Dear Peircers – In my 2014 book Natural Propositions on ”Dicisigns” I investigate Peirce’s idea from around 1903 that Dicisigns may represent Facts. Below, a section of the discussion. Best Frederik
3.8 Facts as Truth-makers of Dicisigns ”What we call a 'fact' is something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself” ( Kaina Stoicheia, 1904, EPII 304), Peirce claims, and this fact theory is what explains the ability of propositions to depict facts. Facts are the truth-makers of Dicisigns: if a Dicisign is true, the corresponding fact is the case. Thus, the fact depicted by the Dicisign is different from the object reference of the Dicisign. This distinction allows for an obvious way of explaining the existence of false Dicisigns – something which may sometimes be a challenge for picture-oriented theories of the expression of propositions (cf. G.E. Moore; the early Russell). The syntax keeping together the Dicisign in itself functions as an index of the two aspects of the fact corresponding to the two aspects of the Dicisign: ”Every informational sign thus involves a Fact, which is its Syntax” (Syllabus, 1903, EP II 282; 2.321). Peirce thus maintains a theory of facts or state-of-things to account for what was later called the truth-makers of propositions. Thus, he distinguishes the object or referent of the Dicisign given by its indexical subject part, on the one hand, and the truth-maker making true the Dicisign as a truth-bearer given by the fact structured in the same way as the syntax of the proposition. This plastic theory permits Peirce's account to escape problems encountered by proposition theories taking states-of-affairs or facts to be not only the truth-makers of propositions but also their referents. Such simpler doctrines immediately, of course, run into trouble because of their diffculty in accounting for false propositions. But even theories admitting false propositions may encounter problems. False propositions refer to non-existing facts, but the same thing is achieved by meaningless propositions. The difference between propositions such as ”Barack Obama is the president of China” and ”The present king of France is bald” tends to evaporate in such a theory. Russell, as is well known, concluded that the latter just like the former must be counted as false. In Peirce's account, we should rather take the former proposition as a false claim about an existing person and the latter as a meaningless claim about a non-existing person because it fails to make an object reference for the proposition in the Universe of Discourse even if both have non-existing truth-makers. (In the framework of bivalent logic, Peirce tended to count meaningless propositions as true, reserving ”false” to refer to ascriptions of erroneous predicates to potentially existing entities only.) Facts, in Peirce's doctrine, are certain simple states of things: A state of things is an abstract constituent part of reality, of such a nature that a proposition is needed to represent it. There is but one individual, or completely determinate, state of things, namely, the all of reality. A fact is so highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be wholly represented in a simple proposition, and the term ”simple”, here, has no absolute meaning, but is merely a comparative expression. ( The Basis of Pragmaticism in the Normative Sciences , EPII, 378, 5.549 50) Thus, simplicity here pertains to the relevant level of observation, not to any supposedly basic level of reality, such as was the case in Wittgenstein's in some respects similar picture theory of language in the Tractatus which famously led him to found his whole theory upon logical atoms without being able to point out a single example of one. Even if Peirce's theory of Dicisigns may, even in a very strong sense, be called a picture theory of propositions, it does not follow that the objects and properties singled out by a proposition be simple in any absolute sense. This is because states-of-things or facts in Peirce's account are structures of reality, distinct from simple subsets of reality: . . . I must first point out the distinction between a Fact and what in other connexions, is often called an Event* [Foot note* Or at least the temporal element of it is not the whole of it since [the] thing to which the event happens [is] an element of the event.], but which, owing to that word being used in the Doctrine of Chances in its stricter sense of the way in which a doubt about what will happen is ultimately resolved, must be here called an Occurrence. If from the Universe of the Actual we cut out in thought all that, between two instances of time, in uences or involves in any considerable degree certain Existent Persons and Things, this Actual fragment of what exists and actually happens, so cut out, I call an Actual Occurrence which Thought analizes into Things and Happenings. It is necessarily Real; but it can never be known or even imagined in all its infinite detail. A Fact, on the other hand is so much of the Real Universe as can be represented in a Proposition, and instead of being, like an Occurrence, a slice of the Universe, it is rather to be compared to a chemical principle extracted therefrom by the power of Thought; and though it is, or may be, Real, yet, in its Real Existence, it is inseparably combined with an infinite swarm of circumstances, which make no part of the Fact itself. (Ms. 647 Definition , 5th draught 16-18 Feb. 1910, p. 8-11, discussing Laplace) Thus, facts or states-of-things are ”principles”, structures extracted from reality explaining their Janus-headed doubleness, consisting at the same time of particular objects (secondnesses, referred to by the indices of the proposition) and general properties (firstnesses, described by the icons of the proposition). Scientifically traceable causal relations hold between facts, not between occurrences. Thus, Peirce's version of scientific realism (and scholastic realism, assuming the reality of some predicates) is dependent upon this ability of Dicisigns to depict extracted, structured aspects of reality. Here, the ability of Dicisigns to involve the large array of iconic predicate possibilities of maps, diagrams, graphs, etc., becomes central to his notion of diagrammatical reasoning in the sciences. The important claim above, that the simplicity of facts is relative only, gives an easy way of understanding why simple Dicisigns may express facts stemming from very different levels of ontology (from ”2+2 = 4” to ”There are two classes of elementary particles”, ”This chair is white” to ”The Movement of Enlightenment took place in the 17th and 18th centuries”) where the objects involved have highly different ontology and complexity, cf. on diagrams and language in ch. 7. This simplicity pertains to fact structure only, not to the objects and events co-constituting those facts. Fra: [email protected] <[email protected]> på vegne af Atila Bayat <[email protected]> Dato: lørdag, 20. september 2025 kl. 17.17 Til: [email protected] <[email protected]>, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Facts, Opinion, Perspective, and Inquiry, was, Truth, Ethics, and Esthetics Jon, Mary, Ben, List: Thank you for these excellent citations and corrections. Mary supplied a brilliant passage from Collected paper Volume 1 (§ 22-26), and reflects my sentiment. Let me add to this some other passages from CSP around the 2nd category; CP Vol. 1, p.183 Cf. Buchler’s edition Philosophical Writings Chapter 6 complete, specifically ‘’What is fact’ excerpt is from 1896…excerpts in that chapter are not in chronological order. CP Vo. 7, 7.659; see the whole excerpt. Notice in the Century Dictionary definition, there is only a reference to a “simple” fact. CSP will describe “Hard facts” in his papers. Cf. Collected Papers (CP) 7.659; see the whole excerpt. MS.283, he introduced formal distinctions of facts again; these ideas lead me back to the section in CP 1.183; (in a well-stated paraphrase by E. Freeman, Categories of Peirce (1934)) pp. 17-19. I'd like to direct you there and include an excerpt later. Invariably, CSP will tie these definitions into his discussion and demonstration of his ontological constructs - in his papers - of how his categories are derived as mental processes, and of course, how these correspond to the three kinds of signs. Freeman writes, “These three kinds of relations and signs…are the clues to the three essentially different kinds of mental processes.” p.14 Jon, that’s a good correction, and I see it. While I incorrectly wrote “representation,” I will opt for the expression from J. Esposito: “From Schiller Peirce took over the idea that reality was a synthesizing interplay of opposing tendencies—a concretizing tendency and a generalizing tendency.” (Peirce Studies Symposium #1 1979, ‘On the Origins and Foundations of Peirce’s Semiotic.’ Peirce lays out these definitions, anticipating his systematic leaning toward developing both a theory of categories and a theory of semiotic process. Perhaps the best treatment of ‘fact and Secondness’ I found is in J. Feibleman’s Introduction to Peirce (1946), pp. 160-61. Important. It seems some of these matters could lead to an exhaustive dissertation. Does anyone recall the talk T. Sebeok delivered in 1989 at the Harvard Sesquicentennial for CSP? I remember taking notes on Indexicality. Sorry for the late reply. Ben, please send me an email. I need to get updated to share digital content. Regards, Atila On Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 1:38 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Mary, List: Thank you for bringing that additional passage by Peirce into the discussion. It is from the 1903 Lowell Lectures and comes a few paragraphs after his definition of "the question of nominalism and [scholastic] realism" as "whether laws and general types are figments of the mind or are real" (1.16), as well as his assertion that "all modern philosophy of every sect has been nominalistic" such that Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hartley, Hume, Reid, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel were all nominalists (1.19). What he says about Aristotle (1.22) echoes his earlier remarks that I quoted in another thread a few days ago--"he may, I think, be described as a nominalist with vague intimations of realism" because he "endeavors to express the universe in terms of Matter [2ns] and Form [1ns] alone," exhibiting only "an obscure conception of what he calls entelechy [3ns]" (NEM 4:294-5, 1901). Since we are focusing here on the definition of "fact," the immediately previous paragraph is also relevant. CSP: The heart of the dispute [between nominalism and scholastic realism] lies in this. The modern philosophers--one and all, unless Schelling be an exception--recognize but one mode of being, the being of an individual thing or fact, the being which consists in the object's crowding out a place for itself in the universe, so to speak, and reacting by brute force of fact, against all other things. I call that existence. (1.21) Nominalists view facts as discrete individuals, not real abstractions prescinded from the continuous whole that is "the all of reality." Similarly, Peirce later identifies "three Universes, which are distinguished by three Modalities of Being" that correspond to his three categories, the second of which "is that of, 1st, Objects whose Being consists in their Brute reactions, and of, 2nd, the facts (reactions, events, qualities, etc.) concerning those Objects, all of which facts, in the last analysis, consist in their reactions. I call the Objects, Things, or more unambiguously, 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" (SS 81-2, EP 2:478-9, 1908 Dec 28). Strictly speaking, this is the only universe that nominalists recognize as real, since it includes qualities that are instantiated in existents. Of course, Peirce considers that position to be untenable. CSP: I do not think that such a thing as a consistent Nominalism is possible. Thus, Pearson, after a long discussion founded on a Nominalism so explicit as to say that it is we who make the Laws of Nature, at last remarks that of course he does not deny the concatenation of events. But Nominalism--or, at least, modern Nominalism,--is precisely the doctrine that the Universe is a heap of sand whose grains have nothing to do with one another, and to recognize concatenation is to recognize that there is something that is not Individual and has another mode of Being than that of an Individual Existent. (SWS 283, 1909 Nov 7) Another example is that although "Leibniz was an extreme nominalist" (1.19), "A great deal of the Leibnizian philosophy consists of attempts to annul the effect of nominalistic hypotheses"; most notably, "his principle of sufficient reason, which he regarded as one of the fundamental principles of logic. This principle is that whatever exists has a reason for existing, not a blind cause, but a reason. A reason is something essentially general, so that this seems to confer reality upon generals" (CP 4.36, 1893). Regards, Jon On Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 8:46 AM Mary Libertin <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, Atila, List, Here is another passage discussing “fact,” from Collected Writings, Volume I. Principles of Philosophy / Book 1: General Historical Orientation / Chapter 1: Lessons from the History of Philosophy / §1. Nominalism. Peirce, in the passage below, connects Aristotle’s “entelechy” to his development of three modes of being. These three modes are described from the perspective of a definition of “fact.” This may be where Peirce is describing, early on, the relationship of abduction — based on probability from a future perspective or retroduction, as does Baynes, who was aware of Peirce’s discussion of abduction — to the other two modes of being. I will let these passages speak for themselves, leaving it open for your discussion. Our discussions will affect how the future will interpret the meaning of “fact." Best, Mary Libertin 22. Aristotle, on the other hand, whose system, like all the greatest systems, was evolutionary, recognized besides an embryonic kind of being, like the being of a tree in its seed, or like the being of a future contingent event, depending on how a man shall decide to act. In a few passages Aristotle seems to have a dim aperçue of a third mode of being in the entelechy. The embryonic being for Aristotle was the being he called matter, which is alike in all things, and which in the course of its development took on form. Form is an element having a different mode of being. The whole philosophy of the scholastic doctors is an attempt to mould this doctrine of Aristotle into harmony with christian truth. This harmony the different doctors attempted to bring about in different ways. But all the realists agree in reversing the order of Aristotle's evolution by making the form come first, and the individuation of that form come later. Thus, they too recognized two modes of being; but they were not the two modes of being of Aristotle. 23. My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future. 24. Let us begin with considering actuality, and try to make out just what it consists in. If I ask you what the actuality of an event consists in, you will tell me that it consists in its happening then and there. The specifications then and there involve all its relations to other existents. The actuality of the event seems to lie in its relations to the universe of existents. A court may issue injunctions and judgments against me and I not care a snap of my finger for them. I may think them idle vapor. But when I feel the sheriff's hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. There is no reason in it. I instance putting your shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality. On the whole, I think we have here a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is. I call that Secondness. 25. Besides this, there are two modes of being that I call Firstness and Thirdness. Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject's being positively such as it is regardless of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others. The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility. And redness in itself, even if it be embodied, is something positive and sui generis. That I call Firstness. We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or may not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities [except] so far as they are actualized. 26. Now for Thirdness. Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction; and in the majority of cases these predictions are fulfilled in the event. Yet a prediction is essentially of a general nature, and cannot ever be completely fulfilled. To say that a prediction has a decided tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the future events are in a measure really governed by a law. If a pair of dice turns up sixes five times running, that is a mere uniformity. The dice might happen fortuitously to turn up sixes a thousand times running. But that would not afford the slightest security for a prediction that they would turn up sixes the next time. If the prediction has a tendency to be fulfilled, it must be that future events have a tendency to conform to a general rule. "Oh," but say the nominalists, "this general rule is nothing but a mere word or couple of words!" I reply, "Nobody ever dreamed of denying that what is general is of the nature of a general sign; but the question is whether future events will conform to it or not. If they will, your adjective 'mere' seems to be ill-placed." A rule to which future events have a tendency to conform is ipso facto an important thing, an important element in the happening of those events. This mode of being which consists, mind my word if you please, the mode of being which consists in the fact that future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call a Thirdness. On Sep 18, 2025, at 8:57 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Atila, List: Peirce indeed prepared the entry<https://server-66-113-234-189.da.direct/century-dictionary.com/html/djvu2jpgframes.php?volno=03&page=336&query=fact> for "fact" in The Century Dictionary--the complete list of his contributions is here<https://www.depts.ttu.edu/pragmaticism/collections/works/bibliography.pdf>, pp. 43-83--and his second definition is indeed the one that is relevant to what we have been discussing. CSP: A real state of things, as distinguished from a statement or belief; that in the real world agreement or disagreement with which makes a proposition true or false; a real inherence of an attribute in a substance, corresponding to the relation between the predicate and the subject of a proposition. By a few writers things in the concrete and the universe in its entirety are spoken of as facts; but according to the almost universal acceptation, a fact is not the whole concrete reality in any case, but an abstract element of the reality. Thus, Julius Caesar is not called a fact; but that Julius Caesar invaded Britain is said to have been a fact, or to be a fact. To this extent, the use of the word fact implies the reality of abstractions. With the majority of writers, also, a fact, or single fact, relates only to an individual thing or individual set of things. Thus, that Brutus killed Caesar is said to have been a fact; but that all men are mortal is not called a fact, but a collection of facts. By fact is also often meant a true statement, a truth, or truth in general; but this seems to be a mere inexactness of language, and in many passages any attempt to distinguish between the meanings on the supposition that fact means a true statement, and on the supposition that it means the real relation signified by a true statement would be empty subtlety. Fact is often used as correlative to theory, to denote that which is certain or well settled--the phenomena which the theory colligates and harmonizes. Fact, as being special, is sometimes opposed to truth, as being universal; and in such cases there is an implication that facts are minute matters ascertained by research, and often inferior in their importance for the formation of general opinions, or for the general description of phenomena, to other matters which are of familiar experience. In short, a fact is not itself a representation, it is what a true proposition represents. As Peirce writes elsewhere, "What we call a 'fact' is something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself" (EP 2:304, 1901); and, "A fact is so highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be wholly represented in a simple proposition" (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906). We often colloquially use "fact" when referring to "a true statement," but it is terminologically more precise to use "fact" as instead referring to "the real relation signified by a true statement," i.e., an "abstract state of things" that is prescinded from the "one individual, or completely determinate, state of things, namely, the all of reality" (ibid.). As Peirce observes, this effectively "implies the reality of abstractions," which is fully consistent with scholastic realism and utterly incompatible with nominalism. 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 Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 4:39 PM Atila Bayat <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I think the Stoic definition of “fact” confuses the sense Peirce was driving at. Your entry seems to reflect the 1st entry in Century Dictionary which Peirce wrote, I believe. Actually the second entry is more fitting for a discussion on fact and truth. I think Peirce suggests/implies a representative characteristic to fact in his semiotics. Or I will check into that again later today. But I had the Century dictionary vols handy. Atila _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► 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]<mailto:[email protected]> . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>?subject=SIG%20peirce-l">UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► 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] . ► <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=SIG%20peirce-l";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
