Interpreter and Interpretant • Discussion 3 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/05/interpreter-and-interpretant-disc… Re: Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 4 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/31/interpreter-and-interpretant-sele… Figure 2. Dewey's “Sign of Rain” Example • https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/deweys-sign-of-rain-… Re: Conceptual Graphs • Tom Gollier • https://lists.cs.uni-kassel.de/hyperkitty/list/cg@lists.iccs-conference.org… TG: ❝Given your diagram of Dewey's example, I don't see how the event of rain can be the object (O). The objects seem more clearly to be the air and the clouds which in their coolness and darkness are being taken as signs (S). The event of rain is only included in this situation via the interpretant (I), the thought to the likelihood of rain. ❝What's more, the ambiguity of this interpretant, being both a “thought of the likelihood of rain” and the object, “rain”, might be a clue to getting at the nature of the interpretant in general as we move along?❞ Tom, The meaning of the word “object” in pragmatic thought is another one of those topics we keep circling back to. There are more thought‑out thoughts I shared in my early days on the Peirce List, but since this very issue arose just recently in other discussions I'll save myself a modicum of mental effort by linking to my latest attempts to clarify the point. The object of reasoning is to find out … • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/23/the-object-of-reasoning-is-to-fin… I can think of no better beginning than to meditate on Peirce's object in using the word “object” as he does in the following two statements. ❝No longer wondered what I would do in life but defined my object.❞ — C.S. Peirce (1861), “My Life, written for the Class-Book”, (Chronological Edition 1, 3) ❝The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else which we do not know.❞ — C.S. Peirce (1877), “The Fixation of Belief”, (Collected Papers 5.365) • https://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/fixation/fx-main.htm#CP5.365 If the object of an investigation is to find out something we do not know then the clues we discover along the way are the signs which determine that object. People will continue to be confused about determination so long as they can think of no other forms but analytic-behaviorist-causal-dyadic-temporal, object-as-stimulus, sign-as-response varieties. It's true ordinary language biases us toward billiard‑ball styles of dyadic determination but there are triadic forms of constraint, determination, and interaction not captured by S‑R chains of that order. Pragmatic objects of signs and concepts are anything we talk or think about and semiosis does not conduct its transactions within the bounds of object as cue, sign as cue ball, and interpretants as solids, stripes, and pockets. 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. • https://web.archive.org/web/20001210162300/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquir… • https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052 • https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inqui… • https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inqu… Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA. Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY. • https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37423/37423-h/37423-h.htm Peirce, C.S. (1859–1861), “My Life, written for the Class-Book”, pp. 1–3 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982. • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2016/03/16/abduction-deduction-induction-ana… Peirce, C.S. (1877), “The Fixation Of Belief”, Popular Science Monthly 12 (Nov 1877), pp. 1–15. Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.358–387. • https://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/fixation/fx-frame.htm Regards, Jon cc: https://www.academia.edu/community/VWj9G5

Interpreter and Interpretant • Discussion 4 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/06/interpreter-and-interpretant-disc… Re: Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 4 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/31/interpreter-and-interpretant-sele… Figure 2. Dewey's “Sign of Rain” Example • https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/deweys-sign-of-rain-… Re: Conceptual Graphs • Tom Gollier • https://lists.cs.uni-kassel.de/hyperkitty/list/cg@lists.iccs-conference.org… Tom, Another discussion coming to mind is one we had on this subject in 2016. Once again I'll save a measure of strain on my brain by repeating that here and picking up from that point. Re: Peirce List • Tom Gollier • https://web.archive.org/web/20160316200003/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane… I know we've discussed the various meanings of the word “object” which make sense in Peirce's semiotics and pragmatism generally, so let me just link to a recent comment I found in my search for previous mentions. Objects, Objectives, Objectivity • https://web.archive.org/web/20160316184001/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane… I am constantly reminded of the following line from Peirce. “No longer wondered what I would do in life but defined my object.” — C.S. Peirce (1861), “My Life, written for the Class-Book” (CE 1, 3) • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2016/03/16/ab(duction-deduction-induction-an… The question of Objects, Objectives, and Objectivity is a persistent one. The Latin-rooted English “object” springs from deeper roots in the Greek “pragma”. It was a personal revelation to me on first looking into Liddell and Scott and reading all the meanings and ramifications of that vast pragmatic semantic complex. It is especially the senses of the word “object” referring to aims and purposes, in other words, intentional objects and objects of intention, that we are likely to miss if we don't remind ourselves of their pertinence to pragmatic thinking. Keeping that variety of meanings in mind, a few more words may help to clarify the reading from last time ... 1. There are of course the usual run of behaviorist, causal, stimulus-response theories of “signal processing” and “verbal behavior” that have enjoyed their popularity and never-say-die revivals from the days of Charles Morris to B.F. Skinner, but Peirce's semiotics includes them as degenerate species of the more solid genre he had in mind. 2. Peirce's definition of a triadic sign relation is cast at such a level of generality that nothing in it prevents a sign relation L ⊆ O × S × I from having intentional objects in its object domain O. 3. To say that coolness is a sign of rain is a perfectly natural statement in English and I think it would be a more troubling narrowness to exclude it from sense. 4. Semiotic objects are any objects of discussion or thought. It should be obvious that we talk and think about future, imaginary, intentional, or “virtual” objects all the time. 5. The fact that coolness might be a sign of many other things is exactly what calls for our peripatetic hero to abduce a hypothesis (rain?), to deduce a prediction (dark clouds?), and to test the prediction against further observations (look up!). All of those features are why we chose Dewey's story as an illustration of a full-blown inquiry. Reference — It helps to read “object” in a fuller sense than we often do in billiard-ball philosophies, as a lot gets lost in the translation from the Greek “pragma” from which pragmatism naturally takes its cue. For a sample of that fuller sense see the following lexicon entry. πρᾶγμα • Liddell and Scott (1925/1940), A Greek-English Lexicon • https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057… • https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ Regards, Jon