Vinicius, Gary F, Auke, Cathy, list, In an earlier email, Gary F. raised the following questions about two assertions that Vinicius attributes to Peirce:
[gf] With that in mind, I don’t quite follow your argument here, and could use some further explanation on these points: 1) “icons do not enter our concepts as such” 2) “depth signifies the object by applying to it percipua discriminated as predicative terms (mortal, rational, mammal etc).” [gf] I would say instead that the predicate signifies characters of the object and thus furnishes the proposition with its depth.) Having taken a look at MS 7, I'd like to ask a quick question about the first assertion. What is Vinicius claiming when he says that icons don't *enter* our concepts as such? Looking at page 15 of the MS, I see Peirce saying the following: "An icon cannot be a complete sign; but it is the only sign which directly brings the interpretant to close quarters with the meaning; and for that reason it is the kind of sign with which the mathematician works." Shortly after making this point, he develops the examples of the weather vane and the photograph. Is the first clause in what I've quoted from Peirce (i.e., An icon cannot be a complete sign) the kind of thing you have in mind in saying that icons don't *enter* our concepts as such? If so, I don't see how the assertion you are attributing to Peirce squares with his discussion on pp. 9-10 of how qualities arise in the the combination of concepts. The example he gives is of a person who has no idea of what patriotism is, but who does know what love is and what a man's country is. What Peirce says is that the combination of these two ideas in the thoughts of this person will give rise to the idea of patriotism--"along with a quality of feeling which arises upon their composition." On my reading of this example, the quality of the feeling is a part of the conception of patriotism. What is more, attention to this quality of feeling and the analysis of its character as a quality can serve as a icon in further interpretations of the meaning of the idea of patriotism (e.g., such as when this idea is combined with others--such as the idea of fascism). As Peirce says later in the quote above, this kind of icon is the only sign that "brings the interpretant to close quarters with the meaning." --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Vinicius Romanini [vinir...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 1:13 PM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapter 5, Semeiotics, or the doctrine of signs Gary F, Auke, Cathy, list Gary F, maybe I was indeed too quick and jumped the rationale of my claim. Sure the predicate signifies characters of the subject and offers the depth of a proposition. But saying that does not explain how we come to have the concept of, say, yellow, as to apply to a chair. So let's take the example Cathy brought up in her text about perception. Cathy quotes Peirce: "Let us consider, first, the predicate, 'yellow' in the judgment that 'this chair appears yellow.' This predicate is not the sensation involved in the percept, because it is general. It does not even refer particularly to this percept but to a sort of composite photograph of all the yellows that have been seen". (CP, 7. 634). Notice that the "pure icon", the quality of feeling, is not the predicate. The predicate is the "composite photograph" that gives an "idea" of yellow from previous experience, collaterally. It is a generalization, or percipuum. Continuing now about the perceptual judgment, Peirce says: "The judgement, ‘This chair appears yellow’, separates the color from the chair, making the one predicate and the other subject. The percept, on the other hand, presents the chair in its entirety and makes no analysis whatever" (CP, 7.631). Here is an perceptual assertion, or a "perceptual fact". It is represented by the proposition "This chair appears yellow". Here we have breadth and depth in their logical distinction: the subject is "this chair" (denoting some specific chair, i.e, its extension) and the predicate "appears yellow" signifying the character (i.e, its comprehension). The perceptual judgment is the first grade of separation in the phaneron. Peirce calls it "dissociation". It is also the first grade of clarity of the pragmatic analysis: a familiar knowledge about the object given in experience. We dissociate yellow from chair and arrange them in the propositional form. There are two other types of separation: precision and discrimination. We need get to them, but before that I want to go back to a quote that you, Gary, provided some days ago: "Kant gives the erroneous view that ideas are presented separated and then thought together by the mind. This is his doctrine that a mental synthesis precedes every analysis. What really happens is that something is presented which in itself has no parts, but which nevertheless is analyzed by the mind, that is to say, its having parts consists in this that the mind afterward recognizes those parts in it. Those partial ideas are really not in the first idea, in itself, though they are separated out from it. It is a case of destructive distillation." (W6:449, CP 1.384, 1890). Here we have a rather idealist Berkelian view of perception (instead of the empiricistic take), but that Peirce will correct by inserting haecceities, or "the outclash". But the quote did not stop there. Peirce continued in the same paragraph: "When, having thus separated them, we think over them, we are carried in spite of ourselves from one thought to another, and therein lies the first real synthesis. And earlier synthesis than that is a fiction. The whole conception of time belongs to genuine synthesis and is not to be considered under this head." This piece left out in your original quote reveals two important things: 1) The first real synthesis, after dissociation, is the perceptual judgment 2) The concept of time is the is a genuine synthesis which is not perceptual. Actually, it is a synthesis that cannot be separated by dissociation nor by any other kind of separation (precision nor discrimination). More than that, this primordial synthesis underlying the perceptual judgment is precisely what gives the form of syntax for the perceptual assertion reunify what has been separated. This is the continuous predicates, the flow of time given by the flowing of feelings. Auke, here is where Phi and Psi play their roles. The psi part is the synthatical attractiveness of the law of mind, the leading principle that binds together subjects and predicates, premises and their argument. It is something analogous to gravitation. "(...) under this universal law of mind, there [is] the great law of association (including fusion), a principle strikingly analogous to gravitation, since it is an attraction between ideas. There are, besides, other general phenomena of mind not explicable by association. The laws of all these phenomena will be studied under a second suborder of special nomological psychology" (CP. 1.270) Now I can go back to precision and discrimination. Nominalistic epistemology considers only dissociation and discrimination. Dissociation is the first grade of clearness and discrimination is the second grade of clearness, this former being how our conceptions are clearly and distinctly defined as terms of our knowledge. So we discriminate space from time, magnetism from electricity, matter from mind, energy from information, and so on. We then use them as general predicates to signify the world we experience. Discrimination, ruling alone, "cuts the world with an ax living only chunks of being" (to quote Peirce himself). Abstraction by precision allows a intermediate grade of separation, by which you can peel the original predicates given during perception (the predicate "yellow" for the yellow chair), and throw their "yellowness" as the object of a more abstracted predicate. By precision, we make an mental experience upon our phaneron, attending to something while neglecting the rest. It is a "gedanken" experiment that gives us a new possible consequences on a theorematic ground (or from theorematic deduction). By separating space (the chair) from yellow by precision, we can now say that "Something has the character of yellowness". Yellowness is now taken as a real universal predicate for anything that is yellow. But it can also become the object of another proposition given by inquiry: Yellowness is the light wavelength of 517 THz We can say then that the yellow chair emits a wavelength of 517 THz The above is granted by the general form, or syntax, of predication (nota notae). Here is where the attractiveness of the Psi part is fundamental: Everything that has yellowness emits a wavelength of 517 THz This chair is something that has yellowness This chair emits a wavelength of 517 THz In the process of growth of comprehension, perceptual judgement (sensations, first grade of clearness, dissociation) gradually become knowledge by general terms (second grade of clearness, discrimination). The scrutinity of reason upon its own forms of predications through precision (third grade of clearness), we can extract relations not yet apparent and, when they are synthetized in new arguments, we expand our information. Vinicius 2014-04-02 9:41 GMT-04:00 Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>>: Vinicius, My previous message was inspired by the kind of thing Peirce says in the “New Elements” essay of 1904: [[ Every sign that is sufficiently complete refers to sundry real objects. All these objects, even if we are talking of Hamlet's madness, are parts of one and the same Universe of being, the “Truth.” But so far as the “Truth” is merely the object of a sign, it is merely the Aristotelian Matter of it that is so. In addition however to denoting objects, every sign sufficiently complete signifies characters, or qualities. We have a direct knowledge of real objects in every experiential reaction, whether of Perception or of Exertion (the one theoretical, the other practical). These are directly hic et nunc. But we extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling, peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters of which we have no immediate consciousness. All these characters are elements of the “Truth.” Every sign signifies the “Truth.” But it is only the Aristotelian Form of the universe that it signifies. ]] [[ The totality of the predicates of a sign, and also the totality of the characters it signifies, are indifferently each called its logical depth. ]] [[ It is remarkable that while neither a pure icon nor a pure index can assert anything, an index which forces something to be an icon, as a weather-cock does, or which forces us to regard it as an icon, as the legend under a portrait does, does make an assertion, and forms a proposition. ]] With that in mind, I don’t quite follow your argument here, and could use some further explanation on these points: “icons do not enter our concepts as such” “depth signifies the object by applying to it percipua discriminated as predicative terms (mortal, rational, mammal etc).” (gf] I would say instead that the predicate signifies characters of the object and thus furnishes the proposition with its depth.) “The process of discrimination, which is a hypostatic abstraction, is a work of the interpretant.” gf] You’ve lost me there. “What is left after all possible abstraction is done is the continuous predicates - the very syntax of time and that cannot be further discriminated because every try will leave it untouched as before.” gf] Yes, that describes Peirce’s practice of “throwing everything into the subject” to reveal the continuous predicate. But I don’t see how you are connecting that with logical depth or with iconicity. Can you explain further? gary f. From: Vinicius Romanini [mailto:vinir...@gmail.com<mailto:vinir...@gmail.com>] Sent: 1-Apr-14 4:57 PM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapter 5, Semeiotics, or the doctrine of signs Gary, Very quickly: Assuming that we are talking about symbols (concepts, terms, propositions, assertions, arguments etc) I agree that indexes denote the object of the proposition and are associated with breadth. But icons do not enter our concepts as such. The iconic function is given - if we want to dig enough - by percipua, which are the generalized qualities of percepts. So depth signifies the object by applying to it percipua discriminated as predicative terms (mortal, rational, mammal etc). The process of discrimination, which is a hypostatic abstraction, is a work of the interpretant. What is left after all possible abstraction is done is the continuous predicates - the very syntax of time and that cannot be further discriminated because every try will leave it untouched as before. Vinicius ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . -- Vinicius Romanini, Ph.D. Professor of Communication Studies School of Communications and Arts University of Sao Paulo, Brazil www.minutesemeiotic.org<http://www.minutesemeiotic.org/> www.semeiosis.com.br<http://www.semeiosis.com.br/> Skype:vinicius_romanini
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