Lists,
As we move into 2015 we'll be resuming our study of Stjernfelt's Natural
Propositions, with Gary Richmond continuing the discussion of Chapter 8.
We'll also have time in January to revisit questions about previous
chapters, as we won't be starting Chapter 9 etc. until next month, but we're
also focussing on iconicity (or rather iconicities).
I thought this would be a good time to post an excerpt from a draft letter
to Lady Welby which Peirce wrote in the spring of 1906. This passage, in the
course of explaining the relation between "thought" and "sign", explicitly
relates existential graphs to dicisigns, which "we may, from one point of
view, regard as the principal kind of signs." This struck me as a good way
to reintroduce the discussion of iconicity in NP Chapter 8; it also reminds
us of the peculiar syntax of the dicisign (NP 3.7).
Existential graphs are to be conceived as scribed upon the different leaves
of a whole book. This whole book represents the thought (upon a given
subject) of one mind. Each leaf represents a single stage of that thought.
In the beginning, the successive leaves must represent strictly successive
states of thought-I speak of, logical succession. But afterward when the
minute anatomy of the thinking process has been mastered by the reader one
can successively enlarge the intervals of development between the states of
thought that successive leaves represent.
The blank leaf itself is the quasi-mind. I almost despair of making clear
what I mean by a "quasi-mind;" But I will try. A thought is not per se in
any mind or quasi-mind. I mean this in the same sense as I might say that
Right or Truth would remain what they are though they were not embodied, &
though nothing were right or true. But a thought, to gain any active mode of
being must be embodied in a Sign. A thought is a special variety of sign.
All thinking is necessarily a sort of dialogue, an appeal from the momentary
self to the better considered self of the immediate and of the general
future. Now as every thinking requires a mind, so every sign even if
external to all minds must be a determination of a quasi-mind. This
quasi-mind is itself a sign, a determinable sign. Consider for example a
blank-book. It is meant to be written in. Words written in that in due order
will have quite another force from the same words scattered accidentally on
the ground, even should these happen to have fallen into collections which
would have a meaning if written in the blank-book. The language employed in
discoursing to the reader, and the language emplyed to express the thought
to which the discourse relates should be kept distinct and each should be
selected for its peculiar fitness for the purpose it was to serve. For the
discoursing language I would use English, which has special merits for the
treatment of logic. For the language discoursed about, I would use the
system of Existential Graphs throughout which has no equal for this purpose.
I use the word "Sign" in the widest sense for any medium for the
communication or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is
determined by something, called its Object, and determines something, called
its Interpretant or Interpretand. But some distinctions have to be borne in
mind in order rightly to understand what is meant by the Object and by the
Interpretant. In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is
necessary that it should have been really embodied in a Subject
independently of the communication; and it is necessary that there should be
another subject in which the same form is embodied only in consequence of
the communication. The Form (and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it
really determines the former Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet
we may and indeed must say that the object of a sign can be nothing but what
that sign represents it to be. Therefore, in order to reconcile these
apparently conflicting truths, it is indispensable to distinguish the
immediate object from the dynamical object.
The same form of distinction extends to the interpretant; but as applied to
the interpretant, it is complicated by the circumstance that the sign not
only determines the interpretant to represent (or to take the form of) the
object, but also determines the interpretant to represent the sign. Indeed
in what we may, from one point of view, regard as the principal kind of
signs, there is one distinct part appropriated to representing the object,
and another to representing how this very sign itself represents that
object. The class of signs I refer to are the dicisigns. In "John is in love
with Helen" the object signified is the pair, John and Helen. But the "is in
love with" signifies the form this sign represents itself to represent
John-and-Helen's Form to be. That this is so, is shown by the precise
equivalence between any verb in the indicative and the same made the object
of "I tell you." "Jesus wept" = "I tell you that Jesus wept."
The last two of these paragraphs, plus two more, are printed in EP2:477-8.
Semiotic and Significs, p. 197-201, continues the excerpt still further, if
anyone wants to follow up.
gary f.
} Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he
would not ask any question. [Peirce] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
-----------------------------
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] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
