Gary F., List: This might strike you as another case of forcing together pieces from different puzzles, but I will throw it out there anyway.
I have already noted that in CP 2.418 (1867), Peirce characterized logical breadth, depth, and information as follows. - Informed breadth is the Sign's "direct reference to its object, or the real things which it represents"; i.e., what he later called the Dynamic Object. - Informed depth is the Sign's "reference to its ground through its object, or the common characters of those objects"; i.e., what he later called the Immediate Object. - Information itself, the product of breadth and depth, is the Sign's "reference to its interpretant through its object, or all the facts known about its object." Just previous to this, in CP 2.407-417 (1867), Peirce identified three senses of breadth and depth that correspond to three distinct *states *of information. - *Essential *breadth and depth - knowledge of no facts, but only the meanings (definitions) of terms. - *Informed *breadth and depth - knowledge derived from experience, which always falls between the other two. - *Substantial *breadth and depth - knowledge of qualities/forms and things/substances themselves (absolute truth). It occurs to me now that these at least loosely parallel the three Interpretants of Peirce's much later semeiotic writings. - "... the Immediate Interpretant, which is the interpretant as it is revealed in the right understanding of the Sign itself, and is ordinarily called the *meaning *of the sign" (CP 4.536; 1906). - "... the Dynamical Interpretant which is the actual effect which the Sign, as a Sign, really determines" (ibid). "In its Active/Passive forms, the Dynamical Interpretant indefinitely approaches the character of the Final/Immediate Interpretant; and yet the distinction is absolute" (CP 8.315, EP 2:499; 1909). - "... the Final Interpretant ... is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached" (CP 8.184, EP 2:496; 1909). *Essential *information is mere "acquaintance with the system of signs" (CP 8.179, EP 2:494; 1909). *Substantial *information is "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 ... the ultimate interpretant of every sign" (EP 2:304; 1904). Within these limits is what we might call *experiential *information--the kind that is routinely (and fallibly) obtained when Signs are "used by a 'scientific' intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience" (CP 2.227; c. 1897). As for methodology, I have remarked before that yours is more "exegetical," while mine is more "systematic." This does not entail that they will always lead us to incompatible outcomes; on the contrary, they have the potential to complement and reinforce each other. However, we do seem to have different *purposes *underlying our efforts more often than not, and that cannot help but affect the results that we reach and how we evaluate them. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 8:30 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, > > Your explanation confirms my hypothesis as to why you see a contradiction > where Peirce evidently doesn’t. If you don’t mind a metaphor, you’re trying > to fit Peirce’s terms together as if they were rigid pieces of a flat > picture puzzle (rather than products of various logical analyses made from > various points of view with occasional shifts of emphasis in a > multidimensional study of semiosis). But if that’s your path of inquiry, > far be it from me to block it. All I can do is try to explain why I take a > different path, and I think my previous post does that, so no need to > repeat myself. > > I might however add a note about my practical methodology which I don’t > think I’ve mentioned before. First, I prefer reading whole texts of Peirce, > in which I try to follow his train of thought from point to point, rather > than collections of snippets such as the Commens Dictionary. Once I’ve read > them, if they tell me anything new, I collect them into a single > ever-growing chronologically ordered megatext. Then, when I want to > investigate Peirce’s usage of a single term such as “signification”, I do a > search for the term (in this case I would search for “signif”) in that > megatext. That way each hit occurs in a context with which I am already > familiar, and some hits trigger adjustments in my current understanding of > the depth of the term. Sometimes I go on to search the CP or other > searchable collections for texts that aren’t in my collection. I realize > this method is not for everybody, but it often reveals connections and > nuances of Peircean thought that I hadn’t noticed before, and may explain > some differences between my results and others. > > Gary f. >
----------------------------- 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] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
