Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 07:14:07 +0100
27 January. Hugo Fjelsted Alroe wrote:
> Yes, maybe my mariage of Pirsig and Peirce isn't a happy one. I believe I
> can make it work, but perhaps Pirsig and the squad will withdraw after the
> first really intimate meeting.
Hugo and Squad.
I noticed your post of 26 January where you expressed your dislike of
the lumping together of quality, value and morals, but before I could
crank my brains to working temperature Diane offered a most
appropriate response. Still, I admire your effort to "marry" Pirsig
and Peirce and as I too have spoken about Peirce, allow ME a go at
a comparison.
What dissatisfied Charles Peirce was the DYADIC logic (read:
metaphysics) prevalent in his time. He did not call it subject/object
metaphysics, but I see no hindrance to draw a parallel between these
two. SOM is dyadism itself. His alternative was the TRIADIC logic of
semiosis (Greek sign=semeion)
My reference is Jesper Hoffmeyer's book ("Livets Tegn","En Snegl paa
Vejen"in Danish. I believe it is translated to English as "Minding
Nature") If you have it, look at page 29 and the diagram 'B'
which is to depict the semiotic "tripod". For those who don't have
the book visualize a big Y. The down spoke is "Interpreter", the
right is "Object" and the left is "Primary Sign". To give a hint of
what it is all about there is a similar diagram 'A' where the down
spoke is "doctor", the right is "Measles" and the left is
"Red spots". For the doctor the red spots are sign of measles, for
the mother merely signs of something wrong with her child. They are
nothing IN THEMSELVES, there is always a relationship: a context.
This is what you refer to a contextualism: Dewy and Bateson for
instance?.
At this point Peirce is at the same stage as Phaedrus of ZMM
when he reached the "trinity" conclusion:
Peirce: Interpreter Object Primary sign.
Pirsig: Subject Object Quality.
Phaedrus did not stop there, he went on to discard the subject and
object spokes and only quality was left as the primary reality. When
Phaedrus reappears in LILA he has constructed another "figure" which
is neither monadic, dyadic nor triadic. The mystic quality is a
Dynamic "ocean" in which the various static wave/patterns have
formed. The patterns are not different from the ocean except for
being PATTERNS.
If Peirce had undergone the same development the "primary sign" spoke
of his tripod should have taken on the same overwhelming importance -
after all it is clear that the "illness" of the child is more primary
than the "doctor" or the "diagnosis". Then Peirce would have returned
with a "Metaphysics of Signs" - the MOS (Even better because it is
SOM backwards!). He would have postulated a Primary (Dynamic) Sign
out of which four (Static) Sign levels have crystallized: Inorganic
signs, Biological signs, Social signs and Intellectual signs.
But Peirce could not go that far. In the nineteen-sixties it was
madness to give up the subject/object division (and Phaedrus suffered
accordingly), in the eighteen- sixties it wasn't conceivable at all
and Peirce was stuck with the impossible situation of a dyadic
mind/matter universe in which a triadic logic reigned. A problem that
several squad members still struggle with.
Thus spaketh Bodvar
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