Gary F., lists,
It's not that Joe Ransdell simply saw no difference between phaneroscopy
and semiotics. It's that he had trouble understanding, among other
things, how phaneroscopy, as conceived as a science by Peirce, could
work successfully.
Some posts on the subject:
June 11,2009 from Joe R.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/5644/focus=5650
June 12, 2009 from Gary R.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/5644/focus=5654
June 12, 2009 from Joe R.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/5644/focus=5665
July 3, 2009 from Gary R.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/5687
July 4, 2009 from Joe R.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/5687/focus=5691
That's not the whole discussion! But it's a start.
Best, Ben
On 11/30/2014 11:58 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
“Firstness”, “Secondness” and “Thirdness” are hypostatic abstractions.
I’m afraid those who can’t see the difference between hypostatic
abstraction and prescission — see /Natural Propositions/ 6.10 — are
always left “bending over backwards” to force Peirce’s terms into
their own prior categories, because the /practice/ of prescission
eludes them. This produces the kind of muddle that confuses semiotics
with phaneroscopy, and both with introspective psychology.
The elements of the phaneron, which those hypostatic abstractions give
names to, are undiscernible in that muddle. Once you’ve made their
acquaintance, they are unavoidable; but words can’t furnish that
acquaintance, and if your universe of discourse is totally verbal, I
suppose it’s quite inaccessible. Perhaps some people, even some
accomplished philosophers and scientists, are constitutionally
(genetically?) unable to practice phaneroscopy — even such a
distinguished Peircean as Joe Ransdell didn’t see a difference between
phaneroscopy and semiotics! — and there’s no hope of understanding it
without /practicing/ it.
I guess one way of coping with the situation (of not knowing what
Peirce was talking about) is to argue that /Peirce/ didn’t know what
he was talking about. Unfortunately such arguments are impervious to
experience, and thus to logic as an experiential science (CP 7.526).
gary f.
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Brenner
Sent: 30-Nov-14 7:22 AM
The Peircean semiotic doctrine could be made more acceptable, to me at
least, by the elimination of just one word - pure. I do not see, even
in its own universe of discourse, why Firstness and Secondness must be
totally disjunct. It is this that makes them, as Howard says,
abstractions.
A vague, semi-unconscious awareness of general aspects of existence is
something that can be experienced or observed but is qualitatively
different enough from everyday experience to justify (I am leaning
over backwards) the designation of Firstness. But there is no
necessary ontological 'boundary' between Firstness and Secondness.
They are inseparable categorial features of existence, one or the
other of which is (primarily) actualized or predominates in any real
(cognitive) situation, at the expense of the other.
Joseph
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