Jerry, EP2:477 is from a 1906 letter from Peirce to Lady Welby, and the EP2
editors chose to omit part of it, including the paragraph preceding the one
that I quoted. Restoring this context may help to clear up your confusion about
Peirce’s usage of “embodied,” which is compatible with the first meaning you
quote from the Apple dictionary. Here are the two paragraphs together:
[[ 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 employed 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 one sentence that you quoted from this in your earlier post says that the
Form (which is communicated or extended by the Sign) is embodied in two
subjects, in one of them independently of the communication, and in the other
as a consequence of the communication. Your original question, “How is a sign
embodied in two different objects?”, does not make sense in that context.
Gary f.
} Wipe your glosses with what you know. [Finnegans Wake 304] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 25-Oct-15 13:57
To: Peirce List <[email protected]>
List:
In a separate post, it is stated:
Jerry, the sign is not embodied in two different objects, it is embodied in two
differentsubjects. Communication always involves at least two subjects; even
thought, according to Peirce, is dialogic. Any given thought is “embodied” when
it actually occurs to (or is initiated by) a living subject, instead of being
just a possibility.
This assertion (usage) is problematic and certainly in remote from my
interpretation of the meaning of the EP2:477.
The dictionary definition of "embody" is the meaning CSP is referring to, I
presume (because of his background in logic and chemistry):
Apple dictionary states:
"embody" as defined in a dictionary is the meaning that I refer to:
embody |emˈbädē|verb ( embodies, embodying, embodied ) [ with obj. ]1 be an
expression of or give a tangible or visible form to (an idea, quality,
orfeeling): a team that embodies competitive spirit and skill.• provide (a
spirit) with a physical form.2 include or contain (something) as a constituent
part: the changes in law embodiedin the Freedom of Information Act.
Gary's usage is problematic.
CSP usage (as well as the dictionary's and mine) are consistent with usages
such as "atoms are embodied in molecules"
Or, propositional terms are embodied in propositional logic.
Or, "DNA is embodied as a chemical fact of biological reproductions"
Cheers
Jerry
On Oct 25, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
List:
On Oct 25, 2015, at 7:41 AM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
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.
Are there two mysteries associated with EP2:477?
What is the philosophical meaning of embodiment in this context?
How is a sign embodied in two different objects?
What is the meaningful distinction between "communication" in
should have been really embodied in a Subject independently of the communication
and "communication" in
same form is embodied only in consequence of the communication.
Cheers
Jerry
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