John, list,
I agree that no phenomenon can be a "pure first", but for the reason that firstness, secondness and thirdness are elements of every phenomenon (or as Peirce put it, of the phaneron). However I disagree with your belief that "we infer the existence of firsts from a theory of signs." On the contrary, since a sign is a kind of phenomenon, a theory of signs has to be grounded in phaneroscopy, in order to account for the possibility of semiosis. Peirce himself did not fully realize this until 1902, but his subsequent definitions of "sign" all involve the three elements of the phaneron, either explicitly or implicitly. On this point I disagree not only with you but also with Joe Ransdell, and I gave my reasons in the Ransdell issue of Transactions, so I won't elaborate on them here. The fact that Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are extremely abstract concepts does not imply that we infer them from a theory of signs, and does not preclude them being elements of direct experience, as Peirce said that they were. And this makes a big difference in the way we read Peirce's logic and semiotic, which does indeed apply to "dumb animals" as well as to words. gary f. From: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za] Sent: 3-Aug-14 1:40 PM To: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for Stephen, It seems to me if you are aware of something as distinct from something else, irrespective of if you put a word to it, then it is not a pure first. If you are not aware of it as distinct from something else, I question whether you can be aware of it. In other words, I question whether there are an "bare" firsts. I believe we infer the existence of firsts from a theory of signs. In other words, we get at them through abstraction, not direct experience. I don't think think this has any consequences for Peirce's view that all thought is in signs, but it does put some limits to how far we can go with phaneroscopy. In any case, what I was saying has nothing to do with words per se, and would also apply to the dumb animals. John At 12:38 AM 2014-08-01, Stephen C. Rose wrote: It is the penumbra of everything within the mind that you experience prior to putting a word to it that attests to the independent existence of "uninterpreted phenomena". I think it is for this reason that the writing of words is always a sort of slaying of what was there. This is a temporal event. It proceeds I think from the conscious sense of there being more than one can name and its editing down to one or more terms that is seen to be the named sign. This is my experience of how signs may evolve within consciousness. @stephencrose <https://twitter.com/stephencrose>
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