Jeff D, Gary R, lists,
Jeff, this is a very important point you've raised: JD: Gary F's analogy between the periodic table of elements and Peirce's 10-fold classification of sign types is a helpful, but I have worries about any reconstruction that construes such complex things as dicisigns and arguments as elementary. The article by Bellucci on continuous predicates contains a nice explanation of what makes one or another kind of relation elementary. At root, what Peirce seems to see is that the underlying organization of the periodic chart is driven more by the question of what kinds of bonds can be formed between different kinds of elements and less by the series of of atomic numbers. GF: The connection here is that one dimension of the periodic table arranges the elements by valency, and predicates also have a "valency" (i.e. the number of 'blanks' in them which can be filled by subjects). But it would indeed be misleading to compare the chemical elements with the elements of the phaneron, which Peirce also referred to as "universal categories" or "modes of being", because these are nested within one another in a way that atomic (discrete) elements are not: Secondness is inconceivable without Firstness, and Thirdness without Secondness. And Peirce's advanced semiotic analysis, where the more complex sign types involve simpler types, is based from the start on his phenomenology, as he makes clear in the Syllabus (EP2:267). This entails that in Peirce's analysis of the dicisign or proposition, "subject" and "predicate" are not rigid categories into which the sign-matter is divided; rather the purpose of the analysis can authorize the analyst to "throw everything into the subject" or into the predicate. It also means that signs are capable of self-reference, as we've seen in Chapter 3: the syntax of the dicisign involves an index of its own indexicality, and this is the genesis of the "immediate object", which Peirce initially called the "secondary object". Thus we have "two Objects of a Sign, the Mediate without, and the Immediate within the Sign" (EP2:480). On another level, the argument asserts the truth of its own conclusion (a sign within the sign), and thus makes explicit the truth-claim that was latent in the proposition. This too involves self-reference, although its truth is inconceivable without other-reference, i.e. an indexical connection to an external dynamic object. This brings me to Gary R's question about the relations between concepts and symbols, and where consciousness fits into this picture. Briefly, if we agree that the function of consciousness is to add a higher level of self-control - that is, to enable a being to modify its own habits - we can hypothesize that degrees of consciousness are directly related to levels of self-reference. Thus for instance percepts, which are not subject to conscious control, are the ground level of consciousness, so to speak, while concepts are more self-referential, more internal (where the "self" is the semiotic system hosting both the percepts and the concepts). This is a way of developing Peirce's early intuition that "a man is a sign" but extending the idea of a 'semiotic system' well beyond the human. I think we can go beyond Peirce here by correlating the semiotic system with a cognitive system which is necessarily also a biological system, all of these systems involving layers of self-reference. But I'll leave it there for now, and try to pick up this idea in connection with Chapter 5, where Frederik introduces some intriguing analogical connections between Peircean semiotics and neuroscience. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 1-Nov-14 5:42 PM To: 'Peirce List'; 'biosemiotics list' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7309] Natural Propositions chapter four Gary F., Lists, I would add the following to what Gary F. says. The names for the three-fold divisions between rheme, dicisign, and argument, and between qualisign, sinsign and legisign are developed in the last decade of his career, but Peirce is explicitly working within a tradition in logic that makes distinctions beween term, proposition and argument, and between token instance of a rule and an embodied rule as a habit. Peirce is doing a number of things in the last decade by way of expanding the account of what is necessary for a representation to function as a sign, but two points that seem important for understanding Frederik's reconstruction in NP of Peirce's position are the following: 1. Peirce is broadening the explanations of terms and propositions by by providing accounts of what is necessary for a rheme to be significant and for a dicisign to represent something as true. 2. He is applying his account of the various kinds of relations that can obtain between sign, object and interpretant to the classification of different kinds of signs. Gary F's analogy between the periodic table of elements and Peirce's 10-fold classification of sign types is a helpful, but I have worries about any reconstruction that construes such complex things as dicisigns and arguments as elementary. The article by Bellucci on continuous predicates contains a nice explanation of what makes one or another kind of relation elementary. At root, what Peirce seems to see is that the underlying organization of the periodic chart is driven more by the question of what kinds of bonds can be formed between different kinds of elements and less by the series of of atomic numbers. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Gary Fuhrman [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2014 7:11 AM To: 'Peirce List'; 'biosemiotics list' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7309] Natural Propositions chapter four Edwina, thanks for this very useful summary, and for citing your sources. One comment for the benefit of those just coming to grips with the three trichotomies: Peirce does discuss the icon/index/symbol trichotomy "all through his work"; but his writings about the other two and about the "ten classes" are all from the final decade of his life, mostly 1903-08. It's true that these writings are scattered "all through" the Collected Papers (because of the arbitrary way those were "collected"), but most of them are conveniently gathered in the latter half of The Essential Peirce volume 2 - which for most people is more accessible than the CP anyway, and has the overwhelming advantage of being chronological. That's why I usually cite EP2 in discussions of Peirce's detailed semiotic analysis, including his work on Dicisigns, which is the main topic of NP. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Edwina Taborsky [ <mailto:[email protected]> mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 1-Nov-14 9:08 AM To: Jerry LR Chandler; Peirce List; biosemiotics list Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7309] Natural Propositions chapter four Jerry 1) The nine terms (eg, icon, index, symbol; qualisign, sinsign, legisign; rheme, dicent, argument) refer to the nine possible RELATIONS that the three 'nodes' of the semiosic triad have. Peirce discusses these all through his work. The Relations are defined by two factors: their categorical mode (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) and their Relation (relation to the Object; relation in itself; relation to the Interpretant). See, for example. 8.334 and on (Welby letters), where he writes such statements as "In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects, I divide signs into Icons, Indices and Symbols"....And "In regard to its relation to its signified interpretant, a sign is either a Rheme, a Dicent, or an Argument". (8.337)...and so on. Then, another site (and as I said, Peirce discusses these issues throughout his work, so these are only two)...See 2.243, where he writes that "Signs are divisible by three trichotomoies, first according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law; secondly, according as the relation of the sign to its object consists in the sign's having some character in itself, or in some existential relation to that object, or in its relation to an interpretant; thirdly, according as its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility or as a sign of fact or a sign of reason". Essentially, these 3 x 3 can be put into a triangular table, a kind of crosstabs with the three Categories (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness) on, eg, the horizontal line and the three Relations (with Object, Representamen in itself, with Interpretant) on the vertical. You come up with an ordered 9 'types' in this manner. ( Spinks does this in his 'Triadomania' extensive analysis). 2) The ten classes (2.254) are the full triad of Relations: Object-Representamen-Interpretant. Peirce did diagrams of these in, eg, 2.264. Again, it can be set up as an ordered outline according to Categories and Relations. 3) It can become more complicated when the analysis deepens with adding the Immediate Object, and the three types of Interpretants....but the basic diagrams give us the 9 types of Relations and the 10 classes of signs. 4) As for your comment asking about the 'molecular formula' as an 'index of the sinsign'...I don't understand this statement. A molecular formula, to me, as a set of letters/words, has a purely symbolic relation to the actual chemical components.....The chemical composition would be a legisign (a sinsign is "an actual existent thing or event which is a sign" (2.245) while a legisign "is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established by men....it is not a single object but a general type"...2.246. Edwina
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