Pierce's Semiotics, the triad and putting curves into Straight Lines

Blooms, watering can and a hose hopper

  "So what are you actually trying to say about Straight Lines and Trinities?"

 If you think of breeze and the sails of sailing ships you might be able to think of breeze as influence. If you then address Charles Pierce's Semiotics - signs, symbols and communication - where he insisted  that "action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this trirelative - three related subjects - are an influence that cannot be resolved into actions between pairs." You might now conclude that minds are propelled by a breeze called triads or trinities that use words as symbols as they are blown into the corridors of meanings. And here, you as the interpretant are a third participating influence, or breeze along with the sign which is the word CAT and its object, an actual breathing cat that needs to be fed or whatever. 

 Unlike de Saussure, who concentrated his poststructural thinking on language around the signifier - the spoken word C-A-T - and the signified - the abstract image and understanding of cat that dwells in your mind - Pierce was of the opinion the whole combination that connects the cat form to the cat idea - the you - should not be underestimated and therefore in the study of semiotics there was a tri-relative - three related subjects - influence that could not be resolved by the actions of bi-relative - two related subjects.

 Pierce died in 1914, de Saussure died in 1913.

 "And your point?"

 Since those days, not so long ago, scientists of the mind and their terrifying machines, have determined that when the brain is engaged in routine task-solving, or cognitive custom and practice, it relies on predictable, boring apparently linear pathways that draw straight lines from Problem A to Solution B through a tri-relative process. (1) the Problem, (2) The solution, and (3) the subject, you or I, who more often has already mentally examined, carefully shelved and sanctified the solution to the problem long enough for it be classified as a habit of thinking that has achieved the status of "True."

 So when stuck in a loop of depression, or stuck in the loop of a failing belief system of predetermined solutions, those "There is no alternative" doctrines of the locust relieve common sense of its purpose by maintaining a triad that keeps the line straight, endless, unchanging until blessed release produces no actual somewhere else to go.

 But when the brain stops to actually think, it enters a genuinely creative state which neuroimaging suggests is a radically non-linear series of events. The brain turns to the wishy-washy parts  responsible for daydreaming, sometimes called memory-blending, and explores the glory of unconstrained association. 

 To do this, a mind intentionally breaks the triadic logic of "Given A and B, C must follow." The straight lines are gone, replaced by friction, anxiety, ambiguity, and a wandering that allows thoughts to drift out into the wilderness where unexpected connections hide behind or under rocks waiting to be presented as a possibility, sometimes called "hope" or "dreaming" or "the solution."

A "Just Is" that Curves Straight Lines

On The Move : Turkey Nursery

 "Trinity Thinkers. What are they? Please explain! I know we have looked at this before but at the moment if it was a question on a long bus trip I'd be a D-minus." 

 Let's make Kant proud and call them, as an example, Triadic Structures of Faith. We might begin to think of them in terms of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, how he thought thinking progressed from a slight disagreement between friends into a "dynamic process inherent in History and Reality." Here, for the billionth time we have a chance to raise the ancient specter of the dialectic, a three part process that starts with a statement or an argument, is then met by a contradicting statement or argument, and this potential for a third world war is resolved by combining the valid parts of both arguments into a new argument, or into the New Thesis.

 For Hegel and for Marx, their triad of the dialectic was a foundational axiom that produced a comforting  straight line of Historical Determinism that sort of lost touch with anything remotely resembling the curves of hope, the circles of dreams or any of those flagrantly subjective chains to heaven that have to be regularly polished, in case they rust away leaving a soul stranded.

 First of all, let's put something to bed. Creativity is a Just Is that  Curves Straight Lines in us people. "Artists," as defined by 21st Century US English Usage, are people who make a point of defining themselves and sell themselves as "creative." In the rest of the world, if we're lucky, "Artists" are still painters or drunks or confidence tricksters. Creativity is not a commodity, nor is it a skill that a data driven Agentic Intelligence can master. 

 The difference, my friend, is between "generating and output" and "living the creative act." If we return to Walter Benjamin's thesis on the mass production of Art, think ourselves into that time when to see the Mona Lisa you'd have to make a pilgrimage to Florence, or a castle in Amboise or since 1797 The Louvre. Look around for it now, and you can see the Mona Lisa hanging on many a wall, second hand shops, and post cards

 The market myth tells us that friction is bad—that the goal of life is to get from thought to finished product instantly, without effort.The machine can trace the straight lines of our past, but only a living human being can throw a curve into the future.

 Meanwhile structures in the mind of the self defined, and please forgive me for using the odious word, "creatives," have sourced their dawning sense of alienation in the myth of a fundamentally market driven trinity. And lo, our Over-lords having prepared the ground, have automated the soul first, because patterns in text and images were easier for algorithms to harvest than building a robot that can mop a floor or fix a pipe or say "have a good day" with a meaningful smile as it serves you a bacon and egg sandwich.

 Like the dismal loop of Beck's Cognitive Triad of Depression or anxiety. In comes the professional to bandage you up by taking the curves out of your line and straightening you up by suggesting a new trinity.