Gary R, you wrote (in reference to my post yesterday): I agree that there is a reciprocity in semiosic determination, that 2ns and 3ns "call for" each other, that that is what makes of any given semiosis a genunie triadic relation. But I think you may be hinting at something deeper here, so that if you would explicate your meaning a bit further, that would be quite helpful.
If there is something deeper behind this particular reference to reciprocity, it’s the same thing that the whole of Turning Signs is an attempt to explicate, and if there’s one diagram at the bottom of it, it’s the one at the heart of TS, http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#meancyc , which I call the meaning cycle. One Peirce passage that I also had in mind is from the concluding paragraph of the “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism” (CP 4.572): A mystery, or paradox, has always overhung the question of the Composition of Concepts. Namely, if two concepts, A and B, are to be compounded, their composition would seem to be necessarily a third ingredient, Concept C, and the same difficulty will arise as to the Composition of A and C. But the Method of Existential Graphs solves this riddle instantly by showing that, as far as propositions go, and it must evidently be the same with Terms and Arguments, there is but one general way in which their Composition can possibly take place; namely, each component must be indeterminate in some respect or another; and in their composition each determines the other. On the recto this is obvious: “Some man is rich” is composed of “Something is a man” and “something is rich,” and the two somethings merely explain each other's vagueness in a measure. Two simultaneous independent assertions are still connected in the same manner; for each is in itself vague as to the Universe or the “Province” in which its truth lies, and the two somewhat define each other in this respect. The composition of a Conditional Proposition is to be explained in the same way. The Antecedent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Interpretant; the Consequent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Object. They supply each the other's lack. I hope that will serve to explicate my meaning a bit further … Personally, I wouldn’t formulate it quite the way you have in saying “that 2ns and 3ns "call for" each other”; I would prefer to say that Thirdness mediates between, or conjoins, two “things” each of which is second to the other considered as first, and this action is most genuinely triadic when one of those “things” is a possibility and the other actually exists. As Peirce put it in the “Neglected Argument” paper, The third Universe comprises everything whose Being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign,—not the mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign's Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth, of a plant. (CP 6.455, EP2:435) But that probably differs little, if any, from what you meant by your formulation. It also reinforces your point quoted from the “Logic of Mathematics”, that “we can only conceive a fact as gaining reality by actions against other realities” (CP 1.432). There can be no reality without Secondness (otherness, externality), but a fact “gains” in reality by interactions with other facts. As Peirce said later (in “Kaina Stoicheia”), a fact has the structure of a proposition; thus it embodies thirdness, which actually increases the reality of the realities conjoined by it, by establishing the reality of the relations between them. Through those relations they “explain each other's vagueness in a measure,” i.e. determine each other. Gary f. From: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com] Sent: 13-May-16 14:46 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce on the Definition of Determination Gary F, List, Thanks for posting this passage from 'The Logic of Mathematics'. It has got me looking at that extraordinary piece of minute logic yet again. Indeed, the essay seems nearly inexhaustible, at least for me and especially given that it is Peirce's avowed "attempt to develop my categories from within." In any event, commenting on the passage, which concludes: It is not time and space which produce this character. It is rather this character which for its realization calls for something like time and space. — Peirce, CP 1.433 (c. 1896) You wrote: GF: Secondness as individual existence ‘calls for’ continuity as Thirdness, while on the other side of the coin of meaning, the niche in meaning space ‘calls for’ its inhabitation. Semiosic determination, like the ‘imprinting’ of a new hatchling on its parent, is a reciprocal realization. I agree that there is a reciprocity in semiosic determination, that 2ns and 3ns "call for" each other, that that is what makes of any given semiosis a genunie triadic relation. But I think you may be hinting at something deeper here, so that if you would explicate your meaning a bit further, that would be quite helpful. Meanwhile, I want to read more on either side of the passage you quoted. For example, the paragraph just above it is intimately related to it, saying it "in other words, so to speak. Here Peirce remarks that "the fact fights its way into existence." It has its here and now; and into that place it must crowd its way. For just as we can only know facts by their acting upon us, and resisting our brute will [. . .], so we can only conceive a fact as gaining reality by actions against other realities (CP 1.432). And I am pretty certain that he uses the term 'reality' here advisedly. Best, Gary R
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