List,
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.
Peirce does say that percepts are, in some respects, vague. Here is one place
in "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism: "But not to interrupt our train
of thought, let us go on to note that while the Immediate Object of a Percept
is excessively vague, yet natural thought makes up for that lack (as it almost
amounts to), as follows. A late Dynamical Interpretant of the whole complex of
Percepts is the Seme of a Perceptual Universe that is represented in
instinctive thought as determining the original Immediate Object of every
Percept.†2 Of course, I must be understood as talking not psychology, but the
logic of mental operations. Subsequent Interpretants furnish new Semes of
Universes resulting from various adjunctions to the Perceptual Universe. They
are, however, all of them, Interpretants of Percepts. CP 4.539 I.e., A complex
of percepts yields a picture of a perceptual universe. Without reflection, that
universe is taken to be the cause of such objects as are represented in a
percept. Though each percept is vague, as it is recognized that its object is
the result of the action of the universe on the perceiver, it is so far clear."
CP 4.539 Fn 2 p 425
Here is a place where he says that percepts have a singular character: "the
reader questions, perhaps, the assertion that conclusions of reasoning are
always of the nature of expectations. "What!" he will exclaim, "can we not
reason about the authorship of the Junius Letters or the identity of the Man in
the Iron Mask?" In a sense we can, of course. Still, the conclusion will not be
at all like remembering the historical event. In order to appreciate the
difference, begin by going back to the percept to which the memory relates.
This percept is a single event happening hic et nunc. It cannot be generalized
without losing its essential character. For it is an actual passage at arms
between the non-ego and the ego. A blow is passed, so to say. Generalize the
fact that you get hit in the eye, and all that distinguishes the actual fact,
the shock, the pain, the inflammation, is gone. It is anti-general. The memory
preserves this character, only slightly modified. The actual shock, etc., are
no longer there, the quality of the event has associated itself in the mind
with similar past experiences. It is a little generalized in the perceptual
fact. Still, it is referred to a special and unique occasion, and the flavor
of anti-generality is the predominant one." CP 2.146
For the sake of understanding the division in NDTR between signs based on the
mode in which they are apprehended (i.e., qualisign, sinsign, legislgn), I do
think it would help to spell out the manner in which each of these types of
signs is determined by its object. For example, in the Minute Logic, which was
written in 1902 (one year before NDTR), Peirce says the following about the
relation between the percept and the perceptual jugment: "The most ordinary
fact of perception, such as "it is light," involves precisive abstraction, or
prescission. But hypostatic abstraction, the abstraction which transforms "it
is light" into "there is light here," which is the sense which I shall
commonly attach to the word abstraction (since prescission will do for
precisive abstraction) is a very special mode of thought. It consists in taking
a feature of a percept or percepts (after it has already been prescinded from
the other elements of the percept), so as to take propositional form in a
judgment (indeed, it may operate upon any judgment whatsoever), and in
conceiving this fact to consist in the relation between the subject of that
judgment and another subject, which has a mode of being that merely consists in
the truth of propositions of which the corresponding concrete term is the
predicate. Thus, we transform the proposition, "honey is sweet," into "honey
possesses sweetness." CP 4.235
Is Peirce suggesting in this passage that a visual impression of light or a
taste impression of sweetness can function as a sign (e.g., a qualisign)
because the feeling is abstracted--both prescissively and hypostatically--from
the percept? Another possibility is that the impressions of light and taste
can function as qualisigns insofar as they are precissively abstracted from the
object, and then something like a diagram (what he will later call a percipuum)
comes in as the interpretant of the qualisign. The remarks he makes about the
conventional symbols expressed as part of a perceptual judgment (e.g., "it is
light" "honey is sweet") are the data that we can analyze for the sake of
sharpening our account of how signs that are mere feelings (i.e., qualisigns)
might function in an uncontrolled inference to a perceptual judgment.
--Jeff

Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
________________________________________
From: g...@gnusystems.ca [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2015 2:25 PM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations
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/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
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,
<g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto: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: “[cid:image001.jpg@01D13298.32207220] 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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