Predication: the process (sequel)
Predication: the Process
Sequel to predication and consciousness.
Whenever two sign-uses are brought together in actual predication, two things occur essentially: identification of an object of reference by the S term, and the act of asserting the meaning of the P term of S. The distinction between use of a sign S* as subject, and its use as predicate, is the same as the single sign taken once as token (“standing for” the object referred to), secondly as text (what the token is used to mean, predicated of the object). The dual functional components of S* (any sign used in communication) as both as text and as token are identical with the functional components of the form “S is P”. The paradigm situation evoked is, again, perceiving an object and calling its name. Inm direct perception, the name “B”, previously having the meaning of “the second letter of the English alphabet”, is predicated of the object. “The letter B is drawn on the chalk board,” a person may assert in direct perception. Asked “how do you know?”, they may reply “I see it.”
In “S is P”, the S* used as in the S place occurs as a token, for which reason proper names are written with large case letters. This is highly significant from a psychosemiotic point of view. It shows that the function of designating a particular object is duplicated by the sign-use as a particular object – an empirical mark (sight, sound, etc.). We stand before the marks we use in communicating about object to each other as before the “objects” brought into relation with contents of consciousness. Differences that have found their way into type of token indicate differences in the accompanying processes. If someone hiccupped every time they uttered a certain sound, say “kkrkk”, one could legitimately infer some kind of common process at work associating them. Similarly, use of large case letters for a specific function implies a common process, a shift in conscious orientation. The first inscribed human communication at the historical cultural level is in fact monuments, lithographs, hieroglyphs that partly stand for what they mean as text by resemblance (e.g., the sign for the placenta). It is these origins of text-on-token sign use that is retained and reproduced in the conventional habit of using large case letters for proper names. If it talked, this user would declare “I am important! a Name. Designator of a particular thing”. But – recalling Wittgenstein, we must remind ourselves – it is not said, but shown. The step from “showing” to “saying” is the same as the step from token to text, recognizing to reading.
The text is token-relative; the class of marks of the letter “B” in this page, upper and lower case, are functionally identical with the use of the second letter of the English alphabet. That is the “concept” in them, shown by their occurrence. It is partial text; combinations of letters are used to get words that transcribe utterances from which actual sentences expressing thoughts originate. The word “word” signifies in the way letter “B” (and “consciousness”) does: its text is in the token. It is a double meaning/datum entity, located through its text in logical space. and by its empirical mark in tokenspace. Entities of the latter sort include all signs strung together in whatever manner and relationships that belong to the act of persons communicating (books stored in libraries, DVD’s at all the movie rental stores, etc.), recognized as such by their looks. This recognition is by the experienced intake of similarities of languages in cultures of Western Sumerian/Egyptian origins, in particular, and tokens of other peoples as well.
There are two ways of connecting signs by memory relative to the two kinds of space internal space posited by sign-use. One is memory of the way signs fit together as text, in logical space, as in “G.W. Bush is the 43rd president of the United States”. The other is memory of how to produce the signs, very likely accompanied by actual or latent emotional murmurs, which involves various movements of the body (tongue, lips, breath through vocal chords). The token side is the part of the sign-use subject to Leibniz’ principle of sufficient reason: whatever difference in token is explained by a nexus of causes. And each token is distinct and different from every other, being contents of individual personal consciousness. The use of signs is in fact the intersection in reality of causal (psycho-neurological) processes and those involved in logical inference. This is a matter of fundamental metaphysical importance to prevent the secondary process of taking textual content only as representing reality, grammatically purged of all tokens except those for logical space, re-internalized as the structure determining self-reference. Such a procedural monstrosity is the core of the fallacy of textualism: to identify what exists with the totality of true text. This is perhaps the most pernicious influence in philosophy. It splits the two memory functions.
Memory of connections of sign uses S*, qua text and token, is acquired by learning language, based largely on conventional meaning assignments. Names are not things today, though originally they were. The instantly recognizable names of the planets and signs of the zodiac are residual tokens of that original era of sign-us acquired by learning, but resonating from antiquity. The name recalls the individuality of the thing it names, for which reason great care is exercised by parents in choosing one for their progeny. How they are called is something a person carried about all their lives, unless they go to the trouble of changing it. What is involved because it is the human species communicating are the particular motions they go through in talking/writing. This is the anatomical constant in sign-use, the process present in each one at birth as genetic endowment. These, and the pre-verbal memory of these (later verbalized), are retained in common cosmic tokenspace. The essence of the idea of a time “when the whole earth had one language and the same words” (Genesis 11.1) echoes this original tribal-genetic unity. If humanity has always experienced the same common objects, why shouldn’t it be thought they all once shared common words? This is the textualist’s fallacy in the making.
The two kinds of memory for text and token determine the different contents of consciousness in upper and lower triads of sign-use. This is explained in detail elsewhere. The upper triad consists in three S* whose meanings are wholly contained in consciousness under signs for: 1. The completing totality; 2. Sign-use, itself; 3. existential self-awareness (“I”, for myself; but also, the empirical ego, for psychology). Tokens of these three types may be termed theological, psychosemiotic, existential, and for purposes of organizing thee order of their logical connection, assigned the numerical tokens 7,6,5 respectively. The paradigm use of just these signs would be: I SAY GOD, from bottom up; GOD SAY I from the top down. The upper triad is thus a hierarchy of sign-uses ordered by inclusive relations taken from “I”, to “…using Signs”, to “(saying) GOD” as types of content under which The World as a totality can be seen. All three together, and separate from the lower triad, represents the person existing as a conscious totality by use of the name-sign “God” for its completing totality. This is a psychosemiotic reconstruction of the idea that the soul is that which in a person responds to God, is identical in this respect among humans, and can survive death of the body. The soul is the part of consciousness under sign-use that is brought to awareness of itself as a content of consciousness under the concept of a completing totality. “God” and “I” are identical in this respect, but at opposite ends of the metaphysical pole in sign-use, as it were, with respect to ‘limited and unlimited’ (“God” conceived as the unlimited completing totality, “I” as the limited; connected by the act of using.)
The lower triad of sign-uses is also an ordered three-step hierarchy of actual processes essential to maintainence of tokenspace as theatre of empirical consciousness. The most inclusive level is that of full-body awareness. Nerves carrying stimuli that reach the brain terminate on either external or internal receptors, carrying qualities of sense-perception or inner organic arousals, respectively. The conjunction of these under the movements productive of sign-use is the “gestalt”-totality of embodied experience in an act of communication. This is presence as a body in conversation with others. Contents of the lower triad are not wholly contained in the consciousness, as the object in tokenspane is also identical with an object in physical space. This would be the awareness of the sensitive animal lacking a soul. Taking away the reality of the gestalt perception (level 3) leads directly to the strictly phenomenal stratum (level 2), signs used only for data as content of consciousness, not referred to objects either in the personal body or external objects. These are not used except by explicit “noticing” with suspense of commitment to external existence. Finally, the instance of dreams, nature’s signifiers in altered states, is required to complete the levels (1) of totality of sign uses. The culmination of level 3, given that the lower triad as a whole is the organic body as a totality, is the orgasm reflex, accompanied by the most intense pleasure, to lead the organism to want to reproduce its kind.
Sequel to predication and consciousness.
Whenever two sign-uses are brought together in actual predication, two things occur essentially: identification of an object of reference by the S term, and the act of asserting the meaning of the P term of S. The distinction between use of a sign S* as subject, and its use as predicate, is the same as the single sign taken once as token (“standing for” the object referred to), secondly as text (what the token is used to mean, predicated of the object). The dual functional components of S* (any sign used in communication) as both as text and as token are identical with the functional components of the form “S is P”. The paradigm situation evoked is, again, perceiving an object and calling its name. Inm direct perception, the name “B”, previously having the meaning of “the second letter of the English alphabet”, is predicated of the object. “The letter B is drawn on the chalk board,” a person may assert in direct perception. Asked “how do you know?”, they may reply “I see it.”
In “S is P”, the S* used as in the S place occurs as a token, for which reason proper names are written with large case letters. This is highly significant from a psychosemiotic point of view. It shows that the function of designating a particular object is duplicated by the sign-use as a particular object – an empirical mark (sight, sound, etc.). We stand before the marks we use in communicating about object to each other as before the “objects” brought into relation with contents of consciousness. Differences that have found their way into type of token indicate differences in the accompanying processes. If someone hiccupped every time they uttered a certain sound, say “kkrkk”, one could legitimately infer some kind of common process at work associating them. Similarly, use of large case letters for a specific function implies a common process, a shift in conscious orientation. The first inscribed human communication at the historical cultural level is in fact monuments, lithographs, hieroglyphs that partly stand for what they mean as text by resemblance (e.g., the sign for the placenta). It is these origins of text-on-token sign use that is retained and reproduced in the conventional habit of using large case letters for proper names. If it talked, this user would declare “I am important! a Name. Designator of a particular thing”. But – recalling Wittgenstein, we must remind ourselves – it is not said, but shown. The step from “showing” to “saying” is the same as the step from token to text, recognizing to reading.
The text is token-relative; the class of marks of the letter “B” in this page, upper and lower case, are functionally identical with the use of the second letter of the English alphabet. That is the “concept” in them, shown by their occurrence. It is partial text; combinations of letters are used to get words that transcribe utterances from which actual sentences expressing thoughts originate. The word “word” signifies in the way letter “B” (and “consciousness”) does: its text is in the token. It is a double meaning/datum entity, located through its text in logical space. and by its empirical mark in tokenspace. Entities of the latter sort include all signs strung together in whatever manner and relationships that belong to the act of persons communicating (books stored in libraries, DVD’s at all the movie rental stores, etc.), recognized as such by their looks. This recognition is by the experienced intake of similarities of languages in cultures of Western Sumerian/Egyptian origins, in particular, and tokens of other peoples as well.
There are two ways of connecting signs by memory relative to the two kinds of space internal space posited by sign-use. One is memory of the way signs fit together as text, in logical space, as in “G.W. Bush is the 43rd president of the United States”. The other is memory of how to produce the signs, very likely accompanied by actual or latent emotional murmurs, which involves various movements of the body (tongue, lips, breath through vocal chords). The token side is the part of the sign-use subject to Leibniz’ principle of sufficient reason: whatever difference in token is explained by a nexus of causes. And each token is distinct and different from every other, being contents of individual personal consciousness. The use of signs is in fact the intersection in reality of causal (psycho-neurological) processes and those involved in logical inference. This is a matter of fundamental metaphysical importance to prevent the secondary process of taking textual content only as representing reality, grammatically purged of all tokens except those for logical space, re-internalized as the structure determining self-reference. Such a procedural monstrosity is the core of the fallacy of textualism: to identify what exists with the totality of true text. This is perhaps the most pernicious influence in philosophy. It splits the two memory functions.
Memory of connections of sign uses S*, qua text and token, is acquired by learning language, based largely on conventional meaning assignments. Names are not things today, though originally they were. The instantly recognizable names of the planets and signs of the zodiac are residual tokens of that original era of sign-us acquired by learning, but resonating from antiquity. The name recalls the individuality of the thing it names, for which reason great care is exercised by parents in choosing one for their progeny. How they are called is something a person carried about all their lives, unless they go to the trouble of changing it. What is involved because it is the human species communicating are the particular motions they go through in talking/writing. This is the anatomical constant in sign-use, the process present in each one at birth as genetic endowment. These, and the pre-verbal memory of these (later verbalized), are retained in common cosmic tokenspace. The essence of the idea of a time “when the whole earth had one language and the same words” (Genesis 11.1) echoes this original tribal-genetic unity. If humanity has always experienced the same common objects, why shouldn’t it be thought they all once shared common words? This is the textualist’s fallacy in the making.
The two kinds of memory for text and token determine the different contents of consciousness in upper and lower triads of sign-use. This is explained in detail elsewhere. The upper triad consists in three S* whose meanings are wholly contained in consciousness under signs for: 1. The completing totality; 2. Sign-use, itself; 3. existential self-awareness (“I”, for myself; but also, the empirical ego, for psychology). Tokens of these three types may be termed theological, psychosemiotic, existential, and for purposes of organizing thee order of their logical connection, assigned the numerical tokens 7,6,5 respectively. The paradigm use of just these signs would be: I SAY GOD, from bottom up; GOD SAY I from the top down. The upper triad is thus a hierarchy of sign-uses ordered by inclusive relations taken from “I”, to “…using Signs”, to “(saying) GOD” as types of content under which The World as a totality can be seen. All three together, and separate from the lower triad, represents the person existing as a conscious totality by use of the name-sign “God” for its completing totality. This is a psychosemiotic reconstruction of the idea that the soul is that which in a person responds to God, is identical in this respect among humans, and can survive death of the body. The soul is the part of consciousness under sign-use that is brought to awareness of itself as a content of consciousness under the concept of a completing totality. “God” and “I” are identical in this respect, but at opposite ends of the metaphysical pole in sign-use, as it were, with respect to ‘limited and unlimited’ (“God” conceived as the unlimited completing totality, “I” as the limited; connected by the act of using.)
The lower triad of sign-uses is also an ordered three-step hierarchy of actual processes essential to maintainence of tokenspace as theatre of empirical consciousness. The most inclusive level is that of full-body awareness. Nerves carrying stimuli that reach the brain terminate on either external or internal receptors, carrying qualities of sense-perception or inner organic arousals, respectively. The conjunction of these under the movements productive of sign-use is the “gestalt”-totality of embodied experience in an act of communication. This is presence as a body in conversation with others. Contents of the lower triad are not wholly contained in the consciousness, as the object in tokenspane is also identical with an object in physical space. This would be the awareness of the sensitive animal lacking a soul. Taking away the reality of the gestalt perception (level 3) leads directly to the strictly phenomenal stratum (level 2), signs used only for data as content of consciousness, not referred to objects either in the personal body or external objects. These are not used except by explicit “noticing” with suspense of commitment to external existence. Finally, the instance of dreams, nature’s signifiers in altered states, is required to complete the levels (1) of totality of sign uses. The culmination of level 3, given that the lower triad as a whole is the organic body as a totality, is the orgasm reflex, accompanied by the most intense pleasure, to lead the organism to want to reproduce its kind.
posted by Sid Thomas | 6:01 PM
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