Re: “On the Paradigm of Experience Appro priate for Semiotic”

Previously on the Peirce List ...

* Comments on the Peirce List slow reading of Joseph Ransdell,
   "On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic",
   http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/paradigm.htm

JR = Joe Ransdell
SE = Steven Ericsson-Zenith

JR: The thesis of my paper is that it is doubtful that any distinction
     should be drawn between empirical and nonempirical semiotics or even
     between experimental and nonexperimental semiotics. Doing so tends to
     reproduce within the semiotics movement the present academic distinction
     between the sciences and the humanities which semiotics should aim at
     discouraging, rather than reinforcing. But to overcome this undesirable
     dichotomy, it is necessary to disentangle the conceptions of the experiential,
     the experimental and the empirical from certain other complexes of ideas with
     which they have become associated by accident rather than necessity.

SE: I confess that on first reading the phrase "it is doubtful that" caused me some problems.
     I think it dilutes the impact of the paper and reveals a caution that I think is unnecessary.
     This is, I believe, because Ransdell is addressing a community of American philosophers,
     a European thinker would have been more confidently assertive.

One of my favorite (philosophical) activities all throughout my undergrad years
was a mental exercise I called "erasing distinctions" or "seeing coincidences",
and in that old spirit I found myself initially sympathetic with the project of
seeking continuities between the humanities and the sciences, especially with
regard to the spectrum of semiotic studies.

But I lack the skill at erasing distinctions that I used to have, and one that
I can remember trying to smudge as best I could to no truly long-lasting avail
was the distinction between policy and theory, "ought" and "is", in short, the
difference between normative sciences and descriptive sciences.

I'll be reading "descriptive", "empirical", "positive", and "special"
as near enough synonyms in regard to sciences and fields of study as
will permit us to ignore the slight shades of difference among them.

Jon

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