Inquiry Into Inquiry

Re: Conceptual Graphs • Helmut Raulien  

HR:

I find it a bit problematic to say, that the sign determines the interpretant, because the sign doesn’t infer, it is the interpreter, who does the inference.  But ok, I guess we might say, that Peirce prescinds the semiosis from the interpreter, so, ok, the flow of determination goes from the sign to the interpretant, because it is the interpreter, who receives the sign, and then forms the interpretant […]

Helmut,

Thanks for this.  Something about the way you expressed the question led me to think of a new angle on it.

What makes an interpretant is fairly simple, at least, here’s the catch, once you have the appropriate mathematical framework in place — An interpretant is whatever appears in the third place of a sign‑relational triple

What makes an interpreter is more complex.  I’ll take that up as I get more time.

Resources

• Pragmatic Maxim
• Hypostatic Abstraction
• Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection (1) • (2) • (3) • (4)

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Interpretation and Inquiry

To illustrate the role of sign relations in inquiry we begin with Dewey’s elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday life.

In Dewey’s narrative we can identify the characters of the sign relation as follows.  Coolness is a Sign of the Object rain, and the Interpretant is the thought of the rain’s likelihood.  In his description of reflective thinking Dewey distinguishes two phases, “a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt” and “an act of search or investigation” (p. 9), comprehensive stages which are further refined in his later model of inquiry.

Reflection is the action the interpreter takes to establish a fund of connections between the sensory shock of coolness and the objective danger of rain by way of the impression rain is likely.  But reflection is more than irresponsible speculation.  In reflection the interpreter acts to charge or defuse the thought of rain by seeking other signs the thought implies and evaluating the thought according to the results of that search.

Figure 2 shows the semiotic relationships involved in Dewey’s story, tracing the structure and function of the sign relation as it informs the activity of inquiry, including both the movements of surprise explanation and intentional action.  The labels on the outer edges of the sign‑relational triple suggest the significance of signs for eventual occurrences and the correspondence of ideas with external orientations.  But there is nothing essential about the dyadic role distinctions they imply, as it is only in special or degenerate cases that such projections preserve enough information to determine the original sign relation.

References

• Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.  Archive.  Journal.  Online (doc) (pdf).
• Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA.  Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY.  Online.

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The following selection from Peirce’s “Lowell Lectures on the Logic of Science” (1866) lays out in detail his “metaphorical argument” for the relationship between interpreters and interpretant signs.

Reference

• Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

Resource

• Hypostatic Abstraction

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In the next passage up for review the hypostatic abstraction of a person to conduct the movement of signs is described by Peirce as a Sop to Cerberus, a rhetorical gambit set to side‑step a persistent difficulty of exposition.

It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the nature of a Sign.  I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.  My insertion of “upon a person” is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.  (Peirce 1908, Selected Writings, p. 404).

Reference

• Peirce, C.S. (1908), “Letters to Lady Welby”, Chapter 24, pp. 380–432 in Charles S. Peirce : Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1966.

Resource

• Hypostatic Abstraction

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Questions about the relationship between “interpreters” and “interpretants” in Peircean semiotics have broken out again.  To put the matter as pointedly as possible — because I know someone or other is bound to — “In a theory of three‑place relations among objects, signs, and interpretant signs, where indeed is there any place for the interpretive agent?”

By way of getting my feet on the ground with the issue I’ll do what has always helped me before and review a small set of basic texts.  Here is the first.

Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche);  written words are the signs of words spoken.  As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men.  But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).  (Aristotle, De Interp. i. 16^a4).

References

• Aristotle, “On Interpretation” (De Interp.), Harold P. Cooke (trans.), pp. 111–179 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.
• Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.  Archive.  Journal.  Online (doc) (pdf).

cc: FB | Semeiotics • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Academia.edu
cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science