Jeff,
I see that the list has been busy while I’ve been off doing other things, so it might take me awhile to catch up, starting with this message of yours. I too would like to learn more about the way Peirce is drawing on the phenomenological categories as he categorizes different kinds of signs and sign relations. I see the concept of degeneracy as very much entwined with that inquiry, and in fact it was trying to get a handle on Vinicius Romanini’s treatment of degeneracy as applied to sign relations that got me started on this line of inquiry lately. I’ve just started reading the Nathan Houser piece that you cited, and so far I’m finding it both concise and accurate. This excerpt especially impressed me as a helpful summary of the three trichotomies in NDTR: “Perhaps it is evident that Peirce's categories inform all of these triadic divisions; that the rows descend from firstness to thirdness and the columns move right from firstness to thirdness. The sign's ground (the nature of the sign in itself) QUALISIGN SINSIGN LEGISIGN The sign's relation to its object ICON INDEX SYMBOL How the sign is represented in its interpretant RHEME DICENT ARGUMENT “Bearing in mind that higher categories can involve components from lower categories, but not vice versa …” (The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (Routledge Companions) (pp. 92-93). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.) Now, one way of referring to the “categories” is as three “modes of being,” as Peirce does in the “Logic of Mathematics” for instance. So we can say that the first trichotomy is according to the mode of being of the sign in itself, which is the First Correlate of a triadic relation. If that mode of being is Thirdness, then we have a Legisign; and so on down to the Qualisign. The second trichotomy, though, is according to the mode of being of the sign’s relation to its object, which of course is a dyadic relation (CP 2.239). If the mode of being of that relation is Thirdness, then we have a Symbol, and so on. We could also trichotomize sign types according to the other two dyadic relations (S-I and O-I), as Peirce says in 2.239, and combining those trichotomies would give us a different set of ten sign types from the one Peirce gives in NDTR. As far as I know, Peirce never carried out that kind of analysis, not even in his ten-trichotomy division a few years later. Why not? I think that’s an interesting question which has some bearing on what the mode of being of a relation can be. The third trichotomy is according to the mode of being of the representation of the sign in its interpretant, which of course is a triadic relation. If the mode of being of that triadic relation itself is Thirdness, then we have an Argument, and so on. But that’s all I have time for tonight! Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 5-Dec-15 17:02 Hello Gary F., List, I'd like to learn more about the way Peirce is drawing on the phenomenological categories as he categorizes different kinds of signs and sign relations. Focusing on this first division between qualisign, sinsign and legisign, what guidance are we getting from Peirce's account of the more degenerate and more genuine features of the categories. In "Peirce, Phenomenology and Semiotics," (In the Routledge Companion to Semiotics), Nathan Houser provides the following table as a way of clarifying Peirce's account of the universal categories. Structure of the Phaneron 1. Universal categories: forms of firstness a. Firstness b. Secondness c. Thirdness 2. Universal categories: forms of secondness a. Qualia (facts of firstness) b. Relation (facts of secondness) c. Representamen (facts of thirdness) 3. Universal categories: forms of thirdness a. Feeling (signs of firstness) b. Brute fact (signs of secondness) c. Thought (signs of thirdness) While I like the general idea of trying to figure out how the different aspects of Peirce's account of the categories might be fitted together, I'm not able to square what Nathan is providing in this table with the various texts on phenomenology and phaneroscopy. Does anyone have suggestions for how we might either justify this account or how we might modify it to make it fit better with what Peirce says? The reason I ask is that Nathan offers a number of rich suggestions for thinking about the ways that Peirce is drawing on the universal categories in phenomenology for the purposes of setting up the 10-fold classification of signs in the semiotic theory. As such, I'd like work this out in some more detail. In order to stimulate some discussion, let me point out that Peirce offers some interesting remarks about the degenerate forms of the universal categories in the Collected Papers at 1.521-44. He describes, for instance, the differences involved in the firstness and secondness of a second, and the those involved in the firstness, secondness and thirdness of a third. Any ideas about how we might draw on these distinctions for the purposes of justifying or amending the kind of table that Nathan has offered? --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354
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