Re: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Semiotics

Re: Gary Moore
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8463
In: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8463

GM = Gary Moore
JA = Jon Awbrey

JA: Chomsky is "thoroughly Cartesian" only to the extent that he emphasized
     the rationalist aspects of linguistics at a time when a tide of naively
     empirical approaches had gone to extremes.  But that much rationalism
     he shares with both Kant and Peirce, who took more balanced views of
     the relation between empirical and rational approaches to inquiry.
     In that time also, Chomsky was one of the voices beyond Peircean
     enclaves who wrote with favor about Peirce's approach to science
     and inquiry generally.

JA: If I had to guess why Peirce did not have more to say about Humboldt,
     it might be because Peirce was accustomed to taking for granted most
     of what Humboldt had to say by way of principles.  For example, the
     idea of "making infinite use of finite means" is such a commonplace
     of mathematical practice from Pythagoras on that it would scarcely
     seem like a much of novelty to Peirce.  Just a guess, though ...

GM: “Principles” seems to be used in Humboldt as an identification of a mode
     of action since fundamental principles in Humboldt are in no way “fixed”
     or stable in any way, but always generative, changing -– as if you were
     checking the quality of a very long rope for serious defects being quickly
     pulled between your hands -- so that, though one “generates” in thought
     “modes of action”, “mode” in no way is a fixed form of action but rather
     the action itself continuously changes what the mode itself is moment to
     moment through its, literally, continuously changing changes judged by a
     form of ‘sameness’.  Only “convention” has the ‘ability’ to *fix* words
     and concepts as meaning the same through time, but this “convention” is
     only valid within certain subcultures and invalid with others.

GM: One thing I also find sidetracked but constantly implied in semiotics
     is extreme relativity, i.e., "Everything is relative!" except obviously,
     and everybody seems to realize this, for the statement to make any sense
     not only is it itself not 'relative' to anythng else -- how could that be? --
     but that it has the form of being an absolute statement, always true in
     every case, something to be relied upon, a ground in that there is no
     ground.  Humboldt seems to go along with this as well as Deely and Eco --
     and Peirce with infinite semiosis, unlimited reflexivity.  Therefore in
     one sense the statement is conventional nonsense as related to Einstein
     but in another sense is true except in order to be true it must be false...?


Gary & All,

The Humboldtian tune that Chomsky likes to hum boldly, to wit,
“the infinite use of finite means”, is just what “generative”
means in this context.  Understanding that is key to detecting
the Peircean signal amidst the diverting but still distracting
noise of Eco and others when it comes to the whole sense whose
sense they render as “infinite semiosis”.

Nor should we identify “finite” with “fixed”, since a diversity
of finite bases, grammars, procedures, or sets of generators
may be found that generate the very same formal languages,
objects, spaces, species, or varieties.

The type of “relativity” we find in Peirce's cosmology is not
essentially different from what we find in Aristotle's cosmos,
in so far as it affects the interpretation of signs, at least.
The innovation that Peirce brought in was to craft a logic of
relative terms and a mathematics of relations that could deal
with the complexity of triadic relations, including the whole
manifold of those that appear in math, science, and semiotics.

Regards,

Jon

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