word

According to Chapter 13 of Turning Signs,

A niche in a meaning space is a type of meaning. A niche in a symbolic meaning space can only be occupied by a Legisign, ‘a law that is a Sign.… Every conventional sign is a legisign. It is not a single object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant’ (— Peirce, EP2:291).

If we consider a language (such as English or Greek) as a semantic or meaning space, we might say that a niche in that space is occupied by a word. But we might say instead that a word, being a legisign or type and not a single object, is the meaning space, which is ‘occupied’ in actual linguistic practice by tokens of that type or instances of that word, as Peirce says (CP 4.537, 1906).

On the other hand, Peirce also says that ‘Man, homo, ἄνθρωπος are the same sign’ (MS 9), although we would not usually say that they are the same word. This would imply a cross-linguistic meaning space in which different words are instances of the same sign. This would still be a symbolic space, but we might call it a semiotic meaning space, as it is more inclusive than a linguistic one (constituted by a single language). Likewise in his fifth Harvard Lecture of 1903:

Take, for example, any proverb. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Every time this is written or spoken in English, Greek, or any other language, and every time it is thought of it is one and the same representamen. It is the same with a diagram or picture. It is the same with a physical sign or symptom. If two weathercocks are different signs, it is only in so far as they refer to different parts of the air. … “Evil communications corrupt good manners” and φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθʼ ὁμιλίαι κακαί are one and the same representamen. They are so, however, only so far as they are represented as being so; and it is one thing to say that “Evil communications corrupt good manners” and quite a different thing to say that “Evil communications corrupt good manners” and φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθʼ ὁμιλίαι κακαί are two expressions of the same proverb.

EP2:203

The distinction in that last sentence is essentially the distinction between a language and a metalanguage, or between use and mention – or between semiosis and semiotics.

Wild wide web

The semiotic point of view is the perspective that results from the sustained attempt to live reflectively with and follow out the consequences of one simple realization: the whole of our experience, from its most primitive origins in sensation to its most refined achievements of understanding, is a network or web of sign relations.

— John Deely (1990, Chapter 2)

The real economy

Food, shelter, clothing, fuels, minerals, forests, fisheries, land, buildings, art, music and information are real wealth. Money by itself is not. Money is circulated among people who use it to buy real wealth.

— Odum and Odum (2001, 91)

Unfortunately, almost everything we hear about “the economy” through the media reflects an obsession with “growth,” as defined by increasing circulation of money. Meanwhile the planet continues to grow more impoverished.

Phenomoment

Every moment has its momentum.
Something behind it has just been determined,
and something before it is about to be.
— if we think of time as a thing in motion, like an arrow.
But what if time is the motion itself?
Is the past then before and the future behind?

And what if time is the continuity of presence?

Phenoscopy analyzes ‘whatever is before the mind in any way, as percept, image, experience, thought, habit, hypothesis, etc.’ (Peirce).
What does it mean for something (X) to be ‘before the mind’? Most obviously, X can be an object of your attention, something you are “minding” or conscious of. The sound of the rain, say. But there must be other ways of being ‘before the mind,’ – or ‘in the mind,’ as Peirce sometimes put it. He included ‘thoughts’ and ‘habits’ in his ‘whatever’ list, but you cannot be directly conscious of either.

Thought is often supposed to be something in consciousness; but on the contrary, it is impossible ever actually to be directly conscious of thought. It is something to which consciousness will conform, as a writing may conform to it. Thought is rather of the nature of a habit, which determines the suchness of that which may come into existence, when it does come into existence. Of such a habit one may be conscious of a symptom; but to speak of being directly conscious of a habit, as such, is nonsense.

— Peirce, EP2:269

You can be indirectly conscious of a habit, by using a sign to refer to it, as this sentence has just done. The sign at the moment has to be a replica of a legisign. But habits – including the habits or “laws” of nature – are themselves legisigns. They determine the momentum of the moment by determining what comes into (or goes out of) existence at this time – just as the Thought determines where your thinking and feeling are presently going.

The only kind of sign that can embody this momentum is the argument: for ‘“urging” is the mode of representation proper to Arguments’ (Peirce, EP2:293). Likewise some kind of urging seems to be the mode of life itself, driving all the creatures in its urgent grip like ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ (Dylan Thomas).

Every moment has its momentum.