Jon, a couple of responses inserted … Gary f.
From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 17-Mar-19 17:03 Gary F., List: So far, this thread is confirming my suspicion from the outset that I do not really "get" phenomenology. GF: I agree, and apparently my post was no help to you — so this reply probably won’t help either, but … GF: Not all phenomena are semiosic, so talking about phenomena is not automatically talking about semiosis. Not all phenomena are semeiosic, but all thinking and talking about phenomena are semeiosic. Would you say, then, that we have a semeiotica utens that enables us to do the latter without any kind of formal Speculative Grammar? GF: Of course we do. It’s called “language.” It’s the same semeiotica utens that physicists use when they talk about physical phenomena (without knowing anything about linguistics). The special difficulty of phaneroscopic language is that there is nothing special about the phaneron: it’s right there in everyone’s face all the time, and that makes it difficult to talk about. (As Wittgenstein also noticed.) Did Peirce ever say something along those lines, beyond his references to a logica utens? GF: Peirce would not say anything so obvious. GF: Peirce does not say there that we think through phenomena; he says we think through signs: Right, all thinking is in Signs--including the predicates that we prescind from the phenomena, the subjects that we abstract from those predicates, and the propositions that we formulate by connecting those subjects. How, then, can anything be "before the mind" that is not a Sign? According to Peirce, "a Percept is a Seme" (CP 4.539; 1906), although previously he had said that a percept or "image" in the psychological sense "makes no professions of any kind, essentially embodies no intentions of any kind, does not stand for anything" (CP 7.619; 1903).'' How should we reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements? GF: Those statements are contradictory only if you think that it’s impossible to see, or hear, or touch anything without thinking or talking about it. Do you really think that? It’s true that terms like “mind” and “percept” don’t fit comfortably as phaneroscopic terms; like “person,” they are sops to Cerberus. That’s why he invented the “prebit” to occupy that niche in the phaneroscopic ecosystem. As for “mind,” in phaneroscopy you have to cleanse your mind of any preconceived meaning that word has, except that it’s that “before” which, or “to” which, anything and everything appears. You also have to cleanse the term “appear” of any traces of the appearance/reality dualism that might be clinging to it. Likewise the subject/object dualism has to drop away from “object.” (As for “categories,” you might better forget the term altogether in this context.) GF: The phaneron contains everything that is or can be “before the mind” in any way, including objects and realities. Are objects and realities themselves before the mind, or only our Percepts of them as Signs? GF: You seem to be assuming that phenomenology is limited to analysis of perception. All sorts of things can be “before the mind” that are not percepts. Phenomenology claims only that those appearances really appear. Whether they turn out to be objects or realities or feelings or hallucinations is for logic to decide. Is it not our Perceptual Judgments as Retroductive hypotheses that posit Objects determining those Percepts (cf. CP 5.181, EP 2:227; 1903), and Reality as that which is as it is regardless of how we think about it (cf. NEM 4:343; 1898)? Is Atkins right that "Since the phaneron is a collection, it has parts"? If so, then why did Peirce say that "The image has no parts," such that we must create predicates by means of precission (NEM 3:917; 1904)? GF: ... it is the task of phenomenology to recognize Secondness (and Thirdness and Firstness) as elements of the phaneron. My understanding is that we do this by first recognizing 3ns (representation/mediation)--which "pours in upon us through every avenue of sense" (CP 5.157, EP 2:211; 1903)--then prescinding 2ns (relation/reaction) from 3ns, and then prescinding 1ns (quality) from 2ns and 3ns. What am I missing or misunderstanding? GF: We prescind the elements of the phaneron from the phaneron, not from each other. Once you have the concept of 3ns, then you can prescind the concept of 2ns from it, and so on. But the concepts are not the elements, any more than the map is the territory. As for what you’re missing, I agree with Gary R: you have to practice phenomenology before you can understand it. Peirce gives some pretty good pointers on how to do that, and that’s what you need to study before you try to derive a concept of phenomenology from Peirce’s writings on logic as semeiotic. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 8:00 AM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Jon, Gary R, What Peirce himself says about phenomenology/phaneroscopy seem to me much more clear and direct than the questions you are struggling with here, so I’ll confine myself here to flagging instances where I think your usage of Peircean terms is based on a misreading of Peirce (and/or Atkins). I think the problems you are dealing with are likely to vanish if these misreadings are cleared up. JAS: I still struggle to see how anyone can think or talk about Phenomenology without engaging in Semeiotic. After all, any fact is always expressed in a proposition; but as soon as we think or say something about a phenomenon using a proposition, we are going beyond merely observing that phenomenon in itself--we are now representing it with something else, and relating it to something else. GF: You can’t talk about anything without engaging in semiosis. But you’re not engaging in Semeiotic unless you are talking about semiosis. Not all phenomena are semiosic, so talking about phenomena is not automatically talking about semiosis. JAS: Peirce seemingly used "object" as a synonym for "phenomenon" in 1903. GF: A phenomenon is an object of attention. It becomes the object of a sign when the sign is uttered. GR: Hypostatic abstraction, continuous predicate, proposition, etc. are terms of semeiotic, and what you've described above is, as I see it, a posteriori work logic does upon the factual findings and principles of phenomenology uncovered. JAS: I agree that all of those fall under Semeiotic as thinking about the "facts of phenomenology," rather than observing the phenomena themselves and thinking through them (cf. CP 4.549; 1906), which I currently see as the scope of Phenomenology itself. GF: Peirce does not say there that we think through phenomena; he says we think through signs: CSP: [[ That wonderful operation of hypostatic abstraction by which we seem to create entia rationis that are, nevertheless, sometimes real, furnishes us the means of turning predicates from being signs that we think or think through, into being subjects thought of. We thus think of the thought-sign itself, making it the object of another thought-sign. ]] GF: Signs are phenomena too, of course, but phenomena are not signs unless they refer to other phenomena. JAS: the Phaneron contains no objects and no realities, only "images" (De Tienne's term). GF: The phaneron contains everything that is or can be “before the mind” in any way, including objects and realities. An object must first appear in order to act as an object of attention or of a sign. A thing must appear, must be present to the mind, in order to be recognized as real. That recognition is logical and metaphysical, not phenomenology, but it is the Secondness of the phenomenon (to the mind) which underwrites its reality, and it is the task of phenomenology to recognize Secondness (and Thirdness and Firstness) as elements of the phaneron. Those three terms are, of course, hypostatic abstractions, but the objects of those signs are not. They are “subjects thought of” which are more elementary than anything we say or think about them. Gary f.
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