Jon AS, list, What caught my attention so far in your transcript of R787 was this paragraph, which comes just before the one I’d quoted earlier from NEM 4:ix:
[[ There are, however, observations which are not only open to all men; but which are necessarily open to all intelligences capable of acquiring scientific, imperfect knowledge from observation and reasoning. The science which is based on such observations as these may suitably be called philosophy. This science will be somewhat narrower than what is commonly called philosophy, since it will exclude ethics, esthetics, etc. which repose on observations which might be foreign to some kind of scientific mind. This science of philosophy, although it is observational, yet will have, in a certain sense, a necessary character; for it is based exclusively on such observations as must be open to every scientific intelligence. According to my views of logic, it is impossible to find any absolute criterion of whether a given obser-[s1|6]vation is necessary, in that sense; and continual errors in this respect in the course of the evolution of the science ought to be expected. This quasi-prediction, based on the above theory of the nature of philosophy, has been amply fulfilled in the history of philosophy; and this is a probable argument in favor of the approximate correctness of that theory. But it does not follow that there is no method by which philosophy may be gradually and indefinitely improved and its errors be successively eliminated. ]] It seems clear to me that what Peirce calls philosophy here is what he later calls phenomenology (and still later, phaneroscopy), as this observational science is positive (unlike mathematics) but not normative (as it excludes ethics, esthetics, etc.). What makes its observations “necessary” is that they are not relative to the species of the observer, but must be observable by “every scientific intelligence”. So he makes the “quasi-prediction” that, for instance, certain observations may turn out to be relative to the human sensorium, or the specifically human embodiment, and are thereby proven to be not “necessary” in this sense. It seems, then, that we can only arrive at our list of “observations which must be open to every scientific intelligence” through a process of elimination. Peirce’s retroductive prediction in his phenomenology is that the only “observables” which can never be eliminated by that process are Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. I would say that his “reduction thesis” is an attempt to prove this mathematically, but of course mathematics can never prove an assertion made by a positive science, i.e. any assertion claiming to be true of the real world of experience. This is why Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, abstract as they are, are not primarily mathematical objects. It’s also the reason that iconic signs (such as diagrams) should not be regarded as primarily visual, because there may well be “scientific intelligences” whose embodiment does not enable visual experience. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> Sent: 15-Jun-20 21:32 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Communicating an Idea (was Interpreter-Interpretant and Possible-Actual) Gary F., Jon A., List: Coincidentally, Peirce wrote a somewhat similar passage thirty years later, in the manuscript whose complete transcription I distributed over the weekend. CSP: [E]very general sign, even a "term," involves, at least, a rudimentary assertion. For what is a "term," or "class-name" supposed to be? It is something which signifies, or, to use J. S. Mill's objectionable terminology, "connotes" certain characters, and thereby denotes whatever possesses those characters. That is, it draws the attention to an idea, or mental construction, or diagram, of something possessing those characters, and the possession of those characters is kept in the foreground of consciousness. What does that mean unless that the listener says to himself "that which is here (before the attention) possesses such and such characters"? That may not be quite a proposition, or fully an assertion, because the object of attention being in this case nothing but a mental creation, the listener does not tell himself what it is that is "here." It is, at least, not an assertion about the real world. But none the less it contains the assertoric element, the mental copula. When a listener hears the term "light," he proceeds to create in his mind an image thereof ... . Until this process is performed, the name excites no meaning in the mind of the listener. (R 787:30-31[34-35], CP 2.341, c. 1895-6) A term by itself is a "general sign" that "signifies ... certain characters, and thereby denotes whatever possesses those characters." This is exactly what I mean when I say that a term's immediate interpretant (whatever it possibly could signify) is its definition within the system of sign types to which it belongs, and its immediate object (whatever it possibly could denote) is anything that satisfies this definition. Moreover, as a symbolic (3ns) sign it involves both indexical (2ns) and iconic (1ns) aspects, by means of which "it draws the attention to an idea, or mental construction, or diagram." After all, as Peirce explains earlier in the text, each term in an assertion serves as an index that "directs attention" to one of its subjects (R 787:16[20], CP 2.336); and as Robert pointed out to start us down this whole road, "the only way of directly communicating an idea [or mental construction] is by means of an icon [such as a diagram]" (23[27], 2.278). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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