Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA20796 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 26 Jun 2000 20:41:42 +0100 Message-Id: <200006261939.PAA27257@mail3.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 14:43:38 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: FW: Cons and Facades - more on truth Pt. I In-reply-to: <LPBBICPHCJJBPJGHGMCIEEPNCGAA.ddiamond@ozemail.com.au> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net>
Subject: FW: Cons and Facades - more on truth
Date sent: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 01:10:30 +1000
> Hi Joe,
>
> I am forwarding my last reply directly to you. Dont forget to change the
> address to memetics etc when you reply.
>
> best,
>
> Chris.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Lofting [mailto:ddiamond@ozemail.com.au]
> Sent: Thursday, 22 June 2000 12:05
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - more on truth
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> > Of Joe E. Dees
> > Sent: Thursday, 22 June 2000 10:25
> > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > Subject: RE: Cons and Facades - more on truth
> >
> >
> <snip>
> > Peirce recognised that to get into the quadrivium of
> > arithmetic, geometry,
> > > astronomy, and music you had to first work your way through
> > three 'lesser'
> > > disciplines, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
> > >
> > > These lesser disciplines are for Peirce the three threads of
> > the Science of
> > > Semiotic where grammar = firstness, logic = secondness and rhetoric =
> > > thirdness.
> > >
> > Firstness is object, secondness is subject, thirdness is sign.
>
> Peirce makes the point that:
>
> "A Sign, or Representaman, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic
> relation to a Second , called its object, as to be capable of determining a
> Third, called its interpretant..."
>
Peirce wrote about as clear as mud, but it is reasonably easy to
discern from the preceding and following passages that his word
"interpretant" refers to the ideation of the sign in the self-conscious
mind. He is surely mistaken if he gives ontological priority to the
sign (or representamen) over that object to which it refers. The
referent is ontologically dependent upon the object it represents. It
also must be recognized that without the "third", or self-conscious
and signifying mind, the sign would never be imposed upon its
object. The object can subsist without being perceived (isness),
but this being which is, is without either presence (for it lacks a self-
conscious awareness to be present TO) or meaning. Once self-
conscious perceives this being as present to it, (thatness), it may
impose meaning upon the being that it perceives (whatness).
>
> Firstness has a degree of single context about it as well as a 'realtime'
> presence. Secondness and thirdness etc take us into harmonics analysis where
> we 'cut' the first out from 'reality' and create an internal mapping for
> analysis. The interpretant is 'in here', the copy of the first, as Peirce
> comments:
>
> "A sign, or representamen, is something that stands to somebody for
> something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is,
> creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more
> developed sign [Peirce's acknowledgement of internal feedback processes i.e.
> memories, that can add more to a sign than is 'there']. That sign which it
> creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for
> something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but
> in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the *ground*
> of the representamen. "Idea" is here to be understood in a sort of Platonic
> sense..."p99 Buchler, J. (Ed) (1955) "Philosophical Writings of Peirce"
> Dover
>
The reference to "ground' may be understood as the consciously
self-aware mind's cognitive gestalt contexture relative to and in
which the representamen is situated so that it may assume its
signification by comparison and contrast with other, similar and
dissimilar representamens which are already present in the mind.
You may conceive of these ideational representamens as L-memes.
>
> On the same page Peirce emphasises that the "Science of semiotic has three
> branches...the first.. we call pure grammar...the second is logic proper
> [secondness works using analogy, it is dyadic this compared to that aka NOT
> this]...the third...I call pure rhetoric.."p99
>
> In this sense there is a continuum present that is divided into three,
> firstness = syntax, secondness = emergence of meaning, semantics (use of
> analogy, this from that) and thirdness = pragmatics that is tied to rhetoric
> and so qualitative discernment.
>
Syntax has to do with the structure of language, and has to do with
sign-sign relations within a symbolic system. Thus it is not a
firstness, since it requires referents to be ABOUT, otherwise it is
reduced to sterile and referentless meaninglessness. Semantics
has to do with the referential relation between the sign and its
object (standing for, representing), and is the imposition by self-
conscious awareness of meaning upon being. Pragmatics has to
do, with the relationship between the sign and its imposer and
interpreter, i. e. us.
> > >
> > > The last distinction does take us into preliminary dynamics that get
> > > expanded as you work further up the hierarchy (at least the
> > three tiers ).
> > >
> > > >From the template area the structural emphasis is very
> > archetypal in form,
> > > in the I Ching it is called the Fu Hsi sequence with a rigid
> > structure using
> > > binary trees. Upon these foundations are layered the 'King Wen' sequence
> > > were the emphasis is on dynamics and a definite start-end distinction.
> > >
> > > I have linked Greimas's semiotic square to the Fu Hsi sequence
> > emphasising
> > > the structural basis and am now expanding this into dynamics
> > and the King
> > > Wen sequence (there are 8 trigrams that form a compass pattern
> > and we get
> > > two compasses, the relational overlayed on the structural.)
> > >
> > Any one of these a priori and mythically influenced classificatory
> > systems, be it astrology, Native American earth astrology, tarot,
> > runes, qabbalistic tree of life, the enneagram, or the i ching, I take
> > with a sack of salt.
>
> then you totally misunderstand what is going on. These systems are metaphors
> and they all 'map' to the template I present, a template that also
> 'contains' our categories of types of mathematics number representations. My
> websites, my interest, is the acceptance of these systems by people, how
> they find value in them. Read my 'general' essay "The Logic of the Esoteric"
> at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond/esoter.html
>
Your website might benefit from a study of mereology (the
philosophy of wholes and parts) and a reading of F.S.C. Northrup's
THE MEETING OF EAST AND WEST, where he labels Hegel's
dialectic a reductive unity-duality archetype of the actually
obtaining multilectic between unity and multiplicity. A coin has two
sides (and an edge), but a tetrahedron has four, a cube six, an
octahedron eight, a dodecahedron twelve, and an icosahedron
twenty (and a sphere either has one side or an infinity of them -
you choose).
>
> The problems come when these systems are taken literally rather than as
> metaphors for the particular description of objects and relationships, where
> objects and relationships are the basic units of information the brain works
> with.
>
> The fact that you take a sack of salt suggests that you interpret these
> systems literally and so reject them, which is fine since they should be
> since they are METAPHORS.
>
Read Lakoff and Johnson's PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH and find
out exactly how much of language reduces to spatiotempoal
perception and action metaphors such as source-path-goal, focus-
field-fringe, etc.
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