Helmut, List: If the *quality *of beauty (or whiteness or mass) *itself *serves as a sign of some *other *possible quality, then it is obviously a qualisign/potisign/tone, so it can *only *be an abstractive and a descriptive--there is nothing problematic about this. However, Peirce states that the *word *"beauty" is an abstractive, even though (like all words) it is a legisign/famisign/type, which--according to what he says elsewhere in the very same text--can *only *be a collective and a copulant.
Another puzzling example is when he says (twice) that while the universal proposition "Any S is P" is a copulant, the particular proposition "Some S is P" is a descriptive (CP 8.357&361, EP 2:486&488). The only difference between them is the *quantification *of the subject, and Peirce sometimes even labels the trichotomy for the immediate object as vague/singular/general accordingly. However, this is plainly inconsistent with *every *proposition being either indexical or symbolic as firmly established in his 1903 taxonomy, and thus either a sinsign/actisign/token or a legisign/famisign/type, such that it *cannot *be a descriptive, only a designative or a copulant (CP 8.361&367, EP 2:488-9). Further working out these kinds of later developments in Peirce's speculative grammar is not merely a matter of terminology, unless every sign having two objects (and three interpretants) has no relevance to "the actuality of semiosis." I wonder, can Robert's mathematical lattice approach be extended to the resulting additional trichotomies and sign classes? Might it shed some helpful light on these apparent inconsistencies in Peirce's initial classifications of signs according to "the Mode of Being of the Dynamical Object," "the Mode of Presentation of the Immediate Object," "the Mode of Apprehension of the Sign itself," and "the Relation of the Sign to its Dynamical Object" (CP 8.344, EP 2:482)? Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sat, Sep 27, 2025 at 8:47 AM Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote: > Supplement: Fur colours/ whiteness might count, that e.g. a white orchid´s > colour for an insect is of a different colour (ultraviolet ith black > stripes?). For mass, I don´t know. Was Peirce wrong by subsuming it under > abstractives, or has it something to do with as well being effete mind? > 26. September 2025 um 21:19 > "Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, List, > > I think, there´s on one hand the possible meaning of a token of a > necessitant type, its immediate interpretant, and on the other hand an > abstractive, whose type is not a necessitant, but a possible. "Beauty" on > first sight seems like of a necessitant type, like a copulant, because > beauty commonsensely exists. But beauty does not exist in any explicit > place, because it always may be, that what one person regards for > beautiful, another person does not. So there is a chance, that there is > nothing everybody would find beautiful. Meaning: It is not clear, that > beauty exists, it merely is possible. That´s why Peirce says, beauty is an > abstractive, I´d say. > > Best, Helmut >
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