NH = Nathan Houser
JR = Joe Ransdell
NH: Let me make a quick reply and later when I have more time I'll go back to
Joe's paper to see if he may have had something like what you say in mind.
I suppose a lot depends on precisely what Joe meant by "directly concerned
with semiotic" when he wrote that 90% of Peirce's philosophical output was
directly concerned with semiotic. And also on how much he was limiting the
scope of his claim by his qualifying reference to Peirce's philosophical
output. It would seem that to be "directly concerned with semiotic" is to
be about semiotic, not just involved with sign usage. We wouldn't normally
say, for example, that in completing one's tax return one is directly
concerned with mathematics. I certainly think it is plausible to regard
all of Peirce's writings about normative logic as semiotic works (I do not
include the mathematical theory of relations in normative logic) but it
seems
to me that the rationale for Peirce's classification of the sciences
precludes
counting writings about phenomenology, esthetics, and ethics as belonging to
semiotic proper, and this goes as well for the sciences that come after
logic,
including his metaphysical writings. Since mathematics, psychology, and
physics
are not philosophical sciences, presumably Joe was not including Peirce's
considerable contributions in those areas.
NH: Having said this, I nevertheless agree that a great deal of Peirce's
philosophical output
does, at least in part, deal directly with semiotic but I believe it is
considerably less
that 90%. I suspect this is in part because I do not believe that the bulk
of Peirce's
metaphysical writings can correctly be said to be "directly concerned with
semiotic."
But, as I said, when I get more time I'll look at this question more
carefully with more
consideration of the breakdown between works on philosophy and works in
other sciences and
I'll see if I can get a better sense of how Joe defended, or would have
defended, his claim.
Perhaps there has been relevant discussion in earlier slow reads.
Nathan,
I suppose I read the phrase "his prodigious philosophical output" to be a
general way
of saying "his thought and work" rather than focusing on the more restrictive
meanings
of the word "philosophy", as in works falling under particular numbers of a
catalog, say.
But reading Ransdell's note 2, I see both senses appearing again under the
designations of
"philosophical interest" and "on philosophy", so I despair of drawing any hard
and fast line.
JR: [Note 2] The manuscript material now (1997) comes to more than a hundred
thousand pages.
These contain many pages of no philosophical interest, but the number of
pages on philosophy
certainly number much more than half of that. Also, a significant but
unknown number of
manuscripts have been lost.
I see -- now -- the other sense of "concerned with" that you are indicating
here.
Still, a channel swimmer must be as concerned with the waters in which she swims
as she is with the farther shore. So I guess it comes down to word "directly",
which I confess I probably just sloughed over in my casual reading. Then again:
JR: "For Peirce, everything was grist for semiotic"
That makes of semiotic neither wheat or chaff but the mill.
Oh well ...
Jon
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