Jeff,
To some of your questions I have no answer because I don’t really understand what motivates your asking them, and I think you may be asking questions about qualisigns that just don’t apply to them. So I’ll just insert the answers I can give. Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 6-Dec-15 11:28 To: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations Hello Gary F., List, Having looked a bit at how Peirce is drawing distinctions between various aspects of the phenomenological categories--conceived of in terms of both relations and relationships--in their more genuine and degenerative forms, I'd like to see if we can apply these ideas to the classification of sign types. Here are a first set of questions about the first classification which is based on the mode in which the sign itself is apprehended. Here is the classification Peirce offers in NDTR: A. Mode of Apprehension of Sign itself: 1. Qualisign-tone, mark 2. Sinsign-token, instance 3. Legisign-type, rule GF: You’re mixing the NDTR terminology with 1908 terminology here, but I don’t object to the way you’ve done it. Here are some quick questions about the qualisign. While we are considering this sign as it is apprehended in itself, its capacity to function as a sign depends on its relations to an object and an interpretant. After all, this classification is part of a larger system of a classification of genuinely triadic relations. Let me get a bit ahead of the story--just for the sake of taking a closer look at what Peirce is doing here. First, is a qualisign a rheme, or isn't it? Second, is a qualisign an icon, or isn't it? GF: Peirce’s answer to both questions is Yes, in CP 2.254: “a Qualisign is necessarily an Icon. Further, since a quality is a mere logical possibility, it can only be interpreted as a sign of essence, that is, as a Rheme.” The reason I ask is that, when we move to the larger 66-fold classification, Peirce characterizes the division between icon, index and symbol in terms of the relation between sign and dynamical interpretant. In the same system, he classifies the division between rheme, dicisign and argument in terms of the relation between sign and final interpretant. With these divisions in mind, what should we say about the relation between the qualisign and the object considered simply as an object of thought (i.e., an immediate object)? The term "icon" doesn't appear to be a classification that applies to this kind of relation. GF: I don’t see why not. How can the relation between a qualisign and its object be anything other than iconic? Similarly, what should we say about the relation between the qualisign and the immediate interpretant? The term "rheme" doesn't appear to apply to this kind of relation. GF: I don’t see why not in this case either. But then, perhaps I don’t get the point of your question. In practice, especially at this earlier stage in his thinking about signs and sign relations (circa 1903), he sometimes characterizes the qualisign as something that not only can but must function as an icon. In other places, he quite deliberatively leaves the term "icon" out and simply calls them qualisigns. GF: “deliberatively”? It’s simply redundant to mention that a qualisign is an icon. What does this tell us about the way Peirce might be developing the conception of the Qualisign in 1903? You point out that Peirce characterizes the Qualisign in these terms: As a Sign, this “quality” must be a correlate of a triadic relation with its Object and Interpretant, “by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible Interpretant” (CP 2.242). Then, you add the point that Peirce makes: yet it cannot act as a sign until it is embodied, i.e. until it becomes involved in at least a dyadic relation, and thus enters the universe of existence. GF: I think we need to look at all of Peirce’s uses of “embodied” in NDTR to see as exactly as possible what it means. Like “determine”, it’s difficult to define out of context. Let's think about what is involved in the embodiment of the qualisign--where a token sinsign is functioning to refer to something. In the Lowell Lectures of 1903, Peirce says this: "Now we found the genuine and degenerate forms of Secondness by considering the full ideas of first and second. Then the genuine Secondness was found to be reaction, where first and second are both true seconds and the Secondness is something distinct from them, while in degenerate Secondness, or mere reference, the first is a mere first never attaining full Secondness." CP 1.535. What light might this shed on the character of the qualisign? As a sign, it draws attention to some quality of feeling and thereby serves the function of providing reference to a ground. How does the qualisign provide such a reference? Well, it enables us to refer to a range of abstract possibilities. For instance, if I look at a book and notice that the color of the cover is scarlet, this feeling of scarlet is capable of functioning as a qualisign. Peirce points out, however, that the hue of the color considered in its monadic firstness alone is not able to function as a sign. In order for it to serve this function, it must be connected to something. The simplest kind of relation that the quality of scarlet can be in is one of containment, such as we find in the essential dyadic relation between scarlet being contained in red. Peirce goes further, however, and says that it isn't possible to make comparisons between colors that are actually experienced unless there are richer sorts of relations. For instance, in "The Logic of Mathematics" he says the only primary essential dyadism is that between "a containing monadic quality and a contained monadic quality. For qualities cannot resemble one another nor contrast with one another unless in respect to a third quality; so that the resemblance of qualities is triadic. This, however, is a point calling for reexamination in a future revision of this analysis." What is necessary for the qualisign to stand in the kind of triadic relation that is necessary for the very possibility of making comparisons--such as a comparison between an experience of scarlet, and possible experiences of ruby and burgundy? This, I believe is the kind of question Peirce is setting up when, he makes a provisional division in the opening paragraphs of NDTR between triadic relations of comparison, performance and thought. This question is, I think, the guiding question in the initial divisions between signs based on their modes of apprehension. There are a whole host of questions we might ask about the qualisign and its function in making comparisons between qualities of feeling. Here are two. Is it really possible to compare the feeling of the quality of scarlet that is seen when looking at the cover of a book to the blare of a trumpet that is heard. Or, is it not possible to compare such hues of feelings because they are like apples and oranges. In order to make a comparison between two qualities of color, is it possible for a simple impression of sense that is felt at the present moment to serve as a sign? Or, must the quality of the hue be experienced as something that has continuity--and as thereby perduring through time (even if that time is just an infinitesimally small duration of past present and future? Contrary to the arguments of psychologists like Prantl, Peirce is arguing that it is possible to compare hues of feelings from different sense modalities. Contrary to the arguments of philosophers like Hume, Peirce is arguing that comparison of hues of feeling requires that they be continuous in time. On my reading of the opening pages of NDTR, the qualisign is being classified as a kind of sign that is necessary for the possibility of making such comparisons--and the account of its mode of apprehension is built around these requirements for the possibility of such simple forms of cognition. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2015 9:31 AM To: 'Peirce-L' Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations Moving on to the first trichotomy of sign types in “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”: According to the first division, a Sign may be termed a Qualisign, a Sinsign, or a Legisign. A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign. [As a Sign, this “quality” must be a correlate of a triadic relation with its Object and Interpretant, “by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible Interpretant” (CP 2.242-4). Yet it cannot act as a sign until it is embodied, i.e. until it becomes involved in at least a dyadic relation, and thus enters the universe of existence. Yet its significance is its quality (not its embodiment), and qualities being monadic, there is no real difference between Sign and Object (or Interpretant either). So I think we might call this a doubly degenerate kind of triadic relation, where the Sign is virtually self-representing, and self-determining as its own Interpretant. Compare the “self-sufficient” point on a map which Peirce offers as an example of doubly degenerate Thirdness in his third Harvard Lecture, EP2:162.) Or, since this degeneracy is relative, we can say that the Qualisign is degenerate relative to the Sinsign and to the Legisign (just as the Icon is degenerate relative to the Index and the genuine Symbol, according to Peirce in both the third Harvard lecture of 1903 and “New Elements” of 1904). On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph:] 245. A Sinsign (where the syllable sin is taken as meaning “being only once,” as in single, simple, Latin semel, etc.) is an actual existent thing or event which is a sign. It can only be so through its qualities; so that it involves a qualisign, or rather, several qualisigns. But these qualisigns are of a peculiar kind and only form a sign through being actually embodied. [Evidently it is the involvement of qualisigns in a Sinsign — which, I suppose, constitutes their embodiment — that makes them “peculiar,” because a “normal” Qualisign is disembodied (and does not act as a Sign). But perhaps this will be clarified by the definition of Legisign, which I’ll leave for the next post.] Gary f.
----------------------------- 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 .
