[peirce-l] Re: What
to the first method but not the fourth he would > not have any logical need to make sure that the reader knew what he > was alluding to, given that his aim in the paper was primarily to > establish an understanding of the fourth method only. As regards why > I think the two psychological laws might have had something to do with > neural responsiveness, I say this because of the reference to that > sort of consideration at the end of section 3 of the Fixation > article. Whatever these laws are, though, they would have to be ones > that could be instantiated by the will of the person threatened with > the prospect of losing a belief, such that a result would be the > reinforcement of the shaky belief such as would be involved in > deliberately avoiding any further exposure to possible doubt-inducing > ideas and in the repeating of reassuring experiences. But how to > formulate anything like that which might pass muster as a > psychological law simply escapes me.>> Joe>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]>>>> - Original Message > From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> To: Peirce Discussion Forum > Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:15:49 PM> Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What>> This is intriguing stuff, Joe and I'd like to hear more about what you > have in mind.>> First, I'm not sure what sort of special relationship the > two psychological laws in question need to bear to the method of > tenacity. If they're in fact psychological (i.e. psychical) laws, > then it would be unsurprising if the other methods of inquiry made > important use of them. I thought that the only special connection > between the laws and tenacity is that the method tries to deploy those > laws especially simply and directly.>> Next, can you help me see more clearly how the passage you quote in > support of your suggestion that Peirce has in mind laws concerning the > properties of neural tissue, etc. is supposed to yield *two* > psychological (in any sense of ""psychological," since you rightly > point out that idioscopic laws might be fair game at this point) > laws? I don't love my interpretation and would like to find a way of > reading Peirce as clearer and less sloppy about this issue. But I > don't see how your reading leaves us with two laws that Peirce could > have expected the reader to extract from the text.>> Thanks to you and to both Jims and the other participants; Ithis > discussion makes me resolve to do less lurking on the list (though > I've so resolved before).>> Jeff>> -Original Message-> From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" > Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:57:59 -0700 (PDT)> Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce > referring to?>> Jeff Kasser says:> > JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, > it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of > the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in > the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V > of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of > inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not > attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we > may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all > which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt > and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of > the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the > idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological > laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the > reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to > wander too far afield> from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.> > REPLY:> > JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that > either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological > laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a > habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, > what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry > ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived > at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he > might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he > single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are > equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the > FEELING of believing
[peirce-l] ARISBE at new address
The website ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is up again, at a new address: http://www.cspeirce.com/ or simply cspeirce.com typed into the browser will do it. Note that any shortcuts/bookmarks previously used for the site or anything on it will no longer work, and there may be some infelicities involved in internal cross-linking on the site that need to be fixed in virtue of the change. But I haven't encountered any yet, though I will be trying to check it out thoroughly. I will also have to notify other websites and users that link to it about the change as well. Joseph Ransdell manager of PEIRCE-L and ARISBE --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
ical need to make sure that the reader knew what he was alluding to, given that his aim in the paper was primarily to establish an understanding of the fourth method only. As regards why I think the two psychological laws might have had something to do with neural responsiveness, I say this because of the reference to that sort of consideration at the end of section 3 of the Fixation article. Whatever these laws are, though, they would have to be ones that could be instantiated by the will of the person threatened with the prospect of losing a belief, such that a result would be the reinforcement of the shaky belief such as would be involved in deliberately avoiding any further exposure to possible doubt-inducing ideas and in the repeating of reassuring experiences. But how to formulate anything like that which might pass muster as a psychological law simply escapes me. Joe[EMAIL PROTECTED]- Original Message From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:15:49 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: WhatThis is intriguing stuff, Joe and I'd like to hear more about what you have in mind.First, I'm not sure what sort of special relationship the two psychological laws in question need to bear to the method of tenacity. If they're in fact psychological (i.e. psychical) laws, then it would be unsurprising if the other methods of inquiry made important use of them. I thought that the only special connection between the laws and tenacity is that the method tries to deploy those laws especially simply and directly.Next, can you help me see more clearly how the passage you quote in support of your suggestion that Peirce has in mind laws concerning the properties of neural tissue, etc. is supposed to yield *two* psychological (in any sense of ""psychological," since you rightly point out that idioscopic laws might be fair game at this point) laws? I don't love my interpretation and would like to find a way of reading Peirce as clearer and less sloppy about this issue. But I don't see how your reading leaves us with two laws that Peirce could have expected the reader to extract from the text.Thanks to you and to both Jims and the other participants; Ithis discussion makes me resolve to do less lurking on the list (though I've so resolved before).Jeff-Original Message-From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:57:59 -0700 (PDT)Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Jeff Kasser says: JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.REPLY: JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular. I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his d
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
RE: the complaint below The messages of condolence were not accepted for distribution because of the repeated use of multiple masked identities on the list by a person or persons using "cispec" (or "cispeirce") as address, and bcause of the emanation of messages harassing the manager of PEIRCE-L from the same address. . As a point of list policy, it should be understood that it is NOT the use of a nom de plume (pseudonym) masking the identity of an individual person that is objectionable since there are sometimes legitimate reasons why a person would wish to participate in the discussion using a masked identity. Anyone doing so, however, should always use the same pseudonym so that, for purposes of discussion here, his or her contribution will carry with it the force of a consistent personal identity. This is important for the following reason. Whether two persons A and B agree or disagree is significant for discussional purposes here and the significance is based on the fact that it will be assumed by others that A and B are in fact two persons rather than one. When they are not, others on the list are misled logically by the false assumption, which means that the person who has pretended to multiple identities has practiced logically relevant deception as a participant here, and that is contrary to the purposes of the forum. Joseph Ransdell manager of PEIRCE-L - Original Message From: ALASE _Asociación Latinoamericana de Semiótica_ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, October 8, 2006 12:28:45 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Death of Arnold SheppersonThe 30 October, 2006 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> sent repeatedly to <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> a message of condolence for Arnold Shepperson's death (see below) that has not been diffused. We want to know the reason of that ignominy, Mr. list manager. Fecha: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 22:54:19 + (GMT) De: "Centro Interamericano de Semi¨tica" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Añadir a la Libreta de contactos Yahoo! DomainKeys confirm¨ que el mensaje fue enviado por yahoo.com.ar. Más info. Asunto: Death of Arnold Shepperson A: peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Arnold has been a brother for us. We are deeply aching. Cispeirce Preguntá. Respond¨. Descubr¨. Todo lo que quer¨as saber, y lo que ni imaginabas, está en Yahoo! Respuestas (Beta). Probalo ya! --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
Jim: I just want to add a correction to my post in reply to your thesis about truth as an average. Upon reflection I have to say that I don't know what I was thinking of in saying that I didn't recognize the structure of the fourth method in your account. I should have stopped with saying that your thesis would only apply to some cases of settlement by the fourth method. I'm not sure exactly how to characterize that class of cases, but the differentium seems to involve them being cases where there is an initial disagreement, amounting to a formal contradiction, between diverse observation statements about the same object of observation, and this is handled not by taking due account of perspectival differences but simply by averaging and taking the projected average to be the truth of the matter. If perspectival considerations are taken duly into account initially in describing the observations there is no contradiction to be reconciled to begin with since one expects the object to appear differently from those differing perspectives and with just the differences found in the observation reports, which means that averaging is not pertinent to that sort of case. But where it is pertinent in arriving at the truth of the matter, what is happening is that a decision has been made that the original observation reports are to be construed as differing for reasons unknown and therefore to be best regarded as not being simply about the object but about the observer as well as the observed, though without specification of exactly what the difference is as regards the vantage point of the observer's observation. I am saying that awkwardly, but you get my point: that if we take the perspectival difference into account to begin with we don't get pluralism but simply expected differences in appearance reports. If we don't take perspectival differences into account we do get pluralism, apparently, but with the implicit understanding that it is really only apparent disagreement which is best handled by not going to the trouble of trying to figure out what the systematic perspectival difference is and taking the average as the final conclusion to be drawn in lieu of that, on the assumption that it does not differ significantly from what we would get if we knew what the perspetival differences are. Bit then that is not pluralism either/ However, there is still another relevant possibility for the use of averaging, in your sense., which is suggested by Peirce's notion of the "composite photograph" as a sort of metaphor for the way in which generality is developed on the basis of vagueness plus difference. Here is a Pomeranian and there is a Great Dane and both are dogs. How can animals seemingly so different in appearance be regarded as of the same kind? One reason might of course be that they are classified according to very different sorts of properties, which are not all visual appearance propertties. But sticking with differences in visual appearance, one can perhaps explain their type identity by noticing that if you overlay photos of various instances of various species of dogs the resultant and in some sense the averaged result is an animal that looks about as much like the one as it does the other and definitely looks like a dog, especially if the photograhs are cinematic, showing the ways they move about. (A Pomerian looks more like a typical cat then like a typical dog if the overlay is only with motionless photographs, but it it is a cinematic overlay the difference in style of movement between cats and dogs differentiates them effectively enough. ) Chris Hookway's provocative paper on this topic has come up before and if we were to pursue this topic we would want to go to that. However, I am not myself interested in that right at the moment -- though I am much interested in it in respect to another thread of discussion which has emerged here and which I would like to return to another time -- and I mention it now only as a reminder in passisng, and as a sort of marker of relevance of your thesis to another topic to be returned to in another connection at another time. But for the moment I would myself prefer to stick with further leisurely musement about the four methods of the Fixation article, and I don't think your thesis works for that. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 10:10:02 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: WhatJim: I think your thesis about the truth being the average, in the sense you describe, is an instance of a partial truth in that it probably does work for some class of truths, but it really only applies to those in which the diversity of opinion is opinion based upon observation. The first three methods, though, are not about opinions arrived at by observation. Indeed, the thir
[peirce-l] Fw: Memorial: Arnold Shepperson
- Forwarded Message From: Keyan Tomaselli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, October 6, 2006 1:40:21 AMSubject: Memorial: Arnold SheppersonJoe please post on Peirce List. Many thanks. KeyanCondolences have been received from all over the world. Obituaries have been posted on the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)LAN, the International centre for Qualitative Inquiry, Arisbe and theSouth African Communication Association websites. A memorial was held atUKZN today.Many of Arnold's colleagues have inquired about the possibility ofdonating to a fund for the education of Arnold's adopted young son, Eddie-Lou. The family is left destitute with the passing of Arnold,and donations would be appreciated. Registering at a good governmentschool in South Africa requires the payment of hefty fees by parents.The fund will be admistered by myself, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli and MarcCaldwell, all of UKZN.Funds can be electronically transferred to:Name of account: Arnold SheppersonABSA Flexi Save account no. 917-200-1854Branch Code: 632005Swift code: ABSA ZAJJThe address of the bank isABSA Campus BranchHoward College CampusUniversity of KwaZulu-NatalDurban 4041South AfricaCards and e-mailed condolences can be sent to Keyan. These will bepassed on to the family. Donors should please let me know by e-mail that they have donated so wecan thank each personally.Keyan Tomaselli, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli, Marc Caldwell and graduatestudents, CCMSJohn Collier and Julia Clare (Philosophy)Keyan G. TomaselliProfessorResearch Director and Outreach CoodinatorCulture, Communication and Media Studies (CCMS)Howard College CampusUniversity of KwaZulu-NatalDurban 4041, South AfricaPast PresidentSouth African Communication AssociationSouth AfricaTel: +31 260 2505Fax: +31 260 1519http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccms/e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Please find our Email Disclaimer here: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
Jim: I think your thesis about the truth being the average, in the sense you describe, is an instance of a partial truth in that it probably does work for some class of truths, but it really only applies to those in which the diversity of opinion is opinion based upon observation. The first three methods, though, are not about opinions arrived at by observation. Indeed, the third is conspicuously not composed of any opinions arrived at by observation, .The second could at mos be construed as being about observation in the case where the authority arrived at the opinion that way; but the person who adopts the method of authority is, insofar, NOT basing his or her opinion on observation. And as regards the first, the only observation the tenacious thinker is making is about his or her own feelings, but the opinion adopted is not about his or her own feelings of conviction. So you are at best right only about some cases of settlement by the fourth method. But even there I do not recognize in it the formal structure of the fourth method itself. I think you start to go wrong when you say that "Each of the three methods for fixing belief is valid in so far as it goes". "Valid" must mean "valid as a way of getting truth", but there is simply no basis for saying that, so far as I can see. One CAN say that any of the four methods can yield a truth, and one can perhaps make a case for saying that there may be describable classes of cases where the conviction yielded by this or that non-fourth method is a better way of getting truth than the attempt to use the fourth method would be. When I taught using this paper, usually in intro classes, I regularly assigned the students the task of considering various kinds of cases where we form opinions about something and then making a case for the method they thought most reliable, by and large, for getting at the truth about the matter in this case and that.. I uuually just cited such sorts of cases as those where we are arriving at ethical opinions, at esthetic opinions, religious ones, poliical, scientific (when we are oot ourselves scientists), opinions about wha other people are like, opinions about ourselves, and so on. And I often got very interesting and plausible claims made about the value of this and that non-fourth method.. But none of that srrengthens your view.On the other hand, I think that, as regards cases where indeed observation is involved, there may be a generalization to be drawn along the lines you suggest/ Since it does not appear to require all of the elements of the foruth method, thouoh, it looks to me like it might actually be a fifth method. So it was a thesis well worth trying out, at the very least.Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED]- Original Message From: Jim Piat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 6:14:05 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What Dear Jim Willgoose, Opps, I goofed. I think you are right. In an earlier version of my post I had included the possibility that in an open system new energy, information and possibilities were being added (or taken away) that would change the mean of the system and thus account for evolution of the mean (and why variation about the mean is so important and included in nature's plan). Otherwise, yes, the average represents the "least total error" of a distribution and moreover is in some ways an abstract "fiction" as for example the average family size of 2.3 people. Still, as long as we are dealing with generalization about multiple observations that in reality vary about a mean (and I can't think of any actual observations that don't) then the mean remains the characterization of the group of observations that produces the least total difference from all the other observation comprising the data set. And what is our notion of truth if not the example with the least error? Along with Peirce, and statistical measurement theory, I think of every observation as containing a combination some universal truth and individual error. The average of a distribution of observations contains the least percentage of individual error because that is what the math of achieving the average produces. The "truth" of a whole distribution is the distribution itself. The least erroneous generalization about the distribution is its average. I don't think truth lies outside the data. I take the view that every method, observation or imaginable thing contains some truth but only a part of the truth along with individual error. Each of the three methods for fixing belief is valid in so far as it goes (and of course as examples of themselves perfectly true). So I would describe them as producing partial truths. All observation are individual matters. But idividual observations are wrong in so far as they lack the validity that only multiple individual POVs can provide. The whole truth requires simult
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l]Re: Arisbe archives availability
Irving Anellis asks: Is there a possibility of setting up a dedicated server for Arisbe at your university, at the Peirce Edition Project offices in Indy, or some similar venue such as the Peirce Project at U Montreal or some other university? If I can figure out the technicalities of how we might incorporate it into the Peirce Publishing web site at http://www.peircepublishing.com, I'd be willing to give it free space as a public service to our community. REPLY: Thanks very much for your offer, Irving. I should be finding out today whether or not the change in management at my local ISP, The Door, to a nationally based ISP called "Windstream", will involve a reinstatement of a hosting commitment there, and if so at what expense. The Door was doing it pro bono, the new company probably not. Since ARISBE is not a huge site, compared to some -- it uses a little less than 70 megabytes of space, which is not much anymore -- the monthly fee will probably be pretty small, small enough at least to stay with them for a little longer even at my own expense, if necessary. But the real need is to establish both ARISBE and PEIRCE-L on the same server and to integrate them as effectively as possible. Just how this is to be done is not at all clear to me, simply as a question of efficieny of function, But on the technical side, it will also entail getting a first-rate listserver program, such as the one that used to be called "listserv", for example -- I forget the current name for it -- that has an archival system which is more usable than any others I am acquainted with, which requires quite a bit more money for the deluxe version. But that is what is needed as far as the list server goes. (Although it is questionable whether I can actually retrieve all of the old messages -- going back to August 1993 -- from the computing people at Texas Tech, who have changed the server system several times over the years and never yet lived up to their obligation to port the archives from server to server when they did so, I have copies myself of nearly everything from the beginning, perhaps with an occasional loss of a few messages at certain times but with no big gaps; but the conversion of them into a common format will be a time consuming task since ti cannot be fully automated. But it can be done and should be done.) The upshot of all this is that what is really wanted is a new home, as permanent as possible, for both ARISBE and the list, a functional integration of them, and a reconstituting of the archives for the list from its beginnings some thirteen years ago up to the present.. Okay, one problem this poses is that it seems clear that to do this right is going to require making the combined server system self-sustaining financially, and that raises the question of how, since I take it for granted that neither the ARISBE website nor the PEIRCE-L list should have any registration fee or any other impediment to universal access and use. My non-expert impression is that although there is not much problem with the maintenance of a server for a website like ARISBE as it presently stands, the same cannot be said for a list server owing, first, to the many technical complications which email systems introduce under the best of conditions, and second, to the fact that the onslaught of spammers, invasive and malicious hackers, and the like is both constant and is constantly changing as regards the kind of invasive and destructive strategies being used and likely to continue at the same or even greater pace into the indefinite future as spies and saboteurs of every type -- governmental, commercial, religious fanatics, and miscellaneous indiividual nihilists, cranks, and adventurers -- continue to figure out new ways to eavesdrop and sometimes simply disrupt communication of every sort. In short, it is my impression that it is probably unwise for well-intentioned individuals such as yourself, with small business or non-commercial organizations or projects, to take on the responsibility for maintaining list servers in particular, since they are a constant headache and are not likely to be any less so for the foreseeable future. This then raises the question of what sort of institutions should be turned to for hosting these things, and of course one immediately thinks of universities as the natural home for such entities. However, the problem with that is that universities are, as a general rule, no less unscrupulous in respect to any matters that they regard as part of their proper concern than commercial organizations or governments (and of course they sometimes are just a part of a governmental system). There are no doubt exceptions to this, but this has little to do with their prestige as universities and if you do not know the inner workings of the given university you cannot know which are and which are not scrupulous in the way you want them to be. Far from it being the
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science
Bill, you say:BB: Were Arjuna of right mind, he would be dead to self and all earthly cares,his mind clearly fixed on the Absolute. REPLY: But according to my understanding of the Gita the idea is that to be of the right mind is to clearly fixed on your earthly task, on what you are doing right now, like any craftsman at work in his craft. That is a very different matter than being "fixed on the Absolute", which does not seem to me to be recommended anywhere in the Gita. What could that mean in Hinduism? Of course, the objection is obvious, given my interpretation, namely, who says what your task is? Well, Arjuna was a general; and the dramatic context provides the task there: be a general and do what that dictates now. But then in real life that is frequently the way it is. Wriggle around any way you like, at times; there is no getting around what your task appears to you to be, unless you are in the business of rejecting all obligations in principle. Now, Arjuna might well be faulted for never having asked himself before that moment, when all the troops are lined up, whether he really thinks he ought to be try to be a general, instead of raising that question at the last minute. But then he might have said, well, but is there no legitimate occasion ever to be a general, the task of whom is precisely to slaughter the enemy at certain times, no matter who the enemy is? And then we would have a wholly different kind of moral reflection going on. But do you think the point the Gita makes is simply wrong, regardless of context, or isn't it right in saying, in effect, "Hey, the world contains many unspeakably vile things, never to be justified by any reasoning based on practical worldly consequences. There is no solution at the level of this-worldly understanding, and no conclusion to be drawn about this world except that it is constructed in an unspeakably vile and unjust way, if you try to assess it in calculative terms of good and bad produced. But in fact these armies are drawn up and are going to be slaughtering one another regardless of what you decide now. But don't confuse yourself with the being that decided that the world would be like this, if it makes sense to say that there is any such being." There is something that simply passes the possibility of a mere stance of moral self-righteousness about such situations. And sometimes there is nothing to do but what is wrong, any way you want to look at it. (He is not, after all, being urged to slaughter needlessly -- any more than, say, he is being urged to torture people by proxy, as generals and commanders-in-chief frequently are, Western and Eastern alike. Would that the products of Western civilization and the Christian religion could be expected to rise routinely to the level of a sincere and intelligent devotee of the Gita and just do their job instead of exploiting its power! ) So the only way out, when you are in such a situation of moral impossibility is just to do your job, assuming you know what your job really is." In my opinion, the next stage of development after Hinduism is Socratic Platonism -- Plato is acually a Reform Hindu in my opinion -- where you take as your job the task of, say, trying to get clear on what it means to be a general. Not that that gets you off the hook of these morally imponderable situtations, but at least you've got a better job! And if you ever find yourself in position to be the executive ruler of a great country you might be able to avoid disgracing your office and your political and religious tradition when such questions as, What is the job of a President? and What is the job of a torturer? arises! I am reminded just now, by the way, of that passage in the l898 lectures on "vitally important topics" where Peirce says that the vivisectionist becomes immoral precisely at the moment when he tries to justify his actions in slicing up the dog on the grounds that it will have beneficial results. Joe --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce-James question
It's just a typing error for "1869". But as regards the question, it is reasonable to suppose that James was influenced by that article even if there is no evidence other than the evidence for him having read it, provided there is something in it which suggests this. It was during a period in which James would have been susceptible to such an influence (e.g. the metaphysical club was formed in l871). Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Jorge Lurac <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2006 5:19:59 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce-James questionAre you sure? James died August 26, 1910. J. Lurac _ You wrote: I've been away from the list a while and don't know whether this has been discussed before. Perhaps you can help me. I've been concerned with James lately, particularly his comment about Peirce's essay which he found in "comprehensible," despite Peirce's "vocal elucidations," but which "interested me [James] strangely." Despite Peirce's "crabbed" writing, I think James studied the printed essay later and figured it out. I also think - but want some confirmation - that parts of that "strangely interesting" essay influenced James' with respect to the will to believe and with respect to risk. This is not to say that Peirce would have agreed with what James made of Peirce's essay. The essay which James alluded to, in his letter to Bowditch, seems to have been, "The Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic," written in 1969. __Correo Yahoo!Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ¡gratis! Reg¨strate ya - http://correo.espanol.yahoo.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Jeff Kasser says: JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.REPLY: JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular. I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when he says "… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?" This involves reiteration of effort with anticipation of it having a result in consequence of it , and thus implicitly makes reference to a possible sequential regularity of a lawlike nature. The two psychological laws might then be idioscopic rather than coenoscopic laws, having to do with the responsiveness of neural tissue to repeated stimulation and the like, which Peirce would know something about. It doesn't make any difference that it is not cenoscopic or properly philosophical since he is referring to it as something the devotee of tenacity exploits, not as something logic is based upon. This means that in referring to the two laws he is NOT referring to the basic principle that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as constituted by what would be logically described as a formal contradiction.Now, as regards that principle, the idea that inquiry -- thinking in the sense of "I just can't seem to think today" or "he is a competent thinker" -- is driven by doubt in the form of an exerienced contradiction is not a modern idea but has its origins at the very beginning of philosophy in the West in the practice of the dialectical craft of Socrates. Let me quote myself, from a paper I wrote a few years back, on the Socratic tradition in philosophy, which I claim to be the proper logical tradition to which we should be putting Peirce in relation In its origins Socratic dialectic probably developed as a modification of practices of eristic dispute that made use of the reductio techniques of the mathematicians, perhaps as especially modified by the Parmenidean formalists. Socratic dialectic differs importantly from the earlier argumentation, though, in at least two major respects, first, by conceiving of the elenchic or refutational aspect of the argumentation not as a basis from which one could then derive a positive conclusion either as the contradictory of the proposition refuted, as in reductio argumentation, or by affirming the alternative because it was the sole alternative available, but rather as inducing an aporia or awareness of an impasse in thought: subjectively, a bewilderment or puzzlement. Second, it differs also by using the conflicting energies held in suspense in the aporia as the motivation of inquiry. (Ransdell, "Peirce and the Socratic Tradition
[peirce-l] Fw: Memorial: Arnold Shepperson
Fprwarded to PEIRCE-L for Keyan Tomaselli: A memorial for Arnold Shepperson- Forwarded Message From: Keyan Tomaselli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: undisclosed-recipientsSent: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 5:06:49 AMSubject: Memorial: Arnold SheppersonA memorial has been organised to pay our last respects to Arnold:Venue: Grobler Room, Afrikaans, Howard College, UKZNDate: Friday 6 OctoberTime: 1.15pmCondolences have been received from all over the world. Many ofArnold's colleagues have inquired about the possibility of donating toa fund for the education of Arnold's adopted young son, Eddie-Lou Please lodge any cash donations (of any amount) with Ms Santie Strong,CCMS Postgraduate Administrator. Alternatively and preferably, pleasedeposit your donation in: Name of account: Arnold SheppersonABSA Flexi Save account no. 917-200-1854Branch Code: 632005Swift code: ABSA ZAJJCards and e-mailed condolences can be sent to Keyan. These will bepassed on to the family. Keyan Tomaselli, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli, Marc Caldwell and graduatestudents, CCMSJohn Collier and Julia Clare (Philosophy)Please find our Email Disclaimer here: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: Obituaries: Arnold Shepperson
Forwarded to PEIRCE-L for Keyan Tomaselli: two obituaries for Arnold Shepperson- Forwarded Message From: Keyan Tomaselli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 2:27:18 AMSubject: Obituaries: Arnold SheppersonDear JoeArnold spoke of you often, he valued your debate and engagementimensely. He introduced your work to me. His sudden passing is a realshock to all of us. I wondered whether you might be able to post oneor both of the obituaries below on the Peirce List?Many thanks Keyan TomaselliKEYAN TOMASELLIArnold Shepperson passed away on 29 September, 2006.UKZN(University of KwaZulu-Natal) and the communities of scholars his workhas impacted have all lost a great scholar, a committed intellectual,and a wonderful colleague. He died of a heart attack. Arnold servedfor a time as editor of the "Under Fire" section of Critical Arts, andco-wrote with me (and Joe Muller) a number of papers on the impact andhstory of the journal.A CCMS Honours and MA graduate, Arnold was employed by CCMS at varioustimes since he joined us in 1991 as a researcher, project consultant andstudent research advisor. He mentored numerous students in the PublicHealth Promotion via Education Entertainment (EE) Honours module, wasconsulted by students on their MA and PhD dissertations and theses, andhe worked extensively with me on a variety of both University andcontract research projects. Arnold was a key member of CCMS andsignificantly helped to build its research and publication capacity overthe past 16 years. He introduced a strong philosophical component to ourcultural studies work and debates, guiding us in the process towards aunique form of cultural studies globally. During his association with ushe co-authored scores of peer reviewed publications which appeared inboth local and international journals. Arnold was a leading contributorto international debates on CS Peirce, a US philosopher on pragmatismand semiotics, and he served for many years as one of the two SouthAfrican representatives on the Council of the International Associationfor Semiotic Studies. Arnold started his professional career as an industrial electrician onthe mines in the Witwatersrand. He registered at the University ofNatal at the age of 36, completing his undergraduate degree inPhilosophy and English. His goal was very specific: to learn about whyengineering professionals failed to heed warnings about safety issues inmine shafts. He was concerned about how the notion of `safety' wasconstructed by mine management, and he served as an expert witness forthe union with regard to one accident when a number of miners werekilled. Arnold raised funds while a PhD student in the Centre forCultural and Media Studies (CCMS) to conduct a contract research projectfor the Safety in Mines Advisory Committee in which he explored thesemiotics of hazard. His report engaged assumptions about cultures ofsafety and he suggested ways of engaging discourses about safety inrelation to implementation of culturally appropriate diagnosticmechanisms. This was also partly the subject of his PhD, which drewadditionally on his contributions to my Kalahari "from Observation toDevelopment" research project, in which he played a key theoreticalrole. Arnold significantly contributed also to the writing up of theDepartment of Health's Beyond Awareness I media and education strategyin the mid-1990s, developed under the auspices of the Minister'sAdvisory Committee on HIV/AIDS and STDs. The EE module introducedlater gave him an opportunity to thus also apply his talents onempirical projects undertaken by the many students whom he mentored.Arnold was accepted to Honours graduate study in CCMS in 1991 when hewas introduced to CS Peirce's work, a conceptual trajectory in which hewas soon to specialize and in which he became internationally renowned. He published by himself and and co-authored articles in journals on thetopic of semiotics in S - European Journal for Semiotic Studies, SocialSemiotics, Acta Fennica Semiotica, and worked with me also on numerousother articles and book chapters. His contribution to ongoing debatevia the web-based Peirce List was often positively commented on by hisand our peers. Arnold's influence on my own work is well known, and ourclose research and publishing partnership continues to date, with anumber of papers still in press and in preparation. Arnold was probablythe most accomplished Perciean scholar in South Africa.Work done by Arnold in the late 1990s on the National ResearchFoundation sponsored State of the Discipline: Communication Studiesreport, is well known to the South African communication and mediastudies scholars. This work was published in Communicare and EcquidNovi, and two international journals. Arnold's work will via thisproject have impacted nationally on the discipline. Many members of theSA Communication Association (SACOMM) will have interacted with Arnoldat its annual
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
Denis and list: The ARISBE website is temporarily down, with a possibility that it might be permanently down at its present location and have to be reopened elsewhere. The Door -- the IPS that has been hosting it gratis -- was apparently taken over by a national networking company and it may not be possible -- or desirable if it is possible -- to keep it going there. I am waiting to hear back from somebody at The Door on this, and will let everybody know on this as soon as I find out something.Two things important to understand: first, I have several complete up-to-date copies of the website stored on several different media and restoration is just a matter of pushing a few buttons once suitable arrangements are made, which I will do as quickly as possible if it is necessary to move it in order to restore it. I don't want to make more than one such move, though, because of the complications and possible confusions implicit in such a move. Second, the PEIRCE-L forum is not systemically connected with the ARISBE website and whatever happens there has no effect on the workings of the listserver which provides the physical basis of this forum. Joe Ransdell -- manager of PEIRCE-L and of the website ARISBE[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Denis Bayart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, October 2, 2006 7:51:05 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson Joe, The link to the Shepperson paper : http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf doesn't seem to work, or I miss something Could you help me, please ? Denis Bayart[EMAIL PROTECTED]---Centre de recherche en gestionEcole polytechnique et CNRS(33) (0) 1 55 55 83 21 - Fax (33) (0) 1 55 55 84 44http://crg.polytechnique.fr - Message d'origine - De : Joseph Ransdell À : Peirce Discussion Forum Envoyé : samedi 30 septembre 2006 22:29Objet : [peirce-l] Death of Arnold Shepperson John and Gary: As you suggested, Gary, I have made the paper by Arnold on safety and the logic of hazard -- which is an application of Peirce's economy of research -- available at ARISBE, on the page for Peirce-related papers. The URL for that is:http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdfI discovered, though, that the link for the paper he did with Tomaselli, on cinematic consciousness., does not work, apparently because it is on a page on the website for the Journal of South African and American Studies called Safundi that has restricted access: the link merely leads to the home page of that journal (which looks like an excellent journal, by the way). I wonder if John, or somebody who knows Keyan Tomaselli could find out about making that available without restriction somehow. I could mount a copy of it at ARISBE, for example, or it could appear on somebody else's website to which I am given a URL that I can use. Arnold also did a transcription of a Peirce MS which I have a copy of . I don't know what plans he had for that but I am sure he would like to make it generally available. I forget the number of the MS at the moment but I can find the transcription, I am sure, and will mount that on the web page for Peirce's own work after checking it over to see if it needs any tweaking. I will be pleased to post anything else which he did which anyone thinks he would like to see made generally available in this way.Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
My characterization of Arnold's paper "Safety and the Logic of Hazard" is not adequate and, after going through it again -- very hurriedly but with a better focus of attention than the first time through -- I realized that both his title and my brief characterization of it as being an application of Peirce's Economy of Research hardly even begins to suggest what it is really about. In fact, I don't know how to describe it in such a way as to do justice to it, but I do want to say that I find the range of things he is concerned with in it astonishing and extraordinarily exciting and I will be reading it again and again at the pace which it deserves. There is, for example a several page overview of Peirce's career and his philosophy which is masterfully done, well worth reading for that alone, as can also be said about his account of some of the principles of Peirce's pioneering theory of economy of research. But what especially interested me is a remarkable and lengthy discussion of the history of various and sometimes competing and contradicting conceptions of culture, tradition, and custom that have flourished at one time and another in the discourse of social theorists of various sorts, this being presented within the contextual frame of Peirce's categories of Quality, Actuality, and Representation which Arnold provides. The paper as a whole is so rich conceptually, and done with such a light touch and magisterial skill, that I can't imagine that there would be anyone in this forum who would not find what Arnold is doing in this paper to be of unusual interest for one reason or another. I would be very much interested myself in other people's reactions to it. Here is the URL again: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:29:14 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Death of Arnold SheppersonJohn and Gary: As you suggested, Gary, I have made the paper by Arnold on safety and the logic of hazard -- which is an application of Peirce's economy of research -- available at ARISBE, on the page for Peirce-related papers. The URL for that is:http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf I discovered, though, that the link for the paper he did with Tomaselli, on cinematic consciousness., does not work, apparently because it is on a page on the website for the Journal of South African and American Studies called Safundi that has restricted access: the link merely leads to the home page of that journal (which looks like an excellent journal, by the way). I wonder if John, or somebody who knows Keyan Tomaselli could find out about making that available without restriction somehow. I could mount a copy of it at ARISBE, for example, or it could appear on somebody else's website to which I am given a URL that I can use. Arnold also did a transcription of a Peirce MS which I have a copy of . I don't know what plans he had for that but I am sure he would like to make it generally available. I forget the number of the MS at the moment but I can find the transcription, I am sure, and will mount that on the web page for Peirce's own work after checking it over to see if it needs any tweaking. I will be pleased to post anything else which he did which anyone thinks he would like to see made generally available in this way.Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Death of Arnold Shepperson
John and Gary: As you suggested, Gary, I have made the paper by Arnold on safety and the logic of hazard -- which is an application of Peirce's economy of research -- available at ARISBE, on the page for Peirce-related papers. The URL for that is: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf I discovered, though, that the link for the paper he did with Tomaselli, on cinematic consciousness., does not work, apparently because it is on a page on the website for the Journal of South African and American Studies called Safundi that has restricted access: the link merely leads to the home page of that journal (which looks like an excellent journal, by the way). I wonder if John, or somebody who knows Keyan Tomaselli could find out about making that available without restriction somehow. I could mount a copy of it at ARISBE, for example, or it could appear on somebody else's website to which I am given a URL that I can use. Arnold also did a transcription of a Peirce MS which I have a copy of . I don't know what plans he had for that but I am sure he would like to make it generally available. I forget the number of the MS at the moment but I can find the transcription, I am sure, and will mount that on the web page for Peirce's own work after checking it over to see if it needs any tweaking. I will be pleased to post anything else which he did which anyone thinks he would like to see made generally available in this way. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
John Collier said: I regret to inform you that Arnold died yesterday of a heart attack. It was a shock to me, since I saw him shortly before his death, and he seemed fine, and very enthusiastic. It is a loss to me personally, but also, I think, to the wider world. Arnold was well on his way to giving a Peircean response to Arrow's paradox of social choice by rejecting Arrow's explicitly nominalist assumptions on ordering, using the idea of sequence instead, as found in Peirce. And a loss to the Peirce community, John, to which Arnold had already contributed much.. Thanks for letting us know. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] My best to everyone.John--Professor John Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED]Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South AfricaT: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Jim and list I think we may be getting close to the rationale of the four methods with what you say below, Jim. I've not run across anything that Peirce says that seems to me to suggest that he actually did work out his account of the methods by thinking in terms of the categories, but it seems likely that he would nevertheless tend to do so, even if unconsciously, given the importance he attached to them from the beginning: they are present in the background of his thinking even in the very early writings where he is thinking of them in terms of the first, second, and third persons of verb conjugation (the second person -- the "you" -- of the conjugation becomes the third categorial element). But whether he actually worked it out on that basis, the philosophically important question is whether it is philosophically helpful to try to understand the four methods by supposing that the first three correspond to the categories regarded in isolation and the fourth can be understood as constructed conceptually by combining the three methods consistent with their presuppositional ordering. That remains to be seen. In other words, I do think we can read these factors into his account in that way, and this could be pedagogically useful in working with the method in a pedagogical context in particular, but it is a further question whether that will turn out to be helpful in developing his thinking further in a theoretical way. It certainly seems to be worth trying, though. If the overall improvement of thinking in our practical life seems not to have improved much from what it was in antiquity, when compared with the radical difference in the effectiveness of our thinking in those areas in which the fourth method has been successfully cultivated, it may be because we have failed to pay attention to the way we handle our problems when we take recourse to one and another of the other three methods, as we are constantly doing without paying any attention to it. I started to write up something on this but it quickly got out of hand and I had best break off temporarily and return to that later. I will just say that it has to do with the possibility of developing the theory of the four methods as a basis for a practical logic -- or at least a practical critical theory -- of the sort that could be used to teach people how to be more intelligent in all aspects of life, including political life -- and I will even venture to say, in religious life: two areas in which intelligence seems currently to be conspicuously -- and dangerously -- absent. One potentiality that Peirce's philosophy has that is not present in the philosophy and logic currently dominating in academia lies in the fact that he conceived logic in such a way that rhetoric -- the theory of persuasion -- can be reintroduced within philosophy as a theoretical discipline with practical application in the service of truth. One can expect nothing of the sort from a philosophy that has nothing to say about persuasion. Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Jim Piat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 9:54:25 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Dear Joe, I agree with your characterization of the scientific method as including the distinctive elements of the other three. You have clarified the issue in a way that is very helpful to me. I agree as well that taken individually each of the lst three methods (tenacity, authority and reason) can lead to disaster. So, without going into all the details let me just sum up by saying I agree with you and that includes your cautions about my misleading metaphors, etc. Thanks for two very helpful posts. Picking up on your suggestion of a possible hierachical relationship between the methods I have been thinking about some of their possible connections with Peirce's categories. Again, my ideas on this are vague and meant only to be suggestive and I look forward to your thoughts. First, very roughly, it strikes me that iconicity is the crux of direct apprehension of reality. In essence perception is the process by which one becomes impressed with (or attunded to) the form of reality. In effect a kind of resonance is established by which subject and environment become similar. This I think accounts for the conviction we all have that in some fundamental way what we perceive "is" the case -- which I think is in part the explanation for the method of tenacity. Second is the notion of otherness or dissimilarity. The existance of resistance which we experience as the will of others or as the limits of our own wills. Third is the notion of thought or reason by which one is able to mediate between these two modes of existence. Unfortunately, as you point out, one can get lost in thought (or without it) and thus we are best served not
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
But I would disagree with this part of what you say, Jim. Considered simply as methods in their own rights, I don't think one wants to speak of them as being incorporated AS methods within the fourth method. As a methodic approach to answering questions the method of tenacity is surely just a kind of stupidity, and it seems to me that the turn to authority, not qualified by any further considerations -- such as, say, doing so because there is some reason to think that the authority is actually in a better position to know than one is -- apart, I say, from that sort of qualification, the turn to authority as one's method seems little more intelligent than the method of tenacity, regarded in a simplistic way. The third method, supposing that it is understood as the acceptance of something because it ties in with -- coheres with -- a system of ideas already accepted, does seem more intelligent because it is based on the properties of ideas, which is surely more sophisticated than acceptance which is oblivious of considerations of coherence. But it is also the method of the paranoid, who might reasonably be said to be unintelligent to a dangerous degree at times. But I think that what you say in your other message doesn't commit you to regarding the methods themselves as "building blocks", which is a mistaken metaphor here. It is rather that what each of them respectively appeals to is indeed something to which the fourth method appeals: the value of self-identity, the value of identification (suitably qualified) with others. the value of recognition of a universe -- all of which are redeemed as valuable in the fourth method by the addition of the appeal to the force majeure of the real given the right sort of conditions, i.e. objectiviy. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ - Original Message From: Jim Piat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 3:56:39 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Dear Folks, Part of what I'm trying to say is that its not as though the scientific method were an entirely independent alternative to the other three methods. On the contrary the scientific method is built upon and incorporates the other three methods. The lst three are not discredited methods they are the building blocks of the scienfic method. What gives sciences its power is that in combining the three methods (plus the emphasis upon observation -- which can or can not be part of the method of tenacity) it gives a more reliable basis for belief than any of the other three methods alone. But as for one and two -- yes I'd say they are the basis of the whole structure. Tenacity and authority can both include reason and observation. So if we include reason and observation in the lst two then we have all the elements of the scientific method. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Jim Piat and list: Jim, your analysis (see below) agrees with something I worked out on this from a different but complementary perspective some years ago in the process of teaching from "The Fixation of Belief" in my intro classes. I've also used it here a number of times but perhaps never explained adequately how I had derived it. I regard your analysis as a sort of verification of mine (or mine as a verification of yours) since it is clear that you did in fact come up with it from a different perspective. When that happens it is like the sort of corroboration or verification one gets which Peirce refers to in that marvelous passage where he says: ==quote Peirce CP 5.407= . . . all the followers of science are animated by a cheerful hope that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they apply it. One man may investigate the velocity of light by studying the transits of Venus and the aberration of the stars; another by the oppositions of Mars and the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites; a third by the method of Fizeau; a fourth by that of Foucault; a fifth by the motions of the curves of Lissajoux; a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth, may follow the different methods of comparing the measures of statical and dynamical electricity. They may at first obtain different results, but, as each perfects his method and his processes, the results are found to move steadily together toward a destined centre. So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. ===end quote= Anyway, my analysis goes like this. Like you, I think of the fourth method as including the first three in a sense, though I would put it more exactly as including that distinctive element in each of the three which they respectively take account of. (Whether or not it would be possible to conceive of the third method as doing something analogous with the first two, and the second method as doing something analogous with the first method -- which would make for a very nice symmetry in the whole account -- I do not know since I have never tried to work that out.) The frame I use here is the formulation for the necessary components of what I call a "primary research publication", meaning by that the kind of publication often called in the sciences a "primary publication", in which one is making a research claim in the form of a report to other researchers in the same field about a conclusion one has come to about the subject-matter of common interest to those in the field, though only provisionally, on the assumption that others will or would come to the same conclusion about it provided that they were to start from the same agreed upon understanding of the subject-matter, already and independently established and thus to be taken for granted, and on the basis of this prior agreement were to draw an inference -- described as such in this paper -- from some specified premises to the conclusion which constitutes the research claim the paper is making. In other words, in putting the paper forth as a publication one is addressing one's research colleagues -- one's research peers -- and saying, in effect: "Here is a conclusion I have come to about our subject-matter, and I believe that you -- any of you -- will agree with me on this if you start from where I am starting [the premises of this particular claim] and draw the following inference [which could be any of the three basic types of inference -- deductive, inductive, or abductive -- or any co-ordinated sequence of such inferences] to this conclusion." This could be the description either of an observational or an experimental procedure, which are essentially the same thing since a scientific observation is one which is understood to occur consequent upon certain specified conditions of observation being met. Thus implicit in the making of the research claim is something essential in each of the methods. The essential element of the first method, which concerns only the conviction of the individual (which could be an individual group or team, by the way), is there at the most fundamental level of the claim: " I have come to the following conviction or c
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce and knowledge
Burke and Clark:Burke asks whether Peirce ever defined "knowledge", and I would add this to what Clark says:.REPLY:Yes, and very cagily, in Baldwin's Dictionary, and it appears in the Collected Papers as follows:==Peirce: CP 5.605-6 from Baldwin's Dictionary (1902)= [Definition of "knowledge":] 605. This word is used in logic in two senses: (1) as a synonym for Cognition, and (2), and more usefully, to signify a perfect cognition, that is, a cognition fulfilling three conditions: first, that it holds for true a proposition that really is true; second, that it is perfectly self-satisfied and free from the uneasiness of doubt; third, that some character of this satisfaction is such that it would be logically impossible that this character should ever belong to satisfaction in a proposition not true. 606. Knowledge is divided, firstly, according to whatever classification of the sciences is adopted. Thus, Kantians distinguish formal and material knowledge. Secondly, knowledge is divided according to the different ways in which it is attained, as into immediate and mediate knowledge. Immediate knowledge is a cognition, or objective modification of consciousness, which is borne in upon a man with such resistless force as to constitute a guarantee that it (or a representation of it) will remain permanent in the development of human cognition. Such knowledge is, if its existence be granted, either borne in through an avenue of sense, external or internal, as a percept of an individual, or springs up within the mind as a first principle of reason or as a mystical revelation. Mediate knowledge is that for which there is some guarantee behind itself, although, no matter how far criticism be carried, simple evidency, or direct insistency, of something has to be relied upon. The external guarantee rests ultimately either upon authority, i.e., testimony, or upon observation. In either case mediate knowledge is attained by Reasoning, which see for further divisions. It is only necessary to mention here that the Aristotelians distinguished knowledge hoti, or of the facts themselves, and knowledge dioti, or of the rational connection of facts, the knowledge of the how and why (cf. the preceding topic). They did not distinguish between the how and the why, because they held that knowledge dioti is solely produced by Syllogism in its greatest perfection, as demonstration. The term empirical knowledge is applied to knowledge, mediate or immediate, which rests upon percepts; while the terms philosophical and rational knowledge are applied to knowledge, mediate or immediate, which rests chiefly or wholly upon conclusions or revelations of reason. Thirdly, knowledge is divided, according to the character of the immediate object, into apprehensive and judicative knowledge, the former being of a percept, image, or Vorstellung, the latter of the existence or non-existence of a fact. Fourthly, knowledge is divided, according to the manner in which it is in the mind, into actual, virtual, and habitual knowledge. See Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, lib. I, dist. iii. quest. 2, paragraph beginning "Loquendo igitur." Fifthly, knowledge is divided according to its end, into speculative and practical.===end quotation=== You'll notice that he defines it as a "perfect cognition", with no implication that any such thing ever is or is not actually attained. Thus it is stated consistently with his fallibilism since it specifies a condition -- the first condition, that it really is true -- which specifies something we cannot be absolutely certain of, though of course we may very well be certain enough for this or that practical purpose. As a matter if practice we do of course identify some things we are confident about as being knowledge, but it never follows from that that it IS knowledge. All knowledge is really just "knowledge".so-called. But, again, there can be (defeasible) situational justification for so identifying it. Peirce uses the word "cognition" frequently, and that term does not carry the same burden of implication in its use that "knowledge" does, so, for example, it is not straining its usage to speak of defective or even false cognition. In practice, nothing of importance in his philosophy seems to hinge on how Peirce conceives of knowledge, which is little more than a verbal question given his approach to topics usually connected with it, such as the question of what is meant by truth, for example. The question about the meaning of "truth" or "true" IS an important question for Peirce, since inquiry, being essentially social, involves truth claims. But does it involve knowledge claims? Only secondarily, when one is defending a truth claim by citing something which is functioning as a premise or presupposition of the truth claim one is making and justifying the use of that premise or presupposition as something "we already know", whic
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Gary says:
"The social principle is rooted in logic, and logic is rooted in the
social principle. If that ain't circular, what is?"
(See below for context)
REPLY:
Well, Gary, it looks like some fancy footwork with the term "is rooted
in" might have to be resorted to if we are to save Peirce on this
one! You've caught him with a flat contradiction
there! (Or so it seems! 8-] )
Joe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Original Message From: gnusystems <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 12:55:58 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Joe, thanks for that pointer to Jeff Kasser's paper; it clears up many of the questions i've had lately about what Peirce meant by "psychologism" (and "psychology").However i'm inclined to question Jeff's emphasis (in the middle of the paper) on the circularity of "psychologistic" approaches to logic as a crucial component of Peirce's antipsychologism. I think there's an important sense in which the logic of science -- the logic that Peirce was mainly interested in -- *has* to be circular, or rather cyclical. I won't go into that here, but i will point out a circularity in Peirce
which i think would be rather damning if all circles were vicious.Jeff quotes W2 270-1, CP 5.354, EP1 81 [1869]:[[[ [L]ogic rigidly requires, before all else, that no determinate fact, nothing which can happen to a man's self, should be of more consequence to him than everything else. He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his inferences, collectively. So the social principle is intrinsically rooted in logic. ]]]Now, compare this with a clearly "recycled" version from 1878 (EP1, 149; CP 2.654):[[[ It seems to me that we are driven to this, that logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however
vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. 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. Logic is rooted in the social principle. ]]]The social principle is rooted in logic, and logic is rooted in the social principle. If that ain't circular, what is?gary}Who guides those whom God has led astray? [Qur'an 30:29 (Cleary)]{gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson & Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin University }{ [EMAIL PROTECTED] }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/ }{---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Jim W. says: "Pyrryo, of course, claimed that 'suspension' yields peace of mind." REPLY: Yes, but then again Pyrrho wasn'y supposed to be making any assertions at all, being the sort of sceptic he purported to be! But, yes, sure, This or something like this has always seemed to me to be the central puzzle for philosophy, central or maybe fundamental: fundamental, when we consider that there is reason to think that the whole point to Socrates as paradigmatic philosopher is that he is a model for philosophy as the answer to the question of what the good life is like, but how can permanent dissatisfaction be in the recipe for the good life? This is perhaps why his interlocuters so persistently accuse him of acting like he doesn't know when he surely does! Of course we can do some distinction drawing to clarify all this, but there seems to be an unlimited quantity of more such distinctions to be drawn to keep the paradoxes at bay! On the other hand, I have no doubt that quite a few of us here would have to admit that we can't think of anything better to do than doing philosophy, if only we had all the time in the world to do it right, in the leisurely fashion that it requires to do really well! There is a lot of puzzling paradoxicality in connection with detachment generally: we praise it in order to promote objectivity and condemn it as indicative of callousness and insensitivity. for example. But back to Pyyrho: I suppose we might point out that Buridan's ass does starve to death, notwithstanding all of that food at hand. Or less facetiously, we might point out that the bundles of hay (or whatever) must be absolutely identical in attractive power, and the passing of time assures us that even if an equality of opposiite attractors is achieved it will only be for a very short time, and as the dissymmetry sets in which enables us to move along in the process the movement toward success is experiened as gratifying. Lurking just below the surface in this, though, is the question of "feigned doubt or hesitation," too, i.e. treating something as being in question even though one is only entertaining the hypothetical possibility of a doubt. But isn't that necessary for raising a question at times? There is something on this in a footnote to one of the early pragmatism papers, as I recall, possibly attached by the editors of the Collected Papers which they culled from some MS. I recall not being altogether happy with what he was saying there. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 12:22:52 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe and list, It is difficult to tell exactly what those two psychological laws are from the text. (preceding the quote below) It is also difficult to frame them universally. Either we talk of all men at all times or some men at all times or all men at some time or another. I think we could talk of all men at some time or another "systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions." That is what needs explaining. The explanation is teleological. What causes people to avoid changing their opinions? Why do people avoid changing their opinions? Peirce says, 1. an instinctive dislike of an undecided state of mind makes men cling spasmodically to the views they already take. 2. a steady and immovable faith yields great peace of mind. (sec. 5 FOB) Pyrryo, of course, claimed that 'suspension' yields peace of mind. But this was only after the method of science or experience was brought to bear. Furthermore, an undecided state of mind motivates inquiry as much as it closes it down. Effectively, this reflects the problem of framing a law universally. How about "The truth is too painful." If the man following the "method of ostriches" knew this about himself, however,it is difficult to see how it could yield peace of mind. Can s/he coherently say "I am impervious to the truth and I am happy." What can be said here? In any case, I am not sure what the two psychological laws are. #1 looks like a candidate. Jim W -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 6:21 PM Subject: [peirce-l] What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce says that "a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change n his opinions, and if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychologicl laws -- I do not see what can be said against his doing so". This is in Part V, where he is explaining the method of tenacity, where he then goes on to say that "the social impulse" will nevertheless somehow cause him, at times, to face up to some contradiction which impels recourse to adopting the second method, which
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Title: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Pei Martin -- and Bill: Martin, I find what you are saying both plausible and resulting in a gemerally consistent view. Something can be done, too, to put a more positive face on the first two methods, which need not be construed as negatively as Peirce does, e.g. by pointing out that tenacity, in spite of there being nothing that one can cite at a given time that supports one's viewand the evidence seems actually to be against it, this sort of stubborness seems to be a pretty important factor at times in winning through to a better view. Of course everything really depends on good judgment and being willing, finally, to give up on something. But there is a positive element in tenacity that needs to be identified and salvaged finally as part of the fourth method. And so also for authority, which is, in some cases, simply the overwhelming forcefulness of well-deserved good reputations. Peirce is definitely aware of this sort of thing. I ran across a passage within the past day or so that illustrates this and I'll see if I can find it again. Peirce is expressing a kind of scorn, as I recall, about scientists who are overly impressed by the recognition given in official commendations and awards and the like and says that the individual scientist has to be the best judge of his or her own competence. In other words, competence actually requires one's own ability to be the best judge of one's own competence, that is, one ought to regard the matter that way. I think though that you are probably right that it is only in the case of the third method that it even appears that we can reasonably talk about it as being a rational method, that being highly qualified, of course, by noting it as a "degenerate" form, as you suggest. That goes back to what Bill Bailey was saying about the decision about the planet Pluto being a committee decision. I think myself that it is not correct to say that they really did settle anything by making that decision. I mean their vote may well have the effect of bringing that change about, but this is simply a causal result, not a logical consequence, i.e. they didn't really decide to do anything other than to lend persuasional weight to what will turn out de facto to be accepted about Pluto from now on. I would argue myself -- have argued elsewhere -- that acceptance in science can mean only one thing, namely. the fact that future inquirers do in fact make use of the proposition in question as a premise or presupposition in their own futuire inquiry, essentially including that part of it which consists in making a public claim to a research conclusion which is put forward as based on the propositon in quesion in that way. Otherwise it makes no difference what any scientists say about Pluto's status. It is up to the future to determine whether the resolution to actually use the proposition in that way or not has the effect of actual such use of it. And of course the last word on that is never in. As it stands, the confusion about what is meant by "acceptance" in science -= and inhumanistic scholaraship, too -- is massive and sometimes grotesque, as when it is confused with gettting a paper accepted by a prestigious journal! Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] From Martin Lefebvre To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 11:40:01 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe, Kristi, list, At the risk of offering a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument, I'll try looking at the issue from the prespective of Peirce's more mature views. I consider the "Fixation" essay to be organized around a sort of development/growth principle that leads to the scientific method as the method of choice of reason. I believe that growth here can be thought of categorially. The method of tenacity "works" as long as the individual is considered monadically (the social impulse must be held in check) and as long as there is no attempt to examine a belief against experience. A "monadic" mind (what could that be???) would think what it thinks, irrespective of anything else. Of course, the individual (the self) is not a monad (see Colapietro's work on this) and the social impulse cannot be held in check forever. With the method of authority belief is achieved in relation to the belief of others (those in authority) -- not in relation to experience. There is a growing sense of dualism here with the introduction of "others". With the third, a priori, method we find something interesting. This third method is "far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed", says Peirce (italics mine). He adds, however: "It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste". Now, as you know, Peirce (much) later introduced esthetics to the normative sciences and saw both ethics and logic as requiring the
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Bill, Kirsti, et al: In my earlier message I mischaracterized the method he describes in MS 165. And of course what later becomes the fourth method or method of reason is only alluded to rather than described except in the last paragraph of this MS where he talks about "the Children of This World" in contrast with the "Divine, Spiritual, or Heavenly" world of the fundamentalists, the "Children of this world" being those who realize that "things are not just as we choose to think them", which is nearly equivalent to saying that they recognize that there is such a thing as reality, the recognition of which is of the essence of the fourth method, which Peirce defines in terms of that which is so regardless of what anyone thinks it to be. I was thinking of this simplistically as the method of tenacity, but in fact what he is describing includes both the tenacity component and the authority component and I would say that it also includes the a priori component as well, though what he means by the latter, in the Fixation article, is not easy to get completely clear on. Anyway, I think we can see how, after writing this, further rewrites by Peirce will show him recognizing that he needs to draw some further distinctions, which ends up finally as the four methods of the Fixation paper -- and there are many, many rewrites of this in the MS material, some of which is available in Writings 2 and 3 and some of which is available in Volume 7 of the Collected Papers (in the part called "The Logic of 1873"), which is somewhat misleadingly titled since Peirce was working on this text from the time of the MS presently in question from 1869-1870. If you go to the ARISBE website, you will see that on the page for the primary Peirce writings as made available there http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm I have arranged the material which the Peirce Edition Project has made available from Volume 2 of the Writings from that period (a few years earlier than the publication of the Fixation paper in l877) in a fairly perspicuous way and the development of his thinking on this can be traced through to some extent there in addition to what can be learned from what is available in the Collected Papers in Volume 7. But there is much MS material still available only in the unpublished manuscripts. Perhaps we can get copies of some of that transcribed and distributed in the next few weeks. (If anybody has an digitized transcriptions of that particular MS material, let me know and I will put it up on-line.) Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 11:10:36 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Bill, Kirsti, and list generally: Let's go back to a short MS from 1869-70 (available on-line, from Vol 2 of the Writings), which is the earliest MS I am aware of -- but not necessarily the earliest one there is -- in which we find Peirce explicitly approaching logic, in what is clearly a projected introductory logic text, from the perspective of logic as inquiry. In German "inquiry" would be "Forschung", as in Karl Popper's Logik der Forschung of 1914, which was disastrously -- for the course of logic in the 20th Century -- mistranslated as "Logic of Scientific Discovery". (More on that later.) The immediate point of interest is that in it we find Peirce working initially with only two methods, tenacy and what will later be called the "method of reason" or "method of science" or, in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, "the experiential method". It is short and I include the whole of it here and wll as follows: =quote Peirce http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_37/v2_37.htm Practical Logic (MS 165: 1869-70) Chapter I "All men naturally desire knowledge." This book is meant to minister to this passion primarily and secondarily to all interests that knowledge subserves. Here will be found maxims for estimating the validity and strength of arguments, and for deciding what facts ought to be examined in the investigation of a question. That the student may attain a real mastery of the art of thinking, it is necessary that the reasons for these maxims should be made clear to him, and that the maxims themselves should be woven into a harmonious code so as to be readily grasped by the mind. Logic or dialectic is the name of the science from which such rules are drawn. For right reasoning has evidently been the object of inquiry for Aristotle in all the books of the Organon except perhaps the first, as it was also that of the Stoics, of the Lawyers, of the medieval Summulists, and of modern students of Induction, in the additions which they have made to the doctri
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
he principle of ordering the methods this way in terms of critical thought involved. The method of tenacity, by definition, involves none. The method of authority may involve some, though not necessarily by the believer, but by the authority. It is not excluded, by definition, that the authority in question may have arrived at the belief by a process involving critical thought, as well as having gained the authority for a reason. Well, I don't know. Don't remember Peirce ever writing along these lines. But it is an ordering of "intellectual enditions". So the method of tenacity would imply a conscious belief, in contrast to all the beliefs forced upon us by experience which we are not aware we are holding. CP 5.524 ""...For belief, while it lasts, is a strong habit, and, as such forces the man to believe until some surprise breaks the habit." Kirsti Määttänen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>25.9.2006 kello 02:02, Joseph Ransdell kirjoitti: Dear Kirsti:: I'm short on time today and can't really answer you until tomorrow, but I ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch he describes what he was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as follows. (I'm just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at the moment and will get back with you tomorrow, when I have some free time again. In a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564, Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from the proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when satisfaction is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then 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 [i.e. the method of tenacity], the most degraded of all intellectual cnditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society [the method of authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and finally reaching the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the method of experience]." My words are in brackets Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Kirsti Määttänen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe & Bill, Joe, I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote: > JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the > second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have > the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be > authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried > to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't > recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory > on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much > interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of > something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I > believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible? And later in the discussion you wrote: JR: Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of when one thinks of one's identity. To my mind the logic in the order Peirce is here following is based on the degree of 'goodness' of methods, not on motives, or order in evolution, or any other kind of (logical) order. And the goodness has to do with 'summum bonum", the ultimate aim and purpose, which is not necessarily an aim or a purpose held by any (one) individual person. So, the method of tenacity, in spite of being the lowest in degree of goodness, IS STILL A CONSIS
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Dear Kirsti:: I'm short on time today and can't really answer you until tomorrow, but I ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch he describes what he was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as follows. (I'm just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at the moment and will get back with you tomorrow, when I have some free time again. In a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564, Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from the proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when satisfaction is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then 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 [i.e. the method of tenacity], the most degraded of all intellectual cnditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society [the method of authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and finally reaching the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the method of experience]." My words are in brackets Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Kirsti Määttänen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Joe & Bill,Joe, I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote:> JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the > second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have > the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be > authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried > to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't > recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory > on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much > interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of > something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I > believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible? And later in the discussion you wrote:JR: Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of when one thinks of one's identity.To my mind the logic in the order Peirce is here following is based on the degree of 'goodness' of methods, not on motives, or order in evolution, or any other kind of (logical) order. And the goodness has to do with 'summum bonum", the ultimate aim and purpose, which is not necessarily an aim or a purpose held by any (one) individual person.So, the method of tenacity, in spite of being the lowest in degree of goodness, IS STILL A CONSISTENT METHOD. Which, if persisted in, will, in the long run (if the person persisting will live long enough), show to the person its truth or falsity.If false, it will be some kind of a nasty surprise to the person. If still persisted in, more nasty surprised are to follow. - Well, it might as well be a pleasant surprise. For example with the (common) belief that humans beings are by nature evil and egoistic. Being surprised in this way, according to my somewhat systematic observations, follows a different course. But Peirce does not give examples of this kind.But I do not see any justification given in this particular paper to:CSP: In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity.It can only be the 'summum bonum', which could act as an (ultimate) justification in considering the method of authority as far superior to the method of tenacity. But Peirce does not take that up here.Anyway, the IF's in the following may be worth considering:CSP: "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit"How I find, is, that these are the premisses from which Peirce proceeds in this chapter. So these give the perspective Peirce is here taking in view of the answers he offers, pertaining as well to the logic of the order of the methods in presenting them.As t
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
As regards tthe logical vs. psychological distinction: Jeff Kasser wrote an important paper on what that distinction meant for Peirce a few years ago. The title is "Peirce's Supposed Psychologism". It;s on the ARISBE website: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/kasser/psychol.htm Jeff makes it pretty clear, I think, that what Peirce meant by "psychologism" -- which Peirce frequently inveighs against but is often accused of himself -- is not what most people who talk about this now assume that it is. I won't attempt to state Jeff's conclusions here with any exactitude -- he will be joining the discussion himself in a few days when he gets some free time -- but just roughly indicate what he is getting at -- or at least what I learned or think I learned from his paper -- namely, that the conception of thought or mind is not uniquely the proper province of any special science, be it psychology (scientific or otherwise) or sociology or linguistics or the theory of computing machines or whatever. The idea of mind or thought is also a basic commonsense conception which has been around in the West in an overt form since the time when people first started speculating about thought and mind in ancient Greece. In the terminology Peirce adopted from Jeremy Bentham, we should distinguish between a COENOSCOPIC sense of "mind" or "thought" or other mentalistic term and an IDIOSCOPIC sense of such terms.. The former is the sense of "mind" or "thought" which we have in mind [!!] when we say something like "What are you thinking about?", "What's on you mind?", "He spoke his mind", and so forth, as distinct from the sense which is appropriate for use in the context of some special scientific study of mind. To understand what is meant by the word "mind" as used in scientific psychology, let us say, we have to find out what people who have established or mastered something in that field understand by such terms since the meaning of such terms in that context is a matter of what the course of special study of its subject matter has resulted in up to this point. That is the idioscopic sense of "mind", "thought", etc. But long before there was anything like a science of psychology and long before we were old enough to understand that there is any such thing as psychology we had already learned in the course of our ordinary dealings with people something about the nature of mind in the "coenoscopic" sense of the term. For we all learn early on, as small children, that we have to figure out what people are thinking in order to understand what they are wanting to say, for example; we learn that people can be sincere or insincere, saying one thing and thinking another; we learn that they sometimes lie, pretending to think what what they do not actually think or believe; people change their minds; they tell us what is on their minds; and we learn also that they believe us or doubt us, too, when we say something, and so forth. We become constantly -- I don't mean obsessively but just as a mater of course -- aware of that sort of thing in any conversation we have or any communications we read. In other words it is just the plain old everyday understanding that is indispensable for ordinary life, which may be shot through with contradiction and incoherence but,.for better or worse, is indispensable nonetheless Now it is a nice question to get clear on exactly what we must be minimally assuming or taking for granted in drawing such commonsense distinctions in our ordinary day-in, day-out dealing with people, and we may very well make big mistakes in trying to say what they are; but whatever the right analysis of that yields -- which may take some considerable skill to get right -- it will be our common sense understanding of what mind is, what thinking is, etc. That is our "coenoscopic" understanding of what mind is and that is what philosophers -- including logicians -- are (or ought to be) concerned to explicate when they are doing their proper job.. Such is, I believe, Peirce's view of the distinction of two kinds of understanding of what mind is. There is, by the way, a corresponding distinction to be drawn between our ordinary commonsense (coenoscopic) physics -- our understanding of the purely physical aspect of the things we have to deal with in moving about and moving other things in the world, and then there os the special scientific (ideoscopic) understanding. Now, at one point Jeff quotes a passage from Peirce in which he claims that at the basis of the special sciences we in fact find coenoscopic conceptions which we think of as being idioscopic though they are not. ==quote Peirce= Now it is a circumstance most significant for the logic of science, that this science of dynamics, upon which all the physical sciences repose, when defined in the strict way in which its founders understood it, and not as embracing the law of the conservation of
[peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Bill Bailey says: "Joe, I don't understand why you think the order might be reversed. To resort to authority is essentially to cease thinking and to unquestioningly accept. There's no cognitive dissonance avoidance necessary. But if we begin with trying to avoid dissonance, and society forces us to confront it, then authority is one possible resort. (Leon Festinger's school of research would suggest still other possibilities of dissonance reduction.)" REPLY: Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of when one thinks of one's identity. Losing some beliefs e.g. in religion, in one's parents, in the worthiness of one's country, etc., can be experienced as a kind of self-destruction and people often seem to demonstrate great fear of that happening to them. But this sense of self-identity could be argued to be a later construct than one's idea of the social entity of which one is a part. I always liked to use it in teaching intro to philosophy classes because it is the only paper on logic I know of where it is made clear that there is no obvious or self-evident basis for supposing that it is better to be reasonable than unreasonable: indeed, irrationality is frequently respected more highly than rationality by people with a literary orientation, for example. Anyway, what I want to say is that I interpret Peirce as appealing to four distinct things of value to which appeal can be made -- which may be existentially at odds with one another as values -- in a process of belief-fixing: self-integrity, social unity, coherence or unity of ideas (construable objectively as the idea that there is a universe), and the idea of the independently real that is always there, the one thing you can always rely upon. I think of the fourth method as presupposing the values of the first three but as introducing a fourth as well, which could be the first three considered AS ordered, I suppose. (But I am not arguing that.) What are the other possible kinds of dissonance reduction that Festinger identifies, by the way? Joe - Original Message From: Bill Bailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 11:34:25 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe, I don't understand why you think the order might be reversed. To resort to authority is essentially to cease thinking and to unquestioningly accept. There's no cognitive dissonance avoidance necessary. But if we begin with trying to avoid dissonance, and society forces us to confront it, then authority is one possible resort. (Leon Festinger's school of research would suggest still other possibilities of dissonance reduction.) Bill Bailey In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce says that "a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change n his opinions, and if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychologicl laws -- I do not see what can be said against his doing so". This is in Part V, where he is explaining the method of tenacity, where he then goes on to say that "the social impulse" will nevertheless somehow cause him, at times, to face up to some contradiction which impels recourse to adopting the second method, which is the method of authority. His explanation of this is very unsatisfactory, far too sketchy to be very informative, and I wonder if anyone has run across any place where he says anything that might flesh that out or, regardless of that, whether anyone has any plausible explanation themselves of exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible? Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.6/453 - Release Date: 9/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l foru
[peirce-l] What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce says that "a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change n his opinions, and if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychologicl laws -- I do not see what can be said against his doing so". This is in Part V, where he is explaining the method of tenacity, where he then goes on to say that "the social impulse" will nevertheless somehow cause him, at times, to face up to some contradiction which impels recourse to adopting the second method, which is the method of authority. His explanation of this is very unsatisfactory, far too sketchy to be very informative, and I wonder if anyone has run across any place where he says anything that might flesh that out or, regardless of that, whether anyone has any plausible explanation themselves of exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible? Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: SEED journal
Thanks for the tip on the science blog, Clark. Some of the people associated with SEED seem to be Peircean in orientatian and some not, but a significant number certainly are. Joe - Original Message From: Clark Goble <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 12:30:06 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: SEED journalOn Sep 9, 2006, at 4:30 AM, Joseph Ransdell wrote:Here is the URL for the on-line journal SEED, which has a lot of papers by Peirceans: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.htmlNote that Seed has a collection of science blogs that are quite good as well - especially some of the cognitive science ones. There are enough authors that the typical problem of blogging (you get busy for a few months or run out of creative ideas) doesn't affect things too much. I know several of the bloggers and we've discussed Peirce relative to cognitive science a fair bit.http://www.scienceblogs.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Just now getting arond to addressing your question of several days ago, Jim: you formulate it towards the end of your message as follows: JP: I don't see how a sign can represent without there being an observor role which is functionally distinct from the role of mere participant. So anyway that's my question -- is Peirce's theory of representation and the sign meant to imply or address this issue of an observor or am I just misreading something into it that is not there. I will be greatly dissapointed if such a notion or something akin to it is not part of what is intended by the idea of a triadic relation as being above and beyond that of a mere dyadic relation. But then there are those Peirce comments about consciousness being a mere quality or firstness so I'm not so sure. OK -- I hope I have made clear the nature of my concern and look forward to any comments you might have. I realize I'm drifting a bit from the initial question that started this exchnage but I for me the questions are very much related. I'm trying to get at and understand the relation of the sign as carrier of meaning and as that which gives rise to the feeling we have of being not simply participants in a world (like colliding billiard balls) but of also being observors of this participation -- aware of our nakedness and so on. The notion that in the beginning (of awareness) was the word. REPLY: REPLY: I would say that his theory of representation has to be capable of articulating that distinction or there is something wrong with it, but I don't think that it is to be looked for merely in the distinction between the dyadic and the triadic but rather in something to do with the different functions being performed by icons, indices, and symbols, and that the distancing or detachment you are concerned with is to be understood especially in connection with the understanding of the symbol as involving an "imputed" quality. What this says is, I think, that we do not interpret a symbol as a symbol unless we are aware both that the replica we are interpreting is one thing and that what it means is something other than that, namely, the entity we imagine in virtue of its occurrence. Explicating that will in turn involve appeal to the functioning of a quality functioning as an icon of something the replica indexes. Of course we are not normally aware of all of that when we are actually undergoing the experience of understanding what someone says, for example, but something that is actually very complex really must be going on nonetheless, as seems clear from, say, what is happening when we are watching a drama on a stage in front of us and are capable of understanding what is being said and done in the play AS action in a play and are able to be engaged by the actor's actions as being at once the entity enacted and a mere enacting which is NOT what is enacted. What never ceases to amaze me is the way in which I find myself able to be responsive to the actors as if they are something which I know at the very moment to be quite different from what they actually are. How is that dual consciousness possible? What is all the more amazing to me is that the ability to interpret actions as mere representative acts rather than as the actual acts which they appear to be actually seems to be earlier in our development than our ability to interpret things for what they literally are. Why do I say this? Because I am thinking about the way in which young animals -- like dogs and cats, say -- spend their early lives merely pretending to be fighting with one another and only later put the skills acquired in play into action as serious or non-playful actions. They bite but from the very beginning do so in such a way as to make it only a pretense bite by stopping just before it gets serious. Of course they are not always successful at this. I have a cat who is extraordinarily playful but unfortunately doesn't always judge accurately just how far to go in playing, whereas other cats I have had usually are pretty good about never making that sort of mistake from the beginning. But one would think that the playful act is necessarily more complex than the serious act since it seems to involve the animal being aware both of what it is to bite and of what is required in order for it to only seem like but not be a real bite. How is it that play can come first? it bespeaks a complexity that somehow is accomplished without any awareness at all on our part. I am sort of rambling on on this point, but let me try to illustrate it another way. It seems at first to be reasonable to suppose that our ability to understand the nature of symbolism is something that we are, as highly enculturated people with a long history of accumulated sophistication about things, just now acquiring an ability to grasp, as is shown by the way we flounder around in our theories of meaning and representation long after we have figured out so much about the nature
[peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Great question, Jim! I can't even get started on an answer today, but I will be at work on it tomorrow and try to get at least a start at an anwer before the day is out. Joe - Original Message From: Jim Piat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, September 9, 2006 1:44:02 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: "reduction of the manifold to unity" Dear Joe, Thanks for your informal and very helpful response. I think I was misunderstanding the introductory passage in the New List. So I have a few more questions. First some background. My understanding is that signs refer to and stand for the meaning of objects. In standing for objects signs can be useful tools for communicating about objects as well as for conducting thought experiments about objects. But it is their function of referring to objects that I want to focus upon and ask you about. It seems to me that in defining signs as referring to objects part of what this definition implies is that the sign user is in the position of standing outside (or perhaps above and beyond) the mere reactive world of the object being referred to and observed. IOWs the sign user has a POV with respect to the object that is beyond a mere indexical relationship. That being an "observor" or spectator requires a level or dimension of detachment that goes beyond the level or dimension of attachment that is involved in "participation with" or reacting to an object. And so I'm thinking that an indexical representation is more than just a tool for indexing an object or giving voice to one's sub or pre-representational understanding of an object. I'm thinking that representation is also (and perhaps most importantly) the process by which one achieves the observational stance. Or, to put it another way, that the capacity to step back from the world of objects and observe them as existing is one and the same as the capacity to represent objects. That, in effect, the ability to represent is the foundation of being an observor in a world of existing objects as opposed to being merely a reactive participant in existence. . Actually, as I think about this a bit more, maybe it is not simply the sign's function of "referring" but also the signs function of "standing for" that creates, presumes or makes possible the "observor" POV. But however one cuts it I don't see how a sign can represent without there being an observor role which is functionally distinct from the role of mere participant. So anyway that's my question -- is Peirce's theory of representation and the sign meant to imply or address this issue of an observor or am I just misreading something into it that is not there. I will be greatly dissapointed if such a notion or something akin to it is not part of what is intended by the idea of a triadic relation as being above and beyond that of a mere dyadic relation. But then there are those Peirce comments about consciousness being a mere quality or firstness so I'm not so sure. OK -- I hope I have made clear the nature of my concern and look forward to any comments you might have. I realize I'm drifting a bit from the initial question that started this exchnage but I for me the questions are very much related. I'm trying to get at and understand the relation of the sign as carrier of meaning and as that which gives rise to the feeling we have of being not simply participants in a world (like colliding billiard balls) but of also being observors of this participation -- aware of our nakedness and so on. The notion that in the beginning (of awareness) was the word. Thanks again -- I look forward to any comments, advice and suggestions you or others might have. I am very eager to get clear on this point. So drop whatever you are doing ... Best wishes, Jim Piat - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2006 12:23 AM Subject: [peirce-l] "reduction of the manifold to unity" Jim and list: This is just a repeat of my previous message, spell-checked and punctuated correctly, with a couple of interpolated clarifications, and minus the unphilosophical paragraphs at the beginning and end: (I will try to state it better in a later message.) As regards your question: I will try to respond to it, but I can only talk about it loosely and suggestively here, in order to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all [because of the length], I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, I will go on to say that I t
[peirce-l] SEED journal
Here is the URL for the on-line journal SEED, which has a lot of papers by Peirceans: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.html It's edited by Edwina Taborsky. You might want to jot the URL down now or go there and get a "bookmark" or "favorites" URL for your browser. Don't count on being able to find it easily by googling later. I spent several frustrating hours in the prrocess of trying to locate it, starting from the URL Vinicius provided recently for one of the papers from it (by Andre DeTienne). The University of Toronto keeps it well-hidden: their search facility never heard of it, apparently. I've got a paper there myself and didn't realize it. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] "reduction of the manifold to unity"
Jim and list: This is just a repeat of my previous message, spell-checked and punctuated correctly, with a couple of interpolated clarifications, and minus the unphilosophical paragraphs at the beginning and end: (I will try to state it better in a later message.) As regards your question: I will try to respond to it, but I can only talk about it loosely and suggestively here, in order to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all [because of the length], I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, I will go on to say that I think that one of the things that is likely to be misleading about the New List is that it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of the Kantian phrase "reduction of the sensuous manifold to unity" which Peirce uses at the very beginning of the New List to be talking about a unification of sense-data in the technical sense of "sense-datum" developed by philosophers somewhere around the beginning of the 20th Century, stressed especially by the positivists, especially since Peirce takes as his example the proposition "The stove is black". But regardless of what Kant might have had in mind in talking about the "manifold of intuitions" in the Critique, there is no reason to think that Peirce ever held to the view that a theory of cognition is supposed to begin by explaining how sense-data such as color patches and the like, regarded as meaningless atoms of quality, are what is primitively given, then named by fiat, to provide a primitive level of cognition constituted by sense-data plus interpretation. I take it that the point to the denial of intuition in the 1868 papers that follow immediately upon the New List (and are clearly of a piece with it) shows that the reason Peirce started with an example like that was to be able to make the point that, even in cases that might seem to us to be cases of a simple perceptual given involving no interpretation at all, it is in reality the interpretation of a product of an unspecifiable number of levels of prior interpretation. (See his argumentation towards the very beginning of the "Questions" article about things like the unnoticed blind spot on the retina, the example of tactile sensation, the tricks of the stage magicians, and so forth, which all underscore that even what seems like it must be utterly simple sensation is actually the result of unconscious interpretation. So, the point is that the items in the "sensuous manifold" of perception that mind is required to synthesize (to reduce to unity through application of a unifying conception) are always already meaningful and the "reduction" -- which is to say, the successful predication -- is always just further interpretation of disparate materials which are already results of prior interpretation. Why must they be unified? Why are they disparate? What is it that is driving the need to unify the "manifold" by the formation of a proposition bearing the force of an assertion, which is to say, by the application of an explanatory predicate? The answer is contradiction: the unification process -- which is the thought process generally -- begins from the tension of unresolved contradiction, itself constituted by what must be assumed to be (from the logical point of view) the conflict of "repugnant" propositions (as he says in the Fixation article) -- felt experiential incoherence -- which is the incipient beginning of all doubt and questioning. Bear in mind that most conscious cognitive perception is not of simple occurrence of color properties, tingles of feeling, and so forth, but of macrocopic objects, such as the ordinary "furniture of the earth" that makes up our perceived and recognized environment -- people and things in our environment, both local and remote, that come to our conscious attention for some special reason, the idea being that if you were to analyze any particular instance of ordinary conscious perception of something you would find, at the bottom of that analysis, as it were, what would always be something which first came to our attention because of some oppositional factor that our perception functioned to overcome by a reconciliation of the opposition in some sort of unity. No opposition, no need for attention being paid to it. So the beginning of cognition of which we are conscious, then, is always in an as-yet-unresolved conflict of some sort perceived as such because in our "processing" of it we had to make the effort of a unification of oppositional entities of some sort, the awareness of each of which at a preconscious or unconscious level is due to the funded result of prior unification, i.e. prior learning. The important point here is that this holds tru
[peirce-l] Re: Dennett
Jim and list:: Sorry to be slow in responding. I just discovered that about half of my email has been going into the spam folder. It's a new account and the version of it I am using is a new format for yahoo and still a bit clunky and erratic. (The new yahoo mail is a lot like Outlook Express though it looks as if it will be an improvement on that once they get the bugs out of it. But there are annoying glitches here and there, such as e.g. there being a mark by the side of the spam folder which says "empty" even when it is not, and I've been wondering why the messages recently sometimes seem so disconnected when in fact many of them have been hidden away in my mail in the supposedly empty spam folder.) Anyway, as regards your question: I will try to respond to it, but I can only talk about it loosely and suggestively here, in order to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all, I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, I will go on to say that I think that one of the things that is likely to be misleading about the New List is that it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of the Kantian phrase "reduction of the sensuous manifold to unity" which Peirce uses at the very beginning of the New List to be talking about a unification of sense-data in the technical sense of "sense-datum" developed by philosophers somewhere around the beginning of the 20th Century, stressed especially by the positivists, especially since Peirce takes as his example the proposition "The stove is black". But regardless of what Kant might have had in mind in talking about the "manifold of intuitions" in the Critique, there is no reason to think that Peirce ever hld to the view that a theory of cognition is supposed to be begin by explaining how sense-data like color patches and the like, regarded as meaningless atoms of quality, are what is primitively given, then named by fiat, to provide a primitive level of cognition constituted by sense-data plus interpretation. I take it that the point to the denial of intuition in the 1868 papers that follow immediately upon the New List and are clearly of a piece with it shows that the reason Peirce started with an example like that was to be able to make the point that, even in cases that might seem to us to be cases of a simple perceptual given involving no interpretation at all, it is in reality the interpretation of a product of an unspecifiable number of levels of prior interpretation. (See his argumentation towards the very beginning of the Questions article about things like the unnoticed blind spot on the retina, the example of tactile sensation, the tricks of the stage magicians, and so forth, which all underscore that even what seems like it must be utterly simple sensation is actually the result of unconscious interpretation. So, the point is that the items in the "sensuous manifold" of perception that mind is required to synthesize (to reduce to unity through application of a unifying conception) are always already meaningful and the "reduction" -- which is to say, the successful predication -- is always just further interpretation of disparate materials which are already results of prior interpretation. Why must they be unified? Why are they disparate? What is it that is driving the need to unify the "manifold" by the formation of a proposition bearing the force of an assertion, which is to say, by the application of an explanatory predicate? The answer is contradiction: the unification process -- which is the thought process generally -- begins from the tension of unresolved contradiction, itself constituted by what must be assumed to be (from the logical point of view) the conflict of "repugnant" propositions (as he says in the Fixation article) -- felt experiential incoherence -- which is the incipient beginning of all doubt and questioning. Bear in mind that most conscious cognitive perception is not of simple occurrence of color properties, tingles of feeling, and so forth, but of macrocopic objects, such as the ordinary "furniture of the earth" that makes up our perceived and recognized environment -- people and things in our environment, both local and remote, that come to our conscious attention for some special reason, the idea being that if you were to analyze any particular instance of ordinary conscious perception of something you would find. at the bottom of that analysis, as it were, what would always be something which first came to our attention because of some oppositional factor that our perception funtioned to overcome by a reconciliation of the opposition in some sort of unity. No opposition, no need for attention being p
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben says: BU: I quoted Peirce on verification to show that, in the Peircean view, the doubting of a claimed rule is not automatically a universal, hyperbolic, Cartesian doubt of the kind which Peirce rejects, especially rejects as a basis on which (a la Descartes) only deductive reasoning will be allowed to build -- a Cartesian needle's eye of doubt through which all philosophical ideas are mistakenly forced to pass or be discarded. I was defending myself against Charles' claim that my view of verification implied some systematic incorporation of Cartesian doubt into research practices and against Charles' suggestion that therefore maybe I was a nominalist. . . . Evidently you still think that I'm talking only of conscious deliberate verification involving the taking of physically active steps. That is not at all the only kind of verification which I've been discussing. <>The things which you describe are only part of that which I mean by "verification," which I'm using as a forest term for the various trees. In experience and life, the greater part of experience whereby the mind supports and verifies (to whatever extent) is experience which the mind already has, and the main active steps are usually at most a bit of digging through memory. The whole "feeling" of experience, acquaintance, knowledge, recognition, etc., as involving a _pastward_ orientation is no mere accident of linguistic history; likewise the "feeling" of settlement, establishment, etc., as involving becoming part of the past (not in the sense of the departed but instead in the sense of that which has been, that which is the foundation on which we stand). Oftenest, when a mind forms an interpretant supported by that mind's experience, that's it right there -- recognition takes place at near lightspeed -- "verification accomplished," as far as that mind is concerned, and accomplished more or less fallibly as is often if not always also recognized by the given mind. That is a big part of what I mean by "verification," and I hold that it happens just as largely and minutely and consciously and unconsciously at every semiosic stage and level, just as largely and minutely and consciously and unconsciously as objectification, representation, and interpretation happen. Science is distinguished by (among other things) a very active attitude of taking verificational steps in a context where an everyday mind (and also a scientific mind busy with other things) is often content to stand/sit/rest on the established. <>[JR: Omitting more to the same effect.] <>BU: If, after all this, you wish that I would just use some other word than "verification," I'm open to suggestions. I've also used "recognition" but the problem with that word is that it also names a psychological act in some sense that "interpretation" and "representation" do not, and there are other and related problems with it as well. Though I didn't see it clearly from the start, "recognition" in the sense in which I've used it really should not be _equated_ with "acknowledgement" any more than "representation" should be _equated_ with "assertion." "Establishment" seems to come closest to the desired sense, but it is also used in the sense of "founding" or "setting up" as in "establishing an organization" etc., and even in the verificational sense it's kind of strong in its "up-or-down" feeling; one is particularly unaccustomed to a phrase like "degrees of establishment." Also it's hard to form a word like "interpretant" or "recognizant" from "establish" -- going back to Latin, it should be "stabilient" but that word does not evoke the word "establish." Maybe I could go half-Spanish and coin "establecent." Or "establizant"? "Establicant"? "Establishant"? JR: I don't think you will find another word that will work, Ben. Anyway, I looked up "verify" (and its conjugate terms) in the on-line Century Dictionary. (It is not listed as one of the the entries written by Peirce himself, by the way, but I've come to think of the Century as being the best dictionary to consult for any word in use during his lifetime, in any case.) For every of the several closely related senses the implication is always there that there is some prior claim requiring the verification and I don't see how that would make sense if it is supposed that what is being verified has already involved that very component. BU: Lately I've noticed that people talk about "the categories" and seem to mean the basic semiotic elements (object, sign, interpretant). When I see "categories" or "categorial" I usually take it initially in the cenopythagorean sense (quality, reaction, representation). Anyway, I'm unsure how you mean "categorial" here, but it may ultimately make not that much difference. Anyway, I'll respond to the rest of your post later. JR: I was just referring to the context as being one in which the problematics of category theory are relevnat,
[peirce-l] address change for list manager
I had to change my internet service from Cox Cable to AT&T's DSL and, in consequence, lost my mailbox at Cox and am temporarily using the following email address [EMAIL PROTECTED] This does not affect the way the list works but if you wish to email me off-list, please use this address until I get a more satisfactory arrangement set up. Joe Ransdell list manager of PEIRCE-L __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: I was just now rereading your response to Charles, attending particularly to your citation of Peirce's concern with verification, and I really don't see in what you quote from him on this anything more than the claim that it is the special concern for making sure that something that someone -- perhaps oneself -- has claimed to be a fact or has concluded to be so (which could be a conviction more or less tentatively held) really is a fact by putting the claim or acceptation of that conclusion to the test, in one way or another. This verificational activity could involve many different sorts of procedures, ranging from, say, reconsidering the premises supporting the claim as regards their cogency relative to the conclusion drawn to actively experimenting or observing further for the same purpose, including perhaps, as a rather special case, the case where one actually attempts to replicate the procedure cited as backing up the claim made. Scientific verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on something about which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong concern for establishing something as "definitively" as possible, which is of course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on something so thoroughly that no real question about it will ever be raised again.But it is no different in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to "make sure" of something that we think might be so but about which we are not certain enough to satisfy us. My point is that it is surely obvious that we don't take steps to verify something in ordinary life unless we have some special reason to do so, and that any steps actually taken to verify anything are taken only if something has come to our attention as requiring such action. Ordinarily, we just accept what we unreflectively learn (come to believe or to think to be so) either in the ordinary course of living and perceiving things or in the course of learning about what other people think to be so, supposing we have a normal regard for the competence of others as regards the sort of thing in question (which of course varies a lot). Always, though, something of the nature of an acceptance or claim to the effect that something is so is presupposed by the activity of verifying it. It cannot be the case, then, that all of our understanding of things includes verification as an essential part of it. In fact, it must be only a very small percentage of the opinions, beliefs, etc., that we acquire in the normal course of living involve verification in their acquisition. And this makes it quite out of the question to suppose that verification especially and essentially involves or includes something which is of a categorial nature which is not already present in all cognition, which must surely include much that involves no verification and is never considered to be in any need of it. This is not to say that you are mistaken in stressing the importance of verification as a philosophical topic. it is remarkable just how little attention has been paid to it even by philosophers of science, where it has usually been discussed only in the context of (1) the verificationist theory of meaning and (2) the context of induction and the problem of establishing its validity as a mode of inference. Those are not trivial contexts and what you are saying may have considerable importance relative to those contexts of interest and some others as well, perhaps. Thus I don't intend any discouragement or disparagement of what you are concerned about as regards those contexts of interest. But I think you may be inadvertently blunting the significance of what you are driving at by relativizing it to the context of interest which concerns the categorial conceptions, and, moreover, the attempt to make it relevant to the problematics of the categories may actually be distorting your thinking in some way. I think it may in fact be doing precisely that, and the reason for my thinking so is that I keep finding myself unable to make what you are saying add up to anything, regardless of how impressive it may seem prima facie. It is my experience in doing philosophy over the years that one frequently has to trust one's intuitive judgment or intuitive sense as regards whether something being said really makes any sense. Sometimes one has to go with something that seems clearly not to do so because, in spite of that, one also has the feeling that it really does make good and important sense even though one can't figure out what exactly that might be at the moment. And this also holds for things that may seem to make sense, though one is not really sure of that and one is suspicious of it as probably being senseless in spite of seeming, on the face of it, to do so. In fact, on most topics of interest one's hunches along these lines must be relied upon or else one will never get to anything very interesting or worthwhile. A
[peirce-l] MS 94 Harvard Lecture 1 - 1865
I just now uploaded a verbatim version of MS 94, which is the first Harvard Lecture of the lecture series of 1865. It is available in print in Writings 1 (the first volume of the new chronological edition), but it is of such special interest that an on-line copy of it is important, too. It has to be interpreted with caution as a statement of Peirce's view since it was written some two years before the New List was published, but it is clearly in a line of development that finally shapes up into the New List and other work of l867-1869 and some things are discussed in it which throw light on later developments. Among them are the idea of an unpsychological basis for logic as a science, the idea of three worlds (the internal, the external, and the logical worlds) , which shows up at various times across his career; the pre-New List view of the trichotomy that later becomes the icon-index-symbol distinction, where the predecessor of the index, as subsequently understood, appears as the idea of a logical proper name; an account of the way symbols work which is, in my opinion, essentially the same as that which appears in the New List as expressed in terms of the idea of an "imputed quality" being involved in symbolism; and is, I believe, a permanent element of his thinking from the time of the New List on. And then, closely connected with this, there is the relationship of Peirce's notion of how the general word relates to the general idea, as compared how Locke conceived this.. Nor is that all! Anyway, I have been working on a running commentary on several passages in it, which I will also make available at Arisbe in a few days (on the resource page), which involves some minor reformatting, punctuating, and emphasis that is intended to make more clear what he is actually saying, but I can legitimately do this only if I also provide a verbatim copy of the text at the same time that can be used as a check on my supposed improvements of the readability of the text and my interpretation generally. So I am making the verbatim copy available first, for those who are interested in this early work of Peirce's, as providing clues to what is obscure in the New List and later. It is on the Peirce Papers page, at ARISBE and the URL for it is http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/earlymss/ms94harvard1.pdf Joe Ransdell __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Yeah, I think enough's enough on this, Ben, for the time being anyway. Best, Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 5:17 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, Let's just say that I misunderstood what you were saying and read too much into it about inquiry priorities. It certainly was not a "blatant diversionary tactic." It was what I thought at the time. If neurons have a lot of triadicity, that's fine with me. At some level, we're biological information processes and I wouldn't expect to see a recipient/recognizant role distinctly embodied all the way down. It's clear to me at this point that you have some recondite conception of verification. I really don't know what you're thinking of in regard to it. I have specified that I'm using "verification" as a "forest" term for the various "trees" of confirmation, corroboration, proof, etc. Maybe you think that I'm talking only of a conscious deliberate act, or some sort of counterpart thereto at a neuronal level. I have already specified otherwise. Any time you enter a situation with some conjectures, expectations, understandings, memories, etc., you are testing them, whether that's your purpose or not. And you're always entering a situation with such orientations. And you see what happens, and are surprised, unsurprised, etc. As an intelligent system, you learn from the result and accordingly revise, even if only slightly in particular cases, the system which you are. That is evolution (as opposed, say, to pre-programmed development). The "universal category" of _accidens_ involved is that of consistency, truth, validity, soundness, legitimacy, etc. Now, looking at the four (the first three are similar to Peircean ones): 1. reaction, force, connection ~ ~ ~ ~ 3. meaning, importance, import, good/ill 2. aptness, tendency, etc. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4. truth, legitimacy, etc. You can see that I'm actually relating categories and semiosis back to more traditional philosoophical structures. Or maybe you can't see it, haven't thought about the four causes and related conceptions that much, don't "get" a strong-apt-good-true 4-chotomy, just aren't familiar enough with those byways to see the structure there, and so on. But actually I've argued these subject matters all in much more detail elsewhere. I'm growing tired of this. Best, Ben http://tetrast.blogspot.com Ben, let's focus on the following interchange: [JR] The universal categories are analytical elements involved in all cases alike and any individual case must already be fully constituted as being of the nature of a cognition of some sort before the question of its verificational status can even arise. The verificational factor therefore cannot be on par with the sort of universal element we are concerned with when we are concerned with the categories. [BU] In other words, never mind pointing out a contradiction in semiotics and arguing for a given solution as most common-sensical and accordant with general experience, though it would undermine the category theory, instead, do a whole new category theory before critically looking at semiotics. REPLY: No, those are not other words for the same thing, but merely a blatant bit of diversionary rhetorical ploy. [BU continuing] Even for those for whom Peirce's category theory is _that well established_, that argument should not be valid, at least as it is formulated, since the truth is that a problem arising in a special area can _lead_ to revisions in a more general area; it really depends on the case, and no theory is allowed such sheer monolithicism as to immunize it from revision. REPLY: The specific point I made is simply ignored in favor of inveighing against a supposed commitment of mine to some general thesis about special cases and general areas which is supposedly designed to immunize Peirce's view from all criticism. Come on, Ben. [BU continuing:] But Peirce's category theory is not even well established among philosophers generally, so this sort of requirement has that much less credibility. REPLY: What sort of requirement? You say nothing about what I actually said. Skipping over a paragraph about a past message in which you outlined "an alternate category theory", you then go on to say: [BU]: But where Joe really goes wrong is in saying _that a cognition must be fully constituted before the question of its verificational status can even arise_. At this point I have no idea what Joe means by "verification," surely he doesn't think that it's something that only professional scientists do. It's something, instead, that children do
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: It is true that I am not especially interested at this time in the analysis of verification, though not true that I have paid no attention to what you have had to say about that. The reason is that verification is obviously a special kind of cognition and therefore not a generic element in any cognition whatsoever. whereas in being concerned with Peirce's category analysis I am concerned with the essential conceptual elements of anything cognitional. By a "cognition" I mean any instance of thinking that something is so, any understanding of any sort that can be regarded as assessable in terms of its truth value, whether true or false. This would seem to cover what Peirce had in mind in his category analysis in the New List, which he characterizes as being concerned with the nature of assertion. This would include such things as perfectly ordinary perceptions, conscious or unconscious, such as are occurring constantly, very few of which are normally regarded as requiring any verification and far fewer of which can possibly be construed as themselves verifications. This does not imply any lack of interest in verification, as a philosophically relevant topic, but only a lack of present concern with the topic owing to being primarily concerned with the category theory. When you say something like: "Yes, generally I point out that sign and interpretant don't give experience of the object and that verification involves experience of the object. There's a cogent general argument right there." The very phrase "sign and interpretant don't give experience of the object" suggests, by being so ill-formed -- which would be equally so if you said "do" rather than "don't" -- suggests, I say, some misunderstanding as regards what the category theory is actually about. In any case, at the end of your message, after complaining that I have not responded to your challenge about diagramming something to do with verification, you say: "Recently you verbally partly outlined how such a diagram would work, and I responded quite specifically on how it seemed that it would work and posed you a question about it, and haven't heard about it from you since then." The question you originally posed had to do with diagramming collateral acquaintance, and I explained how that is done because that does have bearing on the category question. If I didn't respond to some further question about it, it must have had something to do with diagramming verification or some other topic with which I am not concerned at this time because my present focus of interest is on the category theory, as I have already explained. I don't feel under any intellectual obligation at this time to produce a reduction argument for there being only three basic categories, as you seem to think I should. Maybe there aren't only three. I have no deep conviction as regards that question myself, though I find the idea that three are enough to be appealing and have found thus far no reason to think that there is indeed any need for a further one. But that is not the question at issue between us, as far as I am concerned, which is rather your claim that a fourth one is required, and moreover one which you are suggesting. I see no reason thus far to think so. That is where the issue stands with me at present. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 12:02 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, list, Joe, I don't know why it seems to you like I'm suddenly releasing a "tirade of verbal dazzle." The prose there looks pretty mundane to me and I certainly didn't mean it intimidate you. Generally when I write such prose I'm just trying to present links in arguments, keep from being confusing, and keep the internal cross-references clear. I try (not always successfully) to avoid trying to write "dazzling" prose because often enough when I've looked at it months later it seems a bit stilted and labored. My editing consists most of all in replacing pronouns with nouns and phrases, even though it leads to repetition, because it worked very well for Fritjof Capra in his _The Tao of Physics_, and he pushed that sort of writing about as far as it can reasonably go, to excellent effect. As for showing that there's no subtle weird complex way that one could reduce verification to the triad, I don't know why you were expecting such in my response to Jim. I've said earlier that I was working on something, and that it would take maybe a week. Then you soon posted to me on other stuff in regard to verification, and that led to the current discussion, so I don't know where you think that I'd have found the time to work on the no-reduction argument. And when I said that I've practical matters also to attend to, I
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
I misunderstood what you were attempting to do in the messages in question, Ben. I can't respond fully to what you say below right at the moment, but will do that later, as soon as I get some time, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, August 21, 2006 12:02 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, list, Joe, I don't know why it seems to you like I'm suddenly releasing a "tirade of verbal dazzle." The prose there looks pretty mundane to me and I certainly didn't mean it intimidate you. Generally when I write such prose I'm just trying to present links in arguments, keep from being confusing, and keep the internal cross-references clear. I try (not always successfully) to avoid trying to write "dazzling" prose because often enough when I've looked at it months later it seems a bit stilted and labored. My editing consists most of all in replacing pronouns with nouns and phrases, even though it leads to repetition, because it worked very well for Fritjof Capra in his _The Tao of Physics_, and he pushed that sort of writing about as far as it can reasonably go, to excellent effect. As for showing that there's no subtle weird complex way that one could reduce verification to the triad, I don't know why you were expecting such in my response to Jim. I've said earlier that I was working on something, and that it would take maybe a week. Then you soon posted to me on other stuff in regard to verification, and that led to the current discussion, so I don't know where you think that I'd have found the time to work on the no-reduction argument. And when I said that I've practical matters also to attend to, I wasn't just making it up. Now, I didn't see any reason to rush the kind of argument which you asked me to make, since it would be the first time that I'd made such an argument on peirce-l. And I see it as dealing with more challenges than you see it as dealing with, for I don't seem able, even after all this time, to get you to _focus_ on analyzing the verificatory act, for instance, of checking on what a person says is happening at some house. You refer to such an act but you don't look at it. Somebody tells me there's a fire at a house, I form an interpretation that there's a fire at that house, I run over and look at it, and looka there, it's on fire! Feel the heat! Look at the fire trucks! Cross to the other side of the street in order to get past it. Verification, involving experience of the object(s). Now, if that experience merely represented the house to me, the smoke, its source, etc., then it wouldn't be acquainting me with the house as the house has become. Doubts about this lead to the interesting question of _what are signs for, anyway_? Meanwhile, if the house really is on fire, then subsequent events and behaviors will corroborate the verification. Once, from around 16 blocks away, I saw billowing smoke rising from the vicinity of my building. I rushed up to the elevated train station but couldn't get a clearer view. Finally I ran most of the way to my building, where I observed that the smoke was coming from a block diagonally away -- the Woolworth's store was aflame and my building was quite safe and sound. I hadn't sat around interpreting a.k.a. construing, instead I had actively arranged to have a special experience of the objects themselves, an experience logically determined in its references and significances both prior and going forward, by the interpretation that my building was afire; and the experience determined semiosis going forward as well, and was corroborated in my interactions with fellow witnesses and by subsequent events, including the gutting and rebuilding the store. - Was the experience the object in question? - No. - Was it the sign? - No. - Was it the interpretant? - No. - Was it determined logically by them? - Yes. - Was it, then, another interpretant of the prior interpretants and their object? - No, because it was not an interpretant of the object, instead it further acquainted me with the object. Now, if you don't see a problem for triadicism there, then I'd say that you've set the bar exceedingly high for seeing a problem. And if you reply that you don't find that sequence of questions and answers convincing of anything, even of the plausible appearance of a problem, without pointing to just where the logic breaks down, then I'll conclude that you've merely skimmed it, and haven't reasoned your way through it at all. Yes, generally I point out that sign and interpretant don't give experience of the object and that verification involves experience of the object. There's a cogent general a
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben says: BU: Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, and it seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies. JR: Perhaps it never did. BU: Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and will not only develop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now). JR: yes that certainly happens BU: However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily. JR: That is right, but none of this shows that recognition -- or cognition -- is not capable of being analyzed and explicated in terms of complexes of sign-object-interpretant relationships -- along with the secondness and firstness relationships they presuppose -- as they structure a process the peculiar complexity of which is made possible by the changing identities and differences of the entities in the process that occur and recur in it. Your unleashing of your verbal abilities at this point in your response in a tirade of verbal dazzle, where you should be focusing your efforts in a careful analytical way instead, is blinding you to the task at hand. That is how what you say from this point on in your message appears to me, Ben. This is positively my last response to you on this particular topic. If others are persuaded that you have actually shown what needs to be shown instead of burying it verbally, that will no doubt impress me. But at this time I don't see it and have a strong sense of being intimidated verbally rather than reasoned with. Perhaps I am merely being obtuse. I recognize this as a possibility but I find no tendency in myself to believe it. Perhaps at another time things will appear differently to one of the two of us. Joe Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, and it seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies. Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and will not only develop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now). However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily. Meaning is formed into the interpretant. Validity, soundness, etc., are formed into the recognition. Meaning is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of interpretants. Validity, soundness, legitimacy, is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of recognitions. One even has some slack in "making" the distinction between interpretant and verification -- it's a slack which one needs in order to learn about the distinction so as to incorporate those learnings into oneself as a semiosic sytem and so as to employ the distinction in a non-reckless but also non-complacent manner. (For everything -- (a) boldness, (b) confident behavior, (c) caution, (d) resignation -- there is a season -- (a) bravery, (b) duely confident behavior, (c) prudence, (d) "realism" -- & an out-of-season -- (a) ras
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Nor do I know what else to say to you on this topic, Ben, except that I just don't get the sense that we are even talking about the same topic. It baffles me, but I will just have to leave it at that. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 5:02 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Charles, Joe, Gary, Jim, Jacob, list, The occasion here is that Charles wrote, "I am still trying to find out if I have any grasp at all of what you think the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits." The idea that one can't even grasp what I'm saying leads me to make one last try. What do I think the relation omits? I think that the (Interpretant -- Sign -- Object) relation omits recognition, verification, establishment. I mean "recognition," "verification," "estabishment," and the like, in a pretty commonsense way. I'm trying to think of how to get the tetradic idea across. First, I'd point out that the difference between interpretation and verification can be taken in a common-sense way with which we are all familiar. That common-sense way is at the basis of how I mean it. But I've pointed that out in the past. I've even brought the plot of _Hamlet_ (because peirce-l is classy :-)) into the discussion. Now, there's a weak sense of the word "understanding" where one says "well, it's my _understanding_ that Jack is going to come" -- one is saying that one doesn't _know_ whether Jack is actually going to come -- one hasn't _verified_ it, even to oneself -- one means that, instead, it's _merely one's interpretation_. I think that we're all familiar with these ways of talking and thinking. I talk and think that way, and my impression is that most people talk and think that way. Those ways of talking and thinking are quite in keeping with object-experience's being outside the interpretant. An interpretation is a construal. An unestablished, unsubstantiated interpretation is a _mere_ construal in the strongest sense of the word "mere." (In a similar way, one should think of a sign which is unsubstantiated in whatever respect as a _mere_ sign, a _mere_ representation, in that respect.) One should not let the _word_ "interpretant" evoke anything stronger in such a case, but, instead, one should stick with the common notion of interpretation. Even a biological mutation, considered as an interpretant, should be considered as a construal and as a random experiment which "experience" or actual reality will test. Research and thought had thousands of years to show that one can make much progress by merely making representations and construals about other researchers' representations and contruals and by, at best, verifying representations and construals _about_ representations and construals -- doing so via books about other books and by researchers' going back and checking the originals and considering the ideas presented there. This sort of thing in the end makes little progress when the subject matter is not thought itself but instead, say, physics or biology. One needs to verify by experiences of the subject matter. The logical process must revisit the object, somehow, some way. Second, I'd point to the analogy between decoding and interpretation, an analogy which has been referred to and alluded to often enough, e.g., in David Lodge's "Tout décodage est un nouvel encodage." I'd point to the extended analogy, and ask, why does triadic semiotics have no analogue for the recipient? source ~~~ object encoding ~~ sign decoding ~~ interpretant recipient ~~ ? Is it merely that in early scenarios the decoding was usually mechanical and the recipient a human? Why does a recipient notice redundancies and inconsistencies which a decoder does not notice? What is the difference in function between a decoding and a "recipience"? Why, at the fourth stage, does the analogy suddenly break down between information theory and triadic semiotics? Does one of them have the wrong scenario? Which one? Is it normal or is it a warning alarm, when a tenable analogy just suddenly goes bad? If the interpretant is analogous both to decoding and to recipient, what functions analogous to theirs does it combine? Should a semiotic philosopher be concerned about such questions? Especially a Peircean one accustomed to tracing extensive analogies and correlations, a philosopher who believes in doing that sort of thing? But I've pointed this all out in the past. Third, I'd point out the following logical stream of thought: Peirce says that to represent an object is not to provide experience or acquaintance with the object. There are good reasons to agree with Peirce about th
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
W will just have to leave it as a stand off, Ben. I have no more to say on this than I have already said. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 2:21 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, Gary, Jim, Charles, Jacob, list, It's obvious that in _some_ sense or other I disagree with Peirce about how semiosis is related to experience. However, I think I find sufficient material in Peirce to make the argument in Peirce's own terms, especially in Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, where he plainly says that one needs experience collateral to sign and interpretant of the object in order to identify the object. And I don't get the idea of finding the equation or dis-equation of an experience and a sign/interpretant so confusing that "it literally makes no sense," so confusing that one can't make sufficient sense of it in order to argue against it in terms of what experience is, what interpretation is, etc. If it were true that it is, -- in your words, "a confusion in virtue of talking about the interpretant as being an 'experience or observation.' In talking about the sign-object-interpretant relationships we are doing so in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation (or verification) and it literally makes no sense to me put in that way," -- then Peirce's discussions of collateral experience would make no sense. He's far too specific in delineating relationships of semiosis to experience for those delineations to be compatible with that which you say. Why would Peirce say things like "All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. It is...the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign." Why would Peirce say, "Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience"? Note that he does not say that _collateral_ acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. He is not stating such a truism. Instead, he says that acquaintance, any acquaintance at all, must be gained by collateral experience. Peirce is saying that the _representing_ of the object is never an _acquainting_ with the object (except, as usual, in the limit case where the representing sign and its object are the selfsame thing). But that is just the sort of statement which you say _makes no sense_ to you. How do you account for that? Do you deny that that's what he is saying? If so, how do you justify such a denial? I don't know why it makes no sense to you to speak of denying or affirming that one's experience of an object is or isn't one's sign of an object, least of all can I understand why this would be a consequence of talking about object-sign-interpretant relationships in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation. You talk as though experience were something like the moon or the color green or the letter "C," which one would certainly not expect to see treated as basic semiotic elements on a par with object, sign, and interpretant. But we have Peirce right above characterizing _all_ signs in terms of experience and, in particular, distinguishing them -- _all_ of them -- from acquaintance, observation, experience of the object. How could this make sense if it doesn't make sense to speak of an object experience as being a sign of the object or not being a sign of the object? I have only one Peirce collateral-experience discussion which presents me with any problems for my views or, more specifically, for my use of his views -- you have all the rest of his collateral-experience discussions contradicting you. You say, "The semeiotical terminology is properly used in explication of such notions as that of experience, observation, verification, etc. and therefore signs and interpretants cannot except confusedly be equated with such things as observations or experiences or verifications." I would say that conceptions of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications are all of them analytic tools for analyzing processes of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications (and more generally, experiences), and none of this stops us from clearly dis-equating experiences/verifications from interpretations, etc. Or maybe you mean that sometimes one's experience of the object is one's sign of the object, and sometimes not? I.e., that one only confusedly equates or confusedly dis-equates them because there's no such general rule? But I don't understand why anybody would think, that, even if only sometimes, something serving as _another_ sign
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: The requirement of collateral acquaintance with the object is simply what is implicit in the definition of the interpretant, as in the formulation of the New List, where it is said to represent the relate to be a representation of the same correlate which the interpretant itself represents, and there is no special problem involved in diagramming that. It is merely a matter of (1) having one referential arrow from the interpretant, I1, pointing to the sign, S1, as a sign, hence pointing not at the node, S1, but at an arrow running from S1 to O, and (2) having a second arrow from that interpretant running to the object, O, without being mediated through S1's reference to it. This is a matter of the internal structure of a given instance of semiosis and is essential to the process being a semeiosical process. Verification concerns the relationship of one instance of semiosis, C1, regarded as a cognition of something, O, and a second instance of semiosis, C2, also regarded as a cognition of something that is purportedly the same object, O, that C1 is about, and in agreement with it as regards what it predicates of O. This means that, diagrammatically, C1 is one cognition, and C2 is another cognition whose referential arrows will differ in one important respect: the arrows of C2 will refer to O -- the same O -- just as those of C1 do, but there will also be a further reference of the arrows of C2 that are absent from those of C1, namely, those that refer to the interpretant, I1, and sign, S1, of C1 since C2 is not only about O but also about C1, i.e. about I1 as interpretant of S1 as sign of O. In other words, the verifying cognition, C2, is both about what C1 is about and also about C1 since it says of the sign in C1 that it is a representation of what it, S2, represents and which it represents in the same way. This makes for some interesting complexity of reference, designed to show both the referential structure of C1 and show also, by exhibition, the referential structure of C2, which includes reference to S1 and I1; and if it were easy here to do a lot of drawing of referential arrows and the like we could see what all of that involves. But it is simply a matter of drawing arrows from nodes with labels which differentiate those nodes which are functioning as signs, nodes functioning as interpretants of signs, and nodes which are functioning as the object of signs, and also of drawing arrows from nodes which point to other arrows from nodes. There is nothing, though, that requires some new type of entity functioning as nodes other than something of the nature of a sign, something of the nature of an interpretant of a sign, and something of the nature of an object of a sign. Basically, It is still just a diagram about signs referring to objects, some of which are being referred to as signs and some of which are not. One of the complexities to get into if one gets into that sort of diagramming -- as no doubt some people already have by now, in one way or another -- is that one can, I believe, use sign-to-object referential arrows in such a way as to take account of whether the signs involved in the referential structure are functioning iconically, indexically, or symbolically. This involves nothing new either, though I have found that in practice it is difficult to do this without resorting to something like a third dimension in the process of doing so, and that it is difficult to do on an unchanging two-dimensional surface in a perspicuous way, though I suspect that it can be done fairly well now, given the development of computer technologies and of programming skills that can take advantage of the ability to graphically represent processes as undergoing transformations and also to rotate the graphical entities themselves around so that they can be viewed from different perspectives. I say I believe this can be done because in process of trying to do so myself, at a time prior to the development of the computational technologies required, I found that although I could draw arrows that seemed to serve that purpose in principle, I could not do so in a way that is visually perspicuous, so that, at that time, I could see no advantage in working it out in detail myself inasmuch as it would only yield an uninformatively complex representation intuitively incapable of adding anything to what one already understands on a verbal basis. But however that might be, the point is that all that the representation of a cognition functioning as a verification requires by way of notational elements is what is already available for use in representing cognitions that are not verifications, such as those that the verifying representations purport to verify. And there are surely a vast number of cognitions that are neither verifiers nor verified. The reason why I used very simple examples of verification to try to
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process. The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character. To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis. That seems possible. Is that your view? I pose it in this abstract way to make sure we are talking about something on par with the sign, the object, and the interpretant. If so how do you know that semeiosis cannot be adequately described without recourse to that factor, i.e. cannot be described on the basis of an appeal to some complexity possible through recursion and referential reflexivity involving only three kinds of elements or factors -- as Peirce would have to claim? Joe Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] . - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Jacob, Joe, Gary, Jim, list, >[Jacob] Theres been a lot of debate on this issue of verification, and it >almost sounds like patience is being tried. If I could just give my input >about one remark from the last posting; I hope it helps some. >[Jacob] Ben wrote: I dont know how Peirce and others have missed the >distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open >regarding that question, thats about all. I dont have some hidden opinion >on the question. >[Jacob] Prof. Ransdall (or do you prefer Joe?) replied: I dont think Peirce >overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a >distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and >Peirces approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesnt mislead him into >thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. >[Jacob] I want to agree with Joe; its hard for me to see Peirce overlooking >that bit, for several reasons. But the question of why verification isnt a >formal element in inquiry needs some unpacking. >[Jacob] The discussion sounds like everyones talking about isolated >instances. All the examples given to illustrate testing here are >particular, individual cases where one person observes something, draws a >conclusion, and checks to see if hes right. Thats not the only way to view >the development of thought. >[Jacob] Take Joes common-sense example: You tell me that you observed >something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a >certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the >edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there >myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the >place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing >about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about >it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my >report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and >find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at >the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . >Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? >(This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) >[Jacob] I dont think anyone finds this sort of thing unusual; the >difficulty with this illustration is in *how* it bolsters the case Joe is >making. >[Jacob] It also seems to me theres some confusion about what were arguing >about. The role of verification in *inquiry* or *thought*? At the level of >individuals or in general? Let me try to illustrate what I mean. >[Jacob] When checking your work, you might discover that youd made an error >(often the case with me), or even that you initially had the right answer >but somehow messed up (not often the case with me). This occurs at the >individual level. But animals reason too, though they dont verify. And >thats telling. (This was Bens point
[peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense
Dear Vinicius: Good to hear that your dissertation is being completed in time for you to take advantage of the conference which is occurring a few days before that so that Nathan and Tom could be present for your defense. For personal reasons, I had to decline Lucia's invitation to appear at the conference, as one of the invited speakers, along with Nathan, Tom, and Vincent as well, an occasion which I deeply regret missing out on for several reasons, and to learn of the further missed opportunity of attending the discussion at your defense makes it all the more regretful. But I'll be looking forward to reading your dissertation myself as soon as you can make it generally available. (I won't trouble you for further information on what conclusions you arrived at until after the defense, but the topic has been under discussion recently on the list and I am sure there are a number of people who will want to raise some questions with you about what you came up with when you have the time free to be responsive to that.) But as I say this it occurs to me that no announcement of that conference was ever made on the list, and I should perhaps provide some context for this. The conference referred to was described by Lucia Santaella, who arranged it, as "an International Conference on Consciousness, Mind, and Thought in Peirce to be held in August 24-25, 2006, during which the Center of Peirce Studies at Sao Paulo Catholic University will be transformed into an International Center." Lucia is the creator of the Center, which originates as a program at that university which has been developed under her leadership for many years now and is largely (though by no means exclusively) responsible for a remarkably vital and continually growing and burgeoning tradition of Peirce-related research and scholarship whose equal is difficult to find anywhere in the world. The occasion is thus a celebrational one, and anyone interested in matters Peircean who is in position to be in attendance in Sao Paulo during this period is certain to find it worth while to do so. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Vin¨cius Romanini To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 8:11 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Doctoral Defense Dear list members, particularly Brazilians or whoever happens to be in Brazil by the end of August. I would like to invite you to the public defense of my doctoral dissertation on Peirce¨s classification of signs. Lucia Santaella, Nathan Houser and Thomas Short are part of the committee. Vincent Colapientro and Winfried Noth will be attending to it too. I think it will be a great opportunitie to discuss some hot topics of Peirce¨s logic and semiotic, as well as to hear leading scholars on the field. Needless to say that I will try to put an English version of it available online as soon as possible. Best, Vinicius Romanini The School of Communication and Arts (ECA) of the University of S¨o Paulo (USP) is pleased to invite you to the public defense of the doctoral dissertation of Vin¨cius Romanini entitled Minute Semeiotic Speculations on the Grammar of Signs and Communication based on the work of Charles S. Peirce Committee: Lucia Santaella (Pontifical Catholic University) Mayra Rodrigues Gomes (University of S¨o Paulo) Dulcilia Helena Buitoni (University of S¨o Paulo) Nathan Houser (Indiana University) Thomas Short (Independent Scholar)Abstract:The work is dedicated to the branch of Semiotic that Charles S. Peirce called Speculative Grammar: the study of the formal conditions that enable a Sign to function as such, the survey of all possible types of Signs and their ordered classification. The Speculative Grammar is the first branch of Semiotic, Logic is the second and Communication is its third one. A fruitful semiotic treatment of the Communication depends, therefore, on that the Grammar and Logic are sufficiently developed. This was the motivation of this work. After an introduction about Peirce and the development of his Theory of Signs, we present a proposal for a generation of 66 Classes of Signs and make some considerations on how this table could help to solve some problems of Logic and to construct of a formally semiotic Theory of Communication.The defense will happen on Monday August 28, at 2:00 pm at the Department of Journalism of the School of Communication and Arts (ECA) on the University of Sao Paulo (USP) campus, Av. Prof. Lúcio Martins Rodrigues, 443, Cidade Universitária, S¨o Paulo, Brazil. There will be simultaneous translation English/Portuguese. Do you Yahoo!?Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: JR: I must say that I think you are missing my point because of some mistaken assumption that I can't identify. The reason I gave the simple example of a common sense verification was to make as clear as I could that there is no deep logical point involved. Consider again my simple example: You see something and tell me about it and I take a verifying look. I see what I expect to see given what you told me to expect and that's enough for me. That is a verification. It doesn't follow that either of us grasped the truth of the matter, but if you did indeed grasp it by taking a look as you passed by the object and I did indeed grasp it by taking another look then we are both correct. But where in all of that is this all important difference you keep talking about between mere interpretation and experience" There was no more or less experience in my look than in yours, and no more or less interpretation, as far as that goes, other than the memory that the reason I took a look myself was because I wanted to see if what you saw is what you thought it to be, which I am willing to credit if, after taking a look myself, the description matches up. There is no denial of verification involved in any of this. It is an imaginary account of a very simple case of verification. JR: Now you can complicate it as much as you want, turn the look at a macroscopic object requiring no special instruments of vision (a burning fire) into, say, the look at the object which is involved in the case of scrutinizing a bunch of measurement data gathered from cranking up a particle accelerator at CERN with the help of a thousand other people, and the basic idea of verification or disverification is unchanged except for being required to be vastly more sophisticated, given the enormously different conditions of perceptual access to the object, and of course given the equally enormously greater amount of inference involved in the one case than in the other when we move from understanding the perceived object to be a burning building to the compared case of understanding the perceived object to be, say, a quark doing its thing under this and those conditions. Exactly the same sort of gross macro description of it applies as semiotically construed: an object is perceived as manifesting this or that, which, semiotically, is talked about in the same terms regardless of the difference between being an object with manifest qualities functioning as representations interpreted as being a burning fire or quark doing whatever quarks do. JR: So I just don't get it, Ben. Of course there is much of philosophical interest, at a specialized level, if one wants to deal with highly complex experiences instead of simple ones. I am not denying that. I assumed that you would understand that. You say: BU: One might make similar remarks on abductive inference, which is belief-laden and context-sensitive and would require getting into lots of details and variation case by case. Note that the kind of hypotheses which inferential statistics characteristically produces are "statistical hypotheses" rather than explanatory ones, and it is not as if statisticians never had an interest in the subject; a few years ago one statistician wrote here at peirce-l about being interested in general approaches to the production of the content of hypotheses which go beyond the usual statistical kind. Statistics deals with phenomena in general and, though often applied in idioscopy, is not itself about any special class of phenomena. Yet one does, in at least some philosophy, attempt and pursue general characterizations _of_ abductive inference and this is because abductive inference is a logical process of a general kind and is therefore part of philosophy's subject matter. JR: Yes, of course, but why would I deny any of that? You then say: BU: Verification is also a logical process of a general kind. The question is, is it some kind of interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof? Or is it something else? JR: Now that baffles me. Of course it is some kind of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof." Why would you even say such a thing? Is it something else? Well, it is supposed to be all of that considered as occurring subsequent to some prior instance of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof", relating to that prior instance as sufficient like it (or in some other way relevant to it) to count as something that might verify or disverify a claim made that cited the prior instance as evidential relative to that claim. Yes, it is one thing to be a verification and quite another to be that which is verified. But what is all of this talk about the one being a mere sign and interpretant whereas the latter is an experience? Both are equally describable in sem
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben: I forgot to say something about the supposed problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense. That's what the pragmatic maxim is all about, isn't it? Tom' Short's take on this has to do with Peirce's supposed failure to realize that his view of infinite interpretability entailed an infinite deferral of sense being given to the initially senseless symbol. In my view Tom doesn't understand what Peirce's view in the work of the late 1860's actually is. I think I can establish pretty persuasively that Peirce was, to put it mildly, a bit more sophisticated than Tom credits him with being. It is really just a matter of understanding what he meant by an "imputed quality" in defining the symbol in the New List, which Tom finds too distastefully Lockean to be taken seriously; but it has to be laid out and tediously tracked through text after text in order to put an end to the sort of misreading of Peirce that Tom gives, which is what I am currently completing. I don't see that it has anything to do with verification, though. It is just a question of what his theory of meaning is. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 1:01 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Ben Says: I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. Take a common sense case of that. You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) The question is, why have philosophers of science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to count as such? You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest for absolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the form of a major philosophical industry devoted to the production of theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be explained in terms of some natural confusion of thought like those which make it seem so implausible at first that we can get better control over our car when it
[peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Ben Says: I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. Take a common sense case of that. You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) The question is, why have philosophers of science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to count as such? You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest for absolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the form of a major philosophical industry devoted to the production of theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be explained in terms of some natural confusion of thought like those which make it seem so implausible at first that we can get better control over our car when it goes into a skid if we turn the car in the direction of the skid instead of by responding in the instinctively reasonable way of trying to turn it in opposition to going in that unwanted direction. Okay, not a very good example, but you know what I mean: something can seem at first completely obvious in its reasonableness that is actually quite unreasonable when all relevant considerations are taken duly into account. some of which are simply too subtle to be detected as relevant at first. Thus people argue interminably over no real problem. It happens a lot, I should think. In any case, a will-of-the-wisp is all that there is in the supposed need for some general theory of verification. There is none to be given nor is there any need for one. People make claims. Other people doubt them or accept them but want to be sure and so they do something that satisfies them, and others, noting this, are satisfied that the matter is settled and they just move on. Of maybe nobody is ever satisfied. That's life. Of course it can turn out at times that it is not easy to get the sort of satisfacion that counts for us as what we call a verification because it settles the matter in one way, or a dissatisfaction because it settles it in a contrary way. But that is all there is to it. Maybe there are fields or types of problems or issues in which the course of experience of inquiry about them has resulted in the development and elaboration of procedures that are regarded as having verification or disverification as their normal result, but
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Sorry, Ben, for the garbled message. I sent it off accidentally before rereading it to pick up on rewordings without corresponding correction of the syntax. The first sentence should read: I'm wondering if you are acquainted with the paper "Fourthness," by Herbert Schneider in the 1952 collection of essays _Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_, ed. Wiener & Young (Harvard U Press)? Joe - Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:55 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Ben, It is sometimes referred to retrospectively as the "First Series" since a volume subsequently appeared which is also called "Studies in the Philosophy of CSP", but differentiated from the first by being called the Second Series of this collection. It was published, however, by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1964 and edited by Moore and Robin. Schneider calls the supposed fourth factor "importance" (which he distinguishes from "import") and explicates it in terms of "satisfaction", which seems to have much the same logical function as what you discuss in terms of "verification". I am not saying that I see your view in his exactly but rather that I seem to see some similarity with your view in his explication of it as being required in order to account for the universal as "concrete" rather than merely an abstraction. (Peirce does talk somewhere of "concrete reasonableness" as being a fourthness while denying at the same time that this introduces something not formally resolvable in terms of the other three factors. That is, I seem to recall this, but I can find nothing in my notes that says where that passage is. Does anyone else recall this, I wonder, or have I merely hallucinated it?) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:10 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Jim, list, >>[Ben] That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or >>acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the >>common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that >>expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they >>will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from >>books. There is good reason for this. >>[Ben] The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The >>experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of >>experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you >>stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about >>math problems and working those math problems yourself. >[Jim] Dear Ben, >[Jim] Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! >[Jim] You seem to be saying that we can have two types of acquaintance with >objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation >of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety >of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make >sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct >aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of >representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Yes and no. No: "Direct" and "unmediated" don't mean the same thing. There's lots of "sub-logical" or "sub-semiotic" stuff going on. I don't mean "illogical," instead I mean, "not inference-processing." We perceive directly, but there's lots of "mediation" by things -- dynamic, material, biological -- which we don't perceive. Likewise in conscious experience there are contributions by unconscious inference processes. If we order by principles of knowledge, principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know thing, then experience comes first. When we analyze experience, we start breaking it down into elements whereby we explain what we do experience. We can break experience down into, for instance, dynamic processes (in which I've said in the past that we should look for the involvement of 'inverse' or multi-objective optimization), material stochastic processes, and vegetable-level information processes. In idioscopy, if we order by explanatory principles then we will put physics first, as usual. If we order by knowledge principles, we will put inference processes first (in idiosocopy this means the sciences of intelligent life). The maths are typically ordered in th
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben, I'm wondering if you are acquainted with the paper "Fourthness," by Herbert Schneider in what has come to in the 1952 collection of essays _Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_, ed. Wiener & Young (Harvard U Press). It is sometimes referred to retrospectively as the "First Series" since a volume subsequently appeared which is also called "Studies in the Philosophy of CSP", but differentiated from the first by being called the Second Series of this collection. It was published, however, by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1964 and edited by Moore and Robin. Schneider calls the supposed fourth factor "importance" (which he distinguishes from "import") and explicates it in terms of "satisfaction", which seems to have much the same logical function as what you discuss in terms of "verification". I am not saying that I see your view in his exactly but rather that I seem to see some similarity with your view in his explication of it as being required in order to account for the universal as "concrete" rather than merely an abstraction. (Peirce does talk somewhere of "concrete reasonableness" as being a fourthness while denying at the same time that this introduces something not formally resolvable in terms of the other three factors. That is, I seem to recall this, but I can find nothing in my notes that says where that passage is. Does anyone else recall this, I wonder, or have I merely hallucinated it?) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:10 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Jim, list, >>[Ben] That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or >>acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the >>common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that >>expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they >>will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from >>books. There is good reason for this. >>[Ben] The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The >>experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of >>experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you >>stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about >>math problems and working those math problems yourself. >[Jim] Dear Ben, >[Jim] Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! >[Jim] You seem to be saying that we can have two types of aquaintance with >objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation >of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety >of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make >sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct >aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of >representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Yes and no. No: "Direct" and "unmediated" don't mean the same thing. There's lots of "sub-logical" or "sub-semiotic" stuff going on. I don't mean "illogical," instead I mean, "not inference-processing." We perceive directly, but there's lots of "mediation" by things -- dynamic, material, biological -- which we don't perceive. Likewise in conscious experience there are contributions by unconscious inference processes. If we order by principles of knowledge, principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know thing, then experience comes first. When we analyze experience, we start breaking it down into elements whereby we explain what we do experience. We can break experience down into, for instance, dynamic processes (in which I've said in the past that we should look for the involvement of 'inverse' or multi-objective optimization), material stochastic processes, and vegetable-level information processes. In idioscopy, if we order by explanatory principles then we will put physics first, as usual. If we order by knowledge principles, we will put inference processes first (in idiosocopy this means the sciences of intelligent life). The maths are typically ordered in the "order of knowledge" rather than an "order of being" -- ordered on principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know things, and structures of order and deductive theory of logic are usually considered more basic and foundational. This is the opposite of the situation in idioscopy. Anyway, recognition, interpretation, representation, and objectification are elements in a logical a.k.a. semiotic process. If we order by "explanatory principles" aka the traditional "order of being," which corresponds to the order of semiotic determination, then we explain by the object. Yet there is more than objects in semiosis, and there is more than forces and motion in the concrete world. Yes: One can
[peirce-l] Re: Ransdell on the notion of determination in Peirce
Claus, list: The reference is to something I distributed on-line (posted to the list) some years ago. It's a chapter in an incomplete book on semiotic. I'll send you a copy of that chapter, if you like. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claus Emmeche To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 4:33 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Ransdell on the notion of determination in Peirce Dear Joe Ransdell,I have a bibliograpical question to you on something you wrote on determination. I saw this passage from a paper by Antônio Gomes, Ricardo Gudwin & João Queiroz:= = = = QUOTE:Determination provides the way the triad elements are arranged to form a sign. According to Peirce"The sign is determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determines the interpretant in reference to the object in such a way as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of the sign" (MS 318:81). These determinations can be rewritten as:1. O determines S relatively to I2. S determines I relatively to OAccording to Ransdell (1983:23), determination encompasses a both causal and logical idea. In this context, how do these causal and logical modes operate? = = = = = UNQUOTE(from in section 3.2 in the paper by Antônio Gomes, Ricardo Gudwin & João Queiroz, "Towards Meaning Processes in Computers from Peircean Semiotics" published in the online journal SEED vol. 3 (2), November 2003, here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/SEED/Vol3-2/Queiroz_3-2.htm ).In the references, the reference to your 1983 paper is"Ransdell, J. Peircean semiotics, 1983. (unpublished)."Is that a paper that has been published later, or eventually, do you have written on this issue in other papers, e.g. to be found at Arisbe ?Best regards,Claus--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
I agree with you on this, Jim. I am wondering if Ben really thinks that there is any such cognitive acquaintance. I had thought he was simply misstating whatever point he was trying to make and didn't intend that. I am looking forward to his answer on that. Joe - Original Message - From: "Jim Piat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 12:12 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Ben Udell wrote: >>That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or >>acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the >>common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that >>expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they >>will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from >>books. There is good reason for this. The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about math problems and working those math problems yourself. >> Dear Ben, Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! You seem to be saying that we can have two types of aquaintance with objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Is it your view that even without signs (or the process of representation) that experience would be meaningful to us? Is it your view that that signs and the process of representation are (merely) tools for comunicating or thinking about our experience but are otherwise not required for experience to be meaningful? Personally I don't think Peirce meant that we can conceive of objects without engaging in representation. We may have aquaintance with objects in the same sense that two billiard balls are aquainted when they collide but this is not triadic aquaintance for the billiard balls and conveys no meaning to them. For me, all meaningful experience is triadic and representational. That one conception of an object is taken as foundational for a particular discussion does not priviledge that object as the "real object" but merely as the object commonly understood as the criteria against which the validity of assertions will be tested. Its as though the discussants were saying that the object ultimately under discussion is "that one over there" or "the one described in this sentence" or whatever -- but hopefully always one which all participants to the discussion have at least in theory equal access. The issue of what constitutes a collateral object rests less on the distinction between direct aquaintance vs aquaintance through signs but one of private vs public access to the object. A useful collateral object is one to which all discussants have equal access. The question being raised by collateral experience is really one of public vs private experience. The question is not whether the collateral object is known through representation or somehow more directly through dyadic aquaintance because (in my view) all meaningful experience (even so called direct experience) is mediated through signs. The difference between reading about something and doing it is not a matter of representational vs non representational aquaintance but between two different representations of the same object. There are folks who can read about pro football who can not play it and there are folks who can play pro football who can not read. Representation of experience is required for both activities. The common object represented is neither the football-done nor the football-read but the quality of football that is common to and inheres in both. Some of the habits acquired in mastering one respresentation or conception are not the same as required for mastering the other. I don't mean for these last two paragraphs above to leap frog your answers but more as guides to what is troubling me and what I mean by my questions. Thanks again for your comments, Ben. I am still studying them, but want to make sure I'm understanding you as I go. Making sure I understand your distinction between direct aquaintance and sign mediated aquaintance seems an important lst step. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edit
[peirce-l] URL for Notes on Logic (MS 171)
Ben: The complete text from which that passage you were concerned with was taken is already available on-line in transcribed form at the PEP website (it was published in Writings 2): http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_42/v2_42.htm There is a link to it from Arisbe, too. Joe -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] MS 339.663f transcription on-line
I just now added the transcription of the 1909 definition of a sign in the Logic Notebook -- pages MS 339.663f -- to the copies of the MS pages http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/ms339d-663f.pdf It reads better than the version I posted to the list a couple of days ago because the pdf format can exactly duplicate Word format in a way that HTML format cannot, and that enabled me to show the cross-outs as actually crossed out though still legible. Also, this on-line version is more complete, as I transcribed material that I had omitted in the version posted for the reason I gave in that post, namely, because the additional material primarily concerns the question of whether one can know that one knows something (which is something that arises in the context of fallibilism), rather than the topic I was primarily concerned with when I posted it, namely, the conception of a sign as a substitute or surrogate for the object. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe
Gary (Fuhrman) and list:
Thanks for the response to the transcription of MS 403. I'm just now in
process of completing a combination of MSS 403 and 404 into a single paper
of two parts which adds some short descriptive phrases for the section
divisions as he recognizes them in the 1893 version. Pondering your
suggestion about whether parts of the New List should be included as
following rather than preceding the later version, it occurs to me that for
on-line reading the best arrangement would be to program it with hypertext
buttons at the appropriate places in the 1893 version that would pop up a
resizable "floating" panel containing the passage from the New List to be
compared so that the reader could easily reshape and move the panel around
on the screen to the best place for doing the comparison. Maybe one would
have to do that programming in whatever language the Shockwave technology
uses, or something like that, or maybe it would be as simple as using html
encoding to make a button for a popup of a new browser window, which could
then be manually resized.
Joe
- Original Message -
From: "gnusystems" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 2:39 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe
Joe, i think we all owe you a round of thanks for your transcription of
MS 403, especially those of us who are relative newcomers to the study
of Peirce. After several readings of the "New List" paper i still find
it a tough nut to crack, and this 1893 version makes it much more
accessible. In fact i would advise beginners in Peirce studies to try MS
403 (and 404) first and the 1867 paper later. Terminologically, the "New
List" paper seems to have a very hard crust, perhaps the result of its
conceptual content having been "in the oven" for three or four years
before reaching its published form -- guaranteeing that its language
would be transparent for its author, however opaque it may be for the
average reader. I think MS 403 shows Peirce making some progress toward
making his expression as "elementary" for the public as his categories
were already "elementary" in the logical sense.
Or maybe i'm reading my own progress as a reader into it ... i'd like to
hear a real beginner's testimony as to which version makes more
immediate sense. (I wonder if it would work better to put the sections
from 1867 after the 1893 versions of each section?)
The new footnotes also reveal some unexpected implications and
connections (unexpected by me, anyway). -- As for MS 339D.663f, i'm
still struggling with that one.
gary
}Drawing nearer to take our slant at it (since after all it has met with
misfortune while all underground), let us see all there may remain to be
seen. [Finnegans Wake 113]{
gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson & Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin University
}{ [EMAIL PROTECTED] }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/ }{
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben says: "I thought I was so concise that it was okay to pull the topic in my favorite direction, since it seemed brief. But I have to make some additions and corrections." Ben, I hadn't read your latest message in responding to your earlier message as I do below, and am not sure whether your subsequent comments bear on what I say or not but will just go ahead and post them anyway. (I should add that the MS from which the quote you are commenting on is drawn was not completely quoted by me and what was omitted is perhaps pertinent to it, given the direction you went from it. I will perhaps post the whole thing separately in a later message.) Ben says: ===QUOTE BEN Peirce: "The point of contact is the living mind which is affected in a similar way by real things and by their signs. And this is the only possible point of contact." The mind alone recognizes sign and interpretant as corresponding to the real. Yet that mind's recognition of the signs' corresponding to the object is not the mind's sign for the object yet is the mind's _something_ regarding the object, something involving experience of the object. Maybe it's just that, experience, and experience is something "outside" semiosis, technically non-semiotic in that sense, and supporting semiosis by external pressure? (No, I don't think that, in case anybody is wondering :-)) ==END QUOTE=== REPLY: I wonder if in talking about correspondence, you are looking for something that just isn't to be found, Ben, namely, a statement of verification of a certain cognitive claim that is something other than a mere repetition of the same claim because it claims that the claim corresponds to the way the object actually is. (I say this in view of your opinion that confirmation or verification is a logically distinct factor that Peirce fails to take due account of as a logically distinct fourth factor in his category theory.) Let us suppose that some person, P1, makes a certain knowledge claim, C1, about a certain object, O, namely, that O is F. And let us suppose that a second person, P2, makes a claim, C2, about that claim, saying, yes, O really is as P1 claims it is, namely, F. (In other words, he makes what may seem to be a verifying claim.) And suppose that P2's claim differs from P1's claim not as regards any difference in evidential basis for saying that O is F but only because C2 is about the relationship between claim C1 and O and their observed correspondence, whereas C1 is just about O. (In other words, P1 is merely saying that O is F whereas P2 is saying not only that O is F but also that P1 is saying that O is F and is therefore speaking the truth.) Supposing that the two persons are equivalent as regards their generally recognized status as people who try to speak the truth. Question: Is P2's claim that P1 is speaking the truth a verification of P1's claim? Given that there is no difference in their evidential base and that P1 and P2 are on par as recognized truth-tellers, it would seem not. Why? Because P1's simple claim that O is F could just as well be taken as verification by P1 that P2 is right in claiming that O is F. The general point is that in thinking about the need for verification you are thinking of a verifying statement -- a verification -- as differing from the statement being verified because the verifier is performing an act of comparison of correspondence that is of a different logical type than the act of making the claim being verified, whereas the one is logically on par with the other. Thus e.g. when one gets a second opinion from another physician, let us say, one is not ipso facto getting an opinion that can either verify or disverify the first, though we may mistakenly think that this is what we are doing. But a second opinion is just a further opinion, as a third, fourth, etc., and it doesn't make any difference which one comes first. Of course, we could take the second opinion as verification of the first provided we brought to bear some further considerations, but amongst them would NOT be the fact that one of them could be construed as differing from the other because it involved a comparison of the other as an opinion with the object of that opinion. In other words, there is never really any such thing as a correspondence comparison of opinion and fact or sign and object of sign in the sense you implicitly have in mind. Joe Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben, list: Thanks for the response, Ben, and for the news from Gary about the conference. I hope Stjernfelt's paper is made generally available soon. He has an important paper in Transactions of the Peirce Society 36 (Summer 2000) called "Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircean Epistemology".. I'm caught by a luncheon engagement and can't do more at the moment than to add some more quotes to provide some background for sorting out the imputation factors along the lines you are suggesting: These are all from the early years (1865-1873): ==QUOTE PEIRCE=== Writings 1,172f (1865) MS 94 Harvard Lecture I "Concerning words also it is farther to be considered," [Locke] says, "that there comes by constant use to be such a connection between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses." Now this readiness of excitation obviously consists in this, namely, that we do not have to reflect upon the word as a sign but . . . it comes to affect the intellect as though it had that quality which it connotes. I call this the acquired nature of the word, because it is a power that the word comes to have, and because the word itself without any reflection of ours upon it brings the idea into our minds. . . . Now, I ask, how is it that anything can be done with a symbol, without reflecting upon the conception, much less imagining the object that belongs to it? It is simply because the symbol has acquired a nature, which may be described thus, that when it is brought before the mind certain principles of its use -- whether reflected on or not -- by association immediately regulate the action of the mind; and these may be regarded as laws of the symbol itself which it cannot _as a symbol_ transgress. Writings 1, 280 (1865) MS 106 Harvard Lecture X Inference in general obviously supposes symbolization; and all symbolization is inference. For every symbol as we have seen contains information. And in the last lecture we saw that all kinds of information involve inference. Inference, then, is symbolization. They are the same notions. Now we have already analyzed the notion of a symbol, and we have found that it depends upon the possibility of representations acquiring a nature, that is to say an immediate representative power. This principle is therefore the ground of inference in general. Writings 1,477, Lowell Lecture IX 1866 Representation is of three kinds -- Likeness, Indication or Correspondence in fact, and Symbolization. . . . A representation is either a Likeness, an Index, or a Symbol. A likeness represents its object by agreeing with it in some particular. An index represents is object by a real correspondence with it -- as a tally does quarts of milk, and a vane the wind. A symbol is a general representation like a word or conception. Scientifically speaking, a likeness is a representation grounded on an internal character -- that is, whose reference to a ground is prescindible. An index is a representation whose relation to its object is prescindible and is a Disquiparance, so that its peculiar Quality is not prescindible but is relative. A symbol is a representation whose essential Quality and Relation are both unprescindible -- the Quality being imputed and the Relation ideal. Thus there are three kinds of Quality Internal Quality (Quality proper) -- The Quality of an Equiparent and Likeness External Quality -- The Quality of a Disquiparant and Index Imputed Quality -- The Quality of a Symbol And two kinds of Relation Real Relation (Relation proper) -- The Relation of Likeness and Index Ideal Relation -- The relation of a Symbol . . . Having thus made a complete catalogue of the objects of formal thought, we come down to consider symbols, with which alone Logic is concerned -- and symbols in a special aspect; namely, as determined by their reference to their objects or correlates. The first division which we are to attempt to make between different kinds of symbols ought to depend upon their intention, what they are specially meant to express -- whether their peculiar function is to lie in their reference to their ground, in their reference to their object, or their reference to their interpretant. A symbol whose intended function is its reference to its ground -- although as a symbol it must refer also to an object and an interpretant, and although the nature of its reference to its object is alone the study of the logician -- is nevertheless intended to be nothing more than something which has meaning and to which a certain character has been imputed; in other words it is a symbol only because the imputation of a certain character has made it one -- the imputation of the character is the same as putting it for a thing or things -- so that it is merely con
[peirce-l] MS 339D.663f On the sign as surrogate
Correcting an error in the URLs in recent message. They should read: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/339d-664.pdf http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/339d-663.pdf (And note that the MS number is 339, not 399, and contains a "d".) Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
What follows below is a transcription of a passage from Peirce's Logic Notebook, dated Nov. 1, 1909. (The ISP numbers of the two copy pages are MS 339.663 and 664, but 664 precedes 663 in the order of composition.) The interest which especially attaches to this, for my purposes, is that the date -- November of 1909 -- is very late in Peirce's career, and I regard what Peirce says in this passage as evidence that his view of the nature of symbolism never changed substantially from his view of it as he described it in the earlier years -- and now and again in later years as well -- in terms of it being grounded in an "imputed" quality or character. This is a way of saying that the symbol functions as if it were something else in causing an effect on whatever interprets it which is the same as some effect which that other thing, which is the symbol's object, is itself capable of causing. The symbol thus functions as a surrogate or deputy for its object. There are various ways this can be expressed but this is what he is saying in the passage transcribed here when speaks of a sign as being capable of "producing upon a person in whom certain conditions are fulfilled effects that another thing or a collection of other things would produce". I will comment more on various wordings below, following the transcription, or in a separate message. Everything in square brackets is editorially added, and I indicate Peirce's emphasis by use of flanking underscores in order to keep this in ASCII. [TRANSCRIPTION BEGINS] A "Sign" is an _ens_ (something, of any kind), which in addition to possessing characters such as an other _ens_ of the same kind might possess without being a "Sign"[,] is _capable_ of [Peirce crossed out: "causing an effect called here an _Interpretant_, upon a conscious being, which is as if it were in some way due, or in some mode corresponded to such as might be regarded as mentally affecting some conscious"] affecting some conscious Being so as to tend to produce in him a disposition, action, or imagination as if some state of things called the substance, signification, predicate, or (here particularly) the Interpretant of the Sign were more definitely realized in reference to an object (other than the sign itself) or in [the sentence breaks off] _ _ _ Well, on the whole, -- or rather not on the whole by any means, but as another phase of reflexion, -- I think this won't do. This is made plain to me by the impossibility along this line to do justice to the _Object_ in all its generality. I think I must say [The entire following paragraph is crossed out with a big "X"] A "_Sign_" is an Ens (i.e. is something) which in addition to being either imagined, perceived, or conceived, as anything of which we are to have any experience or dealings must be, must also be taken as a revelation of something else, -- i.e. it conveys to its interpreter[,] the man who practically understands the particular system of substitution it employs, the interpreter, as we call him, not experience of that other thing, but in some measure the same effect, with such modification as the interpreter if sufficiently qualified (though it is not possible that he should be so in all cases, among examples that of its being skillfully designed to deceive) may expect or at least suspect. It not only produces this effect, which is variously called its Substance, Signification, and in particular here through its Interpretant, but it also enables the interpreter [sentence breaks off] _On The Opposite Page Better Put_ [This is apparently a note from Peirce to himself; it seems clearly to refer to the paragraph on MS 339.663 which begins just below:] A "Sign" is an Ens (i.e. something of some and it may be of any category of being) which not only has a capacity of being either imagined, perceived, or conceived, or anything of the same category of Being of which one happens to have enough of the right kind of dealing maybe but also has the property of producing upon a person in whom certain conditions are fulfilled effects that another thing or a collection of other things would produce, those conditions being the possession by that person of a practical understanding of the system of correspondence. [END OF TRANSCRIPTION OF RELEVANT PASSAGE ] There is more on the notebook page than this. It continues with a lengthy comment that begins as follows: "But this definition ought to be prefaced with the remark that no event of learning anything brings _per se_ any other knowledge than that which [?is?] learned, and in particular does not include any knowledge about that event of learning itself." And it goes on, but I end my transcription at this point because what Peirce himself seems to be primarily concerned with in this connection is some problem he seems to see in arriving at a defining formulation for the word "sign" in this way which will be consistent with his fallibilism.
[peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe
Arnold, Wilfred, and list: I just noticed -- and corrected -- a transcription error that occurs in Section 3 of the 1893 version in the footnote embedded in that paragraph: I had typed "intention" where it should have been "attention". That could easily induce a conceptual error. I also corrected a couple of typos, one was a spelling of "priscindible" as "priscindable" and I forget the other, but it is something trivial, too. Also, that glitch on the last page, at the top, disappeared when I figured out that it was due to some confusion induced in the program that was caused by using the switch that keeps the two lines together at the page break. That was corrected, too, and the box enclosing the text now stays open where it was mistakenly closing at the page break before. The only important error, though, was the attention/intention mistake. And they are all corrected now. (If you find any other seeming mistakes please let me know so I can correct them, too.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Arnold Shepperson To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:11 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe Joe, Wilfred I had a quick squizz at MS 403, and agree that it could be quite an important document in getting an idea of the combined continuity and growth of Peirce's thought. Thanks for doing this: I am at this moment taking a break from preparing an article on the contributions to social inquiry that Peirce's philosophical, semeiotic, and logical possible inquiries make possible, and this document (even if I don't cite it directly) does seem to clarify ways of showing reader only partly familiar with Peirce that he is definitely worth the further effort in the reading. BTW: the article in question is for a relatively new journal, _The Journal of Multicultural Discourses_, based at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. An earlier version by Keyan Tomaselli and I was sent back with a referee's request that the article say less about what Africans purportedly think about GW Bush's America, and a lot more about Peirce. I have been giving this a full go for the last week, and expect to be busy for another week or two yet: anybody who wants more Peirce, can have as much as I can give, and whatever else they can get from all the resources!! Hence the rather peculiarly personal relevance of your posting MS 403 to Arisbe, because this is a source I can pass on as part of the article's review of the change in peirce Scholarship resources as a result of the Internet. I had asked the journal's editor whether his university had had any contact with Charls Pearson's project, but haven't had a respone yet. Cheers Arnold Shepperson--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/394 - Release Date: 7/20/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/394 - Release Date: 7/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: Programa II Jornadas "Peirce en Argentina"
This was forwarded to me by Alfredo Horoch, one of the participants in the conference in Argentina which is described below. It is gratifying to see how many scholars are involved and how widely they are dispersed throughout Central and South America now, though I can only guess at the location of a good many of them. Perhaps a later version of the program will indicate the institutional affiliations more explicitly. (The acronyms used are not informative to me.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 1:08 PM Subject: Programa II Jornadas "Peirce en Argentina" II Jornadas Peirce en Argentina 7 y 8 de septiembre de 2006 ACADEMIA NACIONAL DE CIENCIAS DE BUENOS AIRES Av. Alvear 1771 3er. Piso (PROGRAMA PROVISIONAL) 7 de Septiembre de 2006 14:00 Recepci¨n-Acreditaci¨n 14:20 Apertura: Palabras de la Lic. Catalina Hynes, Coordinadora GEP Argentina. 14:25 Conferencia Inaugural: Dr. Roberto Walton (Centro de Estudios Filos¨ficos "Eugenio Pucciarelli"): "Peirce y la fenomenolog¨a". Presentaci¨n a cargo del Dr. Jaime Nubiola (Universidad de Navarra). Trabajo en comisiones: Sal¨n de Actos: Mesa panel sobre verdad y error Coordinadora: Evelyn Vargas 15:30 ANDR¨S HEBRARD (UNLP), FEDERICO L¨PEZ (UNLP-CIC): "Razones para la convergencia: realidad, comunidad y m¨todo experimental" 16:00 EVELYN VARGAS (UNLP- CONICET) "La inferencia como s¨mbolo" 16:30 CRISTINA DI GREGORI (UNLP- CONICET), CECILIA DURAN (UNLP) "John Dewey: acerca del pragmatismo de Peirce" 17:00 MARIA AURELIA DI BERNARDINO (UNLP) "Máxima Pragmática y abducci¨n" Sala CEF: Coordinador: Roberto Marafiotti 15:30 ROBERTO FAJARDO (Univ. de Panamá) "Hacia una l¨gica de lo indeterminado; creaci¨n art¨stica y semiosis" 16:00 CLAUDIO CORT¨S L¨PEZ (Univ. Finis Terrae - Chile) "Semi¨tica y est¨tica de la pintura: una aproximaci¨n desde la teor¨a Peirce-Bense" 16:30 IVONNE ALVAREZ TAMAYO ( Univ. Pop. Aut. del Estado de Puebla) "Abducci¨n y fenomenolog¨a de Peirce aplicada en procesos de diseño visual y audiovisual" 17:00 LORENA STEINBERG (UBA) "La semi¨tica aplicada al análisis de las organizaciones" 17:30 Pausa caf¨ Trabajo en comisiones: Coordinador: Javier Legris Sal¨n de Actos: 17:45 EDGAR SANDOVAL (Univ. de Panamá) "Peirce y la semi¨tica de las afecciones" 18:15 DANIEL KAPOLKAS (UBA - CONICET) "Verdad, realidad y comunidad: una lectura realista de la teor¨a de la cognici¨n de Charles Sanders Peirce" 18:45 CARLOS GARZ¨N (Univ. Nac. de Colombia), CATALINA HERN¨NDEZ (Univ. Nac. de Colombia) "C. S. Peirce: realidad, verdad y el debate realismo-antirrealismo" 19:15 CATALINA HYNES (UNSTA- UNT) "El problema de la unidad de la noci¨n peirceana de verdad" 19:45 Mesa Panel (Sal¨n de Actos): "El origen de la cuantificaci¨n en Peirce": Javier Legris (UBA), Gustavo Demartin (UNLP), Gabriela Fulugorio (UBA), Sandra Lazzer (UBA) Coordinador: Ignacio Angelelli Sala CEF: Coordinadora: Natalia Rom¨ 17:45 ALEJANDRO RAM¨REZ FIGUEROA (Univ. de Chile) "Peirce desde la inteligencia artificial: la abducci¨n y la condici¨n de consistencia" 18:15 GUIDO VALLEJOS (Univ. de Chile) "Autonom¨a de la abducci¨n e inferencia hacia la mejor explicaci¨n" 18:45 SANDRA VISOKOLSKIS (UNVM -UNC) "Metáfora, ¨cono y abducci¨n en Charles S. Peirce" 19:15 V¨CTOR BRAVARI (Pontificia Univ. Cat¨lica de Chile) "Abducci¨n colectiva" 19:45 Presentaci¨n del libro (Sala CEF): E. Sandoval (Comp.): Semi¨tica, l¨gica y epistemolog¨a. Homenaje a Ch. S. Peirce (UACM, M¨xico, 2006): Jaime Nubiola (Universidad de Navarra) y Edgar Sandoval (UACM) 8 de Septiembre Sal¨n de Actos: Coordinador: Jorge Roetti 14:00 ROSA MAR¨A MAYORGA (Virginia Tech) "Pragmaticismo y Pluralismo" 14:30 SARA BARRENA Y JAIME NUBIOLA (Universidad de Navarra) "El ser humano como signo en crecimiento" 15:00 ALFREDO HOROCH (ARISBE) "Arisbe 1888-1914: un hogar para Julliette, Charles, y un refugio para la ciencia estadounidense" 15:30 HEDY BOERO (UNSTA) "Juicio de consejo y abducci¨n: Tomás de Aquino y C. S. Peirce" Sala CEF: Coordinador: Mariano Sanginetto 14:00 CATALINA HERN¨NDEZ Y ANDERSON PINZON (Univ. Nac. de Colombia) "Peirce, mente y percepci¨n: una posible cr¨tica" 14:30 ALEJANDRA NI¨O AMIEVA (UBA) "La abducci¨n en el análisis semi¨tico de imágenes" 15:00 OSCAR ZELIS, GABRIEL PULICE (Grupo de Investigaci¨n en Psicoanálisis) "Las tres categor¨as Peirceanas y los tres registros lacanianos. La estructura triádica del acto de semiosis como nudo de convergencia entre ambas teorizaciones" 15:30 MAR¨A GRISELDA GAIADA (UNLP), CHRISTIAN ROY BIRCH "La tercerdidad en la experiencia psicoanal¨tica" 16:00 Pausa caf¨ Sal¨n de Actos: Coordinadora: Sara Barrena 16:15 BERNARDITA BOLUMBURU (Univ. de Chile) "Peirce, la abducci¨n y los modelos mentales" 16:45 JO¨O QUEIROZ (Univ. Federal de Bah¨a, Brasil), CLAUS EMMECHE (Univ. de Campinas, Brasil), CHARBEL NI¨O EL-HANI (Univ. de Copenhagen, Dinamarca) "Information and meaning in living sis
[peirce-l] MS 403 available at Arisbe
I just now mounted a transcription of MS 403 (1893), "The Categories", at
Arisbe.
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms403/ms403.pdf
This is a rewrite -- up to a point -- of the 1867 paper on the categories,
and I include in the transcription of the later paper a copy of the 1867
paper interleaved with it in such a way as to make it easy to compare the
two as regards what is and is not changed. The changes are, in general,
explainable in terms of the different audiences for which they are written.
In the case of the later paper, the audience would be the reader of a logic
text in which it (MS 403) was to appear as Chapter 1. The name of the logic
text (never published) was to be "The Art of Reasoning" and -- judging from
the name -- it seems to have been intended for people of the same type as
those whom he recruited for his "distance education" course
("correspondence" course) in the late 1880's since that was also the
advertised name of his course. (See Nathan Houser's account of this
remarkable endeavor in Volume 6 of the Writings of CSP, Indiana University
Press).
I don't know whether Peirce was still thinking in terms of that
correspondence course in 1893, which seems to be several years after he gave
up on the course; but the reference to logic as an art rather than a science
and the use of the word "reasoning" rather than, say, "reason", suggests
that the
intended readership was the same, adults primarily concerned with what logic
could do for them as good thinkers generally. Needless to say, perhaps,
Peirce's idea of what would appeal to those interested primarily in practice
rather than theory seems a bit odd and unrealistic at times. But watching
"Deadwood" has convinced me that Americans may well have tended to think
about things in a more eloquent and intelligent way in those days than we
are presently accustomed or inclined toward nowadays -- an idea which has
occurred to me a number of times in the past when reading not only Peirce
but some other American writers of the late 19th Century -- so maybe Peirce
wasn't so far off in his expectations about his prospective students as we
are inclined to think.
Anyway, I find the modifications Peirce did and did not make in his 1893
rewrite of the New List helpful in understanding his thinking generally and
perhaps others will as well. Unfortunately, MS 403 stops just one sentence
short of the passage in the New List where he defines the symbol in terms of
"imputed quality", though he has just drawn the distinction between an
internal quality and a relative quality, as in the New List but does not
complete that with the notion of the imputed quality nor make use of the
talk of three kinds of quality to define the icon/index/symbol distinction.
The reason seems fairly clear when we turn to MS 404, which was apparently
composed as a continuation of 403 but introduces something for which there
is no corresponding passage in the New List, namely, an attempt at a loose,
suggestive, intuitive, poetic appreciation of the three-category conception.
One obvious reason is that he could not reasonably expect someone who is
reading a book on the art of reasoning to understand what is happening in
distinguishing between internal, relative, and imputed quality.
I do not think it was because he had abandoned the earlier idea of the
symbol as being grounded in an imputed quality, since this is really the
same as to say that the proper interpretant of a symbol interprets it as if
it were an icon conventionally associated with the symbol which is being
indexed by the symbol replica. (This is his later doctrine, stated again
and again by him from the 1890's on, ) But I don't think it is only that
he had decided on a better way of saying the same thing, but also had
something to do with the distinction between three kinds of quality:
roughly, monadic, dyadic, and triadic (i.e.internal, relative, and imputed
quality). What is problematic in this is that in order to make sense of
that distinction he had to distinguish between the firstness of firstness
itself and the firstness of secondness and the firstness of thirdness since
the quality could not otherwise iconize existential or dyadic relations and
three-term representation relations. He does of course recognize THAT
distinction later, but that is a complication that he would not want to be
burdened with explaining in an introductory text in logic!
Anyway, I doubt that he had realized the necessity for that when writing the
1867 paper, but I see no reason why it should be thought of as inconsistent
with it. All that is required to recognize the foundational character of
the New List for his later as well as his earlier work is to be able to
understand it as consistent with such further developments of it as turned
out later to be required. Nobody holds -- so far as I know -- that Peirce's
thought did not DEVELOP across hi
[peirce-l] Re: Floyd Merrel
Floyd Merrel is an academician in the literary humanities, possibly retired by now (from Purdue, dept of Portuguese and Spanish, as I recall) but still active, I think, and can fairly be called an independent scholar in a laudatory sense of the term. He has never been on the list and has not been strongly oriented toward on-line communication but can be called an "advanced" thinker nonetheless who brings a special perspective to Peirce studies. He is also versed in the Continental European semiological tradition, as are many in the literary humanities. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 6:20 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Floyd Merrel I am now on the net looking for sources for notion of vagueness connected with CS Peirce. By doing so, I also found some books on Amazon by Floyd Merrel. My question is whether this guy is scientist or more like independent scholar. And I am actually wondering whether he is on this list?? I have only now seen some of the reviews and tittles of his books. Seems to be they are very practical and clear? Kind regards, Wilfred Berendsen---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.8/380 - Release Date: 30-6-2006 --No virus found in this outgoing message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.8/380 - Release Date: 30-6-2006 No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.8/380 - Release Date: 6/30/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.8/380 - Release Date: 6/30/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
In response to me saying:. >Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has >actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke >of a book! Ben says: It's also difficult to believe that anyone eats all the way through a rich, multi-layered Italian pastry. And yet, we do (usually). Kidding aside, I have literally no idea why Joe says it's difficult to believe that anybody could read all the way through it. Too much coherence? Too much mix of coherence and incoherence? Now, it's fun to try to work a certain amount of seeming incoherence into one's writing. Conversations, for instance, don't have to be written as give & take where speakers understand or even address each other's previous remarks in any direct way. It's a literary technique, or challenge, which one sees here and there. REPLY: Good point, Ben, and incoherence certainly is not always bad. Maybe it is the mix, as you suggest, but reading that whole book -- instead of just dipping into it now and again to see if one can find firm footing (which I never could) -- seems to me rather like reading the same joke told in many different ways. "Shaggy dog stories": do you remember when they were all the rage as avant garde humor? -- they are fun heard once, though it seems to depend upon the realization that it is just a shaggy dog story and funny because of its pointlessness, i.e. because you recognize it as a practical joke comparable to having the chair jerked out from umder you when you are trying to sit in it. But to listen to variations on the same shaggy dog story knowing that it is a shaggy dog story for 135 pages? It makes me suspect that there is a sense to it that I am missing and you are picking up on, being more wiedely read than I and in the relevant way. Well, I do seem to remember owing a copy of _t zero_, too, but I probably jmissed the point to it, toom since I remember notihng about it except the title! But I'll give it a try -- maybe -- if I can track it down. Joe === _Teitlebaum's Window_ by Wallace Markfield has some of it. Some of the "conversations" in _Mulligan Stew_ by Gilbert Sorrentino. In real life, of course, that kind of talk is often motivated by evasiveness. One year at a Thanksgiving dinner, a relative asked a question about another relative, a question which those of us in the know didn't want to answer. So I answered that the reason why the relative in question had gone to California (we're in NYC), was in order to "buy some shoes." There followed about an hour's worth of "purposely non-responsive" conversation by all the relatives, both those in the know and those not in the know (conversation which really confused some of the non-family guests), which was really jokes, puns, whatever we could muster. But the point wasn't incoherence, but, instead, unusual coherences intensified and brought into relief against the lack of some usual kinds of coherence. Years ago I read a newspaper column doing this, by Pete Hamill of all people, and it was really pretty funny. Also don't miss _t zero_ with "The Origin of Birds." Best, Ben - Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Michael said: [MD:] Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's "Cosmicomics," [but] I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications" is titled "The Ends of the Universe," which posits an asymptotic "end" of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that "preceded" the sporting emergence of Firstness. RESPONSE: [JR:] Well, I'm not sure what the moral of it is supposed to be, Michael. I put all that down rather impulsively, not thinking much about what might justify it or what it might imply. In retrospect I think that what I was doing was trying to re-express what I thought Peirce was expressing in the following passage from the MS called "Answers to Questions Concerning my
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
quot;very high IQs". And it is always possible that the wildest of gabble conveys as much of the truth of the matter in question as our lot to be able to discover. So I don't know whether you should abandon your attempt to conceptualize the cosmic stew or not. But thanks for the thoughtful response to a rather impulsive post, Michael. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! So I wouldn't count on it as a solution to anything. But it's a good read as far as you can stand it nonetheless! Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Michael J. DeLaurentis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:37 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's "Cosmicomics," by I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications" is titled "The Ends of the Universe," which posits an asymptotic "end" of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that "preceded" the sporting emergence of Firstness. -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 5:19 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Michael J. DeLaurentis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of "opinion," representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sport
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Michael J. DeLaurentis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of "opinion," representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Claudio Guerri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: "I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as "that object for which truth stands"" I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that "Lo" is "So") Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
It is found in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Claudio Guerri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: "I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as "that object for which truth stands"" I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that "Lo" is "So") Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] question about neuroquantology journal
In case there was any misunderstanding, my recent message about the response to my question about the neuroquantology journal was not intended to discourage further response but rather to encourage further such questions from others as the occasion should arise. It struck me as a use for the list which we have not exploited sufficiently. Nor was there any intention to be critical of any of the responses. Quite the contrary, I was feeling pleased about the quality of the responses and thinking about how helpful they all were. Frank expressions of judgment and surmise are always valuable. I was merely remarking that any conclusions drawn about the journal on that basis would have to be drawn by us as individual assessments for personal purposes, rather than as pseudo-objective impersonal conclusions about its value or status.. I suppose that is all obvious enough, but sometimes I sense that my position as manager as well as participant has unintentionally suggested something unintended. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: NeuroQuantology New Issue Published, June 2006
For what it's worth: the reason for my query about Neuroquantology was receipt of the message below. The unusual range of interests and accomplishments of the people on PEIRCE-L makes it a good place to raise questions about possible resources like this, doesn't it? Others should feel as free as I do to raise such questions as this. There is no need to summarize results since it would add nothing substantive to the opinions expressed. It's useful and sometimes important to know to what extent a journal is "mainstream" or marginal, but that in itself says nothing about its intellectual value. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "NQ Editorial" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 3:19 AM Subject: NeuroQuantology New Issue Published, June 2006 Dear NeuroQuantology Readers NeuroQuantology Journal has just published its latest issue at http://www.neuroquantology.com We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles FREE and items of interest. Thanks for the continuing interest in our work, Vol 4, No 2 (2006) Table of Contents * www.neuroquantology.com * Editorial Is Quantum Physics Necessary to Understanding Consciousness? Sultan Tarlaci 91-92 Men Who Made a New Science My Scientific Odyssey ¨ner TAN 93-100 Perspectives Psychomotor Theory: Mind-Brain-Body Triad in Health and Disease ¨ner TAN 101-133 Invited Article Phenomenal Awareness and Consciousness from a Neurobiological Perspective Wolf Singer 134-154 Review Article Brain Research: A Perspective from the Coupled Oscillators Field Jose Luis Perez Velazquez 155-165 Original Article Quantum, Consciousness and Panpsychism: A Solution to the Hard Problem F Gao Shan 166-185 The Mechanism of Mourning: An Anti-entropic Mechanism F Giuliana Galli Carminati, Federico Carminati 186-197 NQ-Biography Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) 198-200 Abstract from NQ literature Selected Abstract from Literature Details 201-290 -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Neuroquantology Journal
Does anybody on the list know anything about the following journal or feel in position to assess -- or make a reasonable guess about -- its likely character as a journal by browsing its contents, contributors, editorial policy, etc.? http://www.neuroquantology.com/ Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Frances and list: The passage Jim found runs as follows: "It is usually admitted that there are two classes of mental representation, Immediate Representations or Sensations and Mediate Representations or Conceptions." In the context in which that occurs, Peirce goes on to say: "The former are completely determinate or individual objects of thought; the latter are partially indeterminate or general objects." And he then goes on (in the next paragraph) to say : "But according to my theory of logic, since no pure sensations or individual objects exist . . . ." I omit the rest of the long and complex sentence since it adds nothing to the point at issue, which is that he does not himself accept the "usually admitted" theory, which he contrasts as based on a different metaphysics than his. I cannot myself think of any reason why he would want to use such a term. The word "icon" is after all his term for a representing entity which presents its object immediately in the sense that no distinction can be drawn between the iconic sign and that of which it is an icon: they are numerically identical.. (There is still a formal distinction to be drawn between icon and object, in the sense that there is a difference between representing and being represented, but this does not entail that what represents and what is represented cannot be the same thing. Otherwise there would be no such thing as self-representation. But of course there is.) So of what use would there be for the term "immediate representation", where that is equivalent to "immediate sign" or "immediate representamen"? It would only introduce an awkward expression of no distinctive use in his theoretical work with the negative potentiality of throwing it into confusion. That is why I am questioning your trying to do this. I don't understand what theoretical use it could have. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 2:07 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Frances to Joe and Jim and others... No sources could be found by me in Peirce or on Peirce for the terms "immediate representamen" and "immediate sign" but my search continues. The terms "Immediate Representations" and "Mediate Representations" found in Peirce however do raise the further issue of some differences that Peirce might have held between representation and representamen, as well as some differences that he might also have held between representamen and sign. Joe queried... Where does Peirce talk about "immediate representamen" or "immediate sign"? I can't think of any use he would have for such a term. Jim answered... "It is usually admitted that there are two classes of mental representation, Immediate Representations or Sensations and Mediate Representations or Conceptions." - from Essential Peirce, Volume 1, page 106 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Where does Peirce talk about an "immediate representamen" (or an "immediate sign")? I can't think of any use he would have for such a term. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:17 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Frances to Ben and others... In the decadic table or model, the ten classes of signs seem to deal with immediate objects, and dynamic objects, and sparse selections of immediate and dynamic and final interpretants. The decagon does not seem to deal with immediate representamens whatsoever, except perhaps indirectly or subsequently through immediate objects. The first class of signs, posited as qualisigns and sinsigns and legisigns, deals with the immediate objects of a representamen, and probably not with the representamen or sign vehicle itself alone. My guess is that immediate representamen are posited as potisigns and actisigns and famsigns, but are removed from the decadic table or model of semiosis, likely for some reason of expediency by way of illustrating the correlation and interrelation of signs. The present condensed table or model of semiotics as offered in its many forms does seem to serve that basic purpose well enough. The second class of signs, posited as icons and indexes and symbols, deals with the dynamic objects of immediate interpretants, of which immediate rhemes are merely one class of interpretant and indeed only one class of immediate interpretant. The third class of signs, posited as rhemes and dicents and arguments, deals partly with those interpretants that are respectively immediate and dynamic and final. They are only a partial selection, because they are not all the interpretants that are offered in semiosis. They are however trichotomic exemplars of their respected categories, in that rhemes are the first of three immediate interpretants offered, and dicents are the second of three dynamic interpretants offered, and arguments are the third of three final interpretants offered. This condensation actually yields a diagonal layout, which is unusual for categorical trichotomies, which are usually horizontal. Nonetheless, even this architectonic scaffolding is not categorically consistent with the structured trichotomies of phenomena, in that there should be only one immediate class, but two dynamic classes, yet three final classes. The class members of such monadic firstness and dyadic secondness and triadic thirdness would also each fall under there own class holder, presumably of zeroness. It is my suspicion that all the interpretants posited for semiosis are not all of grammatics, the first of the three grand semiotic divisions before critics and rhetorics; and grammatics which is also the sole basis of the decagon. One thorn here for me then is whether all the subsequent signs of critics and rhetorics are indeed only various kinds of grammatic or other interpretants. Another thorn here for me is whether semiotics can be complete at least to some degree, for say nonhuman mechanisms or organisms or even for mature humans, if only the grammatic division of signs is present as information, to the exclusion of critics and grammatics in any particular situation of semiosis. This of course implies that making signs to some extent, and thus making the logic of signs to some extent, and thus making the ideal sought seem real to some extent, is not limited only to mature intelligent humans. If this speculation of mine is correct, then just what role the decadic table or model of signs is intended to fully play as a degenerate condensation of logical semiosis becomes unclear to me, and there surely must be an important role. Given what is now known of Peirce, it would not be reasonable to hold the decagon as confused. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Here is a verifying passage:, from the neglected Argument paper
Peirce: CP 6.452
The word "God," so "capitalized" (as we Americans say), is the
definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really
creator of all three Universes of Experience.
Some words shall herein be capitalized when used, not as vernacular,
but as terms defined. Thus an "idea" is the substance of an actual unitary
thought or fancy; but "Idea," nearer Plato's idea of {idea}, denotes
anything whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully
represented, regardless of any person's faculty or impotence to represent
it.
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:18 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I agree, Ben. Peirce used capitalization to mark his use of a term as a
technical one, a term of art. It is a common practice of his and I am
certain that there is at least one place where he states this explicitly.
Ill try to track down a verifying passage but it may be difficult to find.
Joe Ransdell
.
- Original Message -
From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:39 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Aw Jim, you're a trouble maker!
>> 66~~
>> *A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine
>> triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of
>> detemining a Third, called its _Interpretant, to assume the same triadic
>> relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.*
>> ~~99
Normal English? With capitalization of the ordinals, no less? In English we
would say a "given thing," "a second thing," etc. English is characterized
by intransigent normalcy. So Peirce is going to use some capitalized
ordinals without explicit referents, as if he were talking about Firsts,
Seconds, & Thirds in the usual Peirce way, in order to say simply
"something," "another thing," and "a third thing"? Peirce is complicated but
he is not sadistic toward the reader.
The Sign's correlate, when no further specification is provided, is the
Object. "On a New List of Categories": Secondness is reference to a
correlate. The Object is the Correlate is the Second.
"On a New List of Categories": Thirdness is reference to an interpretant.
The Interpretant is the Third.
Argh,
Ben, on three glasses of wine
- Original Message -
From: "Jim Piat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:12 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list--
For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms
"first", "second" and "third" in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as
Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved
when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to
something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as
a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand
the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness.
OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's
trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories
and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting.
But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an
interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting
discussion which I hope will continue.
That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a
sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the
characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up
with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we
can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not
to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as
themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a
sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to
something.
And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special
interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that
in a separate post.
Best wishes,
Jim Piat
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I agree, Ben. Peirce used capitalization to mark his use of a term as a technical one, a term of art. It is a common practice of his and I am certain that there is at least one place where he states this explicitly. Ill try to track down a verifying passage but it may be difficult to find. Joe Ransdell . - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:39 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Aw Jim, you're a trouble maker! >> 66~~ >> *A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine >> triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of >> detemining a Third, called its _Interpretant, to assume the same triadic >> relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.* >> ~~99 Normal English? With capitalization of the ordinals, no less? In English we would say a "given thing," "a second thing," etc. English is characterized by intransigent normalcy. So Peirce is going to use some capitalized ordinals without explicit referents, as if he were talking about Firsts, Seconds, & Thirds in the usual Peirce way, in order to say simply "something," "another thing," and "a third thing"? Peirce is complicated but he is not sadistic toward the reader. The Sign's correlate, when no further specification is provided, is the Object. "On a New List of Categories": Secondness is reference to a correlate. The Object is the Correlate is the Second. "On a New List of Categories": Thirdness is reference to an interpretant. The Interpretant is the Third. Argh, Ben, on three glasses of wine - Original Message - From: "Jim Piat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:12 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list-- For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms "first", "second" and "third" in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness. OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting. But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting discussion which I hope will continue. That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to something. And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that in a separate post. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I was intending to warn Ben against adopting a bullying tone toward you, as his frustration seemed to be mounting. Perhaps a mistake on my part but a response in part to your own complaints about his tone, which you were construing as an attempt to silence you. Also I had been about to answer you with the same point that Ben made and didn't want to feel required to duplicate it. Joe . - Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 1:18 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: > Ben: > > I don't think you or your position would lose any credibility by > letting Jean-Marc have the last word on the matter. > > Joe Ransdell That's unfair in my opionion. Being accused of not answering, I answer to Ben with counter-arguments and now the question should be shoved under the carpet ... /JM > - Original Message - > *From:* Benjamin Udell <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > *To:* Peirce Discussion Forum <mailto:peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> > *Sent:* Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:14 PM > *Subject:* [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) > > Jean-Marc: > > In reading Joe's response to you, I am reminded that you still > haven't taken a stand on the three main trichotomies and their > categorial correlations. If you do in fact understand the > correlations, you may feel that it destroys your argument to admit > that you understand them. But then it comes to the same thing. > > --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
y the pair (2,1)or by the pair (1,1). In the three cases the sign is an icon ( respectively legisign or sinsign or qualisign). I have the analogous question here as I asked above. (You start out saying that the sign is a qualisign, and (3,1) seems to be a collective qualisign, and (2,1) seems to be a concretive qualisign, and (1,1) seems to be an abstractive qualisign. (3,1) & (2,1) seem excluded by the usual rules of sign-parametric combination, and then you say that the sign a qualisign or a sinsign or a legisign. Etc.) Best, Ben Udell > Whatever the case the trichotomie n¨ IV is enterely determined by the trichotomies I and III and consequently the distinction brought forth this trichotomie is not operative and I conclude that is redundant. > The same argument can be advanced for the trichotomies VII and IX, generally for the trichotomies concerning relations betwen elements of which the nature is otherwise know . > The case of tne trichotomie number X is different and I admit willingly that I don't see what can be a trichotomy of a triadic relation especially when I represent It by a branching Y. If anyone can give to me an idea on this matter I should be grateful to him... > Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 12:56 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: redundancies of trichotomies Robert, list,I wrote,"In that case (3,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) legisign and (2,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) sinsign,..."Things are confusing enough without my typos. I meant,"In that case (3,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) legisign and (2,2) would be a (2) concretive (2) sinsign,..."- Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:39 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Jean-Marc:What you say below suggests a chaos in Peirce's work and in the scholarship about it which does not exist, as regards this matter in question. I have said several times here and once quite recently that all talk about Peirce's work on the trichotomies past the three presented in the Syllabus of Logic of 1903 where the stuff about the ten sign classes first appears is about material in Peirce's notebooks which is very much of the nature of work in process that never reached even a provisionally satisfactory status in Peirce's own estimation. It cannot be talked about as if it is on par, as representing Peirce's view, with the material in the Syllabus where the first three trichotomies are developed systematically and were in fact made publicly available by Peirce.. So far as I know, no one who is aware of this in virtue either of studying the MS material themselves or hearing about how problematic it is from me or someone else disagrees with that, so far as I know. Ben's comments about the three trichotomy set which Peirce himself made publicly available are quite reasonable as a way of contrasting the present status of that with the unsettled status of the material in his notebooks. I am less concerned with defending Ben, though, than I am with there not being a misunderstanding about the present scholarly situation. There is no assumption, of course, that any settlement of opinion on any of this is definitive or absolute. .Joe Ransdell- Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:48 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)Benjamin Udell wrote:> Jean-Marc, list,>> I don't even agree in the end with Peirce's classification but it's pretty obvious that whether one partially or totally orders the 10 classes depends on the criteria. And it's pretty obvious that the trichotomies are ordered (or orderable) in a Peircean categorial way, specifically: the 1st trichotomy pertains to the sign's own category, the 2nd to the category in which the sign refers to its object, and the 3rd to the category in which the sign entails its interpretant. If one incorporates this ordering of the trichotomies into the ordering of the classes, then one ends with a complete ordering of the classes. One can also so prioritize as to arrive simply at the partially ordered lattice. This is at least partly a matter of whether one prioritizes the Peircean category of the trichotomy (the ordinality of the "parameter"
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Jean-Marc: What you say below suggests a chaos in Peirce's work and in the scholarship about it which does not exist, as regards this matter in question. I have said several times here and once quite recently that all talk about Peirce's work on the trichotomies past the three presented in the Syllabus of Logic of 1903 where the stuff about the ten sign classes first appears is about material in Peirce's notebooks which is very much of the nature of work in process that never reached even a provisionally satisfactory status in Peirce's own estimation. It cannot be talked about as if it is on par, as representing Peirce's view, with the material in the Syllabus where the first three trichotomies are developed systematically and were in fact made publicly available by Peirce.. So far as I know, no one who is aware of this in virtue either of studying the MS material themselves or hearing about how problematic it is from me or someone else disagrees with that, so far as I know. Ben's comments about the three trichotomy set which Peirce himself made publicly available are quite reasonable as a way of contrasting the present status of that with the unsettled status of the material in his notebooks. I am less concerned with defending Ben, though, than I am with there not being a misunderstanding about the present scholarly situation. There is no assumption, of course, that any settlement of opinion on any of this is definitive or absolute. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:48 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Benjamin Udell wrote: > Jean-Marc, list, > > I don't even agree in the end with Peirce's classification but it's pretty > obvious that whether one partially or totally orders the 10 classes > depends on the criteria. And it's pretty obvious that the trichotomies are > ordered (or orderable) in a Peircean categorial way, specifically: > the 1st trichotomy pertains to the sign's own category, > the 2nd to the category in which the sign refers to its object, and > the 3rd to the category in which the sign entails its interpretant. > If one incorporates this ordering of the trichotomies into the ordering of > the classes, then one ends with a complete ordering of the classes. One > can also so prioritize as to arrive simply at the partially ordered > lattice. This is at least partly a matter of whether one prioritizes the > Peircean category of the trichotomy (the ordinality of the "parameter") or > the Peircean category of the term IN the trichotomy (the ordinality of the > "parametric value"). How does one decide? Well, one looks at it both ways, > both ways have their illuminative aspects, so one ends up finally not > choosing one way dispensing permanently with the other way. So there seems > to be some optionality in how one orders these things. Jean-Marc, however, > seems to believe that the ordering question is quite determinate, and > leads inevitably to the partial ordering. He does this by dismissing > without analyzing the certainly very categorial appearance of the ordering > of the trichotomies. Certainly Peirce was quite conscious of this > categorial structure of the trichotomies, since his 10-ad of trichotomies > is obviously an attempt to extend that structure. > > Where most Peirceans seem to regard this matter as settled and fairly > simple, Jean-Marc differs, which is his right. But I don't see in any of > this thread where Jean-Marc addresses what certainly appears to be a > Peircean categorial orderability of the trichotomies. Instead he has > merely asserted that they are like categories of male/female and > old/young, and he has not actually pursued a comparison of his example > with the Peircean trichotomies in order to argue for his counter-intuitive > assertion. So I think that we're still awaiting an argument. If this > argument is supposed to be in Robert Marty's book, then perhaps Jean-Marc > can summarize it. If Jean-Marc is unprepared to do that, perhaps Robert > can do it. > > Best, Ben Udell > > Which "Peirceans" are you thinking of? I'll tell you about the Peirceans, concerning the ordering of the trichotomies. First Peirce, among the Peirceans, gives over the years five different orderings of the trichotomies. Beginning with the triad (S, S-Od, S-If), then continuing with the 6 trichotomies (1904 and 1908) in different orders and the finally with the ten trichotomies (letter to Lady Welby 1908 and 8-344) yet again in different orders - This is summarized on page 231 of Marty's book. None of the orderings are the same, by the way. This is for Peirce's account. Then two other authors Lieb (1977) and Kawama (1976) listed in the same table propose a different ordering of the 10 trichotomies. Marty also mentions on the same page that Jappy proposed a non-linea
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
The numbers can be ignored altogether as far as I am concerned, or one could use, say, the Greek alphabet instead of numbers or just leave the numbers off. All that is important for me is the class names and the understanding that it is presuppositiional from the top down, which could be shown by using down-pointing arrows for connective lines. The use I would have for the figure doesn't require that it have the properties required to transform it in the various ways graph theory requires. For my purposes its use is primarily as a mnemonic for remembering what presupposes what. so that if, in the process of analyzing a bit of discourse, say, one has identified something as being of this class or that one knows ipso facto that a sign of this or that other class is either presupposed by it or presupposes it, directly or indirectly.. I imagine the use of it to be that of being able to figure out what is going on in or going wrong with some actual bit of persuasive argumentation, in a very broad sense of argumentation in which even a work of visual art or a piece of music might be thought of as being constructed argumentatively, supposing one can make good on the prospect of being able to understand artworks\as arguments, coherent or incoherent. The application of this sort of thing to infrahuman life would be via the collapse of genuine into degenerate forms (in the special sense of "degeneracy" Peirce uses), the elimination of levels of reflection, and whatever other modifications are necessary to account for higher developments of life. This view of its use could conceivably be at odds with Peirce's own aims in devising graphical representations of the classes, which might require that the graphs have the properties you require of them because his aim was to be able to learn some things simply from manipulating the graphs in various ways. But it seems to me that something gets lost there. Perhaps something of great philosophical interest will result from the use of graph theory, but focus on what that might yield could be at the expense of what is lost by conforming to its constraints where there is no need to do so since all one needs is a graphical representation for mnemonic and other intuitional purposes. I am not at present aware of what may in fact have been accomplished philosophically with the use of graph theory, but I can imagine it being of interest for a great many other purposes which, for all I know, may be far more important than the philosophical ones. Moreover, I am not saying that what has been done has no philosophical interest but only that I am not myself aware of any such results from it -- and I lay no claim to being well informed about it, which I am not.. I \am just saying that what interests me does not seem to require anything more than I indicate above. Anyway, one thing that occurs to me when I note that Peirce's trek through the presuppositional order in 2.254 through 2.263 begins with quality and ends with the argument is that it seems comparable to regarding thought in the Kantian way as a process of "unification of the manifold". as in the New List. If I understand Peirce correctly, he thinks of a quality as being a given unity and simplicity which is, however, also regardable, reflectively, as if it were an achieved unity -- the achievement being forgotten once completed -- brought about through a unification process which builds the given quality from a "manifold" of elements of synthesized qualia, themselves regardable as if they are the simplified results of still prior qualitative elements logically synthesized in the same way. Or looking at it the other way around, the completion of the argument yields a new quality -- the argument assumes the appearance of a new quality -- which may or may not play a similar role in a further synthesizing unification of the same sort, and so forth. In other words, there is something comparable in that sequence to the line of development one finds in the New List, though at a finer grained level of resolution, as it were. This is a lame description of what I am trying to draw attention to, intended only suggestively. That passage in CP 2 is not comparable in rigor to what happens in the New List. to be sure, but the progression does have a presuppositional complexity which seems comparable.. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:20 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: > Jean-Marc says: > > I am surprised that you are claiming that the classes can be traversed > by a unique, "natural", ordered sequence from 1 to 10 while at the same > time you claim to have come up with a structure simil
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Jean-Marc says: I am surprised that you are claiming that the classes can be traversed by a unique, "natural", ordered sequence from 1 to 10 while at the same time you claim to have come up with a structure similar to a lattice, these are contradictory assertions. REPLY: I made no such claim, I said there is an order and there is, most assuredly, an order, and that is not a matter of convention. It is an order of presupposition -- or, from another perspective, of internal complexity -- and it can be read from top to bottom in the lattice representation. Whether or to what extent it can be filled out further is something that has to be worked out laboriously by actually thinking the conceptions through, as distinct from manipulating graphical representations containing the names for the classes, If the word for the structure is not "lattice" please supply the correct one. I am referring to what Merkle calls by that name in his representation of Merrel's and Marty's versions of it. The one I came up with is identical with that one. I'll send it along in a separate message. The only important difference is that I gave the classes nicknames of my own. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 4:27 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: > J-MO = Jean-Marc Orliaguet > JR = Joseph Ransdell > > J-M: > >> Also note that the various trichotomies are not ordered. It is purely a >> convention to call a trichotomy the first, second, or third trichotomy, >> etc. So deducing an ordering of the classes from that information only, >> as it has been done many times including on this list, is incorrect. >> > > JR: > >> It is not a matter of convention only: the three trichotomies are based >> on >> the difference between firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which is >> sufficient in itself to make the ordering of them as first, second, and >> third something having informative content of some possible importance. >> > > J-M: > yes, but this does no influence the results in any way, especially this > has nothing to do with ordering the classes. If one started with the > second trichotomy instead of the first, one would get let us say an > (index, sinsign, rheme) instead of a (sinsign, index, rheme) ... but in > a different order if one followed your method (3 would be 5 or something) > > no, really... the order relations between the classes of signs comes > from the internal relations of determination between the sign, object > and interpretant. That is totally independent of the way in which you > perform the trichotomies. > > REPLY BY JR: > The sequential order is not conventional. Peirce begins, in CP 2.254 with > the simplest possible sign, the qualisign, > which is so simple that its peculiar value as a sign can be due to nothing > other than what it is by hypothesis: sign and object are the same, thus it > can only be in icon when considered in relation to its object. That same > simplicity constrains it to be only a rheme by constraining its > interpretant > to being the only thing it can possibly be, the quality which is the sign > itself. > This is the first class of sign: the rhematic iconic qualisign. When we > get > to 2.263, nine paragraphs later, for the tenth class > of signs, we have traversed a path of continually increasing complexity > through the intervening eight classes. In what sense of complexity? I > couldn't describe informatively, at this time, what that sense is, but I > can > say that if you analyze what you have at the end of the process -- the > argument (i.e. argument symbolic legisign) -- you find that it involves an > instance of a sign class of the ninth class (the dicent symbol legisgn or, > for short, the proposition), which in turn involves an instance of the > eighth and an instance of the seventh, each of which involve signs of > still > prior classes, and so forth until you end at the beginning with the > qualisign involved. > ... > :Joe Ransdell > It increases in complexity, indeed but only for the first 2 and the last 2 classes in a comparable way (the one being involved in the other); apart from these there is no total order hence no "preferred" way to order the classes from 1 to 10. instead they are partially ordered in a lattice and finding counter-examples is easy: 1) the dicent indexical legisign involves and is involved in no rhematic symbol 2) the dicent sinsign involves and is involved in no rhematic indexical legisign 3) the indexical sinsign involves and is involved in no iconic legisign I
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
J-MO = Jean-Marc Orliaguet JR = Joseph Ransdell J-M: > Also note that the various trichotomies are not ordered. It is purely a > convention to call a trichotomy the first, second, or third trichotomy, > etc. So deducing an ordering of the classes from that information only, > as it has been done many times including on this list, is incorrect. JR: > It is not a matter of convention only: the three trichotomies are based on > the difference between firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which is > sufficient in itself to make the ordering of them as first, second, and > third something having informative content of some possible importance. J-M: yes, but this does no influence the results in any way, especially this has nothing to do with ordering the classes. If one started with the second trichotomy instead of the first, one would get let us say an (index, sinsign, rheme) instead of a (sinsign, index, rheme) ... but in a different order if one followed your method (3 would be 5 or something) no, really... the order relations between the classes of signs comes from the internal relations of determination between the sign, object and interpretant. That is totally independent of the way in which you perform the trichotomies. REPLY BY JR: The sequential order is not conventional. Peirce begins, in CP 2.254 with the simplest possible sign, the qualisign, which is so simple that its peculiar value as a sign can be due to nothing other than what it is by hypothesis: sign and object are the same, thus it can only be in icon when considered in relation to its object. That same simplicity constrains it to be only a rheme by constraining its interpretant to being the only thing it can possibly be, the quality which is the sign itself. This is the first class of sign: the rhematic iconic qualisign. When we get to 2.263, nine paragraphs later, for the tenth class of signs, we have traversed a path of continually increasing complexity through the intervening eight classes. In what sense of complexity? I couldn't describe informatively, at this time, what that sense is, but I can say that if you analyze what you have at the end of the process -- the argument (i.e. argument symbolic legisign) -- you find that it involves an instance of a sign class of the ninth class (the dicent symbol legisgn or, for short, the proposition), which in turn involves an instance of the eighth and an instance of the seventh, each of which involve signs of still prior classes, and so forth until you end at the beginning with the qualisign involved. I just now put in a few hours going through the chapter from Merkle's dissertation where he goes through, compares, and comments upon the many graphical representations of the sign concepts, including the various forms of the lattice structure of involvement which I described above, which is not constructed as a mere convention/ When I was working on this material myself I had constructed a representation of that as a lattice of involvement or presupposition of exactly the same form as that which Merrel and Marty had independently constructed, unknown to me, Merrel's apparently being before mine but I was unaware of it, and Marty's around the same time as mine but, again, not in my awareness. (His book was published around the time my attention was diverted from working further with that sort of thing, which dates from the time of a convention in Perpignan in 1989 where I recall learning that Marty had published his magnum opus, which I never read because I had another agenda from that time on in virtue of something that happened at that convention.) I mention all this because it is clearly unlikely that we would each have come up with that same peculiar lattice structure independently on the basis of independent decisions to so construct it as a matter of convention. There were logical necessities of involvement motivating it all the way. I am much impressed by all that has been done graphically in representing the sign classification system, and especially by Luis Merkle/s masterful handling of it all in that part of his dissertation, as well as further work by others in Brazil and elsewhere as well, but my own interest in the classification system is not with what can be learned from it by manipulating graphical models of it but with understanding what use it might have when it comes to understanding how to apply it in the analysis and understanding of distinctively philosophical problems such as have formed the staple of philosophical concern from the time of the Greeks on. I wonder if anyone knows of any attempts to do that. :Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Jean-Marc says: For the record, it must be added that a lot of the information found in this very exhaustive piece of work has readily been available to researchers since the 80s and before, including the work done by Robert Marty on lattices (see the chapter on 'partially ordered sets' for an overview of why the linear representation of the classes of signs from 1 to 10 is a bit of a problem... Also note that the various trichotomies are not ordered. It is purely a convention to call a trichotomy the first, second, or third trichotomy, etc. So deducing an ordering of the classes from that information only, as it has been done many times including on this list, is incorrect. REPLY: It is not a matter of convention only: the three trichotomies are based on the difference between firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which is sufficient in itself to make the ordering of them as first, second, and third something having informative content of some possible importance. And I don't recall anyone deducing the ordering of the classes from that information only, though I may have overlooked such a demonstration. Could you be more specific about that? Peirce himself presents the ten classes in a certain sequence (CP 2.254-263) which is at least in large part deductive in character, though whether or not the deduction that occurs there is based on that information only depends upon what you mean by "that information only": what information, exactly? This is not nitpicking. The question of precisely what is going on there is an important one. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Ben and list: As regards the question of which of the three images of the triangle of boxes in the manuscript material is the one which was actually relied upon by the editors of the Collected Papers for the image of it that appears at CP 2.264, it is reasonably certain that it is the second one, i.e. the one from MS page 540.17, that was used. The passage in the CP that begins at 2.233 and ends at 2.272 is derived from MS pages 540.2 through 540.23. (If there is any further question about the accuracy of Hartshorne and Weiss's transcription of Peirce's document, let me know what passage you have in mind and I can check it against the original Peirce MS and make a copy of that page of the MS and post it, too, if that seems desirable or necessary.) That seems to me to settle the matter of the origin of the Roman numerals: it is an artifact of the editorial work of Hartshorne and Weiss. In addition to what Ben says below, there is also what is said in the scribbled note at the bottom of page MS 540.17 towards the left bottom corner, which is by some later editor, who is saying that the rationale for the Roman numerals is to be found in the footnotes to CP 2.235 and 2.243, where Hartshorne and Weiss are giving their interpretation of the modal principles underlying the tenfold classification.. It may be more legible in the copy I have than in the copy I distributed. To be exact, it reads as follows: "[See [235] and [243] for explanation of the roman numerals]" So it must be by some later editor, who is referring to what Hartshorne and Weiss did as editors of the CP. I remarked earlier in this discussion that I found a marginal note to myself in my copy of the CP, written many years ago when I was working with this material with some intensity, that I thought Hartshorne and Weiss were making some sort of mistake in their account of what Peirce is saying. I have not yet attempted to find out why I thought this is so, but I will try to do that now to see if there is anything in that.. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 1:45 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Looking at all three triangles, I get to feeling that it's unlikely that Pierce, having included no numbers in one triangle, would then in the other two triangles throw numbers in like afterthoughts and, in both triangles, change them, and begin and finish the numbers so that they looked a bit scattered and visually sloppy -- when he has written the sign class names with some care. Especially the MS540-17 triangle. I had noticed in the smaller graphic image of MS540-17 that the lettering looked careful, with serifs -- I thought it might even be medieval style. But in fact it was the bolding which Peirce did, which gave a medieval lookto some of the lettering when seen in the smaller, less-easy-to-read graphic image . I keep wanting to crack a joke here about Peirce being "not a profligate bolder" but showing here that "he was clearly not inexperienced at it ." Anyway, great work, Joe! Thanks for these images of Peirce's own writing. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 2:01 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Image came through beautifully! Look carefully at the MS799.2 triangle of boxes and you can that the numbers are change from an earlier set of numbers. I originally thought that the little earlier numeral "8" was an extra numeral "3" CURRENT: 1 ~ 5 ~ 8 ~ 10 ~ 2 ~ 6 ~ 9 ~~ 3 ~ 7 ~~~ 4 EARLIER: 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~~ 8 ~ 9 ~~~ 10 Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Digitization of Peirce's work
Thanks for the suggestions, Bill. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "Bill Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 6:41 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Digitization of Peirce's work All, I am not yet a Peirce scholar, but I do know a bit about Web technology and its social capabilities. I agree that it is particularly important to preserve Peirces work in a way that makes it accessible to a wide range of scholars and interested parties. Two avenues for doing this suggest themselves. 1. Contact the Internet Archive - they are particularly interested in preservation and have mobile technology (and I seem to recall reading something about an established facility in the Harvard Library). It may take some work to identify who to contact, however I suggest starting with http://www.archive.org/about/about.php. 2. The other possibility is to take advantage of Google's Library Project - http://books.google.com/googleprint/library.html. This is also set up in the Harvard Library. If you can convince either of these organizations in the value of preserving Peirce's body of work, they would be powerful allies in locating the necessary funding. I hope the idea is helpful. Bill William P. (Bill) Hall, PhD Documentation & KM Systems Analyst Head Office/Engineering Nelson House Annex, Nelson Place Williamstown, Vic. 3016 Australia Tel: +61 3 9244 4820 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.tenix.com Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations URL: http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/ Visiting Faculty Associate University of Technology Sydney Senior Fellow Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society History and Philosophy of Science University of Melbourne email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.acsis.unimelb.edu.au/ --- [The] skyhook-skyscraper construction of science from the roof down to the yet unconstructed foundations [is] possible because the behavior of the system at each level [depends] on only a very approximate, simplified, abstracted characterization of the system at the level next beneath. H. Simon 1996 - The Science of the Artificial - Original Message - From: "Steven Ericsson Zenith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 9:14 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) > I do not doubt the merit of the exercise - only the suggested source of > funds. Individual scholars on well understood "tracks" can get funding > from a variety of sources - or so I am led to believe. Project funding > for something like this probably needs to come from within an > institution that understands the merit. > > With respect, > Steven > > > > > Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen wrote: > > Well I am pretty sure that a better understanding of Peirce can and will > > lead to raising the standards of public education. It already has in some > > aspects of education. Think it would not be hard to make some convincing > > discourse about importance of Peirce's discourses for past and current and > > future society. > > > > Like I stated in previous mail, even if Bill Gates Foundation is not willing > > to help, there will probably be other sources. But, like I said, it would > > first be needed in my opinion to at least have real figures about costs for > > digitalization. Then some good preparation about what to say and how to say > > so (some good rhetoric) to get the money. And this is not about some > > arbitrary scholarly endeavors it is about very relevant philosophical > > material that will help lots of intellectuals to improve society and also > > education. > > > > I myself will also concentrate a lot on getting my PhD finished as soon as > > possible. And mention the relevance of CS Peirce's thoughts in it. This does > > not appear to be that helpful, but I just guess it will because of the huge > > relevance and impact of my findings. But well, we'll see ;-). > > > > Kind regards, > > > > Wilfred > > > > -Oorspronkelijk bericht- > > Van: Steven Ericsson Zenith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 23:36 > > Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum > > Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) > > > > My understanding is that this would not be a project within the bounds > > of those that interest the Gates Foundation. The focus there is on > > raising the standards of public education - not arbitrary scholarly > > endeavors. > > > > With respect, > > > > Steven > > > > Joseph Ransdell wrote: > > > >> Wilfred
[peirce-l] Re: Remarks on manuscripts
David and list: I have to correct you about the photocopies, David. Any photocopies that bear the stamped numbers you describe derive from a (paper) photocopy of the manuscripts which was made independently of the Robin microfilms and any photocopies derived from \it. This second source of photocopies was created by a team of people from Texas Tech University in the Summer of 1974 (as I recall) who wanted to establish a new set of photocopies taken directly from the manuscripts which would contain information inscribed on them about the original which the black-and-white and relatively primitive photocopies of that time could not pick up from the original. (The participants in that second copying of the originals were Max Fisch, Kenneth Ketner, Charles Hardwick, Joe Esposito, and Christian Kloesel, as I recall.) That photocopy is still at Texas Tech in the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, and a copy made from it provided the basis for the copy or copies originally in use at the Peirce Edition Project in Indianapolis, though the latter has long since been augmented by photocopies of other manuscripts located at places other than Harvard. The difference between the two distinct sets of first-generation paper photocopies (and their respective descendants) is that those derived from the Robin microfilm will not show the markings which were made on those derived from the 1974 photocopying project I describe above. The rationale for this second copying was to make it unnecessary to go back to Harvard to pick up that additional information, and also to correct some mistakes made in the Robin microfilming. It resulted in a degree of independence from Harvard not otherwise possible at that time. I agree with what you say about the situation at the Harvard Library, but it may be possible to bypass the problems there by not depending upon any new scanning of the originals except for a few especially problematic manuscripts. It is not clear to me whether your comment that "The easiest access to Peirce's papers is of course to work directly from the Robin microfilms" is intended o bear upon that or not. But I am running out of time today. Thanks for the input, David, and I hope to hear more from you on these things.. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "David Lachance" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:14 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Remarks on manuscripts Dear listers, I hope I am not repeating anything that's been said before, in which case I apologize, but here are just a few remarks on Peirce manuscripts to avoid confusion. (Joseph's reply just arrived, as I was writing this). The two images here are (at least) second generation photocopies of the Robin microfilms of Peirce's papers (held in Harvard's Houghton library). These photocopies bear rubber-stamped numbers in the lower righthand side corner indicating MS (799) and page no. (2), not found of course on the originals. The MS no. also appears in pencil, top left, in the hand of P. Weiss, written directly on the original. Photocopies such as those submitted here often bear annotations about ink color and such, since this information is lost after filming mss in b/w. In the present case (say, the 1st image), the title "Ten Classes of Signs", the arrows, the indications about brown and red ink, etc. are NOT Peirce's. From what I can make out I would say the numerals are his though. When the Peirce edition Project publish a ms in the Writings, everything that is not Peirce's is of course taken out, and important information (such as the brown-red change in ink color by Peirce) is noted so as to give the clearest possible idea of the appearance of the original. Contrary to the Writings, neither the CP nor EP are critical editions in the strict sense (although the latter are based on the PEP's editorial work done for the Writings). The easiest access to Peirce's papers is of course to work directly from the Robin microfilms. I might be wrong but I think the Bill Gates idea has been tried already (computer switch, name dropping and all). As for digitization, Harvard Libraries are rather reluctant as the rules for the protection of the manuscripts are quite strict; in any case they wouldn't let just anyone bring in a scanner and do it, obviously. Digital microfilm viewers/scanners are the easiest way to view the microfilms onscreen, but there are copyright issues with the scanning of the films, which remain Harvard's property. David --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Yes, there is already a movement afoot and maybe more than one, and all of
the things you mentioned are being considered or coming under consideration.
If you'll give me two or three days to get some information together for you
on this in a systematic way, I'll try to convey to you and others on the
list who may be interested in this sort of project a definite idea of what
is being and might be done and what you might be able to do to help and also
to get your own ideas on this. It will take a collaborative effort to do it
and there are indeed shortcuts that can be taken to get it moving, I
believe. But bear with me for just a couple of days so I can figure out how
to organize the discussion effectively without interfering with the normal
discussion function of the list. I should say, perhaps, that the people at
Harvard won't be of any special help at this particular time, but there are
contacts with the Peirce Society that will be to the point.
Joe Ransdell
.
- Original Message -
From: "Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:12 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
So, who are the we who need how to get the money? I mean, are there already
people working on getting things digitalized? SO yes, 80.000 pages is a lot.
But I can hardly imagine it would cost more than 1 dollar per page or so to
get it digitalized? And should be able to do that job within 2 years or so?
With more people and some more equipment, some months?? Yes and maybe
special lightning. But still not milliard dollar I suppose?? I think it is
first of all needed to get exact figures about what such digitalization of
only the Peirce pages at Harvard would cost. The camera's "we" would
probably be able to just borrow or get from some good supplier of this
stuff. And time to do so decreasing it to just put more persons on the job.
I myself would be willing to think about ways to get this done. As it also
interests me a lot. And it is just important that this happens as soon as
possible.
Does anyone here have contact info for the Charles Peirce Society. And any
other foundation or society working on encouragement of study/communication
of Charles Sander Peirce. And maybe some good contact address at Harvard,
the people there responsible for the Peirce collection.
Kind regards,
Wilfred
-Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 21:33
Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum
Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Wilfred and the list:
The MS pages reproduced here are from photocopies of photocopies of the
manuscripts which constitute Peirce's Nachlass ("literary remains") insofar
as Harvard has possession of them. They are located in the Harvard Library,
not in the Philosophy Department, and there are 80,000 or more pages of
them, still largely unpublished. (There are several tens of thousands of
pages more than that elsewhere, by the say, but the bulk of the
philosophical stuff is largely in the Harvard collections. Since a lot of
the manuscripts have been rotting away for years, the librarians aren't
eager for people to poke around in them and there has to be some special and
persuasive reason to get permission to do so at this time.
They ought, of course, to be digitized with high res color cameras and
special lighting that minimizes the effects of the scanning on them and
plans are supposedly in the offing to do that -- along with a vast quantity
of other holdings there in the library which they want to digitize. We may
all be dead before they get around to it -- unless, of course, some
benevolent patron with a spare million dollars or so does what he or she
ought to be doing with his or her money; but you don't find a whole lot of
them around these days who don't already have other things they want to
support. Know anyone smart enough, wealthy enough, and moral enough to
understand the value of doing this sort of thing for Peirce? If so let me
know and I can assure you it will be done. Ask the U.S. government for it?
Sorry, but what with the need for the manufacture and development of ever
more fearsome weapons of mass destruction, for the financing of covert
armies, and for the destruction of foreign governments in the interest of
spreading freedom and religious salvation to the grateful survivors,
American taxpayers -- or at least their supposed representatives -- aren't
much inclined to support such frivolous enterprises as this at this time.
But speaking less facetiously, the digitization of the MS material so that
the originals can be retired from use and the digitized material made
generally available is an enormous task, far more difficult than one might
at first suppose. One complication that has to be taken into
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Wilfred says::
"I think we should ask the Bill Gates foundation for this!
And also just mention the importance of this to be done wherever we can.
Regarding the bill gates foundation, maybe he should first know then where
the electronic switch idea originates from. But I guess we could give it a
try, preferably with lots of names and tittles and so on to make things
happen."
That's an idea worth investigating, Wilfred, particularly in view of the
fact that Bill Gates is presently retiring from active control of Microsoft
and devoting himself exclusively to his and his wife's philanthropical
concerns -- then, too, he was a student at Harvard -- and I will see to it
that it is investigated. Foundations usually have an initial filtering
system that can be checked out for possible entry into an inner sanctum
where you might be permitted to make your case for support. It seems to be
more the exception than the rule for them to leave it open enough for much
in the way of purely scholarly projects to be capable of slipping through at
this time, but there are ways of construing the interest which this
particular project might have that might find some possibilities there.
I'll see what I can find out about the prospects and let you know what I
find out soon.
Joe Ransdell
- Original Message -
From: "Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 2:50 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I think we should ask the Bill Gates foundation for this!
And also just mention the importance of this to be done wherever we can.
Regarding the bill gates foundation, maybe he should first know then where
the electronic switch idea originates from. But I guess we could give it a
try, preferably with lots of names and tittles and so on to make things
happen.
Kind regards,
Wilfred
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 21:33
Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum
Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Wilfred and the list:
The MS pages reproduced here are from photocopies of photocopies of the
manuscripts which constitute Peirce's Nachlass ("literary remains") insofar
as Harvard has possession of them. They are located in the Harvard Library,
not in the Philosophy Department, and there are 80,000 or more pages of
them, still largely unpublished. (There are several tens of thousands of
pages more than that elsewhere, by the say, but the bulk of the
philosophical stuff is largely in the Harvard collections. Since a lot of
the manuscripts have been rotting away for years, the librarians aren't
eager for people to poke around in them and there has to be some special and
persuasive reason to get permission to do so at this time.
They ought, of course, to be digitized with high res color cameras and
special lighting that minimizes the effects of the scanning on them and
plans are supposedly in the offing to do that -- along with a vast quantity
of other holdings there in the library which they want to digitize. We may
all be dead before they get around to it -- unless, of course, some
benevolent patron with a spare million dollars or so does what he or she
ought to be doing with his or her money; but you don't find a whole lot of
them around these days who don't already have other things they want to
support. Know anyone smart enough, wealthy enough, and moral enough to
understand the value of doing this sort of thing for Peirce? If so let me
know and I can assure you it will be done. Ask the U.S. government for it?
Sorry, but what with the need for the manufacture and development of ever
more fearsome weapons of mass destruction, for the financing of covert
armies, and for the destruction of foreign governments in the interest of
spreading freedom and religious salvation to the grateful survivors,
American taxpayers -- or at least their supposed representatives -- aren't
much inclined to support such frivolous enterprises as this at this time.
But speaking less facetiously, the digitization of the MS material so that
the originals can be retired from use and the digitized material made
generally available is an enormous task, far more difficult than one might
at first suppose. One complication that has to be taken into account stems
from the fact that the people who were supposed to take good care of his
work after Peirce's death in 1914 -- the people in the philosophy department
at Harvard -- savaged it dreadfully over the course of the many decades when
they were its "stewards", leaving it in appalling disorder by the time it
was finally rescued from them several decades after his death.
Consequently, a major part of the problem in making that material generally
available lies in the fact that it is st
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Wilfred and the list:
The MS pages reproduced here are from photocopies of photocopies of the
manuscripts which constitute Peirce's Nachlass ("literary remains") insofar
as Harvard has possession of them. They are located in the Harvard Library,
not in the Philosophy Department, and there are 80,000 or more pages of
them, still largely unpublished. (There are several tens of thousands of
pages more than that elsewhere, by the say, but the bulk of the
philosophical stuff is largely in the Harvard collections. Since a lot of
the manuscripts have been rotting away for years, the librarians aren't
eager for people to poke around in them and there has to be some special and
persuasive reason to get permission to do so at this time.
They ought, of course, to be digitized with high res color cameras and
special lighting that minimizes the effects of the scanning on them and
plans are supposedly in the offing to do that -- along with a vast quantity
of other holdings there in the library which they want to digitize. We may
all be dead before they get around to it -- unless, of course, some
benevolent patron with a spare million dollars or so does what he or she
ought to be doing with his or her money; but you don't find a whole lot of
them around these days who don't already have other things they want to
support. Know anyone smart enough, wealthy enough, and moral enough to
understand the value of doing this sort of thing for Peirce? If so let me
know and I can assure you it will be done. Ask the U.S. government for it?
Sorry, but what with the need for the manufacture and development of ever
more fearsome weapons of mass destruction, for the financing of covert
armies, and for the destruction of foreign governments in the interest of
spreading freedom and religious salvation to the grateful survivors,
American taxpayers -- or at least their supposed representatives -- aren't
much inclined to support such frivolous enterprises as this at this time.
But speaking less facetiously, the digitization of the MS material so that
the originals can be retired from use and the digitized material made
generally available is an enormous task, far more difficult than one might
at first suppose. One complication that has to be taken into account stems
from the fact that the people who were supposed to take good care of his
work after Peirce's death in 1914 -- the people in the philosophy department
at Harvard -- savaged it dreadfully over the course of the many decades when
they were its "stewards", leaving it in appalling disorder by the time it
was finally rescued from them several decades after his death.
Consequently, a major part of the problem in making that material generally
available lies in the fact that it is still badly disordered even now, after
several more decades of attempts to sort it out with use of the photocopies.
This is highly labor-intensive intellectual work. There are plans afoot for
doing all of these and other things as well, but it requires money even to
get a start on doing all of this.
As I said, let us know if you know where to get it.
Joe Ransdell
- Original Message -
From: "Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 1:14 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Ok..so...are these actual original notes of Peirce to be found at Harvard?
And can they be reviewed by scholars? If so I would be interested to go
there maybe some time and review it. Better to have seen it first hand.
Peirce is getting my attention more and more :-)
Is there actually some good overview of where to find what materials as
original as possible notes and so on from Charles Sander Peirce? And any
money available from institutions for thorough research?
Wilfred
-Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: Benjamin Udell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 20:02
Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum
Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Image came through beautifully!
Look carefully at the MS799.2 triangle of boxes and you can that the numbers
are change from an earlier set of numbers. I originally thought that the
little earlier numeral "8" was an extra numeral "3"
CURRENT:
1 ~ 5 ~ 8 ~ 10
~ 2 ~ 6 ~ 9
~~ 3 ~ 7
~~~ 4
EARLIER:
1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4
~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7
~~ 8 ~ 9
~~~ 10
Best, Ben
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 16-6-2006
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 16-6-2006
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - R
[peirce-l] Re: Please Have Mercy on Pierce-L Digest Subscribers
I don't know the solution off-hand, Richard. Sometimes we have to do graphics and when we have some collaborative scholarship going I am not going to disturb that by worrying about the digest, which gets little use. Another platform than lyris is one answer -- it is , to be sure, an abomination of a listserver (though not an abomination of my making) -- but that involves a move to another listserver provider, which is going to be happening "one of these days". There may be other possibilities. Joe Ransdell. - Original Message - From: "Richard Hake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Cc: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 11:13 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Please Have Mercy on Pierce-L Digest Subscribers I realize that most Pierce-L subscribers never see the Pierce-L Digest, so why should they care that it is probably one of the greatest abominations on the internet? Pierce-L is the only discussion list that I know of in which HTML seems to be encouraged and attachments are not automatically deleted from incoming posts. I wonder if there are any subscribers, other than myself, who are stupid enough to subscribe to the gibberish-loaded Digest [see APPENDIX for a brief sample]? If so, IMHO, they should be advised to: (a) immediately cancel their subscription to the Digest, and (b) monitor Pierce-L by means of the Backup Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l%40lyris.ttu.edu/>. On the Backup Archive the HTML gibberish and the interminable pages of code are translated into English, even if the senseless reply-button pushing repeats of previous already archived posts persist. Regards, Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University 24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake> <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi> XX APPENDIX [Severely Truncated Copy of the 179 kB Pierce-L digest of June 13, 2006 1/3. (The gibberish continues for two more 179 kB installments!!) Status: U Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:06:26 -0500 Subject: peirce-l digest: June 13, 2006 To: "peirce-l digest recipients" From: "Peirce Discussion Forum digest" Reply-To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> X-ELNK-AV: 0 X-ELNK-Info: sbv=0; sbrc=.0; sbf=00; sbw=000; PEIRCE-L Digest for Tuesday, June 13, 2006. 1. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 2. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 3. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 4. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 5. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 6. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 7. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 8. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 9. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 10. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 11. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 12. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 13. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 14. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 15. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 16. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 17. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 18. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 19. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign -- Subject: Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign From: "Benjamin Udell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 03:05:22 -0400 X-Message-Number: 1 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --=_NextPart_000_0140_01C68E96.35D86310 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=_NextPart_001_0141_01C68E96.35D86310" --=_NextPart_001_0141_01C68E96.35D86310 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Gary R., Robert, Bernard, Wilfred, Claudio, List, I thought I'd try to the branching style chart of Peirce's ten-adic = division of sign parameters. (These parameters are not mutually = independent). I supposed that the same formal relations applied as with = the main three trichotomies of parameters (qualisign/sinsign/legisign, = icon/index/symbol, and rheme/dicisign/argument). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Best, Ben Udell. qualisign descriptive abstractive iconic hypothetical sympathetic = suggestive gratific rhematic assurance of instinct=20 sinsign <=20 designative <=20 concretive <=20 indexical <=20 categorical <=20 percussive <=20 imperative <=20 to produce action <=20 dicent <=20 assurance of experience=20 / / =20 legisign-- \ =20 \ descriptive abstractive iconic < hypothetical sympathetic = suggestive gratific rhematic assurance of instinct=20 desig
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
Damn, it looks like the images all shrank somehow. Hang in there and I will send all three again in the right size. It will take me a while since I have to stop for breakfast first! Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 9:38 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) You're welcome, Joe. Before you go, do you have a clearer view of the words written in the third set of boxes? Here's what it looked to me like it was saying: Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 10:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) That's all for the moment from me. There arre other MS pages that might throu some light on things but it will take me some time to browse through the MS material, which is from several different file folders, to see what is truly worth adding as grist for the present discussion. P.S.: And thanks to Ben for the earlier help -- off-list as well as on -- with the graphics and for the recent provision of the color version of the triangle of boxes. Joe Ransdell---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
That's all for the moment from me. There arre other MS pages that might throu some light on things but it will take me some time to browse through the MS material, which is from several different file folders, to see what is truly worth adding as grist for the present discussion. P.S.: And thanks to Ben for the earlier help -- off-list as well as on -- with the graphics and for the recent provision of the color version of the triangle of boxes. Joe Ransdell No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
-Vinicius, Robert, and list: Hold the presses! I have found two other instances of the triangle of boxes in the MS material which I will forward in separate messages. Do they solve the problem? I can't say yet but will just pass the images along in a few minutes. Bear in mind that the basic problem is that it is difficult to be certain of what is actually on the original MS page and what is on a photocopy of that page that was made by Fisch, Ketner, et al in 1974 or thereabouts when a team from Texas Tech (including Fisch, who was there as a visiting university professor at that time) went to Harvard and did a photocopy of the Harvard holdings that could replace the Robin microfilm copy. Are the arrows and other notations (such as the numerals) which seem to be due to editors all due to them or are some of them actually notations on the original MS by Peirce himself? Or if they are due to editors, are any of them due to Fisch, Ketner, et al when they made their photocopy, which was then subsequently photocopied itself! What I have is a photocopy of their photocopy -- or perhaps a photocopy of a photocopy of their photocopy! Aaarrrgh! (Sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth!) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 7:54 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) Vinicius, Robert, and list: I take it that you have received in the previous message the image of the original MS version of the boxed triangle, in MS 799.02 (i.e. the second page in the MS 799 folder). Notice the following: 1. There are no Roman numerals, so that is clearly an editorial artifact (Hartshorne and Weiss). 2. The numerals "1" through "10" appear instead, but seem clearly to have been added after the image was drawn and the names of the sign classes were entered, raising the question of whether they are due to Peirce or to some later editors. (More on this below) 3. The numerals associated with the boxes differ in one respect from the Roman numerals that were editorially added in the CP version, namely, in respect to the boxes at the middle and the bottom of the pyramid 4. The names assigned to the boxes also differ in that same respect. Thus both the boxes and the numerals associated with them have been, in effect, interchanged in the transition from the original drawing to the version in the CP. 5. Someone has indicated with the line with an arrowhead at both ends that an interchange should be made, i.e. it seems very likely that this is the meaning of that line. 5. This interchange makes the numbering on the original page the same, in effect, as the numbering by the Roman numerals in the CP version. Hence it is possible that, although there are no Roman numerals on the original, the ones on the CP version could be based on the numbering used on the original and very probably are, and therefore possible that the Roman numerals are justified as well in the sense that they reflect the original numbering. But that is true only if we suppose that the numerals on the original were put there by Peirce. But since they were put there after the drawing was otherwise completed, it is also possible that they were put there by the editors, too, in which case the Roman numerals are only an editorial artifact. as we first conjectured. 6. This also supposes, though, that the line with the arrowheads at both ends that is presumably used to indicate the need to interchange the boxes is also an editorial artifact. But what if that line was put there by Peirce? In that case, the Roman numerals would be justified as an ordering device after all even if due entirely to editors, supposing that Peirce intended to number them at all. 7. But did he intend to number them at all? 8. And who is responsible for the idea of the interchange? Peirce himself or his editors? There may be some clue to that in the editorial comments to be found in the CP which are attached to paragraphs 2.235n and 2.243n. 9. For what it is worth, I have not yet worked with those comments in the CP, but I do notice that in my copy of the CP I made a note to myself many years ago adjacent to the beginning of the note 2.235n, when I was studying this material closely at that time, that says: "This is not what Peirce is saying above", meaning that I did not at that time think that what the editors were interpreting Peirce as saying in 2.235 was in fact correct. I no longer recall why I said this, but I seemed to have spotted something I took to be wrong in the editorial understanding at that time. Joe Ransdell ---
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
Vinicius, Robert, and list: I take it that you have received in the previous message the image of the original MS version of the boxed triangle, in MS 799.02 (i.e. the second page in the MS 799 folder). Notice the following: 1. There are no Roman numerals, so that is clearly an editorial artifact (Hartshorne and Weiss). 2. The numerals "1" through "10" appear instead, but seem clearly to have been added after the image was drawn and the names of the sign classes were entered, raising the question of whether they are due to Peirce or to some later editors. (More on this below) 3. The numerals associated with the boxes differ in one respect from the Roman numerals that were editorially added in the CP version, namely, in respect to the boxes at the middle and the bottom of the pyramid 4. The names assigned to the boxes also differ in that same respect. Thus both the boxes and the numerals associated with them have been, in effect, interchanged in the transition from the original drawing to the version in the CP. 5. Someone has indicated with the line with an arrowhead at both ends that an interchange should be made, i.e. it seems very likely that this is the meaning of that line. 5. This interchange makes the numbering on the original page the same, in effect, as the numbering by the Roman numerals in the CP version. Hence it is possible that, although there are no Roman numerals on the original, the ones on the CP version could be based on the numbering used on the original and very probably are, and therefore possible that the Roman numerals are justified as well in the sense that they reflect the original numbering. But that is true only if we suppose that the numerals on the original were put there by Peirce. But since they were put there after the drawing was otherwise completed, it is also possible that they were put there by the editors, too, in which case the Roman numerals are only an editorial artifact. as we first conjectured. 6. This also supposes, though, that the line with the arrowheads at both ends that is presumably used to indicate the need to interchange the boxes is also an editorial artifact. But what if that line was put there by Peirce? In that case, the Roman numerals would be justified as an ordering device after all even if due entirely to editors, supposing that Peirce intended to number them at all. 7. But did he intend to number them at all? 8. And who is responsible for the idea of the interchange? Peirce himself or his editors? There may be some clue to that in the editorial comments to be found in the CP which are attached to paragraphs 2.235n and 2.243n. 9. For what it is worth, I have not yet worked with those comments in the CP, but I do notice that in my copy of the CP I made a note to myself many years ago adjacent to the beginning of the note 2.235n, when I was studying this material closely at that time, that says: "This is not what Peirce is saying above", meaning that I did not at that time think that what the editors were interpreting Peirce as saying in 2.235 was in fact correct. I no longer recall why I said this, but I seemed to have spotted something I took to be wrong in the editorial understanding at that time. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: robert marty To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 1:50 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) "Peirce never put the roman numbers on his original MS." ! I am very happy reading this assertion of De Tienne, an very good expert of the MS. Personally I was always astonashed that Peirce note the classes of signs with ordinals because nothing cannot justify it since the natural order of the classes is the non linear order of the 10-lattice. In conclude, sometimes, the editors can be "generators of mistakes" instead of "generators of lattices"... Robert Martyhttp://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ -Message d'origine-De : VinXcius Romanini [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Envoyé : samedi 17 juin 2006 01:51À : Peirce Discussion ForumObjet : [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) Dear Joe, list The matter of the roman ordering numbers have always puzzled me. I remember once asking De Tienne about it at the PEP and he told me that Peirce never put the roman numbers on his original MS. They are just another work of Hartshorne and Weiss to make their point about how the classes of signs should be ordered in their own view. I have never seen the original Syllabus MS but now that you have mentioned again the "roman numbering problem", would like to know if you or anyone can ascertain if Peirce did put these numbers or not. Best, Vinicius---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[peirce-l] representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
(Corrected version of previous message:) Bernard, Ben, and list: I am still working on the question of what, if anything, is wrong in my account of the ten sign classes (as resulting from the cross-combination of the three basic sign trichotomies) in my paper on Peirce's semiotic in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics (commissioned and edited by Tom Sebeok and Umberto Eco), originally published in 1986 and presently available in a revised version at Arisbe: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds/eds.htm >From what I have been able to figure out thus far, there is one important error in the original version which I eliminated in the revised version, so there is nothing formally wrong with the version at Arisbe as it presently stands. There is, however, one "infelicity" -- which is a euphemistic way of talking about something that might well be misleading even though not formally erroneous. My elimination of the formal error in the revision was, I think, only a fortunate accident since the corrective move I made was made only in order to eliminate something from the diagram which I adjudged to have no real role to play in anything that I said in the rest of the paper. In short, you were right in sensing something wrong there, Fortunately, it is not the catastrophic blunder I feared that it might be. Let me explain what I did -- or didn't -- do or say that was misleading and, in the original version, strongly so, though considerably less so in the revised version that has been available for the past six years or so. In the original version I did not use a tree diagram but rather a tabular form which is equivalent to and easily transformed into a tree diagram: (1) qualisigns: (i) icons: (i) rhemes (I) (2) sinsigns: (a) indexes (including symbol replicas): (i) rhemes(II) (ii) dicisigns (III) (b) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (IV) (3) legisigns-- (a) symbols: (i) rhemes (V) (ii) dicisigns (VI) (iii) arguments (VII) (b) indexical signs: (i) rhemes (VIII) (ii) dicisigns(IX) (c) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (X) Notice that if you read across the lines with Roman numerals at the end and simply collapse the table appropriately into ten corresponding lines you get a list of the ten classes of signs: qualisigns icons rhemes(I) sinsigns indices rhemes(II) sinsigns indices dicisigns (III) sinsigns icons rhemes (IV) legisigns symbols rhemes (V) legisigns symbols dicents (VI) legisigns symbols arguments (VII) legisigns indices rhemes (VIII) legisigns indices dicents(IX) legisigns icons rhemes (X) Now, this does indeed list out the ten classes according to their differing three-component combinations and is not mistaken in itself. However, when we notice the correlation with the ten roman numerals we find the important mistake, which is owing to the fact that in the passage from the Syllabus of Logic that this is based upon Peirce himself used Roman numerals to number the classes and he numbered them differently. The proper numbering, following Peirce, would rather be: qualisigns icons rhemes (I) sinsigns indices rhemes (III) sinsigns indices dicisigns (IV) sinsigns icons rhemes (II) legisigns symbols rhemes(VIII) legisigns symbols dicents(IX) legisigns symbols arguments(X) legisigns indices rhemes (VI) legisigns indices dicents (VII) legisigns icons rhemes (V) That gives us Peirce's ordering both in the diagram of the ten-box triangle at CP 2.264, where Peirce inserts the Roman numerals in the boxes, and in the several pages just prior to that where he gives paragraph-long descriptions of each of the ten classes, wherein he does not use Roman numerals but does use ordinal English numbers (first, second, etc.). Thus the ordering I suggested with my numbering in the original version was simply mistaken insofar as it suggested that Peirce ordered them numerically in that way, which he clearly did not. My numbering there was not absolutely mistaken because neither way of ordering them makes any difference as to what the ten classes actually are, as regards their differing defining elements. But still, it was clearly a mistake. That mistake was corrected in my revised version when I simply omitted the numbering of the classes after noting that there was no need to include them since I made no use of the numbers in that paper. But
[peirce-l] URL for my paper at Arisbe
Sorry, but I gave you a bad URL. Here is the right one for my paper: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds.htm Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/367 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] representing the ten classes of signs
Bernard, Ben, and list: I am still working on the question of what, if anything, is wrong in my account of the ten sign classes (as resulting from the cross-combination of the three basic sign trichotomies) in my paper on Peirce's semiotic in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics (commissioned and edited by Tom Sebeok and Umberto Eco), originally published in 1986 and presently available in a revised version at Arisbe: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds/eds.htm >From what I have been able to figure out thus far, there is one important error in the original version which I eliminated in the revised version, so there is nothing formally wrong with the version at Arisbe as it presently stands. There is, however, one "infelicity" -- which is a euphemistic way of talking about something that might well be misleading even though not formally erroneous. My elimination of the formal error in the revision was, I think, only a fortunate accident since the corrective move I made was made only in order to eliminate something from the diagram which I adjudged to have no real role to play in anything that I said in the rest of the paper. In short, you were right in sensing something wrong there, Fortunately, it is not the catastrophic blunder I feared that it might be. Let me explain what I did -- or didn't -- do or say that was misleading and, in the original version, strongly so, though considerably less so in the revised version that has been available for the past six years or so. In the original version I did not use a tree diagram but rather a tabular form which is equivalent to and easily transformed into a tree diagram: (1) qualisigns: (i) icons: (i) rhemes (I) (2) sinsigns: (a) indexes (including symbol replicas): (i) rhemes (II) (ii) dicisigns (III) (b) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (IV) (3) legisigns-- (a) symbols: (i) rhemes (V) (ii) dicisigns (VI) (iii) arguments (VII) (b) indexical signs: (i) rhemes (VIII) (ii) dicisigns (IX) (c) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (X) Notice that if you read across the lines with Roman numerals at the end and simply collapse the table appropriately into ten corresponding lines you get a list of the ten classes of signs: qualisigns icons rhemes(I) sinsigns indices rhemes(II) sinsigns indices dicisigns (III) sinsigns icons rhemes (IV) legisigns symbols rhemes (V) legisigns symbols dicents (VI) legisigns symbols arguments (VII) legisigns indices rhemes (VIII) legisigns indices dicents(IX) legisigns icons rhemes (X) Now, this does indeed list out the ten classes according to their differing three-component combinations and is not mistaken in itself. However, when we notice the correlation with the ten roman numerals we find the important mistake, which is owing to the fact that in the passage from the Syllabus of Logic that this is based upon Peirce himself used Roman numerals to number the classes and he numbered them differently. The proper numbering, following Peirce, would rather be: qualisigns icons rhemes (I) sinsigns indices rhemes (III) sinsigns indices dicisigns (IV) sinsigns icons rhemes (II) legisigns symbols rhemes(VIII) legisigns symbols dicents(IX) legisigns symbols arguments(X) legisigns indices rhemes (VI) legisigns indices dicents (VII) legisigns icons rhemes (V) That gives us Peirce's ordering both in the diagram of the ten-box triangle at CP 2.264, where Peirce inserts the Roman numerals in the boxes, and in the several pages just prior to that where he gives paragraph-long descriptions of each of the ten classes, wherein he does not use Roman numerals but does use ordinal English numbers (first, second, etc.). Thus the ordering I suggested with my numbering in the original version was simply mistaken insofar as it suggested that Peirce ordered them numerically in that way, which he clearly did not. My numbering there was not absolutely mistaken because neither way of ordering them makes any difference as to what the ten classes actually are, as regards their differing defining elements. But still, it was clearly a mistake. That mistake was corrected in my revised version when I simply omitted the numbering of the classes after noting that there was no need to include them since I made no use of the numbers in that paper. But still, it could be misleading in case someone were to mistakenly think that the tree diagram which
[peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices
No, still didn't work for me. Thanks, anyway. Joe - Original Message - From: "Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:16 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices Well...just make sure not pushing any button but just choosing some number first with the drop down menu. By pointing with your mouse on the arrow at the right of the number (specify the number of trichotomies). Then choose "ok". Worked for me :-) Wilfred -----Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Verzonden: donderdag 15 juni 2006 20:06 Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices I pushed every button I could find and nothing happened. .??? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: "robert marty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Cc: "BENAZET" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:53 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Generator of lattices Create lattices with n trichotomies ( 3=< n =< 10 ): http://www.univ-perp.fr/see/rch/lts/marty/lattices/lattice.htm (built with the collaboration of Patrick Benazet) Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/360 - Release Date: 9-6-2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/360 - Release Date: 9-6-2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
