Soren, Jon S, Gary R,
Soren suggests there are two problems with Peirce's semiotic theory. One problem is the phenomenological starting point--which starts with a set of mathematical reflections on formal relations. Another problem is the attempt to build a realistic ontology in the semiotic theory. Let me offer the converse argument. The real strengths of Peirce's semiotic theory--as compared to the theories of other 20th century philosophers--such as Russell and Quine or Husserl and Heidegger--are the following. First, the phenomenological theory is guided by a remarkably deep set of mathematical reflections on what is really essential as a set of elemental formal relations in the phenomena that might be observed. Husserl, for example, is working towards the same sort of end in his phenomenological theory, but his mathematical reflections are overly guided by ideas drawn from arithmetic and metrical geometries--and he misses real insights about the character of the continuous and discrete features in our observations can be drawn from graph theory and topology. As such, he (and Heidegger following him) simply do not provide the kind of phenomenological analysis of the elemental formal and material features of experience that is really needed. Our aim in generating the phenomenological account is to properly analyze the observations, articulate what is necessary for the formal elements to be well ordered, correct for the various sources of observational error, and determine how it is possible to make reasonable comparisons and apply various forms of measurement to those observations. Neither Husserl nor Heidegger provides an account of the formal elements that are essential for accomplishing these goals. One reason that Peirce does not start in the phenomenological inquiries with a division between internal experience and the outside world is that he doesn't want to prejudice the analysis. He wants to develop the tools that are needed to analyze any sort of phenomena that might be observed--regardless of whether those observations are directed inwardly or outwardly. Those who import metaphysical conceptions concerning the real nature of external objects or internal thoughts into the account will struggle to articulate those formal categories that are elemental in any sort of experience--real or imagined. Peirce's reason for setting those distinctions aside is that we don't want, at the outset, to prejudge the question of which features in our observations of the phenomena are erroneous and which are not. Rather, we want to arrive at conclusions about the character of our observational errors in a way that can be both trusted in some degree and corrected upon further inquiry. So, I do not think that the phenomenological theory of the categories starts from an assumption that realism is true and nominalism is false. Peirce seeks to develop a theory of semiotics that starts with a phenomenological analysis of the observations that are needed to develop clear explanations of the sign relations that are essential for assertions to be true or false and significant or meaningless (in the speculative grammar), and for patterns of inference to be valid or invalid (in the critical logic)--and that can be put to the test. He wants to keep open the question of whether realism or nominalism is true about any given sort of question. He seeks to answer those sorts of questions in the development of his theory of metaphysics in a manner that is well-guided by an adequate semiotic theory. Russell and Quine prejudge the answers to these questions because they import metaphysical conceptions and commitments for nominalism in some places and for idealism in others into theory formal systems of logic and into theory philosophical theories of sign relations and logical inferences. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Søren Brier <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 5:56 AM To: 'Jon Alan Schmidt'; Gary Richmond Cc: Peirce-L Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology) Dear Gary, Jon and list I suggest that the problem is with a phenomenological foundation of his semiotics and Peirce’s attempt to build a realistic ontology. In the phenomenological view there is no basic difference between experience and the outside world because there is no fundamental distinction between inside and outside from the start. Peirce establishes in his phaneroscophy his three categories from a pure mathematical and epistemological argument as a minimum conditions for cognition in the form of semiosis to function. Thus inside the ontology of phaneroscophy I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct different universes. Best Søren From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 20. oktober 2016 00:09 To: Gary Richmond Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology) Gary R., List: GR: It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical expression of the categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you agree? Yes; I actually see no significant inconsistency between your statement here and Jappy's hypothesis that Peirce changed theoretical frameworks from phenomenological Categories to ontological Universes. That is why I began my post with the six different characterizations from your PowerPoint file; they all reflect common notions of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness. GR: To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break in this matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue. Like Ransdell, I tend to view the development of Peirce's thought over time as evolutionary, rather than catastrophic (so to speak). As such, I think that the shift from Categories to Universes is not so abrupt as calling it "a complete break" makes it sound, and Jappy never uses those words; in fact, he recognizes that the transition occurred over several years. He simply observes in a footnote that "after 1906 Peirce never again employed his categories as criteria in the classification of signs." GR: Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in Categories). Yes, I think that this is key; I somehow missed it when I read that passage right after Gary F. first brought it to my attention in this context. Am I right to think that relations are Predicates, rather than Subjects, and thus belong in Categories, rather than Universes? In light of the above--do we need to come up with a different term that encompasses both Universes of Subjects and Categories of Predicates? Modalities, perhaps? Then the three Universes would be Modalities as they pertain to Subjects (Ideas/Things-Facts/Habits-Laws-Continua), while the three Categories would be Modalities as they pertain to Predicates (possibility/actuality/habituality). Any comments on my hypothesis that the distinctions between the two kinds of Objects (Dynamic/Immediate) and among the three kinds of Interpretants (Immediate/Dynamic/Final) are based on the phenomenological Categories, while the trichotomy of each individual correlate is based on the ontological Universes? What about the feasibility of constructing a 66-sign classification with six correlates divided by Universe and four relations divided by Category? Regards, Jon On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, List, I'm not sure I can fully agree with Jappy's/Short's analysis, at least when the language Jappy uses seems to imply that the three Universes represent a break from the categories. It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical expression of the categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you agree? One of Short's principal theses in his work of, say, the last decade on Peirce's semiotic is that at several points in his career Peirce thoroughly rejected whole portions of his previous thinking, replacing them with entirely new theories. But scholars like Joseph Ransdell were critical of Short in this (for example, Ransdell wrote a searingly critical review of Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs) for they consider Peirce's thought as essentially evolving over his career. To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break in this matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue. Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in Categories). But, in truth, I've only begun to think about these distinctions. 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> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: List: I was digging through my burgeoning collection of Peircean secondary literature this morning and came across Gary Richmond's PowerPoint presentation on "Trikonic" (http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonicb.ppt). It helpfully summarizes various characterizations of the three Categories/Universes. * Basic Categories: unit, correlate, medium. * Universes of Experience: ideas, brute events, habits. * Universal Categories: possibility, actuality, necessity. * Existential Categories: feeling, action-reaction, thought. * Logical Categories: vague, specific, general; or may be, actually is, must be. * Valencies: monad, dyad, triad. I also found two papers by Tony Jappy that, upon re-reading them, I found to be relevant to this topic--"Speculative Rhetoric, Methodeutic and Peirce’s Hexadic Sign-Systems" (2014) and especially "The Evolving Theoretical Framework of Peirce's Classification Systems" (2016), both of which are available online at https://univ-perp.academia.edu/TonyJappy/Papers. His book, Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation, is coming out in December (http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/peirces-twenty-eight-classes-of-signs-and-the-philosophy-of-representation-9781474264839/); unfortunately, it looks like the price will be quite steep ($128 list). Jappy's hypothesis is that Peirce fundamentally changed his theoretical framework for sign classification--from phenomenological Categories to ontological Universes--during the time period between 1903 (three trichotomies, 10 sign classes) and 1908 (six or ten trichotomies, 28 or 66 sign classes). From the conclusion of the second paper ... TJ: The three categories, which, irrespective of their origin, had accompanied all his work in the classification of signs from the earliest period until approximately 1904, was superseded in 1908 by a broad ontological vision embracing three universes, receptacles with respect to which the sign and its correlates could be referred in the course of the classification of a sign. The logical principles supporting this later typological approach to signs, the fruit of an evolution in Peirce’s conception of the object and of the rapid theoretical development that his conception of sign-action experienced in those years between 1904 and 1906, are, therefore, radically different from those of the earlier approach, and it is doubtful that the two will ever be combined in a satisfactory manner in the quest for the sixty-six classes that Peirce hoped to identify. In the body of the same paper, Jappy twice quotes from "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" to explain the difference between Universes and Categories in this context. TJ: 1906 was the year, finally, in which Peirce explicitly introduced a fundamental distinction between categories and universes ... making explicit the universes to which the subjects mentioned in the extract (RL463 26–28) quoted earlier belonged: CSP: Oh, I overhear what you are saying, O Reader: that a Universe and a Category are not at all the same thing; a Universe being a receptacle or class of Subjects, and a Category being a mode of Predication, or class of Predicates. I never said they were the same thing; but whether you describe the two correctly is a question for careful study. (CP 4.545, 1906) TJ: In short, the passage suggests that Peirce is turning his back on the logico-phenomenological framework within which he had established his theory of signs since the mid-1860s, and that he is evolving towards an ontological approach to classification, anticipating in this field, too, the definitions advanced in the 23 December 1908 letter ... TJ: ... The theoretical framework within which Peirce is now working is ontological in the widest sense, involving the three universes defined above, three universes which are entirely different from the phenomenological categories of 1903-1904. A universe, says Peirce, is not the same as a category: "Let us begin with the question of Universes. It is rather a question of an advisable point of view than of the truth of a doctrine. A logical universe is, no doubt, a collection of logical subjects, but not necessarily of metaphysical Subjects, or ‘substances’; for it may be composed of characters, of elementary facts, etc." (CP 4.546, 1906). In this way, the correlates involved in semiosis figure ... as subjects susceptible of belonging to one or other of these universes ... the correlates thus described are not subdivided in any way by Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness but are subjects or members of a given universe: the dynamic object is one subject, the sign is another, etc. Unfortunately, Jappy confines his analysis to the six semeiotic correlates--Dynamic/Immediate Object, Sign, Immediate/Dynamic/Final Interpretants--and does not address the four semeiotic relations, except to note how Peirce described them in a 1904 letter to Lady Welby (CP 8.327-341), when he was still employing Categories rather than Universes. So I guess the questions that I posed earlier today must be preceded by this one--are relations in general, and semeiotic relations in particular, more properly treated as Subjects in Universes or as Predicates in Categories? If the latter, then that may explain why Peirce never managed to arrange all ten trichotomies into a definitive order of determination to establish the 66 sign classes, and why Jappy is skeptical that this can even be done. 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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