Gary M.,
Pardon the delayed reply, i was away yesterday.
I think the crux of the matter is that Peirce's phenomenology – which is
foundational (as you might say) to his logic – is all about the elements of the
phenomenon, and not about experience, or the “subject of experience” as we
often say today. The elements of the phenomenon (or the phaneron, as he
preferred to call it after 1904) are “indecomposable” when they can't be
further analyzed; in Peirce's phaneroscopy they consist of Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness.
In the analysis of propositions, which are statements about qualities of
phenomena or relations among them, the subject is what the statement is about.
More strictly speaking, the subject is that part of the proposition which
represents the object of that sign, while the predicate represents the
characters or relations of that object. This object is decomposable, i.e. it
can be regarded as a complex of objects related in the manner predicated by the
proposition. But when some quality is predicated of an object which does not
involve relations to anything else (i.e. anything external to it), then we can
speak of that quality as “internal” to the subject. And that is how Peirce is
speaking in the quote we are looking at. More generally, Peirce avoids using
the word “subject” in grammatical (linguistic), psychological or metaphysical
senses. Thus Peirce would never say, as Gregory Bateson did, that “all
experience is subjective”. If you'll pardon the expression, Peirce objected to
the usage of “subjective” and “objective” as referring to opposite orientations
or attitudes or types of knowledge, which is still a very common usage in this
post-Kantian age. (Besides, he tended to use “experience” in reference to a
phenomenon in which Secondness was prominent.) As a relative newcomer to Peirce
myself (i've only been studying him seriously for about ten years now), i know
this is one of the challenges in reading Peirce. Of course i could be wrong in
your case, and if so, you won't find the above very helpful.
Here's a bit of Peirce in response to your request for “an explicit statement
of Peirce on this matter”. It's the one i had in mind when i wrote that “Peirce
was interested in how signs would have to function in order to serve the
purposes of any being capable of learning.”
CP 2.227 (c. 1897):
======================
Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name
for semiotic (σημειωτικη), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.
By describing the doctrine as ‘quasi-necessary,’ or formal, I mean that we
observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an observation,
by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are led to
statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means
necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by a
‘scientific’ intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of
learning by experience. As to that process of abstraction, it is itself a sort
of observation. The faculty which I call abstractive observation is one which
ordinary people perfectly recognize, but for which the theories of philosophers
sometimes hardly leave room. It is a familiar experience to every human being
to wish for something quite beyond his present means, and to follow that wish
by the question, ‘Should I wish for that thing just the same, if I had ample
means to gratify it?’ To answer that question, he searches his heart, and in
doing so makes what I term an abstractive observation. He makes in his
imagination a sort of skeleton diagram, or outline sketch, of himself,
considers what modifications the hypothetical state of things would require to
be made in that picture, and then examines it, that is, observes what he has
imagined, to see whether the same ardent desire is there to be discerned. By
such a process, which is at bottom very much like mathematical reasoning, we
can reach conclusions as to what would be true of signs in all cases, so long
as the intelligence using them was scientific. The modes of thought of a God,
who should possess an intuitive omniscience superseding reason, are put out of
the question. Now the whole process of development among the community of
students of those formulations by abstractive observation and reasoning of the
truths which must hold good of all signs used by a scientific intelligence is
an observational science, like any other positive science, notwithstanding its
strong contrast to all the special sciences which arises from its aiming to
find out what must be and not merely what is in the actual world.
Gary F.
} The name that can be named is not the eternal name. [Tao Te Ching] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic
studies: Peirce
From: Gary Moore [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: April-27-12 3:57 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN DEELY LOCATION
FUHRMAN: Gary,
I simply don’t see the connection you are trying to make between Peirce’s
remarks on the “classes of characters or predicates” and Deely/Heidegger/Hegel.
-------------------
FUHRMAN: The immediate context again is this: “Careful analysis shows that to
the three grades of valency of indecomposable concepts correspond three classes
of characters or predicates. Firstly come “firstnesses,” or positive internal
characters of the subject in itself; secondly come “secondnesses,” or brute
actions of one subject or substance on another, regardless of law or of any
third subject; thirdly comes “thirdnesses,” or the mental or quasi-mental
influence of one subject on another relatively to a third.”
Peirce is using the terms subject and predicate in the usual way proper to
propositional logic. (See the index of EP2 for more examples of his use of
those terms.) The “positive internal characters” to which he refers are simply
the qualities predicated of the subject apart from its relation to anything
else. My guess is that you are trying to read something else into these terms
which is quite unrelated to the context in which Peirce is using them here. I
can’t see other basis for your comments or questions. Specifically, i have no
idea what you mean by your comment that “It is an intriguing statement possibly
substantualizing both "internal" and "subject" which, in Deely and Poinsot's
terminology would mean they are foundational terminals in a Peircean Triad
would it not?”
------------------------------------------
GARY: O. K., I get your point – except How can the “subject” of a purely
grammatical or logical statement have any “internal characters” whatsoever in
any sense whatsoever especially in “the subject in itself”? It would seem to me
that a proposition per se is simply and self-evidently proposed. It is just
‘there’ before you perfectly obvious in the wide open spaces without any
‘insides’.
------------------------
GARY: Now, if Peirce misspoke this phrase – “the positive internal characters
of the subject in itself” - so it could be so misquoted by Deely I can
understand, and your point is perfectly valid. It may not go with Deely’s other
quotes from Peirce literally in the same sentence:: “the Idea of that which is
such as it is regardless of anything else” + “the conception of being or
existing independent of anything else” + “the present in general” or “It”
ALTHOUGH upon typing them out just now they do look extremely ontological and
therefore metaphysical, that is, probably any and every explicit metaphysician
could make the exact same statements that can only be clarified Peirce-wise by
having the whole context of what he wrote immediately available which would be
laborious and probably indecisive.
-----------
GARY: See what I am getting at? YOU are the expert on Peirce. I certainly am
not and approach these quotes initially and purely in Deely without any
extensive previous experience of Peirce. I know enough to see that they do not
go with the ‘tenor’ of some of his other contexts – but then when I consider
Peirce is writing about “Firstness”, which is the ground of his pragmaticist
philosophy [as opposed to “pragmatist” which Deely makes a point of] and his
logic and his grammar – even more, when “Firstness” is literally considered
“first” and as “the conception of being or existing independent of anything
else” then Peirce, whether he desires to or not, is making an ontological
statement perfectly in accord with the ontology of any metaphysics which would
define “being”, ens ut primum cogitum, ipsum esse subsistens, exactly the same
way. Peirce calls them in your full contextual quote “indecomposable concepts”
which certainly makes them ontological but then again brings up the specter of
metaphysics because only within a metaphysics can a “concept” be
“indecomposable” which in linguistic analysis is pure nonsense.
----------------------------------------------
GARY: Now, you are undoubtedly correct in saying if I looked up every other use
of these terms in Peirce I would read them differently. But exactly here, in
your full quote, Peirce is not writing in “the usual way proper to
propositional logic” because, besides making a proposition, he is talking about
pure experience as such which is necessarily presupposed as wordless in pure
experience - or such phrases Peirce uses here in your quote as “brute actions
of one subject or substance on another, regardless of law or of any third
subject” and “the mental or quasi-mental influence of one subject on another
relatively to a third” then become logically propositional of nonsense since
experience determines the logic used not logic determining experience.
------------------------------------------
GARY: And again you are quite right I am “reading something into” Peirce.
However, this is what everybody does when they read. The crux is, Can one
logically defend one’s “reading”? However, again, here, there is room for more
than one legitimate ‘reading’.
-------------------------------------------------------
FUHRMAN: The question of the difference between humans and other animals with
respect to language is essentially a matter of psychology, not logic or
semiotic, and not one that Peirce was much interested in (though Deely and his
mentor Sebeok were intensely interested in it, and perhaps Heidegger was too,
but i only have a nodding acquaintance with Heidegger). In developing his
semiotic, Peirce was interested in how signs would have to function in order to
serve the purposes of any being capable of learning.
--------------------------------------
GARY: Thank you. That is exactly what I thought. If anyone reading this knows
of an explicit statement of Peirce on this matter one way or another I would
appreciate it.
-------------------------------
FUHRMAN: By the way my quotation from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations was not chosen for relevance to this thread – indeed it wasn’t
chosen at all. I have a stock of several hundred taglines that i recycle
continuously. Here’s the next one in line ...
Gary F.
} He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. [Ecclesiastes 1:18] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic
studies: Peirce
-------------------------------------
Thank you very much again for your challenging letter! I did not mean to offend
with my Wittgenstein remarks, but Wittgenstein Deely considers him a complete
failure while I am fascinated by him. Deely also dismisses Ockham, Kant, Lacan,
etcetera, etcetera, except sometimes he has to back-peddle as when in
considering Peirce’s reformulation of the categories, Deely not only obviously
must admit the relevance of Aristotle’s categories but also must acknowledge
Kant’s ‘solipsistic’ version of the categories as necessarily embodying how
‘one’ personally must experience the linguistic use of categories. And with
Lacan, in his book on Heidegger, Deely’s other main authority, along with
Jacques Maritain [which I was uncomfortable with but now see his point in using
him], was Father William J. Richardson SJ who was essentially the first major
proponent of Heidegger’s thinking in English [and Deely’s appreciation of him
is fully justified], and yet after his Heidegger period became a very good
Lacanian psychiatrist. I, on the other hand, have as one of my basic premises
that if someone feels it is necessary to a philosophy, metaphysics, theology or
whatever, their motivation to do so, extending over a period of time and
needing a great deal of effort, must be based on a real experience. For
instance, nominalism and solipsism may not be totally valid as all-encompassing
systems of metaphysics, but were created for a real reason and have their own
valid points of real experience that they actually, in themselves, explain
better than other philosophies.
Regards,
Gary
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L
listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to
[email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the
message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
