semiotic function

“Thus we tend to endorse what is ultimately a heteronomous conception of language, understood as a mapping instrument which does not find its justification in itself, but constantly needs to rely on an external reference to justify its function. Yet meaningful signs (including those belonging to natural languages) do not clothe a pre-existing infosphere, they constitute it, and a long intellectual tradition, going from von Humboldt to Chomsky, has called attention to this fundamentally constructionist nature of semiotic codes, whereby languages ontologically incorporate reality, rather than just describing it. It seems that no philosophy of language with a narrowly aesthetic approach (i.e. representational or communication-oriented, in the technical sense just introduced) can hope to succeed in explaining the semiotic function.” (Luciano Floridi. Philosophy and Computing. pp. 115-116)

knowledge as design

“The world provides the data, to be understood as constraining affordances, and we transform them into information, like semantic engines. But such transformation or repurposing ([…]) is not equivalent to portraying, or picturing, or photographing, or photocopying anything. It is more like cooking: the dish does not represent the ingredients, it uses them to make something else out of them, yet the reality of the dish and its properties hugely depend on the reality and the properties of the ingredients. Models are not representations understood as pictures, but interpretations understood as data elaborations, of systems.” (Luciano Floridi. The Logic of Information. p. xi)

discussions about forms of life

“[I]t can be pointed out that discussions about forms of life and world pictures do in fact take place. […] Perhaps even more important is the following: it is necessary to distinguish between the observation that neither the process of justification nor that of criticism can proceed without presuppositions or assumptions and the thesis that what is presupposed or assumed is in the last analysis not open to discussion (that is, is open neither to justification nor to criticism). The latter does not follow from the former. The view that all presuppositions or assumptions may be questioned is of course open to the objection that in discussing one lot of assumptions further assumptions have to be made, so that it is impossible to conceive of a situation which is well-founded in all its aspects. However, the thesis that every assumption is open to discussion does not maintain that everything can be justified simultaneously. It says only that there is no assertion such that the possibility of some argument being advanced for or against it is excluded a priori.” (Robert Alexy. A Theory of Legal Argumentation. pp. 52-53)

two couplets

“Thus, the distinction between what is relative secundum esse and what is so only secumdum dici is the first and the most fundamental analytical couplet of Poinsot’s Treatise. Since, moreover, the relative secundum esse unites under one (ontological) rationale the distinct orders of mind-independent and mind-dependent being, and so includes implicitly (analytically) the second fundamental couplet of the Treatise (ens reale/ens rationis), it does not seem too much to say that the systematic contrast of these two terms determines the conceptual architecture of the Treatise on Signs as a whole: eleven hundred years of Latin philosophizing are summarized and rendered aufgehoben in this application.” (John Deely. Editorial Afterword. Treatise on Signs. By John Poinsot. Trans. John Deely. St. Augustines Press; 2nd edition, 2013. p.477)

virtual similitude

“[I]t is true that a form of impressed specification is a representative similitude of an object, but in the mode of a principle of cognition, not in the mode of a formal awareness or of supposing an awareness to which it would represent, and for this reason it is called a virtual similitude, because it is a principle whence arises a formal similitude and formal awareness. But as a result of this the rationale of a sign is wanting in an impressed specifier, because even though it is a similitude of an object and a representation uniting and making an object present to a cognitive power, it does not posit the object present to cognition m, but is a principle of cognition.” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, pp. 258-259)

mind-independent perfection borrowed and appropriated from mind-independent entity

“[…] Whence a mind-dependent being, although in itself it has subjectively no reality, can still be the object of an act of understanding and specify that act by reason of an objective proportion which it takes on in an order to the understanding when it has a real fundament and is conceived on the pattern of mind-independent being. For then it can perfect and specify the understanding by a mind-independent perfection, not one innate to itself or existing in itself, but one borrowed and appropriated from mind-independent entity, on whose pattern it is objectively conceived […].” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, pp. 190 – 191, note 35)

to be manifestable and objectifiable

“To be manifestable and objectifiable is something independent of mind, and that upon which a cognitive power depends and by which it is specified. Nay rather, it is because an object is thus mind-independent that it does not depend upon a cognitive power by a mind-independent relation. Wherefore, since a sign under the formality of sign does not respect a cognitive power directly (for this is the formality of an object), but respects a thing signifiable or manifestable to a cognitive power, a cognitive power as indirectly included in that manifestable object is attained by a mind-independent sign-relation, because the cognitive power is not respected separately, but as included in that which is mind-independent in the object as something manifestable to a cognitive power; where the whole which is attained in act and formally is mind-independent, and the power whose object it is enters there merely as something connoted and indirectly.” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, pp. 160-161)

division of categorial relation according to its specific and essential differences

“In the second line of division, relation is divided into essential types according to the fundaments of relation, to which fundaments must also correspond diverse formal termini. […] The first fundament is that of subjects relative according to unity and number. On unity and number are founded relations of similarity and dissimilarity, agreement and disagreement, etc. The second fundament is that of subjects relative according to action and reception. For example, it is in this way that all effects and causes are relative. The third fundament is in subjects relative by being one a measure and the other measurable, as cognitive powers are measured by the objects which properly specify them.” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, p. 101)

the first and second intention

“A term of the first intention is one that signifies something according to that which the signified has in reality (independently of its being known) or in its own proper condition, that is to say, apart from the condition or status it has in the understanding and according as it is conceived, such as a white thing, or a man, as existing independently of cognition. A term of the second intention is one that signifies something according to that which the signified has owing to a concept of the mind and in the condition or state of the understanding, such as species, genus, and things of like kind that logicians treat. And these are said to be of first and second intention, because that which belongs to anything according to its own being is, as it were, primary in that thing and its own condition or state; but that which belongs to anything according as it is understood is as it were secondary and a second condition or state supervening upon the first, and for this reason it is called ‘of second intention,’ as of the second status.” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, p. 59, footnote 2)

ad instar realitatis

“Whence a mind-dependent being [ens rationis], although in itself it has subjectively no reality, can still be the object of an act of understanding and specify that act by reason of an objective proportion which it takes on in an order to the understanding when it has a real fundament and is conceived on the pattern of mind-independent being [ad instar realitatis]. For then it can perfect and specify the understanding by a mind-independent perfection, not one innate to itself or existing in itself, but one borrowed and appropriated from mind-independent entity, on whose pattern it is objectively conceived” (John Poinsot, Treatise on Signs, p.191, note 35.)