Edwina, List: Responses interleaved below.
EDWINA: See my comments below:..a side note; can you deal with your font. I can't read the small print - and can't seem to change it on my computer. JON: Strange, your font is the one that has been coming up small when I read and reply to your messages. I wonder if this is a List issue, a Gmail issue, both, or neither. Hopefully this message will come through better for you. Note that if you visit http://news.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce, you can see each message reproduced entirely in one consistent (and readable) font. EDWINA: Yes, only Actuals EXIST, but I am very cautious about your use of 'would-be'. Peirce writes: 'there is certainly a third kind of Interpretant, which I call the Final Interpretant, because it is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached" (8.184). BUT - this Final Interpretant, which is a 'would-be' is NOT, I repeat NOT the same thing as 'general types'. The general type is a universal, and for Peirce, who is an Aristotelian and not a Platonist, generals are REAL. They are not some 'future would-be'; they are REAL, but function only within the articulation of particulars. This is not the same as a consideration of what the ultimate truth might-be, if we analyzed the situation long enough. JON: Understood, thanks for the clarification. EDWINA: Reality and existentiality are not the same thing. Peirce is referring, in this section to Habits - which are not the same as the Final Interpretant, but are operative within Thirdness...and usually, function within the Representamen, since they are generals and are not 'actualized' in discrete units'. Yes, truth is found in the Final Interpretant. But truth and habits are not identical. JON: Agreed, that brings into the picture what Peirce called the ultimate logical interpretant. EDWINA: If the FI is in a mode of Secondness, AND, in your example, the DI is in Firstness, then, of course, the II must be in a mode of Firstness. It cannot be in a higher energy-intensive mode! JON: Got it, thanks. Again, this confirms If>Id>Ii. EDWINA: But - we'd have to define what we mean by 'information' - and I'd say that the term refers to a reduction in ambiguity. JON: Right, as I stated, more information = greater determination = less vagueness. * * * Next question--given that If>Id>Ii, where do the three interpretant relation trichotomies fit? S-Id = Relation of the Sign to the Dynamic Interpretant = Manner of Appeal to the Dynamic Intepretant - Presented/Suggestive, Urged/Imperative, Submitted/Indicative. S-If = Relation of the Sign to the Normal/Final Interpretant = Nature of the Influence of the Sign - Rheme/Seme, Dicent/Pheme, Argument/Delome. S-Od-If = Triadic Relation of the Sign to the Dynamic Object and Its Normal/Final Interpretant = Nature of the Assurance of the Utterance - Instinct, Experience, Form. According to Peirce (CP8.338), we also know that S-If>S-Id. Here are some arrangements, consistent with this, that I have seen. (a) If>Id>Ii>S-If>S-Id>S-Od-If. (b) If>S-If>Id>S-Id>Ii>S-Od-If. (c) S-Od-If>S-If>If>S-Id>Id>Ii. All of the correlates come before all of the relations in (a), and each correlate comes right before its corresponding relation in (b), except that the triadic relation is last. What bothers me about (c)--which has been advocated in years past by Ben Udell and Bernard Morand, perhaps others--is that it involves relation trichotomies determining their constituent correlate trichotomies. It seems to me that, just as S-Od comes after both Od and S, likewise S-If must come after both S and If, S-Id must come after both S and Id, and S-Od-If must come after Od, S, If, and S-If. The problem is that I can offer no good reason for such a restriction, other than the common-sense notion that a relation cannot be more determinate than any of its relata. Am I wrong about this? Regards, Jon
----------------------------- 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 .
