Francesco, List:
FB: If rhemes have an immediate object, then according to Peirce's
taxonomies of 1904-1906 "all men" must be a rheme, because signs with
immediate objects may be general (universally quantified). But "all men" is
not a rheme; therefore, rhemes do not have immediate objects.
I am afraid that I am not following the argument here. As I already quoted
Peirce explicitly stating, "general" is *not *equivalent to "universally
quantified"; both universal ("All men are mortal") and particular ("Some
men are mortal") propositions are *general*, as opposed to *singular *("This
man is mortal"). Moreover, any common noun, such as "man," is a
*general *Rheme
("_____ is a man," cf. EP 2:309-310; 1904) despite not being quantified *at
all*; and it *does *have an Immediate Object, which is whatever possesses
the set of characters that corresponds to its definition--i.e., its
Immediate Interpretant. Quantification *only *comes into play when this
general Rheme is employed *in a proposition*.
In other words, the conclusion that I draw from Peirce's 1904-1906 division
of the Immediate Object into vague/singular/general is not that *only
*propositions
have Immediate Objects, but that the Immediate Object of a proposition
*includes
*the quantification of its *general *subject(s). Nevertheless, I think
that his application of this particular trichotomy to propositions is
problematic--even when revised to Descriptive/Designative/Copulative in
1908; more on that soon.
FB: I must say I do not understand the discussion of "general object".
Rather than repeating myself, I will respectfully request that you consider
reading through the other current List thread on "The nature of the Dynamic
Object" in its entirety, if you have not done so already; perhaps beginning
with the only post in its predecessor thread (
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2018-08/msg00342.html).
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 3:45 PM, Francesco Bellucci <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Dear Jon, List
>
> Thanks for your response. Here some further thoughts.
>
> You will agree that the notion of immediate object as a technical notion
> of semiotics emerges in 1904, that it emerges in the classification of
> signs, and that its purpose in the classification of signs up to 1906 is to
> divide signs into vague, singular, and general. You will also agree that in
> that context, as well as in other writings of the same year (Kaina
> Stoicheia, MSS 4-11), singular means existentially quantified and general
> means universally quantified (distributively general). I see that you also
> agree that "all men" is not a rheme. Let's proceed from here.
>
> If rhemes have an immediate object, then according to Peirce's taxonomies
> of 1904-1906 "all men" must be a rheme, because signs with immediate
> objects may be general (universally quantified). But "all men" is not a
> rheme; therefore, rhemes do not have immediate objects.
>
> I must say I do not understand the discussion of "general object". As far
> as I know, symbols have a general object (indices an individual object),
> legisigns are general in themselves (as types) and universally quantified
> sentences are also said to be "general" by Peirce ("distributively general"
> his preferred term). Talk of "general objects" besides the dynamic and the
> immediate sounds to me very unPeircean.
>
> Best
> Francesco
>
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