Jon, Gary R, John, list, JAS: … Semeiotic as a generalization of normative logic to encompass all kinds of Signs, not just Symbols; i.e., Speculative Grammar. Again, it is normative because it studies "what must be the characters of all signs used by a 'scientific' intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience" (CP 2.227; c. 1897, emphasis in original).
Peirce emphasized “must be,” but he does not refer to “normative” science at all in the passage you quote. You put the “normative” label on what Peirce says here, and when you do that — especially in the phrase “Normative Logic as Semeiotic” — you water down the signification of the word to the point where it almost evaporates. A normative science for Peirce (and as far as I know, for anyone who uses the word regularly) is one whose essence is to make dualistic judgments distinguishing good from bad, true from false, right from wrong, etc. What Peirce is referring to here is not normative science but, more broadly, positive science (as opposed to mathematics, which deals with hypothetical objects and thus does not learn from experience of the actual world). Here’s the context: [[ Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotic (σημειωτικη), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs. By describing the doctrine as “quasi-necessary,” or formal, I mean that we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an observation, by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by a “scientific” intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience. ] CP 2.227] Logic as Semeiotic is Logic in this broad sense. Logic as normative , i.e. logical Critic, is one of three branches of that, as Peirce explains: [[ The speculative rhetoric that we are speaking of is a branch of the analytical study of the essential conditions to which all signs are subject,— a science named semeiotics, though identified by many thinkers with logic. In the Roman schools, grammar, logic, and rhetoric were felt to be akin and to make up a rounded whole called the trivium. This feeling was just; for the three disciplines named correspond to the three essential branches of semeiotics, of which the first, called speculative grammar by Duns Scotus, studies the ways in which an object can be a sign; the second, the leading part of logic, best termed speculative critic, studies the ways in which a sign can be related to the object independent of it that it represents; while the third is the speculative rhetoric just mentioned. ] EP2:326 ] Belluci quotes a similar passage in which logic (in the narrow sense) is named as a “department” of semeiotic: [[ it will be necessary for the present and for a long time to come to regard logic, not as a distinct science, but as only a department of the science of the general constitution of signs,— the physiology of signs,— cenoscopic semeiotics. For if we roughly define a sign as a medium of communication, a piece of concerted music is a sign, and so is a word or signal of command. Now logic has no positive concern with either of these kinds of signs, but it must concern itself with them negatively in defining the kind of signs it does deal with; and it is not likely that in our time there will be anybody to study the general physiology of the non-logical signs except the logician, who is obliged to do so, in some measure. ] R 499 ISP 17-19, 1906 ] Peirce says here that it is up to logicians to study cenoscopic meneiotics — not that semeiotics replaces logic, but that it supervenes on logic. Thus it is quite misleading to claim that in Peirce’s classification, Semeiotic replaces Logic as a normative science. It is more accurate to say that Logic in the broad or “general” sense is coterminous with Semeiotic, and Logic in the narrow sense (Critic) is the normative part of that. None of the passages that you have quoted in defense of that claim even mention “semeiotic”, or any variant spelling of it, or any equivalent term such as “theory of signs,” in connection with Logic as a normative science. “Normative Logic as Semeiotic” is a chimera of your own invention, Jon. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 8-Mar-19 22:30 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Bedrock Beneath Pragmaticism John, List: JFS: Formal semeiotic is an application of logic to semeiotic. That application establishes for phenomenological categories of 1ns, 2ns, 3ns and their use in analyzing any whatever for the purpose of mapping the results to logic. I agree with the first sentence, but not the second. The Categories are established by applying formal/mathematical logic to phenomena as we observe them in their 1ns, as they appear. Once we begin studying phenomena in their 2ns, in relation to ends, we are engaged in Normative Science rather than Phenomenology. Every Sign has an end--to represent something--so applying formal/mathematical logic to Signs is the first branch of Semeiotic as a generalization of normative logic to encompass all kinds of Signs, not just Symbols; i.e., Speculative Grammar. Again, it is normative because it studies "what must be the characters of all signs used by a 'scientific' intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience" (CP 2.227; c. 1897, emphasis in original). …
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