THE PROBLEM OF EXTRA-SEMIOTIC ENTITIES

There is one particular problem that the semiotic conception of the universe raises, and which deserves special treatment here. It concerns the ontological status of existent entities, of the individual things that common sense insists are “out there,” external to all thought. The question may be put in the following terms: If all of reality is to be conceived in terms of semeiotic, as governed by the law of mind, does all of reality then have ontological status only as it enters into sign-action? One answer to this question has been proposed in the assertion by David Savan that Peirce was a “semiotic idealist.”" I contend that, whatever merit the theory of semiotic idealism may have, Savan is mistaken in attributing a version of it to Peirce.

First of all, our account of the internal structure of a complete symbol indicates that there must be elements of the universe that are not merely semiotic. Because a complete symbol requires indices and sinsigns, which are defined as individual existent things involved in dyadic relations to other existents, the answer to the question whether Peirce was a semiotic idealist is in one respect relatively simple. Although everything there is may potentially be a sign, not everything that has being is only a sign.24 There are nonsemiotic aspects to the universe, so it seems that Savan is right to say that Peirce rejected “strong” semiotic idealism: he did not maintain that “the very existence of any thing depends upon the system of signs, representations, and interpretations which purport to refer to it.”23 The catch is that a thing is a constituent part of reality only in so far as it would become an element of the complete symbol Peirce called the entelechy.

Savan characterizes Peirce as a “mild” semiotic idealist. This position maintains that “any properties, attributes, or characteristics of whatever exists depend upon the system of signs, representations, or interpretations through which they are signified.”"‘ The mild semiotic idealist accepts that there are independently existing things, but insists that their properties are determined by the sign-system in which they function (in Peirce’s case, that system is the process of evolution toward the perfectly real sign). Peirce did not adhere to strong semiotic idealism, which makes the extra-semiotic entities’ very existence depend upon the sign system. Savan finds the anti”semiotic idealist” position he calls “extreme realism” unacceptable, as well, and argues that Peirce likewise rejected it. Savan says that this position (let us call it extreme semiotic realism) “is of no interest to anyone who is in pursuit of understanding. For such a realist, whatever [apparent] knowledge and understanding human inquiry may attain, the truth may quite possibly be otherwise. Such a possibility can not be the goal or presupposition of I argue that, as unsettling as the position may be, Peirce’s logical :eafism implies just this form of extreme semiotic realism.

Peirce held that there are existent things, characterized predominantly by Secondness, independent of semiosis. This position is rooted in logic, which according to Peirce must hope (among other things) “that any given estion is susceptible of a true answer, and that this answer is discoverable, a being and being represented are different, that there is a reality, and that c real world is governed by ideas” (NEM 4:20). Here we see the joint sertion that there is objective truth and that metaphysics must suppose .c world to be governed by the law of mind. Peirce’s assertion in this passage that being and being represented are different can be understood to mean that existent things have ontological status independently of semiosis.

Note that both mild semiotic idealism and extreme semiotic realism Presume the existence of extra-semiotic individuals. This is necessary, as ‘,van points out, in order to account for the fact of surprising and compelling elements in experience.” Peirce’s theory of perceptual judgment requires the hypothesis of an independent external world. Perception, for Peirce, is a representation of some object by one’s present self to one’s future self, which interprets the object as a perceived event: “In a perceptual judgment the mind professes to tell the mind’s future self what the character of the present percept is” (CP 7.630). Now what gets represented in a perceptual judgment often comes without any warning, and enters the stream of cognition contrary to all expectation. I flip a light switch and experience a loud pop and darkness rather than the expected bright light. I have no controt over the process by which I represent these phenomena to myself, but he process is indeed describable in semiotic terms.

If we ask what the object of the perceptual judgment is, we come into murkey waters. We can identify no prior cognition that would have the perception of a loud pop and darkness as its proper interpretant. The only prior cognition of which we may have been aware would have had a representation of bright, room-filling light as its interpretant. The novel cognition must have come from somewhere, though, and all we can do is to suggest a hypothesis about what kind of object would generate this kind of surprising sign. Thus we embrace the metaphysical hypothesis that there is indeed a stem of individual enduring things, connected through dyadic reactions, which exist independently of semiosis. These extra-semiotic individuals are dynamical object of my perceptual judgment, and make their presence known in unexpected intrusions into the semiotic flow of cognition.

Independent existence, then, is hypothesized as the dynamical object of certain representations. Because existence is proposed as an object of representation, and because (following Peirce) we have rejected nominalism in lavor of logical realism, we must suppose there is some determinate truth about it which would be revealed as the final interpretant of a perfect reprewntation of that object. Here is where I part company with Savan. He argues that Peirce’s alleged “mild semiotic idealism” makes the characters (though not the existence) of the extra-semiotic world depend on the sign system. If it makes any sense to speak of truth in connection with the object of perceptual judgments, though, that truth must be objective in the sense that it does not depend upon our particular perceptions of it. The definition of truth deriving from Peirce’s logical realism makes truth independent of what any finite inquiry, or any finite process of semiosis, may happen to lead us to believe. A true interpretant would never be revised, because it would accord in all respects with the objectively determinate character of the object. There is an independent world of dyadic existence, we must suppose, and some parts of this world may not be incorporated into any sign until the end of semiosis. Their characters would not be known until that mythical moment, but they must be something independent of their representation: existence has the special characteristic “of being absolutely determinate” (CP 6.439). Until the end of semiosis and the realization of a perfect symbol, our knowledge of these characters very well might be radically mistaken.

In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Peirce introduced his notorious example of the diamond that materializes and is utterly destroyed without ever having been perceived or tested for hardness. In that article, Peirce wrote that there would be “no falsity” in saying that the diamond is soft. Such modes of speech “would involve a modification of our present usage of speech with regard to the words hard and soft, but not of their meanings. For they represent no fact to be different than what it is; only they involve arrangements of facts which would be exceedingly maladroit” (CP 5.403). This might be taken to suggest that the existent thing that never enters the semiotic sphere does not have a determinate property of hardness, and is thus neither hard nor soft. As an inoculation against this interpretation, Peirce wrote in the 1905 “Issues of Pragmaticism”: “Remember that this diamond condition is not an isolated fact. There is no such thing; and an isolated fact could hardly be real. It is an unsevered, though presciss part of the unitary fact of nature” (CP 5.457). If it is anything but pure logical fiction, even in its relatively isolated state the diamond must enter into some dyadic relations with some other part of the world. There are, again, no absolutely isolated individuals or facts about individuals. The diamond’s existence must surely have some effect on its surroundings, and either its hardness or other properties associated with its hardness will leave a mark on the one determinate dynamical object that is the existent world. Though this effect, and hence the diamond’s hardness may remain unknown until the end of inquiry, Peirce insisted that at the end of inquiry, all information about the world would be represented in the perfect and all-encompassing entelechy. Short of that perfect state of information, though, we may well be ignorant or mistaken about any given character of existence.

Savan claims, again, that this extreme semiotic realism is of “no interest to anyone who is in pursuit of understanding,” because it allows that the truth “may quite possibly be otherwise” than what inquiry suggests.  Savan is correct to say that this ontology leaves the door wide open for all our present readings of the book of nature to be exposed as mistaken.  Though QUITE unlikely, it is just possible that we will discover there are no such things as fossils after all, but only bone-shaped rocks.  This is hardly a position of “no interest” to one who pursues understanding, however: it is a direct consequence of the principle of fallibilism.  Peirce balanced this skeptical strain with the affirmation that, after all, whenever we engage in rational thought we tacitly suppose that our thought is leading toward the truth in the long run, and that if there is indeed such a thing as truth, then all we need do is to persist in the methods of science to get close to it (SS 75).

(Kelly Parker, The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought, 219 – 222)

(Any typos are mine)

Related posts:

1. Quick thoughts on OOP
2. The Problem of Fit
3. The Problem with Metaphysics

On the one hand I’m one of those who think Derrida’s a realist but I don’t think that ends up being that informative a description unless one unpacks what one means by realism. Harman brings up the issue of the self-identical which certainly is a big deal in many forms of realism. I do think that the issue of identity doesn’t work in Derrida the way it does in most realisms. So I’d not want to say Derrida is realist of the sort one typically finds in the Anglo-American traditions. I personally do think he’s a realist of the sort one finds in the pragmatic traditions — although even there sometimes the pragmatists are described as attempting to find a third way between the twin poles of realism and idealism. (See for example David Hildebrand’s Beyond Realism and Anti-realism) So I’m not committed to the terminology and I acknowledge the danger of falling prey to a naive realism.

I do take exception to Harman’s claim that people who read Derrida as a realist do so to attack speculative realism. I’m not sure that’s completely fair. I think some are quite sympathetic in the big picture with the various sorts of object oriented ontologies even if they may disagree in the particulars. Further most of those I’ve encountered who adopt realist readings of Heidegger and Derrida do so simply because they think that the best way to read the logic of the arguments. (Which isn’t necessarily the same thing as arguing that Derrida saw himself as a realist, merely that the logic of his arguments move one towards such a position)

I’ve not followed the recent debate over whether Derrida is a realist, although I participated in one over at Larval Subjects a while ago.  (See for instance this post — especially in the comments) I think what leads to the confusion is the issue of reference and identity. It’s abundantly clear that Derrida problematizes these notions and if the traditional view on identity and reference is required for realism then Derrida isn’t a realist. Perhaps it would simply be better to say Derrida is something like a realist who rejects the way those positions are held among either idealists or realists. I do think though that Derrida isn’t saying that difference is merely a product of our minds. To the degree that difference is inescapable and always at work then I’d say he’s a realist about such.

The problem is that most philosophy, from a Derridean perspective, is so caught up in an ontology of presence that it’s hard to retrace some of the original steps and ask what would happen if we didn’t exclude non-presence. I’d think the OOO proponents would be sympathetic to this reading since I think this notion of non-presence is a key one within OOO. (There is an aspect of objects that can’t be reduced to the normal items of relations or properties)

I suspect that the big issue is whether one ought read Derrida as making a primarily epistemological claim and thus see him more in the skeptic camp of epistemology. I simply see Derrida as examining something far more fundamental than epistemology.  For the record, I’ve not read Marder and his book on Derrida as a realist. Outside of the NDPR review I know little about it other than that people I know who’ve read it disagreed a lot with it. (Including those who take Derrida as a realist)

I wish I had time to say more. But I fear the discussion will have to await the future.

Those interested might also be interested in Caputo’s “For Love of the Things Themselves: Derrida’s Hyper-Realism.” This is a relatively old paper (published in 2001) but I think it reflects how Derrida was read as a realist before SR and OOO became so popular. I tend to have differences with how Caputo reads both Derrida and Heidegger in general, but I think this still a worthwhile text to consider. Of course I do think Caputo’s reading is much more open to the correlationist critique that people in the OOO tradition make. So I’m definitely not satisfied with Caputo’s reading. I think it does point at something interesting though.

My own take on Derrida’s realism was something I wrote up two years ago. It’s far from perfect but I think indicates how I take him (which I hasten to repeat isn’t necessarily how Derrida takes himself)

Related posts:

1. One Last One on Realism
2. Realism and Naive Realism
3. Thoughts on Derrida and Realism

It’s no wonder that realism has such a bad name. It has perpetually been ruined by political realism. Political realism has always been that despicable ideology whose name is necessity. It has always functioned at the behest of inegalitarian social arrangements, justifying one more way deny people their voice and to expropriate their goods. On the one hand it strives to regulate bodies in such a way that only some bodies are entitled to have a say, to govern, to rule, to lead, while others are relegated to silence and, above all, invisibility. Political realism is here a mechanism designed to render invisible voice and other social entities. The political realist always says “listen to those in the know”– usually oligarchs or servants of oligarchs –”they are naturally superior, they have your best interests at heart!” Speaking against the masters becomes pure folly. The voice of those that protest, that refuse the “wisdom” of the masters, is immediately coded as animal noise without reason that only “emotes”. We can think here of the difference between how the medical establishment treated hysterics before and after Freud. Prior to Freud, the hysteric was to be dismissed, to be denied voice, to be relegated to the irrational. After Freud the hysteric is to be listened to as articulating a wrong and a breach in the order of identifications. Political realism strives to silence the hysteric, claiming that their voice is no voice at all, that that voice comes from no place of knowledge or wisdom.

Key to how I read Derrida is that it is an expansion of Levinas such that not only are other people given that place of transcendent “otherness” with an associated ethical demand but all other objects are.  (Interestingly a recent NDPR review brought up the same view)

Derrida’s critique of Levinas is that the alterity of the Other is made possible by the (alterity of the) thingness of the other. In this vein, O’Connor argues that Derrida deconstructs Levinas’ view of the human face as exceptional, for the appearance of the face “relies on a general experience of appearing” that encompasses the appearance of the face and of those things that are other to the face; therefore, Derrida envisions a “‘horizontal’ otherness” that “contaminates” Levinas’ “vertical otherness”. O’Connor views Derrida’s later concept of “hauntology” as an advancement beyond Heideggerian ontology and Levinasian alterity.

Levi’s comment about heirarchy and especially mastery and the chain of being is very much wrapped up in how I see Derrida as well.  Rather than focused on the One of neoPlatonism Derrida plays with the khōra that is less that is below all things.  (I’ve argued elsewhere Derrida ends up being quite similar to Plotinus here except in Plotinus’ discussion of Matter rather than the One)

Related posts:

1. Levinas, Heidegger & Objects
2. Levinas, Ostler and the Face of the Other
3. One Last One on Realism

Interestingly I was in a similar discussion about Peirce and Derrida over on Peirce-L this week. I didn’t really have time to say much there either.

Related posts:

1. Derrida and the Text
2. Derrida and Universals
3. Derrida on Sept 11

While I can appreciate not wanting secondary texts I think the reality is that you can’t dive into Derrida without them. At a minimum you need some familiarity with Husserl and Heidegger for anything to make much sense. The best intro I’ve found is Dermot Moran’s Introduction to Phenomenology. The actual Derrida section is very short but he does a fantastic job explaining Husserl and Heidegger and thereby situating Derrida in that discussion. (If you click on the Amazon link to check it out, the Derrida section starts on page 435) My second choice is flawed but I’ve simply not found a better solution for beginners. I tend to always return to suggesting Christopher Norris’ Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. Especially if someone is coming from a more analytic stance. For all its problems I think it does better than anything else actually communicating to people what Derrida is up to without necessarily going deep into phenomenology or the texts Derrida is engaged with.

Related posts:

1. Reacting to Derrida
2. Derrida and Universals
3. The Derrida Debate

Effectively I think OOO is a kind of scholastic realism which acknowledges a kind of Heideggarian “like” withdrawal of the object. That is one considers the object as independent of relations. I say scholastic realism since the objects in question are typically general objects and not fundamental material objects. (Indeed most OOO I’ve read appears to never engage with physics or chemistry — although I’m sure someone out there is doing this) One has to be careful not to press the scholastic realism label too far though. There are, I believe, some differences.

I also think Derrida is largely a scholastic realism. Once again of a sort. So one has to be cautious using the term. The big difference between Derrida and OOO is that OOO has a substantial form as the withdrawn object as a full object. Whereas for Derrida there is a withdrawal but the withdrawal is a kind of nothing or less than being. The place to turn to understand this is that period in the 90′s when French philosophy took a sort of theological turn. Now I’m less concerned with how useful this turn was. (I tend to dislike a lot of it myself) What I find interesting is Derrida’s own take on it. He is careful to note that his own views are more a concern with what is less than being rather than the religious hyper-ouisa.

While OOO’s concern probably shouldn’t be called the hyperousia, since it is hardly filling that roll, in an other sense with respect to the particular object the withdrawn has that logic. A Derridean OOO (if one dare call it that) would thus be one that sees the withdrawn in terms of the khôra. It is not a form at all but rather a place for a form. It’s the interval between in which the forms (object) have a place.

Now one can see the khôra as merely a phenomenological place. (Heidegger’s clearing) However I think Derrida means something far more radical in the khôra as otherness. Rather it is the place in the external earth/world which determines form. It is matter as it relates to form. Far from being an Aristotelian like substantial form which organizes matter it is the matter affecting form as it is intelligible. Now famously Aristotle engages, perhaps unsuccessfully, with a conception of prime matter. This gets taken up by the neoPlatonists in their attempts to harmonize Aristotle and Plato (with a little Stoicism thrown into the mix).

Now Matter is a thing that is brought under order – like all that shares its nature by participation or by possessing the same principle – therefore, necessarily, Matter is The Undelimited and not merely the recipient of a nonessential quality of Indefiniteness entering as an attribute. [...]

Matter, then, must be described as Indefinite of itself, by its natural opposition to Reason-Principle. [...]

Then Matter is simply Alienism (Other) [the Principle of Difference]? No: it is merely that part of Alienism which stands in contradiction with the Authentic Existents which are Reason-Principles. So understood, this non-existence has a certain measure of existence; for it is identical with Privation, which also is a thing standing in opposition to the things that exist in Reason. [...] For in Matter we have no mere absence of means or of strength; it is utter destitution – of sense, of virtue, of beauty, of pattern, of Ideal principle, of quality. (Enneads, II.4.15-16, emphasis mine)

Note how for Plotinus, unlike the One which is ineffable because it is more than Being and the source of Being, Matter is the exact opposite. It is totally other (Alienism in the above translation) as opposition to all reason – all discourse and all intelligibility. If privation is the “gap” in a thing relative to its “complete” intended sense, then Matter is pure privation. It is the gap, the difference, in which all discourse finds itself.

Derrida’s attempts to avoid the One of theology or neoPlatonism focus on a not-speaking not because what one does not speak of exceeds what one wishes to say. He wishes to avoid speaking because there in nothing to say. As Derrida says, “this secret can not be determined and is nothing, as these people themselves recognize, they have no secret.” (“How to Avoid Speaking: Denials” in Derrida and Negative Theology, 89)

Now things are obviously more complex. For one khôra for Derrida has a strong sense of deferral and not merely distance or division. I’ve intentionally avoided talking of time in all this. However clearly for Derrida spacing is a matter of the temporal as well as a way to distinguish ideas/objects. This involves inherently a process oriented conception of objects quite at odds with how much OOO is done. So I really don’t want to minimize this problem. Just defer it for the moment. I’d note though that for Plotinus time is a feature of the realm of soul, below intelligence. Matter as Other is below even this. If the hierarchy of being for Plontinus includes a move from most permanent to most transitory then temporally the Matter is even more temporally in flux than even the realm of soul.

(Edit: Fixed bad link)

Related posts:

1. Thoughts on Derrida and Realism
2. Quick Thoughts on the SMPT Conference
3. Derrida and Universals

Consider for example Derrida.

Let me offer a very brief approach via Derrida’s critique of Heidegger’s ontological difference.

1. The ontological difference is the difference between being and beings.

2. This difference depends upon beings and thus appears to house a contamination. (The difference is in terms of the two and not a “pure” difference)

3. This contamination requires thinking a difference prior to the ontological difference.

4. This difference is a difference in beings.

5. This difference is thus a difference prior to Dasein in the things themselves.

6. This difference thus enables an object – object difference and a relation analogous to being but different and more primordial.

Related posts:

1. Objects: Less than the Sum
2. “Substances all the Way Down”
3. Philosophical Focus

It seems to me that Derrida’s animal ethics runs into the same problem his ethics with people has. That is we see the demand but don’t really have any way of knowing what to do. We can recognize that both the Kantian and Utilitarian grounds don’t capture responsibility towards the other, but can’t say what it is we ought do. Personally I don’t have a problem with that as I am far from convinced by either the Utilitarian or Kantian. But I think inquiring after such considerations will lead us towards choosing an action out of our responsibility. That is the demand of responsibility opens us up towards inquiry but an inquiry where there is always a moment of risk. One might almost say that to be Ethical is to risk harming the Other while attempting to help.

I should also add that my comments about vegetables and gardens are not a flippant response towards vegetarians or animal rights activists. It’s a consideration I take seriously. Our position towards nature can’t be dealt with in terms of “rights” I feel. Yet I think (if only on religious grounds) that we have a deep and abiding responsibility to the world including all life. To create a hierarchy of care based purely upon how closely life resembles the human has always struck me as fundamentally misguided. (i.e. an ape is not to be accorded more rights than a dog simply because it resembles us more)

The other problem I see is that if our concern with the Other is a true kind of responsibility then merely withholding harm is insufficient. If I see someone being harmed in front of my house and refuse to act there is a sense in which I am as responsible for the violence as if I acted myself. Yet if it is wrong to kill a cow because of the harm it does then surely that applies by the same logic to my letting a wolf harm (and far more cruelly) a cow.

I’ve brought this point up to ethical vegans and animal rights activists but I think they think it a disingenuous position. Perhaps some do bring it up merely as a superficial reductio ad absurdum. (Reminds me of that old Screaming Worms song: Carrot Juice is Murder) However I think one can take this very seriously but I think it problematizes the very nature of responsibility in interesting ways. That is clearly to allow wolves to be wolves entails that we allow them to be cruel to deer and to a certain extent cattle. The very aporias that arise in this analysis far from being something to dismiss ought be brought into focus and even problematize our responsibility to the human.

I’d add that I think the Mormon strategy towards part of the problem of evil actually raises this problem. That to be responsible towards the other may entail balancing harms and cruelty in certain ways. I think it is by considering our responsibilty to the world in general (including gardening) that allows us to think this in interesting ways.

Related posts:

1. Consciousness and Responsibility
2. People Assign Blame to the Mentally Ill
3. Responsibility & Open Theism