Gary F., List:
Thank you for offering this possible counterexample to my hypothesis that
all Quasi-minds are perfect Signs. Our exchange, including the off-List
portion, exemplifies what I greatly value about the List--it is not
supposed to be a place where we simply reiterate our preconceived notions
in an effort to have them validated; instead, it best serves as a forum
where any of us can offer our interpretive hypotheses and have them
honestly evaluated, perhaps even refuted, by other participants.
What you quoted from L 463 matches what Gary R. (via the Commens
Dictionary) quoted from SS 195, except that it adds the three sentences
about the "blank-book" at the end. I do not have a copy of *Signs and
Significs*, but managed to find an excerpt elsewhere that included another
sentence right before what Gary R. quoted that is even more direct--"The
blank leaf itself is the quasi-mind." Further online searching for this
statement led me, of all places, to your own List post of January 5, 2015,
where you provided a longer excerpt from the same letter. I was almost
persuaded by your reasoning below, until I read the entire context.
Existential graphs are to be conceived as scribed upon the different leaves
of a whole book. This whole book represents the thought (upon a given
subject) of one mind. Each leaf represents a single stage of that thought.
In the beginning, the successive leaves must represent strictly successive
states of thought--I speak of, logical succession. But afterward when the
minute anatomy of the thinking process has been mastered by the reader one
can successively enlarge the intervals of development between the states of
thought that successive leaves represent.
The blank leaf itself is the quasi-mind. I almost despair of making clear
what I mean by a “quasi-mind;” But I will try. A thought is not per se in
any mind or quasi-mind. I mean this in the same sense as I might say that
Right or Truth would remain what they are though they were not embodied, &
though nothing were right or true. But a thought, to gain any active mode
of being must be embodied in a Sign. A thought is a special variety of
sign. All thinking is necessarily a sort of dialogue, an appeal from the
momentary self to the better considered self of the immediate and of the
general future. Now as every thinking requires a mind, so every sign even
if external to all minds must be a determination of a quasi-mind. This
quasi-mind is itself a sign, a determinable sign. Consider for example a
blank-book. It is meant to be written in. Words written in that in due
order will have quite another force from the same words scattered
accidentally on the ground, even should these happen to have fallen into
collections which would have a meaning if written in the blank-book. The
language employed in discoursing to the reader, and the language employed
to express the thought to which the discourse relates should be kept
distinct and each should be selected for its peculiar fitness for the
purpose it was to serve. For the discoursing language I would use English,
which has special merits for the treatment of logic. For the language
discoursed about, I would use the system of Existential Graphs throughout
which has no equal for this purpose.
It turns out that Peirce is not saying anything different in this letter to
Lady Welby than he did in CP 4.553, where he stated that the Quasi-mind is
the Phemic Sheet, and--more to the point--in EP 2:545n25, where he stated,
"Such perfect sign is a quasi-mind. It is the sheet of assertion of
Existential Graphs." Evidently, *whatever* Peirce means by "perfect Sign,"
it *applies *to the Sheet of Assertion--which is *itself *merely a "blank
leaf" in a "blank-book," *until *someone begins scribing Signs on it. Once
that happens, it is the *aggregate *of all those Signs--*including *"all
that is tacitly taken for granted between the Graphist and Interpreter,
from the outset of their discussion" (CP 4.553)--even as more Signs
continue to be added to it. Likewise, the "blank-book" is, in fact, a
perfect Sign--evidently by virtue of having words written in it "in due
order," rather than "scattered accidentally on the ground."
GF: Then we could try postulating that the blank-book *continues to be
that blank-book* during and after the occurrence of writing in it--just as
in Existential Graphs, the Sheet of Assertion continues to be the Sheet of
Assertion when graphs are scribed on it or erased from it--and ignore the
static intervals before, between and after episodes of writing. Or we could
come to the simpler conclusion that a quasi-mind *may not* be a perfect
sign.
According to Peirce, "Such perfect sign is .. the sheet of assertion"; so
evidently the postulate that you suggested was his own position, rather
than "the simpler conclusion." Hence the "blank-book" is *not *a clear
counterexample to my hypothesis after all. Since you said that you could
give several, I would sincerely appreciate an opportunity to assess the
others--I am still very much open to its falsification.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 12:53 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Jon A.S., list,
>
> In this thread (and an offline exchange) Jon has been proposing the
> hypothesis that every quasi-mind (as Peirce uses the term) is a “perfect
> sign” as Peirce defines that term. He has challenged me to refute this
> hypothesis by giving an example of a quasi-mind that is not a perfect sign.
> There are several I could give, but I’ve chosen one that Peirce gives in a
> draft letter to Lady Welby, dated March 9, 1906, from L 463. Here is the
> context:
>
>
> [[ A thought is a special variety of sign. All thinking is necessarily a
> sort of dialogue, an appeal from the momentary self to the better
> considered self of the immediate and of the general future. Now as every
> thinking requires a mind, so every sign even if external to all minds must
> be a determination of a quasi-mind. This quasi-mind is itself a sign, a
> determinable sign. Consider for example a blank-book. It is meant to be
> written in. Words written in that in due order will have quite another
> force from the same words scattered accidentally on the ground, even should
> these happen to have fallen into collections which would have a meaning if
> written in the blank-book. ]]
>
>
> This blank-book is an example of a quasi-mind. Let us test the hypothesis
> that it is a perfect sign as defined by Peirce (EP2:545).
>
>
> Is the blank-book “the aggregate formed by a sign and all the signs which
> its occurrence carries with it”? Well, its occurrence carries no signs
> other than its blankness, its determinability, the fact that it is meant to
> be written in. This could be called an “aggregate” in the sense that the
> aggregate of *x* and nothing is *x*. But this does not contribute much to
> the plausibility of the hypothesis.
>
>
> Is the blank-book “a *perfect* sign, in the sense that it involves the
> present existence of no other sign except such as are ingredients of
> itself”? If not, it must be an *imperfect* sign, one that involves the
> present existence of *other* signs which are *not* ingredients of itself.
> So which is it? That depends on whether we consider its blankness as a sign
> which is an *ingredient* of the book; but this, like the question of
> whether it involves the *present existence* of *other* signs, is
> difficult to decide, since the book is blank. Again, this test does little
> to affect the plausibility of the hypothesis.
>
>
> Is the blank-book “in a statical condition”? It is, as long as it remains
> blank; which would refute the hypothesis, because “no perfect sign is in a
> statical condition.” We could try to avoid this by saying that it must be
> physically embodied, and must therefore be changing all the time at the
> atomic or subatomic level; but that would certainly be cheating, as this
> level of physical embodiment is irrelevant to its functioning *as a sign*.
>
>
> Then we could try postulating that the blank-book *continues to be that
> blank-book* during and after the occurrence of writing in it —just as in
> Existential Graphs, the Sheet of Assertion continues to be the Sheet of
> Assertion when graphs are scribed on it or erased from it — and ignore the
> static intervals before, between and after episodes of writing. Or we could
> come to the simpler conclusion that a quasi-mind *may not be* a perfect
> sign. The hypothesis that it *must* be a perfect sign is looking less
> plausible.
>
>
> “Every real ingredient of the perfect sign is aging, its energy of action
> upon the interpretant is running low, its sharp edges are wearing down, its
> outlines becoming more indefinite.” Is this true of the blank-book? Even if
> we assume (charitably) that we are talking about the blank-book in its
> dynamic, ever-changing state of actuality, it’s difficult to see how this
> *could* be a true description of it, let alone why it *must* be true of
> it. The hypothesis becomes that much less plausible.
>
>
> “On the other hand, the perfect sign is perpetually being acted upon by
> its object, from which it is perpetually receiving the accretions of new
> signs, which bring it fresh energy, and also kindle energy that it already
> had, but which had lain dormant.” What kind of object could a blank-book
> have, that would act upon it in this way, *without any other signs being
> involved in this actuality* except such as are ingredients of itself?
> What kind of “energy” does a blank-book have? Could we not have a
> quasi-mind which lacks that “energy”?
>
>
> “In addition, the perfect sign never ceases to undergo changes of the kind
> we rather drolly call *spontaneous*, that is, they happen *sua sponte*
> but not by *its* will. They are phenomena of growth.” Does a blank-book
> grow spontaneously, and unceasingly? Must every quasi-mind do that?
>
>
> “Such perfect sign is a quasi-mind.” Since this text (EP2:545) is Peirce’s
> one and only *definition* of a “perfect sign,” we take this sentence as a
> fact about perfect signs: *they belong to the class of quasi-minds*. Does
> this give us any reason for believing, or even hypothesizing, that *All
> quasi-minds are perfect signs*? I don’t think so. But I do think we would
> need very good reasons for limiting the signification of “quasi-mind” in
> that way, given its importance as a term in Peirce’s late semiotic theory.
> And the only justification Jon has offered for limiting it in that way, is
> that some of the attributes of the “perfect sign” fit very conveniently
> with his conception of a “quasi-mind.” I find this unpersuasive because
> some attributes of *signs in general* fit with Peirce’s conception of
> “quasi-mind,” as he says explicitly himself. So if we are *looking for
> confirmations* of (and ignoring discrepancies with) Jon’s hypothesis,
> they are not hard to find. But does Peirce say that any of the attributes
> which make the “perfect sign” a *distinctive* member of the sign family
> are *also* attributes of every quasi-mind? If he does, then it’s a
> plausible hypothesis that every quasi-mind is a perfect sign. But you
> haven’t shown us where he does say that, John, and based on the above, I
> would have to rate the plausibility of that hypothesis rather low — much
> too low to have any influence on what we think Peirce means by “quasi-mind.”
>
>
> Gary f.
>
> } One hour’s reflection is preferable to seventy years of pious worship.
> [Islamic hadith as quoted by Bahá'u'lláh] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
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