Gary F, Francesco, and Jon AS,
The puzzle is solved. I thank all three of you for forcing me
to consider more passages by Peirce. They show how and why EGs
are the Bedrock that determines where the stones fit in the mosaic.
I took a fair amount of time to write this note because I plan
to combine some of this material with another article I'm writing.
GF
this looks to me like an evasive maneuver on your part. Peirce's
definition of "Seme" is part of his speculative grammar and has
nothing to do with Existential Graphs.
No. Every aspect of Peirce's semeiotic from the 1860s to 1914 is
based on his logic. Although his logic and semeiotic evolved over the
years, every feature of his earlier logics has an exact translation to
features of his later versions.
That makes logic the touchstone (standard or criterion) for analyzing
and relating different versions of his terminology. For example, look
at the way he introduced the word 'Seme':
CSP: A familiar logical triplet is Term, Proposition, Argument.
In order to make this a division of all signs, the first two
members have to be much widened. By a Seme, I shall mean anything
which serves for any purpose as a substitute for an object of which
it is, in some sense, a representative or Sign. The logical Term,
which is a class-name, is a Seme. (CP 4.538)
The triplet "Term, Proposition, Argument" comes from Aristotelian-
scholastic logic, which was familiar to every university graduate
in the 19th c. To see exactly what Peirce meant by a logical Term,
look at the way he translated syllogisms to existential graphs in
NEM 3:168. (Copied as p. 8 of http://jfsowa.com/peirce/eg1911.pdf )
In Fig. 11 to Fig 17, he drew the EGs for stating and proving the
syllogism Barbara: Any M is P. Any S is M. Therefore, any S is P.
The letter S is a subject term, P is a predicate term, and M is the
middle term, which appears in both subject and predicate position.
The letters S, M, and P represent monads (monadic predicates), each
of which has one unattached peg. Therefore, the logical subject is
a predicate, which is a Rheme, which is a Seme.
But in the sentence "Some car is red", the noun phrase "Some car" is
the grammatical subject, and the noun 'car' is the logical subject.
In an EG, the grammatical subject has a line of identity attached to
the monad: Car———. This EG is a medad because every peg is attached
to a line. It states the proposition (Pheme) "There is a car."
FB
In R 295, a draft of the "Prolegomena", Peirce says:
The first member of the triplet, the “Seme,” embraces the logical
Term, the Subject or Object of a sentence, everything of any kind,
be it a man or a scribed character, such as h or Pb, which will
serve or is supposed to serve, for some purpose, as a substitute
for its Object. (R 295, p. 26ff)
Since it's a draft, we should ask why Peirce replaced it with CP 4.538.
The most likely reason is that he noticed an ambiguity in R 295.
To see why R 295 is ambiguous, consider "the logical Term, the Subject
or Object of a sentence". The qualifiers before and after 'Subject'
have contradictory implications. The phrase "logical Term" implies
a monad with an unattached peg. But the phrase "of a sentence"
implies a grammatical subject, which would contain indexical words
like 'any', 'some', 'all', 'a', 'the'... Each of those words maps
to a line of identity in an EG. (See CP 3.460 about indexicals.)
In the final version (CP 4.538), Peirce wrote "logical triplet"
at the beginning of the paragraph, and "logical Term" at the end.
But he avoided the word 'subject'. He did use the word 'object',
but only as something in the universe of discourse (UoD), not as
a grammatical part of a sentence.
For more about Semes and Phemes, note EP 2:490, 1908, triad IX:
As to the Nature of the Influence of a Sign [a Seme is] like a simple
sign [a Pheme is] with Antecedent and Consequent [and a Delome is]
with Antecedent, Consequent, and principle of sequence.
As a Seme, the logical subject is simple. It has only one part,
which is represented by a monadic predicate in an EG. But the
grammatical subject has two parts, a monad and a line of identity.
That makes it a medad, which is a proposition, which is a Pheme.
FB
The subject of a sentence, for example "Hamlet" in "Hamlet is mad"
is, according to R 295, a seme.
No. This is a third way that the word 'subject' is ambiguous.
As Peirce said many times, a name is a kind of index. Unlike a
common noun, such as 'man', a name like 'Hamlet' does not require
an indexical in front of it to be a grammatical subject.
In CP 4.538, Peirce wrote "The logical Term, which is a class-name,
is a Seme." That does not include names of individuals. This issue
was debated from antiquity to the 19th c. Aristotle did not allow
names to occur as terms in syllogisms, but some of his followers did.
Even those who allowed names in syllogisms restricted them to subject
position, never middle or predicate position.
And by the way, there is also a fourth meaning of the word 'subject':
some object in the UoD that a grammatical subject refers to. Peirce
kept all the logical/semeiotic relationships clear in his own mind.
To understand what he wrote, quoting MSS is not enough. We must
reconstruct the logic he had in mind.
FB
I know of no classification of signs after 1906 in which "rheme"
is used instead of "seme", and I know some (R 339, p. 285r, R 795,
EP 2, p. 490) in which "seme" appears instead of "rheme"
I never disputed that point. I claimed that a Seme is a predicate
or a quasi-predicate. I'm happy to consider 'Rheme' as a synonym
for 'predicate'.
Since Seme is a First in the triad Seme, Pheme, Delome, a widening
of Term (also a First) must include another kind of First. Therefore,
a quasi-predicate, whatever it may be, must be a First.
But the word 'quasi-predicate' has been questioned because Peirce
only used it once in 1903. Therefore, I'll cite Tony Jappy, who
used the word 'quasi-predicate' in publications that also address
Peirce's late categories.
His recent book discusses quasi-predicates:
Jappy, Tony (2017) Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and
the Philosophy of Representation, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
But I'll quote from his 1914 article, which can be freely downloaded:
https://www.ocula.it/files/OCULA-15-JAPPY-Peirce-rhetoric-and-the-still-image.pdf
Jappy, 1914, p. 8
in the 1903 system the proposition, a dicisign, was defined as a double
sign associating an index and a rheme (CP 2.251). In 1906 these two
terms are dropped and Peirce simply refers to the ‘part appropriated
to representing the object, and another to representing how [the] sign
itself represents that object’ (EP2 478); in other words one part
representing the sign’s partial objects (the indexical elements of
1903), and another representing the form of the relations holding
between these partial objects.
In the 1903 version, the logical subject is the rheme, and the
grammatical subject is the index + rheme. In 1906, the word 'Term'
is "widened" to include percepts (in CP 4.539) that go beyond the
symbols of language or logic. But in NEM 3.917, Peirce had also
discussed the option of precisive abstraction, "leaving something
out of account in order to attend to something else".
A percept or image that represents a form would be a Seme, which
may be simplified (by precisive abstraction) to a monad in EGs.
The indexical elements would be linked to that monad by a line
or ligature. The combination of both parts is a Pheme.
But Peirce had also planned to extend EGs much farther:
Now Existential Graphs furnish us the best diagram of thought
that has ever yet been invented. And do not forget that I have
only developed one Department of it. There are countless Objects
of consciousness that words cannot express; such as the feelings
a symphony inspires or that which is in the soul of a furiously
angry man in presence of his enemy. But all these can perfectly
be expressed in Graphs... And therefore there can be no better
instrument for thinking about Constituents of the Phaneron —
which is itself too evanescent for definite comprehension — than
to think about Existential Graphs. (R 499s: 17, 1906).
This quotation confirms four points: (1) Peirce was always thinking
in terms of EGs; (2) he did not believe that they had any limitations;
(3) they were his primary tool for analyzing the Phaneron; therefore,
(4) they are the formal logic he used to derive the normative sciences.
Jappy, pp. 10, 11
Now this characteristic two-part structure is to be found... in the
dicent sinsign illustrated by the photographs to be examined below.
This is how Peirce had described the photograph in 1903...
[Quoting CP 2:230, 1903]
It will be remarked that this connection of the print, which is
the quasi-predicate of the photograph, with the section of the
rays, which is the quasi-subject, is the Syntax of the Dicisign;
Further on p. 11, Jappy uses the phrase "nonverbal communication
(NVC signs)" for the indexical features of NVCs that determine
the quasi-subjects. As examples of NVCs, he mentions proximity,
orientation, posture, facial expression, gesture and appearance.
On p. 12, Jappy adds "A NVC sign such as proximity or interpersonal
spacing tends to be culturally variable, and is often associated
with orientation." The quasi-predicates, however, describe the
objects that are indicated by the NVCs.
The detail added by Jappy is consistent with what Peirce wrote
about quasi-predicates in 1903 and with what he wrote about Semes
and Phemes in CP 4.538-550:
The Immediate Object of all knowledge and all thought is, in the
last analysis, the Percept... A fact of Immediate Perception is not
a Percept, nor any part of a Percept; a Percept is a Seme, while
a fact of Immediate Perception or rather the Perceptual Judgment
of which such fact is the Immediate Interpretant, is a Pheme...
Subsequent Interpretants furnish new Semes of Universes resulting
from various adjunctions to the Perceptual Universe. They are,
however, all of them, Interpretants of Percepts. (CP 4.539)
In summary, quasi-predicates are percepts, images, or patterns of
percepts and images from any sensory source, including feelings.
An NVC is a nonverbal indexical of a quasi-subject that determines
some object in the UoD which is described by a Seme.
The universes discussed in CP 4.539, when considered as possibilities,
are complex Semes formed as conjunctions of multiple simpler Semes.
But a conjunction of Semes does not become a Pheme until, by some
judgment, it is asserted about something determined by some index.
JAS
Not surprisingly, I agree completely with Francesco
Unfortunately, you were both misled by the same ambiguity. But if
it's any consolation, you were partly right: a logical subject is
a kind of Seme, but a grammatical subject is a Pheme.
John
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