I agree with Edwina that all three elements are involved in the pragmatic maxim. Itself it is a representamen of the possibility of (discovering) meaning (or at least meaning differences). It is also, as an object, a methodology, but understood not as some theory but was a way in which something, in this case the determination of meaning, is done. As interpretant it gives the meaning of meaning, or perhaps better, the meaning of how to determine meaning.
It is tempting to see the representamen as possible meaning (or difference in meaning – the version I prefer), its object as meaning, and it gives the meaning of meaning, its final interpretant being the integrated whole of meaning. However I think this would ignore its pragmatic aspect, which places emphasis on doing things like making mean9ngs clear. John Collier Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, 15 October 2016 2:32 AM To: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Cc: Gary Richmond <[email protected]>; Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology Edwina, list: I apologize if I missed something but what you just stated was basically all only generals. What I am asking for is to apply those generals to the question of the pragmatic maxim and provide the argumentation, that is, the specific premisses (e.g., what is the object or original stimuli?). That is, 1) If the pragmatic maxim is the object, then what is the representamen and what the interpretant? 2) If the pragmatic maxim is the representamen/index, then what is the object/icon and what the interpretant/symbol? _________ Here is a clearer way of putting things. You said: The Object of a syllogism is the minor premise (the surprising fact, C, is observed...) the Representamen is the major premise (But if A were...) the Interpretant is the Conclusion. (B, that which goes from surprise to suspect is true). So, is the following correct? If not, please correct me. 1) C = pragmatic maxim A = Consider what effects… B = lots of freedom for what I can conceive about which you will deny or, 2) C = pragmaticism A = pragmatic maxim B = Consider what effects… For case 2), do you see why I object to “Consider what effects…”? It doesn’t fully/wholly/completely capture the essence of pragmaticism, e.g., things like the categories, of which there are three; ordinality, philosophy of Socrates, the commens, convergence to truth, etc... Best, Jerry Rhee Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object. On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 7:22 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Gary R., List: Thanks for the reminders about Sheriff's book; it was one of my first introductions to Peirce's thought, and I even re-read it recently, but I need to review the portions that you mentioned in light of the discussions in this thread. Thanks also for the additional information on the role of the categories in Peirce's classification of the sciences. GR: I would tend to disagree with you, Jon, that this ur-continutiy is "created" 3ns; rather, I see it as "creative" 3ns as distinguished from the 3ns that become the habits and laws of a created universe. So, in a word, my view is that only these laws and habits are the 'created' 3nses. As I said, taking the blackboard to be created Thirdness is no more than a working hypothesis at this point. If the diagram is confined to the blackboard itself, as Peirce's description seems to indicate, then your characterization makes more sense. I am still toying with a couple of other alternatives, as well. GR: How can one deny Peirce's own words here? Yes, any alleged "reading" or "interpretation" that directly contradicts what an author explicitly states in the text is obviously untenable. 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> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, Edwina, Gary F, Soren, List, John Sheriff, in Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle: Grounds for Human Significance, in commenting on what Peirce calls the "pure zero" state (which, in my thinking, is roughly equivalent to the later blackboard metaphor) quotes Peirce as follows: "So of potential being there was in that initial state no lack" (CP 6.217) and continues, " 'Potential', in Peirce's usage, means indeterminate yet capable of determination in any specific case" (CP 6.185-86) [Sheriff, 4). This "potential being" is, then, decidedly not the "nothing of negation," but rather "the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed" (CP 6.217). Sheriff had just prior to this written: "Peirce frequently drew the parallel between his theory and the Genesis account" and discusses this in a longish paragraph. I think it is possible to overemphasize this "parallel" (and, as I've commented here in the past, Peirce's "pure zero"--or ur-continuity in the blackboard metaphor--seems to me closer to the Kemetic Nun in the dominant Ancient Egyptian creation myth; while it should be noted in this regard that Peirce knew hieroglyphics and may well have been acquainted with this myth). Jon wrote: [M]y current working hypothesis is that "Pure mind, as creative of thought" (CP 6.490) is the Person who conceives the possible chalk marks and then draws some of them on the blackboard, rather than the blackboard itself as a "theater" where chalk marks somehow spontaneously appear; instead, the blackboard represents created Thirdness. However, I will tentatively grant that your analysis may be closer to what Peirce himself had in mind. I would tend to disagree with you, Jon, that this ur-continutiy is "created" 3ns; rather, I see it as "creative" 3ns as distinguished from the 3ns that become the habits and laws of a created universe. So, in a word, my view is that only these laws and habits are the 'created' 3nses. One way of considering this is via the Ancient Egyptian myths just mentioned. In these Kemetic myths there is "one incomprehensible Power, alone, unique, inherent in the Nun, the indefiniable cosmic sea, the infinite source of the Universe, outside of any notion of Space or Time." At Heliopolis this Power, the Creator, is given the name, Atum, "which means both All and Nothing [involving] the potential totality of the Universe which is as yet unformed and intangible. . . Atum must. . . distinguish himself from the Nun and thus annihilate the Nun in its original inert state." (all quotations are from Lucie Lamy's book, Egyptian Mysteries: New light on ancient knowledge, p 8, a popularization of her grandfather, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz's, great scholarly work in Egyptology, still not as influential in that field as it ought to be in my opinion). I won't go further into this myth now except to note that even at this 'stage' of proto-creation that the above "first act is expressed in three major ways" such that Atum, as tum in Nun, "projects" himself as Khepri (that is, becoming, or potential). All the neteru ('powers' according to S. de Lubicz, but usually translated incorrectly as 'gods') will follow from that priordial 'act'. Although there might now be this disagreement as to what the ur-continuity represents, I would not disagree with you whatsoever, Jon, in your view that it was Peirce's belief that God is "Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" since opposition to this view would fly in the face of Peirce own words: "The word 'God' ... is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452). How can one deny Peirce's own words here? Returning now to Sheriff's book, after a fascinating Preface (which, for one example, makes pointed reference to Stephen Hawking's essay, "A Unified Theory of the Universe Would Be the Ultimate Triumph of Human Reason"), Chapter 1, "Peirce's Cosmogonic Philosophy" opens with this quote:"[T]he problem of how genuine triadic relations first arose in the world is a better, because more definite, formulation of the problem of how life came about."(6.322) Moving on to another topic taken up in this thread, Edwina's claim that everything is semiosic does not seem to acknowledge the pervasive use of the categories throughout Peirce's oevre which does not pertain to semiotics as such, including his classification of the sciences (as you mentioned), nor the placement of the first of the cenoscopic sciences, viz., phenomenology, well ahead of logic as semeiotic in this classification, nor the content of phenomenology itself, concerned explicitly with categorial relations in themselves (and there is much, much else which Peirce emphatically associated with the categories which is not semeiotic). But considering for now just Peirce's Classification of the Sciences, Beverly Kent, who wrote the only book length monograph on the topic, Charles S. Peirce: Logic and the Classification of the Sciences, has a number of things to say about the categories in relation to the classification. For example, after mentioning that one of his earliest classification schemes was based on the categories, Kent comments: "Fearing that his trichotomic might be misleading him, he set it aside and developed alternative schemes, only to find himself ineluctably led back. Even so, it was some time before he conceded that the resulting divisions conformed to his categories" (Kent, 19). Phyllis Chiasson, as I recall, makes much the same point. Kent later remarks that regarding his final Outline Classification of the Sciences (which he stuck with, prefaced virtually all his subsequent works in logic with, and thought "sufficiently satisfactory" as late as 1911), that Peirce wrote that "most of the divisions are 'trichotomic' " (Kent, 121) in the sense of involving the three categories (much as Jon outlined them in a recent post). Best, Gary R [Gary Richmond] Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690> ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. 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