I should add to my recent message that my view of what Part III is about is consistent with Bernard Morand's view that it can be regarded as being about the basis for philosophical rhetoric since it is concerned especially with the symbol's relation to its interpretant. I agree. The discussion of the conceptions of belief, affirmation, judgment, assertion (assuming assertion is not simply being identified with affirmation, as I believe it is not), credenciveness, and acceptance is very interesting, and Part III can be read as being as much about that and other aspects of philosophical rhetoric as it is about the topic I described, . . .
Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 12:09 PM Subject: [peirce-l] NEW ELEMENTS: What is Part III about? Considered as an introduction to a book on mathematical reasoning, the New Elements is probably best regarded as incomplete because Peirce does not in fact get around to saying anything specifically about that sort of reasoning except for the definition in Part II of "diagram", which is important but is not followed up in Part III although some groundwork is laid for doing do. If the introduction were complete I would expect Peirce to have gone ahead to a Part IV in which the distinction between corollarial and theorematic deduction is drawn, and the differing role of the diagram in the two kinds of deduction is explained, and if not there then in still another new part there would be other things to be explained, too, at least briefly, as, for example, the peculiarly hypothetical status of distinctively mathematical reasoning. But since, as it stands, there is actually very little in the New Elements which seems to be designed specifically to explain or provide the logical basis for understanding the nature of mathematical reasoning in particular, I conclude that it is simply incomplete and therefore best understood in respect to what Peirce actually does accomplish, or at least attempt to accomplish as far as he got with it. Looking at it that way, it seems to me, then, that the question is, what is Part III about? What is it mainly attempting designed to accomplish? And I would say that Peirce is mainly attempting there to make clear to the reader what is implicit in understanding a symbol as essentially dependent on its interpretant for its identity as the particular symbol it is. The peculiarity of the symbol is that no conclusion can be drawn as to what it is, as a symbol, on the basis either of an intrinsic characteristic of it, or on the basis of it as something in existential relationship with other entities. It is essentially dependent on its interpretant for its identity as a symbol, which supplies what is missing in the symbol itself considered as replicated in something which has no properties of its own, qualitative or existential, that account for its meaning. This is what makes semiosis essentially dialogical: the actually occurring sign is "hostage to the future" in the sense that, apart from what its interpretant can do for it, it is meaningless and is not really a symbol at all. (See Thomas Riese's recent message on this in the interchange with Gary Richmond.) Contrary to what some interpreters of Peirce think, there is no implication in this that it is hostage to some infinitely remote interpretant: any authentic interpretant of it will do, provided it is an interpretation of it as significant in the sense of being connotative or having sense or logical intension (i.e.. signifying a quality or character). If it is an interpretation of it as denotative or referential (having logical extension) it must, as a matter of logical priority, already be significative connotationally. And this is true of it a fortiori if it is an interpretation of it as propositional since that presupposes referential interpretation. So if we suppose that a given symbol actually has been replicated in a sinsign occurrence, we are supposing that an authentic interpretant of it either has occurred or will occur. Nevertheless, Peirce also wants to make clear, before going into the special considerations involved in understanding mathematical representation and the way symbolism works in that respect, that the critically reflective symbol user should understand that there is indeed the promise of an infinitude of prospective future interpretation to be taken duly into account, the practical import of which is that the critical interpreter will understand that there is indeed a potentially infinitely interpretational future implicit in the symbol which precludes the possibility of absolute certainty that interpretation of it at any given time is not mistaken. And he seems especially concerned to convey the understanding that the relation of the symbol to its interpretant is driven by the symbol itself, which cannot be itself other than in its transference of its own identity to the sign that interprets it, which must therefore also be a symbol with the same absolute need to reproduce itself in its offspring in order to be what it is. Now all of this is paradoxical -- seemingly incoherent, in fact -- since it seems to say at once that the symbol is essentially at the mercy of the interpretant and that it is itself responsible for what the interpretant is. The conception which he relies upon here for explicating this idea in such a way as to show that it may be paradoxical but is not really incoherent -- for Peirce certainly is not aiming at being perceived as the sort of romantic nihilist who celebrates incoherence as a good higher than reason (much less as a higher form of reason) -- is the concept of determination, which is why it seems to me to be an unusually important paper in spite of its often puzzling character. It is the only account I know of in which the concept of determination is discussed so closely in connection with the notion of causation, and the only place I know of where he relates his view to the Aristotelian four-fold causal analysis. (I am especially interested in it myself for just this reason since I put in quite a lot of time, a good many years back, in some unpublished stuff, in trying to see if I could accommodate the Aristotelian fourfold analysis within Peirce;s account of semiosis, as I had reconstructed that. I distributed some of that on PEIRCE-L a few years ago but I had not read the New Elements at that point and could make no comparison then. I'll have to dig back into that as soon as I get the time to see if it agrees with Peirce's own account or not, but I haven't tried that yet.) Part III ends, then, after some exploration of the apparent paradoxes which this being in futuro of the symbol harbors within it, and it would perhaps be in a missing Part IV that the account of the role of iconicity implicit in the conception of symbolism would be explained in such a way as to throw light on the nature of mathematical reasoning in particular. It is, I think, made clear enough that the conception of the symbol cannot be understood without understanding the role of the icon in its functioning in semiosis, but precisely how it functions therein is only sketched out minimally in this paper as it stands. So it seems to me that the best bet interpretationally is to proceed as if Part III of the New Elements is all there is to it and see what it adds up to on that assumption. I am not, of course, dictating how anybody else is to interpret it but just describing my own view. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.1/250 - Release Date: 2/3/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.1/250 - Release Date: 2/3/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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