(Hope you don’t mind — since this is primarily related to the copula I put it under the other thread)
> On Jun 21, 2016, at 2:46 PM, Jerry Rhee <[email protected]> wrote: > > In your response, there's no mention of the object that is outside of us, and > in my opinion, no respect for what that object can teach us. Yes there was. The dynamic/immediate object discussion was all about that. > We point but we point at an object. Moreover, we argue over what is involved > in that object, which is outside us. The goal is to come to a complete > agreement about what we say that object is and whether our conception is > actually that object. To say “outside us” seems to buy into the kind of internal/external distinction that Descartes introduced into philosophy. I see Peirce fundamentally as an Externalist. To try and make sense of Peirce in the Cartesian paradigm is doomed to failure and fundamentally misrepresents his thought. Rather than talking about inside/outside us we can only talk dynamic object and immediate object. In saying that I recognize Peirce doesn’t always use that terminology. Sometimes he’ll talk about what is internal or external to the sign. The object is something external to and independent of the sign which determines in the sign an element corresponding to itself; so that we have to distinguish the quasi-real object from the presented object; or as we may say, the external from the internal object. And the external object as it is in itself is to be distinguished from the feature of the external object that is represented. (MS 145 — 1905) Also to say “whether our conception is actually that object” is to adopt a kind of idealism that I think is at odds with the objective idealism of Peirce. The final interpretant is what the universe is fated to arrive at which is the idea of the object. But we have to distinguish the dynamic object from the final interpretant. They’re obviously closely related but to say “whether our conception is actually that object” confuses Peirce’s notion of truth. Peirce wants to compare like to like. So for him we are seeing whether our conception is actually the final interpretant. Now we can loosely talk about that as the object of course but we shouldn’t paper over what’s going on semiotically. Phenomenologically the immediate object is of course the only object we can deal with but semiotically it is a sign (both an index and icon) of the original object(s). (For fictional objects its the properties of real objects that are brought together) The final interpretant is the effects (conceived through continuity) the sign has upon the universe (or quasi-mind) if the effect were completed. Whether the final interpretant is merely a regulative concept needed to make sense of the notion of truth or something truly fated through continuity (sort of the opposite of the Stoic eternal recurrance) seems unclear. I’ve been convinced here over the years that it’s merely regulative after long defending it as an ontological claim. I still suspect it’s an ontological belief of Peirce he took from the medievals but I think it functions philosophically better as a regulative notion. Either way the notions of the dynamic object, immediate object, sign, immediate interpretant, dynamic interpretant and final interpretant really solve a myriad of problems in traditional analytic philosophy. (Particularly speech act theory) The issue of things (object) as they relate to signs is complex. Again this is an important part of Kelly Parker’s book. Around page 219 (which I think I pasted into the list last week) he discusses Peirce as a mild or extreme semiotic idealist. (That is in what senses objects “exist” outside of signs) > How about the case of the copula, then. If it is simply that the > copula = Being, then what constitutes that moment, that absolute moment, when > we all agree that the concept = the real; > when ens necessarium = ens realissimum? Again, could you unpack this a little farther? You’re still assuming a lot of common assumptions that I don’t think are clear. In particular how Peirce uses “real” and how it was often used even at his time isn’t quite the same. See for instance the following: That thing which causes a sign as such is called the object (according to the usage of speech, the “real,” but more accurately, the existent object) represented by the sign: the sign is determined to some species of correspondence with that object. (CP 5.473 — 1907) With regards to the real I think this quote is helpful. The commodious and compact representation in our minds, or icon of our hopes about beliefs[,] is that there is something fixed and not subject to our wills called the reality, and that our beliefs come to shape themselves more and more under experience in conformity to that reality. So far as they accord with it we call them true. This is a handy ideal –. this of reality; – but it represents nothing but a hope. We have no warrant for averring that belief of all kinds will get more and more fixed until its variations become indefinitely small. We simply try to fix belief, and trying to do anything implies a hope that we shall to some extent succeed. The pretense of some philosophers that there is any justification for a broader “presupposition” that that is unfounded. (MS 408:146-7 — 1893) So existence is, in some sense, the start of semiosis. Reality is the end. To ask about the “absolute moment” when “we all agree” the concept = the real is I think to misunderstand our fallibilsm. Again I think Parker on Peirce’s cosmology is quite helpful here even if we needn’t adopt Peirce’s ontology to adopt his logic. It is only in the notion of continuity that we can make sense of reality. To talk about “we all agree” is to mistake the hope for the reality. We’ll never all agree. Put an other way for Peirce this is an endlessly deferred future we hope for but that will never arrive for finite beings. Which is not to say our beliefs might not already line up with truth. Most most certainly must. (I’m quite convinced by Davidson’s argument that most of our beliefs must be true to make function and communication possible) > From what I see, we're at a stage where the conditions for coming to > agreement is so ambiguous, things appear hopeless. Yet, the prescription > appears to be maxims of pragmaticism. So, how do you use that? The notion of continuity is what is key. As for hopeless, again you’ll have to unpack what you mean there. What seems amazing isn’t that we are often wrong but that we are wrong so little. That to me seems a confirmation of Peirce’s hope rather than that of hopelessness.
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