The meaning creation process, information, emotion, knowledge, two objects, and significance-effects: Some Peircean remarks

1 Introduction

Humans have an inherent tendency to make representations, and their potential for making representations is unique and great. Hence, they can develop and discover representations of their inner worlds, the social world, the outside world, and the continuous and complex contact between these, in an infinite number of ways – like no other known species. With C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) we can say that humans have a certain pheno-semeiotic competence. When a human represents, she is engaging in semeiosis or the meaning creation process. We believe that information, emotion, and knowledge are constitutive categories of this process, or that these categories are interdependent, interactive interrelations working within every process of meaning creation, beginning with information and going through experience and emotion finding the way to thoughts and concepts leading to knowledge. We furthermore believe that it can be fruitful and interesting to look at the meaning creation process by implementing theoretical instruments as developed by Peirce within his theories of Phenomenology and Semeiotic, these theories being precisely about experience, meaning production and interpretation, and the acquisition of knowledge. Hence, in the following we will try and see if we can catch a glimpse of the meaning creation process with a Peircean perspective.

2 Setting the stage

We believe that there is an intricate relation between the categories of emotion, information, and knowledge, and that these concepts are the fundamental elements in the meaning creation process. Information is the catalyst for the meaning creation process. Information always causes emotions when perceived. Information is what we use to create knowledge. And knowledge is true interpreted information. Knowledge has to be true or else it is not knowledge. In a Peircean perspective man has an inherent tendency to search for truth. Why? Because humans have to survive in a universe out of which they arose and of which they are part. Hence, to dismiss truth is also to dismiss reality, according to Peirce. Reality is that which is represented in a true representation or semeiosis. The concepts of truth and reality are convertible concepts, and these concepts are simply and solely intended by human cognition.

If we see a dot on the horizon and – given the circumstances: we are in Denmark, in the middle of the day in January and the daylight is fading – and interpret the dot as a flamingo, this is likely to be a false interpretation and, as such, this particular information will not become knowledge given the fact that our collateral experience makes us doubt our observation and, thus, our hypothesis. It will, however, cause several emotions, and we are likely to get mental images of flamingos, provided we know what a flamingo is. As the dot comes closer, we can see that it is indeed a bird; not a flamingo, but a swan. But should the case be that the dot disappeared and we thought that it was a flamingo, this would not be knowledge since we have misinterpreted the information. So, we have a case where the meaning creation process involves information: the dot; emotions: e.g., doubt; knowledge; a swan. In his very fine article “Peirce on Interpretation” (2012b), the Peirce scholar Carl Hausman says – using Peirce’s claim that semeiotic objects have two aspects – that the relation between a dot on the horizon and our interpretation of it is the relation between the dynamical object and the immediate object; the dynamical object being reality and the immediate object being interpretations of the dynamical object. As Peirce himself wrote concerning the object of the sign:

[A] sign has an object … But is remains to point out that there are … two Objects … Namely we have to distinguish the Immediate Object, which is the Object as the Sign itself represents it and whose being thus is dependent upon the Representation of it in the Sign, from the Dynamical Object, which is the Reality which by some means contrives the Sign.

(CP 4.536)

Hence, the dynamical object puts constraints on our interpretation. However, we always use presuppositions including acknowledged and tacit knowledge, beliefs, biases, and such when interpreting the dynamical object (cf. Hausman 2012b: 115). We see a dot (the dynamical object), we interpret it to be a flamingo (the immediate object), our presuppositions including acknowledge and tacit knowledge make us doubt the immediate object. These presuppositions determine our capability to interpret the dynamical object correctly. Information is the dynamical object and the immediate objects are interpreted information, i.e., knowledge, but knowledge when communicated becomes information and, hence, becomes a dynamical object – we will return to this. But a wrong interpretation of information is not knowledge, and the information will remain information. In order to shed some more light on these matters, we will put forth a pheno-semeiotically inspired description of emotion, information, and knowledge concentrating on information as the dynamical aspect of objects and knowledge as the immediate aspect of objects. After that, we will analyze a case of the meaning creation process whereby we will understand the immediate object as an interpreted effect of the dynamical object related to the concept of significance-effect.

3 Emotion, information and knowledge in a pheno-semeiotical perspective

In order to understand the nature of the concepts of emotion, information, and knowledge, how they are related, and what role they play in the meaning creation process, we will describe them in accordance with Peirce’s three categories of consciousness found within his science of phenomenology: Feeling or Primisense, Altersense, and Medisense, since Peirce believed that human consciousness exemplifies all three categories. As he wrote in a draft to the book “A Guess at the Riddle” (c. 1890):

There are no other forms of consciousness except … Feeling, Altersense, and Medisense. They form a sort of system. Feeling is the momentarily present contents of consciousness … Altersense is the consciousness of a directly present other … Medisense is the … medium between Primisense and Altersense leading from the former to the latter. It is the consciousness of a process brining to mind.

(CP 7.551)

Our interest here is primarily the structural relation between emotion, information, and knowledge. Placing emotion as firstness in a meaning creation process does entail that:

… an emotion of the mind is real, in the sense that it exists in the mind whether we are distinctly conscious of it or not. But it is not external because although it does not depend on what we think about it, it does depend upon our state of our thought about something.

(CP 7.339)

Likewise information has a real being and placed in Secondness, information is facts. Consequently, information is both real and external. Let us give an example: A given book is full of information independent of what you and I may feel or think about it. It may just stand there on the book shelf not being read by anyone; still, it is full of information. Imagine a twig broken in two by the wind – even though no one hears the sound, the sound is still information. A deer running across a plain is information, even if no one sees it. Information at this level in cognition does not entail interpretation. The information in a given database is there independent of what you and I may think or feel about it. Now, this must imply that emotion is internal and information is external, and it is only cognition that can bridge the internal-external gap. We believe this is what Peirce says in the following quote:

The past is the inner world, the present the outer world. Now, this joined with feeling (which it involves or requires) might be called consciousness and would be the world, were it not for the phenomena of error and ignorance, which forces us to reflect that there were two worlds in that two-sided consciousness.

(CP 8.282)

And this inferential process is the meaning creation process, which is a semeiotic process because, according to Peirce, we cannot perceive, feel or think without using signs, as he also said a sign is: “something by knowing which we know something more” (CP 8.332; see also 5.251, 7.583) (Figure 1).

Figure 1:

It is cognition that bridges the gap between the internal world (emotion) and the external world (information) and makes the relation general, stable and, thereby, intelligible.

4 The emotional sign: The inner world

The emotional sign is related to primisense; it involves characteristics of primisense; it is an experience of the monadic quality of an immediate feeling; it is a simple and non-compound quality, it is what it is in itself, by itself. It has no relation to the possibility of something else: it has no parts, it has no beginning, middle or end. In “The List of Categories: A Second Essay” (c. 1894), Peirce asked his reader to imagine the following example:

Imagine me to make and in a slumberous condition to have, a vague, unobjectified, still less unsubjectified, sense of redness, or of salt taste, or of an ache, or of a grief or joy, or of a prolonged musical note. That would be, as nearly as possible, a purely monadic state of feeling.

(CP 1.303)

Consequently, the emotional sign is a state of feeling. As such it has not been manifested. It is a sign qua sign. However, naming the first sign trichotomy an emotional sign seems to be in agreement with the acclaimed Peirce scholar David Savan, as he in the article “Peirce’s Semiotic Theory of Emotion” (1981) draws our attention to the following:

Emotions do enter into the systematic explanation of behavior. Further, emotions can be justified, shown to be inappropriate, disproportionately, strong or weak, and so on. It is clear, I think, that an emotion is a legisign. Like any legisign it exists through its instances or replicas. Each such replica is an iconic sinsign. (Savan 1981: 323) ^[1]

If we take a slightly more psychological approach we could – according to Peirce – relate the emotional sign to a sensation. It holds the same characteristics as the definition of firstness above. Peirce grants us the following illustrative example:

… meaning by sensation the initiation of a state of feeling; – for by feeling I mean nothing but sensation minus the attribution of it to any particular subject. In my use of words, when an ear-splitting, soul-bursting locomotive whistle starts, there is a sensation, which ceases when the screech has been going on for any considerable fraction of a minute; and at the instant it stops there is a second sensation. Between them there is a state of feeling.

(CP 1.332)

Let us imagine that we are listening to a piece of music composed by Bach. The sensation begins the moment the music begins and stops when the music stops – what is in between is feeling (conveyed by the qualisign); the particular and dominant kind of feeling (conveyed by the sinsign) being one of, e.g., happiness, sadness, nostalgia, etc. (conveyed by the legisign) – the whole process being subsumed by the emotional sign. This is the first part of any process of meaning creation. However, in order for an emotion to come into being it needs information of some sort. Let us therefore take a look at the informational sign.

5 The informational sign: The outer world

The informational sign is related to altersense, which is the two-sided consciousness concerning force and resistance. It is the clash between ego and non-ego, it is experience including the experience of resistance from the object world, where we get to know facts, and facts are information, simply and solely. The fact that a door is hard and heavy only occurs to us when we put our shoulder against the door trying to force it open. Peirce noticed in “Pragmatism, fragment 2” (c. 1910), how:

Standing on the outside of a door that is slightly ajar, you put your hand upon the knob to open and enter it. You experience an unseen, silent resistance. You put your shoulder against the door and, gathering your forces, put forth a tremendous effort. Effort supposes resistance. Where there is no effort there is no resistance, where there is no resistance there is no effort either in this world or any of the worlds of possibility.

(CP 1.320)

Naming the second sign trichotomy the informational sign means that information in this semeiotically inspired perspective can either be iconic, indexical or symbolic, meaning that it can be similar to, it can point to, or it can refer to by convention, respectively.

It is important to note that information when being defined as non-ego and iconic, indexical or symbolic represents a relation between a representamen, which is a sign, and its dynamical object, which is reality. As such, there is no human interpretation taking place at this level, even though information and, thus, reality may be and often is the result of human interpretation. Information just is – and it is emotion that gives information its particular quality or flavor, if you will. In the article “Peirce’s dynamical object: Realism as process philosophy” (2012a), Carl Hausman analyses five ways of interpreting Peirce’s notion of the dynamical object. The first interpretation takes the dynamical object to function as a Kantian thing-in-itself (Das Ding an Sich). The second understanding interprets the dynamical object to be a manifold, indeterminate, sensuous, and emotional field ready for semeiotic attention (cf. Hausman 2012a: 85). The third interpretation is that the dynamical object “serves as an object of an indexical sign and is experienced in a reaction to resistance” (Hausman 2012a: 86). This defines the dynamical object as Secondness. Hausman further writes:

The idea that the dynamical object is one of the correlates in a dyadic relation is, it seems, a necessary condition of its functioning in triadic, or interpretative, relations. It is one of three ways it relates to signs; the other ways, of course, are iconically and symbolically. And symbols do not exclude indexical reference; nor do icons functions as signs without at least a degenerate dyadic reference. The dynamical object, then, is the active aspect of its function in serving as a constraint on interpretation.

(Hausman 2012a: 87)

The fourth interpretation is a combination of the dynamical object and the immediate object allowing the immediate object to become a dynamical object. Hausman gives the following examples of dynamical objects: the law of gravity; a physical, space-time plaque with a series of inscriptions on it; and a dot on the horizon – and let us add a technical concept as sign. It is clear that these objects are all very different in terms of existence. They are all real. One (the law of gravity) is abstract and cannot be seen, but is a law and, therefore, general – and, according to Peirce, generalities are real. One is manifest (the plaque), it is man-made and has spatio-temporal references, it reacts causally. One (the dot) is under interpretation even if we still do not know what it is. One is an abstract concept (the sign), which has become a dynamical object through multiple immediate objects. Hausman writes:

This may be clearer if I observe that those things called real or dynamical are, after all, interpreted objects. As such, they are immediate objects ready to be interpreted further. Consider the function of individual dynamical objects within a relation of atoms to molecules and molecules to water, or the relation of the impression of the weather to describing or reporting the weather. In each case, the object said to be dynamical is already interpreted, even though it is identified as a dynamical object for a sign. Thus, it functions as a constraining, dynamical object. In short, if dynamical objects are identified as conditions for signs playing roles within a system of signs, they are immediate objects.

(Hausman 2012a: 90)

The fifth interpretation is an elaboration of the fourth, but it adds direction to the dynamical object. The interpretation of the dynamical object is not pure randomness, it moves in a certain direction. “It offers a telos, although it is one that is not known at any specified or specifiable time in the future” (Hausman 2012a: 93). It seems that the dynamical object in this interpretation has becomes a final interpretant. We agree with Hausman that the fourth and fifth perspectives in combination make up the most fruitful way of understanding the dynamical object; a look at any concept should make the case clear. Any concept is caught up in an interpreted and interpreting network adding immediate objects to the dynamical object, and any concept has a telos and a being in future.

The informational sign gives direction and form to the interpretation to follow (conveyed by the symbol) pointing out (via the index) the particular qualities (icons) of information in time and space. This is the second step in any process of meaning creation.

6 The cognitional sign: The mediator

The cognitional sign is related to medisense, which is: “the main process … of thought” (CP 7.276). Medisense is what it is from what it mediates between, what it brings into relation, which is primisense and altersense, or ego and non-ego, even though medisense cannot be reduced to this. Medisense makes the relation between primisense and altersense stable, general and, thereby, intelligible. Put in another way, medisense is an interpretation of the process in which primisense and altersense become related:

This third state of mind is entirely different from the other two. In the second there was only a sense of brute force; now there is a sense of government by a general rule. In reaction only two things are involved; but in government there is a third thing which is a means to an end

(Peirce, qtd. In Houser 1983: 344)

Medisense makes the relation between the emotional sign and the informational sign intelligible. That is, at this level, information, as a dynamical object becomes interpreted through immediate objects and becomes integrated in knowledge. Consequently, there seems to be a structural difference between information and knowledge. Information as the dynamical object is not necessarily interpreted; however, interpreted information is knowledge and knowledge makes the dynamical object grow. Knowledge cannot be reduced to information; information finds its way into explicitness through arguments incorporated in dicent signs and rhemes – the whole process being subsumed the cognitional sign.

At this cognitional level, the cognitional sign makes the relation between emotion and information intelligible. This is the third step in any meaning creation process. Consequently, cognition is the bringing together of the outer world with the inner world. Let us in the following try to exemplify the meaning creation process.

7 The meaning creation process

We have to imagine that we are looking at a field, just taking a glance; we are not focusing on anything in particular. Suddenly, we see a moving shape appear on the horizon, we do not know what it is, but it has caught our attention. The shape comes closer, still we cannot decide what it is, but we feel some excitement, involving expectation, eagerly waiting for the shape to come closer. As the shape comes closer, we can see that it is a dog. We still cannot see what kind of dog it is, if it is happy, or bad-tempered, etc. We are waiting patiently, and then after a while we can see that it is the neighbor’s dog, Jason, a playful crossbreed. The reason for us to use the example is to demonstrate how (1) The meaning creation process takes place involving emotional signs, informational signs and cognitional signs, (2) The appearance of the significance-effect as emotional, informational and cognitional recognition takes place. This example is inspired by the Danish mathematician and semiotician Svend Østergaard. In 1997 he used a somewhat similar example to show the dynamics of basic level and sub-ordinate level categorization, concepts stemming from cognitive semantics. The dog being on a basic level; Jason, the particular dog, being on a sub-ordinate level.

We believe that the example in many ways exemplifies how meaning is created and that it involves emotions, information, and cognitions. As a dot on the horizon the dog is information (a dynamical object [we do not yet know it is a dog]), it makes us attentive. Here, the information already has caused emotions (immediate objects), but we need more information in order to know what the dot is. However, we are making several hypotheses, and we know that it is something – even to recognize the dot as a dot calls for some kind of interpretation (cf. Hausman 2012b: 119).

In this phase of the meaning creation process we can attach a series of possible, immediate objects to the dot on the horizon – it can be almost anything and, hence, we cannot attach many characteristics to the dot. Consequently, the information level of the dot is broad in terms of possible, immediate objects to which the dot can refer. Here, the emotional level is the dominant one. As the dot gets closer it begins to manifest itself into something we can begin to recognize. We can now see it is a dog, but not what kind of dog it is. In this phase of the meaning creation process, we have removed a lot of immediate objects and identified so many characteristics that we can identify the information (dynamical object) as a dog. A number of possible, immediate objects have been rejected, as several characteristics have been added. The information level is the dominant one. Coming closer, we can identify the dog as the neighbor’s dog Jason, a nice and friendly, yet annoyingly playful, dog. At this level, the number of possible immediate objects we attached to the dot has been reduced and several characteristics have been added to the object. The information refers to the particular dog, so the cognitional or knowledge level is now the dominant level – or information has been transformed into knowledge. The relation between the dynamical object (Jason) and the immediate objects (our interpretations of Jason) is true. The meaning creation process is shown in Table 1.

As the table suggests, the meaning creation process runs through different stages. However, it is important to stress that it is always information that causes emotion and knowledge to emerge. It is also important to stress that when the emotional level is dominant there is also knowledge involved – we know that the dot is something, but we do not know what it is – and the lack of precise knowledge about the dot can make us uneasy. As we gradually attach more characteristics to the object, the knowledge level becomes the dominant one, but it still contains emotions, and also different kinds of emotions: stress and anxiety (the dog might bite me) have been replaced with relief and other positive emotions. Consequently, the meaning creation process is a continuous process consisting in adding characteristics to the sign and removing immediate objects from the signs based on prior experience with the given sign. Peirce calls prior experience collateral experience:

All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. I do not mean by “collateral observation” acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not collateral. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. But by collateral observation, I mean previous acquaintance with what the sign denotes. (CP 8.179)

In the above we wrote that we always use presuppositions including acknowledged and tacit knowledge, biases, beliefs and such when interpreting the dynamical object, and that these presuppositions determine our capability to interpret the dynamical object correctly. Hence, the more collateral experience we possess about a given sign, the more likely we are to recognize it and create immediate objects of the dynamical object, and the more likely we are to make true representations, or stand in a continuous contact with reality.

In the meaning creation process we understand the immediate object as an interpreted effect of the dynamical object, and, furthermore, we believe that this interpreted effect can be related to what we designate the significance-effect.

8 Significance-effects

In order to understand how the significance-effects have their place in the above mentioned example, we need to emphasize the different perspectives of the sign. The significance-effect is not about the sign as such, e.g., the dot on the horizon or any other kind of information. The significance-effect is about the relation between any piece of information and an interpreter and is related to the ability of the interpreter to represent the effects of the sign. Consequently, this gives us the following conditions that have to be met in order for the significance-effect to emerge.

1. The sign’s possibility to cause an effect of meaning, which can either be emotional, informational or cognitional.

2. The interpreter must be able to represent the sign as either a sign of emotion, information or cognition.

3. The interpreter must possess collateral experience concerning the sign in question.

No significance-effect can occur if the dot on the horizon does not cause us to be attentive. But as we saw in the above, the dot, which is information, is independent of what we may feel or think about it. It is when we get attentive towards the information that a significance-effect can occur. Regarding the dog example: when we got attentive towards the dot on the horizon, we made some hypotheses about what it could be; these hypotheses were not all deliberate, self-controlled and conscious, and they were emotional in their essence – even though knowledge was also involved, we knew only that it was something, but not what it was. Imagination had almost free rein, of course constrained by the dot as a dynamical object, and based on our different collateral experiences we may have interpreted the information differently. This is where the emotional significance-effect is dominant.

As the dot came closer, we saw that it was a dog. We could not recognize it as Jason, but only as a dog; we were unsure about its intentions. At this level, the emotional significance-effect is still strong, but also the informational significance-effect- we now recognize the dot as a dog; we have erased a number of immediate objects concerning what the dot could be by attaching a number of characteristics to it. The information in shape of a dog is much more precise; we have been given directions to our emotions by the sign. This level also involves knowledge, as we recognize the shape before us as a dog. At this level, the emotional and informational significance-effects are dominant.

Coming closer we are able to recognize the dog as a particular dog that we know. Here, the cognitional significance-effect takes over. We recognize the dog as Jason, because we possess collateral experience about him; we know he is not bad-tempered; we know he likes to run and play. This knowledge is related to the particular dog, and if we did not possess collateral experience, we would not go past the informational significance-effect. Cognitional significance-effect is about knowledge of a particular sign. Here, the immediate objects come very close to the dynamical object, and we have knowledge that approaches truth in terms of the dynamical object.

9 Concluding thoughts

It is the relation between the dynamical object and its immediate objects that makes it possible for information to be turned into knowledge. The dog example shows the semeiotic relation between the dog as the dynamical object and our interpretation of it as immediate objects, and when knowledge about the dynamical object occurs, the immediate objects merge with the dynamical object. Our knowledge about Jason effects Jason as a dynamical object. When Jason was just a dot on the horizon, he caused several emotions: since we did not know what the dot was, these immediate objects were not capable of representing the dynamical object in terms of truth (that the dot was Jason). When we saw that the dot was a dog, not a particular dog, but just a dog, the immediate objects were capable of representing the dynamical object in some correspondence with the dynamical object. A series of immediate objects were rejected. When we recognized the dog as Jason, the immediate objects merged with the dynamical object, and the immediate objects even added knowledge to the dynamical object. Consequently, in relation to Hausman’s five perspectives on the dynamical object, we believe that he is right when combining the fourth and fifth perspective. We also hope that we have shown some suggestions about how to approach the intricate relation between information and knowledge, how information is the catalyst for knowledge, and how knowledge can effect information, while emotion is the flavor of information and knowledge, respectively.