List, First I’d like to thank Jon A.S. and Francesco Bellucci for their posts in another thread which help to clear up a basic misconception about Peirce’s application of his categories to his semiotic analysis. To further my aim of getting “back to basics” in this thread, I’ll try to state one key point in more general terms:
Each of the ten trichotomies in Peirce’s late classification of signs can be (and usually is) arranged in order of increasing complexity. Within each trichotomy, the simplest sign type is “first” in relation to the other two. Thus Seme is first in the trichotomy Seme/Pheme/Delome. But that is the only sense in which “A Seme is a First” (as John S. put it). Only one trichotomy of signs — Qualisign/Sinsign/Legisign (as Peirce called them in 1903) — is made according to the “mode of being” or ontological nature of the sign itself as possible/actual/necessary. All the other trichotomies classify signs according to their various relations to the other correlates within the basic triadic relation Sign-Object-Interpretant. Within the Seme/Pheme/Delome trichotomy, which (as Jon said) is made according to the sign’s relation to its interpretant, the Seme is certainly not First in an ontological sense as claimed by John S. This feature of Peirce’s trichotomic analyses should be borne in mind as we look further into his development of the “valency” analogy. The next Peirce text I’m selecting from here was “probably written in December 1905” according to EP2, where it is Selection 26, “The Basis of Pragmaticism in Phaneroscopy.” I have highlighted certain key terms by using bold type; the italics are Peirce’s (i.e. they mark words he underlined in the manuscript). [[ I propose to use the word Phaneron as a proper name to denote the total content of any one consciousness (for any one is substantially any other), the sum of all we have in mind in any way whatever, regardless of its cognitive value. This is pretty vague: I intentionally leave it so. I will only point out that I do not limit the reference to an instantaneous state of consciousness; for the clause “in any way whatever” takes in memory and all habitual cognition. The reader will probably wonder why I did not content myself with some expression already in use. The reason is that the absence of any contiguous associations with the new word will render it sharper and clearer than any well-worn coin could be. I invite the reader to join me in a little survey of the Phaneron (which will be sufficiently identical for him and for me) in order to discover what different forms of indecomposable elements it contains. On account of the general interest of this inquiry, I propose to push it further than the question of pragmaticism requires; but I shall be forced to compress my matter excessively. It will be a work of observation. But in order that a work of observation should bring in any considerable harvest, there must always be a preparation of thought, a consideration, as definite as may be, of what it is possible that observation should disclose. That is a principle familiar to every observer. Even if one is destined to be quite surprised, the preparation will be of mighty aid. As such preparation for our survey, then, let us consider what forms of indecomposable elements it is possible that we should find. The expression “indecomposable element” sounds pleonastic; but it is not so, since I mean by it something which not only is elementary, since it seems so, and seeming is the only being a constituent of the Phaneron has, as such, but is moreover incapable of being separated by logical analysis into parts, whether they be substantial, essential, relative, or any other kind of parts. Thus, a cow inattentively regarded may perhaps be an element of the Phaneron; but whether it can be so or not, it is certain that it can be analyzed logically into many parts of different kinds that are not in it as a constituent of the Phaneron, since they were not in mind in the same way as the cow was, nor in any way in which the cow, as an appearance in the Phaneron, could be said to be formed of these parts. We are to consider what forms are possible, rather than what kinds are possible, because it is universally admitted, in all sorts of inquiries, that the most important divisions are divisions according to form, and not according to qualities of matter, in case division according to form is possible at all. Indeed, this necessarily results from the very idea of the distinction between form and matter. If we content ourselves with the usual statement of this idea, the consequence is quite obvious. A doubt may, however, arise whether any distinction of form is possible among indecomposable elements. But since a possibility is proved as soon as a single actual instance is found, it will suffice to remark that although the chemical atoms were until quite recently conceived to be, each of them, quite indecomposable and homogeneous, yet they have for half a century been known to differ from one another, not indeed in internal form, but in external form. Carbon, for example, is a tetrad, combining only in the form [CH4] (marsh gas), that is, with four bonds with monads (such as is H) or their equivalent; boron is a triad, forming by the action of magnesium on boracic anhydride, [H3B], and never combining with any other valency; glucinum [the old name for beryllium] is a dyad, forming [GCl2], as the vapor-density of this salt, corroborated by many other tests, conclusively shows, and it, too, always has the same valency; lithium forms LiH and LiI and Li3N, and is invariably a monad: and finally helion, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon are medads, not entering into atomic combination at all. We conclude, then, that there is a fair antecedent reason to suspect that the Phaneron's indecomposable elements may likewise have analogous differences of external form. Should we find this possibility to be actualized, it will, beyond all dispute, furnish us with by far the most important of all divisions of such elements. ]] A tetrad (valency 4) is called so because it forms four bonds with monads, i.e. with atoms that form only single bonds with anything else. A triad (valency 3) forms three bonds with monads, and a dyad (valency 2) forms two bonds with monads. Peirce is proposing that this division of the chemical elements according to their external form (i.e. their mode of combination with other atoms) can serve as a hypothetical model for a division of indecomposable elements of the phaneron. This is the preparation which (we hope) “will be of mighty aid” for the observation of the phaneron which is the inductive stage of the science of phaneroscopy. In practice, the key to such observation of the phaneron is the control of attention. “Thus, a cow inattentively regarded may perhaps be an element of the Phaneron,” but since it can be analyzed in many ways, it is certainly not an indecomposable element. This shows that Peirce’s phaneroscopic observation leads us directly into logical analysis — so directly that, in my view, logical analysis is in practice part of phaneroscopy. (There are other versions of phenomenology in which such analysis is not so directly involved — which is why I have described Peirce’s brand of phenomenology as more analytical than others.) If we ask how logic, or logic as semeiotic, can depend on phaneroscopy as Peirce says it does, the only way we can avoid circularity is to say that logica docens does depend on phaneroscopy, but the latter makes use of a logica utens as part of its process. (Or, as has been suggested, we can give other names to parts of the process; but personally I’d rather not introduce even more terminology into an already jargon-filled discourse.) There are probably other questions raised by the excerpt above, or by my commentary, so I’ll stop here for today to see if anyone wants to raise them before we continue. Gary f. From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: 24-Mar-19 11:41 List, In a couple of recent threads I’ve been trying to sort out the connections between Peirce’s concept of “valency” (which he got from chemistry) and (1) the structure of rhemes (predicates) in the logic of relatives, (2) the representation of that structure in Existential Graphs, (3) the phaneroscopic concepts of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and (4) the “categories” which are basic to Peirce’s whole philosophical system. The most recent of these threads, an exchange with John S. regarding Peirce’s application of the term “medad”, seems to lead up a blind alley (in my opinion); so I think it might help to go ‘back to basics’ with these four overlapping aspects of Peirce’s system. For that purpose I’d like to look at a few Peirce texts which throw some light on the overlaps. For this post I’ve chosen the following quote from Peirce, which I found in Ketner’s book His Glassy Essence, p. 327. Ketner identifies it as an “autobiographical scrap” found among the Max Fisch papers, F64:104. It is undated but the internal evidence would place it around 1905: [[ When I was in the twenties I devoted more than two years with all the passion of that age to the study of phanerochemy (phaneroscopy), in almost every waking hour and dreaming of nothing else. But I was not to be content with less than solid truth; and at the end of two years and a half (reduce it to that by deducting intervals) my situation was this. In regard to the qualitative differences between the different elements of thought, I had made out some relations with certainty, much as one can make out some relations between the different colors. Three pages of letter paper recorded all that I regarded as relatively certain, together with some things that did not seem certain. On the whole, I concluded to abandon the research to some greater genius. But there was a triad of mere differences of quantitative complexity that did not seem to me to be open to any doubt at all. This was recorded in a paper printed in the Proc. Am. Acad. Arts & Sci. for May 14, 1867,—“On a New List of Categories.” During the third of a century and more that has since elapsed, I have done all that man could to guard myself against self deception. I have given up years to the operation of instilling pooh-poohs of it into my soul. I have earnestly striven against the conviction. But for a long time the game has been quite up. It is too evidently true. ]] Peirce never used the term “phaneroscopy” before 1904, but he says here that he was already studying what he now calls phaneroscopy in his twenties, especially in the period of intense work leading up to the “New List” (1867). The curious term “phanerochemy” seems to indicate that Peirce at that time was already applying concepts drawn from chemistry to his study of the phaneron, i.e. to phenomenology. Peirce also distinguishes here between “the qualitative differences between the different elements of thought” on the one hand and the “differences of quantitative complexity” among these “elements” on the other. This corresponds to the distinction he makes elsewhere between the “material categories” and the “formal categories” (or “formal elements” of the phaneron); and as he also says elsewhere, he abandoned research on the qualitative/material categories, and from then on devoted his efforts to studying the triad of quantitative/formal elements of the phaneron. This is where the connection with chemistry comes in. To put it in simplest terms (which a physical chemist would no doubt consider oversimplified), the quantitative/formal aspect of a chemical element is its external relations with other elements, quantified as the “valency” which determines how its atoms can combine with other atoms to form molecules. In the periodic table of the elements, those arranged in each column (not row) have the same valency, roughly speaking. But the analogy between chemical elements and formal elements of the phaneron has its limits: for one thing, it is “evident” to Peirce that there is only a triad of phaneroscopic elements, but the number of valencies in chemistry can go much higher. My next post will explore how all this translates into medads, monads, dyads etc. — and into EGs. Gary f. } You see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. [Dogen] { http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
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