Re: Looking for a Razor and Triangles and Meanings

Re: Looking for a Razor and Triangles and Meanings -- By: Sean Barker
At: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2010-08/msg00236.html

I've never understood this business about the "infinite regress"
of signs.  I remember that it was much ado-ed on the Peirce List
during my sometime visits there.  To the best of my recollection,
it had to do with possible adaptations and/or mis-interpretations
by Umberto Eco.  Here's a fragment of discussion that I copied to
what was then the "Arisbe-Dev List":

http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2005-November/thread.html#3152

In the passage that I do recall from Peirce, his words were more
exactly these:

| A sign stands ''for'' something ''to'' the idea which it produces,
| or modifies.  Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something
| from without.  That for which it stands is called its ''object'';
| that which it conveys, its ''meaning'';  and the idea to which it
| gives rise, its ''interpretant''.  The object of representation can
| be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is
| the interpretant.  But an endless series of representations, each
| representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute
| object at its limit.  The meaning of a representation can be nothing
| but a representation.  In fact, it is nothing but the representation
| itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing.  But this clothing
| never can be completely stripped off;  it is only changed for something
| more diaphanous.  So there is an infinite regression here.  Finally,
| the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the
| torch of truth is handed along;  and as representation, it has its
| interpretant again.  Lo, another infinite series.
|
| C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 1.339, from an unidentified fragment, n.d.
| Online copy @ http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/interpretant.html

Perhaps a bit too diaphanous.  Then again, it comes from an unpublished fragment,
so extra charity is due to him, if we would have it for our own Nachlassting sins.
The phrases "infinite regression" and "infinite series" both occur here, but both
in the context of pointing out that "an endless series of representations, each
representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at
its limit".  Peirce knows all about recursive definitions and the conditions
for the convergence of infinite series, so his use of "infinite regression"
does not entail the bad sense of a logical absurdity or undefined concept.

Jon Awbrey

inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey