Re: [peirce-l] PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN DEELY LOCATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary M.,

 

Your reflections are very rich indeed but i only have time for a few comments 
today ...

 

Yes, the Commens Dictionary is a wonderful online resource.

 

[[ Peirce says, “by the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in 
any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it 
corresponds to any real thing or not. If you ask present when, and to whose 
mind, I reply that I leave these questions unanswered...” (Adirondack Lectures, 
CP 1.284, 1905) ... However Peirce’s concluding statement id disturbing for 
exactitude – “never having entertained a doubt that those features of the 
phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at all times and to all 
minds”. ]]

 

This baffled me at first ... my comment on it is in my online study of Peirce’s 
phaneroscopy, at 

http://www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm#phaner ... compatible with yours, i 
think.

[[ MOORE: Would not a phaneron immediately cease to be a phaneron when we 
attempt to analyze it? Would that not immediately put it in the structure of 
language? ]]

 

Well, analysis introduces a new element into the phaneron (using the word 
“element” more loosely than Peirce would), but it too is present to the mind. 

 

We can’t assume that language is coterminous with thought. Peirce always 
objected to the practice of drawing conclusions about logic or semiosis from 
the structure of language.

 

[[ The phaneron makes no distinction in itself or an other. It is simply “all 
that is in any way or in any sense present to the [unspecified] mind” – would 
that be correct and in accord with Peirce’s ““never having entertained a doubt 
that those features of the phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at 
all times and to all minds”? “I have found” is very fortuitous as if one just 
stumbled across it by accident. ]]

 

I don’t see that implication in it. In Peirce at least, one usually finds by 
searching, or inquiry. But of course it’s what you were not looking for, the 
surprises, that are always most interesting in what you find. As Leonard Cohen 
sang, “There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.” But all 
of the normative sciences (as Peirce called them), including logic, are driven 
by the need for self-control.

 

[[ We never in any path of knowing truly have the complete picture ... ]]

 

Indeed! But if we are scientific inquirers in the full Peircean sense of those 
terms, we never cease trying to make it more complete ... to contribute what 
little an individual can to the “growth of concrete reasonableness.”

 

[[ Where is the perfection at all to be found if “it cannot be at all minute”? 
Someone draws a right angle which every reasonable person says is perfect. 
Wittgenstein, let us say, being the typical unreasonable ‘reasonable’ person 
brings in a powerful microscope and puts the right angle under view. ]]

 

Peirce remarked several times in different contexts that we can’t be sure that 
the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is exactly 180°. Vagueness can 
never be eliminated, it’s always a matter of degree.

 

Gary F.

 

} Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all 
gestures, in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend. [Finnegans Wake 
614] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic 
studies: Peirce

 


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Re: [peirce-l] PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN DEELY LOCATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

ttlos752...@yahoo.com] 
Sent: April-27-12 3:57 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman
Cc: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN DEELY LOCATION

 

FUHRMAN: Gary,

I simply don’t see the connection you are trying to make between Peirce’s 
remarks on the “classes of characters or predicates” and Deely/Heidegger/Hegel. 

---

FUHRMAN: The immediate context again is this: “Careful analysis shows that to 
the three grades of valency of indecomposable concepts correspond three classes 
of characters or predicates. Firstly come “firstnesses,” or positive internal 
characters of the subject in itself; secondly come “secondnesses,” or brute 
actions of one subject or substance on another, regardless of law or of any 
third subject; thirdly comes “thirdnesses,” or the mental or quasi-mental 
influence of one subject on another relatively to a third.”

Peirce is using the terms subject and predicate in the usual way proper to 
propositional logic. (See the index of EP2 for more examples of his use of 
those terms.) The “positive internal characters” to which he refers are simply 
the qualities predicated of the subject apart from its relation to anything 
else. My guess is that you are trying to read something else into these terms 
which is quite unrelated to the context in which Peirce is using them here. I 
can’t see other basis for your comments or questions. Specifically, i have no 
idea what you mean by your comment that “It is an intriguing statement possibly 
substantualizing both "internal" and "subject" which, in Deely and Poinsot's 
terminology would mean they are foundational terminals in a Peircean Triad 
would it not?”

--

GARY: O. K., I get your point – except How can the “subject” of a purely 
grammatical or logical statement have any “internal characters” whatsoever in 
any sense whatsoever especially in “the subject in itself”? It would seem to me 
that a proposition per se is simply and self-evidently proposed. It is just 
‘there’ before you perfectly obvious in the wide open spaces without any 
‘insides’.



GARY: Now, if Peirce misspoke this phrase – “the positive internal characters 
of the subject in itself” - so it could be so misquoted by Deely I can 
understand, and your point is perfectly valid. It may not go with Deely’s other 
quotes from Peirce literally in the same sentence:: “the Idea of that which is 
such as it is regardless of anything else” + “the conception of being or 
existing independent of anything else” + “the present in general” or “It” 
ALTHOUGH upon typing them out just now they do look extremely ontological and 
therefore metaphysical, that is, probably any and every explicit metaphysician 
could make the exact same statements that can only be clarified Peirce-wise by 
having the whole context of what he wrote immediately available which would be 
laborious and probably indecisive.

---

GARY: See what I am getting at? YOU are the expert on Peirce. I certainly am 
not and approach these quotes initially and purely in Deely without any 
extensive previous experience of Peirce. I know enough to see that they do not 
go with the ‘tenor’ of some of his other contexts – but then when I consider 
Peirce is writing about “Firstness”, which is the ground of his pragmaticist 
philosophy [as opposed to “pragmatist” which Deely makes a point of] and his 
logic and his grammar – even more, when “Firstness” is literally considered 
“first” and as “the conception of being or existing independent of anything 
else” then Peirce, whether he desires to or not, is making an ontological 
statement perfectly in accord with the ontology of any metaphysics which would 
define “being”, ens ut primum cogitum, ipsum esse subsistens, exactly the same 
way. Peirce calls them in your full contextual quote “indecomposable concepts” 
which certainly makes them ontological but then again brings up the specter of 
metaphysics because only within a metaphysics can a “concept” be 
“indecomposable” which in linguistic analysis is pure nonsense.

--

GARY: Now, you are undoubtedly correct in saying if I looked up every other use 
of these terms in Peirce I would read them differently. But exactly here, in 
your full quote, Peirce is not writing in “the usual way proper to 
propositional logic” because, besides making a proposition, he is talking about 
pure experience as such which is necessarily presupposed as wordless in pure 
experience - or such phrases Peirce uses here in your quote as “brute actions 
of one subject or substance on another, regardless of law or of any third 
subject” and “the mental or quasi-mental influence of one subject on another 
relatively to a third” then become logically propositional of nonsense since 
experience determines the logic used not logic determining experience.

-

Re: [peirce-l] Fw: [peirce-l] Fw: [peirce-l] PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN DEELY LOCATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary M.,

 

The passage in Deely to which you refer defines Peirce’s concept of Firstness 
by collecting several quotations from Peirce that refer to it. I’m not sure why 
you have singled out one of those quotations in connection with “metaphysical 
concerns”, but i think a better acquaintance with Peirce’s phaneroscopic 
(phenomenological) categories would serve you better in the task of 
interpreting both Peirce’s text and Deely’s. Both of them are referring 
primarily to logic, i.e. semiotic, and while it is true that just about any 
principle of logic “potentially refers to metaphysical concerns”, those 
concerns are secondary and derivative. Comparisons with Heidegger’s terminology 
are even more remote, in this context. I think you’d be better advised to 
peruse Selection 28 in EP2; the passage from Peirce that Deely quotes from CP 
5.469 is a variant reading from that same MS (318), the MS in which he 
introduces the term “semiosis”.

 

Gary F.

 

} The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, 
not when it is doing work. [Wittgenstein] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic 
studies: Peirce

 

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Moore
Sent: April-26-12 2:38 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] Fw: [peirce-l] Fw: [peirce-l] PEIRCE QUOTATION FROM JOHN 
DEELY LOCATION

 

Dear Doctor Rose,

Thank you for your reply! 

--

The quote from John Deely had an important original context because it 
potentially referred to metaphysical concerns with “positive internal 
characters of the subject”. 

---

Now, in my incredibly small experience with Peirce, I have noticed there are 
times when he pays strict logical attention and times when he is more 
‘colloquial’. Sometimes the ‘colloquial’ is not just ‘ordinary discourse itself 
– which I have argued elsewhere in relation to Umberto Eco ALWAYS triumphs over 
philosophical discourse [which is always a mere interruption to ‘ordinary 
discourse’ that always goes on to render philosophy insignificant] – but rather 
refers to old style ‘metaphysics’ as he does here. 



Deely has several special [to himself] issues that would put the Peirce quote 
into a completely different light possibly. One such issue is the theological 
‘soul’. Another relates to his very good book on and continuing high regard for 
Martin Heidegger. I would think neither Peirce nor Heidegger would accept 
literally the metaphysical connotation of “positive internal characters of the 
subject”. Heidegger, in whom Deely most properly and almost uniquely recognizes 
the semiotic aspect of Heidegger [something I was lucky enough to see in 
Heidegger’s 1916 doctoral thesis on the categories of John Duns Scotus whom 
Peirce admired]. 



Heidegger would unreservedly reject any literal reference to “internal” and to 
“subject” in his “Dasein” or Being-there since it is a field of experience 
presented to the human being which, as far as it is ‘known’ is completely 
‘external’ and open to be delimited by language. It would seem to me Peirce 
would do the same since it seems to me that for him experience is an 
undelimited whole or totality. But I could very well be wrong on this for 
Peirce.



Heidegger does recognize obscurely an unknown aspect of Dasein. But since such 
a ‘thing’ is not experienced directly and is not related to language as either 
‘ordinary’ nor ‘philosophical’ discourse, it can only be approached obliquely 
or asymptotically. The Heideggerian scholar William J. Richardson SJ does this 
with Lacanian psychoanalysis which, it seems anyway, Deely disapproves of. The 
point is, it seems with both Heidegger and Peirce, the popular phrase “What you 
see is what you get” is taken in a strict and radical sense. I think also both 
consider the ‘unconscious’ as a matter of historicity being logically being 
teased out of the long dream of language which completely overwhelms any one 
individual.

-

Another issue with Deely and Heidegger related to this is Deely’s seemingly 
strict separation between human consciousness, which dreams the dream of 
language, and the ‘animal’ which largely does not do so. Heidegger also 
separates the two but simply as an observation and method of trying to delimit 
language within manageable bounds, and not because of a religious agenda since 
he explicitly holds for an “atheistic methodology”. In other words, if he had 
found another animal than human being he could converse with, he would have no 
ideological or theological problem, being more attuned to Nietzsche in this 
matter.



Therefore I raise another question: “Does Peirce raise a distinct separation 
between the human being as the only linguistic animal, and if so, where, and if 
not, where?”

-

Gary C. Moore

 

 


-

Re: [peirce-l] Deacon & Peirce [was "re: Deacon's incompleteness and Peirce's infinity"]

[Gary Fuhrman]

Adrian, thanks very much for the link to Deacon’s blog. (Forgive the delay in 
my thanks, i’ve been distracted.) Every now and then i look around on the 
Internet for anything of his but somehow i’ve never come across this blog 
before. As to whether he’d be willing to join peirce-l, i don’t know; i 
attended a talk of his in 2003 at an IRAS conference (before i’d begun reading 
Peirce in earnest myself), and at that time he was very selective about his 
email contacts and hard to find on the Internet. Maybe he’s more open to that 
sort of thing now – though i notice he hasn’t posted anything on the 
Teleodynamics blog since 2008.

 

The article you pointed to is a revised version of one written in 1976, and 
while it shows an extensive acquaintance with Peirce back then, it doesn’t 
really answer the question of why he doesn’t use the Peircean phaneroscopic 
“categories” in his recent book (or in any of his work since 1997 that i’ve 
seen). It would be an interesting question in the light of what he says in that 
older article. I do hope somebody can contact and invite him!

 

Gary F.

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Adrian Ivakhiv
Sent: March-25-12 5:53 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] Deacon & Peirce [was "re: Deacon's incompleteness and 
Peirce's infinity"]

 

This is just an aside to Gary F.'s parenthetical comment about Terrence 
Deacon's knowledge of Peirce:

"In other words, he argues for the reality of Thirdness without calling it that 
– indeed without using Peirce's phaneroscopic categories at all. (Personally i 
doubt that he is familiar enough with them to use them fluently, but maybe he 
decided not to use them for some reason.)"


Deacon has, apparently, been a lifelong student of Peirce's work. One of his 
articles online, accessible from his Teleodynamics blog, is a paper from 1976 
entitled "Semiotics and Cybernetics: The Relevance of C. S. Peirce", which 
includes an extensive discussion of Peirce's phaneroscopy. It can be read here:
http://www.teleodynamics.com/?p=52

It makes me wonder: Has anyone tried to involve Deacon in discussion on this 
list? I've seen him appear on blogs responding to questions about his work. 
Seems he'd be both interested and welcome here...

Cheers,
Adrian Ivakhiv





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[peirce-l] The family of Benjamin Peirce

[Gary Fuhrman]

Steven,

Raposa, _Peirce's Philosophy of Religion_ is superb. And for the next two days 
you could get it at 50% off from Indiana University Press.

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: March-20-12 2:54 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] The family of Benjamin Peirce

Dear List,

I have an increasing interest in Benjamin Peirce and his son James, Charles' 
elder brother.  I am curious about Charles' relationship with his brother, who 
continued his father's work teaching mathematics at Harvard. I wonder about the 
relationship for a number of reasons, but it is primarily to fill in the gaps 
for me concerning Charles Peirce's intellectual life and the familial/social 
climate of the time. 

There is a strong indication in the literature that James was gay and 
potentially the author (Prof X) of a particularly powerful and interesting (in 
the sense of advanced and well-considered thinking) piece on the virtues of 
homosexuality (or at least the reasons why there should be no objection to it), 
and I note no disapproval or criticism of this by Charles or his father. Given 
Charles' hardships later in life I also wonder whether James (his brother) 
provided Charles with aid or property. And given the liberal nature of the 
family I wonder about their view of Charles' later marriage. 

I continue to see the roots of many of Charles' ideas in the work of his 
father, although their vocabulary and ways of speaking differ. Benjamin's 
"Ideality In The Physical Sciences" is an especially interesting read and I 
find myself revising my initial views concerning Charles' religious background, 
that I have previously considered naive from his own writings. Benjamin Peirce 
has an especially sophisticated sensibility for traditional religious concerns 
(Kierkegaardian almost) and the relationship with science, and he speaks 
eloquently about it. His view is certainly suggestive of Charles' "unconsidered 
argument" and in many ways his view is more sophisticated. Certainly his 
conception of "God" is not the anthropomorphic conception and it is compatible 
with Charles' view in that I would not expect Benjamin to object to the 
"unconsidered argument." I am trying to decipher Benjamin's views on what I 
will call "universal will."

As the picture becomes more fleshed out, the family of Benjamin Peirce as a 
whole and Charles' "place" within it, leads me to expect that a fuller 
understanding of this family, and its combined intellectual life, is necessary 
for an understanding of Charles and his work.

Does anyone have pointers for me or suggestions about where I can find more 
help with this?

With respect,
Steven

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Re: [peirce-l] a question

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jason,

 

Yes, i’d agree that in Peircean terms, the conscious experience of the 
immediate present is always at least a Second – i would say primarily a Second. 
The key word being experience, which for Peirce is virtually always associated 
with Secondness. (The Greek root (peirao) signifies trying, implying some kind 
of effort, which cannot occur without resistance.)

 

Gary F.

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Khadimir
Sent: March-17-12 12:30 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question

 

Would it not be fair to say that the conscious experience of the immediate 
present must always be at least a second?  That is the view I hold.

 

Jason H.


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Re: [peirce-l] a question

[Gary Fuhrman]

Diane, i think i understand where the idea of Second as “past” is coming from, 
but i don’t much care for it. The presence of Firstness is its spontaneity, but 
Secondness has a kind of actual ‘in-your-face’ presence too. The force of 
actuality makes things and events definite and determinate, and that’s what 
connects it with the past (while the future is indeterminate and the present 
instant doesn’t exist). But if i were making a chart like that i would put it 
like this:

 

First - presence 
Second - occurrence 
Third - time 

Gary F.

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Diane Stephens
Sent: March-14-12 11:57 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] a question

 

In the book Semiotics I by Donald Thomas, he includes a chart which shows 
concepts associated with firsts, seconds and thirds.  For example, a first is 
quality, a second is fact and a third is law.  I understand all but second as 
past as in: 

First - present 
Second - past 
Third - future 

I would appreciate some help.

Thanks.


-- 
Diane Stephens
Swearingen Chair of Education
Wardlaw 255
College of Education
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
803-777-0502
Fax 803-777-3193 


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Re: [peirce-l] Deacon's incompleteness and Peirce's infinity

[Gary Fuhrman]

Cathy, yes, Deacon’s “absence” is the absence of existing things, concrete 
physical objects or actual events. (This was not clear to me from his first 
chapter but does become clear later in the book.) He wouldn’t use the term 
“Being” in the way that Peirce does, but he is arguing against the tendency in 
biological psychology to reduce all causality to efficient causes, which are 
necessarily present as actualities. So he affirms the reality of formal and 
final causes, neither of which is present in that sense (the presence of 
Secondness, i think Peirce would call it.) Deacon’s universe is not very 
Platonic, it’s more Aristotelian.

 

Jon, yes, “incompleteness” has been on the mathematical agenda since Gödel’s 
famous paper, but Deacon’s argument is essentially non-mathematical; he 
mentions Gödel only once and briefly, and doesn’t mention people like Rosen at 
all. I think Rosen’s idea that a living organism (anticipatory system) is one 
that has no largest model is very similar to what Deacon is driving at. But 
Deacon would have no use for that approach because he deliberately restricts 
himself to physics (whereas Rosen thought that physics was not generic enough 
to encompass life). He doesn’t have much use for mathematical complexity theory 
either.

 

I don’t think the main thrust of Deacon’s argument is all that original – it’s 
not really different from what Peirce argued, for one thing – what’s original 
(in my view anyway) is Deacon’s concepts of orthograde and contragrade change, 
and teleodynamics, which allow him to build his argument for the reality of 
final causality in purely physical terms (and without appealing to ‘quantum 
weirdness’).

 

Gary F.

 

} We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that 
abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. [Norbert Wiener] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic 
studies: Peirce

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Catherine Legg
Sent: March-13-12 10:41 PM



Very rich post, Gary (F), thank you! I've recently been alerted to the 
importance of Deacon by Gary (R) and he is now 'on my list'.

On the interesting issue of Deacon's 'Absence' which you raise in the last 
paragraph, I wonder whether the Absent is absent from Being or just the actual 
world. If the latter, perhaps it is not entirely inaccessible to a Peircean 
phaneroscopy fearlessly navigating the Platonic Universe.

Cheers, Cathy





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Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

[Gary Fuhrman]

Steven, in addition to what Ben said ...

 

Your sense of chronology (and therefore of context) is completely askew here. 
You wrote,

[[ Again:

"... of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to denote Categories 
and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large, very 
promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and 
therefore can only be denoted by Indices."

A year earlier, in 1866, Peirce wrote "On A Method Of Searching For The 
Categories" ... ]]

 

That quote is from the “Prolegomena” of 1906. Your next quote is not from “a 
year earlier” but from 40 years earlier. The Prolegomena clearly does not use 
the word “Categories” in reference to Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, but 
in reference to classes of predicates (as opposed to subjects). Although Peirce 
calls those classes “Categories” in the 1906 Prolegomena, they do not map onto 
his usual categorial triad, nor vice versa. Also note that in 1866-7 Peirce was 
not yet using the term “index” for the kind of sign that is capable of genuine 
denotation; but in 1906, “indices” has its precise semiotic meaning in Peirce, 
which your analysis does not reflect.

 

Gary F.

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: March-12-12 9:28 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

 

Dear Steven,

Okay, 1866 instead of 1867. Indeed he regularly said that his categories are 
indecomposible into more basic elements; they _are_ his basic elements. That's 
why your indecomposability argument fails in the case of the 
Prolegomena-categories (which he says he prefers to call "Predicaments") - it's 
because there he does _not_ call them indecomposable; instead he says that they 
are "classes that, being enormously large, very promiscuous, and known but in 
small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and therefore can only be denoted 
by Indices."

Note that he did not say that the classes in question are indices of their 
elements or members. Instead he said that they are classes denotable (actually) 
only by indices and not by satisfactory definitions (since there actually are 
none). You imply that he could not have meant that because it would have led to 
an infinite regress. Yet it is in fact what he did say, and we are not entitled 
to silently revise him as if it were a mere typographical error. I'm not sure 
why you think it leads to infinite regress but, supposing that it does, it is 
not necessarily a problem for Peirce. Peirce believed in infinite series of 
signs in semiosis that has nevertheless a beginning and an end (at least by 
interruption) in time, since he was a synechist. In fact he based his synechism 
on the four incapacities, for example the incapacity for intuition, that is, 
the incapacity for a cognition devoid of inferential relation to a previous 
cognition. From final paragraph (CP 5.263) of "Questions concerning certain 
Faculties claimed for Man": 

So that it is not true that there must be a first. Explicate the logical 
difficulties of this paradox (they are identical with those of the Achilles) in 
whatever way you may. I am content with the result, as long as your principles 
are fully applied to the particular case of cognitions determining one another. 
Deny motion, if it seems proper to do so; only then deny the process of 
determination of one cognition by another. Say that instants and lines are 
fictions; only say, also, that states of cognition and judgments are fictions. 
The point here insisted on is not this or that logical solution of the 
difficulty, but merely that cognition arises by a _process_ of beginning, as 
any other change comes to pass.

In 1904 he still thought that the Four Incapacities lead to the establishment 
of synechism. From his brief intellectual autobiography*: "Upon these four 
propositions he based a doctrine of Synechism, or principle of the universality 
of the law of continuity, carrying with it a return to scholastic realism."

*(1904), Intellectual autobiography in draft letter L 107 (see the Robin 
Catalog  ) to Matthew Mattoon 
Curtis. Published 1983 in "A Brief Intellectual Autobiography by Charles 
Sanders Peirce" by Kenneth Laine Ketner in American Journal of Semiotics v. 2, 
nos. 1–2 (1983), 61–83. Some or all of it is in pp. 26–31 in Classical American 
Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretive Essays, John J. Stuhr, ed., 
Oxford University Press, USA, 1987. L 107 and MS 914 are in "Charles Sanders 
Peirce: Interdisciplinary Scientist" (first page at Oldenbourg 
 ) by Kenneth 
Laine Ketner in the 2009 Peirce collection Logic of Interdisciplinarity 
 .

As I said to Jon, I don't see why Peirce would refuse to call his own 
categori

[peirce-l] Deacon's incompleteness and Peirce's infinity

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jon, Gary, Ben and List,

 

There's another part of the Minute Logic which may be related to the connection 
Jon is making between “objective logic” and “categories”. It is definitely 
related to the argument in Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature, which Gary R. 
suggested some time ago as worthy of study here. We haven't found a way to 
study it systematically, but maybe it's just as well to do it one post at a 
time. Or one thread at a time, if replies ensue.

 

The central part of Deacon's argument presents “a theory of emergent dynamics 
that shows how dynamical process can become organized around and with respect 
to possibilities not realized” (Deacon, p. 16). Depending on the context, he 
also refers to these “possibilities not realized” as “absential” or 
“ententional”. His argument is explicitly anti-nominalistic and acknowledges 
the reality of a kind of final causation in the physical universe 
(“teleodynamics”). It has a strong affinity with Peirce's argument for a mode 
of being which has its reality in futuro. In other words, he argues for the 
reality of Thirdness without calling it that – indeed without using Peirce's 
phaneroscopic categories at all. (Personally i doubt that he is familiar enough 
with them to use them fluently, but maybe he decided not to use them for some 
reason.)

 

“Incompleteness” is a crucial concept of what i might call Deaconian realism. 
In physical terms, it is connected with Prigogine's idea of dissipative 
structures (including organisms) as far from equilibrium in a universe where 
the spontaneous tendency is toward equilibrium, as the Second Law of 
thermodynamics would indicate. Teleodynamic processes take incompleteness to a 
higher level of complexity, but i don't propose to go into that now. Instead 
i'll present here a Peircean parallel to Deacon's “incompleteness”. The 
connection lies in the fact that incompleteness is etymologically – and perhaps 
mathematically? – equivalent to infinity.

 

First, we have this passage from Peirce's Minute Logic of 1902:

 

[[[ I doubt very much whether the Instinctive mind could ever develop into a 
Rational mind. I should expect the reverse process sooner. The Rational mind is 
the Progressive mind, and as such, by its very capacity for growth, seems more 
infantile than the Instinctive mind. Still, it would seem that Progressive 
minds must have, in some mysterious way, probably by arrested development, 
grown from Instinctive minds; and they are certainly enormously higher. The 
Deity of the Théodicée of Leibniz is as high an Instinctive mind as can well be 
imagined; but it impresses a scientific reader as distinctly inferior to the 
human mind. It reminds one of the view of the Greeks that Infinitude is a 
defect; for although Leibniz imagines that he is making the Divine Mind 
infinite, by making its knowledge Perfect and Complete, he fails to see that in 
thus refusing it the powers of thought and the possibility of improvement he is 
in fact taking away something far higher than knowledge. It is the human mind 
that is infinite. One of the most remarkable distinctions between the 
Instinctive mind of animals and the Rational mind of man is that animals rarely 
make mistakes, while the human mind almost invariably blunders at first, and 
repeatedly, where it is really exercised in the manner that is distinctive of 
it. If you look upon this as a defect, you ought to find an Instinctive mind 
higher than a Rational one, and probably, if you cross-examine yourself, you 
will find you do. The greatness of the human mind lies in its ability to 
discover truth notwithstanding its not having Instincts strong enough to exempt 
it from error. ]] CP 7.380 ]

 

This suggests to me that fallibility – which not even Peirce attributes to God 
– is a highly developed species of incompleteness. The connection with 
infinity, and with Thirdness, is further brought out in Peirce's Harvard 
Lecture of 1903 “On Phenomenology”:

 

[[[ The third category of which I come now to speak is precisely that whose 
reality is denied by nominalism. For although nominalism is not credited with 
any extraordinarily lofty appreciation of the powers of the human soul, yet it 
attributes to it a power of originating a kind of ideas the like of which 
Omnipotence has failed to create as real objects, and those general conceptions 
which men will never cease to consider the glory of the human intellect must, 
according to any consistent nominalism, be entirely wanting in the mind of 
Deity. Leibniz, the modern nominalist par excellence, will not admit that God 
has the faculty of Reason; and it seems impossible to avoid that conclusion 
upon nominalistic principles.

 

But it is not in Nominalism alone that modern thought has attributed to the 
human mind the miraculous power of originating a category of thought that has 
no counterpart at all in Heaven or Earth. Already in that strangely influential 
hodge-podge, the salad of Cartesiani

Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jon,

I've been reading the section of the Minute Logic that you've been posting bits 
of (i don't think i've read it before) and i'm looking forward to your way of 
connecting it to the category of categories ... if that's what you're doing ... 
but i agree with Gary R. and Ben that it would be easier to follow if you put 
it together into one message, or at least collect all the Peirce quotes into 
one and your argument or comments into another one.

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jon Awbrey
Sent: March-10-12 11:20 AM

Peircers,

This passage from Peirce has intrigued me, too, for at least a dozen years, 
just going by the first discussions that I can remember having about it, and 
still find scattered about on the web.  I am less concerned about the terms of 
art from Aristotle -- predicables, predicaments, etc. -- than I am about the 
nature and function of categories in general, with especial reference to the 
status of Peirce's 3 categories.

The larger interest of this question for me is this -- that I see a certain 
continuity of purpose and "uberty" that extends from Aristotle's categories, up 
through Peirce's, and through one potential, as yet unrealized, but perhaps 
inevitable future development of category theory as it is understood and used 
in most mathematical work today, either as a practical tool, as most will admit 
it, or as a foundation more natural and more sure than set theory, as others 
are inclined to recommend it.

But it's Saturday, and I'm due for a bit of R&R ...

Regards,

Jon

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Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

[Gary Fuhrman]

Ben, Jon and list, 

I'm a little confused as to what the question is here. It seems clear to me 
that in the Prolegomena of 1906, which is the source of the passage in 
question, Peirce does NOT use the term "Categories" in reference to what he 
elsewhere calls categories, or "elements" of the phaneron, or even sometimes 
"universes" -- i.e. the triad of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness. 

The "Prolegomena" is all about diagrams, specifically Existential Graphs, and 
the purpose of these diagrams is to facilitate the analysis of propositions. 
The first use of the term in the Prolegomena, namely CP 4.544-5:

[[[ As for Indices, their utility especially shines where other Signs fail 
But of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to denote Categories 
and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large, very 
promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and 
therefore can only be denoted by Indices. Such, to give but a single instance, 
is the collection of all things in the Physical Universe 

Oh, I overhear what you are saying, O Reader: that a Universe and a Category 
are not at all the same thing; a Universe being a receptacle or class of 
Subjects, and a Category being a mode of Predication, or class of Predicates. I 
never said they were the same thing; but whether you describe the two correctly 
is a question for careful study. ]]]

Peirce then proceeds to take up the question of Universes, returning to 
Categories much later, in the passage Jon quoted; and he begins by saying that 
he prefers the term "Predicaments" for classes of predicates, no doubt because 
this avoids confusing them "with the different Modes of Being" which are 
elsewhere called "categories. And indeed he never mentions "Categories" again 
in this very long article; nor does he make any explicit reference in the whole 
article to Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness. I can only conclude that the 
passage you quoted from it, Jon, tells us nothing about *those* "categories", 
which i guess are the ones you referred to as "Peirce's categories." The 
connection between them and the triad of first, second and third *intentions* 
is very tenuous, as i think Peirce indicates by saying that his thoughts about 
the latter triad are "not yet harvested" -- something he could hardly say in 
1906 about his phaneroscopic "categories".

Gary F.

} We are circumveiloped by obscuritads. [Finnegans Wake 244] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce


-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jon Awbrey
Sent: March-08-12 11:05 PM

Ben & All,

I see that I omitted to give my initial thoughts on that last paragraph of 
yours, so let me do that now.

BU: Where else does he say that the successions of his categories are
 "different in the different Modes of Being"?  Where in his other
 writings does he call his own categories "predicates of predicates"?
 It's hard not to think that by "Predicates of Predicates" he does not
 mean his own categories, and instead that, at most, 1st-intentional,
 2nd-intentional, and 3rd-intentional entities, on which he says that
 his "thoughts are not yet harvested," will end up being treated by him
 as Firsts, Seconds, Thirds — instances or applications of his categories.

There is nothing very exotic about predicates of predicates.  We use them all 
the time without taking much notice of the fact or bothering to describe them 
as such.
For example, terms like "monadic", "dyadic", "triadic" are predicates of 
predicates.
When a phenomenon requires a k-adic predicate or a k-adic relation for its 
adequate description, we say that the phenomenon has "k-ness".  So category k 
is the category of phenomena that need k-adic predicates or relations for their 
adequate description.

When it comes to what Peirce means here by "Modes of Being", I guess I had 
assumed from the words he used — Actuality, Possibility, Destiny — that he was 
talking about the traditional triad of modalities, but I'm not so sure about 
that now.  At any rate, those would not be the first words that come to mind 
when I think of the categories.  I am more used to the paradigm of Quality, 
Reaction, Representation and its later variants, and the only way I could force 
an association would be by interpreting those modes of being, or modalities, if 
that is what they are, in relational terms.  Shy of that, I have the feeling 
that Peirce could talk us into any given order he chose on any given day ex 
tempore.

But maybe my readings will bring more light tomorrow ...

Regards,

Jon

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messa

Re: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jon, Ben & All,

I would agree that Peirce's third method of fixing belief is the most difficult 
to give a suitable name to, but i think Peirce's own choice eventually fell on 
"fermentation of ideas", based on this paragraph dated c. 1906:

[[[ My paper of November 1877, setting out from the proposition that the 
agitation of a question ceases when satisfaction is attained with the 
settlement of belief, and then only, goes on to consider how the conception of 
truth gradually develops from that principle under the action of experience; 
beginning with willful belief, or self-mendacity, the most degraded of all 
intellectual conditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the 
authority of organized society; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as 
the result of a fermentation of ideas; and finally reaching the idea of truth 
as overwhelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an 
independent reality. ]] CP 5.564 ]

"Fermentation of ideas" is not very elegant -- i prefer simply "dialogue" -- 
but it does imply that the third method is fully social, and both more 
reasonable and more democratic than the method of authority; the only thing 
that stops it from being scientific is the lack of appeal to direct experience. 
Indeed i think the Ransdell conception of peer review implies that it is a 
prerequisite to a fully developed science (note the developmental approach 
Peirce takes in the paragraph above).

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jon Awbrey
Sent: February-04-12 4:23 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

Ben & All,

My own interest in this topic has more to do with the ways that economic, 
social, and technological systems facilitate or inhibit the dynamics of inquiry 
-- and only incidentally with publication and publishers per se -- but one has 
to play the ball of concrete application where it lies ...

Yes, I've struggled to find the most felicitous one-word description of the 3rd 
method, hoping to find one that fills out the rhyme by ending in "y", so I've 
experimented with words like a priori, apriority (ugh), agreeability, 
congruity, confluity (borrowing that one from the Gestalt psychologists), and 
so on.  This time I tried to draw on the link of "plausible" to "pleasing" and 
"praiseworthy" and the archaic senses of "plausive"
as "pleasing" but with a hint of "specious".

The quest continues ...

Jon

BU: I hope I don't seem pedantic, but this post is about Peirce's methods of 
inquiry
 in "The Fixation of Belief." (I know next to nothing about professional or 
academic
 journals, so I've little to say about them.)

JA: Charles S. Peirce, who pursued the ways of inquiry more doggedly than any 
thinker
 I have ever read, sifted the methods of “fixing belief” into four main 
types —
 Tenacity, Authority, Plausibility (à priori pleasingness), and full-fledged
 Scientific Inquiry.

BU: There is a certain striking similarity between the focus of the third method
 and valuing of plausibility.  Still I think that Peirce would oppose 
calling
 the third method that of "Plausibility," and I'd agree with him.

CSP: By plausibility, I mean the degree to which a theory ought to recommend 
itself to our belief
  independently of any kind of evidence other than our instinct urging us 
to regard it favorably.
  (Peirce, A Letter to Paul Carus 1910, Collected Papers v. 8, see 
paragraph 223).

BU: In "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," 
http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#na0
 Peirce discusses plausibility and instinctual appeal at some length in 
Sections III & IV,
 identifies it with Galileo's natural light of reason, and says:

CSP: it is the simpler hypothesis in the sense of the more facile and natural, 
the one
  that instinct suggests, that must be preferred This plausibility is a 
question
  of the critique of arguments and of abductive inference in particular.

BU: The third method of inquiry a question of inquiry's methodology 
(methodeutic), and not of assessing
 whether a given abductive inference is plausible and worth drawing prior 
to or apart from inductive
 tests and observations. Peirce calls the third method the method of 
congruity or the a priori or the
 dilettante or 'what is agreeable to reason.'

CSP: It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste; but 
taste, unfortunately, is always
  more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly metaphysicians have 
never come to any fixed agreement,
  but the pendulum has swung backward and forward between a more material 
and a more spiritual philosophy,
  from the earliest times to the latest." (Peirce, "The Fixation of 
Belief," 1878
  http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html).

BU: In a sense it _is_ a matter of taste and fashion — not abo

Re: [peirce-l] running CD-ROM on Windows 7

[Gary Fuhrman]

Since i moved to Windows 7, i haven’t used the Intelex CD-ROM because i saved 
the CP files onto my computer after i found that each volume (except v.3, for 
some reason) can be saved as a single file. This is perfectly legal as long as 
you don’t share the files with anyone else, and though it has some 
disadvantages compared to the old CD-ROM interface, it has one enormous 
advantage: you can place all the files along with other text or html files into 
a single folder and search the whole folder for a text string. I do this with 
my text editor all the time. On the CD-ROM the text is encrypted, so it can 
only be searched by its own search engine. The CD-ROM software is very old and 
will never be updated, and had some funny quirks even on XP, so it would 
surprise me if anyone could get it to run on a current version of Windows. 
Though i haven’t tried it myself.

 

If you know a bit of html and CSS, another advantage of using the html files is 
that you can fix errors in the CP text (there are a few), tweak the layout (i 
made mine white-on-black for better readability), and insert notes and 
hyperlinks.

 

By the way, in answer to Kirsti’s question, the simplest way to avoid sending 
duplicate messages to this list when replying is to use “Reply to all” (which 
puts both the group address and the original sender’s address into the address 
field) and then delete the original sender’s address. That’s what i’ve done 
with this message.

 

Gary F.

 

} Humankind is made of haste. I will show you all My signs, so do not try to 
hurry Me. [Qur'an 21:37] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of jacob longshore
Sent: January-27-12 12:28 AM



 

Dear List,

 

Does anyone have tips on using Intelex's Collected Papers CD-ROM on Windows 7? 
It won't run by itself. I've tried the compatibility-tweak furnished by 
Microsnort, but that doesn't work either. It would be good to have, since I'm 
not always online to use the cookie. Thanks for your help!

 

Cheers,

Jacob


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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Here's something directly relevant to this paper that i just spotted in the New 
York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tradition-with-web-collaboration.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Gary F.

-Original Message-
Sent: January-17-12 10:33 AM

Just a note to let everybody know that I am alive and well and I have not 
forgotten about this slow read. I have been away and otherwise engaged two 
weekends in a row, which has put me somewhat behind. I should get back on track 
in the next few days.

Cheers,
Peter

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Re: [peirce-l] Emergence, semiotic, Deacon and Peirce

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jason and list,

Since i've already quoted myself in reference to Deacon's book, i might as well 
copy here the review i posted on Amazon.ca:

Incomplete Nature

If you have a deep desire to understand how life emerged from a nonliving 
material universe, and how sentience emerged from life, and human-style 
consciousness from sentience, then this book is for you. Deacon deploys the 
full range of concepts which have already been developed by writers such as 
Charles S. Peirce, Gregory Bateson, Maturana and Varela, Ilya Prigogine, and 
Stuart Kauffman to explain how physical principles can lead to biological 
principles and thence to the realm of psychology and even spirituality. But 
rather than merely summarize these contributions and add his own, Deacon builds 
his account of emergence from the ground up, beginning with the basic question: 
How is it that we find ourselves in a universe where things and actions have 
meaning and value for us, where intentions can make a physical difference? In 
the course of rethinking this kind of question, he fills in many of the gaps 
left open by previous accounts, and thus tells us a more complete and lucid 
story of emergence than anyone has done before -- which is ironic in a way, in 
view of his conclusion that living beings are radically incomplete, and 
consciousness emerges from this incompleteness.

Some of us are content to fend off this kind of question with the belief that 
the Creator's purposes preceded the creation, and now pervade it in some 
mysterious way. But taking purposefulness for granted prevents us from getting 
to the bottom of it. Deacon appeals to perfectly ordinary experiences, informed 
by the purely physical concepts of energy and work, to explain how purpose 
could arise unintentionally -- spontaneously, but not instantaneously. He does 
find it necessary to introduce some new conceptual tools along the way. The 
most basic and essential, i think, are the concepts of "orthograde" and 
"contragrade" change; based on the relations between these, Deacon identifies 
several clearly differentiated stages of emergence, the most crucial being 
"morphodynamics" (which emerges from thermodynamic or "homeodynamic" processes) 
and "teleodynamics" (emergent from morphodynamic processes). There is no room 
here to define these terms (though Deacon provides a very helpful glossary). 
However, i can testify that one doesn't need to be a specialist or a scientist 
to follow Deacon's argument from step to step. And if we do, we have a much 
more lucid comprehension of where life and mind are coming from.

On the other hand, even though i have been following the literature on 
emergence for a couple of decades now (including all the writers mentioned 
above and many more), i did find that from Chapter 5 (out of 17) onward, 
following Deacon's argument required some intense concentration. I'm sure that 
anyone who hasn't made that kind of effort would find the last few chapters 
full of impenetrable jargon; but Deacon has not introduced all these new terms 
just for the sake of being original or esoteric. My guess is that many of them 
are going to spread through the scientific community engaged with these 
questions, just as terms like "autocatalysis" and "autopoiesis" have spread, 
simply because they make sense of what has not been clear before. (At least i'm 
sure that Deacon's new conceptual tools will find uses in my own work on 
progress, which deals with a closely related inquiry.)

Deacon's account is not an easy read, whether the reader is acquainted with the 
prior literature on emergence or not; it's more difficult than his 1997 
classic, The Symbolic Species. But its scope is much broader, and i can testify 
that it succeeds in its ultimate aim, as expressed in Deacon's Epilogue. He 
points out there that the progress of science has given us mastery over "much 
of the physical world around and within us," but at the same time "alienated us 
from these same realms" (with devastating consequences). If we can learn 
something, through Deacon's book, from the community of philosophically and 
scientifically reflective inquiry, we can reverse this trend, just as life 
itself manages to reverse the thermodynamic trend toward equilibrium. We can 
outgrow our history of alienation and find ourselves "at home in the universe".

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: Khadimir [mailto:khadi...@gmail.com] 
Sent: January-12-12 9:09 PM

Gary,

Thank you for your detailed explanation and consideration.

I have not read the book, and I took the terminology as just-coined neologisms. 
 Thank you for the explanation, and I am following it as I am familiar with 
basic physics; my bachelor's is in science.  I am a junior Dewey scholar 
working my way through Peirce, and thus am grateful for these explanations.

I would be delighted to read that book, given this section.

Best,
Jason

---

[peirce-l] Emergence, semiotic, Deacon and Peirce

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jason, Gary and list,

 

Yes, i guess it's time to change the subject line, so i've started a new one 
that i hope will reflect where this discussion is heading. I should mention 
that my own interest in this topic is intimately related with the chapter in my 
own work in progress that i'm now struggling with, which overlaps a lot with 
Deacon and with some Peircean passages on "thought" and semiosis. I'm trying to 
squeeze a lot into this chapter, so it has to be concise without being too 
abstract and abstruse. I haven't yet found what feels like a good way to do 
that yet, and my musings toward the right expression sort of spilled over into 
my "reply" to your message, Gary ... i didn't really think that i was telling 
you anything that you didn't already know, i was just trying to clarify matters 
for those who haven't yet read Deacon's book, so my post was an experiment 
along those lines rather than a reply to what i thought you were saying.

 

Jason, i'm wondering whether you've read the book, or are basing your 
suggestions on the definitions of teleo- and morphodynamics that Gary provided 
a few messages back. I agree that emergence itself is a bottom-up process – 
because top-down causality can only happen in highly emergent systems. But i 
don't think Deacon's argument supports what you say here:

 

JH: [[ But is not the distinction relative to analytic perspective?  That is, 
what is may be described in terms of morphodynamics, but what might (will) be 
in terms of teleodynamics?  The distinction is more temporal than substantive? 
]]

 

If i understand what you're suggesting here, i don't agree with it. 
Morphodynamic processes arise from far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, as in 
Bénard cells for instance. But these in themselves are not enough to generate 
life or sentience; those arise with teleodynamics. The distinction is in how 
they work, not in whether they are present or future processes. The great value 
in Deacon's book is that he explains exactly how they can arise spontaneously, 
i.e. without a "designer". But in order to follow his explanations, you have to 
absorb his explications of basic concepts of physics such as "work", and in 
order to digest those, you have to get used to thinking in terms of orthograde 
and contragrade change and how they affect each other. Basically, each level of 
emergence enables new varieties of orthograde change. But i'd better not go any 
further until i know more about what i can assume about your background 
knowledge. I'm shooting in the dark here, can't tell whether i'm taking too 
much for granted or too little.

 

It might be helpful if i insert here a slice of my chapter in progress that 
incorporates some of Deacon’s ideas. The chapter is about closure; this part of 
it i’m more or less satisfied with, so far. Here goes:

 

Cells enclose themselves in membranes in order to insulate internal processes, 
but must import energy and selected materials across the boundary in order to 
maintain those processes. This raises the question of how they could have 
organized themselves in the first place: how did biological systems emerge from 
the inorganic? Stuart Kauffman identified one crucial step as catalytic 
closure, in which the product of one spontaneous reaction acted as a catalyst 
for another reaction, which in turn produced the raw materials of the first 
reaction. Such an autocatalytic loop can involve many more than two separate 
reactions, but it can sustain itself and grow as long as it produces its own 
catalysts – provided that it has a source of raw materials which it can ‘eat’ 
or transform into the molecular forms which constitute it.

“Catalytic closure means that every molecule in the system either is supplied 
from the outside as ‘food’ or is itself synthesized by reactions catalyzed by 
molecular species within the autocatalytic system. Catalytic closure is not 
mysterious. But it is not a property of any single molecule; it is a property 
of a system of molecules. It is an emergent property” (Kauffman 1995, 275).

 

However, Thompson (2007, 105) points out that autocatalytic systems do not 
qualify as autonomous agents if they do not produce their own boundary. “In 
summary, the form or pattern of the autopoietic organization is that of a 
peculiar circular interdependency between an interconnected web of 
self-regenerating processes and the self-production of a boundary, such that 
the whole system persists in continuous self-production as a spatially distinct 
individual (Thompson 2007, 101).

 

Likewise Terrence Deacon, in his comprehensive study of emergence (Deacon 
2011), argues that catalytic closure alone is not enough to bring about 
autogenesis, the emergent stage which he proposes as precursor to life. 
Self-enclosure is equally necessary, because without it, the autocatalytic 
process would exhaust the substrate it needs, or its products would dissipate 
into the surrounding medium; in either case the p

Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary,

GR: [[ Still, the question remains: whence the greater system? Sometimes this 
strikes me as one of those "chicken or egg" conundrums (I see Deacon wrestling 
with this too, but in an entirely different way). So, what can be 'built up' or 
'emerge' or 'evolve' occurs in a systemic context (as the result of the 
reciprocal relations within a system--and as the system) and within an Umwelt. 
]]

GF: I don't think Deacon really deals with the cosmological question of the 
origin of matter and energy, if that's what you're asking here; he just takes 
them as the original ground on which emergence built, so to speak, without 
asking where that ground came from. He also takes evolution to be emergent, in 
other words he doesn't trace it all the way back to the original nothing as 
Peirce does. But i don't think Peirce would refer to the not-yet-organized as a 
"system" -- anyway i know i wouldn't, because to me a system is organized by 
definition. 

The term "context" is also problematic in this ... um, context. The whole idea 
of emergence and self-organization is that one kind of process (e.g. 
teleodynamics) can arise from interactions of lower-level processes (e.g. 
morphodynamics) even though no teleodynamic process has ever happened before, 
so there is no teleodynamic context at that point (though it will evolve from 
then on ... and the way it evolves will change the situation, so that the 
spontaneous emergence of a *new* teleodynamic process may be precluded in that 
environment -- as has very likely happened on this planet). Also it seems to me 
that a species and its Umwelt have to co-evolve, so that the species develops 
not *within* but *with* its Umwelt. -- But maybe i'm reading something into 
your utterance that's not what you intended.

Gary F.

} Everything is always becoming something other than what it was becoming. 
[Floyd Merrell] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

-Original Message-
Sent: January-11-12 1:58 PM

Gary,

I think that you're right in suggesting that it's probably not a good idea to 
mix creation myths and the like--even Peirce's "non-scientific"
early cosmological musings--with emergent or evolutionary theory. I would 
suggest, however, that such ideas do have semiotic and metaphysical 
significance for Peirce (say, as much as Big Bang theory has in the physical 
theories of some). Nonetheless, I would tend to agree with this statement:

GF: Top-down causation, like Aristotelian formal cause, consists in the 
constraints imposed by an emergent system on the processes it has emerged from 
(and still depends on for its existence). For instance, the self-organization 
of the brain emerges from the constant chaotic “firing”
of individual neurons, yet it organizes itself by imposing constraints on them, 
and it's the latter part of this circle that is “top-down”.
This is indeed “from the whole to the parts” but not in the sense where the 
“whole” is the world of possibilities and actualities are parts.

GR: Still, the question remains: whence the greater system? Sometimes this 
strikes me as one of those "chicken or egg" conundrums (I see Deacon wrestling 
with this too, but in an entirely different way). So, what can be 'built up' or 
'emerge' or 'evolve' occurs in a systemic context (as the result of the 
reciprocal relations within a system--and as the system) and within an Umwelt. 
In any event, I'll look forward to your further thoughts regarding " the 
connection between Thirdness and reciprocality."

As to your thoughts as to an approach for reflecting on Deacon's book in the 
forum, I think your ideas are excellent. So let's continue to toss this around 
a bit and see what we list members come up with. You and I seem in agreement 
that *Incomplete Science* represents some extraordinary research with 
implications for semiotics generally, and reaching, perhaps, even beyond 
biosemiotics. My own sense is that I'll be studying and reflecting on this book 
for many years to come.

Best,

Gary

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Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary,

I've been wondering myself how to approach Deacon's book on this list and was 
hoping you would have the answers.  :-)  All i can suggest is a post or two 
that would explain why the book would be worth reading -- perhaps introducing 
some of Deacon's most crucial innovations, such as the concepts of orthograde 
and contragrade change -- and then proceed directly to the explicitly semiotic 
aspects of the book. Certainly we can't do some kind of slow read that would 
cover his whole account of emergence, so i would suggest that we cut directly 
to the semiotic chase and then deal with questions as they arise, rather than 
build the whole theory from the ground up as the book does. I think Deacon's 
theory fits into a line of thinking that will be familiar to some members of 
the list -- people like John Collier -- but fills in some of the gaps in 
earlier versions of the story. Those to whom it's all new will just have to 
read the book in order to follow what we're saying about it, if they're 
interested.

For now, just one comment on this:

GR: [[ There are places in Peirce (for example, near the conclusion of the 1898 
Cambridge Lectures (the so-called "cosmological lectures") where he argues (the 
'blackboard' analogy) that there is a vague general character (the blackboard) 
out of which the three categories emerge. This is 'top-down' thinking in 
Deacon's and Fernandez's terms (and 'top-down' causality too==from the whole to 
the parts; categorially, from thirdness to firstness). So, "the world of 
possibilities" within that vague generality, so to speak. ]]

If everything emerges out of this vagueness, then it would be the “top” in some 
schemas — like the Ein Sof in Kabbalah, the supernal out of which everything 
emanates — but i think “top-down” in Deacon, as in the neuroscience of circular 
causality, is just the opposite, where the primal is the bottom or ground, 
while the top is the highest emergent level. Top-down causation, like 
Aristotelian formal cause, consists in the constraints imposed by an emergent 
system on the processes it has emerged from (and still depends on for its 
existence). For instance, the self-organization of the brain emerges from the 
constant chaotic “firing” of individual neurons, yet it organizes itself by 
imposing constraints on them, and it's the latter part of this circle that is 
“top-down”. This is indeed “from the whole to the parts” but not in the sense 
where the “whole” is the world of possibilities and actualities are parts.

More later when i've clarified (for myself) the connection between Thirdness 
and reciprocality.

Gary F.

} No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. [the Mock Turtle] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce


-Original Message-
Sent: January-10-12 1:52 PM

Gary, List,

Gary F. wrote: It's just occurred to me that there's another reciprocal pair of 
semiotic principles [. . . ]: (1) All thought is in signs (EP1:24), and (2) All 
signs are in thought [. . .]. Of course "one must not take a nominalistic view 
of Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. ... It 
is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (CP 8.256; see also EP2:269, 
etc.) -- and the same goes for this usage of "mental". Biosemiotics would seem 
to be rooted in the principle that all living beings are "in thought" in this 
Peircean sense.

GR: This immediately brought to my mind the passage from 'Prolegomena to an 
Apology for Pragmaticism' where the concepts of quasi-mind, quasi-utterer, and 
quasi-interpretant are introduced, the beginning of it speaking directly to the 
matter as biosemiotics views it. Peirce
writes:

"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of 
bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no 
more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of 
objects are really there [, , , ] Not only is thought in the organic world, but 
it develops there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying 
it, so there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give "Sign" a very 
wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within our definition. 
Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be 
declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least 
two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these 
two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless 
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded.
Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of 
Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic (from 
Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism', CP 4.551,
1906)
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/quasiinterpreter.html

You continued:

GF: [. . . ]some of the implications of this thought/sign reciprocity have yet 

Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in logic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary et. al.,

It's just occurred to me that there's another reciprocal pair of semiotic 
principles corresponding to that mutual relationship of logic and "the social 
principle" where each is "rooted" in the other. The other reciprocal pair is 
this: (1) All thought is in signs (EP1:24), and (2) All signs are in thought. 
The latter is not a direct quotation but a paraphrase of Peirce's statement 
(EP2:273) that "thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation", 
in a paragraph which has just stated that only a representamen "with a mental 
interpretant" is a sign. Of course "one must not take a nominalistic view of 
Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. ... It is 
we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (CP 8.256; see also EP2:269, 
etc.) -- and the same goes for this usage of "mental". Biosemiotics would seem 
to be rooted in the principle that all living beings are "in thought" in this 
Peircean sense.

I hope this isn't too obvious to be worth mentioning to Peirceans, because some 
of the implications of this thought/sign reciprocity have yet to be fully 
explored (if they can ever be fully explored!) ... indeed they are related to 
the subject of Intelligence Augmentation which the still current slow read is 
dealing with. They are also related to Terrence Deacon's observation in 
_Incomplete Nature_ that recursive or reciprocal processes are essential to 
teleodynamics and thus to life and sentience. I'm wondering now whether a 
reciprocal relation between *different* recursive loops is essential to 
Thirdness itself. Perhaps we can take this up along with Deacon's book.

Gary F.

} Our duty is to strive for self-realization and we should lose ourselves in 
that aim. [Gandhi] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce


-Original Message-
Sent: January-09-12 2:59 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Logic is rooted in the social principle is rooted in 
logic, was, [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

Kirsti, List,

I hope you are feeling much better when you read this, Kirsti. You
wrote:

KM: I've never thought the concept of 'ground' in Gestalt theory is, or could 
be, the same or even nearly the same as in Peirce's philosophy. 

GR: I agree with and never meant to imply that you might think that the two 
concepts of ground were the same or "even nearly the same." Perhaps I meant 
simply to suggest that since in a philosophical analysis we are free to use 
'ground' in the vernacular sense, or as it is used in psychology, or in a 
Peircean sense, that we--including myself, of course!--need to be especially 
careful not to conflate concepts when the language used to express them is 
similar or even identical (and as there may indeed be ways in which their 
meanings overlap to some extent--certainly the etymology of the 3 usages of 
'ground' just mentioned is the *earthy* one!) Again, this seems especially 
important when we imagine that a term such as 'ground' as used in psychology 
"may be useful in philosophy," as you wrote. So I hope we are in agreement here.

KM:  Anyway, I look forward to reading your thoughts on Zeman.

GR: This has already been posted, I believe in the same message to which you're 
responding, namely, that of 1/6/12,

KR: Then, to your trichotomics. - I think there still are some problems.


GR: No doubt! As Peirce wrote, his categories and trichotomies are meant mainly 
to be suggestive, heuristic if you will. Although it is certainly possible to 
diagram a trichotomy wholly *incorrectly*, yet even when *correct*, there could 
never be a single trichotomic diagram which could approach its subject--its 
object--in any more than a schematic way.

 In any event, diagram observation--trikonic or otherwise--is ultimately more a 
social matter (a scientific tool for the community to use) than it is an 
individual one, while I am quite certain from my own experience, that diagram 
creation and observation benefits the individual's understanding too. As for 
the philosophical or scientific community, through our critical commonsense we 
affirm, or correct, or further develop the diagram. 

So, again, the trichotomies individuals set forth, even Peirce's, are meant to 
be reflected upon, corrected, developed. Peirce himself modified any number 
richotomies he himself devised, a (very) few even radically. For example, on 
this list we once discussed how for most of his logical career he saw deduction 
(as necessary thinking) in the place of thirdness, and induction at 2ns. But 
for a (very) few years he reversed those categorial positions, returning to his 
original analysis late in the 19th century, and staying with it until his death 
(you can read about this reversal, then reversal of the reversal, in the 
Turrisi edition of the 1905 Harvard Lectures, 276-277). 

Still, there are trichotomies which, once posited, Peirce didn't change at all 
(for one simple example, rheme/dicent/argument

Re: [peirce-l] The Illusion of illusion

[Gary Fuhrman]

Dennis, based on the content of your message i'm going to assume that you meant 
it for the whole list (though you only sent it to me), so i'm replying to it 
onlist and including your message below my reply. 

I'm not familiar with Ehrenzweig, so i can only comment on the bit that you 
quoted:

[[[ ... conscious attention, which, with its pinpoint focus, can attend to only 
one thing at a time. Only the extreme undifferentiation of unconscious vision 
can scan these complexities. It can hold them in a single unfocused glance and 
treat figure and ground with equal impartiality. ...according to Gestalt 
theory, we have to make a choice ...but do we really? ]]]

A truly undifferentiated vision would see only phaneron, and would not make the 
perceptual judgment that enables naming a figure as duck, rabbit, *or* 
duckrabbit. So rather than seeing *both* duck and rabbit, it would see 
*neither*. It would also not differentiate figure from ground. (Note that 
figure/ground is not an issue with the duck/rabbit, because when you see the 
figure as one of them, the other is not present as ground, it's simply absent. 
It's different with the faces/vase ambiguity.) You can only treat figure and 
ground ‘impartially’ if you have already seen the difference between them 
(however unconsciously).

[[ Couldn't one have an experience of things being one way and their beliefs 
about that experience being another way? ]]

Of course. That's my point. But once you begin to question your beliefs, you 
have to question all of them impartially, both those you were taught to believe 
*and* those you arrived at by challenging those you were taught, lest the new 
belief become a new orthodoxy too easily. And as a student of psychology, 
surely you are also aware that your *memories* of your experience are no less 
questionable than your propositional beliefs about them. This is why 
phaneroscopy is not easy! (Though it might be easier than deliberately 
practicing “unconscious vision” ...)

Artistic practice is quite another matter, which i wasn't presuming to address. 
All i can say about the role of conceptual beliefs in art is that you will know 
them by their fruits.

GF: [[ But “seeing as” does not exist in the external world common to both of 
us. ]]

DL: [[ Neither does Hope, Charity or Love. ]]

Of course Peirce would say that although these do not *exist*, they are *real*, 
and they determine events in the external world. But that's because they are 
generals, names for legisigns. This is not the case with an individual 
perceptual judgment, which is what i referred to as “seeing as”. A single act 
like that will not make a difference to the commens unless it becomes or 
changes a habit; and by then, the individual perceptual event will have long 
since ceased to exist even for the person who did the seeing. It never did 
exist for anyone else, no matter what they might believe about it.

[[ Again, I don't think one sees outside of practices of seeing. ]]

So there is no immaculate perception, no innocent eye? I'm inclined to agree 
with you on that. Yet i believe (with Peirce) that *experience* can bring us 
news of a reality independent of anyone's belief, no matter how well 
established in “community, lineage or tradition”, and force us (if we are 
honest inquirers) to change our beliefs. 

[[ These images are kinds of diagrams and as such should be very accessible to 
Peircean semiotic. ]]

If you're referring to images like the duck/rabbit, i disagree that they are 
diagrams. The Century Dictionary defined a diagram is ‘a figure for 
ascertaining or exhibiting certain relations between objects under discussion 
by means of analogous relations between the parts of the figure’ (CD.) A 
diagram is an iconic sign “although there be no sensuous resemblance between it 
and its object, but only an analogy between the relations of the parts of each” 
(Peirce, CP 2.279). But not every icon is a diagram, and there is no such 
analogy in the duck/rabbit (or the duckrabbit).

Gary F.

} Show me the face you had before the world was born. [Hui-neng] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce


-Original Message-
From: Dennis Leri [mailto:dl...@earthlink.net] 
Sent: January-04-12 4:45 PM
To: Gary Fuhrman

Gary,

Thanks for your thoughts.

On Jan 4, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

> Dennis and Kirsti,
> 
> At least one of us must be filling in a blind spot, as it were, in our 
> conception of perception.
> 
> DL: [[ First, as an undergraduate in psychology I encountered the 
> either/or dogma of perceiving the duck/rabbit and the faces/vase 
> illusions. ]]
> 
> Is it really standard terminology in psychology to refer to ambiguous figures 
> as “illusions”? Until now i thought this was just a careless habit of lumping 
> them together with other devices that really are illusions (like the 
> Mulle

Re: [peirce-l] The Illusion of illusion

[Gary Fuhrman]

Dennis and Kirsti,

At least one of us must be filling in a blind spot, as it were, in our 
conception of perception.

DL: [[ First, as an undergraduate in psychology I encountered the either/or 
dogma of perceiving the duck/rabbit and the faces/vase illusions. ]]

Is it really standard terminology in psychology to refer to ambiguous figures 
as “illusions”? Until now i thought this was just a careless habit of lumping 
them together with other devices that really are illusions (like the 
Muller-Lyer for instance). But if there's a good reason for calling an 
ambiguous figure an “illusion”, i'd like to know what it is.

DL: [[ As I was also an art minor and a practicing artist I found that I could 
see both. ]]

The question of course is whether you see both *simultaneously*, so i'll assume 
that's what you mean. Now, i have no doubt that this is possible. I don't even 
doubt that it's easier than Kirsti says it is. But the problem here is neither 
psychological nor methodological. The problem is indeed one of logic, i.e. 
semiotic. 

The “either/or dogma of perceiving the duck/rabbit” is not a scientific 
hypothesis, and that's why it can't be refuted. The assertion that one can see 
a duckrabbit, or the assertion that one can flip back and forth at will between 
the percepts of duck and rabbit at 10 flips per second, is equally irrefutable. 

You say that the key to seeing the duckrabbit is not naming what you see. But 
this could be a universal key to phaneroscopy: it could apply just as well to 
the duck phenomenon, the rabbit phenomenon, and the phenomenon of flipping from 
one to the other. The problem is that we can't *report* any of these phenomena 
without naming them. That's why the experiment Kirsti mentions can't be 
replicated. If i tell you that i have just flipped the percept from duck to 
rabbit, you will have to interpret my report (if at all) as referring to your 
own collateral experience, and you have no way of comparing that experience 
with the phenomenon i am reporting to see whether the one is a replica of the 
other. And of course the same is true of any report of seeing a duckrabbit.

If we do give our respective experiences the same name, that doesn't prove that 
the same percept, or even the same kind of percept, is the dynamic object of 
the sign in both cases. If that object existed in the world external to both of 
us, as the ambiguous figure itself does, we could verify that the identity of 
the objects (or object). But “seeing as” does not exist in the external world 
common to both of us.

It's not an issue of trust either. If someone tells me that he saw the face of 
God at 11 a.m. on November 11, 2011, i have no good reason to doubt that he is 
reporting his experience truthfully. But on what basis could i possibly claim 
that i either have or have not had the experience which he calls “seeing the 
face of God”? Would it make any difference if he reported seeing that duck over 
there, or that rabbit, *as* the face of God? (After all, according to the 
Qur'án, wherever you turn, there is the face of God!)

Back when i used to read a lot of psychology and neuroscience, i'm sure that i 
read about some experiments that attempted to correlate people's reports of 
“flipping” an ambiguous figure with observations of brain activity (i forget 
whether it was MRI, EEG or single-neuron). And as i recall, they did find some 
correlation. Perhaps you or someone else in the field can fill us in on the 
details. Anyway, that's an experiment which can be replicated, because both the 
report and the brain activity exist in the external world which is the common 
ground of this universe of discourse. This is not the case with seeing the 
figure as a duckrabbit, or as a duck, or as a rabbit, *prior* to naming the 
phenomenon. We have no common ground there -- although, according to Peircean 
phaneroscopy, the *elements* of the phaneron must be common to all minds.

Gary F.

} No messenger is ever sent save with the tongue of his own people. [Qur'an 
14:4] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce


-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Dennis Leri
Sent: January-03-12 3:18 PM

Gary, Kirsti,

First, as an undergraduate in psychology I encountered the either/or dogma of 
perceiving the duck/rabbit and the faces/vase illusions.  As I was also an art 
minor and a practicing artist I found that I could see both.  I took the 
illusions to my friends in the art department and I'd say that many if not most 
could also.  Later, in the what was then a very influential book, Anton 
Ehrenzweig's The Hidden Order of Art, one encounters his teaching students to 
see both.  The process of not seeing this or that may have many possible 
explanations (maybe Kirsti can illuminate) but for me it was being able to 
defer naming and thus think visually both.  It may not be a common experience 
with the public at large but 

Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

[Gary Fuhrman]

Kirsti writes,

 

[[I do not know any drawing with three changing figures. - Well, now that that 
think again, I do. It is this very same duck/rabbit picture. Seeing both 
simultaneously IS the third figure. ]]

 

You might check out some of the paintings of Octavio Ocampo for examples of 
three separate layers of figure/ground ambiguity. (Some of them can be found in 
a book called Masters of Deception, by Al Seckel.) 

 

However i don’t think that your experience of seeing duck and rabbit 
simultaneously disproves the hypothesis that that these kinds of figures are 
seen in an either/or way. I suppose it does refute it for you, but it can’t be 
a refutation for the whole scientific community, because nobody but you had (or 
could have) that individual experience. Your experiment can’t be replicated by 
others because only your report of it, and not the phenomenon itself, is open 
to public observation. Someone else might report a similar experience as 
“flipping” the figure-ground relationship back and forth so fast that the two 
views appear simultaneous. Would you then challenge their report as inaccurate? 
How would you show the rest of us that yours is more accurate?

 

Anyway, the identification of the composite duckrabbit as third picture does 
not depend on the simultaneity of duck and rabbit views – does it?

 

Gary F.

 

} For the clarity we are aiming at is indeed *complete* clarity. But this 
simply means that the philosophical problems should *completely* disappear. 
[Wittgenstein] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Määttänen Kirsti
Sent: January-02-12 5:12 PM



 

Gary, list,

 

To me, your trichotomics is a fruitful approach. I don't see any basic 
disagreement between our views. 

 

To comment your provisional diagram: It may be better to take the case with the 
utterer as the first separately from taking the interpreter as the first. 
Putting both in the same position in the same diagram I find a bit confusing.  
Perhaps making a diagram for both as separate cases (though interrelated, of 
course) might be better.

 

It may well be the case that Peirce did not use the concept of Ground in his 
later writings. Still, I can't see any grounds for he abandoning it. - But if 
you, or anyone else in the list, knows of some explicit critical comments by 
Peirce on the concept, I would be most grateful to know.

 

Peirce's work during his life presented such a wealth of approaches, so many of 
them worked up to details. As I see it, he did not have time to come back to 
many, many of the issues taken up earlier. 

 

The triad with Ground as the first in the triad may well be one of the issues 
he did not take up in his late

writings Still, I have given the concept a lot of thought. And studied it in 
practice, taking it into use and trying it out. - As I view it, it has a quite 
definite place in the architecture of Peirce's system. 

 

Gestalt theory, with its idea of figure and (its) ground were (within its 
limited scope) after something similar to what Peirce meant with his concept of 
the Ground. But it just amounts to claiming that for every figure there is a 
background which makes it possible for anyone to see the figure. - And this not 
a trivial matter!  - It is a most important philosophical matter.

 

You, and most listers probably know the concern Wittgenstein gave to the 
duck/rabbit picture. One of the examples of being unable to see both 
simultaneously, either the one of the other figure just vanishes, when one - or 
the other - takes precedence. 

 

Gestalt theory dealt with these kinds of pictures. - There are plenty.

 

To my knowledge and understanding, Wittgenstein never got any further than to 
the understanding that for every figure there is a background, and that the 
background always changes. Even if by little and little, and so little that 
virtually no one can see it change. Still, it does.

 

On this philosophical understanding Wittgenstein based his writings on 
certainty and on paradigms, the essential part of his later writings. - On this 
I am fully convinced, be it or be it not - so far -a generally accepted view on 
Wittgenstein.

 

Peirce does not give so much - if any - attention to the idea of figure and 
ground. Still, his concept of Ground is in full accordance with the ideas of 
Gestalt theory. But his concept has a vastly broader ground (pun intended), and 
vastly broader consequences. 

 

I take your provisional trichotomical diagram as an example.  If you take an 
utterer as the first, and the sign she or he utters as the second, then the 
utterer always has in mind, not only his intention with uttering the sign, but 
also all  kinds of things she or he knows & understands and assumes the 
interpreter also knows & understands. 

In so assuming, she or he may be mistaken. As is often the case, but seldom 
totally so.

 

Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary et al.,

Ironically, i've just caught up with this conversation because i spent much of 
yesterday on my work in progress; and the irony is that the part i'm working on 
deals with what Gregory Bateson and Walter Freeman call "circular causality", 
which i take to be closely analogous to what i call "the meaning cycle" and the 
cyclical nature of life itself, hence a core biosemiotic concept. Naturally i 
trace the "circularity" of the relation between logic and the social principle 
to the cyclical nature of life and meaning, which of course is a diachronic 
idea (as opposed to "circular reasoning" which is a synchronic concept 
excluding recursive processes). And of course all of this overlaps considerably 
with Terrence Deacon's argument in _Incomplete Nature_. But, no use in my going 
on about it here ... the first 9 chapters of my book are online, and Chapter 9 
(http://www.gnusystems.ca/mdl.htm ) includes a diagram and explanation of the 
meaning cycle. How much sense it will make to readers who haven't read the 
preceding chapters, i don't know ... but i think they also contextualize the 
illogicality of individualism (especially chapters 2 and 8).

Gary F.

} You and the world are embedded together. [Edelman] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: December-18-11 3:10 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

Ben, Jon, Terry,

Something which has always intrigued me about the two occurrences of the almost 
identical phrases being considered here, and which had a brief list discussion 
a couple of years ago, is that in the earlier (1869) version, "He who would not 
sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his 
inferences, collectively" is immediately followed by "So the social principle 
is rooted intrinsically in logic,"
while in the later (1878), nearly identical--except for the "as it seems to me" 
reservation, "He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, 
is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively" reverses 
the wording of that concluding thought to "Logic is rooted in the social 
principle."

At the time of that earlier discussion the consensus of thread participants was 
that this did *not* represent a kind of circular reasoning. But, as I'm working 
on an article centered on the "Logic is rooted in the social principle" idea, 
I'm wondering if anyone has any fresh thoughts about this now that these two 
different ways of stating this notion have been connected to the "He who would 
not sacrifice his own soul" idea, something I don't recall occurring in the 
earlier discussion (which restricted itself to the reversal of the language of 
the concluding thought).

Also, if anyone could easily recover that earlier discussion (Ben?), that too 
would be most helpful. Thanks in advance!

Best,

Gary

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

I'd like to bring this conversation a little closer to the aspect of IA that 
Joe Ransdell devoted most of his paper to, namely the process of genuine peer 
review that is facilitated by Ginsparg's innovation in physics, which amounts 
to cutting the gatekeepers out of the publication process, and thus 
democratizing it. 

Gary mentioned "flying to international conferences" as one of the benefits of 
technology generally. Personally i would very much like to see an alternative 
to air travel -- which is, after all, a major contributor to climate change -- 
in the form of a system that would allow conferencing over the internet, for 
groups of (say) a dozen peers who could all meet (i.e. see and hear each other) 
without leaving home, and without any special equipment beyond their laptops. 
Surely the software and hardware to do this can't be far away, if it doesn't 
exist in cycberspace already. Conferences usually have to "break into groups" 
(or break for lunch) in order to have really good, productive conversations 
anyway. 

I think genuine dialogue among peers (in Joe's sense) takes place all the time 
on peirce-l, but there are definite advantages to doing it in "real time", and 
i think those advantages can be realized without having to move our bodies 
thousands of air miles. I'm sure it would augment the intellligence of the 
participants.

Gary F.

} Real time is the wheel reinventing itself. [gnox] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: December-16-11 5:52 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Steven, Gene, Ben, Peter, List,

IA as contributing to the possibility of actual intelligence augmentation is a 
mere goal of such visionary thinkers as Engelbart, Technology is a tool that 
can be used wisely or poorly, as several have already noted. My friends who 
teach in some of the better educated countries in Europe do not seem to have as 
much of a problem with new technologies as is being expressed in this thread. 
"The book" is itself the result of a new technology of the time, the printing 
press, and its dissemination to many in especially the 19th and 20th centuries 
was the result of the further advancement of that and other, related 
technologies. Pre-computer/internet reading of books resulted in a very well 
educated European population, but that did not keep Europe from falling into 
two disastrous, finally, world wars. 

The total dumbing down of, for example, the American population, I mean, the 
American education system, also pre-dates computers. The 1%, it appears, 
benefits from  a dumbed-down population, the better to manipulate it through, 
admittedly, especially the television media (think Fox "news"). That "vast 
wasteland" of idiotic television programming was also a conscious decision by 
corporate interests in the interest of making big profits. The principles and 
practices of a hunter-gather society (which Gene has so beautifully articulated 
in his books and articles) is nothing that we are going to regain as desirable 
as it might seem to want to do so.  It ain't gonna happen.

Meanwhile,  many of us on this list enjoy our technological advances (I 
especially am fond of modern plumbing), use the web rather well for research 
purposes, enjoy flying to international conferences, etc., etc.--and regret 
that some of these 'conveniences' are paid for at a cost which, in a vaguely 
poetic way, I sometimes make equivalent to the suffering of much of the 
population of Africa. The point for me is NOT to stop using these tools, but to 
try to find ways to make educational, political-economic, infra-structural, and 
other changes in the interest of benefiting individuals and society. I would 
think that Peirce would have celebrated the new technologies, possibly have 
contributed to them; but he would have deplored their misuse. On that point, at 
least,  I think we are all in agreement.

Best,

Gary

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Re: [peirce-l] Doctrine Of Individuals

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jerry, you wrote,

[[ One should also note the inexact usage of the term "division" when in fact 
the meaning is "separation" (with respect to "logical atoms".) ]]

But i'm afraid it is your usage that is inexact. A logical atom (for Peirce and 
every other logician that i know of) is defined by its Greek root, which means 
exactly "indivisible". The current usage of "atom" in physics and chemistry 
parted company with logic as soon as it was demonstrated that physical "atoms" 
could be divided into component parts -- protons, neutrons, electrons etc.

By the way, you also posted earlier about Peirce's usage of the term "special 
sciences", saying that it is meaningless in contemporary science. Ben already 
replied to that, but i'd like to add a comment or two. I had never heard this 
term before i came across it in Peirce, but his usage is so handy and 
straightforward that i've been using it myself ever since, in reference to any 
non-cenoscopic science, in other words any science that studies a special 
(limited) range of phenomena (and generally uses special apparatus to make its 
observations). Physics, chemistry and psychology are all special sciences in 
this sense. 

But i came across a very different sense while reading Terrence Deacon's 
_Incomplete Nature_ -- thanks to Gary Richmond for pointing to it, and i hope 
we can discuss it next year as Gary suggested, because it makes explicit use of 
some important Peircean ideas. Deacon implies that the usage of "special 
sciences" which he mentions is current within some (unspecified) academic or 
scientific community with which he is familiar. On page 40, for instance, he 
speaks of an "effort to include the special sciences (e.g., psychology, 
sociology, economics) within the natural sciences." I gather that by this 
usage, physics and chemistry are unequivocally "natural sciences", and 
therefore *not* "special", while the three sciences named by Deacon are 
"special" because their status as "natural" sciences is questionable. Elsewhere 
in the book Deacon seems to distance himself from this usage by referring to 
"the so-called special sciences". I recall using the terms "hard" and "soft 
sciences" to make a distinction like that, but have never heard the term 
"special sciences" used that way -- but then i don't move in academic circles. 
I'm wondering whether anyone else on peirce-l has come across this usage of the 
term.

Gary F.

} Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already enough 
names. One must know when to stop. [Tao Te Ching 32  (Feng/English)] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jerry LR Chandler
Sent: December-10-11 11:32 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Doctrine Of Individuals

Jon, List:

Thanks for posting this set of fragments on individuals.

The writings are well worth studying, particularly if one is interested in the 
leaps in CSP's mental development and his loss of correspondence with modern 
chemical theories.

The changing views of the notion of "individual" is amusing.

One should also note the inexact usage of the term "division" when in fact the 
meaning is "separation" (with respect to "logical atoms".)

One is forced to conclude that CSP's notion of a "logical atom" is remote from 
any sort of relation to chemistry where the reference for an atom is an atomic 
number and the signs from the indexical object.

It appears that he recognized this distinction and moved toward chemical 
thinking in his developments of his versions of graph theory.

Cheers

Jerry 

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

[Gary Fuhrman]

Peter, re the question you raise here ...

 

JR: “In developing Skagestad’s conception further in the direction indicated I 
also ground this in Peirce’s dictum, but I do so by making explicit a different 
(but complementary) implication of the same Peircean dictum, namely that all 
thought is dialogical. (JR’s emphasis)”

 

PS: A footnote indicates that I agree with this, which I do, but I want to 
raise the question whether this implication is actually ever made explicit by 
Peirce himself. Signs presuppose interpretation, and interpretation presupposes 
interpreters, which is made very explicit by Josiah Royce in his most Peircean 
writings, but did Peirce himself make this explicit? I am not saying he did 
not, but I am curious about references.

 

CP 4.551 (the 1906 “Prolegomena”):

[[[ Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be 
declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least 
two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these 
two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless 
be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not 
merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical 
evolution of thought should be dialogic. ]]]

 

I think that comes pretty close to JR’s statement.

 

Gary F.

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

 


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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Thanks for this, Ben, it gives a little more nuance to what i was trying to 
say. I’m in total agreement concerning words like “object” and “phenomenon” – 
including their necessary vagueness. “Positive” is another one of the words 
Peirce defined for the CD (at great length, in this case), from which i gather 
that a positive science is simply one that makes propositions, i.e. affirms 
something to be true of the real world (which is what it is independently of 
anyone’s beliefs about it). Mathematics doesn't do that, as Peirce says in CP 
3.428 (The Regenerated Logic, 1896) -- another passage that clarifies its 
relation to experience and logic:

[[[ When the mathematician deals with facts, they become for him mere 
“hypotheses”; for with their truth he refuses to concern himself. The whole 
science of mathematics is a science of hypotheses; so that nothing could be 
more completely abstracted from concrete reality. Philosophy is not quite so 
abstract. For though it makes no *special* observations, as every other 
positive science does, yet it does deal with reality. It confines itself, 
however, to the universal phenomena of experience; and these are, generally 
speaking, sufficiently revealed in the ordinary observations of every-day life. 
I would even grant that philosophy, in the strictest sense, confines itself to 
such observations as *must* be open to every intelligence which can learn from 
experience. Here and there, however, metaphysics avails itself of one of the 
grander generalisations of physics, or more often of psychics, not as a 
governing principle, but as a mere datum for a still more sweeping 
generalisation. But logic is much more abstract even than metaphysics. For it 
does not concern itself with any facts not implied in the supposition of an 
unlimited applicability of language. ]]]

 

Abstraction (in the sense above) obviously has its uses in the process of 
learning from experience, but not to the degree that it can *replace* 
experience. My guess is that this is the same issue that Irving and others have 
been dealing with in this thread with regard to “formalism”, but not being a 
mathematician, i don't always follow their idiom. Anyway all i'm trying to do 
is to emphasize the element of Secondness in “experience”, which i think was 
Joe's main point in this paper, although he chose not to use that term. I 
gather that Steven (and Kirsti?) think the point is something else, but it's 
not so clear to me what that is. Although there can be genuine surprises, and 
thus “experience” of a sort, even in the realm of abstractions (or fictions) -- 
which is also part of Joe's point -- it seems to me that “mathematization” of 
logic would necessarily move it even further from actual experience than it 
already is. To make that move in the name of “rigor” strikes me as a kind of 
obfuscation.

 

Gary F.

 

} By their fruits ye shall know them. [Matthew 7:20] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

 

 

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: November-29-11 3:33 PM

 

Gary, Steven,

 

Steven's discussion of his own view of ethics is a little less clearcut than 
Gary seems to see it as. On one hand Steven says "In my own terms I refer to 
"natural ethics" as the consideration of natural and inevitable behaviors and 
the means by which effective outcomes may be achieved (without judgement or 
notion of "right" or "wrong")." Steven says, 

In my own terms I refer to "natural ethics" as the consideration of natural and 
inevitable behaviors and the means by which effective outcomes may be achieved 
(without judgement or notion of "right" or "wrong"). My view does not concern 
"the should," "the right" or "the wrong." Rather, if you behave one way you 
will get one outcome, if you behave differently you will get another. My aim in 
the social case is to prefer the "good and productive" (the discussion of which 
I leave for another day). 

Steven is saying that he regards ethics in two ways:

*   Natural ethics: Natural and inevitable behaviors and their means. 
*   Social ethics The good and productive. (I.e., good and productive 
behaviors). That seems to be simply to regard what is _right_, what _should 
be_, as what is _good and productive_ in behavior.  

I'm not sure what Steven means by natural and inevitable behaviors - do they 
include behaviors of forces and matter? If so, why call it ethics? Or perhaps 
Steven means instinctive behaviors of living things - but in that case the 
'ethics' that evolution imposes on organisms is not one of effectiveness of a a 
given behavior for a given (near-term) end, but of what are forms or modes of 
conduct good and productive for the species.

 

Mathematization. When Steven says "broad mathematization of semeiotic theory," 
I strongly suspect that he does not mean reduction of semiotics to a deductive 
discipline about purely hypothet

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Steven, i had to read through your post three times before venturing a reply, 
because i couldn't believe that you would actually interpret JR's paper -- and 
the most straightforward part of it, at that -- as saying the opposite of what 
it really says. But further reading of both your post and JR's paper forces 
that conclusion. It seems that when you describe your approach as “rigorous”, 
what you mean is that it gives you a license to bend any text to your own 
preconceived purpose; and your reading of JR's text carries out that program 
recursively by ascribing that very idea to JR's text.

JR himself, on the other hand, says that “there is experience when and only 
when one finds oneself in a confrontation with something other than oneself and 
one's ideas that has the power to do something to one if one is not doing right 
by it.” (Notice the inclusion of the idea of “right” here.) This i take to be a 
paraphrase of Peirce's concept of the “outward clash” or reaction between ego 
and non-ego, i.e. Secondness, as the essential characteristic of “experience” 
in the context of scientific inquiry. There are many statements of this crucial 
idea in Peirce, perhaps the most well-known occurring in his second Harvard 
Lecture, “On Phenomenology” (EP2:150-55; see also CP 1.431, from The Logic of 
Mathematics, c. 1896). This is the “paradigm of experience” that JR sets out in 
his paper to “disentangle ... from certain other complexes of ideas”. It's also 
the idea that your commentary seems designed to deny. 

For instance (enclosing your words in [[ double brackets]]):

[[ In my own terms I refer to "natural ethics" as the consideration of natural 
and inevitable behaviors and the means by which effective outcomes may be 
achieved (without judgement or notion of "right" or "wrong"). ]]

In other words, your "ethics" consists of avoiding any inquiry that might 
interfere with your arbitrary choice of "outcome" (i.e. that which *you* 
consider to be “natural and inevitable” and therefore do not question). Such 
inquiry might involve paying attention to other people's opinions and arguments 
as to the desirability of the outcome, or attention to its predictable 
consequences (predictable by inference from previous *experience*, of course). 
This kind of inquiry would involve an “outward clash”, which apparently you 
prefer to avoid -- which effectively reduces your idea of practicality to the 
“low and sordid sense” which Peirce (CP 5.402 n2) contrasted to his pragmatic 
sense of the word.

[[ Although Ransdell does not get there in this paper, the inevitable 
destination of this approach is the broad mathematization of semeiotic theory 
(including ethics) beyond logic itself. ]]

“Mathematization” could be another way of avoiding experience as “outward 
clash”; for as Peirce says (CP 1.55, c.1896), “success in mathematics would 
necessarily create a confidence altogether unfounded in man's power of 
eliciting truth by inward meditation without any aid from experience.” More 
germane to the point of JR's paper, though, is Peirce's attempt to show that 
even deductive reasoning which does not involve any physical apparatus can 
still incorporate experience, insofar as it makes diagrams and observes the 
results that follow from operations on them quite independently of the 
reasoner's intentions. The observation of the diagram thus constitutes an 
“outward clash”. This argument implicitly counters “the metaphysical conception 
of the physical” which is perhaps the main idea from which JR is trying to 
disentangle “the paradigm of experience”, at least in [11].

Since the dynamic *object* is where Secondness lives in the basic triadic sign 
relation, it is probably natural that you prefer to “avoid "object" language”, 
as you say in your comment on [11]:

[[ Now we begin to head into difficult territory because the term "phenomenal," 
in my view, has the very problem that Ransdell observes. He defines "phenomenal 
object" as "the object unqualified per se by such notions as that of the 
physical, the sense-perceptible, and the like." ]]

This is not a definition but an observation on JR's part, which is clearly part 
of his effort toward disentanglement. It is obvious from the context that a 
"phenomenal object" is anything that can be *experienced* in the sense common 
to Peirce and JR as stated above: it is anything present to the mind in such a 
way that the mind can attend to it. (If you want a definition of “phenomenon” 
or “object”, both were defined by Peirce for the Century Dictionary and you can 
find the appropriate entries online.)

[[ I confess that I find the variety of uses of the term "phenomena" to be 
highly ambiguous and uncertain. ]]

The CD gives separate entries for its use in philosophy and in science; beyond 
that, attention to context is usually sufficient to disambiguate, if the 
interpreter is honestly trying to grasp the utterer's idea even (or especially) 
when it clashes with his o

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Kirsti,

It seems to me quite a stretch to interpret "Joe's explicit thesis" as being 
against "the common distinction between theory and practice", as you wrote in 
your message to Steven:

[[ With putting in the word 'theory' you implicate the common distinction 
between theory and practice. Which is exactly what Joe's explicit thesis was 
against. ]]

If you really meant that, i think you'd better explain how Joe's explicit 
thesis (or indeed anything explicit in the whole paper) argues against the 
distinction between theory and practice. (And manages to do "exactly" that 
without even mentioning the distinction explicitly.)

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Määttänen Kirsti
Sent: November-26-11 2:02 PM

Steven, list,

On 25.11.2011, at 13.02, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

> Dear Kristi,
> 
> By your analysis is there any logical or otherwise substantive distinction, 
> aside from the syntax, between the abbreviated statement: 
> 
>   "No distinction is to be drawn between the empirical and the 
> nonempirical in semeiotic theory."
> 
> And Joe's first sentence?
> 
>   " The thesis of my paper is that it is doubtful that any distinction 
> should be drawn between empirical and nonempirical semiotics or even between 
> experimental or nonexperimental semiotics."
> 
> In other words, can the first be substituted for the second without making a 
> difference. And if it cannot, what exactly is that difference?

I'll answer to the second wording of your question first, with a precept, in 
this case with a recommendation to try it out, to test  the case using the 
substitution rule (which I took up earlier).

 If you substitute the first sentence of Joe's paper with your sentence, does 
it make a difference? - I'm quite assured that all agree that it does. 

What is the difference, then? - Is it "logical or otherwise substantial"? - The 
possible answers to this question may be variable, depending on the meaning 
attached to ' logical' & 'substantial'. 

If, for instance, 'logical' is taken in the sense of propositional logic, 
dealing with (referential) truth values of (single) propositions, then it may 
seem, that there is no difference. 

But your abbreviated sentence (and Joe's sentence, for that matter) is not a 
simple proposition.. Both are about what should (or should not) be done. Which 
means that both Joe's sentence and your abbreviation of it deal with ethics, in 
the first place.  - Which means that propositional logic, as such, does not do 
the job needed.

It does not do to deal with them as simple statements with simple truth claims. 
The logic of ethical questions and ethical claims needs a quite different, a 
much wider ground & different methods. In this case, the question is about 
ethics of research: what should or should not be done. Ethics of research has, 
of course, to do with the question of finding, of approaching the truth. So 
their always is a connection, but not a straight-forward one. It is mediated by 
the 'would-be's. - Familiar to all Peirceans.

If and when the ethical is taken as the prime concern, I do find a difference 
(or rather several ones) between your wording and that of Joe's. And quite 
substantial, too. - Your proposal for a substitution was:
> "No distinction is to be drawn between the empirical and the nonempirical in 
> semeiotic theory."


While Joe wrote:
> ... it is doubtful that any distinction should be drawn between empirical and 
> nonempirical semiotics...

You make a command, resembling a  divine commandment, while Joe presents a 
doubt to his readers-to-be on whether ANY (whatsoever) distinction should be 
drawn between (this and that). A doubt about a distinction he recommends his 
readers to take up and see for themselves, after taking into account the whole 
of his paper. 

I feel quite confident in claiming that there will be a general agreement 
amongst the listers that Joe's ethical approach is a Peircean one. 

Note also that you have added the word 'theory' in your abbreviated sentence, 
which does not appear in Joe's original sentence. According to the rules in my 
method, no such additions are allowed. 

Does it make a difference? - Oh yeah, it does! 

In doing so, you make an assumption, unwarranted by the text. You make the 
assumption that the difference Joe is taking up is about a difference within 
semiotic theory and theoretical concerns. - There is nothing in the text to 
support this kind of assumption. Quite the contrary.

With putting in the word 'theory' you implicate the common distinction between 
theory and practice. Which is exactly what Joe's explicit thesis was against. 

If you now feel tempted to say that you did not mean it that way, it will be of 
no avail. This distinction is commonly made, and belongs to our habits of 
interpretation, no matter how anyone may opine. (This may alter, in some 
distant future, of course. But

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Kirsti,

I'll keep this short so that you can get back to the subject of Joe's paper. 
You wrote,
[[ I'm sorry you did not find my post informative, but rather a distraction. ]]

What i wrote -- with emphasis added to correct the apparent misreading -- was: 
"i wouldn't want *you* to be any further distracted by my question than *you* 
already have been." Unfortunately your reply shows that you're still distracted 
by it -- or rather by the one sentence you chose to pull from my original post 
for special attention (for reasons still unclear to me). If you disapprove of 
historical questions generally, or if the one i posted is as bad as you say, 
why not just drop it and turn to something more productive? As i said before, i 
look forward to your exegesis (or minute analysis or whatever you have in mind) 
of Joe's paper. 

Jumping to your final paragraph (since it appears to ask for a reply from me):
[[ Joe's thesis in the first sentence may seem obvious to you. ]]
My comment did not refer to Joe's first sentence, but to the thesis of his 
paper as a whole.

[[ But if you take a look at the next sentence (a paragraph being the unit of 
interpretation), you find there the distinction between the sciences and the 
humanities. - Do you think this distinction is not generally made in the 
community of inquiry? ]]

The distinction is certainly a common one; but i'm not sure exactly what you 
are referring to as "the community of inquiry".

[[ Or do you think this distinction should not be made? ]]

I don't have a problem with it, as long as it's not made "with an axe" (as 
Peirce would say). Why do you ask? (Please ignore that last question if it's a 
bad one!)

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Määttänen Kirsti
Sent: November-13-11 4:33 PM

Gary F., list

Thanks for an informative reply to my post.  I'm sorry you did not find my post 
informative, but rather a distraction. In many respects, you are right to view 
it as such. I just hope you did not find reading it a waste of time. 

 You wrote:
> GF: You seem to have a lot to say about the paper we are slow-reading, and i 
> look forward to that. But since you have no information to offer in reply to 
> my factual question about the occasion and audience of JR's paper, i wouldn't 
> want you to be any further distracted by my question than you already have 
> been. Indeed you've read so much into what i thought was a simple question 
> that i'd better explain why i thought it so simple.
Here you say that your factual question was about the occasion and audience of 
JR's paper. With all respect, this was not how you stated your question in your 
earlier post. 
> GF:  Since i had never heard (until now) of anyone wanting to make such a 
> distinction, i couldn't help wondering why JR thought it important enough to 
> write a whole paper one the question of how (or whether) such a distinction 
> should be made.

Can you see the difference? 

In my post, I tried to warn you that no answer is to be expected. Instead, I 
focused on slow read as a method, starting from the relation of your question - 
as it was then posed - to the task of interpreting and understanding JR's first 
paragraph. 

I agree with you in that :
> GF: ...for Peirce, semiotic is necessarily experiential...
But not with:
> GF: ...simply because it is a science. 
I can't see anything simple in that. 

Nor do I see that:
> GF: It follows that terms like “experimental semiotics” and “empirical 
> semiotics” would be simply redundant for anyone deploying a strictly 
> Peircean conception of “experience” (as explicated by JR in the paper 
> we are reading)

Hm. There may be many who take themselves to be deploying "a strictly Peircean 
conception of 'experience'" But, unhappily, there is no general agreement in 
the community of inquiry what a strictly Peircean conception of experience is. 
Not even on what Peirce's conception of experience strictly taken involves. 
And, further, if and when the community of inquiry is taken as including not 
only Peirceans, there is no general agreement (i.e. something simple and 
self-evident to all) of a valid concept of experience (which would necessarily 
involve a theory).  

To cut it short, I think you miss the main point in JR's introduction in the 
paper.

First: Note the wording in JR's title. It is not "The Paradigm of  Experience 
Appropriate..., but: "ON the paradigm of...

Which is to interpreted - if the interpretation keeps strictly to the evidence 
at hand (i.e. the title) - that JR was not giving a presentation of THE 
paradigm (etc), but dealing with issues relevant FOR developing such a 
paradigm.  - So, there is no evidence in the title that the paper was  meant to 
be an explication of a strictly Peircean conception of experience. It is only 
telling us that something relevant for developing such a paradigm is dealt 
with. 

In his mature work, Peirce consid

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Kirsti,

You seem to have a lot to say about the paper we are slow-reading, and i look 
forward to that. But since you have no information to offer in reply to my 
factual question about the occasion and audience of JR's paper, i wouldn't want 
you to be any further distracted by my question than you already have been. 
Indeed you've read so much into what i thought was a simple question that i'd 
better explain why i thought it so simple.

Last week, Jon posted a bit of Peirce's 1897 fragment (CP 2.227) which says in 
part: 
[[ Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another 
name for *semiotic* (σημειωτικη), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of 
signs. By describing the doctrine as “quasi-necessary,” or formal, I mean that 
we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an 
observation, by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are 
led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means 
necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by a 
“scientific” intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of 
learning by experience. ]]

>From this and many other statements, it seems clear that for Peirce, semiotic 
>is necessarily experiential simply because it is a science. (The same is true 
>of “philosophy, in the strictest sense,” according to CP 3.428 1896, and 
>Steven has objected to that ‘strict sense’ of “philosophy”, but i think even 
>he would allow that it applies to any Peircean semiotic, no matter how you 
>spell it.)  It follows that terms like “experimental semiotics” and “empirical 
>semiotics” would be simply redundant for anyone deploying a strictly Peircean 
>conception of “experience” (as explicated by JR in the paper we are reading). 
>But as a quick Google search shows, some writers have actually used those 
>terms as if they were not redundant. Hence my tentative hypothesis that JR was 
>addressing his paper questioning the rhetorical viability of such terms 
>primarily to an audience interested in semiotics but perhaps not deeply 
>grounded in Peirce, who therefore might be tempted to use such questionable 
>terms. (My impression is that many European semioticians are not very well 
>acquainted with Peirce, or at least that was the case 30 years ago when JR's 
>paper was originally written.)

You might ask why there's any need for such guesses about the occasion and 
audience of JR's paper. The simple answer is that Joe's thesis in this paper 
seems to me so obvious that i can't help wondering why he would bother to write 
a whole paper on it. But perhaps it's only obvious to me because i had already 
dealt with the role of experience in sciences (from a Peircean point of view) 
in a chapter of my work in progress. Of course i may be missing some hidden 
depths in JR's paper, precisely because i see in it some points i had already 
written down myself before reading it; and i'll be happy if you show me some 
things i might have missed in this paper. Presently, though, i'm just 
explaining why i asked what seemed to me a simple historical question when i 
posted it.

Gary F.


} Judge people by truth, not truth by people. [Al-Ghazali] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Kirsti, it's good to hear from you again, especially to hear that you've 
recovered from a health setback.

You may be able to suggest an answer to a question that's been bothering me 
since i read the first sentence of JR's paper: " The thesis of my paper is that 
it is doubtful that any distinction should be drawn between empirical and 
nonempirical semiotics or even between experimental and nonexperimental 
semiotics." Since i had never heard (until now) of anyone wanting to make such 
a distinction, i couldn't help wondering why JR thought it important enough to 
write a whole paper one the question of how (or whether) such a distinction 
should be made. So i did a Google search on "empirical semiotics" (or 
"semeiotics"), hoping to get some idea of the history of the concept. The hits 
were surprisingly few, and most of those listed at the top seem to be Finnish 
sites. Being a Finn yourself, i thought you might have some insight into this 
history.

Since JR doesn't bother to introduce the concept to his audience, i can only 
assume that the subject must have been a current one at the time JR wrote the 
paper, so that he assumed his audience was familiar with it. (Which implies, to 
me at least, that it must have been an audience familiar with the field of 
semiotics as it existed at the time -- not just an audience of "philosophers".) 
But perhaps Steven knows more than he has yet said about the occasion and the 
audience for which this paper was originally written.

And by the way, i agree with just about everything you've said in your post.

Gary F.

} Truth is truth, whether it is opposed to the interests of society to admit it 
or not. [Peirce] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Määttänen Kirsti
Sent: November-10-11 5:16 PM

List,

First, I feel a need for a short note of apology to those engaged in the list 
some years back, especially to Bernard. In the midst of a lively and deeply 
interesting discussion, I disappeared. - My health then failed me.

So frail, so frail is life. And yet - so strong!

Which means, amongst other (myriads of) things, that I'm back, biting in the 
tail (or head?) of life, conversing with you listers again.

I do miss Joe. - Miss with a new note now, after reading this article of Joe's 
under discussion. - Now I understand, what I missed when I did not read it 
earlier, when I would have had the opportunity of discussing it with him, 
personally. 

Well, then. To the issues at hand. I'll start at the beginning.

Steven starts with the first paragraph of the article:

> Ransdell's approach is provocative. He begins:
> 
> "[1] The thesis of my paper is that it is doubtful that any distinction 
> should be drawn between empirical and nonempirical semiotics or even between 
> experimental and nonexperimental semiotics. Doing so tends to reproduce 
> within the semiotics movement the present academic distinction between the 
> sciences and the humanities which semiotics should aim at discouraging, 
> rather than reinforcing. But to overcome this undesirable dichotomy, it is 
> necessary to disentangle the conceptions of the experiential, the 
> experimental and the empirical from certain other complexes of ideas with 
> which they have become associated by accident rather than necessity."
> 
> I confess that on first reading the phrase "it is doubtful that" caused me 
> some problems. I think it dilutes the impact of the paper and reveals a 
> caution that I think is unnecessary. This is, I believe, because Ransdell is 
> addressing a community of American philosophers, a European thinker would 
> have been more confidently assertive. 

With this I cannot agree. - I am a European thinker, and it would't cross my 
mind to tackle with the phrase "it is doubtful".  And further: I do not think 
it reveals any unnecessary caution. The distinction Joe takes up  is commonly 
made, and is (and has been) taken as self-evident. 

> Ransdell here sees the development of Semeiotic Theory as the activity of 
> "philosophers" and they are clearly his audience, so I should make it clear 
> from the start - in order to contextualize my comments - that I do not think 
> this. Semeiotic Theory is, for me, the first activity of scientific thinking. 
> I further believe that it should be the first activity in mathematical 
> thinking, though today it is not.

Well, Steve. You use quotation marks with "phIlosophers". - To me, this causes 
problems. Joe does not use the word in this paragraph. So you do not quote Joe. 
- Why the quotation marks,  then? 

> This is no criticism of Ransdell, I'm quite sure he would agree, but it is 
> important to the reading of the paper and to understanding my comments.
Hm. I'm not so sure Joe would.
> 
> In any case, what Ransdell says here is, on the face of it, radical. 
> Semeiotic Theory, he says, must avoid the distinct

[peirce-l] FW: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

[Gary Fuhrman]

Steven, thanks for getting our next slow read started – i have a couple of 
questions and a comment on your first post.

In your comments on JR's opening, you say that “Semeiotic Theory is, for me, 
the first activity of scientific thinking.” I take “Semeiotic Theory” to be 
your shorthand for “development of Semeiotic Theory” (since “Theory” is not in 
itself an “activity”). Given the usual Peircean concept of “philosophy” as “an 
experiential, or positive science, but a science which rests on no special 
observations, made by special observational means, but on phenomena which lie 
open to the observation of every man, every day and hour” (CP 7.526), the 
proposition that “the development of Semeiotic Theory is the first activity of 
scientific thinking” would seem to imply that it *is* the activity of 
philosophers (as well as thinkers in more specialized sciences). Yet you say 
that you “do not think this.” Should we infer then that the term “philosopher” 
for you denotes something other than a practitioner of “philosophy” as Peirce 
defined it? Or did you mean to say that Semeiotic theorizing is the first 
activity *not only* of philosophers but of all scientific thinkers?

One comment on your paraphrase of JR's opening:
[[ Semeiotic Theory, he says, must avoid the distinction between the empirical 
and the nonempirical, between experimental and the nonexperimental. ]] Yet JR 
does make this distinction explicitly, in paragraphs 9 and 10, in order that it 
may be “possible for us to regard *all* applied semiotics as empirical 
semiotics” [8 -- emphasis JR's]. This latter claim would be meaningless if 
there were no difference between empirical and non-empirical. JR's point, then, 
is not that Semeiotic Theory must avoid the distinction altogether, but that we 
must “disentangle the conceptions of the experiential, the experimental and the 
empirical from certain other complexes of ideas with which they have become 
associated” [1]. And that is what JR proceeds to do – after several paragraphs 
of beating about the bush of entanglements from which he wishes to free those 
conceptions.

One more question, regarding “Semeiotic Theory”: would you characterize your 
“technical excursion” on JR's paragraph [2] as an instance or an application of 
it? Or is it an excursion *from* “Semeiotic Theory”? For me at least, your 
answer might help to clarify your intention to “to lay a more rigorous 
foundation for the discussion of the rest of the paper,” as i'm finding it 
difficult to see the point of your “excursion.” 

Gary F.

} How do you know you are on the path? Reality checks you at every turn. [gnox] 
{

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
Sent: November-06-11 1:08 AM

Dear List,

Herein begins the slow read of:

On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic by Joseph 
Ransdell
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/paradigm.htm

This paper was originally presented in 1980 and last modified as the above 
version in 1998.

I have delayed starting in order to review the notes that I have made in 
preparing for this reading. I want to ensure that my comments take into account 
the full context of the paper and in the past few days I have spent some more 
time with the paper in order to achieve this. 

I have also taken the opportunity to review comments that relate to this 
subject that Joe made in conversations with myself and others over the past 
decade on Peirce-l. Readers of this paper should also reference the following 
paper that was the subject of a slow read in July.

Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/phenom.htm

This paper provides an informal discussion of "categories of apprehension" and 
advocates, explores and clarifies the unified view of science and the nature of 
verification as advocated by Peirce and numerous thinkers that came after 
Peirce, notably Rudolf Carnap. 

Ransdell's approach is provocative. He begins:

"[1] The thesis of my paper is that it is doubtful that any distinction should 
be drawn between empirical and nonempirical semiotics or even between 
experimental and nonexperimental semiotics. Doing so tends to reproduce within 
the semiotics movement the present academic distinction between the sciences 
and the humanities which semiotics should aim at discouraging, rather than 
reinforcing. But to overcome this undesirable dichotomy, it is necessary to 
disentangle the conceptions of the experiential, the experimental and the 
empirical from certain other complexes of ideas with which they have become 
associated by accident rather than necessity."

I confess that on first reading the phrase "it is doubtful that" caused me some 
problems. I think it dilutes the impact of the paper and reveals a caution that 
I think is unnecessary. This is, I believe, because Ransdell is addressing a 
community of American philosophers, a

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 6

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jerry,

Sorry, i was just trying to explain how the terms "collective" and 
"distributive" are used by logicians such as Peirce in actual discourse (which 
apparently does not interest you). I couldn't tell from your earlier post -- 
and still can't tell from this one! -- whether you were aware that these are 
standard terms in logic, with conventionally established uses, and have been 
since well before Peirce's time. Whether they are standard terms in set theory 
i neither know nor care, and i didn't profess to say anything about set theory.

I gather that you think the meanings of a term (such as "communication" or 
"community") should somehow be deduced from its etymological root, and you 
therefore choose to ignore the role of convention and context in determining 
its role within a specific symbol (such as JR's essay or one of the comments on 
it). But i don't think that someone who arbitrarily reinvents the meanings of 
conventional terms can reasonably expect others to guess what he's using them 
for. Make your *language* idiosyncratic enough, and nobody else can even tell 
whether your *opinions* are idiosyncratic or not!

Gary F.

} Any analytical approach to understanding simplicity always turns out to be 
very complex. [Howard Pattee] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jerry LR Chandler
Sent: October-05-11 10:16 PM

On Oct 2, 2011, at 11:06 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

> Jerry,
> 
> [[ I have been debating with myself for the past month on the relations 
> between "collective" and "distributive"  in the context of 'communicational 
> communities'. A complete stalemate exists. I have no idea what this phrase 
> might mean logically or socially. ]]
> 
> If you have no idea what the phrase " communicational communities" denotes, i 
> wonder how you are able to sustain a debate about the relations between terms 
> in that context!  But just in case it might be helpful: a proposition 
> referring to a set (or group or class or community) is taken collectively if 
> its subject is *the set as a whole*, and is taken distributively if its 
> subject is *each member* of the set. (Or it can be taken selectively, in 
> which case its subject is *some member* of the set.) In the case of a 
> scientific community, for instance, there's a big difference (and a logical 
> relation of some kind) between the behavior of the community and the behavior 
> of its members. And the same goes for a political community.
> 
> Gary F.

Hi Gary:

Thanks for the intriguing response to the notion "internal debate."

Of course, an internal debate is a reflexive mental action on our individual 
personal experience, intellectual development, present context, and so forth. 
It is a unique, one-of-a-kind debate that Is difficult to make public as the 
representations are embedded in our personal neuronal networks of meaningful 
symbolizations. 

I will make an effort to give my personal view, which certainly will NOT 
include a reference to set theory.  In my debate, set theory never enters the 
stage. The reason is simple. Set theory is known for decades to be laced with 
paradoxes. More recently, the issues of "para-consistency" have rotted away the 
foundations of set theory as a decision making tool for biology / medicine. Set 
theory may be useful in machine logic, certain computations and in some nice 
narratives, but, it is not adequate for the logic of chemistry or biology. 
Hence, we have "biosemiotics" as an inquiry into the logic of biology and 
medicine.

More specifically, my conundrum lies with the roots of the terms used in the 
phrase.
The pairs of symbols "communicating communities" both are derived from the same 
root, so the adjective function is modifying itself. Thus, the pair of symbols 
is analogous to the grammar of the pair, reddish redness. 
Is this meaningful?

The second pair of symbols, distributive and collective, are intimately related.
A collection is possible only from a distribution.
A distribution is possible only from a collection.
The terms function as inverses of one another.
Is this meaningful?

So, my internal debate is a  futile search for meaning from the roots of the 
terms as I understand them.

Everyone is entitled to a few idiosyncratic opinions, are they not?

Cheers

Jerry 

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Re: [peirce-l] “Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic”

[Gary Fuhrman]

I agree with Jon, and i think the first Peirce quote that JR includes in his 
paper pretty well justifies the remark that 90% of his "*philosophical* output" 
is directly concerned with semiotic. The only thing that makes it a bit odd is 
that it represents a retrospective relabelling on Peirce's part. If the claim 
were that 90% of his philosophical work is concerned with logic (in the broad 
sense), hardly anybody would balk at that. But it was only late in his career 
that Peirce began to use the term "semiotic" (however we spell it) and 
identified logic with it. So it's a bit like JR's claim that his 1867 "New 
List" is the basic text on his "phenomenology" even though Peirce didn't use 
that term for it until 1902; but in the case of "semiotic" we have a stronger 
textual mandate for applying the term retroactively.

Gary F.

} Her untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest has gone by many names 
at disjointed times. [Finnegans Wake 104] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce



-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jon Awbrey
Sent: October-02-11 7:44 PM

NH = Nathan Houser

NH: JR began this paper by pointing out that Peirce conceived of semiotics
 as a foundational theory capable of unifying sub-theories dealing with
 communication, meaning, and inference.  This may call for some discussion.
 He then claims that 90% of Peirce's "prodigious philosophical output" is
 directly concerned with semiotic."  This is an odd claim in a way since it
 does not seem to be straightforwardly true. How can we make sense of it?

 From my sense of Peirce's work, I would have say that I agree with the claim 
that Joe makes on this point, even if I can't say whether it would be for any 
of the same reasons he had in mind.  Understanding Peirce's pragmatism depends 
on understanding sign relations, triadic relations, and relations in general, 
all of which forms the conceptual framework of his theory of inquiry and his 
theory of signs.

Regards,

Jon

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 6

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jerry,

[[ I have been debating with myself for the past month on the relations between 
"collective" and "distributive"  in the context of 'communicational 
communities'. A complete stalemate exists. I have no idea what this phrase 
might mean logically or socially. ]]

If you have no idea what the phrase " communicational communities" denotes, i 
wonder how you are able to sustain a debate about the relations between terms 
in that context!  But just in case it might be helpful: a proposition referring 
to a set (or group or class or community) is taken collectively if its subject 
is *the set as a whole*, and is taken distributively if its subject is *each 
member* of the set. (Or it can be taken selectively, in which case its subject 
is *some member* of the set.) In the case of a scientific community, for 
instance, there's a big difference (and a logical relation of some kind) 
between the behavior of the community and the behavior of its members. And the 
same goes for a political community.

Gary F.

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 6

[Gary Fuhrman]

Sally, i’d just like to say thanks for your leadership in the slow read of this 
paper – your probing questions and your introduction of other perspectives 
revealed aspects of its meaning that i wouldn’t otherwise have noticed.

 

On JR’s recommendation against “debate”, my guess at his point is that debate 
is not a mode of inquiry or communication at all, but rather a competitive game 
or power struggle, a parody of genuine argument. The spirit of debate is 
therefore alien to the life of science, which JR characterizes as an 
“idealistic” quest for truth -- definitely a Peircean view of science. As for 
Peirce’s use of the term “debate”, i did come across one passage seems to 
reflect the view i’m attributing to JR – CP 2.635 (1878):

[[[ Some persons fancy that bias and counter-bias are favorable to the 
extraction of truth—that hot and partisan debate is the way to investigate. 
This is the theory of our atrocious legal procedure. But Logic puts its heel 
upon this suggestion. It irrefragably demonstrates that knowledge can only be 
furthered by the real desire for it, and that the methods of obstinacy, of 
authority, and every mode of trying to reach a foregone conclusion, are 
absolutely of no value. ]]]

 

Gary F.

 

} Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them 
all yourself. [Eleanor Roosevelt] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Sally Ness
Sent: September-29-11 8:37 PM



...

 

*  JR recommends not to debate the topic of "what is true" with academic 
politicians (paragraph 24).  He justifies this by identifying debate as a 
political rather than a logical mode of discourse and, so, of no value ("one 
wins nothing").  This refusal to engage will short circuit the attempted 
interruptions of the interlopers.

 

*  JR recommends to focus communications on what science, in truth, is "all 
about"--what keeps the tradition of inquiry "healthy" as a form of life in the 
long-run.  This kind of communication, JR argues, will be attractive to 
non-scientists, as it will lay out what is inherently admirable in scientific 
life, its "adventurous and chance-taking spirit" and its "commitment to turning 
failure to success by treating mistakes as opportunities to correct one's 
course rather than as signs of defeat or incompetence." (paragraph 25)

 

Before returning to the question above, I can't help but say that JR's idea 
that debate--of any kind--could be illogical seems hard to fathom.  His 
recommendation that scientists refuse to communicate with academic politicians 
on the topic of truth as it relates to science, is even harder to swallow 
(swallowing in the spirit of Peirce here).  How can such a refusal be 
considered a sincere, logical response worthy of a scientist?   The 
recommendation seems to exaggerate the differences between the scientific and 
the political modes of life, dissociating them to a degree that is 
dehumanizing.  It also seems to discount the possibility that scientists could 
actually win such a debate and that their victory, if they did so, would have 
any meaningful consequences at all for their community as well as the political 
community involved.  Wouldn't a Peircean outlook see more potential for 
communication here?  Wouldn't it be more likely to place  scientific and  
political forms of communication, logic, debate, and life in relation to one 
another and to situate them along a spectrum of human experience, rather than 
to dissociate them in such a radical way? In sum, I am having trouble imagining 
Peirce recommending this course of action, let alone following it himself.  
Peirce wasn't one to refrain from engaging in debate of any kind, with scholars 
or with politicians, academic or otherwise, whether or not the topic was 
initially framed in accordance with his views.  Perhaps listers can supply some 
evidence in support of the Peircean spirit of JR's first recommendation--I'm 
drawing a blank.

 

...

 


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 5 the schizoid machine

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gene,

 

I always enjoy your eloquent rants, and i'd like to thank you for bringing MS 
1334 to our attention; the few fragments of it which i found by online search 
are very interesting. But some readers of this list may not be aware (as of 
course you are) that “profitable pure research” is a pure oxymoron in terms of 
Peirce's conception of “science.” Peirce himself was often vociferous about the 
immense gap between the ideal of genuine science and the professional 
(profitable) practice which he called “Art”, which in our current vernacular is 
called “technology” and usually conflated with “science” (as in your own term 
“sci-tech”). The ascendancy (and destructiveness) of corporate “science” has 
vastly escalated in our time, but i don't see how Peirce can be blamed for that 
– or for using the term “science” to denote the ideal (self-correcting) form of 
inquiry, especially when he pointed out so clearly that this ideal was rarely 
actualized even in his own time, and that its place in society was commonly 
usurped by a corrupted practice for which he expressed a profound contempt. 
(Especially in the Cambridge lectures of 1898, but elsewhere too.)

 

Anyway, i wonder if you can be a little more specific about Peirce’s 
“denigration of the here and now of creation in favor of the long run.” If you 
are referring to the passage you quote from MS 1334, you'll have to show me 
where you find this “denigration”, because i don't see it expressed or implied 
there. If you have found it expressed elsewhere in Peirce, i'd be grateful if 
you could point it out. If you can, it will pose quite a challenge to reconcile 
such an attitude with Peirce's consistently maintained principle that all the 
sciences – including philosophy, mathematics and phaneroscopy – depend 
crucially on observation; for observation is always here and now. To observe 
that any particular observation is an infinitesimal part of the process of 
inquiry is hardly a denigration; rather it’s a humble affirmation of continuity 
as Peirce conceived it, the continuity of mind and nature (and God, who for 
Peirce is anything but impersonal).

 

Gary F.

 

} None of us can fully realize what the minds of corporations are, any more 
than one of my brain cells can know what the whole brain is thinking. [Peirce] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic 
studies: Peirce

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Eugene Halton
Sent: September-28-11 6:09 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" 
Segment 5 the schizoid machine

 

9/28/11

My apologies: Some uncensored thinking out loud follows.

Joe’s remarks clarify the scarifying effects of the authoritarianism of 
reputation in academic and scientific life, and show how the reality of 
communicative qualities such as sincerity and earnestness are necessary for 
science. But something seems to me to be missing. Science comes out clean, 
while self-interested power mongers and status seekers come out dirty. But is 
actually existing science so clean? Or is it that Peirceans get lost in the 
mists of the unlimited community of inquirers, happily dissecting its way 
toward the horizon of truth…at any cost? 

 

Big Science in the USA emerged from The Manhattan Project sucking up to 
military-corporate money power, utilizing it to make precise discoveries at any 
cost. The big sciences today function in many ways as the research arm of 
global capitalism. Is that just a “blip”? How about altering genetic codes for 
profitable pure research? Don’t block the road of inquiry? Whoops, humans and 
numerous other species eradicated. A mere short-term fact without consequence 
in the long run of science? 

 

The broader development of scientific materialism, which animates the sciences 
today, is the Frankenstein of nominalism, which would destroy anything in the 
interests of “pure” research. If science is inadequate for the practice of 
life, as Peirce saw it, because it is too thin, then aren’t scientists, qua 
scientists, inadequately developed humans? Perhaps subhuman would be a more 
accurate term. They can be characterized as subhuman not because of extrinsic 
reputational or authority incursions into science proper, but because science 
proper, as is commonly practiced now, is conceived as a schizoid machine. 

 

It is all well and good to argue that Peirce’s conception of science can 
overcome the schizoid machine of science today in the long run, but that 
assumes the schizoid machine of science does not operate under a telos of its 
own, that of the sorcerer’s apprentice, able and willing to release powers it 
has no clue (or interest in) how to control. Modern, nominalistically conceived 
scientific materialism, far from evicting final purpose from nature, actually 
swept it under the table, so that it could function

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 5

[Gary Fuhrman]

Sally,

 

JR's “overall form of life” does sound more like Wittgenstein's Lebensform than 
a Peircean idiom, but as i think you mentioned before, he seems to be going out 
of his way here to avoid Peircean terminology that might put off the people 
he’s addressing. However it does seem to me quite compatible with Peirce’s 
ideas on scientific inquiry. I don’t think i’d agree that JR “locates truth 
entirely within the "life" of the inquirer, not in the subject matter that 
determines the inquirer's inquiry, and not in any relation that the inquirer 
and the subject-matter might be maintaining to one another”. We’re talking 
about the life of a symbol here, and a genuine symbol must involve both 
indexical and iconic components in generating an interpretant, which does imply 
a relation between the inquirer and the subject-matter (to put it in less 
Peircean terms).

 

Speaking of the “communicational community”, JR’s assertion that it “exists 
distributively not collectively” looks at first more individualistic than 
anything Peirce would say, but i think makes a more Peircean sense if we bear 
in mind the typical Peircean distinction between reality and existence. I think 
Peirce would say that the community as a “form of life” is more real than the 
individual inquirer, but it only exists in the actual practice of individual 
inquirers. And that practice, to be genuine, requires an objective focus on 
“subject-specific properties”, as JR puts it in paragraph 23.

 

That’s how i see it, anyway.

 

Gary F.

 

} Sincerity is incommunicable because it becomes insincere by being 
communicated. [Luhmann] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Sally Ness
Sent: September-23-11 6:11 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" 
Segment 5

 

Segment 5

 

List,

 

As Jerry Chandler has commented, how much weight the scientific community 
places on the concept of sincerity may be open to doubt.  However, there is 
little doubt about the weight the community places on the concept of truth.  
The fifth segment of the paper, "Sciences as Communicational Communities," 
which is composed of paragraphs 22 and 23 (reproduced below), focuses directly 
and mainly on the concept of truth. 

 

Given the interest that has already been shown in this concept on previous 
posts, and the expertise many listers have already demonstrated with respect to 
philosophical discourses focusing on this concept, I am going to leave the main 
points of this segment open for response by those who have much greater 
philosophical understanding of them than I.  I will attempt little more in what 
follows than a reprise of the contents of the segment that identifies a few 
instances where more elaboration, definition, and discussion from those who 
would be inclined to provide it would be particularly helpful.  I hope that 
listers with greater knowledge of Peirce's thinking with respect to the concept 
of truth will come forward to fill in the record in these and other respects.

 

JR's language seems to depart more markedly from the letter, if not the spirit, 
of Peirce in this penultimate segment than in any other part of the paper.  JR 
acknowledges this somewhat at the outset of the segment, but claims that what 
he is presenting is an original insight from Peirce, forging one of the 
strongest explicit links to Peirce that appears in the paper in so doing.  JR 
uses the concept of "assertion indicator" to identify the "force" of truth in 
the predicate "is true."  "Assertion indicator" is the first of several 
concepts, such as "speech-act," "communicational act," and "appropriate 
responsiveness" that  appear to be referencing something other than Peirce's 
own terminology.  I am guessing that Austin's speech act theory is in the 
background here, but I doubt this is the only non-Peircean frame of reference.  
Additional identification of what literature JR is most likely drawing on here 
would be much appreciated. JR indicates that he has gone further elsewhere in 
his work with these concepts.  Perhaps we will see them again in a later paper.

 

In any case, JR's key point in paragraph 22 is that truth ought to be 
understood, for the purposes at hand at least, in terms of its manifestation in 
relation to a verbal sign, and a predicate sign specifically, a sign that does 
not convey "content" (as the subject of the sentence would be doing).  Rather, 
the predicate sign directs those who are interpreting the sentence to do so in 
a manner that is in accordance with the norms that govern their communicational 
processes generally speaking.  In other words, the phrase, "is true," is a 
signal designed to compel normative communicative action, nothing more, nothing 
less.  JR specifies that this signalling is not to be confused with any 
function that spee

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Ben, i don’t think this discussion of the “afterlife” is so far off the track 
of Joe’s paper. It’s related to the connection (and the difference) between the 
autonomy of semiosis and the autonomy of the individual sentient being. We just 
have to bear in mind that in the 1893 paper you’ve been quoting, which follows 
closely after the Monist metaphysical series including “The Law of Mind” and 
“Evolutionary Love”, Peirce is speaking more in metaphysical terms than in 
semiotic terms. 

 

In those terms, death is the end point of the habit-taking process through 
which original spontaneity takes on definite, determinate form. The death of an 
individual is the throwing off of a habit, or rather a habit-system, whose 
autonomy consists in self-definition. “The individual man, since his separate 
existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything 
apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a 
negation” (EP1:55). In the more comprehensively autonomous universe of 
semiosis, the loss of determinate individuality is like waking from the “carnal 
consciousness” of habit-bound sleep to the “lively spiritual consciousness” 
which, in Peirce’s cosmology, preceded the laws of nature, gave rise to them 
and continues to keep the cosmos alive by preventing it from becoming totally 
habit-bound. If this “lively spiritual consciousness” is an “afterlife”, it is 
also a before-life and indeed a continuous life, to which an individual or 
“carnal” life is little more than an interruption. “The world to come” is 
simply the future, i.e. the not-yet-determined.

 

Peirce says that “A man is capable of a spiritual consciousness, which 
constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is embodied in the universe 
as a whole.” The verb in the last clause is in the singular, so its subject 
must be “one of the eternal verities” – not all of them -- and yet this one is 
embodied in the universe as a whole. (Or else it’s the spiritual consciousness 
which is embodied in the universe as a whole.) I think we are close here to the 
double vision in which “a man's spirit is embodied in others” and yet, insofar 
as he is conscious of them, all the others are embodied in him. Another 
approach to this double vision can be found in EP2:472:

[[ what I am conscious of ... is evidently the entire universe, so far as I am 
concerned. Yet there is a wonderful revelation for me in the phenomenon of my 
sometimes becoming conscious that I have been in error, which at once shows me 
that if there can be no universe, as far as I am concerned, except the universe 
I am aware of, still there are differences in awareness. I become aware that 
though ‘universe’ and ‘awareness’ are one and the same thing, yet somehow the 
universe will go on in some definite fashion after I am dead and gone, whether 
I shall be the least aware of it, or not. ]]

 

If the universe will go on living, then the “lively spiritual consciousness” 
will go on in the afterlife (the future), while the error-ridden ego or 
individual consciousness is dead and gone, like everything else which has been 
relegated to the determinate past. My guess is that the “special spiritual 
embodiment” to which the “archetypal idea” is destined is none other than the 
ultimate logical interpretant of the person as sign, who is himself one of a 
sequence of interpretants whose single object is the universe itself. I don’t 
think this is incompatible with your reading, although the emphasis is 
different.

 

Gary F.

 

} Freedom lies only in our innate human capacity to choose between different 
sorts of bondage, bondage to desire or self esteem, or bondage to the light 
that lightens all our lives. [Sri Madhava] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: August-11-11 1:17 AM



 

Gary F., Stephen,

 

After this I promise to try to focus my attention on the slow read discussion 
that Gary Richmond is leading. The first section of Joe's paper had my mind 
running in so many direction that I fell off the track.

 

* * *

 

I agree that there's plenty of continuity in the 1893 paper with Peirce's later 
views, the idea of one's living on in others. Still, he says:  "we shall at 
once perceive that we have had all along a lively spiritual consciousness which 
we have been confusing with something different"

 

Gary is right to note the "we" - in the 1893 article Peirce speaks of what "we" 
shall perceive after carnal death - a plural that's consistent with the idea of 
a collective consiousness. Indeed there he discusses the falsity of absolute 
divisions between onself and others.

 

A lively spiritual consciousness is still a _lively consciousness_, whether 
it's we together or you and I separately who experience it. And it's a _lively 
consciousness_ that we _perceptually_ disting

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

I agree with Stephen. In the 1893 piece, Peirce says nothing about the 
immortality *of the soul*, where "soul" would mean the spiritual consciousness 
*of an individual* person. The very idea of a completely *separate* spiritual 
identity is "the metaphysics of wickedness", an illusion which vanishes at 
death, when "we shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively 
spiritual consciousness which we have been confusing with something different" 
-- emphasis on the "we" (not as plurality but as the "continuity of being").

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: August-10-11 1:46 AM

Not wishing to be contrarian Ben, but it seems to me that in the early passages 
you cite Peirce holds a view not dissimilar from his later view. In the whole 
of his "Science and Immortality" piece of 1887 he is as skeptical as he is 
later. Only on a superficial reading could one conclude otherwise. What he 
alludes to I believe is his belief in a necessary universal basis of mind and 
the "spiritual consciousness" to which he refers is the non-carnal embodied 
state in which the universal is manifest.

With respect,
Steven

On Aug 9, 2011, at 8:10 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

> Gary F., Stephen, Steven,
>  
> In "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (1893, retitled "Immortality and 
> Synechism" by the CP editors), Peirce says.
> CP 7.576. Nor is this, by any means, all. A man is capable of a spiritual 
> consciousness, which constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is 
> embodied in the universe as a whole. This as an archetypal idea can never 
> fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment.
>  
> CP 7.577 [] In the same manner, when the carnal consciousness passes away 
> in death, we shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively 
> spiritual consciousness which we have been confusing with something different.
> But it's clear as all of you point out, that in 1906 (in CP 6.520-21), Peirce 
> was much less sure about immortality.
>  
> 1887 - contributes a chapter 
> http://books.google.com/books?id=V9wPYAAJ&pg=PA69 to a symposium on 
> "Science and Immortality". Doubtful about immortality. CP 6.548-56.
> 1893 - "Immortality in the Light of Synechism," immortality & survival after 
> carnal death. CP 7.565-78, EP 2:1-3
> 1906 - "Immortality" (in "Answers to Questions concerning My Belief in God") 
> - Not sure about immortality or life after death "content to be in God's 
> hands" CP 6.519-21.
>  
> Best, Ben
>  
>  

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Ben, you wrote:

 

[[Peirce believed in a spiritual consciousness, a soul-consciousness, 
confusable with social and carnal kinds of consciousness but becoming clear to 
one, as Peirce came to believe, in surviving the body's death. ]]

 

Can you cite a text where Peirce says this? He does speak of a “spiritual 
consciousness” but i haven’t seen any place where he speaks of this as the 
consciousness of an individual soul surviving the body’s death, or expresses 
belief in that kind of afterlife. He argues rather against it in CP 6.548-52 
(1887), and again in CP 6.520-21 (c.1906), though he also says that the 
possibility can’t be ruled out, precisely because it’s virtually impossible to 
investigate. The “immortality” of which he speaks “in the light of synechism” 
is of a very different kind, it seems to me, to which the survival of the 
individual consciousness or ‘soul’ is quite irrelevant.

 

Gary F.

 

} Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the 
contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. [Thoreau] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 

 

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: August-08-11 8:15 PM

 

Drake,

 

 

For Peirce, truth is immutable so for him in some sense all truths are eternal. 
Perhaps in "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" he was thinking about 
something like truths _about_ eternity, the soul, etc.

 

Not having been religious since I was a kid, I don't easily put myself into 
that frame of mind.

 

I don't know whether he thought that that which he called eternal truths 
require or enliven spiritual consciousness. He might have thought that it helps 
to have lively spiritual consciousness in order to apprehend eternal spiritual 
truths in the right spirit, to learn of them and learn from them, and even that 
such truths don't come through well when translated into everyday conversation, 
but I just don't know. I also wonder whether he thought that such truths could 
be equally well simple or complex like a scientific theory; it can be pretty 
hard to guess about such things with Peirce.

 


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary,

I have a question about one particular sentence in your commentary on paragraph 
[9] of this paper. I’m wondering whether you meant this to be taken literally:

[[ Furthermore, the reach of the paper can be seen as extending well beyond the 
essay itself, so that “it has a number of (possible or actual) unitary global 
interpretants as a sign of that object”: for example, me, you, or virtually 
anyone who has read or will read the essay being analyzed. ]]

 

In other words did you mean to say that any reader of the essay is an 
interpretant of it (rather than an interpreter)? I think this would make sense, 
given Peirce’s argument that “the word or sign which man uses is the man 
himself” (EP1:54). And it would make a highly significant connection between 
the autonomy of semiosis and the autopoietic autonomy of organisms. Yet i doubt 
that you would slide over a point like this without placing more emphasis on 
it, given that it’s an element of Peirce’s philosophy which even some Peirceans 
balk at, and that it comes more naturally for most of us to think of ourselves 
as interpreters than interpretants of what we read. And indeed your next 
sentence seems to cast us in the role of making or perceiving rather than being 
interpretants:

[[ Joe notes that it is even possible that our ‘various interpretants [may well 
be] mutually compatible.” And beyond mere compatibility, historically we have 
sometimes even reached, for example, scientific consensus or quasi-consensus (I 
say this in the light of the principle of fallibilism). ]]

So i thought i’d better ask whether you really meant to introduce the idea that 
we are interpretant signs of the same object that the essay we read is a sign 
of.

Gary F.

} Everything is connected, but some things are more connected than others. 
[Herbert Simon] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Peirce also defined both “singular” and “individual” in Baldwin’s Dictionary:

http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm

 

Gary F.

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Stefan Berwing
Sent: August-05-11 5:08 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

 

Peter, List,
 
this distinction is relevant as long singulars and individuals are the same. 
But when the individual is a universal in time and the singular is the content 
of a perceptual judgement, then this distinction is not possible in that form. 
(Peirce writes about singular/individual somewhere in the first part of W2).
 
 
Best
Stefan
 
 
There is still a distinction, though. Perceptual judgements are hypotheses and 
hence testable, but they are not universal statements, which are the subjects 
of falsificationism. But I may be splitting hairs here...
 
Peter 

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Thanks, Peter, for this clarification and correction, which is much more exact 
than my post about Popper. 

I assume that we are in agreement that, although "Popper was a fallibilist as 
well as a falsificationist", what he called "falsification" is quite different 
from what Peirce called "fallibilism".

Gary F.

} I was sure until they asked me ... now I don't know. [Jane Siberry (after St. 
Augustine)] {

www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home



-Original Message-
From: Skagestad, Peter [mailto:peter_skages...@uml.edu] 
Sent: August-05-11 12:13 PM

Gary,

This is not exactly Popper's view, although this is how Popper has often been 
interpreted, e.g. by Ayer, in Language, Truth, and Logic. Popper's 
falsificationism is based on a purely logical asymmetry between falsification 
and verification in that a single counterexample will refute a universal 
statement, whereas no number of confirming instances will prove it. Thus no 
number of observed black ravens will prove the statement "All ravens are 
black," whereas a single white raven will refute it. But it does not follow, 
nor did Popper ever say, that a falsification is ever conclusive, as I can of 
course be mistaken both in my belief that  am looking at a raven and in my 
perception that it is white.

Basic statements, Popper makes clear in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (pp. 
105-111), are themselves testable; they are "basic" only in the sense that we 
have decided not to test them, at least for the time being. Thus Popper was a 
fallibilist as well as a falsificationist. His discussion of basic statements 
concludes: 

The empirical bases of objective science has thus nothing 'absolute' about it. 
Science does not rest on solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories 
rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The 
piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 
‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we 
have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles 
are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. (L.Sc.D., 
pp. 11)

This is almost eerily reminiscent of Peirce:

Even if it [science] does find confirmations, they are only partial. It is 
still not standing upon the bedrock of fact. It is walking upon a bog, and can 
only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay till it 
begins to give way. (EP, vol. 2, p. 55)

Popper apparently arrived at his views with no knowledge of Peirce, although 
later in life he came to acknowledge numerous points of agreement with Peirce. 
But of course thee remain differences, their divergent conceptions of 
metaphysics being, as you note, one of them.

Best,
Peter

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary and list,

You’ve given a very helpful account of logical determination in semiosis, Gary. 
But i’m still bothered by Joe’s distinction between causal and logical “force”, 
for the very reason that you quote from Peirce: that “the concept of a 
consequent is a logical concept” and that causality is a kind of 
consequentiality. It’s also a metaphysical concept, and if “metaphysical 
concepts are logical concepts applied somewhat differently from their logical 
application,” then it won’t do to make a strong distinction between causal and 
logical force.

However i think there’s a simple solution to the terminological issue (if 
that’s what it is). Peirce accepted and used (with some modification) all four 
of Aristotle’s “causes”: efficient, material, formal and final. Final causality 
or “teleology” is especially operative in semiosis, as Joe points out, but he 
doesn’t use the term “final cause”. My suggestion is that Peircean/Aristotelian 
“final cause” is included in what Joe means by “logical force” – but he doesn’t 
use the word “cause” for that, because he is following the usage still common 
in the physical and biological sciences, and in the vernacular too, in which 
only efficient cause is called “cause”. In this i think Joe’s usage differs 
from the usage in biosemiotics and other related sciences (such as ecology), 
where the full range of Aristotle’s four “causes” is recognized as such (again, 
with some modification).

By the way, the concept of final cause has been implicit even in mainstream 
evolutionary biology for a long time, although they don’t call it that. That’s 
why they are careful to make the same distinction that Joe makes between 
“tendential” and “intentional” teleology, only they use different terms. Ernst 
Mayr, for instance, uses “teleonomic” for Joe’s “tendential”, and 
“teleological” for Joe’s “intentional” (see Mayr’s essay on “The Multiple 
Meanings of Teleological”). However mainstream biology hasn’t caught up with 
Peirce’s semiotic yet, in my opinion – which is why biosemiotics is important.

Gary F.

} You can't carry a ladder while you climb it, or think about signs while you 
read them. [gnox] {

 

  www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: August-03-11 3:59 PM



Gary F, List,

 

I'll be referring to Eliseo Fernández's paper several times in the course of 
this read, but, I'm afraid, only in passing. However, I hope to discuss his 
work in some detail and depth in a future thread, perhaps in the Fall (I think 
my last question anticipates that discussion). For now, let me just comment 
briefly on the critical matter of 'determination' in consideration of semiosis. 
I've CC'd Eliseo, who is a member of this forum, in the hopes that he might 
sound in on this matter as well.

 

On logical determination: I interpret Peirce's concept of 'determination--as in 
"the object determines the sign for the interpretant"--to be logical and not 
causal  (perhaps this suggests why Eliseo added in the snippet you quoted that 
it's a "peculiar" kind of causality). I can't argue this in any great detail 
now since it would tend to lead us too far away from Joe's paper. Suffice it to 
say that it is my understanding that 'determines' semiotically means something 
like 'semiotically constrains'. 

 

To my knowledge, Peirce's most extended argument concerning 'determination' in 
the context of semiosis (as 'constraint') occurs in a 1906 draft of "The Basis 
of Pragmatism" for a paper in the Monist series (see Item 27 in EP2, especially 
pp 391-4). Peirce's is a highly complex argumentation which I cannot hope to 
summarize here, but pointing  to a few key passages in the argumentation of the 
draft paper might be helpful.

 

Peirce first refers to a remark made in an earlier paper in the series to the 
effect that to say that a meaning is determinate would be to say that "it would 
leave 'no latitude for interpretation," and that, as I see it, would-be 
determination in the long run, so, in the final interpretant. Another way of 
saying this might be that the truth of reality constrains the final 
interpretant at the theoretical end of inquiry. So, determination in this sense 
is in futuro, and the meaning of a sign can never be absolutely settled on as 
long as inquiry continues. (Still, that we can make use of, for example, 
scientific discoveries in the development of various technologies suggests that 
we do sometimes come to a definitive conclusion--a kind of 'end of inquiry'--in 
the sense that we've established the validity of such principles as are 
required for the actual creation and development of such technologies.)

 

But, Peirce, says further: "Even a future event can only be determinate in so 
far as it is a consequent. Now the concept of a consequent is a logical 
concept. It is derived from the concept of the conclusio

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

I'd like to add one minor detail to what Stefan, Michael, Wilfred, d_obrien, 
and Stephen have already well said in response to Steven.

Popper's "falsification" is the principle that only a hypothesis that can be 
refuted by empirical testing is really testable, because proof that a 
hypothesis is false can be conclusive while confirmation is never conclusive. 
Peirce said this too, but that's not what he called "fallibilism", which indeed 
he applied to all inquiry and not only to special sciences. Besides, the term 
"science" has greater breadth for Peirce than it does for you or Popper. For 
instance, Peirce speaks of metaphysics as a science, and i don't think either 
you or Popper would.

By the way, d_obrien, glad you could join us! We welcome "newbies" (though we 
don't always make it easy for them to enter the conversation). I expect we'll 
hear more from you, judging from the quality of your post -- and it would be 
helpful if you would sign your future contributions (so we don't have to 
address you as d_obrien).

Gary F.

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

tatement to which you 
objected. Since then it’s become clear that you have also imposed an 
idiosyncratic interpretation of the word “use”. Thus your paraphrase 
arbitrarily interprets Wittgenstein's utterance to suit your own habits of 
usage, creating a straw man that you could react to, without respecting the 
autonomy of the semiotic process to which the original sentence was a fallible 
contribution. This wouldn’t have happened if you had stopped to consider what 
it might mean in a discourse (and a language) wider than the limited world of 
your interpretive habits. The same goes for your cryptic remark about 
“metaphysics” in your reply to Gary R.

 

As to your habits of utterance, you've been asked at least three times to 
explain your cryptic remark that “Peirce would have none of it”. But if 
anything, your subsequent posts have been even more cryptic. My guess is that 
you don't deign to explain yourself in ordinary public language because your 
idiosyncratic code is perfectly clear to you, and if it's not clear to others, 
well, they’re not worth any effort on your part. Your own fallibility as 
utterer never enters your thoughts. Nor do you acknowledge fallibility as 
interpreter, since you treat with contempt any suggestion that your arbitrary 
interpretations are questionable. I don't think you even recognize the irony of 
signing a contemptuous message “With respect.”

 

That's my guess, but i remain hopeful that you will prove it wrong by making a 
genuine contribution to one of these threads. Perhaps you have some real 
insights to share, into Peirce or Wittgenstein or semiosis or language or even 
all of them. But they'll remain your private property until you make a genuine 
(and fallible!) attempt to make them public in a common language, and work with 
others to reduce the natural ambiguity of that language.

 

Gary F.

 

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: August-03-11 4:11 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Wittgenstein on meaning

 

Dear Gary,

 

I'm not clear on why you think I am confusing meaning with reference - I too am 
generally careful not to confuse the two. Indeed, the purpose of my comment is 
to observe that Peirce would not confuse a reference to common usage with the 
act.

 

With respect,

Steven

 

 

On Aug 3, 2011, at 12:52 PM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

 

> Steven, your comment appears to confuse meaning with reference, something 
> Peirce was generally careful not to do.

>  

> But if we really wanted to compare Peirce and Wittgenstein on the subject of 
> meaning, we would have to consider my tagline in its context, Philosophical 
> Investigations (I.43): “For a large class of cases—though not for all—in 
> which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a 
> word is its use in the language.” Or better, consider that sentence in its 
> original language: Man kann für eine große Klasse von Fällen der Benützung 
> des Wortes “Bedeutung” – wenn auch nicht für alle Fälle seiner Benützung – 
> dieses Wort so erklären: Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der 
> Sprache.

>  

> And if we want to discuss the meaning of any word in that sentence (say, 
> “Bedeutung”), we will have to consider the role that word plays in that 
> language, will we not? Words can only be meaningful in the context of the 
> larger signs of which they are parts. The sentence is a larger sign, part of 
> a still larger sign (the Philosophical Investigations), and so on. And the 
> sign-system which is the language is the context of them all. The question 
> then is whether the pragmatic use of the word in that context (not a 
> reference to its use!) is the whole of its “meaning” (in the large class of 
> cases to which Wittgenstein refers). Which strikes me as a remarkably similar 
> question to the one Peirce grappled with in his attempted proof of 
> pragmaticism.

>  

> Perhaps if you could explain to us just what it is that “Peirce would have 
> none of”, your comment wouldn’t hang so loose on the poetic wind.

>  

> Gary F.

>  

> } What a thing means is simply what habits it involves. [Peirce, CP 

> 5.400] {

>  

>  <http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

>  

>  

>  

> -Original Message-

> From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] 

> On Behalf Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith

> Sent: August-03-11 1:28 PM

> 

> On Aug 3, 2011, at 10:11 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

>  

> > } The meaning of a word is its use in the language. [Wittgenstein] {

> > 

>  

>  

> There is a usage of words in the language, but 

Re: [peirce-l] Wittgenstein on meaning

[Gary Fuhrman]

Steven, your comment appears to confuse meaning with reference, something 
Peirce was generally careful not to do.

 

But if we really wanted to compare Peirce and Wittgenstein on the subject of 
meaning, we would have to consider my tagline in its context, Philosophical 
Investigations (I.43): “For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which 
we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is 
its use in the language.” Or better, consider that sentence in its original 
language: Man kann für eine große Klasse von Fällen der Benützung des Wortes 
“Bedeutung” – wenn auch nicht für alle Fälle seiner Benützung – dieses Wort so 
erklären: Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache.

 

And if we want to discuss the meaning of any word in that sentence (say, 
“Bedeutung”), we will have to consider the role that word plays in that 
language, will we not? Words can only be meaningful in the context of the 
larger signs of which they are parts. The sentence is a larger sign, part of a 
still larger sign (the Philosophical Investigations), and so on. And the 
sign-system which is the language is the context of them all. The question then 
is whether the pragmatic use of the word in that context (not a reference to 
its use!) is the whole of its “meaning” (in the large class of cases to which 
Wittgenstein refers). Which strikes me as a remarkably similar question to the 
one Peirce grappled with in his attempted proof of pragmaticism.

 

Perhaps if you could explain to us just what it is that “Peirce would have none 
of”, your comment wouldn’t hang so loose on the poetic wind.

 

Gary F.

 

} What a thing means is simply what habits it involves. [Peirce, CP 5.400] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 

 

 

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: August-03-11 1:28 PM

On Aug 3, 2011, at 10:11 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

 

> } The meaning of a word is its use in the language. [Wittgenstein] {

>  

 

 

There is a usage of words in the language, but if the meaning of a word is 
merely a reference to that usage then meaning is a faint and arbitrary thing 
that hangs loose upon the poetic wind and scars each of us in its passing. 

 

And I'm quite sure that Peirce would have none of it.

 

With respect,

Steven

 


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Gary, and List,

 

Your description of this paper as an “extraordinarily rich theoretical 
miniature” is very apt. Its high degree of condensation is, i think, achieved 
by a high degree of abstraction, which makes it somewhat difficult to answer 
the kind of questions you pose in your second paragraph. Especially the last 
one: How is the ‘generative power of the sign’ connected to that of natural 
systems? If we take Joe’s cue and regard the paper itself as the sign in 
question, an actual reading of it – i.e. the generation of an actual 
interpretant – must surely involve the actual reader’s habits of using the 
language and idiom in which the paper is written. The ideal reader would have 
no idiosyncratic habits, but the actual usage involved in any particular 
reading would still represent a stage in the history of usage of that language. 
Would the autonomy of semiosis mean that the logical interpretant is wholly 
independent of that history?

 

>From a biosemiotic (or even a psychosemiotic) perspective, this raises the 
>question of whether Joe’s account here is too idealized to be realistic. I’m 
>glad that you have pointed to the Fernández paper in connection with it, 
>because the similarities between the two papers enhance the significance of 
>the differences between them. For instance, Joe argues that the semiosis 
>process is autonomous because the generative power of the sign itself (in 
>contrast to the power of the author’s intention or the reader’s interpretive 
>power) is logical and not causal. Fernández on the other hand refers to “that 
>peculiar form of causal action which Peirce called semiosis—the influence by 
>which signs mediate the determination of interpretants by their objects” [my 
>italics]. Come to think of it, Joe’s paper doesn’t appear to mention the 
>latter aspect of semiosis, in which objects determine signs to determine 
>interpretants. Are we dealing with different concepts of semiosis and/or 
>causality here, or just differences in usage of the terms? 

 

I fear this question and my comments may be muddled beyond usefulness, but 
wanted to post it anyway, in the hope that somebody else would clear it up for 
me ... but in any case, i’m looking forward to further discussion in this 
thread.

 

Gary F.

 

} The meaning of a word is its use in the language. [Wittgenstein] {

 

www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home

 

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: July-31-11 4:06 PM



List,

 

In my last post I introduced “Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process” in a rather cursory way. Here begins an analysis of the first 5 
paragraphs of the 16 that go to make up the paper.

 

Section 1. “Semiosis represents the productive power of a sign to generate an 
interpretant” [paragraphs 1 – 5]

 

[1] Ransdell introduces his paper by remarking that semiosis, being the power 
of the sign to generate an interpretant of itself (and the interpretant, itself 
being a sign so also having that generative power), it follows that there are 
semiosic processes and that “such processes are both teleological and 
autonomous (self-governed).”

 

But what exactly do we mean when we speak of the ‘generative power of the 
sign’? Is it an ‘action’ (as Joe suggests) or a kind of ‘influence’ (as Eliseo 
Fernández suggests in the snippet I quoted in my ‘preamble’ to this read), one 
which flows through the sign to the interpretant? Or is it something else 
again? And what is its connection to there being a ‘life of the sign’ (which is 
not a metaphor), a real vitality in semiosis, something which Peirce fairly 
insists on in several places? Finally, how is this putative power connected to 
that of natural systems? (The last is a question with which biosemioticians are 
currently struggling.)

 

The reference to teleology in the paper being to the ‘tendendial’ rather than 
the ‘intentional’ kind, it occurs to me that “the life of the sign” 
quasi-necessarily involves as well its coming more and more to express the 
meaning—the truth—of reality in the long run. Not only has a sign the potential 
for growth, but we’ve all seen that some signs actually do grow. So, the 
‘generative power’ of semiosis also seems to relate to the possibility of the 
growth (the evolution) of signs.

 

As for ‘autonomy’, I couldn’t help but notice that the opening of Eliseo 
Fernández’s biosemiotics conference paper, “Energy, Semiosis and Emergence: The 
Place of Biosemiotics in an Evolutionary Conception of Nature,” quoted in my 
report on the conference, also emphasizes that theme. Indeed, a not infrequent 
reference in the conference was to Maturana’s idea of ‘autopoeisis’, 
interpreted by some to mean that the organism tends towards 
‘self-organizization’ (although, in places, Maturana himself seems not to see 
it this way). One should also note that for Maturana an autopoietic system is 
operationally closed, while Joe’s understand

Re: [peirce-l] Peirce, Mac Lane and Categories; was: Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Irving, Jerry et al.,

For a more authoritative site that points to a real connection between Peircean 
and current *mathematical* “Category Theory”, we might look at
http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/new_essays_peirce.htm.
Among the contents of _New Essays on Peirce's Mathematical Philosophy_, edited 
by Matthew E. Moore (which i don't have access to), this site lists an essay on 
"Peirce’s theory of the continuum, reconstructed in terms of category theory 
and in terms of the “absolute arithmetic continuum”". It also remarks that 
"many of his central concepts—most notably that of continuity—are as much 
mathematical as they are philosophical. For all of these reasons we cannot 
fully understand Peirce's philosophy unless we come to grips with the 
mathematical dimensions of his thought." This suggests to me that it would be 
unwise to make an absolute distinction between philosophical and mathematical 
"category theory", even if no tight connection between them can be 
demonstrated. Just because "Peircean category theory" is both philosophical and 
mathematical (which it clearly is) doesn't entail that the term (with 
adjective) will inevitably cause referential confusion among pure 
mathematicians, does it?

About the blog i cited, you write:

[[ I'd want to know who the author of that blog site would be, and what 
expertise and credentials the author possesses. Note that the line in question 
asserts that Peirce was the "originator of Category Theory"; apparently the 
author of this statement has never heard or Aristotle, or Kant, either, and 
fails to explain what she means by "Category Theory" ... ]]

I think the author's heading and the reference to de Morgan and his "Double 
Algebra" is enough to narrow down the scope of that brief blog post. In any 
case, saying that Peirce is "the originator of Category Theory" is not the same 
as claiming that he was the first to make theoretical use of "categories"; so 
there is no need to mention Aristotle or Kant in a context which is clearly 
mathematical.

By the way, there is yet another kind of "category theory" (perhaps more 
commonly and aptly called "categorization theory") associated mainly with the 
work of psychologist Eleanor Rosch, which has affinities with philosophers as 
diverse as Wittgenstein and Lakoff. Would mathematicians object to calling that 
"category theory" too (if they were aware of it)?

Anyway, i'm starting to suffer from "category fatigue" (if i may coin a term), 
or else i'd take you up on your offer to provide a Word or pdf version of your 
18-page "lecture" on [mathematical] "Category Theory and Categorical Logic".

Gary F.


-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Irving
Sent: July-23-11 10:47 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: [peirce-l] Peirce, Mac Lane and Categories; was: Slow Read: "Is Peirce 
a Phenomenologist?"

Gary Fuhrman writes:

"there is at least one mathematical site online, 
http://kea-monad.blogspot.com/2007/11/peirce-and-de-morgan.html,
which refers to Peirce as "the originator of Category Theory", a real 
connection between “Peircean” and current mathematical “Category Theory” 
appears to be arguable"

I'd want to know who the author of that blog site would be, and what expertise 
and credentials the author possesses. Note that the line in question asserts 
that Peirce was the "originator of Category Theory"; apparently the author of 
this statement has never heard or Aristotle, or Kant, either, and fails to 
explain what she means by "Category Theory", never mind stating whether she has 
in mind category theory as per Aristotle, Kant, et al., or Eilenberg & Mac 
Lane, et al., or whether or not there is a connection.


Irving H. Anellis
Visiting Research Associate
Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought
902 W. New York St.
Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 
46202-5159 USA
URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" - Concept of category?

[Gary Fuhrman]

Jerry's proposal that an adjective such as “Peircean” be used to disambiguate 
the term “category theory” seems very sensible to me, given the fact that 
situations where disambiguation is needed are exceptional. Technical terms are 
no different from common nouns in this respect, that the situation or context 
in which they are uttered is usually sufficient (for those in the field) to 
indicate what the term refers to – unless the context is a dictionary! Gary has 
mentioned the example of “vector”, another term which denotes something 
different in each of several disciplines: the only kind of situation where its 
reference would be ambiguous would be a cross-disciplinary one, and even on 
that kind of occasion, it's not that difficult for (say) a physicist to grasp 
what a physician means by a “disease vector”. It's no more difficult than it is 
to grasp the difference between a physicist and a physician, despite the common 
root.

I think Steven's request that each variation on the term be provided with its 
own definition is excessive, since “a verbal definition is inferior to the real 
definition” (CP 5.492) anyway. Solvitur ambulando, in my opinion.

Since there is at least one mathematical site online,
http://kea-monad.blogspot.com/2007/11/peirce-and-de-morgan.html,
which refers to Peirce as “the originator of Category Theory”, a real 
connection between “Peircean” and current mathematical “Category Theory” 
appears to be arguable – and the argument would have to be a cross-disciplinary 
one, where the adjectival specification is clearly needed. But when the context 
is clearly the study of Peirce, it would be redundant to speak of “Peircean 
category theory”, and i don't see why it should bother mathematicians that the 
term “category theory” has other uses in other contexts that are more familiar 
to them. This is a normal situation, not an exceptional one, and we normally 
deal with it by implicit (non-focal and nonverbal) attention to context and 
situation. The only reason it comes up now is that “category theory” has not 
*yet* become a familiar and well-defined term in Peircean studies; the fact 
that the term has other uses in other venues is not a sufficient reason why it 
shouldn't *become* a term normally used for the purpose Gary R. has outlined. 
The only good reason why it shouldn't would be that some other term is *better* 
for that purpose, and i don't think we've seen one yet.

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: July-22-11 2:52 PM

I can live with this if you can provide a concise definition of the 
distinctions between each, i.e., point to the distinctions that each of these 
authors made for the term. 

By your approach a further break down by author is required in "mathematica 
categories." I'm not saying the approach is bad. Peirce (and I) would agree 
that all such usage must be tied to their authors.

With respect,
Steven


On Jul 22, 2011, at 9:40 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

> List:
> 
> The recent proposals on this listserv for distinguishing among the potential 
> ostensive usages of the term "category" are, in my opinion, insufficient for 
> the purposes of clear communication.
> 
> The term "category" has ancient roots and is many philosophers since 
> Aristotle (Kant, Hegel, Whitehead, among others) have devised specific 
> classifications of putative importance.
> 
> Mathematical categories are of recent origin (Eilenberg / MacLean, 
> 1940? ) and are not even remotely related to the philosophical terms.  
> Mathematical categories, even if one accepts Irving's definitions, are 
> fully plasticized mathematics (symbolic narratives composed from 
> artificial symbols without phenomenological meaning outside an 
> extremely narrow usage of mathematical terms.)
> 
> Thus, I would recommend that if one wishes to communicate clearly, then the 
> various usages of the term "category" should be preceded by a descriptive 
> adjective that grammatically distinguishes the origins of the terms.
> 
> Examples:
> mathematical categories
> Peircean categories
> Whiteheadean categories
> Kantian categories
> and of course, the grandaddy of them all (except the mathematical 
> anomaly) Aristotelian categories.
> 
> Just my opinion.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Jerry
> 

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

I don't think "Doctrine of Categories" would work because the word "doctrine" 
no longer means what it did in  Peirce's time. As for "Theory of Categories", a 
quick internet search shows that it's used by some mathematicians as a synonym 
for "Category Theory", so unless they can be broken of that habit, that 
difference in name isn't enough to distinguish between the two disciplines. 
Maybe Gary needs to come up with an ugly neologism as Peirce would have done -- 
"trichotomologics"? -- if he needs to avoid confusing mathematicians. (I don't 
think "category theory" would be ambiguous for anybody else.)

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: Irving
Sent: July-21-11 10:55 AM

Not to continue to be overly fussy, but I propose "Doctrine of Categories" or 
"Theory of Categories" for the philosophical use, whether speaking of 
Aristotle, or Kant (Kategorienlehre) or Peirce, and reserve "Category Theory" 
for the the that branch of abstract algebra that formalizes a number of 
algebraic properties of collections of transformations between mathematical 
objects (such as binary relations, groups, sets, topological spaces, etc.) of 
the same type, subject to the constraint that the collections contain the 
identity mapping and are closed with respect to compositions of mappings, ... 
unless and until it is demonstrated that the philosophical concept, whether 
Aristotle's, Kant's, or Peirce's, is equivalent to, or at least in some 
important sense related to, the algebraists' concept.

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Following up on yesterday's post clarifying “category theory” as Gary Richmond 
uses the term – as the third in a trichotomy constituting phenomenology – here 
is an edited and updated version of the conversation that ensued between Gary 
(GR) and me (GF) on peirce-l just before the list migration. The main issue 
here is the question of whether (or why) phaneroscopy or phenomenology should 
be called a science – as it definitely was by Peirce, although Joe Ransdell 
doubted the appropriateness of this designation.

 

I have revised my own part here and there, omitting or changing the parts that 
i no longer consider worthwhile, and added a bit at the end, but have left GR's 
words pretty much as he wrote them (with a few omissions). His first comment 
deals with my reference to observation and generalization as “stages” in the 
process or practice of phaneroscopy:

 

GR: As I read him, for Peirce the three categories do not necessarily represent 
'stages'; yet they can represent them. For example, they are stages in what I 
call the vector of process, which starts at 1ns passing through 3ns arriving at 
2ns (quintessential examples: evolution, or inquiry). But, for example, in the 
vector of involution, which commences at 3ns which involves 2ns which itself 
involves 1ns, it does not represent stages at all (quintessential example: the 
derivation of the categories themselves in "The Logic of Mathematics").  [note: 
I analyze 3 of the 6 vectors as more logical and 3 as more temporal, or, 
chronological, although, in a very important sense this is just a matter of 
emphasis; while no vector acts independently of all the others, except for the 
purposes of analysis.]

GF: The observational stage (as i call it) regards the phaneron monadically, 
i.e. doesn't even distinguish between the phaneron and the mind it is present 
to.

 

GR: You and de Tienne and I seem in complete agreement on this.

 

GF: The generalization stage deploys a mathematical logica utens (which for 
Peirce is prior to the normative science of logic) to characterize the 
essential elements of the phaneron. This much can be very amply illustrated 
with many direct quotes from Peirce. 

 

GR: Again, we agree; I made this argument regarding logica utens to Joe for 
both phenomenology and the first two normative sciences on a couple of 
occasions.

 

GF: If we take the “faculties” of observation and generalization as the 
Firstness and Thirdness in a phenomenological trichotomy, the secondness in 
this trichotomy is less directly represented by Peirce, but as De Tienne points 
out, the phaneron must be objectified, i.e. treated dyadically, in order to be 
described; and what you refer to as “category theory” is a description.

 

GR: This is where I think we may differ. For me iconoscopy is the descriptive 
phase sans generalization of the relational kind, and it is category theory 
which concerns itself with generalizing those descriptions into the kind of 
genuine tricategorial relations my trikonic diagrams, for example, attempt to 
analyze. And, while it seems eminently reasonable that a logica utens will be 
involved in your 3rd "stage", it may very well also be employed in the 2nd, 
objectifying, "stage"--yet, to describe x as an example of secondness, say, 
does yet place it in relation to a--it's--firstness or thirdness, necessarily, 
and at all.

 

GF: Peirce does define phaneroscopy as “description of the phaneron” in CP 
1.284, and to me, the dyadic quality of the objectification necessary in order 
to produce a description is strongly suggested by his reference in CP 5.42 to 
“the second faculty” as a “resolute discrimination” fastening itself “like a 
bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying”. 

 

GR: When Peirce writes "particular feature" in the snippet quoted directly 
above, it again seems to me that this second branch of phenomenology does not 
yet involve genuinely tricategorial relations which the final branch, category 
theory, diagrams (less or more iconically). Rather, what occurs here is the 
'mere' description of individual features in relation to one or another of the 
categories, not yet all three at once (although, of course, the three are 
always present), while the work of iconoscopy is, in my view, the "resolute 
discrimination . . . of features"-- but not of tricategorial relations. That 
is, instead, the work of category theory.

GF (concluding the paragraph): However i don’t know of a place where Peirce 
explicitly presents phenomenology as comprising a triad like this.

 

GR: Perhaps not; still, throughout his life Peirce sometimes makes these 
categorial triads explicit (typically, for example, in semeiotic grammar), 
while there are many times when they are only implied, but clearly enough so. 
Still, there are other places where they are merely adumbrated, or only two of 
the three categorial elements are given, etc. No doubt there are still other 
genuine tricategorial relations

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Now that Irving has filled us in on mathematical category theory in connection 
with Peirce, i should perhaps fill in some of the context for Gary Richmond's 
usage of the term, especially since Gary posted about it before the list 
migration to IUPUI, summarizing some prior discussion of Peircean 
phenomenology. Gary himself has urgent business elsewhere at the moment, so i'm 
going to re-post here his message of July 8, along with some comments of my own 
[marked GF] that i hope will improve on my previous response to it. Here it is:

 

Gary F., list, 

 

If there is any matter in which I find myself at rather wholly at odds with 
Joe's thinking (and there aren't many), it is this of the place of and the 
importance of phenomenology in Peircean science. Even in the paper under 
consideration, I find Joe making a contribution to semeiotic; but 
phenomenology?--not so much.

Especially in the light of André De Tienne's work on phaneroscopy and 
iconoscopy (such as represented by the papers discussed on the list in 
2009-10), I think that Joe's arguments against phenomenology being considered 
as a science have lost much of their weight, and it seems to me from comments 
Joe made during that discussion that he too was beginning to modify his view on 
at least certain aspects of this issue in light of De Tienne's inquiries. 
However, it also seems to me that he never ceased maintaining that this 
"peculiar science" of phenomenology (or phaneroscopy) was in fact not a science 
at all, according to Peirce's definition of what constitutes an authentic 
science. Thus his list comment that "if Andre is interpreting Peirce correctly 
on this, then, it is Peirce who is wrong about phenomenology" (there's more to 
be said here, but I'll have to skip over it now).

Opposed to this, I especially recall--as being quite helpful to my thinking on 
the matter--your analogical example in that earlier discussion, Gary, of the 
ethnologist observing animals (distinguishing individuals, for example) without 
yet asserting anything, hypothesizing anything, etc., and your suggesting that 
this is analogous to the pre-semiotic scientific activity which de Tienne calls 
'phaneroscopy' in "Is Phaneroscopy as a Pre-Semiotic Science Possible?"  (I 
would answer the question in that title by saying that it is not only possible, 
but is actual; but more on that later).

De Tienne also introduced a second -scopic with his paper "Iconoscopy between 
Phaneroscopy and Semeiotic." He comments in that paper that 'iconoscopy' is 
probably not the best name for this branch of phenomenology because what he is 
attempting to distinguish is the "objectified phenomena" (the objectified 
phenomenal images which iconoscopy seeks to grasp categorially) from the "lived 
phaneron" (perceptual coalescence of phaneroscopy), a distinction Martin 
LeFebvre further explicated in that earlier list discussion. De Tienne remarks 
that what he is pointing at is more like an 'image' than an 'icon', so that 
this problematically named iconoscopy emphasizes "the experiential dimension 
that accompanies icons" (pure icons, I assume--qualities and characters). 
Furthermore, "Peirce gave the word 'icon' a technical definition" in semeiotic 
"that removes it from the field of phaneral experience." I need to reread the 
iconoscopy paper (I only glanced over a bit of the 2010-11 threads before 
writing this), but I think I recall 'the basics' well enough. 

 

[GF note: this iconoscopy paper is not yet available online but we are hoping 
that, with André's permission, it will soon appear on Arisbe.]

 

Also, at that time I was arguing that Peirce's phenomenology ought to be seen 
as having yet a third branch, "category theory" or what Mats Bergman has 
suggested might be termed 'schematology' (correct as far as it goes, but not 
categorially specific enough).

 

[repeating Gary's more recent note: 

for those who might be wondering what the content of category theory might be, 
please take a look at either of the relevant PowerPoint shows on Arisbe, say, 
this one: http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonicb.ppt]

 

So, linking these three to the categories we get:

Phenomenology:

phaneroscopy (firstness)

|> category theory (thirdness)

iconoscopy, or, imagoscopy(?) (secondness)

 

[GF: This division strikes me as very much in a Peircean spirit, but going 
beyond Peirce's own usage of the terms “phenomenology” and “phaneroscopy”, 
since the latter term was coined by Peirce (in accordance with his own ethics 
of terminology) to replace the former and not to specify a part of the former. 
In most of his definitions of either term, Peirce mentioned two activities 
(though occasionally three or more) involved in it: (1) “observation” of the 
phaneron, and (2) “generalization” from these observations to produce a 
“description” of its “elements”. Gary's trichotomy pushes “phaneroscopy” toward 
the observation pole, if i may call it that, while h

[peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" part 5

[Gary Fuhrman]

My final post as emcee of JR's paper “Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?” deals with 
the final (and, i think, the weightiest) section of this paper, from [22] on, 
which deals with “Peirce's phenomenology proper.” There are some discrepancies 
between Peirce's own remarks on “phenomenology” (and “phaneroscopy”) and JR's 
account of it here, but rather than consider these discrepancies one at a time, 
i'll focus here on the key factor which makes JR's treatment of the subject 
distinctive. To me, it all follows naturally from his statement in [1] which 
identifies Peirce's phenomenology with “the doctrine of categories” – which for 
JR appears to denote what Gary Richmond calls “category theory.”

 

By this i mean not the branch of pure mathematics which goes by that name, but 
the applications of Peirce's categorial concepts (Firstness, Secondness and 
Thirdness) to the analysis and classification of concepts and other phenomena. 
Peirce's own “Guess at the Riddle” would thus be an extended example of 
category theory, and so would much of his later work on semiotics. JR does not 
use the term in this paper, but as Gary has said, he did apply the term to some 
of Gary's own work, and this led to Gary's later analysis of phenomenology 
according to this trichotomy:

phaneroscopy (firstness)

|> category theory (thirdness)

iconoscopy(?) (secondness)

 

But for JR, at least in the paper we are slow-reading, category theory is 
really all there is to Peircean phenomenology. My own study in 
www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm differs from Gary's in taking “phaneroscopy” 
to be synonymous with “phenomenology” rather than a part of it, but agrees with 
Gary's trichotomy in taking phaneroscopy to be different from and prior to 
category theory. JR, on the other hand, does not recognize what Gary calls 
“phaneroscopy”, nor does he acknowledge what Peirce calls “observation” in 
texts like this one: “I found Logic largely on a study which I call 
Phaneroscopy, which is the keen observation of and generalization from the 
direct Perception of what we are immediately aware of” (EP2:501, 1909). 

 

The crux of the matter here is that “generalization” can easily be seen as part 
of logic or semiotic, but “observation” of the Phaneron must be seen as prior 
to Logic in order for the latter to be “founded” on Phaneroscopy. Category 
theory is a logical extension of the phaneroscopic analysis which identifies 
Peirce's triad of categories as elements of the phaneron. JR's exclusion of 
“phaneroscopy” and consequent identification of “phenomenology” with category 
theory prompts him to say in this paper that “most of what Peirce himself did 
along these lines would properly be regarded as a part of semiotic” [22] – 
since Peirce's “categories” are indeed intimately entwined with his semiotic, 
even in the 1867 “New List of Categories” (long before Peirce used either 
“semiotic” or “phenomenology” as specifying terms). Thus it is the “New List of 
Categories” itself that JR takes to be “foundational” [1]. But can this be 
reconciled with the foundational role which Peirce assigns to Phaneroscopy in 
the quote above, and assigned to “phenomenology” as early as 1902?

 

JR does seem to acknowledge this foundational role in [24]:

[[ what "phenomenology" primarily meant to him was the idea that the objects of 
phenomenological study as such are not studied with any implicit or explicit 
assumptions, presuppositions, or assertions as to their reality status, which 
made it possible to develop semiotic or logic (in the broad sense) in a way 
that presupposes no metaphysical framework, and therefore involves no a priori 
assumptions about, say, the mental or physical status of the phenomenal 
entities. ]]

I wouldn't argue with anything in that statement, and i don't think Gary would 
either. But it raises a question which, as far as i can see, JR's paper does 
not answer: How can a study which “would properly be regarded as a part of 
semiotic” make it “possible to develop semiotic or logic” along the lines JR 
describes – or indeed along any lines? Can a part make the development of the 
whole “possible”?

 

If i am misunderstanding or misrepresenting JR on this point, i hope someone 
will correct me. But if not, the key difference between JR's version of 
“phenomenology” and Peirce's own account of it lies in what is taken to be the 
object of that study. For Peirce it is “the phaneron” – or from 1902-04, “the 
phenomenon” – which (in most contexts) he pointedly refers to in the singular, 
as the whole of whatever is present to the mind. JR, on the other hand, refers 
to “the objects of phenomenological study” in the plural, as “phenomena” or 
“phenomenal entities.” Peirce “invite[s] you to consider, not everything in the 
phaneron, but only its indecomposable elements” (CP 1.288). JR, on the other 
hand, says that phenomenology is about “Anything. You name it or point it out 
or mark it off or identify it in any other way and

Re: [peirce-l] FW: Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" parts 1-3 reposted

[Gary Fuhrman]

Irving, Sally, Gary et. Al.,

Thanks, Irving, for the link to the Rosensohn book -- Joe cites it in his first 
footnote but i didn't know it was online. I haven't been able to download it 
yet because i encountered a "network error" when i tried; but coincidentally, 
i've just obtained an even older source which is the only one i've yet found to 
be written by someone who demonstrates a deep acquaintance with both Peirce and 
Husserl:
Herbert Spiegelberg, ‘Husserl's and Peirce's Phenomenologies: Coincidence or 
Interaction’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Dec. 
1956), pp. 164-185.

I can't resist quoting the concluding paragraph of this excellent article, 
which also relates to the Sally Ness question i posted yesterday:

[[ Despite the deep-seated differences, there are enough parallels between 
Husserl's and Peirce's phenomenologies to justify the question about a common 
root for them both. This root can only be found in the very nature of the 
problems with which both Peirce and Husserl struggled. Both were originally 
mathematicians dedicated to the cause of establishing philosophy as a rigorous 
science. And both sought its foundation in a renewed and enriched approach to 
the phenomena given in experience. Thus one might look at Husserl's and 
Peirce's phenomenologies as two independent historical parallels. Their value 
is that of two experiments set up by the history of philosophy and serving as 
mutual controls for one another. Their outcome is all the more significant, and 
it does credit to both thinkers. Thus what Peirce wrote about his own 
relationship to Hegel could be said even more appropriately about his 
agreements with Husserl: 
"There was no influence upon me from Hegel unless it was of so occult a kind as 
to entirely escape my ken; and if there was such an occult influence, it 
strikes me as about as good an argument for the essential truth of the 
doctrine, as is the coincidence that Hegel and I arrived in quite independent 
ways substantially to the same result." (CP 5.38) ]]

That last quote is the best answer to Sally's question about the influence of 
Hegel on Peirce (though i somehow managed to overlook it in my response). 
Spiegelberg also presents convincing evidence that neither Peirce nor Husserl 
was well informed about the other, noting that Peirce's specific comment about 
Husserl in CP 4.7 must have been based on a superficial or partial reading of 
his _Logische Untersuchungen_, while Husserl apparently never mentioned or read 
Peirce at all. Spiegelberg's account of Husserl is far more reliable, detailed 
and fair than JR's, and i would recommend it to anyone interested in comparing 
Husserlian and Peircean phenomenology.

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Irving
Sent: July-15-11 9:40 AM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] FW: Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" parts 1-3 
reposted

Just as a bibliographic aside to Gary Fuhrman's point, from the July 8th 
contribution, that

> As JR
> points out, it is highly unlikely that Peirce adopted the name of the 
> discipline from Husserl; by his own account he took it from Hegel, 
> partly because he saw his own three ?categories? as virtually 
> identical with Hegel's ?three stages of thinking? (search "Hegel" in 
> http://www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm ). It is even less plausible 
> that Peirce would have changed his terminological preference from 
> ?phenomenology? to ?phaneroscopy? in 1904 as a way of distancing 
> himself from Husserl.
>

I would just add that it would appear that Husserl's first use of the term 
"phenomenology" occurred in the _Logische Untersuchungen_ (1900-01), and that, 
although Peirce began work on "phenomenology, or the Doctrine of Categories" 
(at (C.P. 1.280)) starting in 1867, his first employ of the term was in the 
work from which I just quoted (at (C.P. 1.280)). This of course certainly does 
NOT mean, let alone prove, that Peirce borrowed the term from Husserl rather 
than from Hegel, and in particular from Hegel's _Pha"nomenologie des Geistes_.


I just accidentally came across the book by William L. Rosensohn, _The 
Phenomenology of Charles S. Peirce: From the Doctrine of Categories to 
Phaneroscopy" (Amsterdam: B. R. Gru"ner, B.V., 1974), which is available online
(apertum.110mb.com/apoteka/Rosensohn_Fenomenologia_CSP.pdf) and which has three 
pages (pp. 77-79), sect. A of chapter V: "Phaneroscopy: The Description of the 
Phaneron", on "Phaneroscopy or Pure Phenomenology: Peirce and Husserl". I 
expect that most of those following this discussion are already familiar with 
this work; is it worth downloading and going through?


P.S. Can we get people to stop sending to the list rather than to the LISTSEV 
their requests to unsubscribe from the list?


Irving H. Anellis

 

-

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

If i may add a footnote to your footnote, Gary –

[[ As I recall, Peirce says somewhere that one (he? Peirce?) first discovers 
(finds? observes? I forget now the exact language) the categories in 
phenomenology and then later sees that they, not surprisingly, appear in pure 
mathematics as a kind of mathematical valency theory (see, for example, Ken 
Ketner's Appendices in A Thief of Peirce). ]]

I don’t have Thief of Peirce, but this clearly relates to the issue of what 
Peirce called “the formal elements” as distinguished from other kinds of 
“elements” observable in the phaneron – the issue taken up in 
www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm#formel . As far as i can make out from the 
sources excerpted there (which include the 1896 “Logic of Mathematics”), the 
word “formal” in that context means something quite different from what it 
means in the context of “formal logic” or formalization in mathematics.

And this in turn has something to do with the connection between topology 
(“topical geometry” as Peirce called it) and the iconic logic of the 
Existential Graphs. Peirce made a point of saying that the EG were not a 
calculus, but (for me anyway) they are also not a language in the sense of 
Frege’s claim (as cited by Irving) that “his own Begriffsschrift was both a 
calculus and a language, and first and foremost a language”. Languages (unlike 
the laws of nature in Peirce’s cosmology) achieve symbolicity by incorporating 
conventions. In the Existential Graphs, i think Peirce was trying to reduce the 
conventionality of his notation to a minimum and maximize the iconicity. And if 
there’s one thing that JR, De Tienne, you and i all agree on (however vaguely), 
it is that iconicity is the bridge between the phaneron and semiotic logic. Or 
to put it another way, between observation and generalization in phaneroscopy. 
But it’s damned hard to describe a bridge made of Firstness!

 Gary F.

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Gary Richmond
Sent: July-14-11 3:59 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

 

Gary F., Irving,

 

I too want to thank Irving for his post which clarified certain issues for me 
as well.

 

Just a footnote to your comments, Gary. I'll have to find the source(s) for the 
following idea later as I have to leave soon to visit a friend in hospital. 

 

As I recall, Peirce says somewhere that one (he? Peirce?) first discovers 
(finds? observes? I forget now the exact language) the categories in 
phenomenology and then later sees that they, not surprisingly, appear in pure 
mathematics as a kind of mathematical valency theory (see, for example, Ken 
Ketner's Appendices in A Thief of Peirce). This represents, shall I say, a 
retrospective move by Peirce so that, yes, in his Classification of the 
Sciences, for Science of Discovery, 1st science is certainly pure mathematics 
(including, as just noted, the valency theory which includes his famous 
Reduction Thesis), but that the categories are discovered as such in the first 
science of 2nd Science (in philosophy == cenoscopy), that is, in phenomenology.

 

Best, Gary R.

 



>>> Gary Fuhrman  7/14/2011 9:16 AM >>>
Thanks for this, Irving -- it clarifies some of the issues regarding 
"psychologism" and Husserlian phenomenology. There is one point i'd like to 
comment on, in order to clear up an ambiguity in my previous response to your 
question. You write:

[[I am not sure that I would agree with the assertion that one point on which 
Peirce's phenomenology differs from all others is in Peirce’s requirement that 
it must "reckon with pure mathematics" if it is not to be as distorted as 
Hegel's. I say that because Husserl, both in his psychologistic phase, in his 
_Philosophie der Arithmetik_ (1891) and in his phenomenological phase, and 
certainly at least in his _Logische Untersuchungen_ (1900-1901), took it as his 
mission to provide a philosophical foundation for pure mathematics. ]]

I think this is the mission Peirce took on in his 1896 "Logic of Mathematics" 
paper; or more exactly, he drew upon his categories to provide an experiential 
foundation for mathematics. In this sense, he was trying to base mathematics on 
phenomenology (6 years before he called it that). But by the time of the 
Harvard Lectures in 1903 (the source of the reference to Hegel that you quote), 
it seems to be the other way round: he is basing phenomenology on mathematics. 
Thus his Comtean classification of the sciences ends up placing mathematics 
first and phenomenology second, followed by the normative sciences of 
esthetics, ethics and logic. And it is this founding phenomenology on 
mathematics which i claimed was unique to Peirce -- not the effort to provide a 
phenomenological foundation for mathematics.

However -- as documented on the Pha

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" part 2

[Gary Fuhrman]

I received the following question offlist from Sally Ness (who gave me 
permission to reply on-list):

 

[SN:] In Note 3, of JR's paper, when he is discussing Peirce's choice of the 
term, "phenomenology," JR gives his view on Peirce's relation to Hegel that "he 
[Peirce] did not regard himself as having been significantly influenced by 
Hegel in this respect."  The material in your paper from Peirce's own writings 
would seem to contradict JR's assessment here, does it not?   I am thinking in 
particular of the passages you quote in the section "The Primal Sciences."   
You also include earlier on a statement from Peirce where Peirce says he has 
developed "nothing but" Hegel's three grades of thinking (CP 8.213).  I am 
trying to get a handle on how best to characterize the continuity that is 
evident between Hegel's work and Peirce's work-both early and late.  It appears 
to be very basic but still not trivial (as JRs comments would seem to suggest 
it is). 

 

[GF:] I think Joe's comment in his Note 3 refers to Peirce's testimony that he 
had arrived at his three categories independently long before he discovered 
that Hegel's "three stages of thinking" corresponded to them. For instance, 
says in the Lowell Lectures of 1903 that his phenomenological "method has a 
general similarity to Hegel's. It would be historically false to call it a 
modification of Hegel's. It was brought into being by the study of Kant's 
categories and not Hegel's" (CP 1.544).  He also wrote to Lady Welby that "the 
resemblance of these Categories to Hegel's stages was not remarked for many 
years after the list had been under study, owing to my antipathy to Hegel" (CP 
8.329). This "antipathy" is expressed quite often in Peirce's work; he even 
wrote (CP 1.368) that "My whole method will be found to be in profound contrast 
with that of Hegel; I reject his philosophy in toto." That's an exaggeration, 
just as he was exaggerating when he wrote that his categories were "nothing 
but" Hegel's three grades of thinking (CP 8.213). But the independence of his 
phenomenological work from Hegel's is important to him not only for 
"historical" reasons, but also because the validity of these categorial 
concepts is supported by the fact that thinkers as different as Hegel and 
Peirce should both arrive at them independently of each other.

 

In short, i think JR was absolutely right on that point.

 

Gary F.

 

www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm }{ Peirce on Phaneroscopy

 

 


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

llowed for the formation and 
articulation of the formal laws of thought. In "The Task and Significance of 
the Logical Investigations", Husserl (as quoted in Jitendra Nath Mohanty (ed.), 
_Readings on Husserl's Logical Investigations_ (The Hague: 
Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), p. 197; this is a translation by Mohanty of an 
unidentified portion of Husserl’s Phänomenologisches Psychologie, composed for 
lectures for the summer semester of 1925 and published in Husserl ((Walter 
Biemel, hsg.), Phänomenologische Psychologie. 
Vorlesungen Sommersemester. 1925. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 
1968) describes the project of the L.U. to be to “clarify the idea of pure 
logic by going back to the sense-bestowing or cognitive achievements being 
effected in the complex of lived experience of logical thinking.” In this 
respect, Frege’s review of Husserl’s Philosophie der Arithmetic (Zeitschrift 
für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 103, 313–332; English translation by 
Eike-Henner W. Kluge: Mind (n.s.) 81 (1972), 321-337) concerns and criticisms 
regarding Husserl’s philosophy of arithmetic remain untouched. And indeed, 
Robert Hanna (p. 254,"Logical Cognition: Husserl's Prolegomena and the Truth in 
Psychologism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53, 251–275) recognizes 
that a number of Husserl's contemporaries -- who, regrettably, he fails to name 
-- saw a contradiction in Husserl's claim that his phenomenology dispensed with 
psychologism, when at the same time seeking to found pure logic of cognitive 
achievements, although, relying upon the distinction between "strong" and 
"weak" psychologism, Hanna (pp. 254ff.) defends Husserl's position as a 
rejection of -- strong -- psychologism. And for Hanna (e.g. Hanna, pp. 
251-253), Frege is, on the issue of psychologistic logic, the exemplary and 
principal adversary.


- Message from g...@gnusystems.ca -
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:03:35 -0400
From: Gary Fuhrman 
Reply-To: Peirce Discussion Forum 
Subject: RE: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"
  To: Peirce Discussion Forum 


> Irving, if you're ?an amateur on the question at stake?, i'm even more 
> so ... although i have been trying for some time ?to articulate in 
> what specific sense the term "phenomenology" was employed by Peirce?. 
> I often call it ?phaneroscopy? for the same reason that he did (after 
> 1904), namely to distinguish it from other usages (just as he adopted 
> ?pragmaticism? to distinguish it from ?pragmatism?). I'm not well 
> enough acquainted with the other ?phenomenologies? to make 
> authoritative comparisons, but here's a few notes (mostly drawn from
> www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm) in response to specific questions 
> you pose:
>
> [[ (1) whether, if Peirce was a phenomenologist, he was so in the 
> sense of Kant or Hegel or Husserl or Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty; or
> (2) if for Peirce, "phenomenology" means something somewhat different 
> from what any of these others meant by the terms. ]]
>
> The term is not as prominent in Kant as in the others, but Peirce's 
> ?categories? were intended to improve on Kant's, and his phenomenology 
> aimed to specify those ?categories? (which he also called ?formal 
> elements of the phaneron?). As for Hegel, Peirce himself wrote c.1905 
> that ?My three categories are nothing but Hegel's three grades of 
> thinking? (CP 8.213), yet he sharply criticized Hegel for ignoring 
> mathematics: ?A Phenomenology which does not reckon with pure 
> mathematics, a science hardly come to years of discretion when Hegel 
> wrote, will be the same pitiful club-footed affair that Hegel 
> produced? (CP 5.40). Peirce's phenomenology is certainly different 
> from all the others in this respect ? it is quite inseparable from 
> pure mathematics; Peirce's categories are essentially mathematical 
> concepts.
>
> When it comes to the practice of phenomenology, though, Peirce's 
> account of his methods does show some affinity with Husserl's 
> ?bracketing? or ?epoché?  ? for instance CP 1.287: ?The student's 
> great effort is not to be influenced by any tradition, any authority, 
> any reasons for supposing that such and such ought to be the facts, or 
> any fancies of any kind, and to confine himself to honest, 
> single-minded observation of the appearances.? But there are 
> significant differences too, as Peirce's phaneroscopy is less 
> introspective, i.e. more attentive to the structure of the phenomenon 
> than to the inner dimensions of experience. To quote from CP 8.213
> again: ?I use the word phaneron to mean all that is present to the 
> mind in any sense or in any way whatsoever, regardless of whether it 
> be fact or figment. I examine the phaneron and I endeavor to sort out 
> its elements according to the complexity of their structure. I thus 
> reach my three categories.?
>

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" part 4

[Gary Fuhrman]

List,

 

I just noticed this morning that the list parameters are set so that a “Reply” 
to a list message will go to the sender of the message, and not to the list 
unless one uses ”Reply to All”. I have no objection to this myself, but since 
it’s the opposite of the way the list behaved before migration, it may cause 
some confusion. Whereas before it sometimes happened that a message would be 
accidentally sent to the list that was intended only for the sender, now we may 
have the opposite kind of accident, where a Reply intended for the list went 
only to the original sender. I believe this is the case with Clark Goble’s 
message copied below. We will all need to be careful that the list address 
(PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU) appears in the “To:” line of our replies whenever 
we intend them to go to the whole list.

 

I’ve inserted a couple of comments (marked “GF:”) into Clark’s message below.

 

  Gary F. 

 

From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] 
Sent: July-13-11 12:07 PM
To: Gary Fuhrman



 

On Jul 13, 2011, at 8:33 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:





But later in MS 318, Peirce also develops the idea of a final logical 
interpretant – final because it is not another sign, or at least “not a sign in 
that way in which the sign of which it is the logical interpretant is a sign” 
(EP2:418) – which is a habit (or as he says elsewhere, a “habit-change”). To 
me, this specifies in pragmatic terms what lies at the mathematical limit of 
the infinite series of interpretants. But to T.L. Short, as quoted earlier by 
Vinicius, it constitutes a “radical reversal” (rather than a further 
development) of Peirce's doctrine of an “endless series of signs”.

 

I think that the nature of the final interpretant is quite interesting.  It's 
not a sign in that it signifies nothing than itself.   It's not a sign in that 
it is not the end of semiosis (the way it is sometimes presented)  Comparing it 
to limits in mathematics is the appropriate metaphor I think.  The most 
interesting question is comparing the final interpretant with a period of 
stability - potentially permanent stability - in the process of semiosis.  
Clearly those are signs.  But due to their being in a process of semiosis they 
signify something else.  We are led to this odd paradox where a sign that may 
be stable and thus "the same" is simultaneously not the same due to its place 
in process.  We thus have this "final interpretant" that is outside of semiosis 
and thus not a sign yet is quite similar to a sign.

 

I've been so busy I've not been able to follow the list much the past few 
months.  But "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist" is a paper I've long liked by Joe.  
I think he gets some elements wrong - primarily in just dealing with Husserl 
and ignoring the place of Heidegger and those like him who transformed Husserl 
in key ways.  

 

I think Joe gets Heidegger wrong on science, for instance.  See his discussion 
of Short in footnote 6 where he makes a passing mention of Heidegger:

 

But Peirce did not conceive science in that way, nor would he agree that the 
"wasteland" of modern times is properly or profitably diagnosed as being due to 
the development of the sciences, though he might very well agree that the 
conception of science which has reigned in modern times--often shared alike by 
its opponents and its advocates--has more than a little to do with it. (6)

 

Footnote 6: As regards the way Peirce conceives the relationship of science and 
technology, I will only remark here that although it is true that, in his view, 
any successful theoretical science yields a technology of some sort as a 
by-product, Peirce does not equate scientific and technological ("calculative") 
thinking in the way Heidegger does. I address this topic myself, from the 
perspective of the conception of objectivity, in "Semiotic Objectivity", 
Semiotica 26:3/4, 1979, pp. 261-288)), reprinted in Frontiers in Semiotics (ed. 
Deely, Williams, and Kruse, Indiana University Press, 1986).

 

I confess I've never read this further paper of Joe's.  So I may be getting him 
(Joe) quite wrong. 

[GF: I’ve read this paper, which criticizes the work of language theorists 
including Skinner and Chomsky, and with “conventionalist semiotics”, as being 
dyadic (rather than triadic like Peircean semiotics) and therefore more or less 
dangerously misleading; but it doesn’t specifically mention Heidegger and 
therefore doesn’t relate directly to Clark’s point, i think.] 

Heidegger's conception of the essence of science (which isn't necessarily the 
same as science of course) as "standing reserve" is quite famous.  It is 
calculative or "an economy" but what is key is that is something available for 
humans. 

 

Now of course Peirce has a conception of science that attempts to divorce it 
from any sentimentality at all.  To car

[peirce-l] FW: Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" parts 1-3 reposted

[Gary Fuhrman]

Here in one message is a reposting of the first three parts of the current slow 
read, with the dates when they were originally posted before the list 
migration. I think they are the same as originally posted, except for a few 
corrected typos in the first two.

 

  Gary F.

 

www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm }{ Peirce on Phaneroscopy

 

 

=== 5 July 2011 

 

The title:

Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?

The location:

http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/phenom.htm

The provenance of this paper is given in a headnote to it, so i will not repeat 
it here. Paragraph numbers given in the margin will be used for specific 
reference to the paper.

 

In this first post i'll just give a brief overview of the structure of JR's 
paper in relation to the title question (Is Peirce a phenomenologist?) – which 
would seem to presuppose that there is a class of philosophers who study (or 
practice) something properly called “phenomenology”, and to ask whether Peirce 
belongs to this class. But as it turns out, only 8 of the 33 numbered 
paragraphs in the paper actually address the title question, and JR (Joe 
Ransdell) seems ambivalent about its importance. Here is a list of the parts of 
the paper as i see it:

 

Paragraph [1]: introduces Peirce's 1867 essay "On a New List of Categories" as 
“the basic text for that part of his philosophy which he called 
"phenomenology".”

 

[2]–[6]: outlines some doctrines and methodologies commonly referred to as 
“phenomenology”, Husserl's in particular, and compares (or rather contrasts) 
these with some of Peirce's doctrines and methods.

 

[7]–[9]: offers an intentionally vague statement of “one principle ... which 
any phenomenologist would agree with, including Peirce, assuming that we really 
should attempt to assimilate him to this tradition” – but then dismisses the 
question of whether we should do that as not very significant – despite “the 
assumption that some formulation roughly like the one I give above does indeed 
capture an alternative occurring at an important forking of the path of 
philosophy.”

 

[10]–[21]: gives an outline of Peirce's semiotic as a development of the 
concept of representation. (I don't plan to examine this section closely, 
because much of it, as JR himself points out in footnote 8, summarizes material 
we have already discussed in the slow readings previous to this one. However 
that shouldn’t discourage others from posting questions or comments on it.)

 

[22]–[33]: turns “to Peirce's phenomenology proper”, based on JR's beliefs that 
“the essence of it is found in the 1867 paper on the categories” and “that if 
Peirce is to be regarded as a phenomenologist it should be understood that most 
of Peirce's analyses should be looked for under the heading of semiotic.”

 

In this first post, i'll confine my comments and questions to the first 
paragraph, which gives a much better idea of what JR is doing in this paper 
than its title does. But first a word about Peirce's “phenomenology.” His first 
writings dealing explicitly with that subject date from 1902, during a period 
of renewed concern with the classification of the sciences. He wrote quite a 
lot about it, usually calling it “phaneroscopy” from 1904 on, during his last 
decade of work. I have collected some of these writings in a page on my website 
– 

http://www.gnusystems.ca/PeircePhenom.htm

– which is considerably longer than JR's paper, even counting only the Peirce 
quotations in it. My first question, then, is why JR chose to base a paper 
about Peirce's phenomenology almost entirely on the 1867 “New List of 
Categories” (thus virtually ignoring most of what Peirce stated explicitly on 
the subject). 

 

JR's stated reason is clear enough: "On a New List of Categories" is “the basic 
text for that part of his philosophy which he called "phenomenology"; for 
Peirce identified phenomenology as "the doctrine of the categories" ... and it 
is in this paper that the basic categorial conceptions are conceptually 
isolated and their essential inter-relationships described.” But this does not 
take into account several statements Peirce made in his final decade to the 
effect that his concepts of the categories had gone through some major changes; 
nor does it address the many problems involved in Peirce's statements about the 
relation of phaneroscopy to other sciences (see my webpage cited above, 
especially the second half, for details).

 

If i may offer a clue to my own question, i think JR's motivation in handling 
Peirce's “phenomenology” this way is revealed in his footnote 1. But the real 
question, for me anyway, is whether an exclusive focus on the “New List” of 
1867 can offer an adequate approach to a study which Peirce described in 1903 
as “a branch of philosophy I am most deeply interested in and which I have 
worked upon almost as much as I have upon logic” (CP 8.295).

 

= 8 July 2011

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?"

[Gary Fuhrman]

Back in pre-migration days – that is, two days ago -- Irving Anellis posted a 
question about the relation between Peirce’s phenomenology and other brands of 
it. Clark Goble replied to the old address, and i’m copying his post below. 

 

Another resource that might be helpful in differentiating his phenomenology 
from other forms (Kant’s and Hegel’s, at least) is Peirce’s entries in the 
Century Dictionary. In the main dictionary he simply defined phenomenology as 
“A description or history of phenomena.” But in the Supplement (eventually 
published in 1909), there’s quite a bit more:

[[[2. In Kantian terminology, a division of the metaphysics of nature which 
determines motion and rest merely in respect to the mode of representing them 
as phenomena of sense.

--3. In Hegelian philosophy, the exposition of the evolution of knowledge.

-- Cenopythagorean phenomenology, universal phenomenology as it is understood 
by those who recognize the categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness 
(which see).

-- Phenomenology of conscience, that branch of ethics which observes, analyzes, 
and generalizes the judgments of consciences and formulates their principles.

--Phenomenology of mind, that branch of psychology which observes and 
generalizes the phenomena of mind.

--Phenomenology of spirit, in Hegelian philosophy, the exposition of the 
development of consciousness from its first contradiction to absolute knowledge.

--Universal phenomenology, the observation, analysis, and generalization of 
those kinds of elements that are present in the universal phenomenon. See 
phenomenon. ]]]

 

The Supplement also gives a definition of phenoscopy: [[[ That study which 
observes, generalizes, and analyzes the elements that are always or very often 
present in, or along with, whatever is before the mind in any way, as percept, 
image, experience, thought, habit, hypothesis, etc. C. S. Peirce. ]]]  (Signed 
entries are quite unusual in the Century.) And there’s a definition of 
phaneron: [[[ Whatever is in any sense present to the mind, whatever its 
cognitive value may be, and whether it be objectified or not. A term proposed 
by C. S. Peirce in order to avoid loading 'phenomenon,' 'thought,' 'idea,' 
etc., with multiple meanings. ]]]  Evidently Peirce combined these two words to 
come up with phaneroscopy, although he didn’t furnish a definition of that to 
the CD.  (I haven’t seen any text where he actually uses “phenoscopy”.)

 

  Gary F.

 

From: Clark Goble  
Sent: July-13-11 11:23 AM
To: Peirce Discussion Forum

 

(1) whether, if Peirce was a phenomenologist, he was so in the sense of Kant or 
Hegel or Husserl or Heidegger, or Merleau-Ponty; or (2) if for Peirce, 
"phenomenology" means something somewhat different from what any of these 
others meant by the terms.

 

I think there is a sense in which all these figures are doing something 
similar.  Yet there is also a strong sense in which they have very different 
conceptions of what phenomenology consists of.  In one sense it is all about 
what is given to mind independent of its truth.  However for some this is all 
about intuitions or present-data.  I think that is what Kant or Husserl are 
doing.  For others it is much more about the objects themselves that are given 
to consciousness.  Clearly if it is about the objects then it can't be about 
any kind of full presence.  I think Peirce with his concept of thirdness gets 
at that conception of phenomenology and it is also shared by Heidegger.  That's 
not to say Peirce and say Heidegger don't recognize something for 
consciousness.  (This is Peirce's firstness)  However to think of it makes a 
sign so there is this sense of an inescapable mediation in phenomenology for 
them.

 

Some people confuse what Peirce's phenomenology consists of seeing it merely as 
what is immediately given to mind.  However Peirce is quite clear that he is 
speaking of "all that is in any way or any sense present to the mind."  That 
seems explicitly to include both the immediate and mediated.

 

I will not restrict [phenomenology] to the observation and analysis of 
experience but extend it to describing all the features that are common to 
whatever is experienced or might conceivably be experienced or become an object 
of study in any way direct or indirect.  (CP 5:37)

 

This broad view of experience in Peirce's phenomenology is quite significant 
and is why many people tend to distinguish Peirce from Continental 
Phenomenology - although as I've often mentioned I think Heidegger, Derrida and 
others share many features with Peirce in how they broken away from Husserl 
styled phenomenology.  (Merleau-Ponty is a trickier case since in many ways he 
straddles Husserl and Heidegger)

 

The big difference between Heidegger and Peirce is that Heidegger's main focus 
is Being (or in the later Heidegger the focus on Ereignis).  Heidegger is also 
breaking away from Descartes and Husserl.  Peirce on the other han

Slow Read: "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" part 4

[Gary Fuhrman]

Continuing the slow read of Joseph Ransdell's paper “Is Peirce a 
Phenomenologist?”, online at Arisbe 
(www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/phenom.htm), we now take up 
paragraphs [10]-[22]. (If anyone is reading this who doesn't have access to the 
prior parts of this slow-read thread, which were posted on peirce-l before its 
migration to the new host, i can re-post them here upon request.)

 

In this section, the middle third of the paper, JR outlines Peirce's logic “on 
the basis of the conception of representation”, which eventually he called 
semiotic (or semeiotic). Since this is mostly familiar ground for those who 
have followed the slow readings that came before this one, i will only pose one 
question about it, though of course others are welcome to post their own 
questions or comments. My question reopens one that was left unresolved at the 
end of the previous slow read emceed by Vinicius Romanini, and has to do with 
what he called “infinite semiosis”. 

 

In this paper, JR expresses the idea in [15] as follows: 

[[ Since for the logician's purposes the place of the thought is taken by the 
interpretant, we now have: (1) the representation, (2) the representation's 
object, and (3) the representation's interpretant, which is itself a 
representation. But since the same considerations apply to the interpretant qua 
representation, this implies that there is a further interpreting 
representation, namely, one which interprets the interpretant qua 
representation of the first representation of the object. The same applies to 
it, of course, and so on ad infinitum, which means that we now have an 
infinite--potentially, not actually, infinite--sequence of representations of 
representations of the object. ]]

 

The involvement of an “infinite sequence of representations” in any symbol is 
frequently reiterated in Peirce's work on semiotic, as for instance in MS 599 
(c. 1902):

[[[ This interpreting sign, like every sign, only functions as a sign so far as 
it again is interpreted, that is, actually or virtually, determines a sign of 
that same object of which it is itself a sign. Thus there is a virtual endless 
series of signs when a sign is understood; and a sign never understood can 
hardly be said to be a sign. There is an endless series of signs, at any rate, 
in the same sense in which Achilles runs over an endless series of distances in 
overtaking the tortoise. ]]]

 

It should be clear that the series is “endless” in both directions because it 
is continuous, and therefore can be analyzed into infinitesimal parts, although 
any observable instance of symbolic semiosis or “thought” takes a finite time, 
and has a beginning and end which are roughly determinable in historical time, 
like the moments at which Achilles first begins running and finally overtakes 
the tortoise. That's why the series is “potentially” or “virtually” and not 
“actually” infinite. Another iteration of this idea occurs in MS 318 of 1907, 
EP2:403, in the form of an “endless” series of both previous utterers and 
subsequent interpreters of a thought-sign. But later in MS 318, Peirce also 
develops the idea of a final logical interpretant – final because it is not 
another sign, or at least “not a sign in that way in which the sign of which it 
is the logical interpretant is a sign” (EP2:418) – which is a habit (or as he 
says elsewhere, a “habit-change”). To me, this specifies in pragmatic terms 
what lies at the mathematical limit of the infinite series of interpretants. 
But to T.L. Short, as quoted earlier by Vinicius, it constitutes a “radical 
reversal” (rather than a further development) of Peirce's doctrine of an 
“endless series of signs”.

 

For anyone who agrees with Short on this point, i have a double question: In 
what way is the possibility of a final logical interpretant incompatible with 
the virtual infinity of the series of previous interpretants? and, How can we 
dispense with this virtual infinity without losing the continuity essential to 
the concepts of Thirdness and semiosis?

 

There are also some questions about the other end of the infinite series of 
signs, the object end (which in the order of evolution is the beginning). But 
since the present paper by JR does not relate those questions directly to 
Peirce's phaneroscopy, i will set them aside until after this slow read. Those 
questions will rise again, i think, when we take up Gary Richmond's remarks 
about phaneroscopy, iconoscopy and category theory (maybe next week). As for 
JR's paper: although there is a vague reference to “phenomenologists” in [21], 
this middle section does not deal with “Peirce's phenomenology proper.” The 
final section [22-33] turns to this subject, and my final post as emcee of this 
slow read (a few days from now) will deal with that section.

 

Gary F.

 

} The perfect truth cannot be stated, except in the sense that it confesses its 
imperfection. [Peirce] {