Re: Percy as Christian postmodernist?

ketner (BXOKY@TTUVM1.TTU.EDU)
Tue, 8 Apr 1997 08:44:26 CST

How about this as a way of responding to Mitchell's fine remarks?
The self is one of those unfinished pieces of research. Just because one
is adopting an objectiv approach to the solution of questions and problems
doesn't mean that one has all the solutions. I always had the very strong sense
that Walker was working on that issue, the nature of the self. So what we have
from his work is a number of probings and hypotheses about the matter, maybe
some disconfirmations of ome false starts at answering the question. This
is very much the way of fallibilist objective method. Sometimes the fallibilist
answers, "I don't know the answer to that. We have some ideas. We are working
on it. Do you have any ideas or hypotheses?"
Concerning theory of signs. Peirce developed something called Semeiotic
which is pronounced See-My-OH-Tick. Peirce was not doing Semiotics (Semi-AH-
Ticks). Semiotics is a mixed bag of vinegar and water and oil. Semeiotic is a t
heory that Peirce and Percy developed further along scientific lines much
of which arose (as Percy correctly saw) from the very scientific and
objective work on sign theory and logic which was undertaken by those
brother objectivists, the scholastics. Rorty is in the semiotics camp, not
in the camp of semeiotic. I am working on editing a 50's Percy ms in which
he is very clearly showing that he is working on semeiotic. Ken Ketner