(Untitled)

[anosognosia]

Let us suppose that I have a piece of paper, written on it is the phrase 'The experience of the colour red', and I have asked you if this piece of paper is having the experience of the colour red

Comments

[essius]

There are, of course, varying perspectives among semioticians concerning the relation of a sign-vehicle to its object, and of the object to the reality objectified therein. From the perspective of a realist semiotic, the written account represents or signifies the reality (in this case the experience of red) itself, and upon reading the account one is brought into relation with that reality. To speak more generally, the sign enables a coincidence of an object (signified) and some reality or other (whether mind-independent or mind-dependent, insofar as sign-relations, generically understood, are indifferent to the ontological status of what they signify). In the present case, we have an account of the experience of red, which experience is dependent on the mind of the experiencer but not on the minds of external observers. The account itself is never identified with the experience, but there is no reason, in principle, to exclude the possibility of the signification of a thing coinciding with the thing itself in its proper being

[anosognosia]

In what sense is metaphysics limited to the genus of mind-independent being? You don't agree with the Aristotelian identification of metaphysics with ontology, c.f. Metaphysics vi.1?

[essius]

If we distinguish between mind-independent and mind-dependent being not prior to but from within metaphysics that, then semiotics would be the study of the nature and action of that being capable of transcending those two orders, namely the sign. For sign-relations are, qua relations, not limited to mind-independent categorial instantiation. Would you argue that semiotics is, then, a peculiar subfield of metaphysics?

Incidentally, what are your thoughts on the validity of the trivium and quadrivium?

[anosognosia]

I'm not sure that it's important to be thinking about semiotics in the first place. The study of things whose treatises can be held in my left hand transcends genii of being too, but I'm not sure this is a particularly noteworthy fact.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I have any interesting thoughts about them.

To ponder.

[confliction]

The experience of reading.