Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Karey L. Perkins" <karey AT charter.net>]

Mike,

 

Thanks for the references, that was just what I was looking for.  The Peirce literature is so comprehensive it's overwhelming, and unlike my studies of Percy, I have no idea where to start.  I almost didn't do this topic because I am not trained in semiotics (semeiotics?) and most of this is now self taught.  But I have been reading "American Signatures" which says that most semioticians are self taught (as was Percy).  So I'm not alone, but I still don't have a clear path of reading mapped out.

 

Percy says in several places that Susanne Langer dropped the ball and he intended to pick it up -- he says it in the essays, the conversations, etc.  But only one place do I recall that he actually says WHAT she dropped -- what she missed.  I believe it was early in my reading, in "Message," but I don't remember what it was and I'm going to have to go back and look.  I thought someone else might have been familiar with it.

 

Peirce, unlike Percy, was eagerly ready to reject that which did not conform to "the method of science" as a manner of fixing belief.  So he rejected the "method of tradition" "method of authority" and "method of fashion."   The infallibility of the Catholic church would fall under those.  And if anyone has read Peirce's "Fixation of Belief," which was the first essay I read, Peirce clearly asserts that the idea of transubstantiation just can't be.  I don't know if he continued with this opinion or not for the rest of his life, as it seems he changed as he grew older.  However, this is clearly contradictory to Percy's beliefs, and explains why Percy called himself only a "Thief of Peirce" rather than embracing Peirce's whole philosophy.  Still, Percy gives no reason (that I have found) for rejecting the triad in favor of the triangle.  Your solution of viewing the AREA of the triangle as the triadic content is one resolution to the problem, but was Percy viewing it that way?  I think he wanted to put it all on the interpretant (one point of the triangle) to differentiate it from dyadic behavior and to say something special was happening there, within the interpretant. That's where the triadic event was taking place.  But then why do we need the idea of the triangle at all?  It gets back to Cartesian dualism (something non-material is within man) and this is why I think Percy was expressing in his letters to Ken Ketner some doubt as to whether Peirce's triads (notwithstanding Peirce's other writings) could refute Descartes.  However, I don't quite get how Peirce's triads solve the problem either.

 

Just some things I'm wondering about.  I am interested in the work that has been done on this after Percy.  Any way to find out what that is?

 

KP

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Mike Frentz

To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion

Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 4:04 PM

Subject: Re: [percy-l] gays, biblical authority and Percy's language theory --

Karey,

re your first question -- this paper was "discovered" yesterday and floated on the peirce-l list (though the paper is four years old, I wasn't aware of it either and I'm a big fan of Deacon).  Interesting coupling of the "reproductive properties" of memes in terms of semiosis (interpretant spawning yet another sign). 

Terrence W. Deacon, Memes as Signs
 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/srb/10-3edit.html

Unfortunately the two other books he comments on as upcoming in "Note 10" still aren't to be found.  Floyd Merrel's 1997 book on Peirce, Signs, and Meaning is also quite an interesting read in this area.

re the second question -- I personally think this whole notion is irrelevant, as long as the triangle is interpreted by the area rather than the edges, all vertices are connected to the other two, a dyadic relationships aren't necessarily implied to me by this.  I find it interesting that Peirce doesn't really seem to have used either notation in his various descriptions of the same concepts (at least not in the Collected Papers), yet he his existential graphs are nothing less than a graphical computer.  BTW, a *great* reference for anyone attempting to surf the CP on their own is Charles S. Peirce's Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics (Advances in Semiotics)
by Gerard Deledalle, 2001 (Deledalle, a French philosopher who did much to bring CSP to Europe's attention, just died a few months back).  Like having a Fodor's to the CSP wilderness (I think WP would have loved to have had this book)

I find it striking how different research is today because of the web vs. when Percy was working this a little over a decade ago (per Ketner's Thief of Peirce dialogues).  Also, a lot of work has been done in this area since his death.

re the third question:  I dunno?  I'd be interested if you do find the reference.  I have on occasion started to look up Langer's work but came away with the impression that she had drifted so far off in less Pe*rc*an directions that aren't of particular interest to me that I've never followed through on what it was that Percy was fond of in Langer's work wrt CSP's legacy.


Best,
Mike


At 03:24 PM 8/15/2003 -0400, you wrote:

No -- I'm certainly no moderator!  But I am fascinated by the fact that gays and Biblical authority have garnered so much response, but Percy's language theory doesn't get much interest?  There's so much he left unfinished and so much to investigate.  If he had lived longer, I think something tremendous might have come out of it -- like, the answer to, what is the interpretant?  He died before he could solve it.
 
So, here's what I would discuss if I had the choice...
 
What is the interpretant?
 
Why did he use triangles instead of triads, even when a good argument was given against it?
 
What did Susanne Langer drop that he picked up?  (I believe he says what it is in one place, but I lost it somewhere)
 
KP
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Parlin, Steven
To: 'Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion'
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 10:52 PM
Subject: RE: [percy-l] West Wing

Hmmm...

Because some of my replies that contradict Karey are not showing up in my
inbox, I assumed (wrongly it seems) that I had angered her (isn't she the
moderator?), and that she was preventing my postings from going to the list.


I owe you an all an apology...but especially Karey.

Please forgive my presumption.

I'm an ass. 

Steve



-----Original Message-----
From: David Alan Beck [mailto:dabeck AT iupui.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 9:45 PM
To: Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion
Subject: Re: [percy-l] West Wing


Steve,
Why are we getting triplicates of your posting??
-DB

On Thu, 14 Aug 2003, Parlin, Steven wrote:


  [NON-Text Body part not included]



David Beck                                        


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--

An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail

Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
--

An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail

Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy

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An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail

Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy