Jon, Jeff, list,
Jon, to answer your question to me that’s embedded near the end of your post, yes, you’ve gone a long way here toward a schema of the interpretants that makes sense to me, and is entirely compatible with SS 111 (1909) (also included in your post), which to me is Peirce’s clearest statement of the matter. Based on that, I think we can say that the immediate interpretant is the least determinate of the three, and yet it determines the dynamic interpretant in the sense that it constrains (puts some vague limits around) the possible behavior resulting from the communication. But I’m not sure how all this maps onto Jeff’s three-strata diagram. I’ll have to look into that further. And maybe compare it with Vinicius Romanini’s “solenoid of semiosis,” http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/?p=30. which is a somewhat different attempt at a “minute” classification of sign types. One feature of the “solenoid” that appeals to me strongly is the recursive character that’s built into it (and is not evident in Jeff’s diagram). The recursive character of semiosis is perhaps the central idea of my book Turning Signs, and it’s one idea that I did not get from Peirce. However I’ve realized recently that it’s virtually(!) present in Peirce’s concept of continuity, because he shows in the 1892 “Architecture of Theories” and again in the Cambridge lectures of 1898 that a truly continuous line must “return into itself” (because if it had beginning or end points at any finite distance from other points, they would be discontinuities). He didn’t really apply this to his analysis of semiosis, though he comes close to it now and then, and I think it’s fully compatible with the idea of recursiveness that I picked up from biology and neuroscience. Peirce’s “habit” (or “habit-change”) is his ultimate logical interpretant, but in my diagram it’s also the basis of the “guidance system” which determines behavior. Not sure if that’s a digression or not … Gary f. } Her untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times. [Finnegans Wake 104] { <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com] Sent: 26-Aug-16 14:15 Clark, List: CG: I just meant that the final interpretant from Peirce’s cosmology is stability in thirdness for the entire universe. My sense is this is too strong a claim, even given his notion of continuity and that there may be many unstable aspects. But to Peirce the endpoint of the universe is its becoming substance. (Where substance for Peirce was this habit) Upon further reflection, I would like to amend my previous statement to something that I hope is slightly more mist-free. I am starting to think of the Final Interpretant as the habit that would develop in anyone who (or anything that) repeats the Dynamic Interpretant. I mainly have in mind these passages from the two variants of MS 318, "Pragmatism" (1907), that appear in EP 2. CSP: Habits differ from dispositions in having been acquired as consequences of the principle, virtually well-known even to those whose powers of reflexion are insufficient to its formulation, that multiple reiterated behaviour of the same kind, under similar combinations of percepts and fancies, produces a tendency--the habit--actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future. Moreover--here is the point--every man exercises more or less control over himself by means of modifying his own habits; and the way in which he goes to work to bring this effect about in those cases in which circumstances will not permit him to practice reiterations of the desired kind of conduct in the outer world shows that he is virtually well-acquainted with the important principle that reiterations in the inner world--fancied reiterations--if well-intensified by direct effort, produce habits, just as do reiterations in the outer world; and these habits will have power to influence actual behaviour in the outer world; especially, if each reiteration be accompanied by a peculiar strong effort that is usually likened to issuing a command to one's future self. (CP 5.487, EP 2.413, emphases in original) CSP: In every case, after some preliminaries, the activity takes the form of experimentation in the inner world; and the conclusion (if it comes to a definite conclusion), is that under given conditions, the interpreter will have formed the habit of acting in a given way whenever he may desire a given kind of result. The real and living logical conclusion is that habit; the verbal formulation merely expresses it ... The deliberately formed, self-analyzing habit--self-analyzing because formed by the aid of analysis of the exercises that nourished it--is the living definition, the veritable and final logical interpretant. (CP 5.491, EP 2.418) CSP: The supposed objection is that, besides habits, another class of mental phenomena of a general nature is found in purposes. My reply is that while I hold all logical, or intellectual, interpretants to be habits, I by no means say that all habits are such interpretants. It is only self-controlled habits that are so, and not all of them, either. Now a purpose is only the special character (and which is, strictly speaking, special, as contradistinguished from the individual, is essentially general) of this or that self-controlled habit. Thus, if a man has a general purpose to render the decorations of a house he is building beautiful, without yet having determined more precisely what they shall be, the normal way in which the purpose was developed, of which all other ways are probably inessential variations, was that he actually made decorations in his inner world, and on attention to the results, in some cases experienced feelings which stimulated him to endeavors to reproduce them, while in other cases the feelings consequent upon contemplation of the results excited efforts to avoid or modify them, and by these exercises a habit was produced, which would, we know, affect not only his actions in the world of imagination, but also his actions in the world of experience; and this habit being self-controlled, and therefore recognized, his conception of its character joined to his self-recognition, or adoption, of it, constitute what we call his purpose. It is to be noted that in calling a habit "self-controlled," ... what I mean is that it has been developed under the process just described in which critical feelings as to the results of inner or outer exercises stimulate to strong endeavors to repeat or to modify those effects. (EP 2.431, emphases in original) Basically, I see Peirce here intermingling, or more likely still working out, the immediate/dynamic/final and emotional/energetic/logical distinctions, perhaps for the same reason that they have been tripping me up--it becomes a matter of whether the three interpretants themselves or the three divisions of them correspond to possible/actual/habitual vs. feeling/action/thought. As is likely evident, I now lean pretty firmly toward immediate/dynamic/final as possible/actual/habitual ... CSP: My Immediate Interpretant is implied in the fact that each Sign must have its own peculiar Interpretability before it gets any Interpreter. My Dynamical Interpretant is that which is experienced in each act of Interpretation and is different in each from that of any other; and the Final Interpretant is the one Interpretative result to which every Interpreter is destined to come if the Sign is sufficiently considered. The Immediate Interpretant is an abstraction, consisting in a Possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a single actual event. The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends. (SS 111; 1909) ... and the three trichotomies as each feeling/action/thought, which I see as consistent with Peirce's 1904 division of the Immediate Interpretant (CP 8.339), as well as his 1908 divisions of the Dynamic Interpretant as sympathetic-congruentive/shocking-percussive/usual and the Final Interpretant as gratific/to-produce-action/to-produce-self-control (CP 8.370-372, EP 2.490). Notice that he characterizes the latter as "the Purpose of the Eventual Interpretant," rather than its Nature, which seems to echo the third excerpt quoted above. In summary, the Immediate Interpretant is the range of possible feelings, actions, and/or thoughts that a Sign may produce; the Dynamic Interpretant is a particular actual feeling, action, or thought that a Sign does produce; and the Final Interpretant is the cultivated habit of feeling, action or thought that a Sign would produce. Does this seem viable, or am I missing something important? Gary F., per your post just now, does this move us at all in the direction of identifying the need for a threefold division of the Interpretant? CG: I’ll confess I’ve never even thought about whether there was a distinction in Peirce’s use. That’s a really interesting question. I just assumed they were switchable but maybe I’m wrong in that. Given the analysis above, and the general difficulty we seem to be having in pinning down exactly what Peirce meant by "virtual," as well as that term's ubiquity in contemporary discourse with a decidedly non-philosophical association, I am now prepared to abandon my hypothesis that the Immediate Interpretant might better be called a virtual interpretant. My thanks to all who tried to help me think through that notion. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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