Re: RT list: Did Peirce offer an inferential theory of communication (prior to RT)?

I agree with everything Ernst-August says. Pierce discussed inference
extensively, but did not, as far as I know - and my knowledge of Pierce is
limited - develop an inferential approach to communciation. It might have
been appropriate to discuss Peirce in *Relevance*, and Umberto Eco in his
review of the book, if I remember well, criticised us for not doing so and
suggested that Pierce was the pioneer of an inferential approach. I don't
think we had a good excuse, if we needed one, for not discussing Pierce. In
my case, I must confess that I derive no pleasure from reading him, which, I
know, reflects on me.

Dan

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:33 AM, <ernst-august_gutt@sil.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I recently came across the following claims about the work of C.S. Peirce:
>
> "Peirce showed that all interpretation is inferential, and the kind of
> interpretation involved in translation is no exception ... Drawing on
> semiotics to make a case for the inferential nature of translation can also
> provide sound arguments to support other theories of translation which
> either implicitly | presuppose or explicitly discuss inferential processes
> ..." (p. 261-262)
> (Stecconi, Ubaldo. 2008. Semiotics. In Routledge encyclopedia of
> translation
> studies, ed. Baker, Mona and G. Saldanha. 2nd ed. London & New York:
> Routledge; pp. 260-63)
>
> This sounds very much as if Peirce's 'interpretative semiotics' actually
> preceded RT as an inferential theory of communication and appears to be at
> variance with the following claim made in RT:
>
> "Before Grice's pioneering work, the only available theoretical model of
> communication was what we have called the classical code model . which
> treats communication as involving a sender, a receiver, a set of observable
> signals, a set of unobservable messages, and a code that relates the two."
> (Sperber, D., and D. Wilson. 2002. Pragmatics, modularity and mind-reading.
> Mind and Language 17, no. 1/2: 3-23.)
>
> Looking at Sperber and Wilson 1995, acc. to the index there is one brief
> mention of Peirce - only as the originator of the term 'semiotic' - there
> is
> no discussion of his views on communication as inferential.
>
> My own, provisional view, based on a very cursory acquaintance with P's
> work, is as follows: Peirce and 'interpretative semiotics': P acknowledged
> importance of inferential processes in acquisition of knowledge in general
> (deduction, induction, abduction), and hence applied inference to
> communication as well; however, did not recognize the special challenge of
> intentional human communication, esp. the challenge of coordinating the
> inferential processing of the audience with the intentions of the
> communicator. In that sense, while interpretative semiotics recognised the
> insufficiency of coding alone and brought out the importance of inference
> (as part of general epistemics), it did not really come up with an
> inferential theory that would explain intentional human communication in
> particular.
>
> Since I am not very well versed in Peirce's work, I would appreciate any
> comments and/or information on how others see his work relate to RT as an
> inferential theory of communication. I am especially interested in
> discussions of this issue in the RT literature, that I am not aware of.
>
> Thank you for your interest,
>
> Ernst-August Gutt
>
>
>

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