> On Jun 9, 2016, at 1:21 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I too very much admire Kelly Parker's book, while I agree that it has some
> problems. Or should I say, it has been superseded and/or corrected in certain
> topics by scholarship since it was published (1998). Kelly (who btw, is a
> terrific fellow) is very ecologically minded as you no doubt know, seems to
> have turned his attention to Royce. However, I haven't followed him very far
> in that direction.
Yup. I’ve never met him but back when I first read his book he was very
gracious answering questions and acknowledging some problems.
In case anyone else is interested here’s a post to the list from its heyday in
’04 when I was engaging with the book. It’s largely an extended quotation from
the section I mentioned. I’ve also included some quote by Joe Ransdell that got
into the question of truths/realisms about entities like Sherlock Holmes or the
like.
>From Kelly Parker, The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought (Nashville: Vanderbilt
>University Press 1998), pp 219-222.
THE PROBLEM OF EXTRA-SEMIOTIC ENTITIES
|219| There is one particular problem that the semiotic conception of the
universe raises, and which deserves special treatment here. It concerns the
ontological status of existent entities, of the individual things that common
sense insists are "out there," external to all thought. The question may be put
in the following terms: If all of reality is to be conceived in terms of
semeiotic, as governed by the law of mind, does all of reality then have
ontological status only as it enters into sign-action? One answer to this
question has been proposed in the assertion by David Savan that Peirce was a
"semiotic idealist." I contend that, whatever merit the theory of semiotic
idealism may have, Savan is mistaken in attributing a version of it to Peirce.
First of all, our account of the internal structure of a complete symbol
indicates that there must be elements of the universe that are not merely
semiotic. Because a complete symbol requires indices and sinsigns, which are
defined as individual existent things involved in dyadic relations to other
existents, the answer to the question whether Peirce was a semiotic idealist is
in one respect relatively simple. Although everything there is may POTENTIALLY
be a sign, not everything that has being is ONLY a sign. There are nonsemiotic
aspects to the universe, so it seems that Savan is right to say that Peirce
rejected "strong" semiotic idealism: he did not maintain that "the very
existence of any thing depends upon the system of signs, representations, and
interpretations which purport to refer to it." The catch is that a thing is a
constituent part of reality only in so far as it would become an element of the
complete symbol Peirce called the “entelechy.”.
Savan characterizes Peirce as a "mild" semiotic idealist. This position
maintains that "any properties, attributes, or characteristics of whatever
exists depend upon the system of signs, representations, or interpretations
through which they are signified." The mild semiotic idealist accepts that
there are independently existing things, but insists that their PROPERTIES are
determined by the sign-system in which they function (in Peirce's case, that
system is the process of evolution toward the perfectly real sign). Peirce did
not adhere to strong semiotic idealism, which makes the extra-semiotic
entities' very existence depend upon the sign system. Savan finds the
anti-"semiotic idealist" position he calls "extreme realism" unacceptable, as
well, and argues that Peirce likewise rejected it. Savan says that this
position (let us call it “extreme semiotic realism”) "is of no interest to
anyone who is in pursuit of understanding. For such a realist, whatever
[apparent] knowledge and understanding human inquiry may attain, the truth may
quite possibly be otherwise. Such a possibility can not be the goal or
presupposition of |220| science.” I argue that, as unsettling as the position
may be, Peirce's logical realism implies just this form of extreme semiotic
realism.
Peirce held that there are existent things, characterized predominantly by
Secondness, independent of semiosis. This position is rooted in logic, which
according to Peirce must hope (among other things) "that any given question is
susceptible of a true answer, and that this answer is discoverable, that BEING
and BEING REPRESENTED are different, that there is a reality, and that the real
world is governed by ideas" (NEM 4:20). Here we see the joint assertion that
there is objective truth and that metaphysics must suppose the world to be
governed by the law of mind. Peirce's assertion in this passage that being and
being represented are different can be understood to mean that existent things
have ontological status independently of semiosis.
Note that both mild semiotic idealism and extreme semiotic realism presume
the existence of extra-semiotic individuals. This is necessary, as Savan points
out, in order to account for the fact of surprising and compelling elements in
experience. Peirce's theory of perceptual judgment requires the hypothesis of
an independent external world. Perception, for Peirce, is a representation of
some object by one's present self to one's future self, which interprets the
object as a perceived event: "In a perceptual judgment the mind professes to
tell the mind's future self what the character of the present percept is" (CP
7.630). Now what gets represented in a perceptual judgment often comes without
any warning, and enters the stream of cognition contrary to all expectation. I
flip a light switch and experience a loud pop and darkness rather than the
expected bright light. I have no control over the process by which I represent
these phenomena to myself, but the process is indeed describable in semiotic
terms.
If we ask what the object of the perceptual judgment is, we come into murky
waters. We can identify no prior cognition that would have the perception of a
loud pop and darkness as its proper interpretant. The only prior cognition of
which we MAY have been aware would have had a representation of bright,
room-filling light as its interpretant. The novel cognition must have come from
somewhere, though, and all we can do is to suggest a hypothesis about what kind
of object would generate this kind of surprising sign. Thus we embrace the
metaphysical hypothesis that there is indeed a system of individual enduring
things, connected through dyadic reactions, which exist independently of
semiosis. These extra-semiotic individuals are the dynamical object of my
perceptual judgment, and make their presence known in unexpected intrusions
into the semiotic flow of cognition.
Independent existence, then, is hypothesized as the dynamical object of
certain representations. Because existence is proposed as an object of
representation, and because (following Peirce) we have rejected nominalism in
favor of logical realism, we must suppose there is some determinate truth about
it which would be revealed as the final interpretant of a perfect
representation of that object. Here is where I part company with Savan. He
|221| argues that Peirce's alleged "mild semiotic idealism" makes the
characters (though not the existence) of the extra-semiotic world depend on the
sign system. If it makes any sense to speak of truth in connection with the
object of perceptual judgments, though, that truth must be objective in the
sense that it does NOT depend upon our particular perceptions of it. The
definition of truth deriving from Peirce's logical realism makes truth
independent of what any finite inquiry, or any finite process of semiosis, may
happen to lead us to believe. A true interpretant would never be revised,
because it would accord in all respects with the objectively determinate
character of the object. There is an independent world of dyadic existence, we
must suppose, and some parts of this world MAY not be incorporated into any
sign until the end of semiosis. Their characters would not be known until that
mythical moment, but they must be SOMETHING independent of their
representation: existence has the special characteristic "of being absolutely
determinate" (CP 6.439). Until the end of semiosis and the realization of a
perfect symbol, our knowledge of these characters very well might be radically
mistaken.
In "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," Peirce introduced his notorious example
of the diamond that materializes and is utterly destroyed without ever having
been perceived or tested for hardness. In that article, Peirce wrote that there
would be "no FALSITY" in saying that the diamond is soft. Such modes of speech
"would involve a modification of our present usage of speech with regard to the
words hard and soft, but not of their meanings. For they represent no fact to
be different than what it is; only they involve arrangements of facts which
would be exceedingly maladroit" (CP 5.403). This might be taken to suggest that
the existent thing that never enters the semiotic sphere does not HAVE a
determinate property of hardness, and is thus neither hard nor soft. As an
inoculation against this interpretation, Peirce wrote in the 1905 "Issues of
Pragmaticism": "Remember that this diamond condition is not an isolated fact.
There is no such thing; and an isolated fact could hardly be real. It is an
unsevered, though presciss part of the unitary fact of nature" (CP 5.457). If
it is anything but a pure logical fiction, even in its relatively isolated
state the diamond must enter into some dyadic relations with some other part of
the world. There are, again, no ABSOLUTELY isolated individuals or facts about
individuals. The diamond's existence must surely have some effect on its
surroundings, and either its hardness or other properties associated with its
hardness will leave a mark on the one determinate dynamical object that is the
existent world. Though this effect, and hence the diamond's hardness may remain
unknown until the end of inquiry, Peirce insisted that AT the end of inquiry,
all information about the world would be represented in the perfect and
all-encompassing entelechy. Short of that perfect state of information, though,
we may well be ignorant or mistaken about any given character of existence.
|222| Savan claims, again, that this extreme semiotic realism is of “no
interest to anyone who is in pursuit of understanding,” because it allows that
the truth “may quite possibly be otherwise” than what inquiry suggests. Savan
is correct to say that this ontology leaves the door wide open for all our
present readings of the book of nature to be exposed as mistaken. Though QUITE
unlikely, it is just possible that we will discover there are no such things as
fossils after all, but only bone-shaped rocks. This is hardly a position of
“no interest” to one who pursues understanding, however: it is a direct
consequence of the principle of fallibilism. Peirce balanced this skeptical
strain with the affirmation that, after all, whenever we engage in rational
thought we tacitly suppose that our thought is leading toward the truth in the
long run, and that if there is indeed such a thing as truth, then all we need
do is to persist in the methods of science to get close to it (SS 75).
The usual distinction in analytic philosophy between realism and anti-realism
is often muddled. (Thus some of Dummett’s work on realism) However it’s useful
to distinguish between the universe of discourse from other universes. Here are
some quotes Joe supplied on that. This is relevant to Jerry’s recent question
in that it gets at how object and interpretant are related when there’s not a
straightforward object. Peirce’s way of discussing this is slightly different
than how it’s usually discussed in 20th century analytic philosophy. So it’s
useful to make his distinctions clear.
The discourse of these two parties must relate to something which is common to
the experience of both, ... . This common experience, considered as a
collective whole of units, has (by) the logicians for the last half-century,
(been) commonly called the _universe of Discourse_. . . . When the universe
of discourse relates to a common experience, but this experience is of
something imaginary, as when we discuss the world of Shakespeare's creation in
the play of Hamlet, we find individual distinction existing so far as the work
of imagination has carried it, while beyond that point there is vagueness and
generality. MS 25, pp.2-4
[As DeMorgan pointed out] we often carry on reasoning under an implied
restriction as to what we shall consider as possible, which restriction,
applying to the whole of what is said, need not be expressed. The total of all
that we consider possible is called the universe of discourse, and may be very
limited. One mode of limiting our universe is by considering only what
actually occurs, so that everything which does not occur is regarded as
impossible.
CP 3.174 (1880)
I propose to use the term "universe" to denote that class of individuals about
which alone the whole discourse is understood to run. The universe, therefore,
in this sense, as in Mr. DeMorgan's, is different on different occasions. In
this sense, moreover, discourse may run upon something which is not a
subjective part of the universe [i.e. not an individual functioning as subject
of discourse]; for instance, upon the qualities or collections of the
individuals it contains.
Writings 2, p. 366, and CP 3.65 (1870)
It may be asked . . . how a lying or erroneous Sign is determined by its
Object, or how if, as not infrequently happens, the Object is brought into
existence by the Sign. To be puzzled by this is an indication of the word
“determine” being taken in too narrow a sense. A person who says Napoleon was
a lethargic creature has evidently his mind determined by Napoleon. For
otherwise, he could not attend to him at all. But here is a paradoxical
circumstance. The person who interprets that sentence (or any other Sign
whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral
observation quite independently of the action of the Sign. Otherwise he will
not be determined to thought of that object. If he never heard of Napoleon
before, the sentence will mean no more to him than that some person or thing to
which the name "Napoleon" has been attached was a lethargic creature. For
Napoleon cannot determine his mind unless the word in the sentence calls his
attention to the right man and that can only be if, independently, [a] habit
has been established in him by which that word calls up a variety of attributes
of Napoleon the man. Much the same thing is true in regard to any sign. In
the sentence instanced Napoleon is not the only Object. Another Partial Object
is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its meaning unless collateral
experience has taught its Interpreter what Lethargy is, or what that is that
`lethargy' means in this sentence. The Object of a Sign may be something to be
created by the sign. For the Object of "Napoleon" is the Universe of
Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Napoleon being a Member of
it. The Object of the sentence "Hamlet was insane" is the Universe of
Shakespeare's Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it.
The Object of the Command "Ground arms!" is the immediately subsequent action
of the soldiers so far as it is affected by the molition expressed in the
command. It cannot be understood unless collateral observation shows the
speaker's relation to the rank of soldiers. You may say, if you like, that the
Object is in the Universe of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that
moment. Or since the obedience is fully expected, it is in the Universe of his
expectation. At any rate, it determines the Sign although it is to be created
by the Sign by the circumstance that its Universe is relative to the momentary
state of mind of the officer.
CP 8.178; undated (to LW)
There are different kinds of existence. There is the existence of physical
actions, there is the existence of psychical volitions, there is the existence
of all time, there is the existence of the present, there is the existence of
material things, there is the existence of the creations of one of
Shakespeare's plays, and, for aught we know, there may be another creation with
a space and time of its own in which things may exist. Each kind of existence
consists in having a place among the total collection of such a universe. It
consists in being a second to any object in such universe taken as first. 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.
CP 1.433 (c. 1896, MS of Logic of Mathematics)
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