Re: Vedr.: semiotics

At 07:47 PM 21/05/02, you wrote:
>S�ren Brier wrote
>
>Dear Edwina
>
>If all objects are signs and all signs are objects then I cannot see how
>the difference between representamen and object can be upheld. Then the
>triadic sign collapses. There must be a dynamical object "out
>there" (that is not a sign) that the sign through semiosis and the
>evolution in the semiotic web moves towards or else the truth concept will
>disappear. This is my concern.

It is worth remarking that this loss of any external truth is exactly what
Putnam gets from his assumption that all meaning is based in signs (Meaning
and the Moral Sciences). He cites Peirce approvingly. On the other hand,
Putnam is quite clear that he assumes that meaning is something that we do.
If the world does it, then I am not sure that internalizing truth leads to
any problems. Then again, I am not sure that it doesn't. My paranoia
detectors start buzzing when I contemplate a world filled with
significance. Of course there need not be much that is significant to me or
to anyone else. I would suppose that is what really matters, but I would
also worry that if we assume there is no non-significant reality, that we
could wind up hermeneutered. I suppose that there is always the unexpected,
which seems to contain information, though a sign for what is never clear
at first. If this is the case, then there is no truth out in the world, but
information can lead us to truth nonetheless. So, S�ren, why couldn't truth
just be a correspondence of our own signs with the world's signs? This is
somewhat reminiscent of Berkeley's objective idealism, and I find it
distasteful, but not inconsistent.

John

----------
Dr John Collier john.collier@kla.univie.ac.at
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research
Adolf Lorenz Gasse 2 +432-242-32390-19
A-3422 Altenberg Austria Fax: 242-32390-4
http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html?personal/collier
Received on Thu May 23 11:31:19 2002