Jon, First, thanks for filling in the gaps in R 637! I’ll be copying that into my own ‘chronological edition’ of Peirce’s late works.
Just a few quick notes about “Direct vs. Indirect Experience.” The key point is that percepts can be considered either as signs or as objects of signs, depending on the purpose of one’s analysis. As Peirce put it in a letter to James, “Percepts are signs for psychology; but they are not so for phenomenology” (CP 8.300). We might say that percepts are not signs for cenoscopy or for semiotics either; but I think the point is clearer when formulated in terms of the “meaning cycle” as expressed in Turning Signs: percepts are where practice meets perception, so that perceptual judgments are the beginning of cognition. My diagram of this, based on Robert Rosen’s “modeling relation”, is at http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#meancyc. My practice/-ception distinction is analogous, if not identical, to Peirce’s distinction between Theory and Practice in “Kaina Stoicheia” (EP2:304, quoted in http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm#inhab), and my distinction between science and religion (http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/cns.htm#scirel) is along the same lines, science being theoretical and religion practical or pragmatic. I am not ascribing these views of mine to Peirce, but I do find them quite compatible with Peirce’s, enough that I can use Peirce quotes to explain some aspects of them. I gather your views are different, and you also consider yours to be compatible with Peirce’s, but I’m content to chalk that up to the vagueness of both our views rather than debate which one is better. I have to end here, as I have a fair bit of manual labor ahead of me today. Maybe I’ll get back to you and Jeff tomorrow. Gary f From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 26-May-19 22:06 To: [email protected] Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Direct vs. Indirect Experience (was Trinity, Continuity, and the Cosmotheandric) Gary F., List: JAS: If even a Percept is a Seme (Sign) that Retroductively produces a Perceptual Judgment, which is a Proposition (Sign), how can we gain acquaintance with anything in a way that is not entirely mediated by Signs? GF: If we can’t, then there is no such thing as direct, unmediated experience of anything. Would you really want to make that assertion? I quite intentionally asked a question, rather than making an assertion. If all thought is in Signs, then would not all cognitive experience have to be mediated by Signs? Peirce distinguished knowledge/experience as direct vs. indirect, not unmediated vs. mediated; I am wondering if this simply corresponds to knowledge/experience obtained from Percepts as Signs determined (directly) by their Objects vs. Signs uttered (indirectly) about their Objects. Again, the Perceptual Judgments that result from Percepts are Retroductive in nature, and the key difference from ordinary Retroductions is that they are not deliberately adopted; they share the compulsive nature of the Percepts themselves. GF: It would seem to entail that there are no real relations as opposed to relations of reason: No, it only entails exactly what Peirce stated in the passage that you went on to quote (EP 2:382-383; 1906)--that we cannot veritably describe a real relation to someone who has had no direct (i.e., perceptual) experience of it. That is presumably why he typically relied on common examples of such experiences that were likely to be familiar to his readers--e.g., pushing on a door--to explain what he meant by 2ns. GF: As you said yourself, “Peirce required direct experience for all knowledge." Yes, and every uttered Sign must be embodied in a Token--an Instance of a Type that we can recognize within a particular Sign System with which we are already acquainted--and then perceived by us before we can interpret it as a Sign. In that sense, even indirect knowledge/experience (through Signs) requires direct knowledge/experience (of their Tokens). GF: I think proper names are represented in EGs, if at all, by Selectives. Spots represent rhemes, i.e. predicates, which are always general, unlike the Selectives, which ‘name’ lines of identity when they need to be distinguished from other lines. No, Peirce ultimately abandoned Selectives because they violated all three of his purposes for EGs--they are not simple, not analytic, and (especially) not iconic (cf. CP 4.561n; 1908). Moreover, a discrete predicate as represented by a Spot can always be analyzed into a subject (label) and a continuous predicate (Pegs). The EGs for "Cain killed Abel" and "Brutus killed Caesar" have monadic Spots for the proper names, not Selectives, presumably because the Object of any proper name as a subject of a Proposition is always general to some degree--i.e., not absolutely determinate (e.g., Phillip drunk vs. sober). GF: Finally, Jon, your closing sentence quotes Peirce’s own statement of what I’ve been saying all along, that the ultimate meaning of religious concepts consists not in their conveying theoretical knowledge of an external Object but in their influence on the conduct of their interpreters: You seem to be drawing a distinction here that Peirce did not--according the maxim of pragmaticism, the ultimate meaning of any concept, religious or otherwise, including theoretical knowledge of an external Object, consists in its influence on the conduct of its interpreters. Do you disagree? Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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