Jon, (list,) Rather than continue to answer your questions about what I said, I think it would be better to go directly to Peirce if you want to get a grip on how one does phaneroscopy … and I mean to a continuous text, not a collection of quotes plucked from various contexts. I thought maybe the best place to start would be Selection 26 in EP2 (pp. 360-70), but then I found one from a little earlier in 1905 that might be even better. It’s the last few pages of a letter to James, NEM3 833-5, and only a snippet of it has been posted before, so here it is:
[[ … Thus, in any case, it is self evident that all tetradic relations can be reduced to triadic relations, and upon the same principle, so also can all higher forms of relation. But perhaps Royce may say (and I do not think it unlikely) that every dyadic relation is, according to this, a triadic relation. Certainly if he insists upon taking all that can be thought of a dyadic relation into account, this may be made out. But this only carries me to the higher aspects of my categories. I intended only to show that in formal logic they were all three required, and this I have done. But the Hegelians are not satisfied with the position of formal logic, although it is the only scientific attitude. It is simply absurd to attempt, as they do, to attain absolute perfect truth. Of course, no proposition of theoretical science is true in practice. In other words it is only true of an ideal world that differs from the actual world. What of that? It is the only way to attain any kind of mastery over the real world. But when he says (if he does say it) that every thought is triadic, I reply, Yes but a relation may be apprehended without thought, not indeed under a general category, but as something positive in the actual case. A man making an effort or otherwise reacting with the outer world does not necessarily think, but he knows that relation, that purely brute dyadic action in the particular case before him, and he has no need to look further. There is mighty little in the C. S. Peirce of 1905 of identity with the C. S. Peirce of 1867. I feel entitled to speak of him as quite another person. But my opinion is that the paper on A New List of Categories is one of the most perfect gems in all philosophy. I have not been able to find any positive error in it. There is a good deal that was not then worked out; but the leading features were made out correctly. However far we carry thought there remains a dyadic element not transmuted or taken up into triadicity, into tertianity. The phaneron, as I now call it, the sum total all of the contents of human consciousness, which I believe is about what you (borrowing the term of Avenarius) call pure experience,— but I do not admit the point of view of Avenarius to be correct or to be consonant to any pragmatism, nor to yours, in particular, and therefore I do not like that phrase. For me experience is what life has forced upon us,— a vague idea no doubt. But my phaneron is not limited to what is forced upon us; it also embraces all that we most capriciously conjure up, not objects only but all modes of contents of cognitional consciousness. Now I ask what are the kinds of elements, undecomposable parts of the phaneron? Surely no mode of division of them can be more important than that according to the degrees of complexity of their combinations,— like the division of the chemical elements according to their valency. I daresay it may have been Kekulé's Kohlenstoffverbindungen that set me thinking in that direction. A priori they can only be of those three kinds, the Priman (univalent), the Secundan (or bivalent) and the Tertian (or trivalent) (one might state them as nonvalent, univalent, and bivalent, thinking of the relation of one correlate to others,— but that is only a difference of the point of view. Thinking of the fact, the univalent, bivalent and trivalent is better. Just so the function of 2 variables is the trivalent relation etc.) So much must be, a priori. Now look at the actual contents of the phaneron and see what ones of these possibilities are realized. You find that they all are realized. How could it be otherwise? One may well ponder that. However, to come down to fact, when we look we find it is so. Take that Kantian division of the soul which has found so much employment, in spite of being abused incessantly by those who have employed it, that it must approach a great truth — Pleasure-Pain, Conation-Cognition. Let us correct its misapprehensions and leave its kernel of truth. Pleasure and pain are not qualities of feeling per se as this supposes them to be. They are those feelings which attract and repel. They therefore belong to the domain of conation. But the feelings, the qualities of feeling, are eminently priman, positive somethings regardless of aught else, like nothing else, indescribable as nothing else is indescribable. Conation, action, reaction, is in surprise in a more passive form. For action cannot take place without reaction, effort without resistance. If therefore we are acted on in sensation, we must react. But it is but the two sides of Secundity,— as two opposite sides there necessarily are,— that distinguish centrifugal and centripetal innervation. Finally it is not the mere sensation which is any kind of cognition. It is the entrance of the concepts, which makes the third branch. If we say thought, since all thought is dialogue and since symbols alone fully develop the idea of triadic relation, then Feeling, Consciousness of Reaction, and Thought will be the Priman, Secundan, and Tertian elements of consciousness. If I were really the pop-gun that people think and always will think I am, and were capable of pluming myself on having given birth to the valency idea,— the cenopythagorean idea as I sometimes call it,— I might, seeking the fortune of my idea, wish to account for the striking contrast between sensation and volition as being due to physiological causes. But evidently the physiological difference is on the contrary due to what was required to make an animal, to the final causation that it is the fashion to blind oneself to. But the difference is striking and emphatic because duality is the natural habitat of contrast. There is also a threefold distinction in thought for which the theory calls. But it is not so crying a contrast as that between sensation and volition. (The existence of final causes, which every voluntary act conclusively evidences, is far more certain than any theory of science whatever; but the idea is that they must be frowned upon, because the business of physiology is to account for vital phenomena by physical causes. No doubt. But if neglect of the study of logic had not reduced men to the level of children, they would see that the recognition of final causes in nowise interferes with the business of physiology. I doubt if there is any other among many silly notions that are current which is quite so silly as this is.) Thought is 1, creative thought; 2, performing thought, which develops an idea internally, and insistently carries it out into consequences, theoretical and practical; 3, docile thought, the thought that listens, that restrains itself, that seeks to be brought to judgment. To think of one's spending one's whole life in trying to make “thinkers” see anything so simple and self-evident, and failing! It makes one want to sing Crambambuli. ]] Gary f From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 17-Mar-19 23:12 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Phenomenology: a "science-egg," Gary F., List: GF: I agree, and apparently my post was no help to you — so this reply probably won’t help either, but … Both have helped me recognize the extent of my ignorance/confusion. 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? If I see, hear, or touch something without thinking about it, is it accurate to say that it is present to my mind? In any case, the apparent contradiction was between saying that a percept "does not stand for anything" (1903) and saying that "a Percept is a Seme" (1906). Perhaps the capitalization in the latter case signals a subtle difference in meaning? GF: 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.” That sounds suspiciously like doubting everything for the sake of a maxim. GF: All sorts of things can be “before the mind” that are not percepts. Could you please provide some examples, other than products of the imagination (including dreams)? 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 Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 5:33 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Jon, a couple of responses inserted … Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected] <mailto:[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.
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