Joe, list, The transcription of Peirce's "re-write" of the "On a New List of Categories" is exciting and valuable. For one thing, at last now we know what happened to the categories of Being and Substance. They're still there; he just no longer calls them "categories."
I've been kind of distracted lately (my neighborhood was one of those blacked out in Queens), but have electricity again and am following your posts with interest. Gary emailed me today and says that the conference in Denmark went quite well. "Lots of positive support for trikonic" with a number of particulars regarding that. And I don't think Gary will mind my quoting the following: 66~~~~~ High points included Nicola Guarino's invited talk..., Sowa's on "Peirce's Contributions to the 21st Century," and perhaps especially perhaps the preeminent Danish Peirce scholar there, Frederik Stjernfelt's talk on "Two Iconicity Notions in Peirce's Diagrammatology." .... Amongst the other papers the most note-worthy was Rudolf Wille's on the notion of replacing the notion of "ontology" in AI with "semantology". Wille and I had some great conversations--he really is a fine scholar and an authentic Peircean. .... Correia's and Reinhard Poschel's strict mathematical proof of the reduction thesis was also a high point. John Old wants to use trikonic in relation to work he's doing with the on-line Roget's Thesaurus, and of course Simon is keeping me busy already, sending papers, etc. while the fire is still hot. ~~~~~99 Anyway, onward. Joe wrote, > But why, as in the passage newly transcribed here, is this being ascribed to > the sign in general rather than to the symbol in particular? I will return to > that and other relevant considerations in another message. I had the impression that Peirce says somewhere that _every_ sign is a surrogate for its object, but I can't find it. It might be useful for somebody to do a search on the CD-ROM edition for the word "surrogate." In ordinary English, one could say that insofar as a sign stands for its object in some respect, it is a surrogate for its object in that respect. A symbol serves as a surrogate not only for its object but for some unpresented quality or reaction or representational relation which is imputed to that object. Every sign has an effect on its interpretant, or has an effect which is the sign's interpretant. That's to say, that the sign (triadically with the object) determines the interpretant. The interpreter doesn't just make the interpretant up. But not every sign is defined by a habit-based effect on the interpretant. Either (1) the imputation involves a kind of effect, achieved through habit, where, through neither reactional connection (or, more generally, 'real relation') nor resemblance, the sign "conjures up" a kind of idea of a reaction or a resemblance, or of a representational relation which at some level involves reactiononal connections (or, more generally, 'real relations') and resemblances. or (2) the imputation is understood in another manner, one consistent at least with ordinary English, where, in addition to (1) above, also the interpretant imputes an index's reaction (or real relation) to the object, or an icon's quality to an object. It's a kind of word shortage, not enough words for the desired distinctions, or not enough words which actually evoke the desired distinctions in our minds. A month or two ago I spoke of the word "evocant" as something like a synonym for "symbol," but in fact indices and icons evoke their objects too; Peirce says in one the quotes which you supply, that a sign "calls up" its object. If icon, index, and symbol all evoke their object, and if one can speak of 'imputation' of qualities and reactions actually presented as well as symbolized (though perhaps Peirce has supplied some such term as "attribution" for such presentmental cases), then the key difference remains that the symbol, not the index or icon, is _defined_ by its effect on the interpretant, which is to say, defined _by the effected imputation_ of a quality, reaction, or representational relation. It's also to say that the symbol is defined by its (non-reaction, non-quality) reference to an interpretant (more precisely: a given kind of symbol is defined by defining in terms of kind of effect on the interpretant) icon - defined by its quality, its reference to a ground. |> symbol - defined by its (non-reaction, non-quality) reference to an interpretant. index - defined by its reaction (or real relation), its reference to an object. Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 8:00 PM Subject: [peirce-l] MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate What follows below is a transcription of a passage from Peirce's Logic Notebook, dated Nov. 1, 1909. (The ISP numbers of the two copy pages are MS 339.663 and 664, but 664 precedes 663 in the order of composition.) The interest which especially attaches to this, for my purposes, is that the date -- November of 1909 -- is very late in Peirce's career, and I regard what Peirce says in this passage as evidence that his view of the nature of symbolism never changed substantially from his view of it as he described it in the earlier years -- and now and again in later years as well -- in terms of it being grounded in an "imputed" quality or character. This is a way of saying that the symbol functions as if it were something else in causing an effect on whatever interprets it which is the same as some effect which that other thing, which is the symbol's object, is itself capable of causing. The symbol thus functions as a surrogate or deputy for its object. There are various ways this can be expressed but this is what he is saying in the passage transcribed here when speaks of a sign as being capable of "producing upon a person in whom certain conditions are fulfilled effects that another thing or a collection of other things would produce". I will comment more on various wordings below, following the transcription, or in a separate message. Everything in square brackets is editorially added, and I indicate Peirce's emphasis by use of flanking underscores in order to keep this in ASCII. [TRANSCRIPTION BEGINS] A "Sign" is an _ens_ (something, of any kind), which in addition to possessing characters such as an other _ens_ of the same kind might possess without being a "Sign"[,] is _capable_ of [Peirce crossed out: "causing an effect called here an _Interpretant_, upon a conscious being, which is as if it were in some way due, or in some mode corresponded to such as might be regarded as mentally affecting some conscious"] affecting some conscious Being so as to tend to produce in him a disposition, action, or imagination as if some state of things called the substance, signification, predicate, or (here particularly) the Interpretant of the Sign were more definitely realized in reference to an object (other than the sign itself) or in [the sentence breaks off] _ _ _ Well, on the whole, -- or rather not on the whole by any means, but as another phase of reflexion, -- I think this won't do. This is made plain to me by the impossibility along this line to do justice to the _Object_ in all its generality. I think I must say [The entire following paragraph is crossed out with a big "X"] A "_Sign_" is an Ens (i.e. is something) which in addition to being either imagined, perceived, or conceived, as anything of which we are to have any experience or dealings must be, must also be taken as a revelation of something else, -- i.e. it conveys to its interpreter[,] the man who practically understands the particular system of substitution it employs, the interpreter, as we call him, not experience of that other thing, but in some measure the same effect, with such modification as the interpreter if sufficiently qualified (though it is not possible that he should be so in all cases, among examples that of its being skillfully designed to deceive) may expect or at least suspect. It not only produces this effect, which is variously called its Substance, Signification, and in particular here through its Interpretant, but it also enables the interpreter [sentence breaks off] _On The Opposite Page Better Put_ [This is apparently a note from Peirce to himself; it seems clearly to refer to the paragraph on MS 339.663 which begins just below:] A "Sign" is an Ens (i.e. something of some and it may be of any category of being) which not only has a capacity of being either imagined, perceived, or conceived, or anything of the same category of Being of which one happens to have enough of the right kind of dealing maybe but also has the property of producing upon a person in whom certain conditions are fulfilled effects that another thing or a collection of other things would produce, those conditions being the possession by that person of a practical understanding of the system of correspondence. [END OF TRANSCRIPTION OF RELEVANT PASSAGE ] There is more on the notebook page than this. It continues with a lengthy comment that begins as follows: "But this definition ought to be prefaced with the remark that no event of learning anything brings _per se_ any other knowledge than that which [?is?] learned, and in particular does not include any knowledge about that event of learning itself." And it goes on, but I end my transcription at this point because what Peirce himself seems to be primarily concerned with in this connection is some problem he seems to see in arriving at a defining formulation for the word "sign" in this way which will be consistent with his fallibilism. This is of course an important topic in its own right, but it would take us afield to go further into that here. You can verify or disverify my judgment on that by consulting the photocopy yourself which I am making available on-line: The URLs for the two pages are: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/339-664.pdf http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/339-663.pdf The most important paragraph is the last one in the transcription above, which is the formulation with which he indicates some satisfaction in his note to himself; but even the rejected versions help in making clear that he thinks of the sign as having the power of acting AS IF it were something else, namely, the object of the sign, acting on the interpreter instead, conveying something about itself directly. As I remark above, I read this passage from 1909 as saying substantially the same as Peirce was saying about the symbol in particular in his early work, as early as 1865, where he expressed it in terms of "imputation". And there is another passage from the still later date of 1911 which I regard as expressing the same view. =========QUOTE PEIRCE============ A sign, then, is anything whatsoever -- whether an Actual or a May-be or a would be --which affects a mind, its Interpreter, and draws that interpreter's attention to some Object (whether Actual, May-be, or would-be) which _has already_ come within the sphere of his experience; and besides this purely selective action of a sign, it has a power of exciting the mind (whether directly, by the image or sound[,] or indirectly) to some kind of feeling, or to effort of some kind or to thought; and so far as it has any such effect qua sign -- for besides being a sign, it may also be a music -- but so far as it excites feeling, will, or thought in the mind of the Interpreter with its Object as due to it, as the interpretation of it. The writer is not altogether satisfied with this attempt to analyze the nature of a sign; but he believes that the sign calls up its Object or Objects, for there may be several, and besides that excites the mind as if it were the Object that has that effect. If a person reads an item of news in a newspaper, its first effect on his mind will probably be to cause something that may conveniently be called an "image" of the object, without any judgment as to its reality. [from MS 670.33-34 (1911) "Assurance Through Reasoning"] ====END QUOTE======= But why, as in the passage newly transcribed here, is this being ascribed to the sign in general rather than to the symbol in particular? I will return to that and other relevant considerations in another message. Joe Ransdell --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
