Frances to Thomas and Ben... Forgive me for being a little late in this response to your earlier remarks, and also allow me to speculate on defending the position of realist pragmatism in regard to its phenomenal categories.
>From the beginning, each infinite continuum such as perpetual time or eternal space likely has dispositional tendencies embodied in their form, and this is thereby combined by evolution into the metaphysical continua of phenomena. The sporting velocity of time in phenomenal relation to space will hence yield what seems to be energy and later gravity, which is the essential start of particulate materiality. Continuent multiple continua therefore is a state of hierarchical polyadic plurality. The evolution of continuent phenomena and even of existent phenomena seems to be a process enacted by nature of first collections, and then connections, and last corrections. If we however go back to the primordial origins of the evolving world, through a process of regressive elimination, there will likely be one original and final continuum remaining. For atheists, this genesis may be pure time. For theists, it may be the mind of god, yet even god must presumably advance with at least the continuum of time. Whatever that original primordial continuum might be found as, in any event it will be monadic and qualitative. If some property of any infinite continuum can be sensed, it will be done so as a phenomenal representamen that exists as a relational fact or object as a sign, and this act of sense will make the fact real in mind. In the absence of sense, the real cannot be. If any thing or object or being therefore cannot be sensed, it may exist as an unknown fact or continuum, but it will not be real. Unlike factuality which is a material construct, reality is a mental construct and only as real as sense. If nomenal and epiphenomenal stuff or as yet unknown phenomenal stuff is to be sensed and known, it must furthermore be done so analogously with the existent facts of representational phenomena. If some phenomenal property like existent continuity can be sensed of an infinite continuum like eternal time, then that ideal is made real in mind by sense. The use of phenomenal representamens that are assigned to act as existent signs by way of teleonomic design will go to making the ideal seem real to sense. The only way for all this to work in mind however is by way of signs, and they have been found through empirical inquiry as facts to actually be phenomenal and categorical and tridential. The whole system of the phenomenal world indeed has been discovered by mind to be structured in just this manner. Any simple application of mathematical geometry and logical relativity will prove this to be so. It is nonetheless admitted that the categoric path from nomenal zeroness to phenomenal terness may eventually yield epiphenomenal enthness like fourthness and beyond, but not as phanerons nor as representamens. The ontic and cosmic and epistemic arenas of continua and existentia must be represented to sense in mind only by phenomena. Phenomenal representamens in the form of existent objects engaged by signers in acts of representation and referention and interpretation are found within the grammatical information of signs. Acts of interpreting the value and meaning and worth of those signs are then found within the critical evaluation of signs. These informative and evaluative acts are not substitutes for the validation or verification or confirmation of signs, which does however go partly to the critical evaluation of a signs judged worth and then to its rhetorical force, which empowers signs to be good and true. Structurally, these acts are all states of semiosis and are preparatory necessities to the methods of inquiry, but they are not directly part of inquiry itself. The fact is that signs progress through all the divisions of semiotics to some degree, before finally resting as some main kind of sign in each situation of semiosis. If some assurance of form or content or value or truth for example is needed by a signer, then this can be sought and caught through the appropriate divisions. It is a matter of determination where signs are limited to a certain purposive ground as warranted by the signer. The best way to attain such assurance however is by the means of empirical inquiry. This entails holding other ways to skeptical doubt, which includes the very fallible methods tendency and obstinacy and authority. For human thinkers this determinative act may take interpretants through all the divisions of semiotics to reach the desired goal of say truth. These interpretants may also be held as the "cognitive content" or "recognizant" of an empowered sign, and also require some experience collateral to semiosis on the part of the signer to fully get the sign, but this does not imply nor entail a tetradic structure for semiotics. It simply goes either to the preparatory synechastic state of signers, or to the consummatory semiosic state of signs, which takes signers to even higher rhetorical levels of methodeutical semiosis. The checks and balances of signs needed for them to provide assurance simply goes to their correction, which is a prescriptive and an evocative part of their rhetoric force or methodeutic power. The normative actualization of signs for signers eventually lays in a recognition and realization of their ideal reasonableness, which is an objective logical property of the sign and semiosis. The final evocative resting place of the recognizant might therefore be found as a behavioral response in say the pragmatic "signation" of a rhetorical interpretant supersign. This would at least be so within the phenomenal trichotomic categories of realist pragmatism. Upon a brief scan, the matrix table partly entitled "Tetrastic Structures" in support of a tetrachotomy seems to be an attempt to expand the phenomenal trichotomic categories beyond their original design. The table may very well succeed in an expansion of categories, but it seems destined to do it within a semiosic and triadic frame, which would be worthy enough. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [email protected]
