Jon A.S.,
IF (I say If!) we can consider the percept as the subject of the perceptual
judgment, then I think rhematic indexical sinsign is probably how I would
classify it. However, I think we can just as well (maybe better) consider the
percept as the object of the sign (the perceptual judgment). If we consider the
percept as a sign, then it must have an object of its own, and it’s hard to say
how any phenomenon could be the object of a percept.
Remember we’re talking logic/semiotic here, not the psychology of perception,
which would probably locate the percept in the brain/mind and its object in the
external world. But that analysis makes all kinds of metaphysical assumptions
that phenomenology eschews. If we stick to phenomenology, we can say that the
percept appears, i.e. it is a phenomenon, but it does not appear to mediate
between some other phenomenon and a perceiver, as a sign does. It certainly
doesn’t mean anything.
I think your questions are nice, in the sense used by Peirce when he wrote in
NDTR (CP 2.265):
“It is a nice problem to say to what class a given sign belongs; since all the
circumstances of the case have to be considered. But it is seldom requisite to
be very accurate; for if one does not locate the sign precisely, one will
easily come near enough to its character for any ordinary purpose of logic.”
Gary f.
} Throughout the universe nothing has ever been concealed. [Dogen] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 9-Dec-15 13:22
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 <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt>
- twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:39 AM, <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > 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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