Jon, list,
I’m familiar enough with your terminological choices, Jon, to feel that I know
what you’re talking about, most of the time. Thus I’m not inclined to argue for
or against the wisdom of those choices. However, I do tend to stumble over your
phrase “Normative Logic as Semeiotic.” To me, Peirce’s term “Logic as Semiotic”
refers mainly to speculative grammar (and rhetoric) and not to normative Logic
— although I’m not prepared to draw a hard line between the two. He introduced
the term “logic as semeiotic” as a broader sense of “logic” than Critic, which
is Logic in the narrow sense (CP 1.444, c. 1896). Even the EGs are tools not so
much for Critic as for analysis. I don’t see Peirce using EGs to construct
“proofs” of theorems or test their validity, but rather “to separate reasoning
into its smallest steps so that each one may be examined by itself … Our system
is intended to facilitate the study of reasoning but not to facilitate
reasoning itself” (Lowell Lecture 2, 1903). I consider Peirce’s study of
reasoning to be semiotic but not primarily normative.
Regarding the three Universes of Experience in “A Neglected Argument for the
Reality of God”, I notice one big difference between them and the three
Universes of Capacities, Actualities, and Tendencies in R 300: the latter
constitute one level of a holarchy: they are subuniverses of a single Universe
(of Discourse), and they in turn subdivide into subuniverses: “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” (R300, {38}). In the “Neglected
Argument,” on the other hand, there are three and only three Universes; Peirce
does not mention any subuniverses (nor does he say that the three “shade into
one another”). I think the difference is due not to a difference in reference,
or classification of sciences, but to the greater emphasis in the NA on the
logic of vagueness.
Peirce showed a lot of interest around this time in the varieties of
indeterminacy and their importance in logic. The two main varieties are
generality and vagueness, and Peirce as logician did what he could to render
those concepts as exact as possible by distinguishing their functions in
semiosis. But one of the interesting features of the “Bedrock” MS is this
passage about a variant form of generality:
[[ And by the way, in speaking above of a “generalized” icon, I used the
qualification in a sense of “generalize” common among designers, especially
among cartographers, as well as in vernacular talk, though it is not the proper
logical sense of the verb, since it does not signify the removal of any
constituent of logical depth from a condition, nor confers any liberty on the
interpreter, but implies some almost microscopic items that are really
falsifications committed in the interest of simplification. Thus, a map
“generalizes” its image of a river in representing the latter as not making
sundry small windings that it really does make. So recollection may be said to
“generalize” the remembered perception in representing this to be without many
insignificant details {51} that really did belong to it; and although an icon
is not, properly speaking, general, so far as it is a pure icon, yet every icon
must “generalize,” more or less, in this peculiar sense. Even a photograph does
so.) ]]
As an exact logician, Peirce does not often remark on the cognitive value of
generality in the sense of simplification. My book on the other hand, with its
focus on the modelling relation, pays much more attention to the importance of
simplification in modelling, especially with respect to the “internal model” or
Innenwelt which serves as a “guidance system” for every sentient being (see
especially Chapter 11, http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/plx.htm). So I was happy to
find Peirce’s recognition of the value of simplification here (even though he
calls it “falsification”).
I am emphatically not an exact logician, which is why I have so much to learn
from Peircean logic. However, I must confess that I have no use for Peirce’s
EGs except to better understand his broader logic, semiotic and philosophy.
Consequently I have no real use for your PGs either. I don’t agree with some of
your claims about their iconicity — I think that optimal iconicity, as
Stjernfelt called it, or at least the perception of it, varies from person to
person — but again, this is not something I’m prepared to argue for or against.
It doesn’t matter that much to me.
Gary f.
From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
Sent: 6-Mar-19 19:48
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Bedrock Beneath Pragmaticism
Gary R., List:
As Gary F. recently (and astutely) observed, I have a strong inclination toward
attempting to regularize Peirce's terminology. It is part of my general
process of seeking to understand his ideas better by trying to arrange them
into a systematic framework--not necessarily Peirce's own, but one that is
legitimately and recognizably Peircean.
With that in mind, I am already on record as currently thinking that the
Categories and Universes are not different names for the same concept, although
admittedly I have gone back and forth on that question over time. I now
tentatively see them as corresponding respectively to precission and
(subjectal/hypostatic) abstraction, predicates and subjects, Semes and
Propositions, Percepts and Perceptual Judgments, presentations and urgings. As
for whether the Universes are first/best located in Normative Logic as
Semeiotic or in Metaphysics, I suspect that the answer at least partially
depends on whether we take the following three sets of Signs to denote the same
set of Objects.
1. The three Universes of Capacities, Actualities, and Tendencies in R 300
(early 1908).
2. The three Universes of Experience in "A Neglected Argument for the
Reality of God" (mid-1908).
3. The three Universes of Possibles, Existents, and Necessitants in the
draft letters to Lady Welby (late 1908).
#1 sounds like Metaphysics, but appears within a discussion of Existential
Graphs (Logical Critic). You said below that the context of #2 also suggests
Metaphysics, but the article specifically addresses the validity of
Retroduction, Deduction, and Induction (Logical Critic) before going on to
claim that the hypothesis of God's Reality is precisely the kind of instinctive
explanatory conjecture that properly launches any scientific inquiry
(Speculative Rhetoric or Methodeutic). #3 explicitly corresponds to Peirce's
divisions of all Signs according to the six correlates and four relations
(Speculative Grammar).
In summary, at the moment it seems to me that all three varieties of Universes
belong within Normative Logic as Semeiotic. However, if Peirce was right that
"Metaphysics consists in the results of the absolute acceptance of logical
principles not merely as regulatively valid, but as truths of being" (CP 1.487;
c. 1896)--and I believe that he was--then the distinction may not need to be
drawn too sharply anyway.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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