0005 Matthew Minerd Ph.D. pens a commentary that follows Brian Kemple’s essay.
Thomists currently exhibit an attitude when it comes to semiotic things.
0006 He notes (more or less), “For contemporary scholastics, the domain of cognition-dependent reality generally is a kind of terra non-considerata. Real being is ens naturae and is separate from the domains of knowledge, technical craft and moral freedom. These are entia rationis (mind-dependent beings) that, honestly, belong in the shadow.”
0007 How so?
The shadow is not the causalities inherent in ens rationis.
The shadow is the awfulness of the topic.
Look at the shadow side of the domains that Minerd mentions: ignorance (shadow of knowledge), incompetence (shadow of technical craft) and depravity (shadow of moral freedom).
0009 Now, I regard Kemple’s article “Signs and Reality”, in the journal, Reality, and Razie Mah’s Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality” (available at the smashwords website).
Is there a crack in the mirror of the scholastic world, as it reflects on res (thing)?
Things are real.
So are sign relations.
If so, are sign relations things?
0010 If sign relations are real, then the consequences of their realness cannot be denied.
This if-then statement applies to biology.
Are sign-relations so real that they are able to support a niche, into which some hapless creature may adapt? A niche is the potential of an actuality independent of the adapting genus. Could sign-relations, or triadic relations in general, be so real as to constitute a niche?
Consider the masterwork, The Human Niche.
0011 There are more consequences.
If sign relations are real, then a cultural change in the natural-sign character of talk may account for a rapid, inexorable alteration of a Lebenswelt. Does such a transition explain why our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
Consider the masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall.
0012 Finally, if our current Lebenswelt turns the evolutionary progression upside down, elevating stipulation over custom and custom over nature, then how do we validate our spoken words? If the meaning, presence and message underlying a spoken word is stipulated, upon what thing do we staple our stipulation? How about this: If we construct an artifact, then that artifact should validate our stipulation. The artifact validates what we stipulate it to be.
What can go wrong with that?
Consider the masterwork, How to Define the Word “Religion”.
0013 Three masterworks, all available on smashwords, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How to Define the Word “Religion”, expose scientific implications of Brian Kemple’s claims.
If sign-relations are things, then we have an entirely new way to appreciate human evolution, including a recent, and revelatory, twist.
0014 Another triadic relation, the category-based nested form, proves invaluable in discussing these issues.
A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction provide the background.
A category-based nested form consists in a normal context3, an actuality2 and a potential1. The subscripts refer to Peirce’s categories. These three elements fulfill four relational statements.
0016 Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality”, available on the smashwords website, examines Kemple’s work using the category-based nested form and the three-level interscope.
0017 Kemple presents three actualities: species impressa, species expressa and species intelligibilis from various texts by Aquinas.
These fit into a three-level interscope in the following fashion.
Figure 2
0018 Of course, one may contest these associations.
But, how else would these terms fit into the empty slots of a three-level interscope?
Perhaps, I could put in the word “normal context” for the normal context3 for all three levels and “potential” for the potential1 of all three levels.
But, that would not change the overall picture.
0019 Even more curious, these three actualities serve as sign-objects and sign-vehicles in sign-relations. There are three sign-relations in this figure. So each actuality may serve as both a sign-vehicle and a sign-object.
The interventional sign couples the perspective and content levels.
The specifying sign couples the content and situation levels.The exemplar sign couples the situation and perspective levels.
0020 Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality” tells a story and suggests associations between Kemple’s… er…. Aquinas’s terminology and the category-based nested form.
First, three kinds of sign-objects correspond to three actualities in a three-level interscope.
Second, three sign-relations couple the levels, so that each object may serve as both a sign-vehicle and sign-object. The only sign that does not serve as both a sign-vehicle and sign-object is the interventional sign.
0021 Here is a picture.
Figure 3
0022 The interventional sign couples the perspective and content levels.
The specifying sign couples the content and situation levels.
The exemplar sign couples the situation and perspective levels.
0023 Kemple specifically mentions three types of signs. These correspond to the character of the sign-vehicle for the interventional sign.
These types are nature, custom and stipulation.
These three types associate to periods in human evolution.
0024 The first two are discussed in Comments on Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language”. See this blog for the middle of May, 2021.
Early in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, natural events serve as sign-vehicles for interventional signs. Since hominins adapt into the niche of triadic relations, the sign-objects of the interventional sign, sensations and feelings, turn into sign-vehicles for specifying signs.
Later in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in,linguistic manual-brachial word-gestures serve as sign vehicles for interventional signs. The sign-objects decode the interventional signs according to custom. Specifying signs are trained by timeless traditions. Exemplar signs cannot be articulated using hand talk, yet they involve crucial adaptations, because the exemplar sign-object manifests as a commitment.
0025 Finally, after the first singularity, in our current Lebenswelt, the exemplar sign is able to be symbolized by speech-alone talk.
This turns out to be most problematic, since speech-alone allows the interventional sign-vehicle to be stipulated. Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality” tells a story about a stipulation. The story also tells about concupiscence.
0026 The sign-object of the exemplar sign occupies the same position in the three-level interscope as the sign-vehicle of the interventional sign. This is significant. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of original sin conducts itself precisely along the circuit depicted above, as discussed in Comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution”.
0027 Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality”, available at smashwords, includes a story of a rot consuming the Age of Ideas, the third age of understanding. Modernism is frozen in its gaze upon a thing, an innocent thing. Certain modern elites hunger to financialize and harvest such innocence. Call it what you will. The yearning goes by many names.
In time, the rot will run its course.
Modernism will fail.
However, in this theodrama, the premodern Thomism of the Latin Age, the second age of understanding, may transubstantiate into the postmodern Thomism of the Age of Triadic Relations, the fourth age of understanding. Deely predicts it. Kemple aims to manifest it. Signs are real, just like things.
0028 This is not the only fissure to appear in the scholastic mirror of the world.
Shall I elaborate?
0029 Smashwords contains an entire series of commentaries devoted to the question, “Is Aristotle’s hylomorphism an expression of Peirce’s category of secondness?“
Another series is devoted to empirio-schematics, starting with Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) “Natural Philosophy” and Comments on Nicholas Berdyaev’s Book (1939) “Spirit and Reality”.
Several commentaries in the series, Reverberations of the Fall, expand on Aquinas’s breakthrough concept of original justice.
0030 These series are not anomalies. They are features of what happens when Thomists take seriously the very topic that they struggle to avoid.
0031 Look to Reality: A Journal of Philosophical Discourse.
Visit the website.
Donate to its flourishing.
Read the works.
Take a course.
0032 Most challenging of all, hire a budding scholar to compare and contrast Kemple’s article “Signs and Reality”, in the journal, Reality, and Razie Mah’s Comments on Brian Kemple’s Essay (2020) “Signs and Reality”.
0038 I see what is happening3a, I ask, “What does this mean to me3b?”.
This business about phantasms2b is crucial. If our mind-dependent beings, our phantasms2b, are to stand the trial of the suprasubjective1c, then their symbols2b must be true1c. Plus, they must be able to be subjectively1a communicated. They must be witnessed as things and events2a.
0039 There is a profoundly biological reason for this. Our genus evolves by cooperating in teams. Each team is like the cat. It disposes privations to others, in order to achieve its perfection. One team hunts rabbits. Another team digs up tubers. Human teams hunt and gather, all in the pursuit of their fullness of being. The One Who Gives, Without Us Knowing Why, provides in many different ways.
Just as metabolism resides in every living being, the One Who Gives, resides in each social circle. As noted in Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big, the One Who Gives is an object that brings all teams into relation. Otherwise, teams might come into conflict. Like metabolism, this relational object stands undifferentiated from the organization objectives of each team. This relational object sustains them all.
0040 We choose our teams based on disposition and natural abilities. Or maybe, our teams choose us. After all, if a prosperous team lasts long enough, generation after generation, our kind will adapt to its challenges. The tasks will become more intuitively natural. Evolutionary psychologists will call these adaptations, “mental modules”.
0041 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, there is no contradiction between the phantasm2b simultaneously touching base with the potential of truth1c and the potential of subjective agreement1a. That is because hand talk2a and hand-speech talk2a image and indicate their referents1a. A referent1a defines the objectivity1b of each gesture word2a. The referent1a is also suprasubjectively evident1c. If it1a were not real1c, it1a could not be imaged or indicated2a.
In our current Lebenswelt, there is a contradiction. Speech-alone2a talk is purely symbolic. It2a does not image or point to anything1c. So, the phantasm2b suffers a privation, opening the door to a condition where the potential of subjective agreement1a may be actualized without the simultaneous realization of the potential consilience1cunderlying the One Who Gives, Without Us Knowing Why3c.
In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, we join a team and our commitments2c are plain to see. Each person has a role1cand communicates that role1c through behavior, including manual-brachial gestures2a. These gestures2a are natural signs. They are icons and indexes. They are subjectively experienced as images and indications1a.
0044 But, there is a caveat, the more obvious the gesture, the more distinct from any other gesture, the more likely the gesture will be instantly understood. So, each gesture-word2a becomes more and more distinct from every other gesture-word. Language consists in systems of differences.
0045 Word-gestures2a are symbols, purely relational beings, striving for fullness within an ever more effective system of differences. Language evolves within each team. Humans, as a kind, adapt to what each team does2b.
0046 What does this mean in regards the prior interscope?
Here is a diagram of the social construction where the situational phantasm2b (including its manifestation as langue2b) aligns with both things and events2a (including parole2a, hand and hand-speech talk2a) and a judgment2c (which cannot be symbolized, so is expressed as a commitment2c).
0047 Our capacities for phantasms2b are adaptations to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Each team talks in icons and indexes that are so distinct that they function as symbols in a symbolic order (a finite system of differences). This is parole2a. Langue consists of the sign-objects of word-gestures that picture or point to their referents2b.
Our genus innately assumes that gesture-words2a image and indicate things and states of things2a. Our human ancestors continue to think this, even when a new way of talking, speech2a, gets added to hand talk2a. In the beginning, Homo sapiens practices hand-speech talk. They do so for around two-hundred thousand years. Then, something radical happens.
0047 Humans drop the hand-component of hand-speech talk. This is no accident. There is an archaeology to the Fall. Humans adopt speech-alone talk. The semiotics of speech-alone talk potentiates civilization.
Speech-alone words do not image or indicate their referents. Speech-alone deprives us of an automatic, intuitive answer to the team-oriented question, “What does this mean to me3b?” The thing that we picture and point to in our gesture-word2a, where is it?
Oh, I know. Let’s build an artifact2a, an idol2a, that will validate our spoken words.
0048 In our current Lebenswelt, we are deprived of the fullness of gesture-words2a.
Evil is privation. So, is speech-alone talk evil? Are our phantasms evil? Are our judgments evil?
They all suffer privation of the fullness of what they evolved to be.
