Thanks Jon and Gary for your well articulated answers to my questions in this
thread.
My main concern was that your Immediate Object was sounding too much like an
interpretant. The object/interpretant distinction is of course vital to triadic
semiosis, and closely related to the subject/predicate distinction in
propositions and the matter/form distinction which Jon mentions in Peirce’s
1904 writings. As Jon wrote, “Only the Sign itself--not its Immediate
Object--can be a concept (Symbol) that unites Matter (denotation) and Form
(signification) in its Interpretant (determination).” How then can an immediate
object consist of “attributes” (or characters or predicates) of the Dynamic
Object?
But I was forgetting that these distinctions get relativized in Peirce’s late
semiotic, so that parts of what is usually considered the predicate can
alternatively be “thrown into” the subject, leaving only a continuous
predicate. I just came across a passage about this written by Peirce in
December 1909:
[[ The determination by a Sign of its Interpreting Mind,– i.e. the idea that
mind gets, or the feeling it sets up, or the action it stimulates, I call its
"Interpretant"; and there is all the difference in the world between the
Object of a sign, of which the Interpreter must have some collateral
experience, immediate or mediate, or he won't know at all what it is
that the Sign represents [ ... ] and whoever questions that point simply
fails to understand what I mean by the Object, and confounds it with
the Interpretant. The latter is all that the sign conveys. The Object is the
otherwise known something concerning which what it conveys relates.
The distinction is a real distinction and yet it is purely relative, in the
sense that the line of demarcation between the two can just as well be
drawn in one place as another. [ ... ] The point is that the artificiality of
a line of demarcation does not prove that the twoness of the parts that
line of demarcation may be regarded as separating does not correspond
to any twoness in re. — RL 36 ]]
So I have nothing more to say on that subject!
Gary f.
} In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners
of addiction and the prisoners of envy. [Ivan Illich] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Sent: 1-Mar-18 11:52
To: Peirce-L <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Quasi-minds Revisited
Gary F., List:
GF: Are we assuming here that the perfect Sign is an accretion of Signs in a
Quasi-mind?
Gary R. and I now agree that a Quasi-mind is (in my words) "an individual Sign
that is also a complex of Signs," and (in his words) "something like the
prerequisite of all semiosis and communication." There is nothing in EP 2:304
to indicate that "the ideal or perfect sign" is "an accretion of Signs,"
although EP 2:545n25 does refer to "a perfect sign" as "the aggregate formed by
a sign and all the signs which its occurrence carries with it." I am not quite
ready to say anything further about the latter passage just yet; I would prefer
to cover a bit more semiotic and metaphysical ground first.
JAS: The more attributes of the Dynamic Object that the Immediate Object of
the Sign includes, the closer the Interpretant comes to reproducing the entire
effect that the Dynamic Object itself would have on the Quasi-interpreter (cf.
EP 2:391; 1906).
GF: Are we assuming that the Immediate Object includes (or can include)
attributes of the Dynamic Object? (Why?) If we do, then the Immediate Object
sounds like a concept — as, for example, your concept of a woman includes
attributes of the woman you are talking about right now. Do you think of an
Immediate Object as a concept or like a concept?
In the 1906 passage that I cited but did not quote, Peirce stated that a Sign
"is determined by the object, but in no other respect than goes to enable it to
act upon the interpreting quasi-mind; and the more perfectly it fulfills its
function as a sign, the less effect it has upon that quasi-mind other than that
of determining it as if the object itself had acted upon it." I have posited
that this "respect" is precisely the Immediate Object, and stated that
determination "must always occur with respect to a character or quality; i.e.,
a Form." Hence the Dynamic Object determines the Sign with respect to some,
but not all, of its characters or qualities; and that partial combination of
attributes is the Immediate Object, the Form that the Sign communicates. Only
the Sign itself--not its Immediate Object--can be a concept (Symbol) that
unites Matter (denotation) and Form (signification) in its Interpretant
(determination).
GF: By “Dynamic Object” do you mean an existing thing in reaction with another
existing thing? If so, why use a term that is defined only as a correlate of a
triadic relation?
Indeed, it would be better to substitute "Thing" for "Dynamic Object" when
discussing dyadic reaction; I only wanted to emphasize the direct contrast with
triadic Sign-action. In fact, I am drafting another post to discuss what I see
as the key distinctions among Things, Quasi-minds, and Persons, continuing to
utilize the Aristotelian terms for the Categories that Peirce employed in his
1904 writings--Form (1ns), Matter (2ns), and Entelechy (3ns).
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
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