Jon, list,
You concluded: "Any comments? I am guessing that these topics must simply
not be of much interest, or people are just very busy these days, since I
find it hard to believe that everyone agrees with everything I have been
posting. :-)"
I would imagine that there are several on this list (I could probably name
them) who find the topics you're discussing of considerable interest, and I
am one of them. I doubt that everyone--even and especially every one of
those interested individuals--agrees with everything you've been posting,
but I personally agree with much of it, having some reservations about some
of it which I'll have to discuss in a future post.
However, more to the middle reason you offered in the snippet I quoted
above as to why you haven't received much feedback recently. I myself have
been exceedingly busy of late and haven't had much time to fully digest
your very rich messages let alone respond to them. From off list messages,
I know two other list members who are quite interested in this line of
inquiry but who are now themselves very busy. This situation reminds me of
Joe Ransdell's comment on the Peirce-l page at the Arisbe web site.
If nobody responds to your posts you should NOT assume that it is because
of lack of interest, or that your post is perceived as something
negligible. You really have no basis for doing that, given the
understandings and practices of lists like this. Frequently, the interested
people just don't have time to respond, and few of us have time to respond
to more than a small percentage of the things that interest us, in any
case. Since you usually have no way of knowing why you didn't get the
response you hoped for, it is best to be Stoic about it. . . Pose your
questions and comments well by your own standards and remind yourself that
even if there is no overt response, what you have said or asked will be
read by hundreds of people in any case, and with what results or "fruits"
you cannot know.
While I'm still busy, for now I'd like to respond to a couple of more
substantive points made in your most recent post:
JAS: After further contemplation, I now believe that Peirce was
describing *the
same thing* here as in the passage about "the ideal sign" that I have
mentioned previously, which he wrote a couple of years earlier.
You then quoted the passage from EP 2:304 which included these sentences:
CSP: . . . Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or *entelechy*,
which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to mean the
very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and so
identical,--in such identity as a sign may have,--with the very matter
denoted united with the very form signified by it.
This snippet from the longer quotation, especially the phrase "the ideal
sign which should be quite perfect," would seem to nearly confirm your
sense that what Peirce terms the "ideal sign" and, years later, the
"perfect sign" are, indeed, synonymous.
And I'm also "with you" in your revising your previous hypothesis.
JAS:
Contrary to my previous hypothesis, "Perfect Sign" is *not* synonymous with
"Quasi-mind"; instead, it designates the Truth that corresponds to the
Universe.
While I've held from the get-go that 'perfect Sign' and 'Quasi-mind' are
*not* the same thing, I'm beginning to return to my original thought that
the 'perfect Sign' expresses some kind of an ideal, some asymptotic
approach to "the Truth that corresponds to the Universe," a Universe
which, however, is ever-evolving.
So, it seems to me that 'perfection' (also, 'ideal') in Peirce's semieotic
sense is *not* being employed by him in some informal, every day,
colloquial way. I think that if respondents to your posts were to read more
of what Peirce means by these terms ('perfect' or 'ideal' + sign, 'the
Truth', etc.) rather than what they 'think' these may mean based on a less
scientific and more colloquial usage, that this inquiry could perhaps move
forward more speedily. Or not.
Best,
Gary R
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