Re: Pragmata = Objects?

Gary,

Was just about to hit the sack, so just a quick note on the Dewey point.
I naturally agree that Peirce's account is superior in it's own terms.
But the thing about Dewey is that he lived long enough to observe the
reception of Peirce's ideas over the long haul, especially the kinds
of regressive forces that keep people slipping back to the imaginary
safety of their absolutist archaisms.  With surprising insight for
the amount of background he had in the sciences, he paid attention
to the developments in physics and information theory that Peirce
anticipated but never got a chance to see in full flower.  These
experiences and sources of information -- and no small measure
of relentless repetition, retrial, and rewriting -- produced
an analysis of the blocks to inquiry that I have gradually
come to see as an essential key to the future of inquiry.

And you know I mean "essential" in the good sense ...

Jon

GARY RICHMOND wrote:
 > Jon wrote:
 >
 >> In Peirce's way of thinking, from the theory of inquiry
 >> to the theory of signs to the pragmatic maxim, the word
 >> "object" marks a role in a relation -- object of a sign --
 >> and the role is more important than all the ontological
 >> essences that people may try to squeeze out of the word.
 >> Dewey was especially peirspicacious in articulating the
 >> relational matrix of objects, signs, and interpretants.
 >
 > Well, yes, right, and of course, and all that (except that I consider Peirce's
 > theory of inquiry as well as the pragmatic maxim to be parts of his theory of
 > signs, and I haven't quite the confidence in Dewey which you seem to have in
 > this matter, finding Peirce's own explication of the semiotic relationship
 > far superior in virtually every way).
 >
 > Let's consider the first diagram in your "Interpretation as Action" paper:
 > http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html (the .gif is attached)
 >
 > In your diagram the s-o-i relationship is given on the left, and on the right some
 > mind (or psyche == the interpreter) grasps (observes, experiences, takes in, etc.)
 > the whole of the triadic relationship (and if you also call THAT intuition an object,
 > then we would seemingly have two objects -- and I'm not referring here to the 'immediate'
 > vs the 'dynamic' object, but to an intuitive grasping of the whole being referred to as
 > an 'object'.  The 'thing' which 'i' grasps is clearly NOT the same 'thing' as the 'object'
 > itself since the psyche experiences the entire triadic movement, the semiosis (as process).
 > So, in fact, you designate this not with a lower case 'o' but with a lower case 'i', and for
 > good reason.
 >
 > So, as you wrote, "the word 'object' marks a role in a relation," namely the
 > triadic relationship s-o-i, and I suppose one *could* refer to the apprehension
 > of that relationship as an 'object of apprehension', but I think it may tend to
 > confuse matters given that that other object-as-role (which is complex enough in
 > being both 'immediate' and 'dynamic') would seem to have a special right to the
 > 'object' designation.
 >
 > Still, I'm trying to inquire with you and others into this matter (gnox's recent
 > remarks seem to me especially cogent) and so I wouldn't presume to attempt to say
 > anything "definitive" in the matter.  Nonetheless, I think we need to be as careful
 > in our terminology here as Peirce was.
 >
 > So, in a word, the interpreter (psyche in your diagram) experiences
 > (or participates in, or intuits) not an object but a semiotic process,
 > and it seems to clarify the matter a little, perhaps, to refer to that
 > totality -- which only *involves* an object--not as itself an object,
 > but exactly as a process, which 'thing' it is.
 >
 > Yet, I also agree with you that "the role is more important than
 > all the ontological essences that people may try to squeeze out of
 > the word" 'object' (so long as we confine the term to the object in
 > the semiotic process).  I personally think that such a distinction
 > represents “a difference which makes a difference" and ought not be
 > reduced to a matter of "the people who get it already ... and the
 > people who don't."
 >
 > Best,
 >
 > Gary

-- 

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