Gary F, Jon, List,
"Your billiard-ball example strikes me as a case of purely dyadic efficient
causality, missing the other aspects of causality that Peirce (following
Aristotle) recognized, and I think those other aspects of causality are
essential to semiosic determination."
I'm not as advanced in Peircean studies as some of you here are — that is, I
have spent a long time analyzing and reading (also writing about) Peirce, but I
recognize ten years in my case might be a fraction of the 30 or 20 or however
many years others have spent and at varying intensities.
But I did want to point out that the most famous billiard ball example comes
from David Hume (in philosophy and regarding what is or is not necessary and
causal).
He uses the example of one billiard ball striking another to illustrate that we
do not observe necessary connection — we only see constant conjunction (one
event regularly following another) and come to expect the outcome, but we do
not perceive a power or force that links them.
Here is the relevant passage in full from the 1748 version of the Enquiry:
"When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation
of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or
necessary connexion; any quality which binds the effect to the cause, and
renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find, that the
one does actually, in fact, follow the other. The impulse of one billiard-ball
is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the
outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this
succession of objects: consequently, there is not, in any single, particular
instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or
necessary connexion."
And a further elaboration:
"Suppose a body struck, such as a billiard-ball, lies before us: suppose
also we have never seen any motion or communication of motion between bodies.
We apply our hand to it, and it moves. This is a new experience. We try another
body of like shape and size; it also moves upon impulse. Repeating this
experiment a hundred times, we find, that in proportion as the impulse is
stronger, the motion is more rapid. From all this, we conclude that there is a
connexion between the impulse and motion. But still it is only after having
observed the constant conjunction of similar events, that we form the idea of
causation."
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1748.
I've merely quoted a quick "grab" from an AI thing because I couldn't remember
the page (the citation from that is in Blue/Bold).
Best
Jack
________________________________
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of
[email protected] <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2025 12:45 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Semiosic Ontology (was Spencer-Brown's concept of
'reentry')
Jon, list,
CSP (EP2:478, 1908): “I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by
something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person,
which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately
determined by the former. My insertion of “upon a person” is a sop to Cerberus,
because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.”
Jon, your “working hypothesis” “that any dyadic reaction between discrete
things can be conceived as an occurrence of such an event of semiosis” (with
its billiard-ball example) seems to go as far as possible — and maybe farther —
in eliminating the last vestige of “personhood” from semiosic ontology.
I think Peirce was definitely a process philosopher, but he was not a systems
thinker. His sop to Cerberus would have been unnecessary if he had just written
that the Sign determines an effect upon a system which is the Interpretant (or
triad of interpretants, if you like). Personally I think it would have to be a
self-organizing system (or complex adaptive system) in order for the Sign to
mean anything. Stan Salthe used to call it a “system of interpretance.” Your
billiard-ball example strikes me as a case of purely dyadic efficient
causality, missing the other aspects of causality that Peirce (following
Aristotle) recognized, and I think those other aspects of causality are
essential to semiosic determination.
Love, gary f.
Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
} To seek Buddhahood apart from living beings is like seeking echoes by
silencing sounds. [Layman Hsiang] {
substack.com/@gnox<https://substack.com/@gnox> }{ Turning
Signs<https://gnusystems.ca/TS/>
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Jon Alan Schmidt
Sent: 19-Jul-25 20:14
To: Peirce-L <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semiosic Ontology (was Spencer-Brown's concept of
'reentry')
List:
JAS: As I see it, this is a refinement of Peirce's objective idealism--instead
of a substance ontology in which "matter is effete mind, inveterate habits
becoming physical laws" (CP 6.25, EP 1:293, 1891), it is a process ontology in
which discrete things and their dyadic reactions are degenerate outcomes of
continuous and triadic semiosis.
To elaborate on this a bit more, every triadic relation involves dyadic
relations between different pairs of its three correlates; a genuine triadic
relation is not reducible to those dyadic relations, while a degenerate triadic
relation is so reducible. The three correlates of the genuine triadic relation
of representing or (more generally) mediating are the sign (S), its dynamical
object (Od), and its final interpretant (If); and it involves, but is not
reducible to, the dyadic S-Od and S-If relations. That is why there are
trichotomies for classifying signs according to them in Peirce's various
taxonomies--icon/index/symbol for S-Od, and rheme/dicisign/argument (or
seme/pheme/delome) for S-If.
On the other hand, an individual event of semiosis happens when a dynamical
object determines a sign token to determine a dynamical interpretant (Id)--an
actual sign produces an actual effect. This is a degenerate triadic relation,
reducible to those two dyadic relations. Peirce's later taxonomies include
another trichotomy for classifying signs according to the S-Id
relation--presented/urged/submitted (or suggestive/imperative/indicative),
corresponding to the sign's "manner of appeal" (CP 8.338, SS 34-5, 1904 Oct 12;
EP 2:490, 1908 Dec 25). My working hypothesis is that any dyadic reaction
between discrete things can be conceived as an occurrence of such an event of
semiosis.
For example, when a moving billiard ball collides with a stationary billiard
ball, that impact is a sign token, the previous momentum of the first ball is
its dynamical object, and the subsequent momentum of the two balls is its
dynamical interpretant. The sign token is an index because the S-Od relation is
an existential connection, and an urged imperative because the S-Id relation is
compulsive. It is also a dicisign or pheme because the S-If relation is
isomorphic to that of a conditional proposition with antecedent and
consequent--the collision is governed by a physical law. In Peirce's words ...
CSP: Any dynamic action--say, the attraction by one particle of another--is in
itself dyadic. ... However, the dyadic action is not the whole action; and the
whole action is, in a way, triadic. ... That whatever action is brute,
unintelligent, and unconcerned with the result of it is purely dyadic is either
demonstrable or is too evident to be demonstrable. But in case that dyadic
action is merely a member of a triadic action, then so far from its furnishing
the least shade of presumption that all the action in the physical universe is
dyadic, on the contrary, the entire and triadic action justifies a guess that
there may be other and more marked examples in the universe of the triadic
pattern. (CP 6.330-2, 1907)
Regards,
Jon
On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 9:04 PM Jon Alan Schmidt
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Gary R., List:
GR: It seems to me that all signs have an immediate interpretant (the capacity
to mean something), a sign may have a dynamical interpretent (if, say, someone
actually finds and reads the message in a bottle), and that the final
interpretant is its meaning "in the long run" by an unlimited community over
unlimited time (so only asymptotically approachable). Another way to say this
is that a sign must have the capacity to generate an interpretant to be a sign
at all.
Yes, this is very well said. My only mild reservation is that it again seems to
be looking at semiosis from the bottom-up (not top-down) perspective, but it is
mitigated by our agreement that doing so is merely "an analytical contrivance
in speculative grammar."
GR: I have always found the last quote you offered, well, profound: "The very
entelechy of being lies in being representable. ... This appears mystical and
mysterious simply because we insist on remaining blind to what is plain, that
there can be no reality which has not the life of a symbol" (EP 2:324, NEM
4:262, 1901).
I have found it increasingly profound myself in recent years, because it
expresses the fundamental ontological upshot of semiosic synechism. Quine
famously stated, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable"; but I suggest
instead that to be is to be the possible dynamical object of a sign--whatever
is, in any of the three Universes of Experience, is capable of being
represented, and therefore itself of the nature of a sign. As I see it, this is
a refinement of Peirce's objective idealism--instead of a substance ontology in
which "matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws" (CP
6.25, EP 1:293, 1891), it is a process ontology in which discrete things and
their dyadic reactions are degenerate outcomes of continuous and triadic
semiosis.
I am still trying to work out the full implications in my own mind and would
welcome further discussion accordingly, which is why I started another new
thread.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> /
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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