Gary R, list, I’m happy to accept your apology, Gary, especially as it is given so graciously and your explanation of how the misunderstanding arose is so clear. I’d like to reciprocate by trying to give a similarly clear explanation of my point of view (and Jon’s, I think) in the nomenclature issue we were debating yesterday in the other thread, without continuing the debate, and thus show why we need to “agree to disagree” on that matter. I’m also hoping to carry the present thread forward by showing that this issue is closely related to some issues in Peircean phenomenology, phaneroscopy and logic.
When I wrote that comment about “an already jargon-filled discourse,” I was referring to Peirce’s discourse. I didn’t intend “jargon” in a pejorative sense, but as a reference to specialized (non-vernacular) terms such as “medad,” “phaneron,” “Priman,” Secundan” and so on. It’s precisely because these terms are jargon that Peirce has to define them as carefully as he does. But his discourse also forces him to give careful definitions of terms that are widely used elsewhere, the most obvious being “sign.” He often, but not always, capitalizes such terms to show that he is using them in an exactly specialized way. Peirce’s definitions of “Sign” are legion, of course, but they all have one thing in common: the Sign is defined in terms of its relation to the other two members of a triadic relation (the Object and the Interpretant). That is why I believe that all three trichotomies in Peirce’s 1903 division of signs are equally basic; they are all subdivisions of the overall definition of what a Sign is. Your view, if I understand it, is that the first trichotomy is more basically definitive of a Sign than the others because the definition of it refers to “the sign in itself” while the other two do not. To me, that phrase refers to the ontological “mode of being” of the Sign prescinded from the triadic relation which is definitive of all Signs. It refers to what he elsewhere called the “material quality” of the sign, as opposed to its formal character. I do not see that ontological quality as more basic than the relational character of a Sign, just as I don’t see Firstness as more basic than Secondness or Thirdness in phenomenology. They are all equally elementary. Hence my resistance to your treatment of the first trichotomy as nominal and the other two as adjectival, despite the fact that the definitions of the terms in each trichotomy all use the same syntax: all nine sign types are named using nouns. (Even Dicent Sign is a noun phrase.) But from now on I’ll stop objecting to your terminological habit and hope you won’t be bothered by mine. Getting back to phaneroscopy, and wrapping up my treatment of EP2:360-70, I’ll just quote the sentences before and after the point where I left off: [[ Much might be profitably added to this preliminary a priori study; but even with the greatest compression I shall cover too many of the valuable pages of the Monist. We must hasten, then, to try how well or ill our a priori conclusions are supported by the actual examination of the contents of the Phaneron. Let us begin at once. Can we find in the Phaneron any element logically indecomposable, which is such as it is, altogether otherwise than relatively, but positively, and regardless of ought else? I answer, There are many such elements. I instance the color of a stick of countinghouse sealing wax which I had to use a few moments ago, and which still lies on my table in plain sight. This is an element, for I do not see it as composite. It is also logically indecomposable. ]] What follows is a very detailed and specific example of Peirce’s practice of phaneroscopy circa 1905-6. I recommend reading those pages (EP2:366-70) closely to get a clear idea of that practice, but in this post I’m only going to point out some highlights. First, Peirce tells us here that we are looking for a Priman element of the Phaneron, “which is such as it is, altogether otherwise than relatively, but positively, and regardless of ought else.” The corresponding effort in classification of Signs is to consider the nature that a Sign has in itself regardless of its relations to its Object and Interpretant — even though it would not be a Sign at all in the absence of those relations. What makes this especially difficult in phaneroscopy is that we all know so much already about how various elements of the phaneron, such as the color of this wax, are related to other elements. That is why the phaneroscopist must be “an observer thoroughly trained to recognize his immediate feelings as they are felt, free from all the allowances which we naturally make for the circumstances of the experience” (EP2:366; this closely resembles the Husserlian precept that the phenomenologist has to “bracket” the prior knowledge which constitutes his “natural attitude” toward what appears and tends to interfere with the direct experience of the phenomenon as such). Regarded in this way, any Priman element is “a quality of feeling.” Now, no words can adequately describe such an element, precisely because the meanings of words are inseparable from the habits we have formed through prior usage of those words. In phaneroscopy, the best we can do with words is to try to direct the reader’s attention to some aspect of present experience rather than another. This is what Peirce is trying to do with EP2:368: [[ Now the whole content of consciousness is made up of qualities of feeling, as truly as the whole of space is made up of points or the whole of time of instants. Contemplate anything by itself,— anything whatever that can be so contemplated. Attend to the whole and drop the parts out of attention altogether. One can approximate nearly enough to the accomplishment of that to see that the result of its perfect accomplishment would be that one would have in his consciousness at the moment nothing but a quality of feeling. This quality of feeling would in itself, as so contemplated, have no parts. It would be unlike any other such quality of feeling. In itself, it would not even resemble any other; for resemblance has its being only in comparison. It would be a pure priman. Since this is true of whatever we contemplate, however complex may be the object, it follows that there is nothing else in immediate consciousness. To be conscious is nothing else than to feel. ]] Since this could mislead the phaneroscopist into thinking that there are no Secundan or Tertian elements in the phaneron, we can’t stop here … but this post is long enough already, and I’ll leave the continuation of Peirce’s train of thought to those who wish to climb aboard. My next post will turn to another text which throws new light on the relations between phaneroscopy and logic. Gary f. From: Gary Richmond <[email protected]> Sent: 29-Mar-19 00:04 To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy and logic Gary F, Jon, List, Gary F wrote: GF: According to the OED, to posit (transitive) is “To put forward or assume as fact or as a basis for argument, to presuppose; to postulate; to affirm the existence of.” To me that is quite different from proposing a hypothesis to be tested inductively. While the definition I would offer is slightly different: Posit: noun PHILOSOPHY 1. 1. a statement which is made on the assumption that it will prove to be true. 2. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/posit 3. I would agree that to posit something, even if, as Peirce did, after decades of working on a central idea like there being Three Universal Categories, is different from "proposing a hypothesis to be tested inductively." GR: For Peirce the consequence of this "mental preparation" was his positing Three Universal Categories. GF: I don’t see that as an accurate description of what Peirce does in the text we are looking at. He is not “positing” anything there; rather, as he says, what he does is to “recommend that the hypothesis of the indecomposable elements of the Phaneron being in their general constitution like the chemical atoms be taken up as a hypothesis with a view to its being subjected to the test of an inductive inquiry.” But what I wrote above generalized what Peirce had accomplished for himself not thinking in particular of the passage you were looking at in which he was guiding his reader through a process leading to their own possible positing of three categories. As you wrote: We all know, of course, that Peirce had arrived at his triad of Universal Categories long before 1905. But he is unwilling to apply this a priori triad to the elements of the phaneron without asking the reader to think it through for himself and thus to see why we should expect to find three indecomposable elements, no more and no less, in the phaneron. Let me take this opportunity to publicly apologize to you, Gary, for I had unfairly conflated my purposes in considering phenomenology with yours. A while back you had suggested that you might soon take up a thread on phenomenology and I eagerly anticipated participating in what I thought might be a wide-ranging discussion of many facets of the science. When you eventually did begin the thread you had decided on another approach, and you began the thread with this: GF: 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 Of course you had every right and reasons of your own to begin however you wished. But, as I acknowledged off-list, I was surprised and, personally, disappointed that you had narrowed--as I saw it--the discussion of phenomenology in this way and from the "get go." Well, that was patently unfair of me. Yet, beyond that, I was downright perplexed when in another post in the thread you parenthetically wrote: GR: (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.) I rather assumed, although you hadn't named those who had given "other names to parts of the process," that you were referring to Andre de Tienne (Iconoscopy) and, perhaps, me (Trichotomic Category Theory) as both of these are intended to go beyond individual phaneroscopic observation. I had no right to assume that whatsoever. But I couldn't think of whatever "terminology" you might be referring to in this context. And further, again in my mind, that since you'd written "(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)" I interpreted this as suggesting that you had reduced those possible "parts of the process" to mere "jargon-filled" terminology. Of course you hadn't, as you explained: you simply had an entirely different purpose. As you wrote: Gary R apparently did not intend has statement to be an accurate description of what Peirce is doing in this text; indeed, as he says, he “had hoped for a very different thread on Phenomenology,” and his statement about “positing Three Universal Categories” really belongs to that other thread rather than this one. So I hope that will clear up any confusion on that matter, and perhaps Gary R will start a separate thread on “possible approaches to developing Peirce's Phenomenology further.” That pretty much sums it up. So, again, my apologies to a scholar whom anyone who has followed this list for some time knows I have nothing but the utmost respect for. It was my foolish "jumping to conclusions" which led me to post inappropriately combative messages in the thread. Finally, as does Jon--and I hope others--I look forward to turning to your addressing a significant shift in Peirce's thinking about EGs and their connection to his pragmaticism. Best, Gary R
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