Jerry, Your question to me is:
JR notion that 90% of CSP is this or that is an hypothesis that seems to be a diminishment of CSP's lifework. Anything less than 100% postulates is a division of an indivisible. What would the other 10% be? There is no easy answer to this for a number of reasons. For one thing, as I mentioned in my introductory post, what JR means by saying that at least 90% of Peirce's philosophical output is directly concerned with semiotic is not clear. If he is referring explicitly to Peirce's philosophical writings, using Peirce's own view of what counts as philosophy proper, then he is not considering Peirce's writings on mathematics, physics, psychology, history, lexicography, etc. This seems likely because in his 2nd footnote JR states that many of Peirce's manuscripts, although less than half, are not of philosophical interest. If we consider all of Peirce's writings, whether published or in manuscript, I believe that considerably more than half would not "directly concern" philosophy. But JR's 90% remark deals only with the writings that do count as philosophy so the question then, I guess, is what might be the 10%, or so, of those writings that is not directly concerned with semiotic. This depends partly on what JR means by "directly concerned." The branches of philosophy that Peirce recognized are phenomenology (phaneroscopy), the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, logic/semiotic), and metaphysics. If by "directly concerned" JR meant only those writings that are specifically concerned with the third branch of the normative sciences, then clearly well over 10% of Peirce's philosophical output is not directly concerned with semiotic. So JR must not have meant that. If that is the case, I guess he must have meant that nearly all of (at least 90% of) Peirce's philosophical writings directly concern issues that have relevance for the study of semiotics or that employ semiotic conceptions is some critical sense. In that case I suppose the excluded 10% would be some writings on phenomenology, esthetics, and ethics, the areas of philosophy that precede semiotic in Peirce's classification of sciences. However plausible this may be, it is muddled by JR's first Peirce quote where Peirce insists that he has never been able to study anything (mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economic, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology) except as a study of semiotic. If JR is using this quotation as evidence for how much of Peirce's work is "directly concerned" with semiotic then I don't understand why he would exclude any of Peirce's writings. My guess is that Joe would have understood Peirce's remark to be an expression of his early understanding that all thought, all conceptions, all intelligence is in signs and that the study of any subject must take that into account. I would remind everyone that we are so far dealing only with the very early part of JR's paper on "Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic." That's fine; this is a slow read after all. But eventually we'll want to push on and one interesting question we may want to consider is what JR means by Peirce's basic semiotic model. He refers to this, although in different terms, on pp. 2, 3, and 8, and maybe elsewhere. Frequently it is supposed that the basic semiotic model is the triadic relational structure derived from mathematics but on p. 8 JR says that Peirce's basic model is derived from "the truth-seeking tendency in human life." I have noticed that on a number of occasions there have been questions about similarities between Peirce's thought and Wittgenstein's. I have nothing substantive to say about that but in case it hasn't been mentioned already it might be of interest that the final chapter of JR's textbook, The Pursuit of Wisdom, deals with Peirce and Wittgenstein. Nathan _________________________________________________________________ Nathan Houser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Senior Fellow, Institute for American Thought Indiana University at Indianapolis From: owner-peirc...@listserv.iupui.edu [mailto:owner-peirc...@listserv.iupui.edu] On Behalf Of Jerry LR Chandler Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 4:02 PM To: Jon Awbrey; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Subject: Re: [peirce-l] “Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic” List, Jon, Sally, Nathan, Gene: On Oct 5, 2011, at 12:20 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote: The crux of both the political issue and the semiotic issue rests squarely with the concept of representation. This comment is sort of a ramble over various topics from recent contributors. In W1, p. 256, Harvard Lecture VIII, Forms of Induction and Hypothesis, CSP asserts: "The first distinction we found it necessary to draw - the first set of of conceptions we have to signalize-form a triad Thing Representation Form. ... The thing is that for which a representation might stand prescinded from all that would constitute a relation with with any representation. The form is the respect in which a representation might stand for a thing, prescinded from both thing and representation. ... We found representations to be of three kinds Signs Copies Symbols ... By a symbol I mean one which upon being presented to the mind-without any resemblance to its object and without any reference to a previous convention-calls up a concept." In W1, Lowell Lecture IX, p. 477 "The first division which we are to attempt to make between different kinds of symbols ought to depend on their intention, what they are specially meant to express-whether their peculiar function is to lie in their reference to its ground, in reference to their object, or their reference to their interpretant. ... which has meaning... ... so that ... expressing a thing or things in their internal character- " I quote these earlier assertions (1865, 1866) because they appear to provide the seeds of the trees of relations that CSP was to develop. The nature of representation appears to be a fulcrum between things and forms. (In modern scientific terms, the nature of correspondence relations between facts and narratives.) Jon: How does your notion of political representation ground itself in such assertions? Sally: How would you find a relation to Wittgenstein (Or Herr M. Heidigger!) in such assertions? At issue, it seems to me, is the question of the distinction between prescinding and abstracting. For prescinding allows one to preserve the internal structure of the category of things while abstracting from a Peircian thing to a mathematical point (or set of points) does not. The Positivist view necessitates a point-wise structure for scientific trees. (see W1, p. 518, "Prescinding and abstracting are two terms for the same process...") Nathan: JR notion that 90% of CSP is this or that is an hypothesis that seems to be a diminishment of CSP's lifework. Anything less than 100% postulates is a division of an indivisible. What would the other 10% be? Gene: What is the status of representation in the social sciences? Is it either prescinding or abstracting? Or what? As I noted at the outset of this post, it is a ramble. But, these are the connections I find from my pentadic view of Aristotelian categories. At a minimum, the exercise of writing these notes created imaginative images in my own readings of W1. Cheers Jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu<mailto:lists...@listserv.iupui.edu> with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU<mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
