Speaking of the past—and here I may depart from orthodoxy among Peirce
scholars—I do not consider Peirce’s system to be a literal description of the
world as it is, but rather a model for understanding consciousness. I realize
this may be rejected outright, but I cannot help but interpret it in this way.
When it comes to time—past, present, future—I read Peirce’s categories not as
fixed ontological boundaries, but as phenomenological modalities of temporal
consciousness. That is, I see time in Peirce much like I see it in quantum
theory: not as a clean succession of fixed states, but as an ongoing process of
semiotic determination. Peirce’s account of the categories—Firstness (quality
of feeling), Secondness (reaction or brute fact), and Thirdness (law or
mediation)—already admits a model of continuity that resists closure:
“Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively
and without reference to anything else. It is the realm of possibility,
quality, feeling.”
— CP 1.337 (1885 - by AI-Source).
In Peirce’s semiosis, the sign is not static: it unfolds through a process of
interpretation, where the Interpretant alters and extends the meaning of a
given sign. In this way, the sign is not an object, but a relational function
across time. Similarly, in quantum terms, the act of measurement—or
interpretation—collapses a possibility space into a particular state, but never
exhausts it. This is why, for example, a sign that emerges twenty years later
may retroactively restructure the significance of a prior event. The past is
made newly legible through present interpretation.
This is consistent with Peirce’s claim that semiosis is infinite and that
interpretants are themselves signs, capable of being interpreted again:
“The sign depends upon its interpretant for its interpretation, and this
interpretant again is a sign, which has an interpretant of its own; so that the
process of semiosis is unlimited.”
— CP 2.303 (1903 - by AI-Source)
As such, what we call "the past" is not determined once and for all, because it
remains open to revision by future interpretants. If the past were fully
determinate, then the most basic acts of reinterpretation, revision, or
understanding would be impossible.
This same structure is evident in the quantum method I use. In my deductive
framework, I describe recursive systems (S₁, S₂, …) as semiotic phases: each
invocation of S₁ alters it, such that S₁ becomes S₁′, and then S₁″, and so on.
It is never the same state again. This is not merely metaphorical—each call
alters the relational state space, just as each interpretive act in semiosis
transforms the “meaning” of the sign.
Only when S₁/S₁′ (S₁″… S₁ⁿ) is no longer invoked at all can we say that the
past configuration has truly ceased to be—no longer semeiotically active. In
network or systems theory, that point can be modeled through thresholds of
signal collapse or feedback saturation. But in consciousness or human reality,
it is far less clear: the "end" of a sign’s activity is not determined
ontologically, but functionally—whether or not it continues to be invoked.
This is in line with Peirce’s theory that semiosis is never complete. There is
no final interpretant “in this life”—and perhaps not even “in the next”:
“There is no final, or absolute, interpretant. The process of
interpretation never ceases. The semiosis is infinite.”
— CP 2.92 (1903 - by AI-Source)
A sign, like a quantum state, may lie dormant, but not concluded.
In that light, semiosis is akin to the quantum structure I devised (states and
call-backs) in that each is recursive, reinterpreting, historically contingent,
and indeterminate until it isn’t. What we take to be “the past” is, surely,
that which may be called upon within the present at any given moment (or
otherwise we cannot even cite said "past").
I must add, here, that owing to my relative "novice" status within this list I
have had to program an AI to grab Peirce quotations where I think they may or
may not fit but the message: I think it important to clarfy such things these
days. As many of you may or may not know, my own work is moving in divergent
areas so I am trying much more, these days, to find some common ground within
the Peircean corpus. It's something that must be addresssed, by me, personally,
at any rate, for me to advance my other work and thus this community is very
helpful (in its agreements and disagreements).
(I add, think Marcel Proust and the cake — for those literary inclined among
us).
Best,
Jack
________________________________
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of
Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2025 10:28 PM
To: Peirce-L <[email protected]>
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Time and Semiosis (was Semiosic Ontology)
Gary F., List:
Let me begin with two housekeeping items. First, I apologize to the entire List
community and especially its moderator, Gary R., for sending three posts both
yesterday and Wednesday, thereby violating his requested limit of two per day
despite complying with the restriction of one per day per thread. Second, I
have changed the subject line of this post to reflect what we are now
discussing, which is not ontology.
GF: The past is not a place where things go when they die (i.e. become
completely determinate). Nothing exists “in the past.”
I agree with you that the past is not a place, but I agree with Peirce that
everything in the past is completely determinate and therefore exists. You say
that this strikes you as absurd, but what other mode of being could the past
have? "The Past consists of the sum of faits accomplis, and this Accomplishment
is the Existential Mode of Time. For the Past really acts upon us, and that it
does, not at all in the way in which a Law or Principle influences us, but
precisely as an Existent object acts. ... [T]he mode of the Past is that of
Actuality" (CP 5.459, EP 2:357, 1905). As you put it yourself, "nothing
unhappens."
Accordingly, in "Temporal Synechism," I outline a version of the "growing
block" theory of time, in which the past and present exist but not the
future--the indeterminate possibilities (1ns) and conditional necessities (3ns)
of the future are constantly becoming the determinate actualities (2ns) of the
past. "Existence, then, is a special mode of reality, which, whatever other
characteristics it possesses, has that of being absolutely determinate" (CP
6.349, 1902). Nevertheless, as I acknowledged before, in the ultimate sense,
the "one individual, or completely determinate, state of things" could only be
fully realized at "a point in the infinitely distant future when there will be
no indeterminacy or chance but a complete reign of law" (CP 1.409, EP 1:277,
1887-8). However, time will never actually reach that limit, when "the all of
reality" would be entirely in the past.
GF: The crucial point I’d like to make is this: time and semiosis are both
continuous, but while time is one-dimensional and one-directional, i.e.
“linear” (to use a spatial metaphor), semiosis is predominately nonlinear.
The accuracy of this characterization depends on exactly what you mean by
"nonlinear." Just like time, semiosis as analyzed for any prescinded individual
sign is unidimensional and unidirectional, always proceeding from the object
through the sign toward the interpretant. However, it is not only straight
lines that are "linear" in this sense, but also curved lines including
ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas that are mathematically defined by
"nonlinear equations." In fact, according to Peirce's hyperbolic cosmology, the
entire universe is proceeding unidimensionally and unidirectionally from an
initial state in the infinite past toward a final state in the infinite future,
where these two states are different asymptotic limits that are never actually
reached. The initial state is "chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which
consists in the total absence of regularity"; while the final state is "death,
the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of
all spontaneity" (CP 8.317, 1891).
On the other hand, what I call an event of semiosis is "nonlinear" in the sense
that an individual dynamical interpretant as determined by an individual sign
token in an individual interpreter is not strictly a function of the sign
itself and its dynamical object; it also depends on the habits of
interpretation that the interpreter possesses at that moment, by virtue of all
the signs that have previously determined that interpreter. In other words, it
is a dynamical interpretant of not only the external sign being analyzed, but
also the internal sign that is the interpreting quasi-mind itself. That is why
it is not only possible but quite common for the same sign to produce different
dynamical interpretants in different interpreters, including misinterpretations
where a dynamical interpretant is inconsistent with the sign's immediate
interpretant and/or final interpretant. The aim of inquiry is eliminating (or
at least minimizing) these deviations, which is what makes logic as semeiotic a
normative science.
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>
On Sat, Jul 26, 2025 at 8:53 AM <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
Jon, list,
There is one statement near the beginning of your post that strikes me as
absurd, and nothing in the remainder of your explanation changes that
impression.
JAS: at the present, that [completely determinate] state of things [namely the
all of reality] "is comprised of everything that is in the past" (p. 253).
The past is not a place where things go when they die (i.e. become completely
determinate). Nothing exists “in the past.” The “state of things” (as Peirce
says) is “an abstract constituent part of reality.” In reality though, as in
the “perfect sign,” nothing is static; “the all of reality” then is as
imaginary as a point on a continuous line. Everything that happens, including
every instance of determination, happens now, and nothing unhappens.
I’ve offered an alternative Peircean account of determination and causality
which addresses the question raised by Gary R here:
https://gnusystems.ca/TS/css.htm#causdetrmn, for those who might be interested.
The crucial point I’d like to make is this: time and semiosis are both
continuous, but while time is one-dimensional and one-directional, i.e.
“linear” (to use a spatial metaphor), semiosis is predominately nonlinear.
Semiosis requires time but also requires energy flows, and energy flows in
systemic processes are typically nonlinear. In the human brain, for instance,
the majority of functional areas that project neuronal signals to other areas
also receive feedback from those areas, and do so continuously during the
current process. Where the organization is hierarchical, the top-down and
bottom-up flows mutually determine what happens. Peirce does acknowledge mutual
determination in the context of Existential Graphs, but he could not have known
how it was physiologically embodied in semiosis or cognition, because system
science was hardly even embryonic in his time.
Jon, my reading of your post may be uncharitable, but I couldn’t help it!
Love, gary f.
Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
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