·

·

A Leading Principle

Smith, W. John 1969. Displays and Messages in Intraspecific Communication. Semiotica 1(4): 357-369. DOI: 10.1515/semi.1969.1.4.357

Any environmental feature can become a source of information. An obvious source for any individual animal is another animal. For instance, if the other individual is strange it may be dangerous. If it is a customary associate, some of its activities (e.g., fleeing) may also indicate a source of danger in the environment. (Smith 1969: 357)

An aspect of phatic communion that translates over into animal communication.

All activities are potentially informative. For instance, Altmann (1965: 492) treats as "communicative" any behavior pattern whose occurrence changes the probability of behavior patterns of other individuals in the social group. Most acts, however, are not specialized to be more informative. (Smith 1969: 358)

"It is generally the case for all species that when two individuals meet they modify each other's behaviour." (Østergaard 2007: 112)

Ritualized iterations appear to involve primarily social acts, or acts that were social in the phylogenetic lineage concerned. That is, their evolutionary sources appear to be behavior patterns performed by at least two interacting individuals. The relationship between the individuals may have to be bonded - i.e., one in which the individuals remain socially inter-related with conventionally defined statuses, and recognize each other individually. (Smith 1969: 359)

Bonding here involves something like Goffmanian "consensus" (cf. Laver 1975).

Our prehuman hominoid ancestors must have evolved this new approach at the same time they were communicating by other means. Whatever novel features linguistic communication has, they initially supplemented and were at least partially in competition with an already existing mode of communication. This prelinguistic mode must, therefore, have had some influence in shaping at least the directions of the origins of linguistic communication. (Smith 1969: 364)

Linguistic communication appeared alongside nonverbal means of communication, which have remained in place.

The zoosemiotic forms of human communication may be important in a number of ways. First, they are the only stylized communicative tools available to prelinguistic infants, and some children (e.g., the deaf) who remain prelinguistic for relatively long periods. They may be the only tools left to certain aphasic adults, they may be the only reliable tools left to, say , schizophrenics. (Smith 1969: 365)

The phatic function "is also the first verbal function acquired by infants; they are prone to communicate before being able to send or receive informative communication" (Jakobson 1960d: 24) and Weston La Barre has written extensively on the phatic communication of schizophrenics (cf. La Barre 1954).

Lowe, Ivan 1969. An Algebraic Theory of English Pronominal Reference (Part I). Semiotica 1(4): 397-421. DOI: 10.1515/semi.1969.1.4.397

It seems that 'social acceptability' is difficult to define here. The utterance-response pair of (6) would not be acceptable under circumstances of serious social intercourse, but might well be acceptable in the case of a deliberate joke, etc. (Lowe 1969: 399)

What makes a social intercourse serious?

There are, indeed, good reasons for choosing the utterance "I said to you" (or any utterance with 1st person subject and 2nd person object) as basic. In the first place all communication subsumes the existence of some sort of source-receptor or speaker-addressee relationship, be such communication in the form of a business letter, a simple conversation, a preface to a scholarly book, or a political harangue. (Lowe 1969: 401)

There is no communication without contact and communication about relationship.

So far we have restricted ourselves to a very simple situation in which there is a cast of just three participants each of whom assumes one of the roles of speaker (first person), addressee (second person) and background (third person), no two participants assuming the same role at the same time, and all participants restricting themselves to the use of singular personal pronouns in their speech. (Lowe 1969: 413)

They are in the background.

Chebanov, Sergey V. 1998. Totality of semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies 26: 417-424.

The point is that Peirce's in Hoffmeyer's treatment) understanding of sign involves the question, what is not a sign? After all, any measuring device satisfies the definition of a sign as "a relation between three factors: (1) [...] the sign vehicle [...]; (2) the object [...] to which the sign vehicle refers [...]; and (3) 'the interpretant' i.e., the system which construes the sign vehicle's [|] relationship to its object" (p. 19). But measuring devices are only physical objects and hardly signs, although they are calibrated. There exist some purely physical processes, in which a kind of calibration takes place, for example the selection of particles by oscillation when building into a crystal under certain conditions. (Chebanov 1998: 417-418)

Goes to show that the interpretant is still the least understood aspect of Peirce's sign model.

This is the point where de Saussure's approach to the sign, as based on the idea that the sign is not a mere conjunction of two fragments of the world thanks to 'the interpretant', but an intersection of two different worlds, one of which is the world of sense, seems to be preferable. In such an approach, there will be nos ign where there is no sense, as in physical or chemical processes. (Chebanov 1998: 418)

Goes to show that I am very, very fallible: just recently I protested against treating the Saussurean poles as "worlds" (cf. Neuman & Nave 2008: 99).

It is characteristic for many branches of biosemiotics and semiotics in general that the historical aspect is ignored. This is especially common in semiotic studies of genetic code, which is the best object for biosemiotic studies. Genetic code is viewed as though it has appeared in its final form; attempts to search for its origin meet with serious problems. The book under review is very interesting in this respect, since it includes biosemiotics in the framework of evolutionary biology and evolutionary science as a whole (beginning with the big bang (p. viii) and ending with the appearance of ethics (Ch. 10)). (Chebanov 1998: 420)

How many branches of biosemiotics are there? From what I've read so far from the journal of Biosemiotics, evolutionary history (and the origin of the genetic code) are discussed rather frequently.

On the other hand, the book is unfortunately quite typical in its scarce referencing of Russian materials. The reason for this is obviously the same barrier plus the iron curtain not so long ago. For example, the works of A. S. Famintzin and I. V. Baranetsky (1860's - 1912) or C. S. Mereschkovsky (1905-1909) are not mentioned when discussing the theory of symbiogenesis. There are no echoes of the 70s Tartu discussions on biosemiotic problems (Morozov 1978), or their follow-up in the late 80s in Moscow University (Sharov 1990). (Chebanov 1998: 423)

In Olev Remsu's Kurbmäng Paabelis (1989), which I consider to be the Estonian Nineteen Eighty-Four, the protagonist is a proponent of neo-morozovism. The citation: Morozov, Vladimir P. 1978. Self-understanding of the symposium. Znanie - Sila 10: 39-41 (in Russian).

Drechsler, Wolfgang 1998. The philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Sign Systems Studies 26: 425-436.

This is not to say that the other ones are bad; if anything, they mostly suffer from a certain pedestrianness, if this is a word. In general, and not surprisingly, Gadamer's replies make the most interesting and profound reading in the book, although their translation from the German is occasionally too close to the words. (Drechsler 1998: 426)

Having just read a paper that I myself had to describe as "pedestrian" (cf. Collins 2008: 58), I'd say that it's definitely a word and would IMO describe papers that are lackluster, treading very well trodden grounds, presenting popular myths or reiterating philosophical commonplaces.

The basis of Gadamer's account is Plato's Philebus, a grossly understudied and undercommented work. (422) Davidson traces the difference between Politeia and Philebus (427-428), addresses the development of Plato as "a matter of emphasis, of 'highlighting'" (429) and arrives at the idea of Plato's development [...] (Drechsler 1998: 427)

An old translation.

Cheng, Chung-Ying 1966. Peirce's Probabilistic Theory of Inductive Validity. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2(2): 86-112.

Peirce conceives inference as a passage from certain ideas or beliefs to certain other ideas or beliefs according to a leading principle. In [|] other words, for Peirce there are three things which are relevant for an inference and its validity: the premises, the conclusions, and the leading principle. What needs explanation here is the leading principle of an inference. The leading principle of an inference is a rule which we are conscious of following when we make an inference, a rule by which the premises of the inference are related to its conclusion. (Cheng 1966: 86-87)

Is this "leading principle" the equivalent to thesic affection? It looks rather like habit.

We know that an inference is valid if we know that its leading principle is true. We believe that the conclusion of an inference must be, or is likely to be true if we believe that its leading principle and premises are true. In this sense of being capable of fixing true belief from true belief or beliefs, a leading principle is essentially a belief-habit, or "a cerebral habit," as Peirce calls it, which we have accepted as leading in general from truth to truth. A "cerebral habit" should be distinguished from a "physiological habit," according to Peirce. When we respond to physical stimulus by way of physiological reaction, we follow a "physiological habit." A "cerebral habit," on the other hand, is something which we follow when we relate beliefs to beliefs. It cannot be described in terms of physiological reactions. (Cheng 1966: 87)

My hunch was correct.

Peirce has also made a distinction between a "logical" leading principle and a "factual" or "material" leading principle (2.589). A "logical" leading principle, according to Peirce, is a formal or logical proposition which, when explicitly stated, adds nothing to the premises of the inference it governs. In this sense, a logical leading principle is simply a logical truth, or a statement of logic, which is ascertainable as true on the gorund of logic. A "factual" or "material" leading principle, on the other hand, is a nonlogical leading principle. It is, in other words, a material proposition, which, if it is true, must be ascertained as true on ground other than logic. (Cheng 1966: 88)

Reminiscent of the term "extra-linguistic", i.e. searching for meaning in the "material" world outside of language. Presumably, a material proposition is indexical.

Holmes, Larry 1966. Peirce on Self-Control. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2(2): 113-130.

Self-control, according to Peirce, is the very essence of rationality; it is what more than anything else "has served to elevate man above all the rest of the fauna of our globe." Only through self-control is any action other than the normal, determined course possible (4.540).
Man comes from the womb in actuality an animal little higher than a fish; by no means as high as a serpent. His humanity consists in his destination. He becomes not actual man until he acquires self-control and then he is so in the measure of his self-control. [...] Man's existence qua man [...] consists solely in his growing to act from rational self-conduct.
I cannot explore all the ramifications of this key concept in Peirce's philosophy, nor refer to more than a few of the many writings, both published and unpublished, in which he treated it. (Holmes 1966: 113)

"If, adopting an ideal of character opposed to his instincts, a man resolve to live in conformity with that ideal, and at cost of self-denial live accordingly, his practical life is initiated and controlled by his conscious mind, and is truly a personal life." (Clay 1882)

The notion of self-control enters into and helps explain his views on the process of inquiry; the meaning of pragmatism and its essential reference to the future; the meaning of consciousness and the self; the nature of reasoning and the difference between reason and instinct; the purpose and relation of the normative sciences; and even the foundation of the categories of phenomenology. (Holmes 1966: 114)

Habit-formation?

The realization of intentions or purposes also must lie in the future, and the self-control necessary to achieve one's purpose "affects future conduct exclusively." Another such reference to the future is that an important aspect of the process of self-control is accomplished by a kind of dialogue or discourse of the mind to one's future self: a variant of Peirce's belief that thought itself takes the form of a dialogue. "The most striking ingredient of self-control, and certainly an indispensable one, is that giving of a command to, and obedient fulfillment by, a future self." (Holmes 1966: 117)

This must be that famous excerpts about how "a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is "saying to himself," that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time." (CP 5.421) - if commands figure heavily here it may be different but compatible with Clay's incommunication, which involves a question "which the mind puts to itself".

Ambiguity in the term "self-control" may arise either of the components. To take the easier one first, "control" can mean either governance or correction. If this division is still unclear, it can be refined into (1) "holding to a norm or ideal," "inhibiting change," [|] or "keeping from straying" - circumlocutions designed to emphasize the conservative aspect of control; or (2) correction, to mean the active process of returning to the norm if teh control in sense (1) has permitted variation of deviation. The meaning that Peirce seems most often to have been using is the second one, as might be expected from the human situation, in which we seldom operate at the ideal, but are concerned rather to minimize the difference between our conduct (whether rational or moral) and an ideal. (Holmes 1966: 120-121)

That's a valuable insight. The dictionary, on the other hand, gives a more volitional definition: "the power to influence or direct people's behaviour or the course of events", though the meaning intended here is embodied in the second definition: "a person or thing used as a standard of comparison for checking the results of a survey or experiment" (i.e. a "scientific control").

The ambiguity of "self" is easy to state, but very difficult to clear up, because it involves one's whole philosophy. When "self-" is used as a prefix with reflexive meaning, it can convey the meaning either of (1) designating a person or thing that is both the subject and the object of the action; or (2) designating something that performs certain operations without outside agency, i.e., automatically. The first meaning, when applied to our term, leads one to believe that there must be a self to control, and further to think that there must therefore be a self which controls; i.e., a self in the agent or substantive sense, or in the dictionary definition "a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness" (Oxford Universal Dictionary, Third Edition). The second meaning contains no such implication: considering it as "auto-," as used in names of self-acting devices such as "automobile," with emphasis on the reflexive but with no commitment about anything there at which the reflexive is aimed, we can take self-control to mean not the control of a self (substantively), but simply auto-control, the control from within or whatever kind of organism the human being is found to be. (Holmes 1966: 121)

Selfhood is difficult. This distinction makes me wonder if there could be any substance to the seemingly trivial difference between Morris' "self-communication" and Lotman's "autocommunication". The latter, after all, is ascribed to culture, which is more of a "self-acting device" (metaphorically an artificial intelligence) than a self. For the purposes of distinguishing these two, this insight is incredibly valuable.

There is not space to argue the position extensively; let me recapitulate briefly, in Peirce's own words, some of the many pronouncements he made, ranging in date from 1868 to 1908, concerning the unreality of a substantial self. First, from an unpublished manuscript:
As to the existence of a person my opinion is decidedly that a person's being is somewhat of the same mode as the being of abstract Truth and Right, which are unquestionably, in some sense, powers in the world, and that its difference from that mode of being lies chiefly in its limitations and in its power of improvement. I regard a man's naïve notion that he exists as being in the main a delusion and a vanity.
And from the published volumes: "Personality is some kind of coördination or connection of ideas" (6.155). "The identity of a man consists in the consistency of what he does and thinks" (5.315). "The self is only inferred" (5.462); "feelings coördinated in a certain way, to a certain degree, constitute a person; on their being dissociated (as habits do sometimes get broken up), the personality [|] disappears" (6.585); "a person is only a particular kind of general idea" (6.270); "all that is necessary [...] to the existence of a person is that the feelings out of which he is constructed should be in close enough connection to influence one another" (6.271); "the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity" (7.571); "the barbaric conception of personal identity" (7.572); "a person is not absolutely an individual" (5.421); man is a sign or symbol (7.583, 5.283, 5.314, 6.344). (Holmes 1966: 125-126)

Beautiful. I can only add Sage Francis' lyrics: "if you're a poor man's version of anything, it's your self-perception".

Pattee, H. H. 2008. Physical and Functional Conditions for Symbols, Codes, and Languages. Biosemiotics 1(2): 147-168. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9012-6

There are classical epistemic problems that have troubled the greatest minds for over 2,000 years without reaching any consensus. This is the case for conceptual dualisms, like discrete and continuous, chance and determinism, form and function, and especially the mind-body problem that has persistently puzzled philosophies, and is still a central issue for philosophy, psychology, artificial life, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. It is also closely related to fundamental issues in physics, the information-energy relation and what is known as the measurement problem. All of these problems are related to a category I have generalized as symbol-matter problems. Biosemiotics, virtually by definition, cannot escape these problems. (Pattee 2008: 148)

Yup, I believe I have sufficiently material (here on this blog) on all these problems to get absolutely nowhere, as is common.

In other words, physical laws must give the impression that events do not have alternatives and could not be otherwise (Winger 1964), while informational symbolic structures must give the impression that they could be otherwise, and must have innumerable ways of actually being otherwise. Semiotic events are based on an [|] endless choice of alternatives, not only in symbolic sequences but also in codes that interpret the symbols. It is just those innumerable alternatives, selected by heritable propagation, that are prerequisites for evolution as well as for creative thought. (Pattee 2008: 149-150)

"Semiosis always presupposes the presence of a C[ode]-space, since it is always a triadic process, where C-space is a time interval, a space of possibility that permits some degree of freedom." (Violi 2007: 70)

The problem also arises in the symbol-grounding problem in artificial intelligence (e.g., Harnad 1990), and in criteria (like the Turing test) for deciding whether a computer can think. There is a current belief in artificial life research that any empirical sense of "meaning" or "knowing" can occur only when symbol systems are connected by sensory inputs and outputs to material systems that in turn are immersed in a realistic physical environment. This area of research is often called situated robotics (e.g., Clark 1997). (Pattee 2008: 155)

I read about this extensively last year, and from I gathered the inability to connect nascent A.I. with the material world set such developments back by several decades.

While the language of physics is reasonably simple and unambiguous, I discovered quickly that the terminologies of semiotics are so complicated and controversial that I could not hope to find consensus on primitive symbol system terminology. As I stated earlier, linguistic terminology originated at the highest levels with human language and human behavior. Not only that, but in the recent past it was believed that symbolic language was what distinguished humans from lower animals. Consequently, the idea of a symbolic language at the origin of life was simply resisted by many linguists, anthropologists, and philosophers as unreasonable except as a vague metaphor or distant analogy. (Pattee 2008: 158)

This is still the case, it appears. (See how difficult it is to nail down the interpretant in various semiotic approaches.)

Conceptually and logically it is also necessary to separate the description from what it describes, the measuring devices from what it measures, and the controller from what it controls if these concepts are to make any sense. The basic meaning of a symbol, a description, a measurement, and a control is that they stand for, or act on, something other than themselves. This necessary separation I have called an epistemic cut, following a discussion of complementarity by Pauli (1994: 41). (Pattee 2008: 159)

Also called displacement and "constitutive absence" (cf. Deacon 2007: 130-131

Furthermore, where and how natural language symbol sequences are transformed in the brain to produce images or actions is unknown. I have suggested that some functional analog of folding must occur in the n-dimensional network of neurons to remove the degeneracy of one-dimensional symbol strings of speech or text (Pattee 1980) but so far we know too little of how brains generate symbols and transform speech and text to action or meaning to make any comparison. (Pattee 2008: 162)

"What, moreover, in neurophysiological terms, are the respective semantic loads? Neuron transmission is an activity of relative potential changes in potassium and sodium ions; what is the microphysiology of semeion?" (Count 1969: 80-81)

One problem about these modern sources of information is that the selective pressures that would normally discriminate between adaptive and destructive information are being virtually eliminated. The cost of production, communication, and storing information is now so low that we are accumulating more information than we can ever hope to selectively recall. This lack of discrimination is increasing not only for our culture as a whole, but also for many individuals who have access to the Internet. Because of this technology, the amount of information in our modern culture is growing exponentially. By contrast, genetic information is sparse and strongly selected [...] (Pattee 2008: 166)

The total cultural pattern has not been able to "selectively recall" ever since the printing press, at the very least (see "The Consequences of Literacy"), but I think our new communication technologies have exacerbated this exponentially. Not only do I have a vague awareness of the limits of my knowledge, I can access databases full of knowledge no one human can ever hope to completely take in. (There's enough reading material worth multiple human lifetimes on the hard-drive of any proper researcher.)

Hoffmeyer, Jesper 2008. The Semiotic Body. Biosemiotics 1(2): 169-190. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9015-3

Intellectually, dualism was based upon a quite natural but nonetheless unsubstantiated argument: 'From the hard-won observation that there can be matter without spirit, dualism inferred that spirit can also be without matter' as Jonas put it (Jonas 2001[1966]: 16). The main problem, with this argument, is not that spirit without matter remains an unobservable and thus basically speculative entity. The main problem is that it is not obvious what the matter-spirit distinction is all about. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 170)

The body, as Socrates put it, is an abhorrant thing (that you have to feed, clean, rest, etc.), so the idea of "living" on without this material baggage is quite appealing in itself.

From birth we humans are in fact skin more than we are anything else. The skin of the newborn is, as Thure von Uexküll says, a kind of 'pre-actual atmosphere' (vorwirkliche Atmosphäre; Uexküll 1999), and what enters the awareness of the newborn infant is only qualities or differences between qualities, grades of intensities of touch, taste, and smell. In a certain sense, then, the newborn child's skin is a type of brain, in the sense that it is the place where encounters with the world first freeze into the vague structuring of knowledge. And, not coincidentally, the skin and the brain both originate from the same germ material, i.e., from the embryo's ectoderm layer. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 171)

The popular sayings that the skin is man's largest organ, and the brain his largest sex organ, come to mind. Iterated on the next page: "the skin is the largest and most diversified organ of the human body".

By way of an extremely simple example, consider a mother who sketches the number two on her child's back, and asks the child to guess the number that she just drew. The mother's light touch causes small deformations of the child's receptors (the sensory cells that lie close together just under the surface of the outer skin) and these deformations, in turn, cause a depolarization of the nerve endings. If the depolarization exceeds a certain threshold limit, an electrical impulse (i.e., an action potential) is transmitted through the nerve to the central nervous system, where a longer lasting pressure causes a series of impulses whose frequency is function of the pressure's intensity. [↩] And already even at this level, the organism's own most current contextual situation becomes a relevant factor in the phenomenon, in that the threshold limit is defined by biochemical parameters that reflect the general condition of the organism. Thus the sense of pain, for example, is greatly influenced by so-called prostaglandins that lower the threshold values and thereby increase sensitivity. Prostaglandins are produced in connective tissues, and their production is increased in case of inflammation. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 173)

"Prostaglandins are powerful locally acting vasodilators and inhibit the aggregation of blood platelets. Through their role in vasodilation, prostaglandins are also involved in inflammation. They are synthesized in the walls of blood vessels and serve the physiological function of preventing needless clot formation, as well as regulating the contraction of smooth muscle tissue." (Wiki)

Signal transduction is a remarkable process because it does not, as one might perhaps naively suspect, imply that signals from the outside somehow find their way into the cell and successively instruct the cellular machinery to initiate distinct activities. What happens is, semiotically seen, much more interesting and typically consists in the following three steps: (a) the primary molecular signal is received at the surface of the cell because it is recognized by a specific glycoprotein, a receptor, and (b) the receptor responds to the signal by changing its conformation which then activates a 'mediator-protein' in or at the cell membrane, (c) the mediator again activates a second signal at the inside of the membrane. Taken together what occurs is a kind of translation of the signal caught at the cell surface to a message formed in the intracellular molecular sign system of the cell and the process may be seen as a case of what Barbieri has called 'an organic code', here a signal transduction code (Barbieri 2003). (Hoffmeyer 2008: 176)

I definitely wish to read more about this. So far I've met the phenomenon in plant physiology, where the focus was on how elicitor molecules "activate particular genes as a part of defense response through signal transduction pathways, resulting in the synthesis of secondary metabolites" (Largia et al. 2015a: 10).

The emotional reactions are spontaneous, in the sense that they occur without any interference from consciousness and are released by the so-called limbic system in the subcortical region of the brain, primarily by the structure called amygdala (LeDoux 1996). What is established through the emotions are characteristic functional states of the body, or rather a kind of readiness, connected to basic survival functions such as defense against dangers, reproduction, foraging, or aggression. Emotions are released either [|] endogenously or as a result of inputs from the surroundings. The emotions may therefore be seen as bodily interpretants, that immediately release further interpretants in the form of characteristic kinds of behavior. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 179-180)

In Peircean lingo, emotional interpretants determine energetic interpretants.

But while the emotional response to a high degree is the same in all vertebrate animals, feelings, in Damasio's use of language, are far more specific for humans, for feelings consist in the experience of emotions. The experience of fear, for instance, appears as the conscious recognition of the emotional response to a dangerous situation. As such, feelings are much more varied and subtle than emotions, since they integrate the emotions into the rich repertoire of nuances available for conscious awareness - the danger may be imminent or more distant, it may be life-threatening or just inconvenient etc. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 180)

Here it may be said that the previous sequence further determines a logical interpretant; e.g. humans are capable of assigning verbal labels to their emotions or emotional reactions.

The idea of super-organisms has a long prehistory in biology, especially in the study of social insects. Both the ant hill and the bee hive have been suggested as example of superorganisms, with the implication that individual insects were seen as just subunits, 'mobile cells' in the superorganism. In the biological world, the delimitation of an individual is far from being always as clear-cut as it may seem in the world of vertebrate animals, and I have no wish to take side in this quarrel. [|] From a semiotic point of view, one might perhaps suggest the criterion that, if a system's semiotic interaction with its environment presupposes a finely elaborated internal semiotic activity (a protoendosemiotics) the system deserves to be counted as an organism. (Hoffmeyer 2008: 182-183)

I think I prefer La Barre's "meta-organism", but in substance it vibes with Lotman's cybernetics of culture.

Kjørup, Frank 2008. Grammetrics and Cognitive Semantics: Metaphorical and force dynamic aspects of verse-syntax counterpoint. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 83-101. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.83

For, as observed by Eliot, "[v]erse, whatever else it may or may not be, is itself a system of punctuation" (Eliot in Ricks 1987: 89). Indeed, it seems, this is how the structural situation is intuited in the most perceptive accounts of the phenomenon. As theorised by Ricks, following Eliot: "[T]he poet has at his command this further 'system of punctuation'. The white space at the end of a line of poetry constitutes some kind of pause" (Ricks 1987: 89). (Kjørup 2008: 85)

Verse consists of contours?

So conceived, the first two lines of Eliot's would be performed (prosodic features notated: major pause //, minor pause /, non-pausing >):
In my beginning is my end. // In succession >
Houses rise and fall, / crumble, / are extended, /
But, without the pause in the middle of syntax, as if punctuating the end of the line, there can be no beginnings of verse-syntax counterpoints. (Kjørup 2008: 86)

Here I like the notation (/, //, >). Otherwise meh.

Freeman, Margaret H. 2008. Reading Readers Reading a Poem: From conceptual to cognitive integration. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 102-128. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.102

On the other hand, I argue that critical interpretations of a poem's meaning fail to capture the essence of a poem because they fail to recognize the experiential dimension of responding to a poem as "formulated feeling" (Langer 1953). (Freeman 2008: 103)

I have to say, formulated feeling is a much better term than "Feeling-Concern" (Worth 1969: 286-287).

The terms intention and motivation are sometimes conflated and used interchangeably, although I see them as two distinct cognitive processes (Freeman 2007). As Gibbs (1999: 80) notes, "An intention is a mental representation caused by a desire for a goal which itself causes action to bring about the goal". Intention thus refers to the "goal" or meaning - the "what" - the writer or reader wishes to communicate; motivation to the "desire" or emotion - the "why" - that invests meaning with significance. (Freeman 2008: 111)

Well, that's one version; another - etymological - relates it to attention (cf. Brandt 2007: 49; Violi 2007: 65-66).

Gibbs's (1999: 328) cognitive intentionalist premise states that one can determine "through empirical means the possible ways that assumptions about intentionality shape understanding". The problem in poetry interpretation, Gibbs claims, lies in the difficulty of inferring the poet's "subjective intentions". To address this problem, Gibbs suggests that readers create what he calls "hypothetical intentions": an idealized version of what the poet has written. This idealized version is arrived at through 1) the text itself, 2) consideration of the conditions under which it was created, and 3) the existence of sufficient common ground between writer and reader. (Freeman 2008: 112)

Reminiscent of Lotman's (1981) model, where Gibbs's (3) would correspond with Lotman's (1) - communication between writer and reader; (2) with (2) - communication between readership and the cultural tradition; and (1) with (4) - communication of the reader with the text; obviously the author's intentions cannot be inferred from the reader's communication with himself through the text nor from the relations between the text and the cultural context, which would impute a higher-level purpose to the text.

| Labels: , , ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)