[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Jim, Rob and List:Before turning to Jim's post, a couple of comments about the Salzburg conferences.The Whitehead conference attracted about three hundred (300!!) participants. The Chinese are keenly interested in Whitehead. It was rumored that they intend to establish 25 research institutes to explore philosophical and political relations. The sessions on mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology attracted about 25 participants to each! very impressive relative to other philosophical conferences.Peirce was frequently mentioned in sessions. A special session included discussions about the Whitehead - deChardin linkages. Roland Faber's paper suggested to me an orthogonality between these two views of philosophy. By orthogonality in this context I mean the approach to extensions.The abstracts are on the web and papers will also be posted on the website for the conference.The Biosemiotics gathering was attended by about 50 participants from perhaps a dozen different countries. Peirce played a role in many many papers. The abstracts are on the web and the papers will be posted. Lots of discussions of coding and bio-logic.Is it not absolutely wonderful that we can access current research reports from our desktops in a timely and efficient manner? Now, on to the issue of Peirce and chemical isomers that are distinguished by a specific property of rotating light that has passed through a crystal, generating what is called "polarized light." Jim wrote:From: "Jim Piat" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 18:17:21 -0400 X-Message-Number: 7 Jerry Chandler wrote: "But, my point is that if four different groups are necessary to = construct an optical isomer of carbon such that it distinguishes between = the logic of polarized light, then it is mathematically impossible to = achieve this logical distinction with any notion of 'threeness". = Optical isomers are not a question of trichotomies and triadicies. They = are questions of tetrachotomies and tetraadicies. I would welcome = arguments to the otherwise". Dear Jerry, =20 Actually, handedness and materials that polarize light are among the = very examples Peirce gives of his notion of Thirdness. Do you have a direct source of this passage? The notions of = left verses right (which distinguished between mirror image optical = stereo-isomers) Peirce pointa out require the consideration of the = triadic relation of three directions (up-down, front back, left right). = It may well be that different carbon groups are involved naturally = occuring steroisomers but in fact only three conjoined points are = required to achieved the distniction beween left and right.This is an interesting point. Of course, it refers to the cartesian plane, not space itself.In general, chemistry operates in space and optical isomers rotate light is space. Triadic examples of handedness Left Right A---B B--A l l l l C C Verses "redundant" tetradic examples of handedness Left Right A--B--D DB-A l l I I C C I don't mean to be present the above as authoritative -- this is merely = my understanding of the issue.=20Modern theory (simplified) considers light rotation to be a spatial operation emerging from the difference between four DIFFERENT material attachments to a central carbon atom.In order to deduce the relation with "left" or "right", one starts with the concept of a tetrahedron.Hold the tetrahedron in space and imagine looking down one of the apexes through the middle point (the central carbon atom) and out the plane opposite the apex and middle point.The "back plane" will contain the other three points of the tetrahedron. These three points can be in two possible orders: A - B - C or A - C - B.Pastuer noticed that two crystal forms of tartaric acid existed and was able to separate them "by eye".One rotated light left, the other right. Many years later it was found that two crystalline forms of tartaric acid with identical molecular formula and structure, represented the order A_B_C or the order A_C_B, differed by the organization in space. This is a slightly simplified version of the narrative but captures the essential features.From a philosophy of science perspective, the existence of optical isomers clears shows the irreducibility of chemistry knowledge to independent physical concepts. As nearly all biochemical molecules are optical isomers, often having hundreds or thousands of optical centers, it is widely believed that a theory of biology depends on explaining the origins of optical isomerism in living systems.I certainly would appreciate any insights individuals may have on how this related to
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Ben wrote: A 3-D object can be so rotated in 4-D space as to turn it opposite-handed. I remember an episode of the original _Outer Limits_ about it -- some man ended up with two right hands :-). My response: Thanks, Ben. I'm not surprised to hear from you on this issue four-most importance. But so quickly -LOL. Well if you are right (and I imagine you are) it seems to me that this would shed some doubt on the universality of Peirce's claim regarding the nature of triads being sufficient to account for all higher order relations. Still I think the result holds for three dimensional space (especially with respect to the issue of sterio-isomers requiring in principle only three groups to establish their handedness. Would you agree with this latter more limited conclusion? I recall a similar discussion on list years back when the question of whehter Peirces conclucions regarding the sufficiency of triads was merely an artifact of the the fact that we lived in three dimensional space and someone said that the issue had been addressed by some mathematicians and apparently "those" mathematicians felt Peirce was correct. But I'm in no position to judge. Seems its a fairly straightforward issue that I would think topologist have,or could, address. Thanks again. Ben.Would my blaming my breaking ofmy vow of holiday silence on you be a some sort of degenerate third or just a plain old garden variety lame excuse. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jim, list,
I'm not sure at this point what more limited conclusion it is that we're
talking about!
Generally speaking, I don't have a view on any logical valence numbers's
being sufficient or necessary for all higher-valence relations. But I'm a bit
doubtful that Peirce's trichotomism triadism are an artefact of his not
considering hyperspaces.
The only case of which I know where a "minimum adicity" makes really clear,
really simple sense to me is that of Feynman diagrams of which it's said that
the "minimum possible event" involves two triadic vertices. I'm able to make
sense of it because it's specified that to be such an "event," an interaction
has to be capable of showing the conservation of quantities.The
corresponding idea in semiosis might not be that of some sort of conservation,
however. I would consider that some sort of evolution must be showable. The
interpretant is merely a development, a hopeful monster, a construal. Triadic
semiosis has no way to learn and keep learning to distinguish sense from
nonsense. Real evolution involves not merely development of construals, but
their testing against the reality which they supposedly represent.
As to tetrads, I just say that, in whatever sense an
interpretant-sign-object relationship can't be reduced to some strictly dyadic
sign-object relationship, so, likewise, in that sense, a
recognition-interpretant-sign-object relationship can't be reduced to a strictly
triadic interpretant-sign-object relationship. Since a collaterally based
recognition is logically determined by its correlates and logically determines
semiosis going forward, it is a semiotic element. Since it is as experience of
the object, that it is a collaterally based recognition, it is neither sign of
the object nor interpretant of the object. If it were the object itself, then
neither sign nor interpretant would be needed. It is indistinct from the
interpretant only when the sign is indistinct from the object; in which case all
four are indistinct from one another. (The interpretant's elucidation of 'fresh'
info about the object implies a distinction or divergence between sign
object.) We are sufficiently code-unbound to be able to test our signs,
interpretants, and systems and "codes" of interpretation. This involves
collateral experience. No degree of elucidation, interpretation, or construal,
is a substitute for (dis-)confirmation, whereby wetake over the task of
biological evolution andlessen our risk of being removed from the gene
pool as penalty for a bad interpretant.
As regards 4-chotomies, some significant ones are transparently logical and
are not subject to any useful kind of trichotomization that I can see. Other
4-chotomies are more or less established, e.g., the special-relativistic light
cone, which is a ubiquitous physical instance of a general structure which one
might revise to a 5-chotomy or even a 6-chotomy; a trichotomization would be the
division into past, present, future, but this is crude for some purposes,
including the understanding of communication. Information theory has its
division into source, encoding, decoding, and recipient, often compared with
that of semiotics up to the stage of "interpretant = decoding." However the
comparison fails at the fourth stage (the recipient) and thereby renders quite
suspect the comparison as a whole. The collaterally based recognition
("recognizant"), however,is what correlates to the info-theoretic
recipient. (Note: Information theory also places channels between the stages,
especially between encoding decoding.)
Best, Ben
- Original Message -
From: Jim Piat
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 12:37 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign -
help!
Ben wrote:
A 3-D object can be so rotated in 4-D space as to turn it
opposite-handed. I remember an episode of the original _Outer Limits_
about it -- some man ended up with two right hands :-).
My response:
Thanks, Ben. I'm not surprised to hear from
you on this issue four-most importance. But so quickly -LOL. Well
if you are right (and I imagine you are) it seems to me that this would shed
some doubt on the universality of Peirce's claim regarding the nature of
triads being sufficient to account for all higher order relations. Still
I think the result holds for three dimensional space (especially with respect
to the issue of sterio-isomers requiring in principle only three groups to
establish their handedness. Would you agree with this latter more
limited conclusion? I recall a similar discussion on list years back
when the question of whehter Peirces conclucions regarding the sufficiency of
triads was merely an artifact of the the fact that we lived in three
dimensional space and someone said that the issue had been addressed by some
math
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Thanks Bill for your comments. You wrote: Patrick, I'm don't know what in my post you're replying to. I don't keep my posts, so I can't be sure, but I don't recall mentioning an expression continuum, segments or meaning continuum. I may have; I sometimes think I only think I know what I say or mean. My post (I think) had to do with the confusion/conflation of independent processes. If that's what you're doing in your last paragraph, quit it! (I don't have any of those smiley gadget to put here.) Cheers, Bill Ok, on the last point, you can borrow this smiley here if you like :) Apropos: expression continuum and meaning continuum are actually supposed to be considered part and parcel of one and the same general continuum of meaning-expression potential that is capable of being cut in various ways, according to Eco's creative blending of Peirce and Hjelmslev's sign functions. My last paragraph was of course pure speculation, and I apologise if it seemed to you too arcane, since there are some flavours in there (transitivity) that I pulled in from systemic functional linguistics. But since I am at present trying (I think) to build/ defend a position that says that all independent processes, though discrete, must always be seen as to some degree presuppositionally linked to one another in the immediate context of any given current event, I fear some conflation/ confusion/ overlapping of perspectives is probably inevitable. Whether it is actually worth trying to defend such a position is of course another matter (cf Steven's recent comments on useful and non-useful hypotheses/ predictions), but that is what (I think) I'm trying to do. But actually, I did keep your message, so let's have a look at it in some more detail. You wrote: Patrick: In addition to representing what I have always hoped is Peirce's developmental teleology, your description of sign function seems to me to get to the heart of pragmatic discourse analysis in which conventional sign structures and meanings (syntactics and semantics) serve principally as orientation to what the situated discourse is being used to do. I would only add that it is sometimes useful to recognize that a number of differentiable processes occur simultaneously within the great alpha process. There is the action processes associated with life-forms. There is the motion/matter processes associated with non-life-forms. (I'm using these terms only as gestures, fingers that point in a given direction, and not as depictions.) The highly ephemeral acts of sign usage are real events in several related but distinct processes--e.g, those physical, physiological, psychological and sociological processes necessary to communication acts. My point here would be that it may be of interest to try to investigate/ describe in some more detail the possible relationships that may obtain or exist between salient aspects of the several related but distinct processes you mention above. In this connection it has occurred to me that the notion of narrative possible worlds as used by Eco, coupled with a dynamic notion of transworld identity, where there can be some degree of transmission or intersection of some salient aspects of actual events as these are seen, or made pertinent, by the inhabitants of each of the involved possible worlds. I sometimes feel that we have developed so specialised languages and norms of communication in our different disciplinary fields that it is often more and more difficult to find some common ground about which we can communicate. Mathematical and computational models provide one interesting, and perhaps relevant means of doing this kind of thing. Mathematics with its high level of abstraction has the advantage of being open to systematically/ formally describing (or modelling) any kind of physical or other phenomenon in processual terms. A problem with this is that any model we make in this way will be reductive in some sense or other, and we will only be able to suggest/ grasp a fairly vague idea of what may be going on in some domain or other of our supposed whole. But mathematical models can certainly be used to predict and confirm working hypotheses, at least to a certain extent When computer science is brought in, coupled with narrative, argumentational or explanatory forms of discourse and dynamic visualisation technologies, this allows intersemiotic translations of descriptive models into visual narrative forms that may be easier to intuitively understand for non mathematicians. It seems to me these different processes often get confused or conflated. Existential objects are also events, but typically in a much slower process that makes them available to our exteroception for comparatively vast periods of time, which we think makes them empirically real, extant. Re-reading this makes me want to ask you what you meant here by exteroception? I
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick, My responses are interspersed below. - Original Message - From: Patrick Coppock [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Cc: Bill Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 9:26 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Thanks Bill for your comments. You wrote: Patrick, I'm don't know what in my post you're replying to. I don't keep my posts, so I can't be sure, but I don't recall mentioning an expression continuum, segments or meaning continuum. I may have; I sometimes think I only think I know what I say or mean. My post (I think) had to do with the confusion/conflation of independent processes. If that's what you're doing in your last paragraph, quit it! (I don't have any of those smiley gadget to put here.) Cheers, Bill Ok, on the last point, you can borrow this smiley here if you like :) I'd be the first to argue that the more abstract--featureless--sign works best (I'm not a perceptual cognitivist ( :) ), but I'll have to pass. Apropos: expression continuum and meaning continuum are actually supposed to be considered part and parcel of one and the same general continuum of meaning-expression potential that is capable of being cut in various ways, according to Eco's creative blending of Peirce and Hjelmslev's sign functions. I've never been much of an Eco fan; in my view, his creative blending tends to bend Peirce to mend Saussure's linguistics based-semiology. But maybe I'm too provincial. My last paragraph was of course pure speculation, and I apologise if it seemed to you too arcane, since there are some flavours in there (transitivity) that I pulled in from systemic functional linguistics. I think you can see why I might twit you on that paragraph from the above response. I'm not much for linguistic approaches to semiotics; however, my comments on your post were absolutely sincere. I very much liked the pragmatic attitude of your post. But I'm not sure you can carry it to fruition in your theoretical enterprise. Gregory Bateson once commented that there are two mutually discrete universes--the Newtonian universe of objects and the communication universe of information. If you start in one, you can never reach the other. Similarly, I think, we might distinguish between the two universes of signs and language, and arrive at the same conclusion. But since I am at present trying (I think) to build/ defend a position that says that all independent processes, though discrete, must always be seen as to some degree presuppositionally linked to one another in the immediate context of any given current event, I fear some conflation/ confusion/ overlapping of perspectives is probably inevitable. Whether it is actually worth trying to defend such a position is of course another matter (cf Steven's recent comments on useful and non-useful hypotheses/ predictions), but that is what (I think) I'm trying to do. But actually, I did keep your message, so let's have a look at it in some more detail. You wrote: Patrick: In addition to representing what I have always hoped is Peirce's developmental teleology, your description of sign function seems to me to get to the heart of pragmatic discourse analysis in which conventional sign structures and meanings (syntactics and semantics) serve principally as orientation to what the situated discourse is being used to do. I would only add that it is sometimes useful to recognize that a number of differentiable processes occur simultaneously within the great alpha process. There is the action processes associated with life-forms. There is the motion/matter processes associated with non-life-forms. (I'm using these terms only as gestures, fingers that point in a given direction, and not as depictions.) The highly ephemeral acts of sign usage are real events in several related but distinct processes--e.g, those physical, physiological, psychological and sociological processes necessary to communication acts. My point here would be that it may be of interest to try to investigate/ describe in some more detail the possible relationships that may obtain or exist between salient aspects of the several related but distinct processes you mention above. In this connection it has occurred to me that the notion of narrative possible worlds as used by Eco, coupled with a dynamic notion of transworld identity, where there can be some degree of transmission or intersection of some salient aspects of actual events as these are seen, or made pertinent, by the inhabitants of each of the involved possible worlds. I sometimes feel that we have developed so specialised languages and norms of communication in our different disciplinary fields that it is often more and more difficult to find some common ground about which we can communicate. Mathematical and computational models provide one interesting, and perhaps relevant means of doing this kind of thing
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jerry Chandler wrote: "But, my point is that if four different groups are necessary to construct an optical isomer of carbon such that it distinguishes between the logic of polarized light, then it is mathematically impossible to achieve this logical distinction with any notion of 'threeness". Optical isomers are not a question of trichotomies and triadicies. They are questions of tetrachotomies and tetraadicies. I would welcome arguments to the otherwise". Dear Jerry, Actually,handednessandmaterials that polarize lightare amongthe very examples Peirce gives of his notion of Thirdness. The notions of left verses right (which distinguished between mirror image optical stereo-isomers) Peirce pointa out require the consideration of thetriadic relation of three directions (up-down, front back, left right). It may well be thatdifferent carbon groups are involvednaturally occuring steroisomers but in fact only three conjoined points are required to achieved the distniction beween left and right. Triadic examples of handedness Left Right A---B B--A l l l l CC Verses "redundant" tetradic examples of handedness Left Right A--B--D DB-A l l I I C C I don't mean to bepresent the above as authoritative -- this is merely my understanding of the issue. Best wishes and good luck witht he conference, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Patrick:A few quick notes from Salzburg as I found your comments of interest and perhaps I can clarify some issues.My goals are more concerned with a coherent philosophy of science, especially a coherent relation between chemical philosophy and biological philosophy and medical philosophy. Peirce, as a 19 th Century chemist should be relevant to my interests. Whitehead asserts a philosophy of organism, which also should be relevant.While the course of development of an individual's thought and patterns of digestion and indigestion are always relevant to understanding the individual, they are not always relevant to my restricted interests. In particular, at the turn of the 21 Century, we see highly specialized logics in Quantum mechanics, chemistry (valence) and molecular biology (genetic code). The challenge I face is to place the modern logics in context of earlier logics. The QM advocates have a highly developed narrative. Chemistry and biology do not. Thus, I seek connections that allow development of coherent narratives for these sciences. It is in this context that I appreciate the narratives you construct.Now for a few comments:On Jul 2, 2006, at 1:08 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote: In any case, I can see I'll have my work cut out=20 to be brief in replying to your notes, since=20 brief though they may be, they are also fairly=20 "dense" in "content". terms, at least if I try to=20 read between the lines.. I would prefer the terms "concise" and "crisp", but, if you insist on the term "dense" I accept your judgment. :-) You wrote: My take on the distinctions between Peirce and Whitehead is rather differen= t. In early Peirce (1868), the analogy with=20 distance functions and branching was the given=20 basis for distinguishing paths of logic,=20 relation to chemical valence and the more=20 general concept of extension. The later=20 writings of Peirce describing "division" of a=20 sign in natural language is not a crisp way of=20 looking at the concept of extension. (One might=20 substitute for the term "division" such terms as=20 partition, trichotomy, lattice, subtraction,=20 incomplete parts, lack of additivity, and so=20 forth; but I do not see how that would create a=20 coherent concept of relational extension.) Well, first off, I personally think it is very=20 important that "early" and "late" Peirce's are=20 seen as part and parcel of one and the same=20 philosophical project, that developed (emerged)=20 over a considerable time period, but always with=20 the key notion of synechism ("the tendency to=20 regard everything as continuous") at its base.=20 Kelley Parker's work on Peirce's continuity is a=20 useful point of reference here.This comment identifies a critical issue. It is not clear to me how relate Peirce's later views to continuity. I do not know the writings of Parker. Clearly, the concept of continuity as well as chemistry was in the early writings. However, in later works, the "flow of semiosis" displaces the relevance to chemical logic; it remains consistent with various aspects of "signal processing" and "Memory Evolutive Systems." When you write that "The later writings of Peirce=20 describing "division" of a sign in natural=20 language is not a crisp way of looking at the=20 concept of extension", I think I'll have to ask=20 you for a bit more detailed explanation of what=20 you mean by that... Very simple. Extension as growth; as increase; as sequence of relations, the later extending the former.My conjecture is that extension is easy in number/arithmetic, difficult in chemistry, and very difficult in natural language.In the example, sign is extended to qualisign, sinsign and legisign. This extension appears to me to include a fair amount of arbitrariness. Fine for a philosophy of belief, not adequate for chemical or biological purposes. It would be helpful if someone could suggest a path that associates these terms with chemical, biological or medical practice. In late Whitehead, Process and Reality, he gets=20 into bed with set theory and never re-emerges=20 from this highly restrictive view of extension.=20 In modern chemistry, a multitude of=20 possibilities for extension exist . (The flow=20 of passions in a bed are great, but they should=20 not be conflated with the light of reason. :-) Regarding "early" and "late" with regard to=20 Whitehead, the same considerations as above=20 regarding the recursive, stepwise development of=20 Peirce's architectonic, I think also holds for=""> Whitehead. From the beginning he was a=20 mathematician (and education theorist) more than=20 a philosopher (and in fact, like Peirce, he never=20 "formally" studied philosophy apart from his own=20 personal readings of other philosophers' work),=20 but process and reality is built round ideas=20 developed in his many other philosophical=20 writings, such as "Adventures of Ideas", "Science=20 and the Modern World" -- in my opinion a good=20 starting
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! ...real-reality... truth...
Jorge, thanks, but as I wrote, after a glance to the CP I found out that this was Vol. 2 of "The Essential Peirce" which Amazon is delivering for me in Pittsburgh this days... I will pick it up in October... List, does somebody knows some scholars of this Association? ALASE _Asociación Latinoamericana de Semiótica_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks Claudio - Original Message - From: Jorge Lurac To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 10:22 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! ...real-reality... truth... Claudio, 2.457-458 are not paragraphs. SeeA Sketch of Logical Critics on EP 2, pages 451 to 462. J. Lurac Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joe, Ben, Jim, List thanks for all information I could not find 'A Sketch of Logical Critics', EP 2.457-458, 1911 because (I suppose) it is in Vol. 2 of EP and 2 is for vol and not paragraph... etc. etc... --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
In response to me saying:. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! Ben says: It's also difficult to believe that anyone eats all the way through a rich, multi-layered Italian pastry. And yet, we do (usually). Kidding aside, I have literally no idea why Joe says it's difficult to believe that anybody could read all the way through it. Too much coherence? Too much mix of coherence and incoherence? Now, it's fun to try to work a certain amount of seeming incoherence into one's writing. Conversations, for instance, don't have to be written as give take where speakers understand or even address each other's previous remarks in any direct way. It's a literary technique, or challenge, which one sees here and there. REPLY: Good point, Ben, and incoherence certainly is not always bad. Maybe it is the mix, as you suggest, but reading that whole book -- instead of just dipping into it now and again to see if one can find firm footing (which I never could) -- seems to me rather like reading the same joke told in many different ways. Shaggy dog stories: do you remember when they were all the rage as avant garde humor? -- they are fun heard once, though it seems to depend upon the realization that it is just a shaggy dog story and funny because of its pointlessness, i.e. because you recognize it as a practical joke comparable to having the chair jerked out from umder you when you are trying to sit in it. But to listen to variations on the same shaggy dog story knowing that it is a shaggy dog story for 135 pages? It makes me suspect that there is a sense to it that I am missing and you are picking up on, being more wiedely read than I and in the relevant way. Well, I do seem to remember owing a copy of _t zero_, too, but I probably jmissed the point to it, toom since I remember notihng about it except the title! But I'll give it a try -- maybe -- if I can track it down. Joe === _Teitlebaum's Window_ by Wallace Markfield has some of it. Some of the conversations in _Mulligan Stew_ by Gilbert Sorrentino. In real life, of course, that kind of talk is often motivated by evasiveness. One year at a Thanksgiving dinner, a relative asked a question about another relative, a question which those of us in the know didn't want to answer. So I answered that the reason why the relative in question had gone to California (we're in NYC), was in order to buy some shoes. There followed about an hour's worth of purposely non-responsive conversation by all the relatives, both those in the know and those not in the know (conversation which really confused some of the non-family guests), which was really jokes, puns, whatever we could muster. But the point wasn't incoherence, but, instead, unusual coherences intensified and brought into relief against the lack of some usual kinds of coherence. Years ago I read a newspaper column doing this, by Pete Hamill of all people, and it was really pretty funny. Also don't miss _t zero_ with The Origin of Birds. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Michael said: [MD:] Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's Cosmicomics, [but] I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is titled The Ends of the Universe, which posits an asymptotic end of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that preceded the sporting emergence of Firstness. RESPONSE: [JR:] Well, I'm not sure what the moral of it is supposed to be, Michael. I put all that down rather impulsively, not thinking much about what might justify it or what it might imply. In retrospect I think that what I was doing was trying to re-express what I thought Peirce was expressing in the following passage from the MS called Answers to Questions Concerning my Belief in God which Harshorne and Weiss published in the Collected Papers, Vol. 6: ==QUOTE PEIRCE 508. Do you believe Him to be omniscient? Yes, in a vague sense. Of course, God's knowledge is something so utterly unlike our own
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Claudio, Patrick, list,
That object for which truth stands doesn't sound fully like Peirce. But
Peirce did say that truth is of a predicate, proposition, assertion, etc. ; a
true predicate corresponds to its object. Inquiry seeks to arrive at true signs
about the real.
66~~~ ('A Sketch of Logical Critics', EP 2.457-458, 1911) ~~~
To say that a thing is _Real_ is merely to say that such predicates as are
true of it, or some of them, are true of it regardless of whatever any actual
person or persons might think concerning that truth. Unconditionality in that
single respect constitutes what we call Reality.[---] I call truth the
predestinate opinion, by which I ought to have meant that which _would_
ultimately prevail if investigation were carried sufficiently far in that
particular direction.
~~99
Lots of Peirce quotes on truth and reality are at
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html
Lo is an old-fashioned word, now generally obsolete, used to attract
attention or express wonder or surprise, and now used with at least some
quaintness of effect. It now seems oftenest encountered in the phrase Lo and
behold. The Online Etymology Dictionary says
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=losearchmode=none that lo is from
Old English _la_, exclamation of surprise, grief, or joy, influenced in M.E. by
_lo!_, short for _lok_ look! imperative of _loken_ to look.
Best, Ben
- Original Message -
From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 10:25 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick, List,
Patrick wrote the 28 June:
I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for
which truth stands
I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got
it?
I found this one, closely related:
CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation
to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its
interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series.
(I imagine that Lo is So)
Thanks
Claudio
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of opinion, representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell Dear Folks, Thanks for all the discussion of real, true and existence. I take the above quote to mean that truth (or the lack of it) is a property of opinions and real (or the lack of it) is a property of the objects to which those opinions (signs) refer. An opinion that is true represents an object that is real. But what is the relation between real and existance? Can a first (such as a quality) whose mode of being is mere potential (not actual) be in itself real? A quality embodied in a real object I agree is real, but I remain puzzled as to the reality of qualites as mere firsts. I guess what I wondering is whether Peirce equates the real soley with what actually exist or whether real can also be applied to mere firsts. I suppose one could use Peirce's above definition of real to apply to mere qualities (as firsts). For example, if one were to express a true opinion as to what potential qualities might be realized in objects or what the character of those qualities might be, those qualities (as the hypothetical objects of those opinions) would be real.One could also express false opinions regarding mere qualities (how many there are and their nature) in which case the qualities referred to would not be real. And if the immediately above interpretation of real is correct (as I now think it is) then I would say that real is a property of all modes of being (potential, actual and general). To be, is to be real. However true or false is a property only of thought. Unreal is a property only of objects that are falsely represented. Anything that has potential or actual being is real but we can mis-represent or falsely represent both qualities and objects and to the extent that that either is falsely represented (or interpreted) that quality or object is not real. So, for example, hallucinations are real but they are falsely interpreted and the objects they are thought to represent by the person experiencing the hallucination are not real. Similarly possible objects do not necessarily exist but if truly (faithfully) represented then they are real. All potentially possible objects (truly represented) are real but impossible objects are not. And so on... I think that sovles the problem for me. My basic conclusion is that all modes of being are real. An object need not exist to be real but it must be possible. Some representations are true and some are false. Objects represented are real or false to the extent the representation is true. I wanted to make sure I had an understanding of real, true and actual that allowed for all sorts of conceptions including lies, illusions, contradictory statements, and mere potential states of affairs. I think the above does it but would welcome errors being pointed out. Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of opinion, representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! ...real-reality... truth...
conception and intuition which enters necessarily into the experience of an object, and which is not transitory and accidental, as having objective validity. In short, it was to regard the reality as the normal product of mental action, and not as the incognizable cause of it. This realistic theory is thus a highly practical and common-sense position. Wherever universal agreement prevails, the realist will not be the one to disturb the general belief by idle and fictitious doubts. For according to him it is a consensus or common confession which constitutes reality. What he wants, therefore, is to see questions put to rest. And if a general belief, which is perfectly stable and immovable, can in any way be produced, though it be by the fagot and the rack, to talk of any error in such belief is utterly absurd. The realist will hold that the very same objects which are immediately present in our minds in experience really exist just as they are experienced out of the mind; that is, he will maintain a doctrine of immediate perception. He will not, therefore, sunder existence out of the mind and being in the mind as two wholly improportionable modes. When a thing is in such relation to the individual mind that that mind cognizes it, it is in the mind; and its being so in the mind will not in the least diminish its external existence. For he does not think of the mind as a receptacle, which if a thing is in, it ceases to be out of. To make a distinction between the true conception of a thing and the thing itself is, he will say, only to regard one and the same thing from two different points of view; for the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is the reality. The realist will, therefore, believe in the objectivity of all necessary conceptions, space, time, relation, cause, and the like. No realist or nominalist ever expressed so definitely, perhaps, as is here done, his conception of reality. It is difficult to give a clear notion of an opinion of a past age, without exaggerating its distinctness. But careful examination of the works of the schoolmen will show that the distinction between these two views of the real-one as the fountain of the current of human thought, the other as the unmoving form to which it is flowing-is what really occasions their disagreement on the question concerning universals. The gist of all the nominalist's arguments will be found to relate to a res extra animam, while the realist defends his position only by assuming that the immediate object of thought in a true judgment is real. The notion that the controversy between realism and nominalism had anything to do with Platonic ideas is a mere product of the imagination, which the slightest examination of the books would suffice to disprove. [...] End quote -- I would like to answer Jim, but my List-time is over for today... and tomorrow we have Argentina-Germany and Italy-Ukraine... nobody is perfect... Best Claudio - Original Message - From: "Jim Piat" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:49 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell Dear Folks, Thanks for all the discussion of real, true and existence. I take the above quote to mean that truth (or the lack of it) is a property of opinions and real (or the lack of it) is a property of the objects to which those opinions (signs) refer. An opinion that is true represents an object that is real. But what is the relation between real and existance? Can a first (such as a quality) whose mode of being is mere potential (not actual) be in itself real? A quality embodied in a real object I agree is real, but I remain puzzled as to the reality of qualites as mere firsts. I guess what I wondering is whether Peirce equates the real soley with what actually exist or whether real can also be applied to mere firsts. I suppose one could use Peirce's above definition of real to apply to mere qualities (as firsts). For example, if one were to express a true opinion as to what potential qualities might be realized in objects or what the character of those qualities might be, those qualities (as the hypothetical objects of those opinions) would be real.One could also express false opinions regarding mere qualities (how many there are and their nature) in which case the qualities referred to would not be real. And if the immediately above interpretation of real is correct (as I now think it is) then I would say that real is a pr
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
attempt to conceptualize the cosmic stew or not. But thanks for the thoughtful response to a rather impulsive post, Michael. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! So I wouldn't count on it as a solution to anything. But it's a good read as far as you can stand it nonetheless! Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:37 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's Cosmicomics, by I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is titled The Ends of the Universe, which posits an asymptotic end of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that preceded the sporting emergence of Firstness. -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 5:19 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of opinion, representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Interesting remarks, including but not limited to those by Peirce. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! It's also difficult to believe that anyone eats all the way through a rich, multi-layered Italian pastry. And yet, we do (usually). Kidding aside, I have literally no idea why Joe says it's difficult to believe that anybody could read all the way through it. Too much coherence? Too much mix of coherence and incoherence? Now, it's fun to try to work a certain amount of seeming incoherence into one's writing. Conversations, for instance, don't have to be written as give take where speakers understand or even address each other's previous remarks in any direct way. It's a literary technique, or challenge, which one sees here and there. _Teitlebaum's Window_ by Wallace Markfield has some of it. Some of the conversations in _Mulligan Stew_ by Gilbert Sorrentino. In real life, of course, that kind of talk is often motivated by evasiveness. One year at a Thanksgiving dinner, a relative asked a question about another relative, a question which those of us in the know didn't want to answer. So I answered that the reason why the relative in question had gone to California (we're in NYC), was in order to buy some shoes. There followed about an hour's worth of purposely non-responsive conversation by all the relatives, both those in the know and those not in the know (conversation which really confused some of the non-family guests), which was really jokes, puns, whatever we could muster. But the point wasn't incoherence, but, instead, unusual coherences intensified and brought into relief against the lack of some usual kinds of coherence. Years ago I read a newspaper column doing this, by Pete Hamill of all people, and it was really pretty funny. Also don't miss _t zero_ with The Origin of Birds. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Michael said: [MD:] Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's Cosmicomics, [but] I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is titled The Ends of the Universe, which posits an asymptotic end of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that preceded the sporting emergence of Firstness. RESPONSE: [JR:] Well, I'm not sure what the moral of it is supposed to be, Michael. I put all that down rather impulsively, not thinking much about what might justify it or what it might imply. In retrospect I think that what I was doing was trying to re-express what I thought Peirce was expressing in the following passage from the MS called Answers to Questions Concerning my Belief in God which Harshorne and Weiss published in the Collected Papers, Vol. 6: ==QUOTE PEIRCE 508. Do you believe Him to be omniscient? Yes, in a vague sense. Of course, God's knowledge is something so utterly unlike our own that it is more like willing than knowing. I do not see why we may not assume that He refrains from knowing much. For this thought is creative. But perhaps the wisest way is to say that we do not know how God's thought is performed and that [it] is simply vain to attempt it. We cannot so much as frame any notion of what the phrase the performance of God's mind means. Not the faintest! The question is gabble. 509. Do you believe Him to be Omnipotent? Undoubtedly He is so, vaguely speaking; but there are many questions that might be put of no profit except to the student of logic. Some of the scholastic commentaries consider them. Leibnitz thought that this was the best of all possible worlds. That seems to imply some limitation upon Omnipotence. Unless the others were created too, it would seem that, all things considered, this universe was the only possible one. Perhaps others do exist. But we only wildly gabble about such things. ==END QUOTE= [JR:] But wildly gabbling doesn't necessarily mean utterly senseless, as I was exaggeratedly construing it, but might only mean that what we are saying or thinking becomes seriously and irremediably
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. Talking of Whitehead, whose process philosophy, or philosophy of organism is surely an interesting and challenging read for any Peirce student or scholar, it strikes me that in all the talk on the list of late of lattices and diagrams, firsts, seconds and thirds, ordered or non ordered systems of relations, we seem along the way to have lost something of the essentially processual character of the peircean notion of semiosis. Perhaps it's the seemingly concrete nature of the diagrams/lattices themselves that has been leading us a bit astray? Let me try speculating a bit by merging a few notions from a Whitehead'ian process perspective with a Peircean one. This is all very sketchy and speculative, so I'm naturally open for all forms of positive or negative criticism. In the interests of saving time and energy for one and all, however, it would probably be a good idea if respondents could keep their comments fairly brief and to the point... OK, as pointed out by Joe and others here a number of times (also recently), the (phenomenological) category of Thirdness will always presuppose Secondness, which in turn presupposes Firstness, but none of these three more basic categories (or any of their ten or more fine-tuned variants as these can be seen to emerge in any form of narrative traversing of the various triadic configurational rooms represented in the tables of sign classes) can actually be said to exist as pure, or static forms or entities. They always emerge as part of a process, which could be described roughly in terms of an ongoing narrative (or argumentation, if you like) According to Peirce's developmental teleology, these three aspects of the sign (function), by way of which we are able to experience or recognise the presence of any given (manifest for someone or something) sign, are destined to keep on morphing into one another continuously, emerging, submerging and and re-emerging again as the meanings we singly or collectively attribute to the signs we encounter from day to day continue to grow in complexity -- at different rates of development, of course, depending on the relative strength of the habits (mental or otherwise) that constrain Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness and allow them to oscillate/ morph in relation to one another at different rates in different situations and contexts, and allow them to be conceived of by us as conventionally (or otherwise) representing signifying (or culturally meaningful, if you like) units/ configurations/ events/ states of affairs. Every culturally significant event that we are able to conceive of as a sign (objects, thoughts, actions etc.) may then be seen to embody or posess, to a greater or lesser degree, and more or less saliently, all three qualities/ aspects of the sign (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) at any given time in the ongoing flow of semiosis. However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually exist, beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness in Whitehead's terms. The categories/ classes are essentially functional event-states that must be seen as potentially transitory and recursive all along the line in any given semiosic process. They can pass from one to another at will, or better as needs be, only to reappear again, perhaps in a different giuse or configuration (class) on some later occasion. The specific charactistics that make Firsts appear to us as Firsts, Seconds as Seconds and Thirds as Thirds, i.e. Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, are able to emerge transitorily and make themselves subjectively known to us at any given moment in any given event (the two latter 'ed notions I've taken from Whitehead, rather than from Peirce) that forms part of any given semiosic process, which by default must be seen as open-ended and as possessing only a potential for limits. It strikes me that might be more profitable if we were to try thinking dynamically of the ten classes of signs as possible emergent events that may arise as a result of any given ongoing semiosic process, and that they are all inter-related with one another, and that each class must possess a subjective organic potential for having more or less stable periods of duration, according to the relative strength of the specific habits or laws that (have) become culturally/ contextually associated with any given configuration/ class at any given time... It also occurred to me that someone well versed in Category Theory (cf some earlier discussions here on the list) might well be able to realise some kind of visual, dynamic model in these (or similar) terms, perhaps? Or maybe someone already has
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick Coppock wrote: At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. ... However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually exist, beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness in Whitehead's terms. Not at all. Peirce was a three-category realist, acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is just another word for nominalism in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Peirce acknowledge the reality of actuality or of secondness (around 1890). Look for outward clash, or Scotus in the CPs and his criticism of Hegel's idealism. He acknowledged the reality of firsts (the universe of possibility), and of course the reality of thirdness (the universe of thought or signs) I don't have the exact references, but that's not too difficult to find if you go through the Collected Papers, look for nominalism, realism, idealism ... However he wrote that some thirds and seconds are degenerate, meaning that they have no real existence. Regards /JM --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jean-Marc, Patrick Patrick has a point in that Peirce's categories are such that in representation the higher-order presupposes the lower (is that the way to use `presuppose, by the way?). Jean-Marc equally has a point in noting that Peirce became a `Three-Category Realist' in his later thinking. Both points seem to highlight the role of transitivity in Peirce's thought, and perhaps the more solid sources for understanding this may be found in his mathematical writings, I would guess. Also, the Logic Notebook perhaps has more pertinent material than the CP, the editorial dismemebrment of which is well enough known. Cheers Arnold Shepperson --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Arnold Shepperson wrote: Jean-Marc, Patrick Patrick has a point in that Peirce's categories are such that in representation the higher-order presupposes the lower (is that the way to use `presuppose, by the way?). Jean-Marc equally has a point in noting that Peirce became a `Three-Category Realist' in his later thinking. Both points seem to highlight the role of transitivity in Peirce's thought, and perhaps the more solid sources for understanding this may be found in his mathematical writings, I would guess. Also, the Logic Notebook perhaps has more pertinent material than the CP, the editorial dismemebrment of which is well enough known. Cheers Arnold Shepperson --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi, I don't think there's any contradiction. semiosis being an inferential process that reconstructs the forms of reality, a third can be created by a combination of a dyad with a monad. A second will evolve into a Third. This will be an internal third or degenerate third, a third by construction --call it what you like. but a third anyway. the only forms that are directly experienced from reality are the Seconds -- with which we experience the clash to use a Peirce expression. Thirds are constructed by inference. Firsts are embedded in Seconds. the phenomenological approach which consists in studying how forms can be combined together have the advantage that there is no need to resort to teleology to explain how these forms (First, Second, Thirds) can be seen to emerge from semiosis. PS: this is an interesting discussion but I'm off the list for a while... Regards /JM --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Thanks JM for your brief comments, I still think we need some way of distinguishing between that which is for us phenomenologically or experientally real and that which is (enduringly) existent in the world. Peirce and Whitehead both operate with notions that postulate some kind of relational continuity between what we call mind and matter. In this connection Whitehead introduces into the cartesian (epistemological) chasm between mental and material substance his notions of actual occasion or organism, while Peirce handles the same problem with his conception of matter as effete mind. For both, being is in some sense always becoming -- the actualisation of a potential for what Peirce often referred to as the growth of concrete reasonableness, and what Whitehead refered to as satisfaction, or in one of his definitions of that notion: the culmination of concrescence into a completely determinate matter of fact both of which I think, can be tied to the notion of entelecheia, which was discussed at some length here on the list previously. I may well be wrong here, of course -- indeed, I haven't been working with Whitehead's ideas so long myself, and trying to see these in relation to those of Peirce is actually quite a daunting task -- so it would be interesting to hear some opinions from other Peirce listers too... Best regards Patrick Patrick Coppock wrote: At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. ... However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually exist, beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness in Whitehead's terms. Not at all. Peirce was a three-category realist, acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is just another word for nominalism in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Peirce acknowledge the reality of actuality or of secondness (around 1890). Look for outward clash, or Scotus in the CPs and his criticism of Hegel's idealism. He acknowledged the reality of firsts (the universe of possibility), and of course the reality of thirdness (the universe of thought or signs) I don't have the exact references, but that's not too difficult to find if you go through the Collected Papers, look for nominalism, realism, idealism ... However he wrote that some thirds and seconds are degenerate, meaning that they have no real existence. Regards /JM --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Patrick J. Coppock Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Reggio Emilia Italy phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www:http://coppock-violi.com/work/ faculty:http://www.cei.unimore.it the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Thanks for your comments Arnold, and yes indeed, what Peirce and Whitehead probably have most in common is their respective competencies in mathematics, and the way in which they use these competncies to consolidate and explicate their respective philosophical projects. It's their maths that lets them try building a bridge between physics, phenomenology and metaphysics, if you will. One of my great frustrations is that I am no theoretical mathematician myself, and cannot read or make sense of anything rather than really quite simple mathematical proofs, so I basically have to take on trust anything that Peirce or Whitehead might have used mathematical forms of argumentation in order to demonstrate in detail. If you read around the lives and works of both these talented authors, you can see from many qualified commentators that both were fairly well respected in the international mathematical communities of their times for their mathematical musings. In any case, it seems quite clear to me that any philosophical or other project that is trying to really get a handle onto what they were talking about in all the various corners of their work, and to put it all into perspective needs must be a fairly inter- or transdisciplinary one... Peirce-l always seemed to me right from the beginning to be that kind of community... Best regards Patrick Jean-Marc, Patrick Patrick has a point in that Peirce's categories are such that in representation the higher-order presupposes the lower (is that the way to use `presuppose, by the way?). Jean-Marc equally has a point in noting that Peirce became a `Three-Category Realist' in his later thinking. Both points seem to highlight the role of transitivity in Peirce's thought, and perhaps the more solid sources for understanding this may be found in his mathematical writings, I would guess. Also, the Logic Notebook perhaps has more pertinent material than the CP, the editorial dismemebrment of which is well enough known. Cheers Arnold Shepperson --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Patrick J. Coppock Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Reggio Emilia Italy phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www:http://coppock-violi.com/work/ faculty:http://www.cei.unimore.it the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Dear Patrick, Folks-- Whitehead, yes-- and also Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance. Signs, like thought are more or less continuous and resist our attempts to pigeon hole them.OTOH contrasting mere intellectual associations with triadic thought Peirce says, "But the highest kind of synthesis is what the mind is compelled to make neither by the inward attractions of the feeling or representations themselves, nor by a transcendental force of haecceity, but in the interest of intelligibility, that is, in the interests of the the synthetising 'I think' itself; and this it does by introducing an idea not contained in the data, which gives connections which they would not otherwise have had". Later in that same paragraph (fromA Guess at the Riddle) Peirce continues with a further good word for those who attempt to sort and categories experience saying "Intuition is regarding of the abstract in a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatisation of relations; that is the one sole method of valuable thought. Very shallow is the prevalent notion that this something to be avoided. You might as well say at once that reasoning is to be avoided because it has led to so much error; quite in teh same philistine line of thought would that e and so well in accord with the spriit of nominalism that I wonder some one does not put it forward. The true precept is not to abstain from hypostatisation, but to do it intelligently". Cheers, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick wrote: However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually exist, beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness in Whitehead's terms. Jean-Marc responded: Not at all. Peirce was a three-category realist, acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is just another word for nominalism in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Dear Patrick, Jean-Marc, Folks-- I have a bit of trouble keeping track of the similarities and differences among the notions of true, real and existent as Peirce uses them. I am especially unclear about the the application of the term real to his category of Firstness.Are firsts real but non existent? Seems to me the notion of real qualities (as opposed to illusory ones) only has meaning in the context of qualities coupled with secondness as they are embodied in objects. In any case, what I'm doing here is asking a question and would love for someone to attempt to sort through how the terms real, existent and true are related. Best wishes Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
At 9:19 -0400 28-06-2006, Jim Piat wrote: In any case, what I'm doing here is asking a question and would love for someone to attempt to sort through how the terms real, existent and true are related. That's the big one Jim! I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands Regarding what is real, I think Peirce would say that we all have our opinions, more or well founded about what is real, or what the real is, and there is always a cheerful hope that we shall develop some further opinions on the matter that are even more well developed in this some respect or other. But of course, we are fallible, and thus no none, however well read, can claim any kind of absolute monopoly on the truth, so it's better to always keep an open mind (bearing in mind too, that some matters have been reasonably well settled for the time being) and keep on asking questions and making (courageous) speculations about how matters that cause us puzzlement may best be answered on the basis of what we already know, or at least think we know. Regarding existent, I think that Peirce always keeps fairly close to the whiteheadian notion of actual occasions in his conceptions of this, and again on this matter I think it is most profitable to make reference to his notion of matter as effete mind, and Objects as Things or Existents that are characteristic for our experience of Secondness as a Modality of Being. In a letter to Lady Welby (See EPII: 479), and talking of Secondness (which he actually refers to in this particular connection as Another Universe, distinguished by a particular Modality of Being), Peirce writes: Another Universe is that of, first, Objects whose Being consists in their Brute reactions, and of second, the facts (reactions, events, qualities etc.) concerning these Objects, all of which facts, in the last analysis, consist in their reactions. I call the Objects, Things, or more unambigously, Existents, and the facts about them I call Facts. Every member of this Universe is either a Single Object subject, alike to the Principles of Contradiction and to that of Excluded Middle, or it is expressible by a proposition having such a singular subject. Best regards Patrick -- Patrick J. Coppock Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Reggio Emilia Italy phone: + 39 0522.522404 : fax. + 39 0522.522512 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www:http://coppock-violi.com/work/ faculty:http://www.cei.unimore.it the voice: http://morattiddl.blogspot.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Patrick, Jean-Marc. On Jun 28, 2006, at 7:27 AM, Jean-Marc Orliaguet wrote: Patrick Coppock wrote: At 0:11 -0400 25-06-2006, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: I will be at the Whitehead Conference in Salzburg next week so I do not anticipate much time for replies. ... However, for us to believe that Firsts, Seconds and Thirds actually exist, beyond their being mere transitory events in an ongoing semiosic process, would be fallibilistic in Peirce's terms, or a Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness in Whitehead's terms. Not at all. Peirce was a three-category realist, acknowledging the reality fo Firsts, Seconds and Thirds early on. What you call Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is just another word for nominalism in that context. Peirce was not a nominalist. Peirce acknowledge the reality of actuality or of secondness (around 1890). Look for outward clash, or Scotus in the CPs and his criticism of Hegel's idealism. He acknowledged the reality of firsts (the universe of possibility), and of course the reality of thirdness (the universe of thought or signs) I don't have the exact references, but that's not too difficult to find if you go through the Collected Papers, look for nominalism, realism, idealism ... However he wrote that some thirds and seconds are degenerate, meaning that they have no real existence. Regards /JM Thanks for your stimulating comments. My take on the distinctions between Peirce and Whitehead is rather different. In early Peirce (1868), the analogy with distance functions and branching was the given basis for distinguishing paths of logic, relation to chemical valence and the more general concept of extension. The later writings of Peirce describing division of a sign in natural language is not a crisp way of looking at the concept of extension. (One might substitute for the term division such terms as partition, trichotomy, lattice, subtraction, incomplete parts, lack of additivity, and so forth; but I do not see how that would create a coherent concept of relational extension.) In late Whitehead, Process and Reality, he gets into bed with set theory and never re-emerges from this highly restrictive view of extension. In modern chemistry, a multitude of possibilities for extension exist . (The flow of passions in a bed are great, but they should not be conflated with the light of reason. :-) One might say that modern chemistry has in richer view of extension - valence is richer than -1,2,3- and it is richer than set theory by using irregularity as a basis of calculation. Also, the propensity of process philosophers to neglect the concept of inheritance of properties in time restricts the potential correspondence between process philosophy and scientific philosophy. A modern philosophy of chemistry must cope with numbers of relations grater than three and also recognize that islands of stability exist within the torrential seas of change. (I repeat my earlier disclaimer - I am neither a philosopher nor mathematician, my background is in biochemistry and genetics - so everyone ought to take my conjectures in these fields that are remote my personal area of concentration with a huge grain of salt.) BTW, the Whitehead conference includes sessions on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Several abstracts were quite novel and may be of interest to readers of this listserve. see: http://www2.sbg.ac.at/whiteheadconference/index2.html Cheers Jerry LR Chandler (PS: Patrick, if you know David Lane, please convey my personal greetings to him.) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jerry, Here's the 'classic' presentation of qualisign, sinsign, legisign (why they are given in the order of the subject of the thread I don't know, but the categorial order I just gave them in is as to their firstness, secondness, and thirdness). In any event, this is the order in which Peirce first presents them. CP 2.243 4. ONE TRICHOTOMY OF SIGNS 243. Signs are divisible by three trichotomies;1 first, according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law;2 secondly, according as the relation of the sign to its object consists in the sign's having some character in itself, or in some existential relation to that object, or in its relation to an interpretant;3 thirdly, according as its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility or as a sign of fact or a sign of reason.4 Peirce: CP 2.244 Cr 244. According to the first division, a Sign may be termed a Qualisign, a Sinsign, or a Legisign. Peirce: CP 2.244 A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign. Peirce: CP 2.245 245. A Sinsign (where the syllable sin is taken as meaning "being only once," as in single, simple, Latin semel, etc.) is an actual existent thing or event which is a sign. It can only be so through its qualities; so that it involves a qualisign, or rather, several qualisigns. But these qualisigns are of a peculiar kind and only form a sign through being actually embodied. Peirce: CP 2.246 246. A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established by men. Every conventional sign is a legisign [but not conversely]. It is not a single object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant. Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word "the" will usually occur from fifteen to twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law which renders it so Peirce employs this same order in a letter to Lady Welby: CP 8.334 334. As it is in itself, a sign is either of the nature of an appearance, when I call it a qualisign; or secondly, it is an individual object or event, when I call it a sinsign (the syllable sin being the first syllable of semel, simul, singular, etc.); or thirdly, it is of the nature of a general type, when I call it a legisign. As we use the term 'word' in most cases, saying that 'the' is one 'word' and 'an' is a second 'word,' a 'word' is a legisign. But when we say of a page in a book, that it has 250 'words' upon it, of which twenty are 'the's, the 'word' is a sinsign. A sinsign so embodying a legisign, I term a 'replica' of the legisign. The difference between a legisign and a qualisign, neither of which is an individual thing, is that a legisign has a definite identity, though usually admitting a great variety of appearances. Thus, , and, and the sound are all one word. The qualisign, on the other hand, has no identity. It is the mere quality of an appearance and is not exactly the same throughout a second. Instead of identity, it has great similarity, and cannot differ much without being called quite another qualisign. These two passages are, it seems to me, equivalent. I guess all of this is clear enough as you wrote: Jerry LR Chandler wrote: The definitions are reasonably clear, at least to me. Then you continued: At issue is the question of why are these terms important to understanding human communication. The appending of three unusual prefixes to the concept of a "sign" is clearly a creative use of language. The apparent (mechanical) objective is to form three new categories as derivatives of the parent word, sign. Could one imagine other prefixes to the word sign? Could one imagine more than three other prefixes? Again, the three are associated with Peirce's category theory (not to be confused with modern mathematical category theory, but concern what Marty refers to as "simple category theory" first appearing in Peirce's decidedly trichotomic phenomenology), so that what a sign in itself is is its 'firstness' but as a firstness it is itself either a firstness, secondness or thirdness in so far as when it is embodied it expresses some character or quality as a sign, or is a single existent thing or event--again when it is embodied (and will then also employ a qualisign), or as a sign it is 'merely' a convention and then must appear as a replica of this law that is a sign, so that the written word two, the numeral 2 (or II, etc.) and the vocable "two" are all the same convention several of which
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
Jerry, Gary, list, A number of recent posts have addressed the topics of: On Jun 19, 2006, at 1:05 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote: Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign I am seeking help in understanding the importance of these terms to individual scholars. The definitions are reasonably clear, at least to me. At issue is the question of why are these terms important to understanding human communication. To Peirce, logical process = representational process, and is not a specifically human or intelligent-life phenomenon, a chapter in the books of psychology, sociology, history, even if these books covered reasoning creatures other than homo sapiens which is the only clear example of which we know (SETI hasn't found ET, at least not yet). Instead, to Peirce, humans are a special logical phenomenon -- he might assent to a current phrase like logic processors though not in the computer sense (deductive, with strict algorithms, etc.). For my part, I would say that logicality is general like statisticality or (in the information-theoretic sense) information. So these terms (signsign, legisign, qualisign) are important in understanding the logical possibilities which human communication tends to actualize. IMHO the importance is not so very different from the importance of aerodynamics to the evolution and anatomy of winged insects, pterosaurs, birds, bats, flying organisms generally. But I think that a more exact analogy would be the relationship of probability, statistics, and, as a general mathematical statistical subject, stochastic processes, to matter. In the Peircean system, terms like qualisign/sinsign/legisign are also important, or regarded as destined to be important, in understanding the possibilities realized in metaphysics -- questions of ontology, questions of God, freedom, immortality, and (philosophical) questions of space, time, matter, etc. This is implicit in Peirce's classification of logic as a field which does not presuppose metaphysics but which is presupposed by metaphyiscs. The appending of three unusual prefixes to the concept of a sign is clearly a creative use of language. The apparent (mechanical) objective is to form three new categories as derivatives of the parent word, sign. Could one imagine other prefixes to the word sign? Peirce imagined quite a few other prefixes to the word sign. But presumably you mean such as to make a semantic distinction, not merely a morphological improvement. Could one imagine more than three other prefixes? Your question would be helpfully clarified if you stated it directly instead of morphologically. Obviously one can imagine, so to speak, many more classes of signs, and Peirce certainly did. Can one imagine a classification into a 4-chotomy of signs? Of course one can, but, for better or worse, it would be unPeircean. Triadism is built deeply into Peirce's semiotic. How is this context important in distinguishing among paths of usages? It's a way of distinguishing between specific occurrences of signs, the appearances of signs, and the general meaning or habitual 'conventional' interpretation of a sign. (The symbol's interpretant, in being an inferential outcome, usually goes beyond such conventional significations.) For many practical and theoretical purposes, English horse and Spanish _caballo_ are the same legisign. Horse and _caballo_ won't be regarded as the same qualisign (except by those for whom all human words are indistinguishably the same qualisign). Horse and _caballo_ won't be regarded as ever being the same sinsign (except by those for whom pretty much all human occurrences are one single undecomposable occurrence). What other terms might be substituted for these terms? Peirce himself offered, at various times, at least three sets of words for the same trichotomy of logical terms: Tone, token, type. Qualisign, sinsign, legisign. Potisign, actisign, famisign. One might call them: a quality-as-a-sign, a singular-as-a-sign, and a general-as-a-sign. He at least mentioned other words as candidates as well. Do these terms impact the concept of a grammar? It depends on the grammar. If this were some other forum, your conception of grammar might be implicitly understood and accepted. Here, in a philosophical forum which happens to be a crossroads of many specialties and traditions, you need to define it and state the context and tradition from which you are drawing your sense of the word, in order to make yourself widely understood. Is this ad hoc extension of the concept of sign desirable for mathematics? How does it contribute to the mathematical usages of signs? You specified neither the hoc nor the basal concept of which you characterize Peirce's terms as an extension. I guess everybody likes to think of his or her concept as the genus and of the other forms of the concept as the specializations. But you haven't said what your concept is,
