Dear Adrian: Thanks for your stimulating post.
A bit of synchronicity arrived with it, as I was just now inquiring into the logic of the names of things as representamen of forms. As an example from my favorite discipline, chemistry, although comparable logical situations exist in biology and medicine (but not is physics?). Consider the name of a chemical element, sodium as a logical term, and a name of a second element, chlorine. Each has it’s own identity, its own “thisness and thatness”. These are two different substances that are clearly and distinctly different from one - another, such that one can ask an question, inquiring into the “difference that makes a different” between the first and the second. Within the metalanguage of chemistry (within the sense of Tarski), Sodium and Chlorine are atomic relatives. The nature of this form of relation is abstract in the sense that both are fully and completely physically independent of one another. Yet the name “atom” infers a common attribute or property of the two. Sodium and Chlorine are both highly toxic to humans. Indeed, chlorine was the principle “war gas” in the WW1. The reaction between the first and the second is violent. Explosive. What are the consequences of this violent reaction between two deadly toxic elements? In the notation for chemistry, these two antecedents lead to a singular consequence. [NaCl] Both the parent elements disappear and a new substance with a new set of attributes emerges. The name itself, however, is changed. Sodium chloride. The new name represents the form of the new material form. The order of the logical terms in the new name is fixed by the meaning - the first term of a salt represents the parent of one class (positive charged ions) and the second term a second class, (negatively charged ions). Thus, the change of representation is metonymic. The patronymic representation is form from one element (sodium). The matronymic representation is formed from the second element (chloride). What is the SOURCE of meaning that is antecedent to the metonymy? Obviously, it is the "difference that makes a difference” between the elements and the compound, the salt. That is, the change in properties that are a consequence of the violent reaction and the fount of the metonym. Within the linguistics of chemistry, this fount is named “an ionic bond.” Now, after expressing the nature of the synchronicity that struct me when I read your post, let us return to it. You quote 1.337, (note the date!) , as he puts it in a 1875 fragment, “By the third, I mean the medium or connecting bond between the absolute first and last. The beginning is first, the end second, the middle third. The end is second, the means third. The third, “connecting bond”, in the sense of chemical linguistics and grammar, becomes the copula between the two nouns, the first and the second, sodium and chlorine. Does “The means third.” refer to the representamen of the “connecting bond” as a causal relation between relatives? The connecting bond is not a predicate and hence I interpret this fragment to be a logical form that differs from ordinary usages of logical constants and the propositional logic in common usage today. In other words, in this context, the phrase "by the third” creates the metonymy of the first and second. Can anyone suggest either an metaphoric usage of thirdness in such a context? As an aside, the further quote from Pelkey, “Peirce’s system can only be understood by reforming old dyadic habits that confuse the middle with the end — by giving up on the idea of counting ‘one, two, three’.” is problematic. The concept of counting is embedded in the concepts of order, which extends well beyond the notion of ”dyadic habits”. Nor is there any need "to give up the idea” just to satisfy this particular idea about the initial segment of a series of symbols. Perhaps these thoughts about the relationships between concrete examples of usage of names as species of logical terms will be useful to ecological applications, where, in my view, the binding of logic to names is a hodge-podge of analogies and metaphors from various meta-languages. Cheers Jerry > On Feb 9, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Adrian Ivakhiv <[email protected]> wrote: > > Dear all: > > I'm > struggling with a way of tying Peirce's categories down to the 3 > main elements by which we can make sense of art works: their > materiality, our experience of them, and their meanings. Putting > it that way suggests one ordering, but a deeper thinking through > of the process (and nonlinear) nature of the categories suggests > another. I'm interested in gauging what Peircians may think. I'd > appreciate any comments directly on the web site below: > > > > http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories/ > <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories/> > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > > > > > Rethinking the 3 categories > February 9, 2016 by Adrian J Ivakhiv > <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/author/aivakhiv/> > I’ve been struggling with how my triadic framework for interpreting art works > relates to C. S. Peirce’s categories <http://www.textlog.de/4254.html>. > When I first developed my triadism (fleshed out > <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2014/12/29/emis-cinematic-materialism-a-response-to-reviews/> > in Ecologies of the Moving Image > <http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Catalog/ivakhiv.shtml>) into the non-Peircian > terms of materiality, experience, and representation > <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2014/03/08/rethinking-the-three-ecologies/> — > which I did in the context of teaching a course on the environmental arts — I > loosely considered the first of these to be analogous to Peircian firstness, > the second to secondness, and the third to thirdness. > The point, in my teaching, was not to adhere strictly to Peirce, since my > students weren’t studying him, but just to have a handy triadic formula that > would be useful for making sense of the eco-arts in ways that get beyond the > customary overemphasis on representation in favor of experience (including > affect) andmateriality. Materiality deals with the stuff that’s just there > (one element); experience involves a second — the artist, the reader or > viewer, et al. (two); and representation makes sense and meaning of the stuff > and its shapers and perceivers in real-world contexts (three); thus Peirce’s > categories loosely fit. Whether students got the Peirce or not, they could > follow that. > But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this way of > ordering the three may be un-Peircian. Or at least that there was a second > way of connecting it to Peirce that was sufficiently different from the first > and had important consequences. > Let me break it down here. > To continue reading, go to > http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories > <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2016/02/09/rethinking-the-3-categories>/ > > > > ______________________________________________________________________________ > > Adrian J. Ivakhiv > Professor of Environmental Studies/Environmental Thought & Culture > Rubenstein School of Environment & Natural Resources > University of Vermont, Burlington VT 05405 U.S.A. > Tel 802.656.0180 Fax 802.656.8015 Email: [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]> > http://vermont.academia.edu/AdrianIvakhiv > <http://vermont.academia.edu/AdrianIvakhiv> > http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv <http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv> > http://www.uvm.edu/~aivakhiv <http://www.uvm.edu/~aivakhiv> > > ----------------------------- > 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 . > > > >
----------------------------- 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 .
