Gary, List: Based on the excerpt below, would a perceptual judgment be properly classified as a dicent sinsign? And would the percept itself be a rhematic indexical sinsign? Or is the percept not yet a sign at all?
Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:39 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote: > GF: I can only assume that you are referring to CP 7.619, and observe that > Peirce does not say explicitly that the percept serves as immediate object. > That proposition seems at best dubious to me, because the percept is > precisely the point where the dynamic/immediate object distinction does not > apply. In fact it’s difficult to apply the sign/object distinction to the > percept. Moreover, Peirce has almost nothing to say about signs in that > entire long essay, and the little he does say is in reference to the > perceptual *judgment* considered as a kind of natural proposition: > > > 633. The other mode of definiteness of the percept consists in its being > perfectly explicit. The perceptual judgment carelessly pronounces the chair > yellow. What the particular shade, hue, and purity of the yellow may be it > does not consider. The percept, on the other hand, is so scrupulously > specific that it makes this chair different from every other in the world; > or rather, it would do so if it indulged in any comparisons. > > 634. It may be objected that the terms of the judgment resemble the > percept. Let us consider, first, the predicate, 'yellow' in the judgment > that 'this chair appears yellow.' This predicate is not the sensation > involved in the percept, because it is general. It does not even refer > particularly to this percept but to a sort of composite photograph of all > the yellows that have been seen. If it *resembles* the sensational > element of the percept, this resemblance consists only in the fact that a > new judgment will predicate it of the percept, just as this judgment does. > It also awakens in the mind an imagination involving a sensational element. > But taking all these facts together, we find that there is no relation > between the predicate of the perceptual judgment and the sensational > element of the percept, except forceful connections. > > 635. As for the subject of the perceptual judgment, as subject it is a > sign. But it belongs to a considerable class of mental signs of which > introspection can give hardly any account. It ought not to be expected that > it should do so, since the qualities of these signs as objects have no > relevancy to their significative character; for these signs merely play the > part of demonstrative and relative pronouns, like “that,” or like the A, B, > C, of which a lawyer or a mathematician avails himself in making > complicated statements. In fact, the perceptual judgment which I have > translated into “that chair is yellow” would be more accurately represented > thus: “ is yellow,” a pointing index-finger taking the place of the > subject. On the whole, it is plain enough that the perceptual judgment is > not a copy, icon, or diagram of the percept, however rough. It may be > reckoned as a higher grade of the operation of perception. > > > > On that basis, I don’t think we can extract from this passage any good > information about what a qualisign is or how it works. What it does make > clear is that the perceptual judgment is not iconic. So at this point I’m > going to jump down to your concluding paragraph. > > GF: There is no vagueness in a percept; it’s a singular. So I don’t see > how the concept of qualisign can serve the purpose you suggest here. I > think the qualisign is simply a necessary result of Peirce’s introduction > of the trichotomy of signs based on the sign’s mode of being in itself. It > has to be First in that trichotomy. >
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