Clark, list,
I’m glad you posted that part of MS 599, I was thinking of doing that myself! I think that in a way, that 1902 passage is the ur-text of the distinction between immediate and dynamic object. The need for this distinction arises from the juxtaposition between the sentence you highlighted, “The immediate object which any sign seeks to represent is itself a sign,” and the very next sentence, “The sign is never the very object itself.” My guess is that as Peirce worked out how best to make this point, the “very object” became the dynamic object, and the immediate object became part of the sign itself. This was necessary to preserve both the Thirdness (continuity) of the Sign and the Secondness (the difference or dyadic relation) between Object and Sign. It seems that Genuine Thirdness has to involve genuine Secondness. But you’re quite right, there is more than one way to analyze these things, and different analyses sometimes appear to describe semiosis differently. I don’t think Peirce was ever satisfied to stick with a single mode of analysis, and that the immediate/dynamic object distinction was a stage along Peirce’s journey toward his later analysis where he “throws everything into the subject” so that what we’re left with is the “continuous predicate,” which thus preserves the irreducible continuity of the sign-function, while also preserving the individuality of the relata which constitute the objects brought into relation by the sign. I’ll insert below the part of Peirce’s 1908 letter to Welby which explains this analysis. You ask, [ What then are the codes, “collateral experience” and “observation” relative to the sign? ] My current answer goes like this: The “codes” are the rules governing the “sign-system,” e.g. the language. They are of course habit-systems, symbolic legisigns. “Collateral experience” (or observation or acquaintance) is indexical, putting the subject of the experience into a “real relation” with the object of the sign, that which is denoted by the proposition (or its subject). The codes determine how the experience will be expressed (and understood) in language; the collateral experience determines what the expression will be understood to be about; the predicate of the proposition signifies what is being said about the subject (while also acting as an icon of the form of the proposition, according to Peirce’s late analysis). Here’s the part of the Welby letter I referred to. Peirce is replying to some questions she had sent him concerning his “Neglected Argument” article. (By the way the original is all one paragraph, so don’t blame its length on me … ) [[ You ask me whether, when I said the mind is characterized by its “active power to establish relations between objects,” I would extend this to establishing relations between ideas and acts, also. In answer, I must explain that, according to my note on the Ethics of Terminology, which I must have sent you, but will now send another copy, I use the term “object” in the sense in which obiectum was first made a substantive early in the Xlllth century; and when I use the word without adding “of” what I am speaking of the object, I mean anything that comes before thought or the mind in any usual sense. Stout and Baldwin use the term in the same sense, though not upon the same principle. I will add, while I am about it, that I do not make any contrast between Subject and Object, far less talk about “subjective and objective” in any of the varieties of German senses, which I think have led to a lot of bad philosophy, but I use “subject” as the correlative of “predicate,” and speak only of the “subjects” of those signs which have a part which separately indicates what the object of the sign is. A subject of such a sign is that kind of object of the sign which is so separately indicated, or would be if the sign were uttered in more detail. [By “uttered,” I mean put forth in speech, on paper, or otherwise.] Of course, your question is already answered, at least, it is so as to ideas; what you mean by establishing relations between acts, as distinguished from ideas of acts, is not clear to me. But I will go on to say something more about subjects, since the study of significs must, I should think, involve a good deal of fine logical analysis, i.e. definition. Now what I have to say about subjects is particularly relevant to the doctrine of logical analysis. The subject of a pure symbolic proposition, i.e. one in which no diagram is involved, but only conventional signs, such as words, might be defined as that with which some collateral acquaintance is requisite to the interpretation (the understanding,) of the proposition. Thus the statement, “Cain killed Abel” cannot be fully understood by a person who has no further acquaintance with Cain and Abel than that which the proposition itself gives. Of course, Abel is as much a subject as Cain. But further, the statement cannot be understood by a person who has no collateral acquaintance with killing. Therefore, Cain, Abel, and the relation of killing are the subjects of this proposition. Of course, an Icon would be necessary to explain what was the relation of Cain to Abel, in so far as this relation was imaginable or imageable. To give the necessary acquaintance with any single thing an Index would be required. To convey the idea of causing death in general, according to the operation of a general law, a general sign would be requisite; that is a Symbol. For symbols are founded either upon habits, which are, of course general, or upon conventions or agreements, which are equally general. Here I may remark that brute compulsion differs from rational necessitation founded on law, in that one can have an idea of it,— a sense of it,— in the single case, quite regardless of any law. A law of nature, which I insist, is a reality, and not, as Karl Pearson tries to show, a creature of our minds, an ens rationis, I am fond of comparing with a legislative enactment, in that it exercises no compulsion of itself, but only because the people will obey it. The judge who passes sentence on a criminal, applies the statutes to an individual case; but his sentence exercises no more force per se than the general law. But what the sentence does effect is to bring the execution of it into the field of purpose of the sheriff, whose brute muscles,— or those of bailiff or hangman under him, exercise the actual compulsion. Thus the Icon represents the sort of thing that may appear and sometimes does appear; the Index points to the very thing or event that is met with,— and I mean by an Occurrence such a single thing or state of things; and finally, the Symbol represents that which may be observed under certain general conditions and is essentially general. When we have analyzed a proposition so as to throw into the subject everything that can be removed from the predicate, all that it remains for the predicate to represent is the form of connection between the different subjects as expressed in the propositional form. What I mean by “everything that can be removed from the predicate” is best explained by giving an example of something not so removable. But first take something removable. “Cain kills Abel.” Here the predicate appears as “_______ kills _______ .” But we can remove killing from the predicate and make the latter “_______ stands in the relation _______ to _______.” Suppose we attempt to remove more from the predicate and put the last into the form “_______ exercizes the function of relate of the relation _______ to _______” and then putting the function of relate to the relation into another subject leave as predicate “_______ exercizes _______ in respect to _______ to _______.” But this “exercizes” expresses “exercizes the function.” Nay more, it expresses “exercizes the function of relate,” so that we find that though we may put this into a separate subject, it continues in the predicate just the same. Stating this in another form, to say that ‘A is in the relation R to B’ is to say that A is in a certain relation to R. Let us separate this out thus: “A is in the relation R1 (where R1 is the relation of a relate to the relation of which it is the relate,) to R to B.” But A is here said to be in a certain relation to the relation R1. So that we can express the same fact by saying “A is in the relation R1 to the relation R1 to the relation R to B,” and so on ad infinitum. A predicate which can thus be analyzed into parts all homogeneous with the whole I call a continuous predicate. It is very important in logical analysis, because a continuous predicate obviously cannot be a compound except of continuous predicates, and thus when we have carried analysis so far as to leave only a continuous predicate, we have carried it to its ultimate elements. ] SS 69-72 ] Gary f. From: Clark Goble [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 29-Aug-16 10:40 On Aug 27, 2016, at 7:30 AM, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> wrote: Clark, I don’t think this approach clarifies the matter, because it seems to overlook a couple of Peirce’s specifications. First, in reference to the sign “It is a stormy day,” he says that “Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine,—not the character of it, but the identity of it.” (So it would not determine the choice of the word “stormy,” which signifies the character of the day, but rather the other words.) Also, the immediate object of the proposition has to work with “collateral experience” or “observation” to identify the Object. But [[ I do not mean by “collateral observation” acquaintance with the system of signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign. ] EP2:494, CP 8.179 ] Your analysis seems to make the “code” (the “system of signs”) one of your two immediate objects, rather than a prerequisite for signification (as opposed to denotation) as Peirce has it. That’s a good criticism. I’ll have to think about it a bit, but my immediate intuition would be that Peirce is just neglecting what Eco calls the code aspects for this analysis. That is it’s a prerequisite for signification but the question then becomes as a sign how does that function. If we exclude how the sign is able to transform and communication this notion of present weather then something is missing logically. By putting it as a prerequisite Peirce seems to recognize this. What then are the codes, “collateral experience” and “observation” relative to the sign? I put it as other immediate objects that simply aren’t part of our analysis in question. However if we reject that way of speaking what are they? Clearly they are parts of signification and a key part for understanding what is going on. An other way to take it is of course to not treat them as immediate objects but as part of the sign. In this case they are tokens that allow the sign-process to proceed. My gut instinct is that while we could use either formulation all that is different is how we are analyzing the sign process. There is something continuous about what is going on. For most signs we can subdivide that sign down into components. So if we put say the words and their meaning in the sign, when we analyze the sign those will at some stage of the analysis be immediate objects. If we put them as immediate objects but then shift our analysis to the dynamic object (the weather as it is) then they shift from being immediate objects into being part of the sign. All of which makes me think that the role they play depends completely on the somewhat arbitrary choice we make for our analysis. They can function as immediate object or sign and all that matters is where we draw those boundaries. None of this changes their essential function though.
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