Monday 28 May 2018

David Rose On "Co-Instantiation" And Peircean Semiotics

At any rate, I’m certain that any semiotic instance is a co-instantiation of many systems at multiple strata 
And that any observation co-instantiates multiple theories, more or less consciously …
Could Peirce help us here, if data were his object, observation the interpretant, and description the representamen?

Blogger Comments:

[1] With the term "co-instantiation", Rose follows Martin in confusing the distinct dimensions of instantiation and stratification.  In SFL theory, instantiation is a token-to-type (attributive) relation between an instance and the system of which it is an instance.  This necessarily locates both the instance and the system on the same stratum.  The relation between (instances of systems across) strata is realisation, a token–value (identifying) relation. 

[2] Since an observation is not an instance of theory (potential) — see the earlier post — it does not "co-instantiate" multiple theories.

[3] This mapping of categories is invalid, if only because it misconstrues an observation as the meaning or ramification of a description.  In Peircean semiotics:
An interpretant (or interpretant sign) is the sign's more or less clarified meaning or ramification, a kind of form or idea of the difference which the sign's being true or undeceptive would make.
sign (or representamen) represents, in the broadest possible sense of "represents". It is something interpretable as saying something about something. It is not necessarily symbolic, linguistic, or artificial.

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