List,
Below is my latest fine-tuning of an explanation of this complex of
basic Peircean concepts. Comments and corrections always welcome, of
course. The same text is readable online at
http://gnusystems.ca/TS/blr.htm#Perce or on my blog as today’s post.
Gary f.
} The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden
because of their simplicity and familiarity. [Wittgenstein] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ /Turning Signs/ gateway
*Percepts* <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/rlb.htm#judg> (considered as
signs) represent a world external to the perceiver. /Nevertheless,
the/ perceptual judgments /which identify what you see (as this or
that type of thing) are based as much on your perceptual habits as on
what’s really out there. … Consequently the objects of our attention
in a genuine quest for truth must be the dynamic objects of the signs
constituting our reading of reality./
Only semiosis can /inform/ anyone, and ’every sign,—or, at any rate,
nearly every one,—is a determination of something of the general
nature of a mind, which we may call the “quasi-mind”’ (EP2:389).
This quasi-mind is an object which from whatever standpoint it be
examined, must evidently have, like anything else, its special
qualities of susceptibility to determination. Moreover, the
determinations come as events each one once for all and never
again. Furthermore, it must have its rules or laws, the more
special ones variable, others invariable. [EP2:545]
These “rules or laws” are what we call the habits of the system, the
bodymind. As for the sign, it is determined by the situation
(consisting of relevant events in the world) of which the system is
informed, which we call the /object/ of the sign. The sign
is determined by the object, but in no other respect than goes to
enable it to act upon the interpreting quasi-mind; and the more
perfectly it fulfills its function as a sign, the less effect it
has upon that quasi-mind other than that of determining it as if
the object itself had acted upon it. [EP2:391]
In another idiom, the more perfectly functional aspect of the sign is
called /signal/, while its effects on the quasi-mind ‘other than that
of determining it as if the object itself had acted upon it’ are
attributed to /noise/. The informable system, in order to experience
either signal or noise, must embody some /indeterminacy/, or variable
state space <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/mns.htm#stsp>. The sign which
conveys information /determines/ its interpretant by virtually
selecting among the possible variations which constitute the state
space of the system. This enables a sentient being to orient itself
with respect to the state of its Umwelt (that part of the world with
which it can interact). Of course, the mental system does not need to
be conscious of doing this, but it does have to /perceive/ the
relevant part of its world as the subject of a perceptual judgment, a
quasi-proposition or /dicisign/.
Is the /percept/ itself a sign? It depends …
The percept is … whole and undivided. It has parts, in the sense
that in thought it can be separated; but it does not represent
itself to have parts. In its mode of being as a percept it is one
single and undivided whole.
The percept is not the only thing that we ordinarily say we
“perceive”; and when I professed to believe only what I perceived,
of course I did not mean /percepts,/ since percepts are not
subjects of belief or disbelief. I meant /perceptual judgments./
Given a percept, this percept does not describe itself; for
description involves analysis, while the percept is whole and
undivided. But once having a percept, I may contemplate it, and
say to myself, ‘That appears to be a yellow chair’; and our usual
language is that we “perceive” it to be a yellow chair, although
this is not a percept, but a judgement about a present percept.
[CP 7.625-6 (1903?)]
This is the origin of /facts/ as used in reasoning.
The whole question is what the /perceptual facts/ are, as given in
direct perceptual judgments. By a perceptual judgment, I mean a
judgment asserting in propositional form what a character of a
percept directly present to the mind is. The percept of course is
not itself a judgment, nor can a judgment in any degree resemble a
percept. It is as unlike it as the printed letters in a book,
where a Madonna of Murillo is described, are unlike the picture
itself. [EP2:155 (1903); likewise EP2:191]
I am thoroughly accustomed to think of percepts or rather of
perceptual judgments as the data of all knowledge, and as such
having a certain imperfect reality. They /exist,/ —the percepts
themselves do. But developed reality only belongs to signs of a
certain description. Percepts are signs for psychology; but they
are not so for phenomenology. [CP 8.300 (1904)]
For phenomenology, or phaneroscopy, percepts are /not/ signs: they are
phenomena, directly present to the mind without regard to whether they
are present mediately or immediately. Perceptual /judgments/, on the
other hand, being assertions in propositional form, /are/ signs
professing to inform perceivers /about/ objects. The psychologist,
looking into the perceptual process from outside of it, sees the
percept as a sign of the object perceived; but to the perceiver of
that object, it’s the object of the sign expressing his judgment about
what kind of object it is. This sign is a kind of quasi-proposition, a
“genuine or informational index” EP2:172).
A /proposition/ is a symbol which like the informational index has
a special part to represent the representamen, while the whole or
another special part represents the object. The part which
represents the /representamen/ and which excites an /icon/ in the
imagination, is the Predicate. The part which indicates the object
or set of objects of the representamen is called the Subject or
Subjects … How much shall be embraced in the predicate and how
many subjects shall be recognized depends, for the ordinary
analyses of logic, upon what mode of analysis will answer the
purpose in hand. [EP2:172]
… the perceptual judgment does not represent the percept
/logically./ In what intelligible manner, then, does it represent
the percept? It cannot be a /copy/ of it; for, as will presently
appear, it does not resemble the percept at all. There remains but
one way in which it can represent the percept; namely, as an
index, or true symptom, just as a weather-cock indicates the
direction of the wind or a thermometer the temperature. There is
no warrant for saying that the perceptual judgment actually /is/
such an index of the percept, other than the /ipse dixit/ of the
perceptual judgment itself. And even if it be so, what is an
index, or true symptom? It is something which, without any
rational necessitation, is forced by blind fact to correspond to
its object. To say, then, that the perceptual judgment is an
infallible symptom of the character of the percept means only that
in some unaccountable manner we find ourselves impotent to refuse
our assent to it in the presence of the percept, and that there is
no appeal from it. [CP 7.628 (1903?)]
In place of the /percept,/ which, although not the first
impression of sense, is a construction with which my will has had
nothing to do, and may, therefore, properly be called the
“evidence of my senses,” the only thing I carry away with me is
the /perceptual facts,/ or the intellect’s description of the
evidence of the senses, made by my endeavor. These perceptual
facts are wholly unlike the percept, at best; and they may be
downright untrue to the percept. But I have no means whatever of
criticizing, correcting or recomparing them, except that I can
collect new perceptual facts relating to new percepts, and on that
basis may infer that there must have been some error in the former
reports, or on the other hand I may in this way persuade myself
that the former reports were true. The perceptual facts are a very
imperfect report of the percepts; but I cannot go behind that record.
…
The data from which inference sets out and upon which all
reasoning depends are the /perceptual facts,/ which are the
intellect’s fallible record of the /percepts,/ or “evidence of the
senses.” It is these percepts alone upon which we can absolutely
rely, and that not as representative of any underlying reality
other than themselves. [CP 2.141-3 (1902)]
That last sentence explains why /percepts/ are not signs for
phenomenology, or for logic. But the /perceptual judgment/ is the
starting point of all cognition, which is always semiosic: “every
concept and every thought beyond immediate perception is a sign”
(EP2:402).
Is the /object/ of a sign “whole and undivided” as the percept is for
phaneroscopy? If the sign is /symbolic/, the singularity or plurality
of its object(s) depends on the point of view:
A sign may have more than one Object. Thus, the sentence “Cain
killed Abel,” which is a Sign, refers at least as much to Abel as
to Cain, even if it be not regarded as it should, as having /“a
killing”/ as a third Object. But the set of objects may be
regarded as making up one complex Object. In what follows and
often elsewhere Signs will be treated as having but one object
each for the sake of dividing difficulties of the study. [CP 2.230
(1910)]
Thus ‘Every sign has a single object, though this single object may be
a single set or a single continuum of objects’ (EP2:393, 1906).
Genuine cognition is the development of these signs (which are also
ourselves, according to Peirce) toward the complete continuum which
would be the /whole truth/. This development proceeds by
/generalization/ underwritten by perception.
… if there be any perceptual judgment, or proposition directly
expressive of and resulting from the quality of a present percept,
or sense-image, that judgment must involve generality in its
predicate.
That which is not general is singular; and the singular is that
which reacts. The being of a singular may consist in the being of
other singulars which are its parts. Thus heaven and earth is a
singular; and its being consists in the being of heaven and the
being of earth, each of which reacts and is therefore a singular,
forming a part of heaven and earth. If I had denied that every
perceptual judgment refers, as to its subject, to a singular, and
that singular actually reacting upon the mind in forming the
judgment, actually reacting too upon the mind in interpreting the
judgment, I should have uttered an absurdity. For every
proposition whatsoever refers as to its subject to a singular
actually reacting upon the utterer of it and actually reacting
upon the interpreter of it. All propositions relate to the same
ever-reacting singular; namely, to the totality of all real
objects. (EP2:208-9)
Organisms capable of uttering or interpreting propositions are in the
same boat with all living organisms in this respect: we must maintain
our /internal/ continuity, our integrity, in order to engage in
semiosis at all. In order to cope with our situations, we must
discover some continuities in the external world as well. We do this
by perceiving objects and generalizing about the relations in which
they (and we) are involved. Interaction with our current situation
requires semiotic mediation, but not necessarily attention to
/semiosis/, or to signs /as such/. The more attention given to
semiosis, so that signs become objects of attention, the more
/deliberate/ interpretation and practice become. But attention to
perceived /objects/ is the bedrock on which all cognition is built.
