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”.
0001 Josh Hammer authors an opinion piece for The Epoch Times. Zerohedge reprints the opinion on Friday, June 4, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. The full title is “Covid-19 Has Forever Destroyed America’s Trust in Ruling Class ‘Experts'”.
0002 I only want to look at the first paragraph.
0003 I will look at this paragraph in two ways.
First, I will use the Greimas Square. The Greimas Square is introduced in Comments On Philip Marey’s Post (2021) “Insurrection”, appearing in this blog in January 2021. To date, no series has been generated for the Greimas Square in smashwords.
Second, I will use the first two levels of the society tier. The two-level interscope is introduced in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction (available at smashwords). The society tier is posited in the masterwork How To Define the Word “Religion” (also available at smashwords).
The two-level interscope recently appears in this blog with Saturn-Jupiter Conjunction in Aquarius (Jan. 2021), Be Little Men (Sept. 2020) and Comments on Yoran Hazony’s Post (2020) “Challenges of Marxism” (Sept. 2020).
0004 Here is the first paragraph of Josh Hammer’s opinion piece, reproduced for examination in the following two blogs. There are three sentences in this paragraph. I present them in sequence.
Hammer writes, “As even many casual observers of America’s fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution’s framers intended.
“Instead, the vast majority of the ‘rulemaking’ governing Americans’ day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state’s sprawling bureaucracy.”The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.”
0005 First, I ask the question, “How does the term, ‘expert’, distinguish itself in spoken language, defined by Ferdinand de Saussure as two arbitrarily related systems of differences?”
Or, more briefly, how does the spoken word, “expert”, hold a place in a finite system of differences?
0006 An answer: The word, “expert”, has a unique Greimas Square, a configuration of four elements (A1, B1, A2 and B2). Each element forms a corner in a square.
Here is a picture.
0007 Here are the rules: A1 is the focal word. B1 contrasts with A1. A2 contradicts B1 and complements A1. B2 contrasts with A2, contradicts A1 and complements B1.
0008 The term, “expert” goes into A1.
What contrasts with A1?
How about the word, “bureaucrat”?
“Bureaucrat” goes into B1.
0009 What contradicts the bureaucrat?
Expert discourse focuses on the subject-matter and does not take into account other issues. Subject-matter discourse (A2) is content-oriented.
0010 What contrasts with subject-matter discourse (A2)?
0012 From the prior blog, I construct the following Greimas square.
0013 Each word is a placeholder in a system of differences. Clearly, the word, “expert”, is not the same as the word, “bureaucrat”. But, the words are entangled, and therefore, the distinction is subject to manipulation.
0014 What are the key relational features of this distinction?
0015 The first contrast involves rules (A:B contrast in 1 and 2).
The expert knows the rules. The expert does not make the rules. The expert is rule-bound.
The bureaucrat makes and enforces rules. The bureaucrat is rule-following.
Hammer reinforces this contrast by saying that the vast majority of rules governing the everyday lives of Americans are made behind closed doors, by federal bureaucrats. This governance fulfills the vision of progressive President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924, President 1913-1921). The administrative state has grown for over a century.
0016 The second pair of contradictions (A2 to B1 and B2 to A1) involves performance and discourse.
Expert discourse is bound to subject-matter. The expert knows the rules of the subject-matter. Personal and organizational circumstances are not supposed to influence the expert’s advice. The expert is supposed to be objective (and, ideally, suprasubjective).
Administrative discourse is bound to rule-making and rule-enforcing. The bureaucrat engages in ministerial operations. Bureaucrats tend to be subjective, while pretending to be objective, and intersubjective, while feigning to be suprasubjective. Hammer highlights these points by saying that bureaucrats disdain give-and-take political wranglingand prefer the ministrations of an enlightened clerisy.
0017 What does this imply?
The use of the word, “expert”, by the federal government, for a person in its employ, is misleading.
The word, “bureaucrat”, is not misleading.
0018 Does the slogan, “Trust the experts”, sound as convincing as “Trust the bureaucrats.”?
Here is a good example of deception through the manipulative use of spoken words.
