Cécile, Edwina, Jon, List, James Liszka made an important observation about Peirce's classification of signs: “the theory is more complex than the phenomenon it hopes to explain." Since Peirce himself was constantly rewriting and revising the details, we can't be sure what he would have written if he had a few more years to write. And we have no right to claim that anything we (or anybody else) would write is what Peirce would approve.
Peirce's correspondence with Lady Welby is an important key to almost everything he wrote after 1903. Up to 1903, his writings about phenomenology followed abstract issues in a style influenced by Kant -- even on issues where he differed from or went beyond Kant. But after he read Welby's book on significs and began his correspondence with her, his writings on phaneroscopy are very different from anything he had written about phenomenology. They are more concrete and address issues they are both discussing in their letters. Please reread the excerpts from letters to Lady Welby in EP2, pp 477 ff. Note how tentative and uncertain he is about those issues. On p. 483, "The ten divisions appear to me to be all Trichotomies; but it is possible that some of them are not properly so. Of these Ten Trichotomies, I have a clear apprehension of some (which I mark...), and unsatisfactory and doubtful notion of others (which I mark ...), and a tolerable but not thoroughly tried conception of others (which I mark ... for ...), almost clear, for ... hardly better." (The Greek letters do not copy properly.) On p. 488, he writes as if he is not sure of himself: "From the summer of 1905 to the same time in 1906,1 devoted much study to my ten trichotomies of signs. It is time I reverted to the subject, as I know I could now make it much clearer. But I dare say some of my former names are better than those I now use.... If Peirce is unsure of how to proceed, we cannot assume that we know better than he did. Any attempt to say anything beyond what Peirce wrote is an opinion of the person who does the writing. It may be better, it may be worse. But all we can say is that it is not what Peirce wrote. Nobody can claim that their opinion is what Peirce intended. On p. 490, he admits "I don't know whether these trichotomies will suggest anything to you or not. No doubt you [Welby] have studied relations to Interpretants in some directions much further than I.[...] In summary, anything not written by Peirce himself is the opinion of the person who writes it. Nobody can claim that their summary, paraphrase, or extension is anything that Peirce intended. And even writings that Peirce intended on one occasion may be something he later rejected or restated in a different way. Fundamental principle: Any comment about anything Peirce wrote, is a personal opinion of the author. Other people may have good reasons for disagreeing -- or not. That's why we need open-ended discussions, especially about topics that Peirce himself was not clear about. However, there are some subjects -- in mathematics and mathematical logic and in experimental sciences -- where developments during the past century have gone far beyond Peirce. But even in those areas, Peirce has important points to add, and experts in those fields often agree that Peirce was right. John
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