Jon, list, I will quote below the specific text to which I was referring as the one in which Peirce explains the relationship between his Existential Graphs and his phenomenological “categories” or experiential Universes, with a few ellipses and my comments interspersed.
[[ in regard to the purpose, or idea, of Existential Graphs, you will not
be surprised to hear that, never, from the first, having arrogated to myself
the function of being the fabricator of that system, but having all along
perceived that I had only stumbled upon it, {34} at first stupidly
describing, in place of it, a System that I now call that of ‘Entitative
Graphs’, I am half-confident of descrying, deep below the superficies of
distinct attention, a far more unitary idea of the system than the somewhat
disjointed one that I can alone, as yet, either indicate or even describe,
in the sentences following. ]]
Is it not remarkable that after working with EGs for over 10 years,
including lecturing and publishing about them, he should be so unsure of his
ability to describe the System or even state its purpose? His perception
that he “had only stumbled upon it” — a phenomenological observation,
referring to the manner in which it first appeared to him — is intimately
related to the idea of the system being inaccessible to his “distinct
attention.”
[[ Loosely, (though, mind you, just in such loose ideas can any rational
system be first laid open,) I might say that the system of Existential
Graphs is designed to afford a sort of geometrical παρασκευή,— or diagram,—
for logical analysis, i.e. for illustrating and facilitating the same. In
order that that end should be attained, all students of precise logic will
agree that there must be a method of exhibiting rational procedures under
high logical magnifications. ]]
The best translation I could find for this use of παρασκευή is “apparatus.”
Notice that the Graphs are designed to facilitate logical analysis of the
reasoning process, not to facilitate reasoning itself — a point Peirce had
already insisted on in the 1903 Lowell lectures and elsewhere.
[[ To this end, it is requisite that, as in mathematics, and as the deepest
and most thorough studies of Logic that {35} have hitherto been attained
show us to be clearly requisite, there should be (1) illustrations of the
logical procedure that shall represent it, (2) not merely by force of any
rule or habit of interpretation, and still less by any actual, or dynamical,
connexion between the sign, or representamen, and the object signified, but,
as far as possible, by and in an analogy, or agreement in the very forms
themselves, between a (3) visual, or optico-muscular, presentment and the
thought itself. ]]
The idea that the iconic “presentment” should be “optico-muscular” (in
order to be analogous to “the thought itself”) reminds me of Einstein’s
letter to Hadamard (1945, 142-3), where he says that the “psychical entities
which seem to serve as elements in thought” are, for him, “of visual and
some of muscular type” (as opposed to being verbal). This is again a
phenomenological observation — and one that Peirce seems to be making about
his own experience. This is confirmed, I think, by the fact that in his
writings about geometry and topology Peirce often speaks of a line as a
point in motion, a film as a line in motion, and so on (the motion being the
“muscular” aspect of the phenomenon).
[[ The very nature of reasoning demands such an iconic mode of
representation, while the nature of the human mind, to which the
representamen is to appeal, strongly recommends the optico-muscular form of
the icon. But this plan-germ having been settled upon, there may be
different ways of developing it into a definite plan…. I must [add] that (4)
that visible surface of which the Graph icons are differentiata, is to
denote that object (as utterly indefinite as to its signification as it is
quite unmistakable in its denotation,) which the Graphs, from their very
first, find to have been {37} settled upon, by a previous understanding
between the Graphist and the Interpreter, as that to which all their
significations must refer. ]]
This previous understanding is functionally equivalent to the collateral
experience which, in semiosis, furnishes that acquaintance with the object
which the sign itself cannot provide. While the Graphs iconize the form of
the thought process being analyzed, the matter of the process is denoted by
the surface on which the Graphs are scribed. This is what the Graphs and
their transformations are about: the Universe of Discourse, or simply the
Universe. This Universe is to discourse as the phaneron is to experience.
[[ This one and unvarying subject of all discourse whatsoever is the
Universe. Yet since the Universe, which force[s] upon us all those enduring
thoughts that we call truths, makes its power felt in three ways so utterly
different that we may well liken them to a set of three mutually
perpendicular directions from which any object may be viewed, we must
distinguish, Firstly, those thoughts that come to us, as we may [say], from
a star-light aspect of the Universe; suppositions that seem to us to be our
own untrammeled fabrications, although we are still bound down in them,
somehat loosely, it is true, to the Universe, in ways of which the
psychologists have, as yet, only begun to furnish us with some slight and
fragmentary accounts, which thoughts {38} refer to what we may entitle the
Universe of Real Capacities; then, Secondly, those thoughts which, as we are
sensible, are forced upon us by the brute force of experience, the Universe
of Actual Fact; and Thirdly, those thoughts into which the growth of our own
souls together with the vicissitudes of life give us as insight as features
of the ideal destiny toward which the course of events is forever to
approach nearer, the Universe of Tendencies. ]]
I call this triad of Universes (or subuniverses of the one Universe)
phenomenological because they are different ways in which the Universe
“makes its power felt” experientially. Now, if we try to eliminate from
phenomenological discourse all terminology that belongs to logic,
metaphysics and psychology, we are left with almost nothing to say — unless
we borrow terms from mathematics, which are also limited in their
application because mathematics is not a positive science which appeals to
experience. Despite Peirce’s insistence on distinguishing all these sciences
from one another, he often uses terms borrowed from the others in his own
phenomenological or phaneroscopic discourse. In the convoluted sentence
above he even refers directly to “the psychologists” as beginning to furnish
some data which can be organized according to phenomenological principles in
order to account for their experiential nature. Of course, psychology and
neuroscience have made great strides in this respect since Peirce’s time,
although many of the workers in the field of cognitive science are not
philosophically astute enough to recognize this phenomenological aspect as
such. (I tried to remedy that situation in some chapters of my book Turning
Signs).
[[ While there are other features of the plan of the System that it matters
more than these that you should appreciate, I hope you may be able to see
that these three, though they shade into one another, are nevertheless
different. Yet the imperative need of the manifold differentiation of each
of them is even more apparent. It is clear that their differences are not
differences of the predicates, or significations, of the graphs, but of the
predetermined objects {39} to which the graphs are intended to refer.
Consequently, the Iconic idea of the System requires that they should be
represented not by differentiations of the Graphs themselves but by
appropriate visible characters of the surfaces upon which the Graphs are
marked. ]]
This is the major point of the whole passage. The three Universes
correspond in logic to the modalities of the propositions represented by the
Graphs. Dealing with modality requires that not only the differences among
the three Universes, but also the manifold differentiation of each of them,
need to be represented “by appropriate visible characters of the surfaces
upon which the Graphs are marked” — but there is simply no good way to do
this, as Peirce goes on to explain. To me, this marks the point where Peirce
essentially gave up on the Gamma Graphs as a tool for logical analysis —
because he found no good way of representing the phenomenological variations
within the thought process which manifest in logic as modality, and in
metaphysics as “modes of being.”
There are no sensuous appearances of surfaces that to our knowledge are in
plain prose analogous to these subuniverses; so that we are driven to call
upon fancies to help us out. If we could fancy or pretend that there were
any respective similarities between the three fundamental hues, Vermilion,
Emerald and Ultramarine and the three Universes of Capacities, Actualities
and Tendencies, then the countless intermediate Hues with their variations
in Luminosity and in Chroma would furnish us with all the differences we
could ever need. But since the actual {40} coloring would be unhandy and in
print impracticable, I have suggested that we resort to the heraldic
tinctures; to wit, to color for the Universe of Capacities, to metal for the
Universe of actuality, and to fur for the universe of tendencies; further
differentiations separating each of these subuniverses into “provinces.” The
whole differentiation of the surface remains, however, the most
unsatisfactory feature of the system. ]]
And that is the bottom line, as far as EGs are concerned, for Peirce in
1908. The reason for my own interest in this is that ever since I wrote a
chapter on “meaning spaces” in Turning Signs, I’ve been looking for a way to
represent them diagrammatically, and I thought Existential Graphs would at
least suggest a way to do this, if not serve that purpose themselves. I now
see this as an illusion on my part. More generally: during all this time
I’ve been looking to Peirce for more exact ways of expressing the ideas I
developed in my book, and that’s been the main motivator for my Peircean
studies. As we all do, I’ve found traces or precursors of my own ideas in
Peirce, but now I’m thinking increasingly that many of my ways of expressing
those ideas are already better (for my purposes) than Peirce’s ways. Further
adapting of Peirce’s philosophy to my own would misrepresent Peirce without
making my own ideas clearer, I think.
Jon, since I think your approach to Peircean studies is rather different
from mine, I haven’t responded to your post in detail, lest we sink into
purely terminological issues. I hope this will do as a response, and that we
can continue to explore the “Bedrock” in this way.
Gary f.
From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: 3-Mar-19 12:49
Gary F., List:
GF: I finally found (just as I was on the point of giving up) a text in
which Peirce explains the relationship between his Existential Graphs and
his phenomenological “categories” (or experiential Universes, as he calls
them there).
As mentioned in several recent posts, I have come to believe that it is a
mistake to equate the phenomenological Categories with the experiential
Universes. While there is indeed an alignment between 1ns/2ns/3ns elsewhere
and Capacities/Actualities/Tendencies in R 300, they are not identical. In
fact, I have proposed that they pertain to two different sciences in
Peirce's architectonic--Phaneroscopy and Normative Logic as Semeiotic,
respectively. …
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