Jon, Gary, List,
Involution, if I´m right, appears in trichotomies, and correlation in triads. The three interpretants, as I think now, differently from before, are a triad, and the two objects a dyad. Not a tricho- resp. dichotomy! All categories come together, so how can there be a dyad? Because it is only prescinded. To me it makes sense to say, that in reality all categories always appear together. And that even a sign triad with a qualisign has three correlates, and the full hexad too. Even if the sign is "possibility". Just then all three resp. six elements pretty much look the same like each other. The meaning of the word "possibility" implies anticipation. If it is only possibility, what is the object? Everything, that determines this possibility. The interpretant is everything, that is possible. As long, as everything, that determines the possibility, is everything, it is pure possibiliy, and nothing happens. Only, when the possibility is restricted, something happens, and then the object isn´t anymore everything, but a subset of everything: Something. And an interpretant is determined, which is different from pure possibility. The interpretant then delivers a new sign, and so on. So, pure possibility is an unstable thing, it just needs a little haphazard restriction, then things start, and unfold. Sounds a bit like the beginning of "Science of Logic" by Hegel, but I don´t like him. Anyway, my point in this post was, that I think, that in reality (other than in prescinded parts) all categories always come together, and degeneracy does not mean there, that any elements are missing, but that some of them look quite similar to each other.
Best, Helmut
28. Oktober 2025 um 23:25
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <[email protected]>
wrote:Gary R., List:
GR: Ransdell's affirmation of three-category involution as opposed to giving priority to 1ns is remarkable given that his philosophical specialty was iconicity which, of course, is rooted in 1ns
I would imagine that he recognized iconicity as 1ns of 3ns, not pure 1ns--a qualitative aspect of signs and semiosis.
GR: The principal point here is that once a universe has come into being and there is semiosis, the categories never appear except together.
I agree. As early as 1867, Peirce recognizes in "A New List of Categories," the article that four decades later he describes as "my one contribution to philosophy" (CP 8.213, c. 1905), that we prescind them from what he eventually calls the phaneron, and that we do so in the order of involution--3ns as representation (later mediation), then 2ns as relation (later reaction), then 1ns as quality.
GR: I am certainly not alone in finding that Peirce's Blackboard argument in the 1898 (so called "cosmic lectures") makes more sense--in my view, is more logical--than thinking that something--a cosmos--can come out of nothing, or out of 1ns.
Again, I agree. Even in "A Guess at the Riddle," the categories emerge from "the womb of indeterminacy" (CP 1.412, EP 1:278, 1887-8), which Peirce is contrasting with "the womb of homogeneity" as posited by "Thales and the early Ionian philosophers" (CP 1.373, EP 1:256-7). In the blackboard lecture, he further clarifies that the initial state is "the utter vagueness of completely undetermined and dimensionless potentiality," such that "It must be by a contraction of the vagueness of that potentiality of everything in general, but of nothing in particular, that the world of forms comes about" (CP 6.193&196, 1898). In other words, vague potentiality is generality (3ns)--"Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general" (CP 6.204)--not a hodgepodge of individual possibilities (1ns), which only came about when "that unbounded potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort--that is, of some quality" (6.220). "We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. ... It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. ... So of potential being there was in that initial state no lack" (CP 6.217)--nothing actual (2ns), but an inexhaustible continuum (3ns) of indefinite possibilities (1ns). This is what the blackboard itself represents as "a sort of diagram of the original vague potentiality, or at any rate of some early stage of its determination" (CP 6.203).
GR: Perhaps the subtlest point regarding involution in all its expressions (not just the cosmic) is that involution does not prioritize 3ns--that is, it doesn't make it "fundamental" or "basic" (all three are 'basic').
This is indeed a very subtle but important point, worth exploring at some length, so I will save that exposition for a future post.
GR: For me, the essential thing--the first thing, the most important thing--is to grasp Peirce's ideas clearly, even if--perhaps especially if--one strongly disagrees with some aspect of his philosophy. Only then will the real world application of his philosophy be adequately grounded and further developed.
Once more, I heartily agree. As I have often said before, the problem with trying to apply Peirce's ideas to today's challenges while using different terms--besides blatantly violating his own ethics of terminology--is that they all too often end up conveying different concepts. As you mentioned a few days ago, describing semiosis with an input/output model is an example of this, misleadingly (even if unintentionally) implying that the same sign always produces the same interpretant for the same object--just as a mathematical function always produces the same output for the same input, even when the corresponding equation is nonlinear. On the contrary, different instances of the same sign with the same (dynamical) object routinely produce different (dynamical) interpretants, not only for different interpreters, but often for the same interpreter at different times.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 12:51 AM Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:
List,Over the years many scholars -- including Joseph Ransdell, creator, moderator, and manager of both Arisbe and Peirce-L until his death in December, 2010 -- have argued for Peirce's idea of categorial involution (Ransdell's affirmation of three-category involution as opposed to giving priority to 1ns is remarkable given that his philosophical speciality was iconicity which, of course, is rooted in 1ns).Categorial involution simply holds that 3ns involves 2ns and 1ns, and 2ns involves only 1ns (which category is incapable of generating anything given its essential character as lacking, in itself, both law and matter).CSP: 2ns is an essential part of 3ns though not of 1ns, and 1ns is an essential element of both 2ns and 3ns. (CP 1.530, 1903)From the cosmological perspective of the 1898 lectures the categories are always-already in place -- or virtually so. But note that the categories appear upon that ur-continuity (represented by a clean blackboard) in that metaphysical 'time before time' 'before' this universe was.Jon Alan Schmidt has suggested that it's certainly conceivable that the general substrate (3ns) and the other categories appear virtually simultaneously. Yet even if that were so, still continuity (3ns) must be 1st in order that the other categories have a substrate upon which to appear. Of course 1ns and 2ns are necessary for generality to have 'material' upon which a cosmos might be evolved. The principal point here is that once a universe has come into being and there is semiosis, the categories never appear except together.I am certainly not alone in finding that Peirce's Blackboard argument in the 1898 (so called "cosmic lectures") makes more sense -- in my view, is more logical -- than thinking that something -- a cosmos -- can come out of nothing, or out of 1ns. In fact, 1ns is no 'thing' at all! 1ns is but the mere possibility of a quality or character being manifest. And it has been noted by Jon and others that Peirce didn't abandon his early cosmological view. Rather, he came to see that if there were to be a Universe with an existential order of 1ns -> 2ns -> 3ns, then there must be a ground upon which it might come into being, an ur-continuity; an aboriginal generality. IN my view, that would appear to be the theme of the last lectures in the 1898 series.Perhaps the subtlest point regarding involution in all its expressions (not just the cosmic) is that involution does not prioritize 3ns -- that is, it doesn't make it "fundamental" or "basic" (all three are 'basic'). Rather, 3ns, as generality and continuity, is necessary for categorial and semiosic appearance and _expression_ to occur at all. Involution merely describes how the categories are related to each other, nested like the famous Russian toy dolls.
Many -- I would suggest most -- scholars agree with Peirce’s claim that the categories are “nested” and not parallel.. Here are just a few 21st century examples.P. M. Borges -- “Indeterminacy and final causation in the process of sign determination,” Cognitio – Revista de Filosofia (2022) “This corresponds to what occurs in the logic of the categories in which thirdness involves secondness and firstness, just as secondness involves firstness.”Scott Metzger -- Peirce’s Semeiotic Realism ( McMaster, 2024) “The categories are like Russian dolls: Thirdness involves Secondness and Firstness, Secondness involves Firstness, and Firstness is as it is apart from any Second or Third.” Dinda L. Gorlée -- “A sketch of Peirce’s Firstness and its significance to art” (2009) Secondness integrates Firstness … Thirdness must integrate Secondness and FirstnessWinfried Nöth -- “Evolution of Peircean Key Terms and Topics,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47(4), 2011 “Whereas a sign or representation is a matter of genuine thirdness, its embodiment in a replica is a matter of ‘Secondness involved in Thirdness’ (cf. CP 1.530) …”I have also been keenly interested in the work of a number of scholars who have explored and creatively worked to go beyond the text*** in the interest of applying Peircean principles and methods in developing fresh resources in various domains.[***A Peirce text, say a quotation, is interpretively not mine, not theirs, not yours, but Peirce's. In my opinion, even one writing a paraphrase of an excerpt ought to strive to represent the 'meaning' of that selected text as accurately and fully and richly -- optimally -- as a very good translator of, say, a poem from Italian to English would attempt to do.]I have drastically shortened the following list to include only scholars I've known personally (that is, as a colleague/friend), and a few others whose work I know well and with whom I've at least had discussions at conferences and workshops or via email. Here are some "beyond the text" scholars, in my view all being relatively true to Peirce's expressed meaning in his writings, and whether or not they agree with him on particular matters or not. The description of their work is in each case wholly inadequate at suggesting the depth and breath of their interests and scholarship.Eliseo Fernández -- semiotic constraints and habit-formation in technical desFernando Zalamea -- Peirce’s logic of continuity applied within modern mathematics;Vinicius Romanini -- biosemiotics and the semiotic basis of life processes;Jon Alan Schmidt -- engineering ethics informed, in part, by Peirce's ethics of inquiry;Terrence Deacon -- teleodynamics and emergent mind-like processes in nature;Gary Fuhrman -- Turning Signs, which book discusses natural and cultural semiosis;Michael Shapiro -- Contributions to Peircean linguistics and semiotic phonology;Joseph Dauben -- applications of Peircean ideas in mathematics;John Deely -- the role of signs in animal behavior and the broader semiosphere;Simon Polovina -- inter-enterprise architecture using existential graphs and triadic logic.In my view, the folk above "got Peirce right" -- that is, they interpreted what he said correctly (to some considerable degree then tend to agree with each other on Peircean principles and methods), while they also tend to speak the same Peircean conceptual language (more or less).For me, the essential thing -- the first thing, the most important thing -- is to grasp Peirce's ideas clearly, even if -- perhaps especially if -- one strongly disagrees with some aspect of his philosophy. Only then will the real world application of his philosophy be adequately grounded and further developed.Best,Gary R
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