List, GR, Edwina, Jon, I actually think Edwina makes a fair series of points. If said terms are used it would be best, for each of us, to better explain what we mean. I know that applies to me, anyway, and perhaps better the target for a small essay than it is for a single list response.
I went the other way, with respect to Peirce's journey through Kant. I rejected the thing-in-itself (over the first few years) as outright nonsense. That's where Peirce landed (whilst retaining a great deal of "other material/influence from Kant"). Then I did a 180 because logically it had to be the case that whatever a thing was to me it could not be that thing (as I experienced it) but must be something else. Now, Jon, citing Peirce, is right, I cannot know what that is. But I also do know that it exists. Technically, that's not exactly a problem as Descartes' "cogito" is scarcely any more solid than that (I understand the difference but there is a similar methodology in the interchange between Hume and Kant — or rather Kant's attempt to rescue metaphysics from Hume). I would also add that if apply the same standard, it isn't possible to falsify the idea of infinite inquiry, either, whether used as ideal or not. Am I wrong here? I don't see how you prove/falsify it. If we're going to uphold the same set of standards, then I'd ask for consistency in certain of Peirce's ideas (not all of them of course) which seem to me pretty hard to falsify. Best, Jack ________________________________ From: Gary Richmond <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, August 7, 2025 9:20 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Cc: Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>; Jack Cody <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Experience and Representation (was Semiosic Ontology) List, Edwina, Jon, Jack, Edwina wrote: As for the one-post-per-day- I’m against it, because I think it transforms an interactive discussion into a site of polemical sermons. GR: As I wrote on List and to you, Edwina, off List, so far you are the only List member who appears to see it this way; on and off List, participants have tended to find this approach reasonable. This is not to say that you are the only one who is 'against it'. But, at least for now, I see no reason to change that rule. ET: . . . I really don’t applaud the use of such phrases as ‘Peirce and I’ or 'Kant and I’… The ‘best buddies' analogy only works, I suggest, for existential reality and since neither gentleman is around..then.... GR: I would tend to agree except when someone posts something which is a paraphrase of Peirce's own words, especially when that is supported by a Peirce quotation demonstrating that the paraphrase does indeed accurately express Peirce's idea. There is nothing 'novel' about that in scholarly scientific discussion. ET: I think that both Jack and Jon should define what each one means by the term of ‘ding an sich’. I suspect that for each, the meanings are quite different - and therefore, we have a situation of tails chasing tails. I concur with Jon's current and earlier explanation of the reasons for Peirce's (and his and my) rejection of Kant's 'ding an sich'. In a word, Peirce considers Kant's notion of a thing-in-itself as incoherent since it posits something completely incognizable. For Peirce Reality -- that is, the reality of physical and mental 'things' -- is accessible within the limits of fallible thought and ongoing inquiry. while the thing-in-itself is 'something' we cannot discuss meaningfully or use productively in inquiry. Perhaps the following passage will help clarify both just how strongly Peirce felt himself influenced by Kant as well as his total rejection of the idea of the 'ding an sich'. I've added the numbers 1 and 2 for clarity within the passage. This List discussion principally concerns itself with 2. Critical Common-sensism may fairly lay claim to this title for two sorts of reasons; namely, 1. that on the one hand it subjects four opinions to rigid criticism: its own; that of the Scotch school; that of those who would base logic or metaphysics on psychology or any other special science, the least tenable of all the philosophical opinions that have any vogue; and 2. that of Kant; while on the other hand it has besides some claim to be called Critical from the fact that it is but a modification of Kantism. The present writer was a pure Kantist until he was forced by successive steps into Pragmaticism. The Kantist has only to abjure from the bottom of his heart the proposition that a thing-in-itself can, however indirectly, be conceived; and then correct the details of Kant's doctrine accordingly, and he will find himself to have become a Critical Common-sensist. CP 5.452 (“Issues of Pragmaticism” The Monist, Volume 15, Number 4, October 1905, emphasis added). Best, Gary R On Wed, Aug 6, 2025 at 2:33 PM Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: List I think that both Jack and Jon should define what each one means by the term of ‘ding an sich’. I suspect that for each, the meanings are quite different - and therefore, we have a situation of tails chasing tails. As for the one-post-per-day- I’m against it, because I think it transforms an interactive discussion into a site of polemical sermons. And as an addition to this - I also suggest that posters should be careful to differentiate themselves from their ‘mentors’, so to speak. That is - I really don’t applaud the use of such phrases as ‘Peirce and I’ or 'Kant and I’… The ‘best buddies' analogy only works, I suggest, for existential reality and since neither gentleman is around..then.... With regard to the Peircean outline of the 'ding an sich’….it’s not the same, as I understand his outline, as the external object which is ‘anything that is not affected by any cognition, whether about it of not, of the man to whom it is external’ [5.525]. This simply means, to me, an object which is not being interacted with at the moment by this human.ie, until such time as it becomes a Dynamic Object rather than an ‘external object’..[EP2.478]. Though I will note that this external object, let’s call it a tree, is most certainly in the semiosic process of Dynamic Object interaction with other entities such as a caterpillar, an ant, a bird, .. Peirce continues in this section ….but, if you ‘exaggerate this …”you have the conception of what is not affected by any cognitions at all…and.. the notion of what does not affect cognition"…. That is - an entity which does not affect cognition and which is itself not affected by cognition. This means, as I understand it, an entity which is outside of the processes of Thirdness, because Thridness is the mode of being of Cognition or Mind, I would just add that for Peirce, cognition does not require a brain [4.551]…but is operative in all existentially..ie..existence requires continuity of organization or habits-of-form, and these habits can be understood as the operation of Mind/cognition - whether within the formation and operation of a chemical molecule, a bacterium or an insect. . And note further, that Thirdness is communal; ie, Forms or habits don't exist ‘per se’ [Aristotle vs Plato] but only within existing entities and operative as a general, as a commonality - operative within a collective and thus requires interaction…which is to say, semiosis. Can the ding an sich exist per se, outside of semiosis? In other words - is there such an entity operative without Mind? Doesn’t a chemical molecule exist only within its common general formulation? And if it does, then, doesn’t this put us more into the analysis offered by Peirce? So- the definition of ‘ding an sich’,in my view, requires clarification. Edwina . On Aug 6, 2025, at 12:35 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jack, List: In addition to the List post to which I am replying, you sent me three off-List messages within 30 minutes last night, followed by a fourth one this morning. Why not just wait a few hours to get some sleep, collect your thoughts, and send a single on-List post--the one per thread per day that is currently allowed--with everything that you wanted to say? I have come to appreciate the wisdom of that restriction, so that is exactly what I am doing here, quoting your off-List messages where I address them. I have tried to limit the resulting length of this post by linking or citing some relevant passages instead of quoting them. Your first statement below is inscrutable to me, but for "the tree example," you initially said the following off-List. JRKC: Humans may use representational sign-systems but there is zero proof (and none possible) that trees and so forth do. The tree's reality may have no "representation" at all. And, insofar as it could, it would always be beyond us to ever know. Not surprisingly for someone who has apparently embraced not only Kantian epistemology and metaphysics, but also Saussurean linguistics, this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on your part--experience is a strictly cognitive phenomenon, but semiosis is not. "It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there" (CP 4.551, 1906). At this point, I join Peirce in despairing of making this "broader conception" understood, at least in your case. As you said later, "we probably diverge and that's fine." I previously quoted Kant's own epistemological definition of a priori as "knowledge that is absolutely independent of all experience" (emphasis mine). Best I can tell, you are still misapplying that term to the ontological concept of a thing-in-itself as that which is (supposedly) "beyond all possible experience" and therefore unknowable. However, you have yet to address Peirce's simple refutation of this, which I summarized a couple of days ago (https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-08/msg00008.html) as presented in the very same paragraph where he refers to Kant as someone "whom I more than admire" (CP 5.525, c. 1905; see also CP 6.95, 1903). Needless to say, I continue to agree with him, and thus disagree with you and Kant; again, "we probably diverge and that's fine." JRKC: Not to be a pain, but the Gödel part is also wrong. When you demonstrate complete inequivalence it has a bearing on all possible systems. That includes all possible meaning making systems--including this one and any possible system Peirce uses. I still disagree--Gödel's incompleteness theorems strictly pertain to sufficiently powerful formal systems as mathematical proofs that draw necessary conclusions about hypothetical states of things. Applying them in epistemology and ontology requires showing that both our knowledge and reality itself conform to every single premiss, including a specific formal system that meets the stipulated criteria. In other words, complete inequivalence is a controversial hypothesis, not another established theorem. JRKC: Any definition of an object through a symbolic system is a function of the system, not the object. Objects do not have definitions, words do; and those definitions are indeed functions of the sign system being employed, not the objects that they purport to describe. In Peircean terms, the definition of a word is its immediate interpretant, and whatever conforms to that definition is its (potential) immediate object when it is incorporated into a proposition. Any description of something using words is inevitably incomplete because the words themselves and the concepts that they denote are general and therefore indeterminate. As a result, "[T]he subject of discourse ... can, in fact, not be described in general terms; it can only be indicated. The actual world cannot be distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Hence the need of pronoun and indices, and the more complicated the subject the greater the need of them" (CP 3.363, 1885; see also CP 2.337, c. 1895, and CP 2.536, 1902). Peirce's Existential Graphs iconically illustrate this. In the Beta part, names (words) denote general concepts and heavy lines of identity denote indefinite individuals (objects) to which those concepts are attributed by attaching their names. The effect of such combinations in various propositions is making the concepts more determinate and the individuals more definite--ascribing the same concept to multiple individuals, increasing that concept's logical breadth; and ascribing different concepts to the same individual, increasing each concept's logical depth (see the last two CSP quotations in my post at https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00068.html). The product of these for any particular concept is its information (CP 2.419, 1867), which increases in both ways. This finally gets us back to my semiosic ontological hypothesis, which I will discuss further in a separate post in that 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> On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 11:13 PM Jack Cody <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I can prove that to/through (mediation) the human being, the thing cannot be what it is in asbentia of that relation nor need it even be similar or remotely equivalent. I assert it rhetorically here. Now the tree example below, qua "impossible to know how a tree experiences anything as the tree does for a human" - this has an obvious bearing on realities that cannot possibly be represented (unless we mean represented as in "made-up conceptual stuff which is not true"). As to ontology — and sorry for the double post — Kant's claim is absolutely ontological for the noumenal is an ontological distinction and use of "apriori" as beyond experience is catogircally demarcated from his use of it in other contexts. He means, by the first a priori, that the meaning of the "thing" as it is is beyond all possible experience and that is what the thing in itself, generally, refers/corresponds to. That is an ontological distinction (you cannot merely call it epistemological wheter you accept the ontological distinction or not). Best wishes, Jack _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iu.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
