The fact that we often proceed by truncated cognitive types reminds one of Peirce’s pragmatic maxim (CP 5.9): «In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception.» In fact, in order to know whether to agree with another person’s perceptual judgment This is an execution of SC2 or in order to verify my own (hazarded after not very many notes of the Prelude), I would have to know all its remote illative consequences: including the fact that the piece must continue in a certain way, recognizable when I listen to the notes.
But as far as SC2 is concerned, it is also possible that I have always listened only to the «Allemande» and the «Courante» and that therefore I have no idea (and never will have one) of what the closing «Gigue» is like. In recognizing, we simply guess that in all probability the end will be as it should. In short, we maneuver vague but optative physiognomic schemata.
In these cases the only guarantee is the consensus of the Community—and too bad if the Community in my mental experiment was reduced to only two individuals. The series of interpretants will see to the rest: when the power comes back on, we shall both be able to read the title of the piece on the record sleeve, and only then, via interpretants publicly registered in the encyclopedia, will the Community tell us that we did not make a mistake.
3.7.10 Some Open Problems
We have admitted that, for all that it is truncated, I possess a cognitive type of SC2. Is it identical to the nuclear content? I should say not, because, however rough the nuclear content may be, it should be possible to interpret it, while we have ascertained that someone can recognize SC2 without being able to hum so much as a note or to write the first notes on the stave. Therefore the only interpretation that this person could provide of the name SC2 would be «composition written by Johann Sebastian Bach at first for cello, on such and such a date…,» and we would be dealing with a verbal interpretation. Or else one could show the corresponding score, and we would be dealing with interpretation by ostension of the graphical interpretation of a sound event. Therefore truncated CTs have the characteristic of being wholly detached from the content, be it nuclear or otherwise.52
Are there other objects of knowledge that reveal the same phenomenon of detachment?
A case very similar to that of SC2 regards CTs of places, private, sufficient for subjective recognition, hard to interpret publicly, wholly detached from the NC. If I were blindfolded and taken to my hometown, and then left at the corner of a road, with the blindfold removed, I would recognize instantly—or fairly quickly—where I was. I could say the same thing if I were left in Milan, Bologna, Paris, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Jerusalem, or Rio de Janeiro, cities I would recognize by the skyline if nothing else (see Lynch 1966). This eminently visual knowledge of mine is still private, because it would be hard for me to give someone a description of my hometown that would enable him to recognize it in analogous circumstances. What would I say?
That it is a city whose streets are usually parallel, that there is a very high bell tower in the shape of a pencil and a river that separates the tower from a citadel? Not enough; the description would not be sufficient to identify the place. Sometimes these private CTs are most vivid; we can tell ourselves what our town is like, without being able to tell anybody else. It seems that visual experiences are easier to put into words than musical ones, but while I (if not Robert) could always interpret SC2 by whistling the first notes, I would not be able to interpret for anybody else the shape (unmistakable for me) of via Dante in Alessandria (a task that could be carried out, laboriously, by an architect, a painter, or a photographer; however, in that case we would be talking not about CT but MC).
In addition my cognitive type would have nothing to do with the NC that I have corresponded to the name of the city (which would be reduced to «Alessandria is a city in Piedmont»). Even in cases in which the NC includes some curious particular, such as the fact that in Rome there are the ruins of a great amphitheater or that New York is a city with lots of skyscrapers, the information would not make it possible to distinguish Rome from Nîmes or New York from Chicago—nor would it allow me to recognize the fact that I was in Rome, if I were deposited in a street in the vicinity of Piazza Navona (something that in reality I could do perfectly well).
One could continue with this typology of dubious cases. I can easily recognize Sharon Stone when I see her in a film, but I cannot explain to others how to recognize her (over and beyond saying that she is a glamorous blonde, but that’s not much to go on), and yet I associate her name with an NC (human being of the female sex, American actress, starred in Basic Instinct). On the highway I can easily tell a Lancia from a Volvo, I have an NC associated with both makes, but I cannot tell anyone how to distinguish them, except in a vague fashion.
It is clear that with regard to our way of approaching the objects of the world (and of talking about them to others), all is not crystal clear, and not everything goes smoothly. When things do not go at all, there is no problem, it simply means that someone does not know something, just as one does not know the meanings of many words or cannot recognize unfamiliar objects. The problem arises when things should not work and yet in some way they do, as in the case of the recognition of SC2.
I think we have to stick to a fairly liberal view: for many of our cognitive experiences, CT and NC coincide; for others, they do not. I do not think this admission is a surrender. It is only a philosophical contribution to an ongoing debate. Let us content ourselves for the time being with clear-cut cases (the mouse, the chair), and let us ascribe the ambiguous cases to the list of phenomena of which we still know very little.
3.7.11 From the Public CT to that of the Artist
A CT is always a private matter, but it becomes public when it is interpreted as an NC, while a public NC can provide instructions for the formation of CTs. In a certain sense, therefore, although CTs are private, they are continuously subjected to public control, and the Community educates us step by step to match our own to those of others. The same thing happens with the control of CTs, as with hasty off-the-cuff assertions. If I say it is raining when my epidermis is struck by imperceptible particles of humidity, but water is not in fact falling from the sky, people will tell me that what I have perceived is mist and not rain, and how to apply the two terms correctly when I put my perceptual judgment into words.
CTs become public, because in the course of our education they are taught us, reviewed, corrected, and enhanced according to the state of the art as sanctioned by the Community. Our introduction to the dog begins with someone’s having us note that it has four legs and not two like a hen, and we are encouraged to see its friendly nature as pertinent; we are invited not to be afraid, to caress it, and we are warned that it will yelp if we tread on its tail. We are told very early on that the sun is in reality far bigger than it seems to the naked eye, and far bigger than we could imagine.
It has been said that the physiognomic types of individuals can be very private. And yet in communicational interaction even physiognomic types are, so to speak, brought together by chains of interpretations: it is possible that Mark and I have a different CT of Johnny, but we usually exchange descriptions of Johnny with other friends, we remark on his way of laughing, we say that he is stouter than Robert, we see photographs that we deem a better or worse likeness of him … In short, we establish (at least with regard to our private circle of acquaintances or to many public figures) sets of what we might call iconographie conventions, and the extent to which these count in the case of public figures emerges from the fact that we recognize them even in caricatures (the caricature being the art of accentuating, or even of discovering, the most salient typical features of a face).
Very private types could belong to artists. A painter has a perception of the difference between colors that is much more refined than that of an ordinary person, and Michelangelo certainly had a cognitive
