Re: [PEIRCE-L] Signs, Types, Tokens, Instances

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 25, 2019, at 12:47 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> How should we characterize these various ways of uttering the same 
> Proposition?  For example ...
> We are going to the restaurant.
> We are going to the restaurant?
> We are going to the restaurant!
> The only change here is the punctuation at the end, but I trust that the 
> reader can imagine how these three sentences would also sound quite different 
> when spoken, rather than written.  Clearly Peirce held that these are not 
> three different Signs; so are they three different Types of the same Sign, or 
> three different _ of the same Type?  Once again, if the latter, what 
> fills the blank?
> 

Worth noting that the distinction here is of course the characteristic focus of 
speech act theory of John Searle. I think Peirce had a somewhat similar albeit 
deeper notion as well. Jarrett Brock wrote an interesting paper on Peirce’s 
speech act theory in Transactions back in the 80’s that I have in my notes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319937?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 


One can debate how close this is to Searle of course. I think unlimited 
semiosis undermines a lot of Searle’s particular approaches. 

One rather key difference as well is how Peirce conceives of propositions. 
Quoting Peirce,

A proposition, as I have just intimated, is not to be understood as the lingual 
expression of a judgment. It is, on the contrary, that sign of which the 
judgment is one replica and the lingual expression another. But a judgment is 
distinctly more than the mere mental replica of a proposition. It not merely 
expresses the proposition, but it goes further an accepts it. I grant that the 
normal use of a proposition is to affirm it; and its chief logical properties 
relate to what would result in reference to its affirmation. (MS 517, 40-41; 
NEM 5.248)

This is just the illocutionary act and its content. 

It is very important that this distinction should be understood. The various 
acts of assertion or assevation, judgment, denial, effective command, and 
teaching are acts which establish general rules by which real things will be 
governed. No mere icon does that, for it only signifies a character and is 
perfectly passive; no index does it, although it is effective in the special 
case. No mere proposition does it. But it is of the nature of every complete 
symbol that it effects a general mode of real happening. (ibid, 36-38)

So I’d say there are either three different modes of meaning of the same sign.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Direct experience and immediate object

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 12:22 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> GF:  It’s important to note that Stjernfelt’s definition of the immediate 
> object is a functional one--the immediate object plays an indexical role 
> within the functioning of a Dicisign ...
> 
> According to Peirce, this is only true of some Immediate Objects--the 
> Existent ones for Signs that he classified as Designatives in the late 1908 
> taxonomy.  Immediate Objects can also be Possibles for Signs that are 
> Descriptives, or Necessitants for Signs that are Copulatives.

My apologies as I’m just coming back to the list after having too little time 
to read for quite some time. Are you talking about Stjernfelt’s discussion of 
natural signs? If so that functional focus would make sense rather than the 
more general case. But of course you’re completely right that possibles as 
immediate objects are extremely important.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 10:49 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
>> "Not quite sure what you’re asking. Could there have been a different 
>> movement less tied to Christianity? Probably."
> 
> I say probably not. And certainly not Islam.

I guess it depends upon what one sees as important and/or essential in the 
Renaissance. Certainly painting development would have been difficult under 
Islam given the very different restrictions on art and different visual 
emphasis. But that’s rather the issue I am getting at. What’s significant about 
the Renaissance?

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 10:49 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> Yes, communism and other religions do indeed talk about a higher purpose. As 
> do other aggregations of society. Social obligation is fairly standard in 
> almost any culture. But it generally expresses itself in the context of 
> groupthink and the need to belong. Christianity is different, because it 
> synthesizes a kind of individualism with higher purpose.

Hmm. I’m a bit nervous there. Here thinking of say Charles Taylor’s _A Secular 
Age_. I’m just not sure that individualism of the sort we think of as 
individualism is characteristic of pre-modern Christianity. There’s no doubt 
that starting with the Reformation that Protestants quickly move in that 
direction - primarily due to the hermeneutic shifts where the individual and 
the Bible become authority rather than the Catholic Church. But I’m not sure 
I’d attribute that to Christianity in general. Further even in the origins of 
modernism is precisely the re-introduction of pagan texts during the 
Renaissance that arguably enables this shift. Here’s thinking of the role of 
people like Giordano Bruno in enabling a shift. Now of course we can debate how 
significant that loose hermetic tradition that arises in the Renaissance really 
is for the rise of individualism in modernism. I think it’s sometimes 
overstated. But I think it’s more of an influence than broad Christianity 
beyond the break that happens with the printing press in Christianity leading 
to the form the Reformation takes. Although clearly there were many issues 
leading to the Reformation.

But again the real issue is the question of counterfactuals. If we rewound 
history to say 100 BCE and replayed things, are there worlds without 
Christianity that would give us individualism arising out of say paganism? It’s 
pretty hard to know. (Which makes the question really unanswerable) My guess 
though is that many would. There’s no intrinsic reason why say Platonism with 
the emphasis on the One in late antiquity necessarily is the only dominate form 
of paganism. Indeed many might argue that type of Platonism arises precisely 
due to conflict and competition with Christianity as the latter becomes 
popular. Without Christianity who’s to say something else doesn’t develop?

> The notion of Christian love enters the narrative. The courage to sacrifice 
> for what you believe in. Does Hinduism do this? Maybe. But its historical 
> context is different. Buddhism? Buddhism is more secular, less 
> individualistic, and constrained by filial piety, though they still are 
> inspired by love of truth.

Individualism certainly is taken as absent from the ancient world. Not just the 
ancient near east but around the world. So I’d agree that at least historically 
neither Hinduism nor Buddhism have individualism. I’m just skeptical 
Christianity did either. While Stoicism is anything but individualistic, it is 
interesting that the self-control and self-reflective nature of Stoic ethics do 
put an emphasis on the individual. It’s not hard to imagine that developing 
over time into something more akin to modern individualism.

To my eyes the key move in modern individualism is the shift in hermeneutics 
primarily due to the rise of the textual tradition of interpreting the Bible. 
That then quickly added to scientific hermeneutics and legal hermeneutics with 
a complex interplay between the three. Could that have arisen in other 
traditions like say a hypothetic Stoic one? It’s hard to say. There’s no Stoic 
corpus although there are the dialogs of Plato. Yet that individual 
self-reflection seems to at least possibly allow an individual hermeneutic to 
develop. At least I’m loath to say why it couldn’t, even if one sees it as less 
likely than within Christianity.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 4:31 AM, Stephen Curtiss Rose  wrote:
> 
> The Pragmaticist Maxim cuts through all these considerations and focuses on 
> the practical results of thinking, musing, etc Peirce designated aesthetics 
> and ethics as normative sciences. He was agapaic in his core understanding of 
> things. This suggests he would have had little interest in parsing the merits 
> of groups and religions but would have focused instead on the fruits of their 
> thinking. 

Many elements of the maxim as applied in this way arise out of Stoic ethics we 
should note. John Shook has a good article on this, “Peirce’s Pragmatic 
Theology and Stoic Religious Ethics.” Although much of what he discusses are 
parallels rather than evidence for direct influence. 

While the agapaic element obviously comes from Christianity, particularly the 
fairly platonic Gospel of John, the Stoic elements can’t be neglected. While 
Stoicism sees this through reason rather than love, the reasoning out the place 
of the individual in terms of the whole through self-reflection is significant. 
As is the rather pantheistic conception of God. (Here meaning how individual 
signs are parts of the whole)

> Peirce was hardly universalist in his understanding however, having a blind 
> spot about slavery. I can only assume that now that spot would have vanished. 
> And that he would see the fruits of considerations in terms of the degree to 
> which harm is created or prevented. That can and should be measured. It is 
> not beyond the province of science which is also universal.

Sadly blind spots in ethics towards slavery were nothing new. Again this was a 
constant problem in Roman ethics I’d say. It is one reason why Stoic ethics 
remain somewhat problematic IMO.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 2:38 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> Christianity was particularly important to the European renaissance. Why?

Not quite sure what you’re asking. Could there have been a different movement 
less tied to Christianity? Probably. If there was a tie I suspect it was 
primarily due to the place of Rome in Italy where the Renaissance started. But 
say, to pose a hypothetical counterfactual, refugees from Constantinople 
primarily went to the Germaic area which had for different reasons a stronger 
economy than Italy. We’d have expected a very different sort of “renaissance.” 
So while the form the renaissance took was very Christian, I tend to see that 
as tied to historic accident. For that matter had Islam not arisen and 
Constantinople fallen, would we talk about a Renaissance? Probably not although 
likely many similar developments in the technique of art or thought may well 
have happened. Or perhaps they wouldn’t have happened at all and Europe would 
have been stuck in a situation more akin to the prior thousand years.

If we talk evolution I think we have to recognize the place of chance in all of 
this. There may well be potential forms that are very useful that would be 
incentivized to arise. Yet the broader issues seem much more arbitrary.

> But Christianity introduces another dimension that is alien to the secular 
> Left or the atheist Right (and the vast majority of religions)... commitment 
> to a higher purpose, regardless of the earthly benefits that may or may not 
> accrue. Is there something in that, at least as a fundamental cultural 
> principle?

I’m nervous at attributing “higher purposes” just to Christianity. After all 
they’re common to many religions and even non-religions like Marxism. Now you 
could argue that Marxism can arise only because Christianity already sets the 
stage. However I think this is biasing things too much to a Eurocentric view of 
civilization. 

> Burkean conservatism and its attendant social practices has its place, but 
> the "higher purpose" is absent. Clinical. Behaviorist. A utilitarian morality 
> that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. Darwinism speaks 
> the same language, and it looks like its shelf-life will be limited. Their 
> fates are determined by the entropy of self-interest.

I’m not sure that’s true. I think Burkeanism can be reduced to “don’t change 
too fast and too radically because of unintended consequences.” Higher purposes 
seem orthogonal to that concern.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 8:43 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Hmm- I'm inclined to think that 'religions' - by which I am assuming a belief 
> in metaphysical powers, begins first at the individual psychological level, 
> where the individual becomes aware of his own finite nature and lack of power 
> to 'make things happen'. AND - his awareness that, despite his best 
> intentions, 'the best laid plans gang oft awry'.

It seems to me that viewing religion in terms of metaphysical claims ends up 
with a rather meager conception of religion. It’s true that some religions, 
medieval Christianity in particular, tended to emphasize belief. However many 
didn’t and even within pre-modern Christianity belief was only a component of 
the religion. For many religions practices rather than belief - particularly 
metaphysical claims - is the main focus. One can draw out metaphysics, but that 
tends to be rather distortive since it’s arguably not the focus of the 
religion. You then have in some religions, like Buddhism, the idea that 
metaphysics is at best serves an instrumental rather than literal function. 
(Here thinking of the Lotus Sutra and the allegory of the children in the 
burning building) Even within Christianity liberal theology tends to reject 
most of the traditional metaphysical claims as myths at best and elevates 
instead ethical duty or perhaps a more foundational sense of Being. (Here 
thinking of Tillich although heaven knows one can critique his ethical behavior)

All that said I think most evolutionary psychology does emphasize basic 
psychological behaviors such as agency detection along with the incentives of 
false positives versus false negatives as leading to religious comportments. 
(Atran’s In Gods We Trust is particularly good here although many other books 
analyze the subject)

It’s interesting again from a Peircean conception of common sense and its 
conservative nature to analyze these. Even if the beliefs are false (and some 
must be false given the varieties of religious belief) the underlying “common 
sense” makes sense. i.e. it’s better to be wrong about a predator being there 
than a predator not being there. What’s changed - and changed rapidly in the 
modern era - is that the context it which we live is radically different. Put 
an other way, the costs of being wrong about agents is simply quite different. 
(And I say that as a religious believer - but I think the underlying logic is 
quite interesting)

> Third - socialization rests on continuity, normative laws of behaviour and 
> belief, dependent expectations of how to interact with others. So- we develop 
> shared beliefs, a shared metaphysics of 'what happens when we die'; why do 
> bad/good things happen'.


This is true. And of course there are instrumentalist values to these beliefs 
to the community. Although one might also say that purported encounters also 
are reasonably common at the community level even if not the individual level. 
i.e. people who claim encounters with the dead souls. While especially in our 
“disenchanted world” we tend to dismiss such claims, they are quite widespread 
and thus have a social effect.
> I don't think this has anything to do with a 'religious leader' or medicine 
> man...Such a specialization will take place only in larger populations where 
> specialization of tasks does take place. But in small bands [about 30 people] 
> - there will rarely be a spiritual leader, much less a military!! Again - it 
> depends on the size of the population which is itself dependent on the 
> economic mode which is itself dependent on the ecological viability of the 
> land to support large populations. 
> 
This seems right. Again many religious experiences are happening on the 
individual level and are quite common. That’s not to dismiss the role of 
religious leaders - particularly in terms of transmitting religious 
interpretations of common phenomena. It matters whether your expectations of a 
phenomena is of false agency inference or a ghost. That in turn affects how 
stable the interpretations of phenomena are in a given community.

Again from a purely economical and evolutionary perspective though, communities 
that can get people to self-regulate are apt to be more successful at large 
sizes than those who don’t. So if you can convince people that someone is 
watching them and judging their actions, that allows for larger stable 
societies. Therefore there is an evolutionary value in such beliefs to make a 
community more successful than what government regulation and punishment alone 
can accomplish.

What’s interesting is to ask from a Peircean perspective how such things should 
be viewed. The way Peirce normally talks about critical common sensism tends to 
downplay, I think, the distinction between the instrumental value of a belief 
from its actual truth. That’s of course famously the difference Peirce has from 
James and to a degree Dewey. James I’d argue actually ends flattening

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

It’s worth noting that most evolutionary views of religion see much of it 
evolving intertwined with the evolution of government. To the point that it’s 
hard to separate the two. It’s true that particularly in evolutionary 
psychology religion has some key differences such as focus on the cognition of 
agency detection and so forth. Yet as a practical social organization the 
separation between government and religion is fairly recent. And arguably still 
incomplete (if it’s even possible to really separate the two)

>From a Peircean view with its emphasis on common sense as heavily tested 
>practices in a somewhat narrow environment it’s worth considering how these 
>social practices would evolve. And perhaps offer some more Burkean like 
>conservative reasons for worrying about the widespread abandonment of many 
>tested social practices.

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 7:53 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> On 6/19/2018 9:15 AM, Stephen Jarosek wrote:
>> Groupthink is the problem...
>> I believe that Christianity might provide some pointers.
> 
> All the religions of the world began at the village level,
> usually as a social group with a guru or medicine-man as
> the social-religious leader who shares power with the
> military leader.
> 
> Because of the sharing of power, the guru can only retain
> social power by persuasion.  That means an emphasis on
> normative values:  aesthetics by stories and ceremonies;
> ethics by morality and justice; and truth by knowledge of
> history, medicine, and good counsel.
> 
> But religion can be corrupted by wealth and political power.
> It's important to keep the guru poor and honest.
> 
> John
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] How language began, a Ted talk by Dan Everett

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 14, 2018, at 6:06 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I came across a Ted talk by Dan E with the title
> "How language began".  At the halfway mark (9 minutes)
> he mentions Peirce and relates his semiotic to the issues:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFxg5vkaPgk
> 
> My only comment would be that there was probably some
> kind of vocalization a few million years earlier.
> 
> Chimpanzees in the wild use gestures to communicate among
> themselves.  When Australopithecus began to walk upright,
> they could carry stuff (food, weapons, and babies).  Sounds
> would be a useful supplement when their hands were full.

Some of Tomasello’s writings end up adopting fairly Peircean ideas along those 
lines. So far as I can recall he never mentions Peirce nor thirdness but much 
of his work ends up tied to a more robust thirdness leading to language. As I 
recall The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition has a lot of Peircean-like 
elements to it.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 9, 2017, at 7:18 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> But there is another side of the question revealed in Peirce’s 1909 letter to 
> Welby (SS 118):
> “My studies must extend over the whole of general Semeiotic. I think, dear 
> Lady Welby, that you are in danger of falling into some error in consequence 
> of limiting your studies so much to Language and among languages to one very 
> peculiar language, as all Aryan Languages are; and within that language so 
> much to words.”

This is very important and also a rut philosophy fell into during the move to 
linguistic analysis during much of the 20th century. Missing these more general 
cases in preference to ordinary language. 

> There is also a phenomenological side to Peirce’s semeiotic as revealed in 
> the Welby letters, but despite the subject line, we haven’t really considered 
> that in this thread …

Yes. I have a reply to that original comment from last week I’m still working 
on. I’ll hopefully take it up in there. I’m still quite swamped though. 
Hopefully others might take it up in the meantime.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 7, 2017, at 10:21 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> Clark,
>  
> Kirsti has presented zero evidence that the sign classifications Peirce 
> detailed in the 1908 Welby letters are summaries of earlier work rather than 
> current work on his part. In fact, if you actually read the material in 
> EP2:477-91 you’ll see why the editors described it as “among the richest 
> records of the evolution of his semiotic thought” — an evolution that was 
> very much in progress as he was writing, as is obvious from his own comments 
> on the process. And on p. 482, Peirce makes it very clear that “the accurate 
> definition, or logical analysis, of the concepts” of semeiotic was central to 
> his inquiry (not to Welby’s; in fact she apparently didn’t know what to make 
> of his analysis of signs).

Again just to be clear I’m not taking a position on the “when.” It’s just not 
something I’ve studied. 

I’d taken that header to the Lady Welby excerpts to imply he was working on it 
while writing to her.  However the excerpts, according to the header, come from 
a space of time from spring 1906 to Christmas 1908. So that’s a broad period 
which is all I was saying. i.e. he may have used the letter writing to clarify 
his thoughts, but he appears to have been thinking on the issues for some time.

To your final point, I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing. Certainly to the 
degree one is studying semiotics one must have accurate definitions and logical 
analysis. The question is whether that is a means to an end or the end itself. 
I’d note that the prior paragraph to the one you quote from on p. 482 goes 
through the divisions he takes from the medievals: grammar, logic & rhetoric. I 
have a post to Gary Richmond where I am dealing with his points and questions 
from last week that goes through that in more depth. It’s about half written 
but I want to be careful I get things right on it. I’d just say that the prior 
paragraph suggests meaning is quite significant. (Forgive the wordplay) It’s 
interesting that he quotes in that paragraph from his paper in 1867 as it 
relates to the relation of symbols to their objects.

My sense, perhaps mistaken, is that the debate is over which is more important, 
the grounds for meaing which Peirce puts first or the formal conditions of 
truth. That is, what does “first” mean both in how he views it in 1908 and how 
he viewed it in 1867.

Without speaking for anyone else, I’m certainly not devaluing the second 
science he discusses. Further I think even relative to meaning it is key. Yet I 
think the most important and foundational analysis consists of meaningfulness 
itself or the formal conditions of symbols having meaning. It is to conduct 
both those analysis though that one must first analyze the concepts. So I agree 
that is central, but only as a means to an end.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 5, 2017, at 8:36 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Actually, there are many "strange states" of matter, for which that
> three-way distinction is extremely oversimplified.

I’d just add to your great comments that really these are just folk science 
distinctions. They happen to work most of the time for the chemistry but break 
down in many cases. That is we use them primarily is for historic reasons. You 
list some great examples where they break down. I suspect most 
physicists/chemists would focus on a phase change diagram and see those are 
more useful states. That in turn becomes quite crucial since the path one takes 
through temperature/pressure can lead to very different states.

A great practical way to see this is with a common food like chocolate. 
Chocolate that you buy is tempered and in a particular thermodynamic state. 
When you melt it, in say a hot car, that state changes even when it cools back 
down. It now has very different properties - usually noticed by the oils and 
solids in the chocolate separating leading to yellow or whitish blotches. It’ll 
also have different texture and taste. If you were to put it back in the proper 
thermodynamic state (called tempering in culinary terms) then it’ll be just as 
if you’d bought it.

So one needn’t look to just very unusual examples outside of common experience 
such as plasmas (although of course a fire is an example of a plasma). The folk 
physics of three states breaks down in many common types of phenomena. However 
of course talking about three states of matter is extremely useful 
pedagogically. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 6, 2017, at 2:06 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
> 
> As evidence backing up interpretations on CSP's then current main interests, 
> works at hand, I find Welby correspondence necessarily weak. Not strong, that 
> is.

Again I’ve not kept carefully up on the nuances of what was innovated when, but 
it always seemed to me that many subtle aspects of his Welby correspondence 
illustrated rethinking of some aspects of the sign. Now I’d assume those didn’t 
originate for the Welby letter but probably represent work done in this general 
period of 1905 onward. 

My own position doesn’t appear to be the same as Kirsti’s. While I think he did 
focus on meaning, I think it was through his work on signs that he attempted to 
understand meaning. But again I note that I’ve just not paid close attention to 
the “when” of certain aspects of of the sign that appear in the Welby 
correspondence. I admittedly am more focused on the content. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 6:52 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But you will recall that his classification of signs and expansion of this 
> classification recently discussed here was an important part of his letters 
> to Victoria Welby. And in his late work, even his discussion of and expansion 
> of the notion of the Interpretant (meaning, as discussed in my last post) has 
> important structural features, not to be glossed over in my opinion. 

Well I think we’re saying the same thing the question is more the more minor 
issue of what was the driver: meaning or just curiosity of structure in 
general. That’s a more subtle point I don’t have strong positions on although 
I’m sympathetic to what I took Kirsti to be claiming: mainly that it was 
meaning that was the prime driver. But I think we all agree with what the 
outcome of that inquiry was.

I’d love to hear Kirsti defend her claim about meaning being the driver. 

My own beliefs here (which I’m more than happy to change with further 
information) come largely from the same paper you quoted earlier “Pragmatism” 
from 1907 (MS318) In particular the different variants of the paper he worked 
with seem to me to show a strong focus on meaning. 

Suffice it to say once more than pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of 
metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a method 
of ascertaining the meaning of hard words and abstract concepts. All 
pragmatists of whatsoever stripe will cordially ascent to that statement. As to 
the ulterior and idirect effects of practicing the pragmatistic method, that is 
quite another affair.

(Sorry just have my Kindle handy so no accurate page numbers)

He then continues going into nuance on meaning to shift to a discussion to 
signs. He bridges the discussion after talking about total meaning in terms of 
counterfactual (would-be) acts by asking how his principles of predication are 
to be proved. He turns for that to a discussion of signs, but the discussion of 
signs is ultimately conducted in service to his larger discussion of meaning 
and pragmatism. As he continues to discuss signs though, he always keeps that 
topic of meaning in sight. It’s true that by the middle of the paper he’s 
shifted from talking about meaning to talking about signification. But that’s 
merely because it’s a more precise way of continuing the same discussion. (IMO) 
I think he continues discussing meaning, noting such things that object of the 
sign can’t be the proper object. He then relates feelings as tied to the 
meaning of the sing. He finally discusses meaning once again in terms of “would 
be” as a way of ultimately grounding meaning. 

He finally closes by going through the various types of pragmatism contrasting 
them with his own over where they vary in terms of meaning using his discussion 
of the sign. To me that implies that the whole point of signs in that 
discussion was to elucidate the differences between his own meaning of 
pragmatism with James, Schiller and others.

Again, I’m fully willing to be wrong here. Most of you are far better versed in 
the nuances of Peirce’s development than I. But it really seemed to me to be 
that distancing himself from others over meaning that led to his getting into 
deeper nuance in the structure of the object and interpretant than he had in 
previous decades.

> SR:  Is this forum an effort to establish scholarly precision about what 
> Peirce said or meant or understood? Or is is an attempt to use his ideas as 
> we understand them as relevant signposts to now? Maybe it is both. . .
> 
> This has come up a number of times on this list, a few times by Stephen. I 
> would say that certain members of this forum at times emphasize the 
> importance of clarifying what Peirce's thought, while others at times 
> emphasize using his ideas to further contemporary thought. But this appears 
> to be mainly a matter of emphasis, and it seems to me that some of the 
> strongest contributors to this forum see it as a both (that is certainly my 
> position).

If the list is only for understanding the history or exegesis of Peirce’s own 
writings then it’s far too limited to be of that much interest I must confess. 
It’s in application that Peirce’s thought has most value. Whether that be in 
philosophy (my own interest) or chemistry or related fields as others have 
focused on. But if it’s merely dry history of philosophy with no interest in 
relevancy then the list will surely die quickly.

> I do not at all think that "it is safe to say" that Peirce's work on meaning 
> has been more influential than his work in semiotics, especially in recent 
> decades. While it is true that James and Dewey didn't fully (really, not all 
> that mujch) embrace Peirce's work on signs. But this field of modern 
> semeiotics which Peirce had pretty much invented (although drawing from 
> Classical, Medieval, and other sources) was, naturally, both entirely new to 
> them and quite difficult to

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 4:41 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But I consider Kirsti's notion that "CSP was all his life after SIGNS. That 
> was earlier. Later he was after meanings" itself, if not 'gravely', at least 
> completely in wrong. Peirce was actively thinking about signs and semiotics 
> throughout his life and, as I see it, increasingly so. Indeed his very idea 
> of 'meaning' is near identical to a particular kind of sign, namely, the 
> interpretant.

I don’t disagree with that - I think what I was agreeing with her over was the 
emphasis on meaning. Of course that’s not all that Peirce was focused on. Sorry 
if I suggested deeper disagreement - I was writing quickly. I don’t think 
Heidegger was only focused on meaning either, although that clearly was one of 
his main emphasis. How to take him in that regard is still a matter of debate 
in Heideggarian circles. (Thomas Sheehan has caused a bit of a divide over how 
to take Heidegger - he emphasizes the meaning aspect and thinks the focus of 
being misses the point - many disagree with him both on the place of meaning in 
Heidegger but also the importance of being)

Really quickly, how I took Kirsti (and please correct me if I’m reading wrong) 
was just that initially Peirce’s focus was on the structure of signs and later 
he was thinking through the structure in terms of meaningfulness that led to 
some of the innovations in structure in the early 20th century. (Such as those 
in his letters to Lady Welby) But I always took the main change as arising out 
of a deeper focus on meaning leading him to adopt positions surprisingly 
similar to Hegel at times. So ironically his deeper structural analysis of 
signs arises out of inquiry on meaning. That is recognizing the differences 
within both the object and the interpretant and how the former determines the 
latter.

Since it’s precisely there that I think there’s common ground with the 
Heideggarian stream of phenomenology (particularly the gap between object and 
sign which a guess is required to bridge) this is quite important in my view. 
Those elements, while often present in a primitive fashion in the earlier 
Peirce really are explicated best in his later works.

The second thing I’d add is that the place of the pragmatic maxim is crucial in 
all of this as a verification principle of meaning (not truth as others took 
it). While one obviously can’t fully separate the maxim from his work on signs, 
the place of meaningfulness as a key factor in his thought in some ways exceeds 
his work on signs. Indeed if Peirce’s thought had an outsized influence, I 
think it safe to say it was his work on meaning not signs that was most 
influential. It’s worth noting that neither James nor Dewey really fully 
embrace his work on signs, only his work on meaning. This is arguably true of 
most pragmatists. Even those later figures who seem to be close to aspects of 
Peirce’s signs - say Grice’s work on language - still end up missing the 
crucial insights. Perhaps because it was his work on signs that quickly became 
so forgotten except in vague ways from some of his popular early works that 
continued to be reprinted. Certainly the key formulation from the end of his 
life seem largely unknown.

More later when I get some time.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 12:52 PM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
> In my view Gary R. is gravely wrong in assuming that CSP was all his life 
> after SIGNS. That was earlier. Later he was after meanings.
> 
> Heidegger was never attempting to create any theory of SIGNS. He was after 
> meanings. Thus he turned into our ancient Greek heritance.  And did not 
> accept the modern meanings attacted to the basic concepts. - He 
> re-interpreted them.
> 
> With this he truly was in line with Peirce.

I think this is right, although the place of Being is different - although even 
there some of the ways Peirce uses the copula is interesting as we discussed 
back in the reading club on Natural Signs. 

> In 1970's  ( and onwards) Peirce became kind of covertly famous in Europe. 
> His writings were studied by the top philosophers. But his name was seldom, 
> if ever mentioned.

That’s interesting. I was familiar with Derrida’s and of course Habermas but I 
didn’t know there were others. 

> Since I read Heidegger's Time and Being, It has been quite clear to me that 
> he was after something akin to Peirce. - Kind of muddled Peirce, I thought.
> 
> Afterwards I read about all Heidegger has written. And was even more 
> convinced that my idea was valid.

I want to respond to Gary in some depth. Unfortunately my kids are starting 
school, my wife is 7 months pregnant, and we have an important client coming at 
work. But I am not posting and running. I think he raises some really important 
issues.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jul 28, 2017, at 2:29 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> By the 20th century Peirce will have somewhat changed his terminology; but 
> from 1902 on I believe he always refer to three branches of logica docens, or 
> logic as semeiotic: namely speculative grammar, critic, and methodeutic (or, 
> speculative rhetoric). These branches of logic all concern themselves with 
> the study of signs as such, while phenomenology is, as it were, pre-logica 
> docens (although it most certainly employs logica utens as has been discussed 
> on this list as we all employ logic even before we've reflected on it in a 
> scientific spirit). 

My understanding is that for Peirce semiotics (our term) is grounded in 
phenomenology or phaneroscopy. So I definitely don’t want to argue that the 
semantic extension of terms is the same in the Heideggarian tradition as in the 
Peircean tradition. Rather I wish to argue that via similar influences there is 
a similarity of content. Heidegger doesn’t really engage much with semiotics 
proper - his focus is primarily on Being arising out of his early work on 
Scotus and then via rethinking Husserl’s phenomenology - primarily 
intentionality and moving from bracketing/reduction to a general hermeneutic. 
Derrida is the one who later takes up semiotics in the more Heideggarian 
tradition via his research on Peirce.

So I’ll readily concede some of your points, such as pointing that some things 
are metaphysics rather than phenomenology for Peirce. But again I think we have 
to distinguish between the content of the two movements versus the terminology 
used to describe that content. I think the latter gets focused on to the 
detriment of thinking through the former.

> In truth this more scientific logical trivium goes back very far indeed, to 
> the Romans, Peirce writes: 

Yes, while we often look to Peirce’s engagement with the scholastics, 
particularly Scotus, a lot of this can be found in the tradition of platonism 
and stoicism in late antiquity. I’ll confess I’ve not read or studied much of 
Peirce’s engagement with such figures although I know he was very well read in 
the texts available - particularly Proclus and similar figures.

> So while I agree that in Heidegger as in Peirce that there is no bracketing 
> or reduction or psychologism or egoic intentiality as there is in Husserl, 
> yet speculative grammar (as a branch of logic) is, in Peirce's classification 
> of the sciences, further down in the list of sciences and, so, draws 
> principles from it and not the reverse. This is quite different from your 
> commenting that, "like Peirce, Heidegger uses [speculative grammar] as a 
> stepping off point" for his phenomenology. Quite the contrary in my opinion. 

Let me think through this a bit. Although my initial inclination is to note 
that in terms of thinking through issues it’s different from the position in 
the taxonomy of Peirce. That is while phenomenology ultimately grounds signs 
and signs these later fields that doesn’t entail that in inquiry the process of 
thinking proceeds solely in that direction. But you raise some good points and 
I’ll have some further comments later.
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[PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

The recent discussion raised some thoughts I’d not entertained in some time. We 
know that there are huge differences between what Husserl called phenomenology 
and Peirce’s project. Indeed Peirce explicitly criticized Husserl for 
psychologism. There’s nothing really like the reduction or bracketing in 
Peirce’s thought and intentionality is completely inverse from 
Brentano/Husserl. Intentionality is from object through signs rather than 
anything like an ego or directness. Consciousness just isn’t an issue the way 
it is for the more Cartesian inclined phenomenologists. Peirce’s sense of 
intentionality arises not from the conceptions developed in the modern era but 
from Scotus’ notion of first and second intentions.

I’ve long noted that while Peirce’s phenomenology bears little resemblance to 
Husserl’s, Heidegger’s seems quite different. Famously it is both on the nature 
of consciousness and intentionality that Heidegger breaks from Husserl. 
Heidegger too turned to Scotus and particularly Scotus’ notion of 
intentionality. Following Scotus Heidegger saw a distinction between ideal 
meaning and real Being that the intended meanings must be a priori in some 
sense. For Scotus the foundation of signs thus because the a priori structures 
of the soul. I’m here thinking of Scotus’ Grammatica Speculativa.

Peirce too turns to this same aspect of Scotus’ thought. In the Comments 
dictionary there are quite a few entries for Speculative Grammar that are tied 
to Scotus’ thought. These are the conditions of signs as signs. (See CP 1.444 
for example)

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/speculative-grammar 


Like Peirce, Heidegger uses this as a stepping off point. Meaning becomes 
autonomous due to this a priori structure. That is fundamentally Heidegger 
breaks with Husserl over these same aspects of psychologism. The main place one 
might see a difference is over the meaning of an individual soul. Peirce sees 
individuals as symbols - arising out of these phenomenological structures in 
acts. Heidegger comes close, seeing historicity in the individual soul where 
these acts occur. Yet at the same time Heidegger’s notion of “living spirit” 
bears similarities to Peirce’s conception of universe in terms of sign. 
Unfortunately this is most pronounced in the early Heidegger rather than the 
more interesting Heidegger of the late 20’s and early 30’s. Yet the shift tends 
to maintain the a priori structure from his engagement with Scotus combined 
with a more historical sense. 

So I’m not saying they are doing the same thing, but I do think they are more 
commensurate than many think. (Unlike Husserl)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] Re: Is relativity theory holding back progress in science?

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 20, 2017, at 6:24 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I have been following new developments in physics for many years,
> and I am also interested in Peirce's views on the subject.  But I
> agree with the summary below by Kashyap V Vasavada.
> 
> I would prefer not to have these emails stuff my folder for
> Peirce-L.  Unless other Peirce-L subscribers want to read these
> notes, I suggest that the cc or bcc to Peirce-L should stop.

Ditto. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of Peirce content.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Did Peirce Anticipate the Space-Time Continuum?

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 6, 2017, at 11:55 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> Clark, List,
> 
> You say:  "So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal 
> due to the role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those 
> terms, I believe the implication is that chance breaks symmetries enabled by 
> determinism."
> 
> In saying this, you seem to be putting greater weight on points 2 and 3 
> below. 
> 
> 1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the 
> conservation of energy.
> 2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly 
> inexplicable.
> 3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be 
> explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real 
> chance.
> 4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is 
> maintained. (CP 6.613)
> 
> I would have thought that points 1 and 4 would be particularly important for 
> understanding some of the reasons for limiting the scope of the 1st and 2nd 
> laws of thermodynamics as explanatory for the growth of order in natural 
> systems (i.e., that they govern closed systems, but are limited, in some 
> sense, in the application to open systems). Here are two questions. 

In the discussion we were talking about habits as related to physics. I think 
Peirce recognized all four as important but the question was how chance could 
lead to habits, the way he argues in his cosmology. He provides a few arguments 
for this although not everyone will be convinced. And of course his cosmology, 
as I frequently note as a caveat, is among his more controversial positions. 
I’m not sure I agree with him there although I find myself also unable to fully 
dismiss his reasoning.

> 
> (a) In what ways do points 1 and 4 add something that is not already found in 
> points 2 and 3? 

I think (3) is important in terms of what is demanded for explanation. i.e. we 
can’t just take regularities for granted but must ask how and why they arise. 
(1) and (2) are just premises due to observation. I don’t see (2) & (3) 
entailing (1) since (3) is just a demand for explanation not a conclusion.

> (b) How might Peirce's account of the law of mind--which I take to be 
> embodied in a summary way in the 1st and 4th points--help us better 
> understand the relationships between the making and breaking of fundamental 
> symmetries and the growth of order in natural systems?

I think they end up being the same thing. The earlier back cosmologically in 
terms of physics, not ontology, one goes the more symmetries you have. Thus the 
evolution of the early universe is a series of symmetry breaking by chance. 
Those in turn result in new natural laws due to the symmetry breaking. (Not 
fundamental natural law obviously) The justification for this in physics is due 
to cosmological expansion. That acts in a fashion akin to state change in 
general thermodynamics. Think starting with a gas and compressing until it’s a 
liquid and then a solid. Here the process goes the opposite direction but is 
analogous in terms of symmetry breaking.

Now where it gets trickier is when Peirce moves to his more neoplatonic 
thinking before time to the ultimate ontological cosmology. There he’s doing 
something more akin to the Timaeus. But I’m not quite sure I buy it as he ends 
up not having time proper but something very much like time in terms of 
precession. Yet that’s a hidden ontological feature he doesn’t analyze. So from 
a purely philosophical perspective those ontological muses seem problematic due 
to the way he grapples with time.

In a somewhat similar fashion the closer to the big bang one gets the more 
problematic time becomes in terms of quantum mechanics. To the point that I 
don’t think we can say much. That’s not an ontological analogue to Peirce’s 
cosmology though. Just that time is a tricky thing.
> 
> These two questions are not yet well formulated. I'm posing them here in the 
> hopes of working towards a better formulation of what it is that I find 
> puzzling about the law of mind and its application to these questions about 
> the growth of order.

There are some interesting quotes by Peirce here. I’m not sure his solutions 
are fully satisfactory though. Here’s one quote to keep in mind.

We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited 
range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring 
to be explained; and since law in general cannot be explained by any law in 
particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of 
pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (CP 1.407)

While not explicitly about mind, it does explain the mind-like constitution of 
the universe. Mind is mind because of its self-organizing capabilities. But 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Did Peirce Anticipate the Space-Time Continuum?

[Clark Goble]

> On May 30, 2017, at 2:49 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> I am not happy with tychism: Conservation laws require infinite exactness of 
> conservation: Energy or impulse before a reaction must be exactly the same 
> before and after a reaction. Though in a very small (quantum) scale it is not 
> so, but then there must be some kind of counting buffer mechanism to make 
> sure that in a bigger scale infinite exactness is granted. This one is also 
> governed by laws. I do not believe in the dualism sui-generis versus laws, I 
> rather guess that it is all laws providing the possibility of evolution and 
> generation of new things, self-organization and so on. Without laws nothing 
> would happen, I´d say. I think that natural constants may change, but that 
> there are some laws that dont. And if these laws are only the ones based on 
> tautology: One plus one can never be 2.001, because 2 is defined as 1+1. 
> I guess these eternal laws are the laws of logic. I think they are 
> tautologies, like a syllogism is a tautology: The conclusion is nothing new, 
> all is already said in the two premisses: "Arthur is a human, all humans are 
> mortal, so Arthur is mortal", you can forget the conclusion by just putting 
> an "and" between the premisses: "Arthur is a human, and all humans are 
> mortal". The conclusion ", so Arthur is mortal" is redundant, except you do 
> not believe in continuity which is indicated by the word "and" between the 
> two premisses.
> My conclusion: "Law" is an inexact term. A "law" is a compound constructed of 
> an eternal part (tautology, continuity), and a changeable part ((temporary) 
> constants).

Mathematically of course conservation laws arise out of Noether’s Theorem. That 
more or less just states the relationship between symmetries and conservation 
laws. I don’t think we need a “buffer” to deal with this, just symmetries. It 
would seem that continuity may (or may not) apply to those symmetries and thus 
determines the conservation.

Of course Noether did her important work both on the theorem that bares her 
name as well as linear algebra well after Peirce died. But Peirce did do some 
work in the logic of linear algebra that is tied to the theorem. So far as I 
know he never approached the insight of her theorem though. He was familiar 
with the abstract principles though. However Peirce did write on conservation 
laws which we discussed here a few months back as tied to chance and 
determinism relative to habits.

In my attack on "The Doctrine of Necessity" I offered four positive arguments 
for believing in real chance. They were as follows:
1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the 
conservation of energy.
2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly inexplicable.
3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be 
explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real 
chance.
4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is 
maintained. (CP 6.613)

So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal due to the 
role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those terms, I believe 
the implication is that chance breaks symmetries enabled by determinism.




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Apr 20, 2017, at 9:32 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> After that one can consider
> the fine points of generic versus degenerate cases, and that is
> all well and good, but until you venture to say exactly *which*
> monadic, dyadic, or triadic predicate you have in mind, you
> haven't really said that much at all.

Glad I’m not alone in thinking that. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dyadic relations within the triadic

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 15, 2017, at 12:14 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> Clark, yes, that’s why I was careful to qualify my comments by saying “In 
> NDTR.” But when you say that “what happens actually affects what is 
> possible,” what you mean is that what happens now affects what can possibly 
> happen in the future. Possibility as Firstness is timeless, in Peirce’s 
> usage, so your usage of the term in your statement diverges from Peirce’s 
> usage in a categorial context.

That’s an interesting question. My assumption is simply that possibles are 
abstract. So what we’re really saying is that there is some possibility given a 
particular state where the state can be of varying levels of generality or 
vagueness. That is when we talk about how an event changes the possibilities 
we’re talking about what possibilities as first apply. The reasoning of 
possibilities is always this applying abstractions.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dyadic relations within the triadic

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Apr 15, 2017, at 10:28 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> The upshot of this, as far as I can see, is that Firstness (possibility) 
> cannot determine Secondness (actuality) or Thirdness (law), and Secondness 
> cannot determine Thirdness: determination can only run in the other 
> direction. And again, this seems to me entirely consistent with the 
> definitions of the three trichotomies and the tenfold classification.
> 

We should note that this is for a particular type of analysis and meaning of 
determines. Since in his cosmology he’s not so limited. Further we can see how 
what happens actually affects what is possible. (If a bridge collapses it’s no 
longer possible to cross) So we should be careful not to assume NDTR applies to 
any type of analysis.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 11:21 AM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> Some reductions are impossible because the functions are not computable, even 
> in Newtonian mechanics.

Are you talking about the problem in mathematics of solving things like the 
three body problem? That’s not quite what I was thinking of rather I was more 
thinking that any solution is approximate and the errors can propagate in weird 
ways.

But that’s true of almost any real phenomena which is more complex than we can 
calculate. It’s not just an issue of reduction although it clearly manifests in 
the problem of reduction and emergence.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 9:30 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I'm guessing an engineer would have some acquaintance with
> relational databases, which have after all a history going
> back to Peirce, and I would recommend keeping that example
> in mind for thinking about k-adic relations in general.

I didn’t know that. Was the computer science that developed relational 
databases engaging with Peirce explicitly? Any good place to get a primer on 
that history?



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 8:15 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> CG
>> I’d more put it that biological descriptions typically aren’t
>> reducible to chemistry or physics... attempting to make the
>> reduction... did perhaps help in getting biologists to think
>> more carefully about the type of descriptions they make.
> 
> You could say the same about "reducing" meteorology to computational
> physics.  Weather predictions today are far more reliable than they
> were 50 years ago.  But it's good to have an alternate date when
> you're planning a picnic.

Yes that’s the exact way I think about it. It’s a practical issue not a 
metaphysical one. Further non-linear dynamics (not always at work) can make 
some reductions as difficult as some predictions. A little error can sometimes 
spiral out of control such as with a double pendulum.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 10, 2017, at 12:44 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> How exactly would you pose "the Kantian question about 'Das Ding an sich'?  
> What makes you think that I am "trying to get a short way out of" it?

I take it primarily as the problem of reference. While Peirce does have the 
index, he doesn’t require firm ground to use the index. It’s signs all the way 
down due to the way he conceives of signs. 

> "Our existing universe" is not limited to the past; it includes the future, 
> but it obviously does not include any other universes or "Platonic worlds."

Not sure what you mean by that. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 8, 2017, at 10:46 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> Indeed, Peirce defined "potential" as "indeterminate yet capable of 
> determination in any special case" (CP 6.185; 1898), but wrote that "Ideas, 
> or Possibles"--i.e., the constituents of the Universe of 1ns, "whatever has 
> its Being in itself alone"--are "incapable of perfect actualization on 
> account of [their] essential vagueness" (EP 2:478-479; 1908).  I found this 
> distinction very helpful in sorting out Peirce's cosmology when we were 
> discussing it on the List last fall.

I think this is more the distinction for Peirce between generality and 
vagueness. The difference is in who is able to make the determination. Vague 
could mean there is a determinate quality which is simply unknown or that the 
thing itself is developing that quality. Whereas generality is wrapped up in 
being able to simply pick one and is wrapped up in his notion of continuity.

My thought is that these are vague because they are symbols under growth and 
are coming to have the properties they will have one day. In the same way that 
I might only be able to speak vaguely of my son’s qualities since his life is 
just partially underway.

> I think that both of us agree with Edwina that all three Categories were 
> present from the very beginning of our existing universe.

I should hasten to add that I agree with that too. I take Peirce’s cosmology to 
be in logical time before there was anytime. Further, while I differ somewhat 
with Edwina regarding what Peirce believed about this, my own views are 
actually closer to hers..

> Gary quoted Clark as having written, "I think Peirce has [two] categories of 
> chance. One is discontinuous whereas the other is continuous. This ends up 
> being important in various ways."  However, I do not recall seeing that 
> statement in any of Clark's messages, and it also does not show up in the 
> List archive.  More importantly, where does this notion arise in Peirce's 
> writings?

I could have sworn I put that in the email. Looking I realize I didn’t. Part of 
it arises out of the continuum behind the continuum which we’ve discussed in 
the past here with the blackboard metaphor.

I draw a chalk line on the board. This discontinuity is one of those brute acts 
by which alone the original vagueness could have madea  step towards 
definiteness. There is a certain element of continuity in this line. Where did 
this continuity come from? It is nothing but the original continuity of the 
blackboard which makes everything upon it continuous. (6.203)

The one quote I’d give would be this one:

My definition of a continuum only prescribes that, after every innumerable 
series of points, there shall be a next following point, and does not forbit 
this to follow at the interval of a mile. That, therefore, certainly permits 
cracks everywhere. (4.126)

That’s not fully satisfying though although it points to the distinction. I was 
primarily thinking of the two tendencies after rereading Reynold’s paper 
“Peirce’s Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics” which I referred to last 
week. An other way of putting the distinction is as reversible and irreversible 
rather than continuous and discontinuous. The idea that ideas spread 
continuously yet can also change really is the same distinction.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 9, 2017, at 7:41 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> The surface is a vague boundary.  All plants and animals have
> exterior cells that are dead or dying (hair, skin, scales, bark)
> and they have secretions (sweat, tears, oils, sap, resins).
> 
> The outer layers are always mixed with liquids and solids from
> all kinds of sources (living or non-living), and they are subject
> to various abrasions and adhesions -- deliberate or accidental
> (e.g., a bird preening its feathers, animals scratching, grooming
> themselves or others, rolling in the dust, or washing in water).
> 
> Even the interior is not well defined.  There are many more billions
> of bacterial cells than human cells in and on the human body.  Some
> of them are pathogens, but most are *essential* to human health.

This seems right, although the word vague in a Peircean sense might not quite 
fit. I think not well defined is a better way to put it.

I especially like the point you and Kirstima make about non-human cells. Our 
body is very much a symbol in a certain sense that when examined closely does 
not have the type of unity we like to imagine. Even ignoring the issue of the 
human biome, we’re finding that even the DNA of our food can end up in odd 
places of our body, potentially interacting in more complex ways than we can 
yet determine. In the bodies of mothers the remnants of their children’s DNA 
can remain and have effects. Lines become blurry and complex. Even the very 
notion of inside and outside fail us. (Is the digestion system ‘inside’ and if 
so when?)

> Very few molecules exist in isolation.  For example, salt (NaCl)
> rarely consists of Na-CL pairs.  In a crystal, the atoms are
> organized in a lattice where each atom is surrounded by atoms
> of both kinds.  In water, Na ions float independently of CL ions.

And the very notion of atoms and molecules when examined more technically is 
better seen as a quantum field which is itself a type of potentiality.

We simplify both because we have to in order to reason about these things, but 
also because our simplifications work most of the time. Even if we could create 
a gigantic complex Hamiltonian to express the field of salt crystal, it 
wouldn’t necessarily help us.

> I agree that biology is not reducible to chemistry or physics.
> But I'd say that the major difference was caused by the first
> quasi-minds, which created the first non-degenerate Thirdness
> (purpose, goals, or intentions).

I’d more put it that biological descriptions typically aren’t reducible to 
chemistry or physics. Although for all the problems philosophy of science 
created here in the 50’s through 70’s attempting to make the reduction, I think 
it did perhaps help in getting biologists to think more carefully about the 
type of descriptions they make.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 7:40 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> What you just wrote ("that the "womb of indeterminacy" is "the original 
> continuity which is inherent in potentiality," and habit as "a generalizing 
> tendency" emerges from that primordial continuity") reminded me that 
> Aristotle's notion of potentiality is more like Peirce's idea of "would-be's" 
> (3ns) than it is like the notion of simple possibility, or, "may-be's" (1ns). 
> 

I think this is right, although I’d add that Aristotle’s use comes from Plato 
albeit modified somewhat. I think I mentioned Plato’s The Sophist before where 
he talks of the lively possibility (dunamis) of being. It’s that discussion 
that as I recall Aristotle uses to distinguish between potential and actual. So 
the dynamic contains the possibility of being represented. Peirce of course 
uses that to great effect.

I’ll fully admit that I don’t know the full history of Platonism nor all the 
texts Peirce undoubtedly read. From what I can tell it was how Peirce took up 
the nature of possibility that was somewhat unique that differentiated his own 
thought from at least how Plato or the neoPlatonists like Proclus were normally 
read. I also think it marks a big difference from Hegel, although again my 
knowledge of the details of Hegel is fragmentary enough I am potentially on 
shaky ground there. I believe though that Hegel sees the shift from Plato to 
Aristotle as the move to see the ideas of Plato as mere potentiality. For Hegel 
the focus is how the actual (which for Hegel is the real) reveals itself. So 
reality or Aristotle's entelechy is the realization of the essence in phenomena.

Peirce’s move away from this nominalistic element in Hegel thus in a certain 
sense a move back to taking both Plato more seriously yet retaining this view 
of Plato of Hegel. (Which I assume was widely held and not limited to Hegel in 
the 19th century) Of course Peirce keeps the idea of actuality but transforms 
it quite a deal. What’s most interesting about Peirce, at least to me, is how 
he slowly develops this more and more robust sense of modal realism. 

The other thing to question, and here I’m far less confident, is where the 
phrase “womb of indeterminacy” comes from. It certainly sounds like it is out 
of The Timaeus where Plato calls the khora or place the womb within which ideal 
forms and essences are created. My guess is that this part of “A Guess at the 
Riddle” is making an explicit reference to Plato’s Khora but I may well be 
wrong. A lot of those passages sound quite similar to the Platonists. For 
instance,

So Plato said that time came into being with the world, but motion even before 
the world’s birth. There was then no time, for neither was there arrangement, 
measure or mark of division, only an indefinite motion, as it were the 
unformed, unwrought matter of time. (Qu. Pl. 1007c)

> So, in several papers and on this list I have sometimes extended Peirce's 
> term "would-be's" in just this direction by writing that we should think of 
> potentialites as "would-be's were the conditions in place for their coming 
> into being.” 

This is important to note. Peirce’s shift is to see differentiation or 
privation (to use the platonic term) as constraints that limit possibilities. 
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[PEIRCE-L] Nature of Habit

[Clark Goble]

On more thing before I leave for the weekend. It seems to me that 1907’s famous 
MS 318 is pretty key to all this the more I think about it. That’s partially 
because he speaks of three habit-interpretants and changes how he talks of 
habit somewhat. Part of the manuscript is in EP 2:398. I didn’t see it 
available online anywhere. The primary focus is the pragmatic maxim, but I 
think he gets at many of the issues we’re discussing.

The main focus is the relationship between the inner world and outer world in 
terms of the effect of a sign. 

It is to be noted that in calling a habit “self-controlled,” I do not mean that 
it is in the power of the man who has it to cast it off,— to cease, in the 
example just given, to try to make his decorations beautiful; for we well know 
that he has no such power,— but what I mean is that it has been developed under 
the process just described in which critical feelings as to the results of 
inner or outer exercises stimulate to strong endeavors to repeat or to modify 
those effects. I may mention that I do not recognize pleasure and pain as 
specific feelings but only as being whatever feelings may stimulate efforts, in 
the one case to reproduce or continue them, or, as we say, “attractive” 
feelings, and in the other case to annul and avoid them, or, as we say, 
“repulsive” feelings. (MS 319 EP 2.431-2, 1907) 

Now Peirce is explicitly talking here of humans and not general semiosis as 
we’re concerned with. So I recognize we have to be careful. 

reiterations in the inner world―fancied reiterations―if well-intensified by 
direct effort, produce habits, just as do reiterations in the outer world; and 
these habits will have power to influence actual behaviour in the outer world; 
especially, if each reiteration can be accompanied by a peculiar strong effect 
that is usually likened to issuing a command to one’s future self. (MS 319: 94; 
CP: 5.487, 1907)

Also 
Habit. Involuntary habits are not meant, but voluntary habits, i.e., such as 
are subject (in some measure to self-control). Now under what conditions is a 
habit subject to self-control? Only if what has been done in one instance with 
the character, its consequences, and other circumstances, can have a triadic 
influence in strengthening or weakening the disposition to do the like on a new 
occasion. This is as much to say that voluntary habits is conscious habit. For 
what is consciousness? In the first place feeling is conscious. But what is a 
feeling, such as blue, whistling, sour, rose-scented? It is nothing but a 
quality, character, or predicate which involves no reference to any other 
predicate or other things than the subject in which it inheres, but yet 
positively is. [...] Our own feelings, if there were no memory of them for any 
fraction of a second, however small, if there were no triadic time-sense to 
testify with such assurance to their existence and varieties, would be equally 
unknown to us. Therefore, such a quality may be utterly unlike any feeling we 
are acquainted with, but it would have all that distinguish all our feelings 
from everything else. In the second place, effort is conscious. It is at once a 
sense of effort on the part of the being who wills and is a sense of resistance 
on the part of the object upon which the effort is exerted. But these two are 
one and the same consciousness. Otherwise, all that has been said of the 
feeling consciousness is true of the effort consciousness; and to say that this 
is veracious means less if possible than to say that a thing is whatever it may 
be.

There is, then, a triadic consciousness which does not supersede the lower 
order, but goes bail for them and enters bonds for their veracity. 
Experiment upon inner world must teach inner nature of concepts as experiment 
on outer world must teach nature of outer things.

Meaning of a general physical predicate consists in the conception of the habit 
of its subject that it implies. And such must be the meaning of a psychical 
predicate.

The habits must be known by experience which however exhibits singulars only.

Our minds must generalize these. How is this to be done?

The intellectual part of the lessons of experimentation consists in the 
consciousness or purpose to act in certain ways (including motive) on certain 
conditions. (MS 318 EP: 2.549–550, 1907)

But feeling simply is chance for Peirce as seen from the inside.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:53 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> 1) You write that 'chance isn't separate from Thirdness'. I think it is. 
> Chance/Firstness is a basic modal category; it's not part of Thirdness.
> 
> 2) I don't read Peirce's view as Neoplatonism ..i.e., that the  first 
> principle is 'the One'. I see Peirce's first principle as Mind.
> 

How do you read his long cosmological writings? That is, while I understand why 
you’d want to read him this way, and it may be more fruitful, it seems you have 
to exclude some pretty key texts.

Anyway, I’m not saying firstness is part of thirdness in any strong sense. 
Thirdness is a kind of mediate between firstness as chance and secondness as 
law. Also while Peirce has some neoplatonic tendencies I think the One and 
Matter are eliminated as “false categories” or merely limits of thought.

The process he discusses in CP 6.215-220 or CP 1.407-15 is the origin of the 
universe. So when we talk of the universe those are already all in place. 
Further Peirce himself calls this platonic. 

The evolutionary process is, therefore, not a mere evolution of the existing 
universe, but rather a process by which the very Platonic forms themselves have 
become or are becoming developed. (CP 6.194)

Again I think there are compelling reasons to doubt Peirce here so we have to 
distinguish between what Peirce thought and our own analysis of what we might 
say he should have thought. 

I probably won’t be able to write more until next week.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't see that 'repetition depends on chance'. I think that you are 
> ignoring that Thirdness [the action of developing and taking habits] is 
> primordial and not a result of another modal category, i.e., Firstness. [I 
> think that all three modes are primordial; others see only Thirdness as 
> primordial]
> 
> 

Just to add to this, I probably should add a bit more defense to anticipate 
some arguments. I’m here thinking of the following quote:

Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third (CP: 6.32, 
1891)

again

Three elements are active in the world: first, chance; second, law; and third, 
habit taking (CP 1.409, 1888)

That is we must distinguish law from the tendency to take habits. There is I 
think some potential inconsistencies here in Peirce over time. So noting the 
time with our quotes is important. My sense is that Peirce was conflicted from 
thinking through this from a perspective of human psychology versus his more 
mathematical and physical drives and experiments. Fundamentally this tendency 
to acquire habits is learning, love, or aesthetics. Habit formation is the 
generalization of belief and habit privation is the generalization of doubt to 
the categories in general.

Belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness; it is a habit of mind 
essentially enduring for some time, and mostly (at least) unconscious; and like 
other habits, it is (until it meets with some surprise that begins its 
dissolution) perfectly satisfied. Doubt is of an altogether contrary genus. It 
is not a habit, but the privation of a habit. Now a privation of a habit, in 
order to be anything at all, must be a condition of erratic activity that in 
some way must get superseded by a habit. (CP: 5.417, 1905)

But this tendency is the law of mind which makes something more likely to 
arise, but which Peirce conceives of in some early form of statistical 
mechanics, perhaps arising out of Boltzmann’s thermodynamics. (As John noted 
Peirce doesn’t appear to have a full understanding of statistical mechanics, 
although one shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of reading Gibbs)

I think the key text here is “The Architecture of Theories” from 1891. In that 
thirdness is the mediating between firstness and secondness as end.

The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the 
character of its commands. A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an 
exact relation. Thus, a physical force introduces into a motion a component 
motion to be combined with the rest by the parallelogram of forces; but the 
component motion must actually take place exactly as required by the law of 
force. On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law. 
Nay, exact conformity would be in downright conflict with the law ; since it 
would instantly crystallise thought and prevent all further formation of habit. 
The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise. It thus 
resembles the “non-conservative” forces of physics, such as viscosity and the 
like, which are due to statistical uniformities in the chance encounters of 
trillions of molecules.

So what he wants is something between pure chance and pure law which is the 
statistical tendency.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 1:59 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Clark
>> As John suggested we can see symmetry breaking in Peirce’s terms
>> such that non-fundamental physical laws are the somewhat chance
>> created habits. Habits in matter are thirdness.
> 
> Those chance-created habits must be supported by some sign-like
> things that are interpreted by some kind of quasi-minds.
> 
> An example is DNA, which is a sign-like chemical produced by
> evolution.  Each cell of an organism has a quasi-mind that
> interprets the DNA as a sign to produce as interpretants
> other chemicals that serve as signs:  hormones, enzymes, RNA,
> and more DNA.

Yes, the tokens are sinsigns. There’s an intrinsic indexical between the cell 
and the DNA within the cell. The other chemicals then are rhematic iconic 
sinsigns.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> "We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a 
> limited range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
> spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
> mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact 
> requiring to be explained; and since Law in general cannot be explained by 
> any law in particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is 
> developed out of pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (“A Guess at 
> the Riddle”,
> 
> My reading of the above is that all three modes are primordial. Chance or 
> Firstness 'mingles' with Thirdness because all three modes are primordial [in 
> my view] but this correlation doesn't mean that Chance CAUSES Thirdness. It 
> co-exists with it and enables new laws to emerge and develop.
> 
I don’t quite understand that reading I confess. Chance isn’t separate from 
thirdness. This is really explicit in the other quotes I gave from Peirce’s 
cosmology. Again, I don’t think we have to agree with Peirce there. I have my 
doubts. But I’m not quite sure I see how to read him as asserting what you are 
claiming. Particularly when he explains the origin of firstness, secondness and 
thirdness out of “the womb of indeterminacy.”

If law were primordial it wouldn’t need to be explained whereas Peirce is 
explicit that it must be explained. Now I’m more with you in that I’m not sure 
I buy Peirce’s neoplatonism here. I’d much rather favor the three be primordial 
and irreducible. That makes far more sense to me. But that doesn’t appear to be 
Peirce’s position.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 11:58 AM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But, as I see it, this is not at all the case. Chance may break up old 
> habits--and this is essential, for example, for evolution to occur

Breaking up habits to create new habits is habit creation. The key point of 
habit is repetition. But the repetition itself depends upon chance. This is 
best seen at the cosmological level where Peirce makes this argument explicitly.

Out of the womb of indeterminacy we must say that there would have come 
something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by 
the principle of habit there would have been a second flash. Though time would 
not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first, because 
resulting from it. Then there would have come other successions ever more and 
more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever 
strengthening themselves, until the events would have been bound together into 
something like a continuous flow. 

The quasi-flow which would result would, however, differ essentially from time 
in this respect, that it would not necessarily be in a single stream. Different 
flashes might start different streams, between which there should be no 
relations of contemporaneity or succession. So one stream might branch into 
two, or two might coalesce. But the further result of habit would inevitably be 
to separate utterly those that were long separated, and to make those which 
presented frequent common points coalesce into perfect union. Those that were 
completely separated would be so many different worlds which would know nothing 
of one another; so that the effect would be just what we actually observe. (CP 
1.412)


This habit taking is later explained.

all things have a tendency to take habits. . . . [For] every conceivable real 
object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former like occasion 
than otherwise. This tendency itself constitutes a regularity, and is 
continually on the increase. . . . It is a generalizing tendency; it causes 
actions in the future to follow some generalizations of past actions; and this 
tendency itself is something capable of similar generalizations; and thus, it 
is self-generative. (CP 1.409 emphasis mine)

Quoting Kelly Parker on this point:

The character of such things, and consequently the relations and modes of 
interaction among them, would be extremely irregular at first. The principle of 
habit-taking has the effect of making events in the Universe of Actuality more 
stable and regular. It underlies the emergence of permanent substances, as we 
have seen. Beyond this, it has the effect of stabilizing the kinds of reaction 
which tend to occur among different substances. Nothing forces there to be a 
tendency toward regularity in the Universe of Actuality, for the notion of 
force implies necessity, an advanced variety of the regularity we are trying to 
explain (CP 1.407). Regularity, like possibility and particularity, must appear 
in the evolving cosmos by chance. But just as we have seen the tendency to take 
habits operate on Firstness to establish the Universe of Ideas and on 
Secondness to establish the universe of Actuality, so does it operate on 
Thirdness, on itself, to establish a universe dominated by Thirdness, 
lawfulness, order, and reasonableness.

Law is habit and Peirce is explicit in “A Guess at the Riddle” that law comes 
out of chance.

We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited 
range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring 
to be explained; and since Law in general cannot be explained by any law in 
particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of 
pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (“A Guess at the Riddle”,  CP 
1.407)



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[PEIRCE-L] Meaning of Chance

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 11:00 AM, Clark Goble  wrote:
> 
> I’ve been trying to think the best way to get into this subject. I recognize 
> it’ll diverge from Edwina’s discussion so I’m changing the subject.

Whoops. I said that and then accidentally posted without changing the subject. 
I’ll use “Meaning of Chance” for further replies to this thread.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 10:17 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:

> I would suggest that 1ns is better characterized as spontaneity, life, and 
> freedom than as pure chance in the sense of randomness, especially as it 
> relates to mind as 3ns.

I’ve been trying to think the best way to get into this subject. I recognize 
it’ll diverge from Edwina’s discussion so I’m changing the subject. It’ll 
definitely get into ontology and a careful analysis of terminology which I know 
Edwina doesn’t enjoy so that’ll help keep the discussions separate.

The question ends up being even if we can make a distinction between the terms 
what the cash value is. That is if meaning is given by a careful application of 
the pragmatic maxim, what does it mean here? 

First off I’m not sure there’s as big a divide as you think in those quoted 
texts. Particulary this one.

Thus, when I speak of chance, I only employ a mathematical term to express with 
accuracy the characteristics of freedom or spontaneity. (CP 6.201; 1898)

I think that while Peirce may not have been familiar with Gibb’s development 
over Boltzmann of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, he did have pretty 
clear and particular views on what the mathematics of chance was. That is he 
was a frequentist and thought the outward aspect mathematically was this 
frequentist conception. The inner aspect is feeling.

Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling 
exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself 
is feeling.
[—]
…diversification is the vestige of chance-spontaneity; and wherever diversity 
is increasing, there chance must be operative. On the other hand, wherever 
uniformity is increasing, habit must be operative. (“Man’s Glassy Essence”, CP 
6.265-6, 1892)


Chance […] as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a distribution. That is 
to say, there is a large collection consisting, say, of colored things and of 
white things. Chance is a particular manner of distribution of color among all 
the things. But in order that this phrase should have any meaning, it must 
refer to some definite arrangement of all the things. (“Reasoning and the Logic 
of Things”, CP 6.74, 1898)

Given this, while I understand the desire to distinguish spontaneity from 
chance as Peirce uses it they are synonymous. That means that the distinction 
you find in say the free will literature between chance and libertarian free 
will (either at an event level or agent level) It’s also the case that chance 
creates habit. So habit is a kind of relationship between determinism and 
indeterminism (chance).

In terms of meaning, I just don’t see any basis for a distinction in content 
between chance, spontaneity or so forth. The only difference is that Peirce’s 
ontology sees “feeling” or absolute firstness as the inner quality of this.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:50 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> SM is statistical mechanics. I don’t recall Peirce ever discussing it, though 
> it was well known at his time, and proven beyond a doubt with Einstein’s ex 
> planation of Brownian motion in 1906. Before that many French theorists 
> rejected it because atoms and molecules were not observables.

Ah. I should have guessed. I was reading it as Standard Model and was getting 
thoroughly confused. LOL.

To the issue of Peirce and statistical mechanics as a foundation for 
thermodynamics that article by Andrew Reynolds discusses it a bit. Here’s the 
full reference:

Reynolds, Andrew "Peirce's Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics," 
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), 
pp. 403-423

He discusses Peirce’s use of Boltzman although he never mentions Gibbs who I 
believe is the first to coin the term statistical mechanics. While Peirce 
mentions Clausius that’s not really statistical.

I found one other article that I’d not read before. “Peirce as a Participant in 
the Bohr-Einstein Discussion.” by Peder Christiansen in Charles S. Peirce and 
the Philosophy of Science pg 222. He argues that his five Monist papers was 
largely how Peirce engaged in the discussion with Boltzmann and his opponents. 
Although he also notes that Peirce’s papers were largely unknown by the main 
figures in the debate.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0SV6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223#v=onepage&q&f=false

Anyway, while he doesn’t mention it explicitly, the way Peirce discusses 
Boltzmann makes me think he had read "On the Relation Between the Second Law of 
the Mechanical Theory of Heat and the Probability Calculus with Respect to the 
Theorems on Thermal Equilibrium” which was Boltzmann’s statistical formulation 
of the second law.

> I think that for some time now most physicists have agreed that order emerges 
> from disorder, along the lines outlined by Prigogine (he won the Nobel prize, 
> after all).

Yes, and Peirce’s arguments are pretty similar to Prigogine’s. Prigogine as I 
understand it was actually fairly familiar with Peirce. Indeed he quotes Peirce 
on the heat death of the universe. (Going from my notes here - but it’s 
relevant to the current discussion)

We may say that we know enough of the forces at work in the universe to know 
that there is none that can counteract this tendency away from every definite 
end but death. But although no force can counteract this tendency, chance may 
and will have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run dissipative; 
chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy by the 
regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by circumstances more 
and more favorable to its reconcentration by chance. (W 4: 551)

> Entropy production is behind the formation of order; order doesn’t just 
> happen on its own. The chance aspects of entropy production are crucial to 
> the emergence of order, but the overall trend is always to increasing 
> disorder.

Right, but it’s worth asking again about Peirce’s view of heat death here.

> Personally, I think that all thirdness originates this way, through symmetry 
> breaking, and I wrote an article on that Information Originates in Symmetry 
> Breaking (1996). I did not see it as confirming Peirce’s ideas about habit 
> formation, and I am still very doubtful that he didn’t just goof on this 
> whole issue because of a lack of understanding of SM.

Well my problem ultimately is over statistical mechanics and the eventual death 
of the universe which Peirce pretty well denies seeing it merely as an issue of 
heat inefficiencies which he thinks chance avoids.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 1:36 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> With the discussions going on in a couple of threads about semeiosis in the 
> physico-chemical and biological realms, a question occurred to me.  What 
> class of Sign is a law of nature?  I am not referring to how we describe a 
> law of nature in human language, an equation, or other representation of it; 
> I am talking about the law of nature itself, the real general that governs 
> actual occurrences.

My sense is that laws of nature are merely habits. As John suggested we can see 
symmetry breaking in Peirce’s terms such that non-fundamental physical laws are 
the somewhat chance created habits. Habits in matter are thirdness. 

I’m not quite sure what question you’re asking though. As you mentioned, it 
seems they are legisigns. The interesting thing is each instance of a legisign 
is a replica or sinsign. So each time matter acts according to the legisign 
that act is a sinsign. 

> What is its Dynamic Object--the inexhaustible continuum of its potential 
> instantiations, perhaps?  How should we characterize its S-O relation?  It is 
> not conventional (Symbol), so is it an existential connection (Index)?  What 
> is its Dynamic Interpretant--any given actual instantiation, perhaps?  How 
> should we characterize its S-I relation--Dicent, like a proposition, or 
> Rheme, like a term?

A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established by men. 
Every conventional sign is a legisign [but not conversely]. It is not a single 
object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant. 
Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be 
termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word “the” will usually occur from fifteen to 
twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same 
word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica 
is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not 
ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as 
significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law 
which renders it so. (CP 2.246)

A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a 
law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the 
Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a 
general type or law, that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica. 
Not only is it general itself, but the Object to which it refers is of a 
general nature.  Now that which is general has its being in the instances which 
it will determine. There must, therefore, be existent instances of what the 
Symbol denotes, although we must here understand by "existent," existent in the 
possibly imaginary universe to which the Symbol refers. The Symbol will 
indirectly, through the association or other law, be affected by those 
instances; and thus the Symbol will involve a sort of Index, although an Index 
of a peculiar kind. It will not, however, be by any means true that the slight 
effect upon the Symbol of those instances accounts for the significant 
character of the Symbol. (CP 2.249)


So I’d say the object is the general that is the set of instantiations. Note 
that Peirce only starts distinguishing legisign from symbol in 1903. So often 
prior to that when discussing symbols he also is including legisigns. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:31 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't accept the neoDarwinian hypothesis that adaptation and evolution are 
> due to randomness and Natural Selection. I think that adaptation and 
> evolution are actions of Mind; that is, the biological systems adapt to 
> environmental realities - not randomly - but as INFORMED systems.

Well that might put a bit of an impasse since I tend to accept normal 
evolutionary theories and mechanisms. But more what I’m getting at is how 
chance (speaking broadly here in a fashion that might include randomness and 
spontaneity) combined with more determinate structures can lead to mind. Put an 
other way, I see mind as informed mind as more an emergent or higher order 
phenomena. But it’s a phenomena that arises out of habit and chance.

My sense, perhaps incorrect, is that you want spontaneity within mind to be a 
kind of informed deliberation not reducible to its parts (including chance).

> By entropy I am referring to the nature of a biological system that 'holds' 
> or binds energy as matter within its morphological nature. So, a particular 
> biological species that changes its capacity to hold onto this matter-and its 
> metabolic transformation, and it might to this for any number of reasons - 
> might release energy/matter to the 'world', which is then rapidly made use of 
> by another biological system. So, we will see an increasing complexity in an 
> ecosystem. A swamp with myriad grasses might see the development of more 
> 'individualistic grasses' which function only in a narrow range of the swamp, 
> BUT, this might lead to a proliferation of more diverse grasses and plants; 
> more diverse insects and birds - some at the periphery of the swamp, some in 
> the mainstream. 
> 

I’m trying to wrap my mind around that sense of entropy and relate it more to 
the sense in traditional thermodynamics. This seems a much, much, narrower use 
although maybe I’m just missing something since I’m not familiar with this use. 
(John - you mentioned your experience with thermodynamics. Any help here?)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:03 AM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> There is still an understanding gap between QM and SM, largely due to the 
> fact that the theory of QM is deterministic. I have heard good scientists say 
> that QM is the basis of entropy, but I don’t find their arguments sound.

I’d tend to agree that reconciling QM to TD hasn’t been well thought through. 
I’m not sure that entails TD doesn’t apply (not that you are making that claim 
- just emphasizing the distinction)

What do you mean by SM?

> I don’t think I agree with Edwina that firstness is entropic, though in some 
> cases it can be. 

I took her to just be making that claim in a narrow area of inquiry.

> I think it is important to distinguish between chance and randomness. Peirce 
> focuses on chance. Chance events can be deterministic on the larger scale, 
> such as when we have a chance meeting with a friend in the store. Nothing in 
> either of our determining that we will be in the store at that time is 
> coordinated with our friend’s determinants except that these determinants 
> become coordinated when we meet. Without both stories together, the meeting 
> is chance, but not random in the technical sense, since the stories together 
> can be compressed to mark our meeting. I call situations like this relative 
> randomness: two histories are not sufficient individually to predict a common 
> event – they don’t contain enough information to compute this event, but the 
> stories together do, assuming determinism.

This is more or less what I was getting at. The combination of 
chance/determinism can lead to unique situations, such as Peirce argues happens 
with mind. I want to address Jon’s point about distinguishing between chance 
and what we might call variants of agency. I think a fair bit of work has been 
done on that in the free will literature. I’m not sure though that Peirce draws 
the distinctions that we’ve seen in the last 20-30 years of that literature. 
(Not that we should expect him to)

I’ll probably not get to Jon’s answer until later though.

> In any case, I don’t see the divergence Clark apparently sees in the use of 
> the concept of entropy.
> 

Not quite sure what you mean by that. I was just speaking of how the universe 
crystalizes into a system of higher information than was there at the beginning 
for Peirce. Peirce’s solution is just to say that TD only applies to the 
determinate part of a system. That is he doesn’t see entropy as an universal 
law, but a much more limited law. Is that more or less what you’re agreeing 
with or are you agreeing with me that such a claim is problematic for most 
physicists? Could you clarify a bit here?



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 6:34 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> - chance does not form habits but only facilitates breaking them - and since 
> chance/Firstness is primordial, then, breaking habits is so to speak, 
> necessary and normal in the universe. Just as habits are primordial; just as 
> differentiation into discrete instantiations is primordial..

Could you clarify this? Are you speaking of biological systems at a starting 
point where our analysis presumes they already are there? (Say a swamp in the 
year 2000 as the starting point - there are already habitual behaviors in place)

The question I have is that I assume you think new habits can develop. While 
this isn’t purely random due to selection, surely chance is a major component 
to developing new habits. 
> John, list - I agree with you that Firstness, in itself, is not entropic - 
> since it also operates within a stable system as vagueness, openness. But 
> Firstness as spontaneity, within that vagueness, can lead as Peirce pointed 
> out to minute changes in the form of the system, which can be accepted within 
> Thirdness and lead to new habits of formation and interaction.
> 
> I also agree that randomness and spontaneity are not identical - and that 
> Firstness is 'spontaneity'.
> 
> 

I’ll hold off for now discussing the distinction between spontaneity, chance 
and randomness. I do think if we use the terms we need to be clear what we mean 
by them since they are all ambiguous terms. 

The problem I have here is what you mean by entropy and change. After all 
change can happen that doesn’t increase entropy. While change typically 
increases entropy of the system of course it can reduce the entropy of the 
subsystem (as is common in evolutionary change). So I’m not quite sure relative 
to your topic of biological creatures what you mean by entropy. Could you 
clarify a little? (Sorry as my training just isn’t in biology but physics. I 
recognize I’m bringing a set of expectations that perhaps don’t apply.)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 8:46 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> As I understand him, especially in his late writings, for Peirce chance does 
> not form habits, it only facilitates breaking them; e.g., small deviations 
> from the laws of nature.  The habit-taking tendency (3ns) is "original," 
> rather than a spontaneous development brought about by chance (1ns).  
> According to my reading of CP 6.490 in particular, super-order is a 
> prerequisite for being.

Could you expand upon this a little more? I see his discussion of the pragmatic 
maxim there. The question is, if I have you right, what the relationship 
between chance and reason is. Certainly pure mind is rational. So as mind it’s 
not chance. The question though is what constitutes mind in this sense. Which 
may reflect the difference in description between us. In terms of a analysis 
with mind, then we speak of mind. In terms of the ontology of mind though, then 
I think my comments on chance apply.

Now when we speak of mind we have to be clear what we’re speaking of. Here I’m 
speaking of mind as thirdness or in particular habit and law. 

We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited 
range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring 
to be explained; and since law in general cannot be explained by any law in 
particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of 
pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (CP 1.407)

While not explicitly about mind, it does explain the mind-like constitution of 
the universe. Mind is mind because of its self-organizing capabilities. But 
that, for Peirce, depends upon chance. Getting back to my earlier discussion on 
entropy, Peirce does distinguish between discontinuous and continuous chance. 
This is pretty important to him. (He goes through this in “The Law of Mind.” 
Thus tychism is chance that averages out whereas synechism is the sorting of 
irregularities which is so key for his cosmology.

Now mind isn’t chance.

Is not one of my papers entitled "The Law of Mind"? It is true that I make the 
law of mind essentially different in its mode of action from the law of 
mechanics, inasmuch as it requires its own violation; but it is law, not chance 
uncontrolled. That it is not "an undetermined and indeterminable sporting” 
should have been obvious from my expressly stating that its ultimate result 
must be the entire elimination of chance from the universe. That directly 
negatives the adjective "indeterminable," and hence also the adjective 
"undetermined.” (CP 6.607)

So it’s this interplay between chance and law that is key. He expands upon this 
in his argument for real chance which at the time was unusual. (CP 6.613)

In my attack on "The Doctrine of Necessity" I offered four positive arguments 
for believing in real chance. They were as follows:
1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the 
conservation of energy.
2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly inexplicable.
3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be 
explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real 
chance.
4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is 
maintained.

In particular (4) is important for the ontological consideration of entropy 
that Edwina listed. (As I said I don’t think it necessarily applies for the 
biological application she takes)




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Jerry Rhee  wrote:
> 
> “So fundamentally the question is whether Peirce’s view that the universe is 
> growing to more reasonableness is incompatible with thermodynamics. Clearly 
> it is. 
> 
>  
> Hmmm… then what’s the semiotic answer to why spirals in BZ reaction?  
> 
> What did people say of Belousov's initial assertion?
> 
Local entropy can (and often does) decrease whereas the universal entropy 
increases.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 2:27 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark, list: Hmm - it's always interesting to read how others view oneself. 
> 
> I hadn't thought that I was saying that " that thinking of all this in the 
> idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should appropriate Peirce more 
> in a materialistic way"
> 
> I don't know what the above actually means - 'idealist' and 'materialist 
> way'. 
> 
> My frustration on this list often comes because of the focus on 'pure 
> philosophy' so to speak - and I see Peircean semiosis as operating in the 
> material as well as the conceptual world. What interests me is 'how does a 
> morphological organism develop and function in this world' - and I consider 
> that it does so by Peircean semiosic principles. That is, I think we can 
> understand how plants interact and informationally network with each other - 
> by semiosis - and thus are not simple mechanical systems. 
> 
> 

Right. More or less all I’m saying is you can do the analysis you want to but 
that the ontological questions (which Peirce was emphatically interested in) 
don’t apply. The reason I think you get frustrated with what you see as 
terminological issues is simply because Peirce often was speaking of ontology. 
When you try and relate these ontological uses of the terminology to your own 
project problems results.

Really all I’m doing is explaining why there are these terminological issues. 
That is when one is talking about human concepts, one is no longer speaking of 
ontology and we have to be careful not to appply ontological passages. Likewise 
once we’re talking about substances, such as in biology, we’re no longer doing 
ontology.

Most of the disagreements ultimately are just taking passages that are 
extremely general or even ontological and applying them inappropriately. I 
think this leads people to talk past one an other. As I’ve been at pains to 
point out, we have to be clear about the type of analysis we’re doing. Often 
that changes how we talk about it.

So I’m really just trying to clear for you a space of why your terminology 
works. But I had be sure what you’re talking about. That was why I originally 
asked about entropy. You’re using firstness in a much more narrow sense for a 
particular phenomena in biology.

I’ll probably go quiet again for a little bit — but I am reading an enjoying 
the discussion.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 2:19 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark- but isn't the reality of the biological realm, which introduces the 
> non-isolation of a system and self-organization and thus, works against 
> entropy - a natural action? After all, the basic mode of action of semiosis 
> is its non-isolation - and the transformation of energy from one to another 
> mode.
> 
> Is the universe growing more reasonable according to Peirce? Or more complex? 
> I don't see how the universe is growing more ordered IF that same universe 
> maintains its three categories: Firstness rejects order. Secondness fights 
> against similarities. Thirdness inserts order. 
> 
> Again- I might be missing something in your outline
> 
> 

Let me start by saying not all biologists accept physicalism, materialism or 
other range of views which I think most assume it ought take. If we take 
biology to be in some sense reducible to physics, then the fact biology isn’t 
isolated (and can’t be) then local entropy decrease doesn’t matter. Put simply 
the earth isn’t a closed system so there is no global second law for that 
system. This is important since of course Creationists often bring up the 
second law relative to biology but that’s simply because they don’t understand 
how it works.

As for the universe, more or less you’re just rejecting Peirce’s view there. 
Which again is fine. The reason Peirce saw the universe as getting more complex 
is precisely because he saw chance both enabling habit and varying from habit. 
So how you are using firstness and chance is just not the same as Peirce, 
although it may well make perfect sense in the particular arena you’re applying 
it.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> I am not sure exactly how this bears on your entropy conversation, except 
> that entropy is often described as disorder; so from that standpoint, 
> uniformity and habit-taking both seem to be negentropic in nature.
> 

The question really is of chance. For Peirce chance both forms habits but also 
allows breaks from habit. Mind is the capacity to form habits but habits can be 
long term habits or short term habits. Again for Peirce the universe as a whole 
can be considered mind and the universe is thus a kind of argument that is 
preceding by thinking itself. However that means the universe is at odds with 
thermodynamics, which Peirce thought applied only to mechanistic deterministic 
systems.

What Edwina is more or less saying (if I have her right) is that thinking of 
all this in the idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should 
appropriate Peirce more in a materialistic way. I don’t have any problem with 
that, I should add. I think Peirce’s cosmology has always been problematic. 
Both in terms of his arguments for his cosmology but also it’s simply a view I 
think few people are comfortable with. There’s a reason why platonism is often 
used disparagingly. I think appropriating Peirce and his semiotics in a more 
narrow way is completely fine. We can talk about signs quite well without 
buying into his objective idealism. Although there will be places where this 
will cause problem precisely because Peirce saw an unity to his own thought.

I suspect the differences between you and Edwina in other contexts ultimately 
is a manifestation of to what degree are we using Peirce and to what degree are 
we attempting to understand Peirce on his own terms. I think Edwina (and 
correct me if I’m wrong Edwina) gets frustrated in the list is because there’s 
often been so much focus on Peirce’s ontology and terminology related to that 
ontology rather than on application (where the ontology matters far less).

So for example if I’m talking about semiotics within chemistry Peirce’s 
cosmology likely rarely matters. Ditto if I’m talking about systems programming 
or AI. My guess is that Edwina wants to talk about firstness as entropy because 
she’s limiting the discussion to a more narrow area.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:18 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> So- I don't see how Peirce's view is incompatible with the current view - but 
> I might be missing what you are trying to explain.
> 

Peirce explicitly saw entropy and conservation as not applying universally 
because they only applied to determinate systems. He also saw entropy as a 
statistical measure. The question is whether his semiotics violates the laws of 
thermodynamics and he explicitly saw that they did. The question then becomes 
how contemporary understanding of thermodynamics in science would see it. Most 
contemporary science sees thermodynamics as unbreakable. In that case if the 
universe is getting more ordered that violates the second law of 
thermodynamics. 

So fundamentally the question is whether Peirce’s view that the universe is 
growing to more reasonableness is incompatible with thermodynamics. Clearly it 
is. 

I don’t think that says much about the utility of semiotics. It does raise 
serious questions about his cosmology though for many people.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Since Mind refers to the 'habit-taking capacity' then, what appears to be the 
> ultimate limit, in my view, is not matter but habit. Habits don't move toward 
> more differentiation but towards more generality.
> 
> What is Firstness? It is the introduction of non-habits and thus, entropic 
> dissipation of the force of habits on the formation of matter. Peirce 
> 
Hopefully you saw that subsequent post where I noted not everyone agreed with 
the article I was using. Although I think in terms of Peirce’s conception of 
why thermodynamics doesn’t apply it’s pretty on the ball. My sense (perhaps 
wrong) is that the differences tend to be tied to terminology.

To the above, I agree habits are introducing more and more generality. However 
as they become more and more habitual they come more and more to take the 
character of substance. That is substance/matter is simply a reflection of a 
lack of variation from the habit. Peirce saw in the long run that these habits 
would crystalize in some sense. 

Now from the perspective of a habit, any variation is a swerve. Peirce in 
various places appears to have since qualia or feeling as firstness as the 
inner view of swerve that he picks up (in a somewhat distorted fashion) from 
the Epircureans. So to that degree that swerve or chance is a break from habit 
I fully agree with you. That’s entropy, formally considered. The problem is 
that Peirce’s conception of the in the long run means habits become more set 
which is anti-entropic.

The question though is what happens when habits form. Peirce sees that 
formation as also occurring out of chance. That’s why I think we can’t only say 
that chance/feeling is entropy. What Peirce sees as entropy proper is purely in 
terms of deterministic mechanics and the Boltzmann statistical view of entropy. 
So here we’re distinguishing between the law of entropy and the measure of 
entropy. That’s an important distinction to keep in mind. Chance as a break 
from habit increases the measure of entropy. But it does not affect the law of 
entropy which is purely a law of physical necessary motion.

The reason this is difficult to wrap our mind around is because we’re all used 
to quantum mechanics with it’s notion of randomness of a sort. Even people who 
don’t accept ontological chance still talk of randomness. Yet we apply 
thermodynamics to quantum mechanics all the time. So to us thermodynamics isn’t 
only a law of determinative mechanics. 

So when I asked you to unpack what you mean by entropy, more or less what I’m 
getting at is whether you are talking about

1. the measure of entropy 
2. the law of entropy in general 
3. a tendency to increase entropy

The problem is that I think most of us who don’t see thermodynamics in terms 
only of Newtonian mechanics just fundamentally see Peirce’s use as wrong. So 
please be aware what I’m getting at here is how Peirce saw it, not what the 
right way of seeing it is. At a bare minimum Peirce’s use is incompatible with 
contemporary use in most cases. (We’ll ignore the Bohmian mechanics proponents 
for the moment)





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 31, 2017, at 3:49 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> It turns out that Short "counts" different Signs based on different Immediate 
> Interpretants, but not based on different Dynamic Interpretants.  This makes 
> sense, given that the Immediate Interpretant is internal to the Sign, while 
> the Dynamic Interpretant is external to it; especially since each occurrence 
> of the latter is distinct, even for the same Sign.  So I wonder--does this 
> "counting" principle also apply to Immediate (internal) vs. Dynamic 
> (external) Objects?  Maybe so; in Short's example, the puffs of smoke would 
> seem to constitute the same Dynamic Object, but have different Immediate 
> Objects as a Sign of fire vs. a Sign of Apaches on the warpath.
> 
> This leads to my suggestion that every Sign has an Immediate Object and 
> Immediate Interpretant that are real possibilities internal to it, thus 
> forming a triad; but a Sign may or may not have a Dynamic Object and a 
> Dynamic Interpretant that are actualities external to it, as three correlates 
> of a triadic relation.  Again, what do you think?

I’m reading (slowly) through the messages. I wanted to comment on this though. 
My personal view (which may be wrong) is that what counts to equate signs are 
the immediate interpretant, sign vehicle, immediate object trichotomy. That is 
what is internal to the sign. While that’s close to what you have Short saying, 
I think I see the immediate object is quite important. Where I think I’m 
differing is that Short is counting what I’m calling the sign-vehicle as part 
of the immediate object. 

So I’d see smoke as a sign for apaches and smoke as a sign for fire as 
different simply because one is more general. That is smoke in general is a 
sign for fire. Smoke here and now thus signifies fire. But there’s also the 
general sign smoke in this part of Arizona is a sign for possible apaches. So 
to me the immediate objects really aren’t the same even though the dynamic 
object is the same (the particular smoke). However that’s different from the 
immediate object due to the smoke. (A subtle point, but keep with me)

(Sorry if others already responded to this) 

This gets back to our discussion of averageness we had here last June. I’d been 
relating Heidegger’s phenomenological principle to Peirce at that point you 
might recall. Unfortunately the terms weren’t quite ideal (averageness a pretty 
vague term). 

The idea is that the dynamic object virtually contains the immediate object 
(due to it containing virtually all the possible significations). Peirce’s term 
“dynamic” actually comes out of Platonism. So in The Sophist Plato talks of the 
lively possibility (dunamis) of being. The same notion gets taken up by 
Aristotle in his distinction between potential and actual. So the dynamic 
contains within itself the possibility of being represented.

The immediate object is thus the set of possibilities in which an object is 
determined for us by its sign. That set of possibilities within the immediate 
object is what I mean by averageness or everydayness. That is the ways in which 
our encountering the sign could be interpreted. 

Getting back to Short, while we can distinguish two different signs due to two 
different generalities when we talk of the object in question (smoke in the 
Arizona desert) then the immediate object of that particular smoke includes 
those other types of general signs. That is virtually the immediate object 
includes the possibilities of apaches, fire, and a whole lot more. It doesn’t 
include all possibilities though, only the possibilities available for me due 
to my culture and so forth. So if I’m completely ignorant of apaches, while 
smoke in Arizona implies apaches, it doesn’t for me. Whether one puts this 
distinction due to knowledge in the immediate interpretant or the immediate 
object seems to depend upon the type of analysis we are conducting.  (I can go 
further on that point but I’ll avoid it for now) The immediate interpretant is 
what the sign could actually do to my mind. It’s thus inherently very similar 
to the immediate object which is how the sign represents the object.

The dynamic interpretant is the actual effect of the sign (other than feeling 
which is in the immediate interpretant). Then the final interpretant is that 
“would have” effect given sufficient development. Typically final inoerpretants 
are interesting only in that they allow us to make sense of truth.

So the immediate object is itself a kind of sign of the dynamic object. It’s 
also what phenomenologically is the object. 

The problem is that how the immediate object functions really depends upon the 
type of analysis we are doing. That’s because if we think of semiosis as a 
process rather than a static slice of analysis any particular sign can itself 
be broken up into constituent signs. That’s especially true of the immediate 
object which can be broken up into all the signs of the object open t

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Re: Re: Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 11:29 AM, Clark Goble  wrote:
> 
> I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial comment 
> that firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve hopefully shown, 
> those are actually opposed. Firstness is what violates entropy. It is 
> anti-entropy.

Sorry that was already long enough but rereading it there’s a crucial point I 
should make. Not everyone agrees on this point. So I don’t want to convey to 
Edwina this is settled. In particular Esposito sees tychism as an entropic 
factor and synechism as an opposing negentropic factor” (Evolutionary 
Metaphysics, 1980, 169)

I’ll confess I’ve not read Esposito, only references to his work. So I can’t 
speak to his argument. From references I’ve seen scattered in various works 
over the years I think Esposito sees the topic through habit and what forms 
habits versus what breaks habits. My previous post sees chance as performing 
both those roles. Esposito sees chances as breaking habit (thus Edwina’s view 
of firstness as entropy). I think though Peirce saw chance as simply something 
different (whether he was correct in that or not is an other matter)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Re: Re: Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 3, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> That is - I am also suggesting that Firstness is not simply quality, feeling, 
> chance - but - is entropy.

Could you unpack that a little more? I *think* I understand what you’re getting 
at — how chance undermines order — but I’m not quite sure. Or, put an other 
way, if habit is the opposite of a rise in entropy then movement away from 
habit (substance being the ultimate limit) would increase entropy.

The place where of course Peirce has some difficulty here is with the second 
law of thermodynamics. The heat death thesis is the clearest example of this. 
Now one might say that Peirce’s conception of substance as the limit of 
semiosis is heat death, but I don’t think that’s right. The heat death is 
basically the interaction between things leading to a broad distribution of 
energy so you lose differentiation. But for Peirce of course habits are moving 
towards more differentiation. While we see that locally we don’t see that 
globally. 

So far as I know not a lot has been written on Peirce and the second law of 
thermodynamics. Which is surprising given how much has been written on Peirce 
and chance - particularly related to classic epicureanism and stoicism. Given 
Peirce’s background in physics and chemistry he knew thermodynamics but from 
what I can tell didn’t really apply it to his cosmology.

One of the few articles on the subject in Andrew Reynolds “Peirce’s Cosmology 
and the Laws of Thermodynamics” in Transactions. There he notes Peirce’s 
conception of the first law (conservation) was that it was just an algebraic 
relationship and not an ontological condition (the way most physicists take 
it).  So for him it simply doesn’t prescribe that the total amount of energy in 
the universe is constant. Merely that in any system you have algebraic 
connections between energy flow. (See CP 6.602) 

He next distinguishes between forces for growth, that are irreversible, from 
those tied to the conservation of energy which are reversible. Since Perice 
thought growth had stronger evidence than conservation, growth was the 
exception. (6.613) He adopts the position of Carus in which the brain is 
primarily physical and thus subject to conservation laws except that “there are 
present states of awareness….Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can 
be weighed on any scales….” (CP 6.614) In explaining that quote from Carus, 
Peirce says, “It escapes materialism. It supposes a direct dynamical action 
between mind and matter, such as not been supposed by any eminent philosopher 
that I know of for centuries.” 

Regarding entropy again, Peirce’s platonic cosmology is kind of the inverse of 
what physicists would expect. The end is not heat death but a system “in which 
mind is at last crystalized in the infinitely distant future” (6.33) Reynolds 
argues that we ought distinguish between 20th century views of entropy from 
Peirce’s 19th century views. (I don’t know enough about the detailed history 
here to know how accurate he is - I’m assuming he’s getting it right) 

Peirce praises the Maxwell/Boltzmann statistical interpretation of entropy. 
(Reasoning, 220) The Boltzmann interpretation is that entropy holds only 
statistically. But Peirce sees real chance as working in a direction counter to 
the increase of entropy. “But although no force can counteract this tendency, 
chance may and will have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run 
dissipative; chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy 
by the regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by 
circumstances more and more favorable to its reconcentration by chance.” 
(Writings 4.551) Reynolds argues Peirce is thinking of what later was called 
the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. However Peirce for mechanism favors Boltzmann 
and thus something like the heat death but due to chance thinks this won’t 
happen. He recognizes the problem with entropy but sees himself as an 
ontological evolutionist. Since “the universe as a whole…should be conceived of 
as growing” (6.613) that growth ontologically escapes both conservation and 
entropy.

The way he does this is to see that there are temporary violations due to 
chance but that there’s then a tendency towards entropy. So it’s that 
combination that he thinks will let him achieve a final state, but which 
because of growth won’t be a heat death state.

Now of course none of this is terribly satisfying - especially to scientists 
who tend to see the laws of entropy as ontological or absolute laws. Indeed 
physicists seem quite willing to give up on most laws except thermodynamics. 
It’s this reason that I personally find Peirce’s cosmology so troubling, 
although I don’t think I’ve explained that before now.

I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial comment that 
firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve hopefully shown, those 
are actually opposed. Firstn

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

(Sorry - been swamped so I’ve not said much)

> On Apr 1, 2017, at 12:53 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Some new words may be useful, but there's already an overabundance
> of terminology from several millennia of philosophy, most of which
> Peirce replaced with a new set of terms.  That is the theme of the
> following article:

This seems quite true. My experience in trying to explain Peirce to people with 
a philosophical background is that the terminology is a big barrier. I 
understand why Peirce coined so many neologisms but it isn’t ultimately a good 
thing in many ways.

> On Apr 1, 2017, at 8:38 AM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> I am 100% with you on this. I just did a synonym search on imitation, without 
> luck. I think we need to invent a new word to more accurately describe this 
> replication and sharing of signs/behavior.


While it’s not exactly the same thing, the existing word of meme is probably 
close enough to do the job. I don’t think we need a new word.


> On Mar 31, 2017, at 2:18 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> With the aim of sharpening the point, Peirce seems to suggest that, for the 
> sake of explaining the cosmos, it is important to ask how degenerate forms of 
> these relations might have grown into more genuine forms of the relations.

As I’ve noted a few times, Peirce’s explanations largely come from 
neoplatonism. That’s of course a pretty controversial position to say the 
least. I’m also not quite convinced that his cosmology is really necessary for 
the rest of his thought. It’s enough to simply talk about acquiring habits and 
leave the cosmology there. The degenerate forms become genuine as habits 
enabling that genuineness arise.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

I don’t have time to chime in right now Edwina due to work but I’ll hopefully 
have some comments Monday.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 3:15 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> So- given the make-up of the posters on this list and their interest [in 
> philosophy] then, I don't see the point of bringing up the  non-philosophical 
> focus of Peirce's work.

I should note that while my own interests are primarily philosophical, my 
background is actual primarily physics not philosophy. I enjoy the 
non-philosophical topics quite a bit although I often don’t know enough about 
the topic to say much. I’ve brought up some of the non-philosophical topics 
here before too such as the relationship of category theory in advanced physics 
or mathematics as it relates to Peirce. Not that I know much about category 
theory, but a few others made comments I learned from.

So I am actually pretty interesting in the applied semiotics. Indeed while my 
interests are primarily philosophical I’ve read a reasonable amount on applies 
semiotics in various arenas.

I seem to remember a discussion a few months ago on political implications of 
Peirce’s thought. I focused primarily on his more conservative tendencies in 
his critical common sensism but also the focus on inquiry.

Anyway, please comment on the non-philosophical points. Even if I don’t 
typically comment I frequently read them.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 8:35 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't see the point of outlining my research on this list - as I'd get 
> reactions of 'Peirce didn't say that!' and 'That's Taborsky-semiotics and 
> it's not Pure Peirce!...
> 

I think my point was just that what gets discussed is largely determined by the 
list members. If we don’t like what’s being discussed we can start new 
discussions. 

I’ll confess that many of the discussions the past year I didn’t find that 
interesting, although I occasionally chimed in here and there on say the 
religion topic. Partially because it was just something I was fairly ignorant 
on. So I like learning things I don’t know. Sometimes they end up being helpful 
in unexpected ways with my own pursuits.

I’ve started a few topics myself including the question of the metaphysical 
nature of truth in Peirce.

But there’s definitely other topics I’m interested in. One that someone brought 
up was what it means to equate two signs. I’d add what does it mean to repeat a 
sign, particularly relative to the index and icon parts of the sign. This is 
actually a big topic in Continental philosophy in the 1960’s especially by 
figures like Derrida and Deleuze.

If you have other topics I’m game. I wouldn’t mind going back to the reading we 
did on natural propositions a year or so ago. There were parts of that 
discussion I wasn’t able to join in on due to time demands that I still have 
questions about.

I also am studying more typical epistemological questions in a Peircean 
framework. It’s an interesting question to me since of course traditional 
epistemology is again a more static analysis of justification at the time of 
knowledge. There are problems with that. But if we switch to a more Peircean 
focus on inquiry, what is the place of those more traditional epistemological 
justifications?
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 6:30 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> In Peirce, we read about semiosis within protoplasm, within crystals, within 
> the formation of matter [matter is effete Mind]. None of this deals with 
> terminology but with the pragmatic function of semiosis - which Peirce sees, 
> as far as I can understand, as the gradual evolution of Mind. Mind is NOT a 
> synonym of the human mind or consciousness but of the natural world.

I think this gets at definition problems though. For instance often mind and 
consciousness are used synonymously in discourse. As you note that’s not how 
Peirce primarily uses it, although he’ll sometimes slip into other use when 
speaking more casually. 

In contemporary discourse even consciousness is ambiguous since it can 
simultaneously mean a kind of first person qualia or awareness of phenomena or 
even self-awareness as a kind of reflexive knowledge of a phenomena and that 
one is also aware that one is aware of the phenomena as a self-awareness. The 
former is pure firstness for Peirce I think although he’ll also sometimes call 
it the inner aspect of the swerve or chance in a sign process. The other 
aspects are indexical aspects of signs and simple complexity of signs.

But one quickly sees that keeping ones terminology is important.

While I’m more dubious towards his foundational ontologies it seems these 
matters become crucial there. While we’ve discussed those ontologies a lot of 
late, it’s mainly been due to other issues such as Peirce’s sense of truth.

> If one focuses only on words and terms, then, it is just as easy, indeed 
> easier,  to use the semiotics of such as Saussure or Morris ..for these are 
> all about 'this' means 'that' - and one can get readily into the seeming joy 
> of 'hidden meanings'. But Peirce doesn't deal with this; his semiotics is an 
> active, adaptive and evolving  process of generation of Mind-into-Matter - a 
> much more difficult analysis.

I’d actually disagree quite a lot with that. I think both miss key aspects of 
meaning - particularly Saussure whose structuralism is quite static whereas 
Peirce’s thirdness and definition of a sign anticipates much of 
post-structuralism. (Indeed one could argue that indirectly a lot of 
post-structuralism arises out of Peirce)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 6:30 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> But a thing that bothers me about some of the focus of this list is its 
> isolation from reality; that is, it's all about words and definitions. But 
> Peirce wasn't focused on that. As John points out, he used his terms in a 
> variety of ways;  - and his focus was on the pragmatism of semiosis. That is 
> - what is the pragmatic function of Peircean semiosis?
> 
I think the biosemiotic people were focused on practical applications. There 
are of course lots of semiotic analysis of various sorts of communications out 
there although this list has never focused on that too much.

But while my own interests are primarily philosophical I’m certainly open to 
any topic people would like to start. Why not tell us some of your own research?

To the definition point, I think especially with philosophical concerns we’re 
grasping after subtle differences. Often we use the same words to mean 
different things. That’s especially true when the differences in question (like 
say the nominalist vs. realist one) have metaphysical implications but only 
subtle practical differences. That makes language a bit tricky. That’s a large 
reason why Peirce himself tended, especially in his later periods, to coin 
neologisms.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 29, 2017, at 1:58 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> J.A.S., your post quoting “New Elements” makes much more sense that the other 
> Jon’s claim that “icons and indices are species under the genus” of symbol, 
> which I’m pretty sure Peirce would never say. The point that Peirce makes in 
> his “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations” and elsewhere is that 
> symbols can involve indices, and indices can involve icons — indeed symbols 
> must involve both icons and indices in order to convey any information — but 
> icons do not involve indices nor do indices involve symbols, and this is what 
> makes them “degenerate” relative to the symbol. They are certainly not 
> species of the genus symbol. TRI again, Jon A.
>  
> As for which type of sign is logically “primordial,” I think the key to the 
> Peircean answer to that question is in his assertion that “a symbol alone is 
> indeterminate.” Now, any symbol which has a real object has been determined 
> by that object, to some extent, so clearly the “primordial” symbol is not one 
> of those. So the time before time is also prior to any information or 
> transformation. But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go into cosmology or the 
> universe of pre-reality.
> 

I wish I’d had the ability to put it that clearly Gary. Thanks for that. I’m 
marking this so I can quote you in future.

As you say, the primordial issue or cosmological issue is really the issue of 
moving for indeterminacy to determinacy. For practical symbols in semiotics you 
need indices and icons.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 5:50 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I agree - there isn't a Mind. And yes, 'semiosis itself is determinative of 
> mind' - though I would also say that mind, understood not as A Mind, but as 
> the process of Being Mind determines 
> semiosis-which-determines-Mind-which...and so on.
> 
Definitely agree although ultimately it’s just signs which is mind.

> My focus in Peircean semiosis is the process. I find that a lot of attention 
> on this list seems to focus on specific and particular definitions of terms - 
> and I have to say, I'm not terribly interested in that area

In this case I think there are some important philosophical issues that beset 
much of 20th century philosophy at play. Just thinking through my frustration 
at saying the right thing due to ambiguities in most terms perhaps makes me a 
little more focused on the language. It’s not so much that I care about the 
definitions as such since to me they’re more descriptions than definitions. But 
there are some subtle distinctions that are difficult to make yet end up 
counting for a lot.

I recognize though that you find the applied issues more interesting than the 
philosophical ones. I find both interesting myself, although my background is 
much more the philosophical side of things. 
>  It seems to me at least, mechanical and static.  I'm interested in the 
> process of transforming one morphological form of matter/concept into another 
> morphological form - which is done by semiosis. So, the process of 
> transforming one cell to another cell; the process of transforming 
> information of a Dynamic Object to a Dynamic Interpretant - which 
> Interpretant can also function as a Dynamic Object for another Dynamic 
> Interpretant and as well, transform into the habits-of-form that are vested 
> within the Representamen.  Those are the areas where I feel Peircean semiosis 
> has a LOT to say.
> 
Well I’m not sure I’d say static and definitely not mechanical. But how things 
transform is interesting as well.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 6:45 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> CG:  Don’t we here have to distinguish between the mark and the sign?
> 
> I know what you mean, but I am not sure that "mark" is the right word here, 
> especially since Peirce used that term in some later writings as a synonym 
> for "qualisign."  I just had in mind the "thing" (also not the best word for 
> it) that acts as a sign.
> 

Yeah, the terminology can get tricky. Especially since it’s signs all the way 
down.

> CG:  Two signs can’t be the same sign unless they also have the same 
> interpretant and object, can they?
> 
> I seem to recall that T. L. Short took this position in Peirce's Theory of 
> Signs, but consistent with that book's reputation overall, I do not know 
> whether it truly reflects Peirce's view or just his own.  Besides, given that 
> semeiosis is continuous, is it even legitimate to "count" signs as distinct 
> individuals at all?

I don’t think it’s just Short’s. I’m not sure how else to conceive of equating 
signs. In some sense we must be able to do so. 

> CG:  Does the icon have its character really or merely as interpreted? That’s 
> the very question that divides nominalism from realism.
> 
> Yes, and I think that the icon really has its character regardless; but the 
> question is whether merely having that character makes it an icon, apart from 
> anyone or anything interpreting it as such.  Again, is it sufficient for 
> something to have only an Immediate Interpretant--"its peculiar 
> interpretability"--in order to "qualify" as a sign, or is that "status" only 
> achieved once it has a Dynamic Interpretant?

Hopefully my later post clarified that a bit. I confess I’m reaching for proper 
language because most terms are ambiguous about the distinction I’m trying to 
raise. Realism vs. nominalism is probably the best way to think of it I’ve 
decided.






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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 4:20 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark, list - I think that the point of a primordial symbol is that it MUST 
> be interpreted to exist even as a symbolic reality. 

An other way to put my question is to ask what this “be interpreted” means. We 
have to unpack it. 

The traditional way in philosophy this is taken is in the Cartesian or Kantian 
sense where there is a mind that makes a judgment. I think that Peirce 
ultimately rejected this. There isn’t a mind. Rather semiosis itself is 
determinative of mind. So the flow from object through sign to interpretant is 
what makes a mind. And it’s precisely that this movement happens throughout the 
universe that the universe is mind-like.

So to say an icon is only an icon when interpreted as such read literally puts 
a mind like substance doing an interpretation. Instead we might say an icon is 
constituent of a part of mind.

There’s some very real ontological issues here.

Again my usual caveat that one need not buy Peirce’s ontology or cosmology to 
use his semiotics. They’re controversial for good reason. It works fine if one 
prefers to simply think of interpretation in the more traditional way. However 
Peirce means something much more radical in terms of the ontology of objects as 
well as the ontology of the relation between signs and objects.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 3:56 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> My initial response is that we do need to distinguish between the sign itself 
> and the character by virtue of which it represents its object.  After all, it 
> seems plausible that the same sign can serve as an icon, and as an index, and 
> as a symbol--all at the same time, and perhaps even to the same 
> interpretant--by virtue of the different characters that it possesses.

Don’t we here have to distinguish between the mark and the sign? Two signs 
can’t be the same sign unless they also have the same interpretant and object, 
can they? Now it’s true that any sign can typically be broken up into 
constituent signs which may be symbols, icons or indexes. Likewise the same 
mark can function in a sign that’s an icon or symbol. Indeed that’s fairly 
common.

The real question is the the question of realism here I think. Does the icon 
have its character really or merely as interpreted? That’s the very question 
that divides nominalism from realism. While I tend to agree that it’s not a 
substantial difference functionally most of the time, it is I think key for 
understanding Peirce here.

> On the other hand, can something truly be a sign--rather than just a 
> potential sign--if it is never actually interpreted as such?  In other words, 
> it has an Immediate Interpretant, a range of possible interpretations, but no 
> Dynamic Interpretant.  This is a sincere question; I am likewise curious as 
> to what you and others think.

This gets at the language problem. What do we mean by “interpreted as such” 
versus having an interpretant. Again this may be where I’m just plain wrong. So 
I hope others chime in.

My sense is that Peirce’s concern is with volition. It’s the old joke of 
someone saying don’t think of blue. You immediately think of blue in some 
sense. What I think Peirce is after in his semiotics is a determinative 
function where signs aren’t fully volitional. Thus the emphasis on the object 
determining. In most philosophy you have judgments as interpretations made 
volitionally in some sense.

CP 2.435 “The Short Logic” is useful here. 

A judgment is an act of consciousness in which we recognize a belief, and a 
belief is an intelligent habit from which we shall act when occasion presents 
itself. Of what nature is that recognition? It may come very near action. The 
muscles may twitch and we may restrain ourselves only by considering that the 
proper occasion has not arisen. But, in general, we virtually resolve upon a 
certain occasion to act as if certain imagined circumstances were perceived. 
This act which amounts to such a resolve, is a peculiar act of the will whereby 
we cause an image, or icon, to be associated, in a peculiarly strenuous way, 
with an object represented to us by an index. This act itself is represented in 
the proposition by a symbol, and the consciousness of it fulfills the function 
of a symbol in the judgment. Suppose, for example, I detect a person with whom 
I have to deal in an act of dishonesty. I have in my mind something like a 
"composite photograph" of all the persons that I have known and read of that 
have had that character, and at the instant I make the discovery concerning 
that person, who is distinguished from others for me by certain indications, 
upon that index at that moment down goes the stamp of RASCAL, to remain 
indefinitely.

I think the idea (and this goes to his cosmology as well) is that we’re talking 
about habits not choices of interpretations. Thus the icon functions as an icon 
because of a habit with the habit tied to resemblance along some character. But 
the resemblance for that habit to function in an iconic form has to be real. 
It’s not just a free judgment of a human mind but a real regularity.

This definitely is a subtle point and language runs us aground when we talk 
about interpret. Since of course for a sign to be a sign it has to have an 
interpretant and an interpretant typically implies an interpretation.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 3:41 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> CSP:  If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was in the 
> beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no reaction and no 
> quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and no time, but just nothing 
> at all. Not determinately nothing. For that which is determinately not A 
> supposes the being of A in some mode. Utter indetermination. But a symbol 
> alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute 
> beginning, is a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of things can 
> alone be understood. (EP 2:322)
> 
> As observed by the PEP editors in an endnote, "This statement brings to mind 
> Peirce's favorite Evangelist: 'In the beginning was the Word' (John 1:1)."  
> It seems consistent with the comment by Jon A. about symbols being primordial 
> relative to icons and indices--not to mention the entire universe, which 
> Peirce described elsewhere as "a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's 
> purpose"; and "every symbol must have, organically attached to it, its 
> Indices of Reactions and its Icons of Qualities" (EP 2:193-194).  So it also 
> strikes me as another data point in favor of interpreting 3ns as primordial 
> relative to 1ns and 2ns in Peirce's considered cosmology.
> 

Just to problematize this a tad, I think we might want to distinguish between 
the cosmological development of an icon or index into an index. As you note for 
Peirce this arises neoplatonically via symbols. This is roughly constricting 
possibilities.

But when we speak of a real object that’s already determinate in some sense and 
how it determines signs, then I think we can and ought speak of indices and 
icons that have that function because of real (i.e. mind independent) 
characters.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 2:04 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I realize that iconolatry -- just one of many forms of dyadic reductionism --
> runs too deep at present for most folks to appreciate this, but it happens
> to be one of the consequences of Triadic Relation Irreducibility (TRI) that
> symbols, signs that denote their objects solely by virtue of the fact that
> they are interpreted to do so, are the genus of all signs, while icons and
> indices are species under that genus.  An icon is an icon only because it
> is interpreted as an icon, by virtue of some property that is singled out
> from all the possible properties that it may share with a denoted object.

Is an icon only an icon because it’s interpreted as such? I’m here thinking of 
natural signs in which the interpretant isn’t necessarily a human mind.

This isn’t a small matter. This connection between icons & indices to symbols 
has huge philosophical implications. It’s why, for instance, some disagree with 
Derrida’s use of Peirce in On Grammatology. In particular the relations of 
difference and repetition (and what gets repeated) are pretty crucial in a lot 
of contexts. 

I ask because one of the more interesting facets of Peirce’s thought is his 
focus on objects in signs/logic rather than the interpreter as is most common. 
So when he speaks of signs he talks of the object determining an interpretant 
through a sign. The semiotics moves in a way more similar to traditional 
conceptions of causation rather than interpretation.

This also seems important when thinking about information conveyed in a sign. 
What is conserved? What is lost? What is transformed?

I recognize there’s a problem of language here. After all we could simply say 
an icon is an icon if it could be so interpreted rather than it being 
interpreted. Perhaps and I think some of the early texts of Peirce can move one 
in that direction. However in his more mature phase it seems he explicitly 
rejects this.

A sign is a thing which is the representative, or deputy, of another thing for 
the purpose of affecting mind. Signs are of three kinds, 

1st, the icon, which represents its object by virtue of a character which it 
would equally possess did the object and the interpreting mind not exist;

2nd, the index, which represents its object by virtue of a character which it 
would not possess did the object not exist, but which it would equally possess 
did the interpreting mind not operate;

3rd, the symbol, which represents its object by virtue of a character which is 
conferred upon it by an operation of the mind.

(Peirce, MS 142.3–6   circa 1899-1900  Notes on Topical Geometry, emphasis mine)

Now again this can be read in different ways. I’m clearly reading it to imply a 
mind-independent quality. But one could distinguish between the icon and this 
character of the icon. We’d then say the character would still be there whether 
it were an icon or not with the interpreting mind making it an icon. I think 
this quote though is attempting to distinguish the icon or index from the 
symbol in a way in which the “operation of the mind” is not king.

Of course I may be completely wrong in this. So I’m curious as to what others 
say. It seems to me though that Peirce is considering these from a purely 
functional position. What’s key is that the symbol is arbitrary in a way icons 
and indices aren’t. Although of course, as with language, a symbol may act in 
an iconic or indexical function that still hinges on a certain arbitrariness of 
the sign.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 6:52 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> But the point of Peirce's extreme scholastic realism is that the universal 
> "red" is not defined by the collection of all red things, and the universal 
> "lion" is not defined by the collection of all lions.  Rather, each 
> universal/general is a continuum that encompasses all possible reds or all 
> possible lions.  Between any two actual reds or actual lions, there is an 
> inexhaustible supply of potential reds or potential lions that would be 
> intermediate between them.  What kind of diagram does each of these 
> universals/generals specify accordingly?  What significant relations does it 
> embody?  How are we relating a stop sign to a diagram when we call it red, or 
> an animal at the zoo to a diagram when we call it a lion?

I’m curious as to John’s response. My own would be that different diagrams can 
get at different aspects of the universal but not necessarily represent it 
fully. As Icons there would typically be lost data. So you might have a graph 
of red things to represent the general of redness without necessarily arguing 
that the general arises out of red things (as with say Armstrong Universals). 
You might have a graph that specifies the range of colors represented by the 
general red (as some linguists do to compare color signs between cultures) and 
so forth.

The nature of an icon is to resemble the object but that usually means that 
there’s a matter of ‘more and less.’ That is there are additions that aren’t 
part of the original object and aspects that are missing.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 7:40 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> I apologize for repeating myself--or rather, for repeating John Sowa--but I 
> still find myself struggling to understand exactly what he meant by this.
> 
> JFS:  Every universal is a specification for some kind of diagram, and every 
> particular is something we classify by relating it to some diagram ... Then 
> the distinction between nominalism & realism depends on the way you interpret 
> the specification:  Is it just a verbal agreement, or is it a law of nature 
> that is independent of anything we may say?
> 
> What kind of diagram does the universal "red" specify, or the universal 
> "lion"?  How do we relate a particular instance of redness, or a particular 
> lion, to such a diagram?

I can’t speak for John, but I’d assume a theoretical diagram would be a 
specification of the locations of all red things.

This is an other reason why I think the appeal to diagrams isn’t quite what 
it’s portrayed to be since a diagram for any robust universal would seem to 
require an infinite space.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 4:20 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> As long as Peirce was writing for readers with relevant backgrounds
> in the practice of math and science it wasn't really necessary and
> would even have been considered impertinent for him to waste words
> on points that everyone in that audience would regard as routine.
> 
> Does that have any bearing on questions about the reality of generals?
> It's hard to say.  I guess it's bound up with the reasons I think the
> only real realists I know and the only practicing pragmatists I know
> are all mathematicians, or at least scientists who use mathematics,
> for the moments they are immersed in doing so.

Mathematics certainly biases one towards realism, especially in physics. While 
physicists are infamous for inconsistency in foundations by and large I think 
most have the idea that the universe in mathematical. While there’s still 
strong empiricist and instrumentalist tendencies there’s also a traditionally 
strong realism towards at least the foundational laws of physics. Where things 
get more tricky is whether the laws/structures that aren’t foundational are 
real. I think Peirce says yes, but many would find that problematic.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 4:04 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> CG:  To my eyes the main issue is the realism vs. nominalism issue both in 
> terms of the nature of possibilities as well as the relationship of 
> individuals to generals. 
> 
> Is there a way to connect this with John Sowa's earlier comment, which I am 
> still pondering?
> 

I think John’s point was largely orthogonal to the issue of realism/nominalism.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 11:37 AM, Jerry LR Chandler 
>  wrote:
> 
> This idea of the mathematics and forms of possibility was articulated already 
> by Francis Bacon 1561-1626.  see the writings of Graham Rees.  (Including 
> Marriage of Physics and Mathematics.)

Right, it’s not that uncommon an idea.

To my eyes the main issue is the realism vs. nominalism issue both in terms of 
the nature of possibilities as well as the relationship of individuals to 
generals. 

That’s why that Fraser review from 1871 is interesting as he does get right at 
the nominalist/realist issues.

Now going back to our discussion of realism a few months ago it’s worth asking 
what the cash value or realism vs. nominalism is. Despite it being such a focus 
for Peirce I’m not sure it entails that much difference - particularly with 
possibilities. 

Where it does matter is more in Peirce’s cosmology where you have possibilities 
becoming actualities along more or less neoplatonic lines. That is the issue 
ultimately is one of a thoroughgoing modal realism more like platonism than 
even Hegelianism. (Despite that it’s often to Hegel that Peirce is compared and 
contrasted) 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 11:14 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> Does it help to amend the initial statement to form a subjunctive 
> conditional?  "Therefore, the knowable universe is limited to everything we 
> would be able to imagine, if the right conditions were to occur."  If so, is 
> this formulation still unobjectionable to a nominalist?

I’m not sure I’d agree with that reformulation simply because I think Peirce 
distinguishes between knowability and what individuals know. I guess you might 
wrap that up under “right conditions” but my complaint is more that the notion 
of continuity seems very wrapped up in Peirce’s project of knowability here. 
Things can in principle be knowable but simultaneously be unknowable for finite 
knowers.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 9:59 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Therefore, the knowable universe is limited to everything we can
> imagine, and mathematics can analyze anything we can imagine.
> (This point is independent of the nominalist-realist debate.)

There’s a bit to unpack there - most particularly who the “we” is in that 
sentence. I think Peirce rejects the idea of the unknowable with his rejection 
of Kant’s thing-in-itself. Yet he also ties this to the ideal community of 
inquirers rather than any particular person. Put simply while the universe is 
knowable and therefore imaginable it doesn’t follow that it is imaginable for 
any finite group of people.

As you note this is also separate from the nominalist debate since a nominalist 
can agree with this. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 26, 2017, at 1:45 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> So, yes, I would have to say that Peirce was a realist about
> possibilities, and patterns of possibilities, from the start.
> That much is simply implicit in his mathematical approach to
> logic, probability, and information.

Yes, from fairly early on he see mathematics as possibilities. I’m not sure the 
date on the earliest he makes that explicit. (Sorry - no time to look it up 
right now)

I think my point about modal realism is more that connection between universals 
and particulars. Does he make that connection with mathematics early on? Again 
I don’t know. It’s one thing to speak about the nature of mathematics as 
possibilities and quite an other to speak about the relationship of mathematics 
to particulars. The old “why is the universe so mathematical.” Again I confess 
I’ve just not investigated the historical question here being more interested 
in the philosophy questions. If anyone else knows I am curious. That’s why I 
mentioned the review on Fraser since it seems to me his criticism of Berkeley’s 
platonism as nominalistic that gets at that issue.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 25, 2017, at 8:54 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I declared myself long ago as one who sees more continuity
> of development than radical shift in Peirce's thought over
> his lifetime.  What I do see changing through the years is
> the greater diversity of his audiences as the river of his
> work flows from its constant sources to the alluvial delta
> he left for us to sift.  The greatest share of variance in
> what he writes is explained more by variations in the whom
> he is addressing than the what he is trying to communicate.

I certainly don’t dispute that - it’s completely my view as well for the most 
part. With regards to modal realism I suspect the question is when did he have 
something like modal realism - which seems there by the early 1890s and perhaps 
1880s - and when is it full bodied modal realism. It’s a difficult question and 
since there are almost always explicit references from the late 1890’s onward 
it’s just easier to use those and avoid controversy.

My own feeling is that most of the mature view was in place by the time he 
switched the pragmatic maxim to counterfactuals even if he didn’t necessarily 
treat those possibilities as real in a robust sense. I think the logic of his 
work pushed him there. Put an other way he may not necessarily have thought 
through all the implications of his logic or, as you note, simply didn’t have 
the right audience to make them clear.

While the logic of modal realism is in place with the shift of the maxim to 
counterfactuals, it seems to me it’s his thinking through the issues of 
universals to particulars where he saw Berkeley and even Scotus as too 
nominalistic that I think the full transformation occurs. But it seems a 
gradual one of recognition rather than substantial change to the logic of his 
argument. (IMO) But of course his main engagement with Berkeley is quite early 
- 1871.

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_48/v2_48.htm 


Is this sufficient for full bodied modal realism? Perhaps we can read it that 
way although I’m not sure I’d want to defend the thesis. (I’m open if others 
have defended it for the period prior to 1897)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

Catching up on my reading - apologies for not responding much the past week or 
two.

It seems to me the starting point for thinking about truth for Peirce ought be 
externalism. That is are we talking about a knower who is roughly a human 
individual at a specific time or are we talking about truth in semiotic broader 
than any one individual. While Peirce occasionally talks of epistemology along 
a more traditional Cartesian conception by and large when he speaks of truth 
he’s speaking of this broader conception. Unless we keep that in mind I think 
we’ll always go astray.

An individual then ‘has’ truth to the degree that the sign within them is the 
same as this final interpretant. 

The next thing to keep in mind is that Peirce still maintains the traditional 
conception of proposition or statement as carriers of truth. By which he means 
they are signs that signify this interpretant. As the quotes Jon put up on 
wikipedia indicate we thus have a sort of correspondence but not a Cartesian 
sort. It’s not the correspondence of an internal image with an external object. 
Rather it’s the correspondence of the object signified through a sign with an 
interpretant that is the same as the final interpretant. The odd feature of 
Peirce’s conception of truth is that this sign need not be in a particular 
knowing subject. (I’m not sure of the implications of that since it gets into 
the question of intentionality in Peircean semiotics)

The biggest difference between Peirce and more traditional conceptions of truth 
in the loose Cartesian tradition (including Kant) would be that truth is 
essentially wrapped up with signs. It is triadic whereas for most philosophy 
correspondence and even coherence is merely dualistic.

I’ve been thinking of my original question I posed a month or two ago. That is 
what is the status of truth. To the degree an object signifies a stable 
interpretant it seems to me that truth is fated or necessary regardless of 
whether one adopts modal realism. I’ve come around to the idea that 
fundamentally what’s at stake with my question is less the question of truth 
than the question of time. That is to ask if truth exists is to ask when a sign 
is complete. If one adopts presentism or some related ontological conception of 
time then this seems to play havoc with Peirce’s semiotic. (Maybe others will 
disagree with me there)  The way out of this problem is either to embrace a 
four dimensional theory of time in which case there is already a truth about 
the future or else to embrace the later Peirce’s modal realism and simply talk 
about truth as those signs that are in all possible universes. That is to 
embrace the kind of robust talk of possibilities we see in contemporary modal 
realism.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 19, 2017, at 9:54 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Re: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Pragmatic_theory_of_truth 
> 
> 
> I have been giving another look at the InterSciWiki (ISW) article on the
> “Pragmatic Theory Of Truth” (PTOT) and I think it will be worth the time
> to clean it up and develop it further.  The plan that usually works best
> from me is to revise the content on the wiki and serialize it on my blog.
> 
> The PTOT article derives from the last Wikipedia revision I edited:

I think one thing that has to be kept clear is well made in that link. Dewey’s 
Warranted Assertability simply is different from what Peirce does. Of course 
this idea of warrant becomes important for Putnam as well. I’ll leave James out 
of the discussion because he just seems pretty inconsistent sometimes adopting 
a very Peircean conception and sometimes a much more short term functional 
conception of truth.

Peirce’s notion largely comes out of the idea that for a difference to be a 
difference it must make a difference and that those differences over time act 
on inquirers. 

The problem, that many brought up over the past few days, is the issue of 
information loss. That is Peirce’s faith really seems to presuppose a lot about 
both how signs act but also the persistence of the information of a sign. The 
problem is this is of course the problem of repetition being so important for 
effects and knowledge. Peirce gets the idea of habit right but I’m not sure 
he’s thought through the implications of erratic patterns of repetition and its 
implication for knowledge.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 16, 2017, at 7:48 AM, John F Sowa  > wrote:
> 
> To formalize the idea of convergence, I combined a Lindenbaum
> lattice with methods of belief (or theory) revision.  The lattice
> contains all possible theories expressible within a given logic,
> and the AGM operators for belief revision give a measure of how
> close one theory is to another.
> 
> I discuss this measure and relate it to Peirce and some critics
> (including Quine) in the signproc.pdf article.  (Excerpt below)

I’ve not read that yet John (hope to at lunch). But a quick thought. It seems 
to me Peirce isn’t committed to the view of convergence in the scientific 
realism of that era. The idea we’re getting closer and closer to the truth. 
Rather it would seem Peirce’s commitments entail that we might get close and 
then far so long as at infinity it reaches the truth. That means that as useful 
as short term notions of convergence are, they really don’t guarantee much. 

The way I usually think about it is that there are many continuous equations 
such that the limit as x → ∞ y → 0.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 16, 2017, at 6:44 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> The key word there is “investigate”.  We can read that loosely
> as any method of fixing belief, but we know that Peirce ranked
> methods of fixing belief in order of their malleability to the
> impressions of reality, their aptness to let what is permanent,
> persistent, “something upon which our thinking has no effect”
> settle the matter once and for all.

This is where Peirce’s epistemology or perhaps more accurately different focus 
on inquiry gets interesting and complex. While he focuses in on inquiry and 
fixation of belief, clearly he thinks all ways to fix belief are not equal. It 
would thus seem epistemology can thus be useful to the degree it gives us 
stable beliefs about general principles of justification. We demonstrate those 
beliefs by acting on them: i.e. disbelieving where epistemology tells us we 
should.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 13, 2017, at 7:00 AM, Jon Awbrey  > wrote:
> 
> I think John Sowa's remarks about the “major failures caused by ignoring 
> [Peirce]”
> and Jerry Chandler's remarks about later readings serving as a “Procrustian 
> bed
> for CSP's concepts” are very apt in this context, and I will have more to say
> in that regard if I can get to it.

I think so too, but I think we should make explicit what other doctrines Peirce 
held that was different from the mainstream of philosophy lead to these 
differences. Off the top of my head I think you have to mention the following:

  scholastic realism vs. nominalism
  modal realism vs. actualism (primarily for the late Peirce although with the 
 pragmatic maxim he moved to counterfactuals reasonably early)
  externalism vs. internalism
  signs vs. thoughts in a mind (i.e. the interpretant need not be a human mind)
  verification as meaning vs. verification as truth

There’s probably some others but those five see the key differences that make 
terms like correspondence or coherence misleading at best.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real; Continuity and Boscovich points.

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 10, 2017, at 6:57 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> In chapter 8 of Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism, Paul Forster 
> argues--convincingly, I think--that the different "theories of truth" are 
> competitors only within  a nominalist epistemology and metaphysics.  By 
> contrast, Peirce's realism recognizes that "correspondence, coherence, 
> consensus, and instrumental reliability are all essential and constitutive 
> elements of truth--none is any more fundamental than the others.  Moreover, 
> each of these elements of truth is a necessary condition for realizing the 
> others.  Each one--properly understood and fully explicated in accordance 
> with the pragmatic maxim--implies the others" (p. 175).

I think the bigger issue is that correspondence presupposes an internalist 
scheme like Descartes or Kant and which tends to be presupposed in most 20th 
century approaches to epistemology which are still caught up in the methods of 
neo-Kantianism. If you adopt an externalist scheme like Peirce does then the 
very problem disappears. That’s why when I hear the word “correspondence” tied 
to Peirce (or Heidegger or any other number of 20th century figures who broke 
with internalism) I think that someone needs to clarify what they mean. If 
there’s no absolute inside or outside then the very need of correspondence, 
coherence and so forth disappears. Even the direct realism of say Scottish 
common sense philosophy becomes much more sensible without the echoes of the 
Cartesian division between mind and world in place.

We can talk about these things relative to Peirce, but almost always we’re 
speaking in terms of signs not minds. So correspondence is the relationship 
between an object conceived in a certain way and an interpretant conceived in a 
certain way. It’s useful for a certain type of analysis but isn’t the 
ontological problem it is in most philosophy.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real; Continuity and Boscovich points.

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 9, 2017, at 3:17 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> With respect to the 13 items on the list. None is, taken by itself, a theory 
> of truth. Rather, they are statements made by a commentator on passages in 
> the published works and manuscripts, many of which are from different 
> contexts--and many of which seem to have been written by Peirce with 
> different purposes in mind. 

Exactly what I was going to point out. None of that really gets at a theory of 
truth. I agree completely.

As John (Sowa) noted there are a lot of different issues at play here. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real; Continuity and Boscovich points.

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 9:10 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> On 3/7/2017 3:19 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
>> pure mathematics starts from a set of hypotheses of a particular sort,
>> and it does not seem obvious to me that these games are grounded
>> on such hypotheses.
> 
> More precisely, pure mathematics starts with axioms and definitions.
> A hypothesis is a starting point for a proof that also uses those
> axioms and definitions.
> 
> JBD
>> Peirce... uses tic-tac-toe in the Elements of Mathematics as
>> an example of how to take a kid's game, and then to examine it
>> in a mathematical spirit. Does this make the game a part of
>> mathematics?
> 
> It certainly does.  The axioms and definitions of tic-tac-toe
> can be stated in FOL.  From those axioms, you can prove various
> theorems.  For example, "From the usual starting position, if
> both players make the best moves at each turn, the game ends
> in a draw."

The problem with the game theoretical view of mathematics is the question of 
realism. This is why Godel made his argument about things not provable since he 
assumed they were true. While of course Wittgenstein’s model of language isn’t 
opposed to realism within mathematics there’s a difference between how we use 
the language of mathematics and what the objects of mathematics are. That is 
what are the relationship between the game and reality. 

Where this comes up is in semi-empirical methods such as Putnam suggested we 
apply to mathematics. As a practical matter there are unproven (and for all we 
know unprovable) mathematical theorems that are used as premises for other 
mathematical proofs. Perhaps this is still limited but I suspect it will 
accelerate in the future.

Again returning to language games of course while the notion can be abused a 
robust notion of language games is compatible with realism. But I think we have 
to think through carefully what sort of game we are playing if we’re going to 
use that as our metaphor.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 1:09 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> CG:  Yes, if there were a late quote along those lines that would have 
> answered my question directly. I suspect though that is just someone assuming 
> it’s merely regulative.
> 
> How about this one, from Peirce's definition of "synechism" in Baldwin's 
> Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1902)?
> 
> CSP:  It would, therefore, be most contrary to his own principle for the 
> synechist not to generalize from that which experience forces upon him, 
> especially since it is only so far as facts can be generalized that they can 
> be understood; and the very reality, in his way of looking at the matter, is 
> nothing else than the way in which facts must ultimately come to be 
> understood. There would be a contradiction here, if this ultimacy were looked 
> upon as something to be absolutely realized; but the synechist cannot 
> consistently so regard it. Synechism is not an ultimate and absolute 
> metaphysical doctrine; it is a regulative principle of logic, prescribing 
> what sort of hypothesis is fit to be entertained and examined. (CP 6.173)

That’s really close but not quite there. Note the last part which I 
highlighted. Logically it’s regulative in terms of what hypotheses can be 
examined. So it’s a way of casting off a hypothesis somewhat akin to the way 
the positivists dismissed many things as meaningless. So while synechism isn’t 
a metaphysical doctrine the question of truth and continuity can still entail 
metaphysical doctrines once those are examined as a hypothesis.

His point is just that as a regulatory principle we have to assume that things 
aren’t inexplicable. So we can’t assume my question is inexplicable. But that 
doesn’t mean of course we have a metaphysical answer for my question.

Now if we simply extend from the idea of continuity to metaphysics we’re doing 
it wrong. However if we’re extending from modal realism to the question of 
whether there is a real possibility of stability (i.e. something beyond the 
regulative) I think we’re making a different sort of argument. Maybe I’m wrong 
in that though.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In the Wikipedia article "Synechism," somebody wrote, without providing a 
> reference, "The fact that some things are ultimate may be recognized by the 
> synechist without abandoning his standpoint, since synechism is a normative 
> or regulative principle, not a theory of existence."

Yes, if there were a late quote along those lines that would have answered my 
question directly. I suspect though that is just someone assuming it’s merely 
regulative.

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In his review "An American Plato" of Royce (1885 MS) W  5:222-235 (see 
> 227-230), also EP 1:229-241 (see 234-236), Peirce says:


That’s a very good quotation. I’d forgotten about that since I’ve tended of 
late to restrict myself too much to the later Peircean writings. i.e. after 
1895 when his ideas are more stabilized. Plus of course it helps that EP2 is 
available on Kindle while inexplicably EP1 is not.

But that’s a really good quote related to some other discussions I was having 
over unknowable things and Peirce.

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In that quote Peirce very clearly holds that not all will be known or can 
> even be imagined. What is left is the idea that details may remain vague (as 
> indeed a house that one sees is a kind of "statistical" object, compatible 
> with the existence of innumerable alternate microstates and that, in any 
> case, the object as it is "in itself" does not involve the idea of some 
> secret compartment forever hidden from inquiry; it is instead a matter of 
> deciding which questions one cares about. Material processes scramble 
> information, and life interpretively unscrambles some of it according to 
> standards of value and interest.
> 

An other excellent quote and helpfully quite late - almost 15 years into his 
modal realist period. I rather like his keeping actuality and reality separate 
since that was what confused me the most all those years ago.

What’s so interesting in that quote is that the realism seems wrapped up in his 
modal realism yet recognizes something is knowable in one possible world but 
not in the other. It’s hard not to think of the hamiltanian equation in the 
wave collapse model of quantum mechanics (say the Dirac Equation). There you 
have all the possible states as real but not actual. As soon as one makes one 
measurement then that constrains the possibilities. So Peirce is recognizing on 
a practical economics of epistemology something akin to uncertainty relations. 
(Here making just an analogy and not saying they are really the same sort of 
thing)

> On another note, Joe Ransdell used to insist that Peirce's realism was 
> stronger in the 1860s than it was when he wrote things like "How to Make Our 
> Ideas Clear" (1878).


I think he was more of a platonist by way of Kant in that very early phrase. 
Yet so many of the details weren’t worked out. I tend to see his modal realism 
as the most important idea. It’s connecting realism and possibility that seems 
like the leap that fully makes his ideas work (and leads him back to a certain 
kind of platonism defined in terms of possibilities)

> Of course his fellow pragmatists were not such strong realists as Peirce, and 
> William James later wrote of liking to think that J,S. Mill if he were still 
> alive would be the pragmatists' leader.
> 

Yes James definitely wasn’t and was more focused on what individuals think 
rather than the logical and community angle Peirce focused on. Dewey seems to 
be much more of a realist of the style of Peirce even if he doesn’t quite 
embrace Peirce’s logic. The rest (except perhaps for Royce depending upon how 
one looks at him) are too caught up in the nominalism of philosophy IMO.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 1, 2017, at 8:00 PM, Jerry Rhee  wrote:
> 
> “The purpose of every sign is to express "fact," and by being joined with 
> other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant 
> which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, 
> we may use this language) would be the very Universe…

The question is really the nature of this “would be.” An other way of putting 
this is whether Peirce thought that the final entelechy would be actual or 
whether it’s just a regulative concept.

It’s worth reading the paragraph before where you quoted.

All these characters are elements of the “Truth.” Every sign signifies the 
“Truth.” But it is only the Aristotelian Form of the universe that it 
signifies. The logician is not concerned with any metaphysical theory; still 
less, if possible, is the mathematician. But it is highly convenient to express 
ourselves in terms of a metaphysical theory; and we no more bind ourselves to 
an acceptance of it than we do when we use substantives such as “humanity,” 
“variety,” etc., and speak of them as if they were substances, in the 
metaphysical sense. (Peirce, “New Elements,” EP 2.304 emphasis mine)

So I certainly think “New Elements” addresses part of what I was after. It’s 
helpfully written after his turn to his modal realism phase. I’m not sure it 
really addresses my concern though due to that caveat. But that’s definitely 
one of the papers I was thinking of with the question.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Logic of Ingenuity

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 1, 2017, at 8:23 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Your points are well-taken.  As I observed at the end of the article, modern 
> engineering reasoning relies largely on the relatively stable habits of 
> matter, whereas ethical deliberation involves the much more malleable habits 
> of mind that manifest in human behavior.  We can model the former quite 
> successfully with mathematics, but the latter are typically amenable only to 
> less reliably predictive approaches, such as narrative.

Oh fully agree and I hope you didn’t take me as dismissive. I rather liked it. 
I just think that pre-modern vs. modern where science and engineering become 
intertwined is very different even though both depend upon stabilities in 
matter.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Logic of Ingenuity

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 1, 2017, at 8:59 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Part 4, subtitled "Beyond Engineering," is now online at 
> http://www.structuremag.org/?p=11107 .  
> It discusses how anyone can use the logic of ingenuity to imagine 
> possibilities, assess alternatives, and choose one of them to actualize.  I 
> have argued for years that just as science is perceived as an especially 
> systematic way of knowing, likewise engineering could be conceived as an 
> especially systematic way of willing; and if this is really the case, then 
> the distinctive reasoning process of engineers should be paradigmatic for 
> other kinds of decision-making, including ethical deliberation.

It seems a fundamental difference is that engineering presupposes stable 
knowledge from physics/chemistry. That is engineering in the contemporary sense 
(as opposed to practical construction in pre-modern times) requires knowledge 
of foundational rules to enable technological production. With regards to 
ethics though we simply don’t have anything like that due to the lack of agreed 
upon meta-ethics not to mention basic questions of whether ethics is knowable 
the way that physics is. (Even in a Peircean model ethical knowledge seems very 
unlike scientific knowledge and of course not everyone agree with Peirce!)

If ethical deliberation is like anything, it’s like pre-modern engineering with 
local norms rather than universal rules. The problem of course with premodern 
engineering, as amazing as things like the stone hedge, the pyramids or the 
works of Rome are, is that there are so many failures. That lack of 
predictability in a technological way where technology proceeds by accident 
likely is very much how we reason as a community ethically. That which is 
successful is kept as societal norms but the reasons for it and thus the 
ability to extend from the norms is lacking.

Now I think Peirce is able to explain both sorts of movements quite well with 
his critical common sensism. Yet that essential merging of the technological 
with the scientific that was lacking in premodern times lacks any equivalence 
with ethics.

Of course as you point out one can be systematic even when ones knowledge is 
more rules of thumb rather than universal laws. Yet the level of generality 
really does matter I think.
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[PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real

[Clark Goble]

Over the years I’ve gone back and forth in terms of how to think of Peirce’s 
conception of truth. I’m here speaking of the notion of truth and less the 
historical question of what Peirce believe at which times. What brought this 
about was our discussion off and on over the past few months of Peirce’s modal 
realism starting in the late 1890’s. Prior to that time while he recognized the 
need to switch to counterfactual discussions in say the Pragmatic Maxim he 
didn’t fully embrace modal realism until quite late.

The question is what his modal realism does for his conception of truth as what 
inquiry would lead to in the long run with an idealized community.

Way back years ago when I was much more of a novice in Peirce my gut tended to 
read this “in the long run” as something actual. Then over time (primarily due 
to arguments made here) I switched over to just thinking of it as a regulative 
notion. That is we can talk about what we mean by truth but there’s not some 
actual truth that grounds our statements as true. This is the way I suspect the 
majority of Peirceans think about it. However with modal realism, if continued 
inquiry and continuity are possible, they are real as possible. This means that 
this “in the long” run of the universe acting has as a real possibility this 
‘end.’ It might not be actual but it is real. (In a way analogous to how Peirce 
treats God)

Does this seem about right? 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

On Feb 16, 2017, at 6:17 AM, John Collier  wrote:One of the hardest things for me in learning analytic philosophy (after original training and work in physics) was to think in words.Yes, the undue focus on the language turn in analytic philosophy has not necessarily been positive. I think the neglect of other ways of reasoning have let to lots of improper conclusions.Your point about physics is apt too. That’s definitely a discipline that incentivizes thinking diagrammatically. At least I found back in my college days that many problems could more easily be solved by moving out of the calculus/tensor/algebra arena of manipulating symbols (really tokens) and into broader diagrams. At a minimum it’d give the proper way to think about manipulating ones symbols. (Say doing change of coordinates for instance)My guess is that Peirce’s background in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry helped him in terms of thinking through practical logic of this sort. Although it is odd that more of the physicists who have entered philosophy haven’t taken these up quite as much. Perhaps due to the expectations especially in analytic philosophy towards linguistic methods.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

Whoops, neglected the end.

> On Feb 15, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> One can readily, for example, find individuals who (by all evidence) seem to 
> think more readily and more commonly in words than in "images and diagrams". 
> One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by all evidence) have 
> lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e., they cannot do language), 
> and yet those people otherwise seem to think perfectly well. 
> 

Yes. I think that’s a good criticism of Peirce who I think is biased towards 
thinking through questions in terms of people with a bias toward logic or the 
hard sciences. While ultimately I think that a plus in his writing rather than 
a negative, it does mean that his generalizations can be problematic. 

While I don’t think this ultimately affects his argument I’d say that people 
often have a bias towards either linguistic or visual thinking. The way a 
logician thinks will typically be different from a musician or a sculptor, 
broadly speaking. At least that has been my experience. That said I think most 
people think some of the time in wide range of styles.

A fun experiment to illustrate this I used to use in college classes was to 
count to 100 and try to do something else at the same time. Depending upon the 
method you use mentally to count you’ll find that some things you can do while 
others you can’t. You’ll find that some people think visually with a number 
line to count and are able to speak while counting. Most people count 
linguistically and thus can’t easily speak or listen to words at the same time.

I would dispute the limited brain damage example though. We have to be really 
careful there since ones cognitive linguistic systems may be functional yet key 
parts of the brain necessary for expression may be damaged. So we have to be 
very careful how we draw inferences from this. However that said we know of 
examples where children were not exposed to language and reach a point where 
they appear to be unable to develop those skills. Clearly they are still 
thinking but their brain simply hasn’t developed in a normal way.

Peirce I think avoids the problems some models of the mind by philosophers end 
up with. (Of course most contemporary philosophers of the mind are at least 
somewhat familiar with the science of the brain and avoid a lot of these older 
problems) Peirce simply doesn’t think that thinking is only conscious 
deliberation the way that especially in early modernism many philosophers 
assumed. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 15, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> Further, when Peirce elsewhere starts making broad pronouncements about 
> "thought" it oftentimes seems that he is referring solely to those rare 
> instances of clear thinking, but other times is referring to the typical 
> thinking, or all thinking?

I think in places Peirce does wax dogmatic at times. At least rhetorically. But 
I think the better way to read him typically when making broad pronouncements 
is that he’s postulating a theory and is more than happy to see it critiqued. 
That his own views changed as he continues to think about the ideas is a good 
indication that this is how he himself takes such views. 

I’d add that I think the style of late 19th century writing is just alien to 
us. We expect that when reading early 19th or 18th century German idealists but 
I think we expect Americans writing in English to write in a style we’re more 
familiar with. However I tend to think most philosophers, especially the great 
ones, are pretty bad writers. Of all the great writers probably only Mill and 
Peirce are the ones I enjoy reading the most. Yet even with Peirce we have huge 
paragraphs and examples of annoying writing and neologisms. 

Part of the problem is often that it’s simply hard. Many philosophers invent 
neologisms because they want to avoid the habits of thinking that older words 
invoke. They want to break us out of those habits to rethink the issues without 
that baggage. This leads to difficulty especially when talking about broad 
foundational ideas. The ideas and words closest to us are often the hardest to 
examine closely. (Thus the traditional problem of “to be” in philosophy)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from AI perspective

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 14, 2017, at 12:04 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> A Replica of the word "unicorn" is thus a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign that 
> calls up the idea of a unicorn because, although no unicorn really exists, 
> real descriptions of the unicorn are well known to the speaker and his/her 
> auditor.

This is why I said I thought things depend upon equivocation. When we say 
“phoenix” it’s not clear if we’re intending to refer to the idea of the phoenix 
(and thus a real general) or the phoenix in the world (which is false and thus 
has no referent).

The question is what type of object we’re referring to. Of course if I refer to 
the existing object of say “trucks” I’m also referring to the idea of them 
since that is partially how I refer. I refer by giving hints since the 
indexical link can’t be directly shared. Instead I share replicants of icons or 
indices or gesture to indicate indexically. 

I’m of the opinion much of this is an artifact of language simply because our 
words are often ambiguous regarding the sense in which we intend them.  By 
simply making clear how we intend to use a word a lot of the problems 
disappear. I wouldn’t go so far as to say all of them do of course. There’s 
always that gap between dynamic and immediate object and immediate object and 
interpretant. Not to mention ambiguity over how the sign-vehicle functions.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from AI perspective

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 14, 2017, at 10:28 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> You wrote, regarding universe of discourse, "Like you I tend to think most of 
> the debate on all this depends upon equivocation over terms."
> 
> Actually I don't have an opinion on that, instead I thought that in the 
> particular discussion of unicorns, it depended on a sometimes tempting kind 
> of equivocation. We like ambiguities, puns, and so on. (Diving is okay, 
> sinking is not so good.)
> 
I was more thinking of the problem of reference & generality with respect to 
fictional creatures. Or was that what you didn’t have an opinion on? As I said 
I think pragmatic maxim offers the solution here. Although that too has some 
oddities in how Peirce applied it. (Thinking here of his example of the Phoenix)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 14, 2017, at 8:41 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> Yikes! My inner William James just raised an eyebrow. This is probably a 
> separate thread... but how did we suddenly start making claims about the 
> nature of other people's thoughts? 
> 
> "People think, not so much in words, but in images and diagrams..." They do? 
> How many people's thoughts have we interrogated to determine that?
> 
> "Consciousness is inherently linguistic." It is? How much have we studied 
> altered states of consciousness, or even typical consciousness? 
> 
> Sorry, these parts of Peirce always make me a bit twitchy. I'm quite 
> comfortable when he is talking about how scientists-qua-scientists think or 
> act, but then he makes more general statements and I get worried.

Are those two statements really controversial? Honestly asking. It seems much 
of our consciousness isn’t primarily linguistic. We are, admittedly, deciding 
this both upon introspection as well as reports of how other people experience 
it. This gets into the question of what we mean by thinking of course. Peirce 
was much more open to thinking not primarily being about what we’re conscious 
of. To the linguistic point I’m not sure that’s controversial either. The idea 
that our consciousness of objects has an “as” structure seems common. That is 
the idea that we don’t just see a blue sky as raw sense data we then 
consciously interpret. Instead we see the sky as blue with blue and sky having 
those linguistic aspects even if we don’t pay much attention to it.

None of this is to deny that we can have non-linguistic experiences. But I’m 
just not seeing the problem. (Completely open to being wrong here of course)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from AI perspective

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 11, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> On the sign's object as ultimately the universe of discourse of the (more 
> explicit) object, I was discussing Peirce's view.
> 
> 1909 | Letters to William James | EP 2:492 
> http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-letters-william-james-6 
>  
> 
> A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., 
> specialized, _bestimmt_) by something other than itself, called its Object 
> (or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence “Cain killled Abel,” in 
> which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to 
> say that that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of 
> Partial Objects. And in every case the Object is accurately the Universe of 
> which the Special Object is member, or part), while, on the other hand, it so 
> determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term 
> the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein 
> determined mediately by the Object.
> [End quote]
> 
> For example, a perturbation of Pluto's orbit is a sign about Pluto, but not 
> only about Pluto.
> 
> 

This gets at the importance of a kind of holism for Peirce that surprisingly 
doesn’t get remarked upon as much as Quine’s. (Even though people pointed out 
the parallel to Quine who then wrote a paper about his ignorance of Peirce)

The tricky bit is really the different types of universes of discourses. We 
talked about that just a few weeks ago so I’ll not bring it up again. But I 
completely agree with you that we can’t really separate out the type of 
generality and reality without talking about these universes. Like you I tend 
to think most of the debate on all this depends upon equivocation over terms. 
That’s why the pragmatic maxim comes in handy as it cuts confusion between say 
an unicorn of a novel’s fictional world from an unicorn in the regular world by 
asking how we’d measure it.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 11, 2017, at 6:40 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> Full blown logical empiricism arises only with verificationism, which I think 
> was the biggest error ever made by otherwise sensible philosophers. We are 
> still suffering the consequences. I hasten to add that, although he was 
> sometimes read that way (perhaps, for example, by Rescher and Putnam) Peirce 
> was no verificationist. We see remnants in opposition views to logical 
> positivism that try to reduce things to social phenomena, which I see as 
> making precisely the same error.

He was a verificationalist about meaning not about truth. Which is a pretty key 
difference. 

What counts as verification was much looser than the positivists allowed too. 
To my eyes that’s a plus not a negative. I rather like Misak’s book 
Verificationism: Its History and Prospects on that topic. She does a really 
good job contrasting Peirce with not only the logical positivists but many 
other groups tied to verificationalism.

I think the reason we can’t abandon verificationalism is that implicit to such 
a conception is the recognition that our beliefs are tied to our experience. 
While some of the later neopragmatists like Rorty tried to jettison the place 
of experience I think it has a pretty key place in pragmatism. 

Where Peirce succeeds where others failed is both due to the richer notion of 
experience in Peirce (and arguably also Dewey) as well as recognition of belief 
as a process of change rather than a more static slice for analysis. That 
static element that comes out of the traditional logic of foundationalism 
started with Descartes is what really causes verificationalism to go astray 
IMO. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from AI perspective

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 10, 2017, at 9:03 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> I think that you have put your finger on the key question.  What exactly does 
> it mean to say that a general is real (or not)?  Alternatively, since 
> generality is logically the same as continuity (RLT 190), what exactly does 
> it mean to say that a continuum is real (or not)?

It’s worth noting that we shouldn’t treat these issues separate from the type 
of analysis one is doing. A general can be real in one sense but not in an 
other. Symbols are a great example of that.

The original idea for questions of realism is really just what is 
mind-idependent or not. Fictions, as someone earlier said, are a great example. 
Yet many philosophical stances (such as variants of empiricism) tend to put 
more in that camp due the theory-tied nature of of consciousness. That is when 
we talk about objects what we’re really talking about is what is in our mind 
which is tied to those theories and thus not real. The way to avoid this was to 
create various correspondence theories.

Peirce somewhat splits the difference. He recognizes there are mind-like 
aspects but things those can be repeated in various ways. This issue of 
repetition ends up being pretty significant philosophically. Of course the 
token/type distinction got picked up in the 20th century from Peirce. But the 
question of how repetition works ends up being trickier than it appears. 
(Although oddly this was primarily an issue in continental philosophy rather 
than analytic philosophy which tended to just take it for granted) 

The way Peirce deals with it is that a general can be an object of a sign. So 
long as the referenced general is repeated it is real because the universe 
itself is mindlike and can repeat it without the problems that certain 
physicalist theories have. (Memes are the equivalent in more physicalist 
conceptions) By having symbols, icons and indices I think Peirce ends up 
avoiding a lot of the problems in both continental philosophy and even analytic 
philosophy (the whole positing aspect of positivism was problematic here but it 
persisted in some ways even after positivism was dead). 

So when we talk about realism all we’re really talking about is whether the 
object of a sign is finitely tied to brains or not. We have to be careful since 
for Peirce, even fictions in theory could be replicated infinitely such that 
they aren’t tied to particular minds. We then have to ask what the being of the 
object is. Fictions along with quite a few other things really don’t have 
grounds outside of finite minds. If the structures are mind-independent (i.e. 
persist independent of being thought about in more traditional philosophical 
ontologies) then their ground is outside of a mind. So say the law of gravity 
is mind-independent but my liking ice cream isn’t.

If you don’t keep track carefully of the type of analysis being done it’s 
pretty easy to get confused in a Peircean model because of that ability to 
shift to new contexts as well as the universe being mind like. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Generals, Realism, Individuals, Nominalism

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 8:01 PM, Stephen C. Rose  wrote:
> 
> Here is my answer. Triadic thinking is conscious consideration by 
> individuals. The first stage is that vague reality that comes up as a sign 
> and ends up becoming more likely a word than anything else. That enables 
> consideration, a second stage, an indexical query, sort of. For me that is a 
> list of values which are in effect an index of what Peirce called memorial 
> maxims. What Jeff calls metaphysical refers to the third stage which is 
> indeed the effect or action or expression that results from the consideration 
> of the first, the sign.  That is the effect, the practical outcome of the 
> triadic consideration. For Peirce is this not the sine qua non of inquiry 
> itself?

I’m not sure I’d agree with the conscious part. What’s so interesting to me in 
Peirce’s semiotic is the place of continuity which presupposes a kind of 
unconscious/hidden aspect to all sign processes. Likewise his externalism makes 
me think that most of what happens happens outside of consciousness.

That’s not to say his semiotic isn’t extremely useful for thinking through 
conscious deliberation but I think the consequence of that analysis will always 
be that a lot more is going on.

> Any way you slice it I cannot help thinking that this is what Brent was 
> trying to understand in his generally maligned biography of Peirce. It was 
> that chapter toward the end that helped me to see it. And I think Brent was 
> also, like me, fishing for the actual reason why Peirce could make the 
> outlandish claim that he would be built on like Aristotle. In any case, I 
> want to at least establish my question as legitimate. What does this all aim 
> at if not the way a practical person thinks, which would need to be taught to 
> replace the largely binary understandings that permeate culture and 
> understanding generally. 

I must have missed a post. I assume you mean Joseph Brent’s biography. I 
confess I’ve not read it. Could you possibly summarize that? I’m missing 
something here. (Undoubtedly my fault - my apologies I sometimes can’t keep up 
with the list and never quite find the time to go back and catch up)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Generals, Realism, Individuals, Nominalism

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 5:25 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> If we try to understand the differences between positions that, like Mill's, 
> are more radically nominalist in orientation and those, like Peirce's, that 
> are more radically realist, by focusing solely on matters of metaphysics, 
> then we will find that the nominalists can say many of the things that the 
> realists say--but in more limited terms that seem to presuppose less (which 
> is a virtue, no doubt). 

I’ll confess it’s been a while since I last studied Mill in any depth, but 
going by my distant memory I’d say the bigger facet between Mill and Peirce is 
vagueness. That is much of Mill’s writing presupposes that the entities in 
question are present in some way to consciousness or at least to some logical 
analysis. Peirce in contrast has a very significant logic of vagueness such 
that some properties are indeterminate but not available to the inquirer.  

This obviously problematizes Mill’s meta-ethic. My distant memory is that it 
also is a problem for his epistemology. His associationism I just don’t 
remember well at all so that may avoid this problem but I’d not be shocked to 
discover that depends upon fully determinate parts out of which larger 
knowledge is built. (My distance memory is that Mill is somewhat similar to 
Husserl & Russell in therms of knowledge by acquaintance but I might be 
completely wrong on that)

That’s somewhat of a tangent to your point but I raise it more to note that 
there are other elements of logic/metaphysics that are pretty crucial in 
distinguishing Peirce from his rough contemporaries. 

In a sense the nominalist presupposes less, but there are practical 
implications for what they do presuppose and often they presuppose more than 
Peirce. (The common assumption of completeness that really didn’t come under 
sustained attack until the mid to late 20th century is an example) I think 
externalism is an other example of this. Admittedly those who allow for robust 
knowledge by acquaintance can do more here. But I think that a more robust 
externalism is pretty important metaphysically although that does become 
significant in the more early 20th century with Sartre, Heidegger and others. 
(The reemergence of pragmatism as strong position with Putnam and others also 
comes to question these assumptions)

All of this is a round about way of saying I’m pretty skeptical the issue is 
always realism/nominalism. I think I’d want to see a solid argument to think 
it’s not dwarfed by other factors.
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