Gary, Jon, Helmut, List,
This discussion is quite interesting. Philip drunk/sober are at the center of
James Joyce’s works — yes, Joyce read Peirce. For the details, read / scan my
post below.
Joyce's and Peirce's Use of the Term “Philip drunk and sober”
Allusions to Peirce in the Wake become more understandable with a retrospective
glance at Ulysses. Joyce and Peirce both use the term Philip drunk and Philip
sober to demonstrate the impossibility of absolute individuality. The term was
commonplace. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable glosses Philip sober:
"When a woman, who asked Philip of Macedon to do her justice, was snubbed by
the petulant monarch, she exclaimed, 'Philip, I shall appeal against this
judgment.' 'Appeal!' thundered the enraged king, 'and to whom will you appeal?'
'To Philip sober', was her reply'." (857) Peirce uses the term to show how no
term is absolutely determinate:
We can only say, in a general way, that a term, however determinate, may be
made more determinate still, but not that it can be made absolutely
determinate. Such a terms as "the second Philip of Macedon" is still capable
of logical division, — into Philip drunk and Philip sober, for example; but we
call it individual because that which is denoted by it is in only one place at
one time. It is a term not absolutely indivisible, but indivisible as long as
we neglect differences of time and the differences which accompany them. Such
differences we habitually disregard in the logical division of substances. In
the division of relations, etc., we do not, of course, disregard these
differences, but we disregard some others. There is nothing to prevent almost
any sort of difference from being conventionally neglected in some discourse,
and if I be a term which in consequence of such neglect becomes indivisible in
that discourse, we have in that discourse,
[I] = 1.
This distinction between the absolutely indivisible and that which is one in
number from a particular point of view is shadowed forth in the two words
individual (τ_ _τoμov) and singular (τ_ καθ__καστov); but as those who have
used the word individual have not been aware that absolute individuality is
merely ideal, it has come to be used in a more general sense. (CP 3.93;
Writings of Charles S. Peirce, vol. 2, 390).
Joyce had access to the article. The above passage from "A Description of a
Notation for the Logic of Relatives, Resulting from an Amplification of the
Conceptions of Boole's Calculus of Logic," first appeared in Memoirs of the
American Academy in 1870, and was separately reprinted that year. (It was also
later translated into French.) In this essay Peirce defines the "logical atom,
or term not capable of logical division" as "one of which every predicate may
be universally affirmed or denied" (CP 2.389). He explains that "such a term
can be realized neither in thought or sense" and concludes that "a logical atom
. . . would involve for its precise determination an endless process" (CP
2.390). Semiosis. Thus one can parse a name: "parse him Persse O'Reilly else
he's called no name at all" (FW 044.14), with an added contrast between parse
and per se which sums up Peirce's above passage and puns upon his name.
Joyce uses the same example of Philip Drunk and Philip Sober to highlight the
so-called narrative technique of the novel Ulysses, wherein a
narrating/narrated duo is both the same and different — the same individual if
we ignore differences related to time and place, different individuals if we
remember time and place as if to particularize or make concrete the "real."
But, before examining Joyce's two Philips, we can see that as early as A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, readers have been reminded of the
Aristotelian principle of identity, wherein a thing cannot both be and not be
at the same time.
Stephen Dedalus, expounding upon his aesthetic principles to Lynch, says:
The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope
of the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection.
Aristotle's entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and
that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the
same time and in the same connection belong to and not belong to the same
subject. (P 208)
Stephen does not state his agreement (nor his disagreement) with Aristotle's
psychology and philosophy, since his comments are interrupted. Nevertheless,
to break the Aristotelian rule of logic, the identity principle, requires only
two tenets: that time (in the here and now) is not absolutely determinate and
can be extended (to include there and then), and that relationships or
connections between attributes and categories/subjects can be multiple. The
subject need not possess an attribute, which thereby extends the idea of
"possession" or "belonging to" to include non-possession — in a move which
anticipates the lack of apostrophe in the title of Joyce's last novel,
Finnegans Wake.
Writing makes possible the situation wherein an attribute can belong and not
belong; the frame of a novel can be based on (or depict) the "act itself of
intellection" and the "subject" thus can require that an attribute be and not
be connected. In Ulysses the Philip Drunk and Philip Sober passage makes this
evident:
Stephen
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about
the lute?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with
lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew
Arnold's face.)
Philip Sober
Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a
pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one
sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer,
the Moira, Larchet's Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.
Philip Drunk
(impatiently) Ah, bosh man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find
out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name?
(his lawnmower begins to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I
was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere.
MacSomebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it,
no?
Florry
And the song?
Stephen
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Florry
Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.
Stephen
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
Philip drunk and Philip
Sober
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever. Out of
it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes,
there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us. (U
15.2508-2540; bold added)
The comment of Philip Drunk and Philip Sober together in the last passage
clarifies various aspects of the Aristotelian philosophical system, including
the identity principle — the Philips can exist together, but only in a "warped"
time-space environment, as evident with the lawnmowers and grasshalms, which
will be discussed later as they reappear in Finnegans Wake. They are one
person, one "Philip," but only when they are "out of it" — out of the supposed
absolute determinate nature of the "here and now" of any given moment, for as
Peirce shows, the absolutely determinate is only a convention. Philip Sober
shows the impossibility of realizing a logical atom of division in sense;
Philip Drunk shows the impossibility of realizing a logical division in
thought. Yet their appearance together leads toward the affirmation of
Stephen's belief that by having no voice he is a "most finished" artist — as
character, "finished" or ended, washed up, but as potential narrator ironically
appropriate in that the graphist/writer is "finished" or "polished." The
correctives the two Philips offer concern time and space as material for
modeling a voiceless text.
It could be argued that Joyce was simply taking the term Philip Drunk and Sober
as a figurative expression to reveal the split in the speaking subject in the
text. Although this may be, Virag's first comment after the appearance of the
two Philips seems planned as a clue or a reference to logical (i.e. Peirce's
essay on logic) systems: "Perfectly logical from his standpoint" (U 508).
Later in Ulysses Philip Drunk and Philip Sober ask Stephen whether he "has" the
"book, the thing, the ashplant." Of course, Stephen, does have the ashplant,
which he uses later to shatter the chandelier in Bella Cohen's whorehouse, but
the book and "thing" are general terms. Stephen, depending on how he
interprets possession, and depending on how he interprets himself (out of the
book he means to write, or strangely both in and out of it), has and doesn't
have the "book, the thing, the ashplant." Stephen's next comment in the
episode highlights his liminal position vis a vis the virtual text he scripts
in his consciousness during the day:
Stephen
To have or not to have that is the question. (15.3522)
In the first episode Stephen has the ashplant, but not the book, in the sense
of having a material object. If the book is a self-referential term, Stephen's
own material existence is called into question by the Philips since he cannot
"have the book" (materially) unless he is "outofit." A passage in Finnegans
Wake can serve as a gloss on Stephen's role:
I am underheerd by old billfaust. Wilsh is full of curks. The collskittle is
philip deblinite. Mr. Wist is therover beyeind the wantnot. Wilsh and wist
are as thick of thins udder as faust on the deblinite . . . means that I cannot
now have or not have a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with
the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I've in mind
unless burrus and Caseous have not or not have seemaultaneously sysentangled
themselves, selldear to soldthere, once in the diary days of buy and buy. (FW
160.26-29. . . 161.9-14)
Connecting as in Ulysses the key terms philip, doubling, have/not have, the
narrator in Finnegans Wake goes a step further in showing how the identity
principle, when complicated by simultaneity and the systemic entangling of
character traits, does not hold.
>From Ulysses' "rigadoon of grasshalms"to Wake's "average grass temperature"
Philip Drunk and Philip Sober had appeared in the first episode of Ulysses, in
fact, but were not named (or noticed) because they were both wearing the mask
of Matthew Arnold (which they later take off):
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf
gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the
sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. (1.172-175; bold
added)
Philip, both taken in the singular as an individual who is masked, cannot hear
those "shouts." Why? Could it be because (like Stephen) they are not
"outofit" but instead shown involved in the activity of mowing the grass (while
being very thoughtful/watchful). In episode 15 they are in the window
embrasure because (like Stephen) they are between being "in" and "out",
liminally. Nevertheless, in both appearances, they are the deaf gardener who
is involved in contradictory activities—pushing a mower and watching the dust
fall through the light onto the stems of individual blades of grass —
contradictory activities only if time is ignored. (Also they are, like Arnold,
somewhat absurd.)
In Finnegans Wake we hear a conversation about a supposed truth concerning the
lawn:
—Pirce! Perce! Quick! Queok!
O Tara's thrush, the sharepusher! And he said he was only taking the average
grass temperature for green Thurdsday. (FW 491.25-27)
Joyce and Peirce's Reviews of F.C.S. Schiller
Joyce may have been motivated to consult Peirce's "A Description of a Notation
for the Logic of Relatives, Resulting from an Amplification of the Conceptions
of Boole's Calculus of Logic," around the time Joyce was reviewing F.C.S.
Schiller's Humanism: Philosophical Essays, published in November 1903 in
Dublin's Daily Express. In this review Joyce writes that Schiller's "emotional
psychology" puts "to shame the ghostly forms of Plato and Aristotle" (CW 136).
In reference to the same book by Schiller, Peirce writes that one of the
included essays, "The Ethical Basis of Metaphysics,"
has a promising title but is reduced to gibberish by the author's talking about
the real, without the slightest hint of what he means by this word except that
it is something the character of which is affected (and it would seem very
greatly) by anybody's thinking that it possesses or does not possess that
character. In short, he treats a verbal definition as a doctrine, and stoutly
denying it, leaves the word a mystery. To meet some such fatal blank has more
than once been my ill-luck in trying to read Schiller. (5.533)
Joyce, like Peirce, criticizes Schiller's book for its lack of a logical basis:
"if Professor Schiller had sought to establish rational psychology as a
starting-point, his position would have been well-grounded, but rational
psychology he has either never heard of or considers unworthy of mention" (CW
136). Joyce's distinction concerning rational psychology may have been based,
in part, on Michael Maher's Psychology: Empirical and Rational, a book in
Joyce's personal library, which was reviewed by Peirce in The Nation in October
1901.
Perhaps Joyce did not read Peirce's review of Maher's book on psychology in
1903, when he was also working on his aesthetic theory. But they both
reviewed Schiller's book. And since Joyce refers to the philosophy of
pragmatism in his review of Schiller, he very well may have consulted any one
of a variety of sources which would have led Joyce back to Peirce: William
James credits Peirce with Pragmatism in The Varieties of Religious Experience
(1902) and in Pragmatism James calls Peirce's lectures "flashes of brilliant
light relieved against Cimmerian darkness" (1910: 7). Peirce himself defines
the term in J.M. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1902).
In addition to "Philip Drunk and Sober" connection between Joyce's Ulysses and
Charles Peirce's article, and the more explicit connection between the context
of the "Philip Drunk and Sober" passages in Ulysses and the naming of Peirce in
Finnegans Wake, we have other important connections: Joyce uses "practically"
in the entry on "The Act of Apprehension" (CW 148). And Joyce and Peirce both
were familiar with Frazer's new 1902 edition of George Berkeley, who is a key
figure in both Joyce and Peirce. Joyce may have read Peirce's essay on
Berkeley in 1902-3 when Joyce was making use of the term "pragmatism."
[COMMENT1] <applewebdata://854CEC8D-5F8A-4E34-B215-7ED48EA6701E#_msocom_1> The
Importance of /entelechy/ to the Semiotics of Joyce and Peirce
And, as we will see, Stephen Dedalus uses a distinction between
first and second levels of entelechy, based on a definition which Peirce wrote
for the Century Dictionary, a book referred to in Ulysses. The definition of
entelechy in the Century Dictionary (Peirce 1889) is as follows:
entelechy (en-tel¢e-ki) n. [<L. entelechia, <Gr. _υτεΛ_χεια actuality, á_υ
τελει _χειυ be complete (cf. _υτεΛ_ζ, complete, full): _Ρ, in; τ_Λει dat. of
τ_Λoζ, end, completion; _χειυ, have, hold, intr. be.] realization: opposed
topower or potentiality, and nearly the same as energy or act (ACTUALITY). The
only difference is that entelechyimplies a more perfect realization. The idea
of entelechy is connected with that of form, the idea of power with that of
matter. Thus, iron is potentially in its ore, which to be made iron must be
worked; when this is done, the iron exists in entelechy. The development from
being in posse or in germ to entelechy takes place, according to Aristotle, by
means of a change, the imperfect action or energy, of which the perfected
result is the entelechy. Entelechy is, however, either first or second. First
entelechy is being in working order; second entelechy is being in action. The
soul is said to be the first entelechy of the body, which seems to imply that
it grows out of the body as its germ; but the idea more insisted upon is that
man without the soul would be but a body, while the soul, once developed, is
not lost when the man sleeps. Cudworth terms his plastic nature (which see,
under nature) a first entelechy, and Libnitz calls it a monad an entelechy.
In Ulysses the concept of entelechy is used often. The first occurs in episode
9 (Sylla and Charybdis) as Stephen, in the library, thinks upon his debt to
A.E.:
Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.
Buzz. Buzz.
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging
forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U. (U 9.200-213; emphasis added)
The second reference to the word entelechy occurs in episode 15:
Stephen
(looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal
language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first
entelechy, the structural rhythm. (15.104-107; bold added)
Peirce's example for the idea that identity is never absolutely indivisible
(i.e., a name is just a logical atom of thought, a convenient term, which can
be divided by time) here becomes connected with Joyce's characters'
divisibility, and, in the Wake, their near absolute divisibility. Both use the
example of the name Philip divided into Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, Joyce in
Ulysses, episode 15 (Circe) and Peirce in his groundbreaking essay on the logic
of relatives. We can see the poly-semiotic credit Joyce gives to Peirce in the
Wake:
Knock
A password, thanks.
Yes, pearse.
Well, all be dumbed!
O really? (FW 262.06-10)
It figures in a riddle. And at times the riddle is the Wake as a whole. Peirce
would understand the "strangewrote anaglyptics" (FW 419.18-19) of Finnegans
Wake. The phrase "strangewrote anaglyptics" describes Joyce's narrative
method. And, again, a Peirce pun or allusion figures in the next re:telling
sentence: "I am, thing Sing Larynx, letter potent to play the sem backwards
like Oscan wild or in shunt Persse transluding from the Otherman or off the
Toptic or anything off the types of my finklers in the draught or with buttle,
with my oyes thickshut and all" (FW 491.23-27; bold added). The reference here
again connects with drunk/sober and multiple personalities (among very much
else), meaning ("sem") and narrative method ("thing Sing . . . letter potent")
— with Peirce.
This passage which recycles the Philip drunk/sober lawn passages in Ulysses
clearly connects both to "Pirce! Perce," an allusion to Peirce. Why is this
significant? I believe Joyce is describing an icon of his own method and
including an allusion to Peirce. Why here in the Wake and not earlier in
Ulysses? Joyce, who perhaps believed that no one understood him (FW627.13-15),
wished to leave clues (not to an answer but to a reading) in his riddle of the
universe.
Earlier a passage in Finnegans Wake connects HCE or Phill (the character who
falls, "Phill filt tippling full" [FW 6.08]) and Peirce:
it was this overspoiled priest Mr. Browne, disguised as a vincentian, who, when
seized of the facts, was overheard, in his secondary personality as a Nolan
and underreared, poul soul, by accident—it, that is, the incident is was an
accident for here the ruah of Ecclectiastes of Hippo outpuffs the writress of
Havvah-ban-Annah-to panissime a slightly varied version of Corrkedribs
confidentials, (what Mere Aloyse said by for Jesuphine's sake! hands between
hahands, in fealty sworn (my bravor best! my fraur!) and, to the strains of The
Secret of her Birth hushly pierce the rubiend aurellum of one Philly Thurnston.
. . . (FW 38.25-35; emphasis added)
Philip in Ulysses, Philly Thurnston in the Wake. One Phil is pierced as the
song about secrets of birth play on. Here comes another juxtaposition of
allusions to Peirce and Philips. And the content of the secret of Peirce and
the Philips is that Phil can become Everyone under a cover (like Philips' make
in Ulysses) — his cover of no-name o-really: HCE (Here Comes Everyone). HCE,
if pronounced slowly, sounds like haecceity, the Scotist principle of identity
/individuality which grants thisness and nowness to existence in a particular
place and at a particular time. HCE becomes everybody; certainly HCE is one,
if the accidents of transubstantiation are ignored, but why should the material
world be erased for consistency? Bruno of Nola, like Charles Peirce, believed
the part can equal the whole (the whole is in the part) and that opposites can
join, given a perspective out of time — that there could be "someone
imparticular who will somewherise for the whole." (FW 602.7-8)
[COMMENT1] <applewebdata://854CEC8D-5F8A-4E34-B215-7ED48EA6701E#_msoanchor_1>
> On Oct 1, 2026, at 12:18 AM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Jon, Helmut, List,
>
> Jon, we agree that Peirce’s Phillip drunk/sober helps clarify how an existing
> individual remains continuous across different, changing, even opposing
> states. I also agree that the Colapietro quote you provided expresses this
> very well. It concludes: "[E]xistence (because it is an instance of
> opposition) designates the aspect of 2ns exhibited by any individual
> substance, while persistence (because it is a case of continuity) designates
> one of the ways in which it manifests 3ns.:
>
> Helmut, however, has been making a different claim about values such as
> liberty, equality, solidarity, and integrity. Although the meanings of these
> concepts surely have changed, sometimes developed historically, their
> validity (I almost wrote 'truth') is not exhausted by what any society
> understands or permits. Slavery was not just because ancient societies
> accepted it (to the extent that they did), nor antisemitism because it was
> widespread (several European countries). That those who suffered under and
> resisted such institutions already reveal their injustice from within those
> societies.
>
> I think we may need to distinguish changing expressions of these values from
> the possibilities and, even, demands that they express. Reciprocity,
> recognition, and human decency were not created only when later societies
> named them. They were latent within communal life -- often violated and not
> infrequently imperfectly understood -- certainly not reducible to even
> widespread practices.
>
> Perhaps Peirce’s agapism is one way of expressing this without invoking a
> fixed essence. Evolutionary love draws possibilities of greater
> reasonableness toward concrete realization, and even as our understanding of
> those ideals (hopefully) develops. Power structures may create and enforce
> such anti-values as domination and exclusion, but they cannot make them
> acceptable, let alone good.
> So, perhaps Helmut’s 'unchangeable core' might be better understood as an
> enduring normative 'direction' rather than something fixed eternally. These
> values persist not as Phillip persists through drunkenness and sobriety, but
> as such real generals become more fully embodied and more fully realized
> through human history.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2026 at 3:25 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> Gary R., List:
>>
>> GR: First, I do not think that every object possesses an 'unchangeable core
>> identity.' That seems to introduce a fixed essence where, as I see it,
>> continuity itself may be a sufficient explanation. For example, I remain the
>> same person from one day to the next, and not because something immutable
>> underlies my various 'changes' (Phillip drunk today, sober tomorrow in
>> Peirce's famous example), but because my present condition is historically
>> and bodily (indexically?) continuous with my earlier states. This is to say
>> that identity may consist in the continuity of an ongoing history. I would
>> be very interested to read Jon's take on this matter.
>>
>> My take on this matter is along similar lines. Here is the passage where
>> Peirce employs the example of Phillip drunk vs. Phillip sober.
>>
>> CSP: Time is that diversity of existence whereby that which is existentially
>> a subject is enabled to receive contrary determinations in existence.
>> Phillip is drunk and Phillip is sober would be absurd, did not time make the
>> Phillip of this morning another Phillip than the Phillip of last night. The
>> law is that nothing dyadically exists as a subject without the
>> diversification which permits it to receive contrary accidents. (CP 1.494,
>> c. 1896)
>>
>> Accordingly, identity is the dyadic relation between "that which is
>> existentially a subject" and itself, regardless of any "contrary
>> determinations" that it receives at different moments in time. Put another
>> way, identity consists in a bundle of habits having a continuity of
>> reactions; and I agree with Vincent Colapietro's remarks about the latter in
>> his 1989 book, Peirce's Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on
>> Human Subjectivity.
>>
>> VC: Existence is the mode of being of an individual substance considered as
>> a continuity of reactions; insofar as it is actually reacting against other
>> things, it exists. Persistence is the mode of being of such a substance seen
>> as a continuity of reactions; insofar as it endures throughout a series of
>> reactions, it persists. In other words, existence (because it is an instance
>> of opposition) designates the aspect of 2ns exhibited by any individual
>> substance, while persistence (because it is a case of continuity) designates
>> one of the ways in which it manifests 3ns. (p. 83)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
>> Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
>> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
>> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>> <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 6:02 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> Helmut, Jon, List,
>>>
>>> Before turning to the details, I want to thank you, Helmut, for introducing
>>> and developing this topic. It has led me to think again about how semiosis
>>> operates in relation to real-world experience -- something I haven't
>>> considered in quite this way or with this intensity for a long time.
>>>
>>> I think your analysis has several strengths. Your distinction between
>>> parallel signs and subsequent signs seems right as different communities
>>> may indeed attend simultaneously to different aspects of the same object,
>>> while subsequent semioses may enter into an object’s developing history. I
>>> also agree that every kind of generality needn't be called a symbol: that
>>> crow that repeatedly drops walnuts onto a hard surface to break it open has
>>> acquired a practical habit. That habit, while obviously not verbally
>>> symbolized still, in Peirce’s broader sense, functions through a general
>>> habit such that the crow’s learned behavior has at least a symbol-like
>>> dimension (although I'm uncertain as to whether that's the optimal way to
>>> express it).
>>>
>>> I have a few reservations regarding some of your other remarks. First, I do
>>> not think that every object possesses an 'unchangeable core identity.' That
>>> seems to introduce a fixed essence where, as I see it, continuity itself
>>> may be a sufficient explanation. For example, I remain the same person from
>>> one day to the next, and not because something immutable underlies my
>>> various 'changes' (Phillip drunk today, sober tomorrow in Peirce's famous
>>> example), but because my present condition is historically and bodily
>>> (indexically?) continuous with my earlier states. This is to say that
>>> identity may consist in the continuity of an ongoing history. I would be
>>> very interested to read Jon's take on this matter.
>>>
>>> I also do not think that differences in immediate objects 'migrate via the
>>> interpretant into the dynamical object'. Certainly a given interpretant can
>>> affect conduct, and conduct may change the physical or social situation.
>>> But the relation seems to me to be much more indirect: object --> sign -->
>>> interpretant --> conduct --> changed situation. Nothing moves backwards
>>> from the immediate object into the dynamical object. but semiosis can lead
>>> to conduct with which subsequent semiosis has to adapt to.
>>>
>>> There may also be counterexamples to what I see as too strict a distinction
>>> between parallel and successive signs. One may interpret the same museum
>>> specimen differently tomorrow without the specimen itself changing --
>>> successive signs needn't involve a changed dynamic object. On the other
>>> hand, 'parallel' interpretations may bring about actions that do change it.
>>> For example (although admittedly highly unlikely), the biologist might
>>> analyze tissue samples as at the same time the museum curator makes the
>>> decision to put the specimen on display concurrently with the taxidermist
>>> completing his work.
>>>
>>> I think that there are counter-examples to your claim that every object is
>>> a boundary object. Suppose I put a piece of quartz I find in a drawer and
>>> never show it nor mention it to anyone. It remains an object but it does
>>> not mediate between distinct social worlds. It makes more sense to me to
>>> say that virtually any object can become a boundary object, but that it
>>> does so only when it functions across different communities while retaining
>>> an identity across their differing practices. Otherwise, it seems to me
>>> that 'boundary object' would become just another name for 'object' so that
>>> the concept of 'boundary object' loses its distinctive -- and potentially
>>> useful -- meaning.
>>>
>>> Finally, I also question your claim that 1. an unchangeable core identity,
>>> 2. interpretive differences entering subsequent dynamic objects, and 3.
>>> every object being a boundary object can be established by deduction alone.
>>> Certainly deduction can tell us what follows if those assumptions are
>>> accepted, but not whether they adequately describe actual experiences.
>>> Indeed, your own abductive and inductive procedure -- forming the
>>> hypothesis and seeking counterexamples -- seems much more methodologically
>>> Peircean. So, I would suggest a narrower conclusion: an object may be
>>> differently represented while remaining identifiable as the same object,
>>> but it becomes a boundary object only when different communities recognize
>>> and use it within their respective communal practices.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Gary R
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