Hi Kirsti,
I haven't yet said what I think Peirce's view is with respect to the
form/matter distinction. For the most part, I've offered some comments on a
small number of his definitions and explanations--and I've tried to follow a
bit of his historical tracing of the different uses of the distinction.
Having said that, I must admit that some years ago, a group of friends was taking part in
an online conversation of some arguments in Peirce's texts, and I realized that he was
using form and matter in a way that didn't make much sense to me. My frustration grew to
the point that I eventually had to throw my hands in the air and say: "I don't know
what he means in using this distinction."
Since then, I've spent a bit of time trying to tease out what he does mean--and
how the distinction might apply to his account of the phenomenological
categories. If you think I'm heading down the wrong track in any place in my
comments, please explain why. I'd like to save myself from further confusion
if possible, but a comment that I'm mistaken without any explanation as to why
doesn't (yet) offer me much help.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Kirsti Määttänen [[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 5:28 AM
To: André De Tienne; Gary Fuhrman; Gary Richmond; Jeffrey Brian Downard;
Peirce-L
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy, iconoscopy, and tric hotomic
category theory
Jeffrey,
Is quality material? - You write interesting mails to the list, but the
formal/material distinction does not do the job you seem to think it does.
Kirsti
Jeffrey Brian Downard [[email protected]] kirjoitti:
> Gary R., Gary F., André, List,
>
> In what follows, Im respondingat least in partto some suggestions that
Richard Atkins makes in his 2010 Transactions article An Entirely Different Set
of Categories: Peirce's Material Categories about how we might understand
Peirce's phenomenological account of the material aspects of the categories.
>
> Two quick points: for my part, I dont think it is all that difficult to make out the
general ideas behind Peirce's formal and material categories--and the relationship between
the two. The formal categories are articulated in response to the kinds of questions I
tried to set out in the last email. I'm practically quoting from Peirce in "The Logic
of Mathematics; an attempt to develop my categories from within." He makes the same
kinds of points in the 1903 lecture on phenomenology, but in less straightforward terms.
>
> What then, is the general idea behind the material categories? The line of
argument for the formal categories that I've tried to point to is conditional in
form. What formal properties would have to be in experience in order for us to
draw valid synthetic inferences from what we've observed? Once the formal
analysis is complete, he has not yet shown that the three formal elements are
actually a part of our ordinary experience. Much of the burden of a
phenomenological theory is to make this out, and to show that all three formal
elements are found in virtually every part of our experience--both actual and
possible. The methods used in phenomenology teach us how to identify the
elemental categories in the complex systems of qualities, objects and
interpretants that flow in our experience in the process of semiosis. When we try
to move beyond this general idea, things get a bit more difficult. Peirce says a
number of things about the material categories (or as I would put it, the
categories viewed in their more material aspects), and it is hard to see how all
of the things he says are supposed to cohere. As a starting point, I would try to
clarify his distinction between what is formal and what is material. He makes
some really interesting points about the history of this distinction--and he
points out that Kant turns Aristotle's way of thinking about this distinction on
its head. I wonder what Peirce is doing with Kant's way of looking at this basic
distinction? (see CP 6.353-63)
>
> With that much said about the distinction between what is formal and material, I think
any reconstruction of Peirce's account of the material aspects of the categories should
start from the points that he first made in the lectures leading up to "On a New List
of the Categories." His initial remarks are about the character of the categories
considered formally. The category that is first is reference to a ground. The category
that is second is reference to an object. The category that is third is reference to an
interpretant. Then he turns to the categories considered materially. The category of
quality is single reference to a ground. The category of relation (later brute fact) is
double reference to ground and object. The category of representation (later mediation) is
triple reference to ground, object and interpretant. On my reading of Peirce' account of
the categories, this early idea of single, double and triple reference is at the root of all
of the later developments and refinements of his account of the categories--both formal and
material--in phenomenology (i.e., and phaeneroscopy).
>
> Now, for the second quick point. Gary F. says: "Jeff, Im interested in your question, 'is
there any kind of formal relation between the parts of a figure, image, diagram (i.e., any hypoicon)
that does not have the form of a monad, dyad or triad?' That certainly sounds like iconoscopy, but I
confess that I have no idea how we would go about investigating that question." The answer to
the question involves the whole of Peirce's semiotic--and not just his account of the iconic function
of signs. So Peirce is bringing quite a lot to bear on the question. For starters, however, I think
we should consider the examples he thinks are most important in formulating an answer. What Peirce
sees is that, in mathematics, the examples we need are as "plenty as blackberries" in the
late summer. (CP 5.483) What do you know, it is late August. Let's go picking.
>
>
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 4:09 PM
> To: Gary Richmond; Peirce-L; Gary Fuhrman; André De Tienne
> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy, iconoscopy, and trichotomic category
theory
>
> Gary R., Gary F., André, List,
>
> Peirce makes two suggestions for doing phenomenology, and both are reflected
in the place he gives this kind of science in his architectonic.
>
> 1) We should ask: what formal categories must be in experience in order to
make valid synthetic inferences from the things we've observed? Or, putting the
question in a more particular form: what formal elements must be in the
observations we made of some surprising phenomenon in order to draw a valid
adductive inference to an explanatory hypothesis? The same kind of question could
be asked about inductive inferences from a set of data.
>
> 2) In order to answer this question, we should look to math and see what
kinds of mathematical conceptions and principles might be borrowed from this
science so as to give us insight into those formal features of the phenomena we
observe.
>
> These suggestions are reflected in Peirce's placement of phenomenology
between math and the normative theory of logic.
>
> In order to see why these suggestions might be helpful for understanding
Peirce's theory of phenomenology (i.e., phaneroscopy), I'd suggest that we take up
a sample problem. Here is a question that mattered much to Peirce. What kinds of
observations can we draw on in formulating hypotheses in the theory of logic about
the rules of valid inference? Peirce's answer to this question is that we are
able to make a distinction between valid and invalid inferences in our ordinary
reasoning, and that we can classify different kinds of inferences as deductive,
inductive and adductive. The process of drawing on our logica utens in making
arguments and reflecting on the validity of those arguments supplies us with the
observations that are needed to get a theory of critical logic off the ground.
>
> As we all know, any kind of scientific observation we make might contain one
or another kind of observational error. As such, we have to ask the following
questions. Once we have a set of observations in hand, how should we analyze them?
What is more, how can we correct for the observational errors we might have made?
We could frame the same kinds of questions about the study of speculative grammar
as I've stated for a critical logic. For my part, I'm working on the assumption
that Peirce's analysis of the elements of experience is designed to help us give
better answers to these kinds of questions than we are able to get from other
philosophical methods--including those of Kant, Hamilton, Mill, Boole, etc.
>
> The study of icons, I take it, is part of a general strategy of thinking more carefully about
question (1) listed above. Gary R., are you thinking about "iconoscopy" or
"imagoscopy" differently? I think that the careful study of icons can be especially helpful
in setting up a theory of logic because of the essential role that icons have in the process of making
of valid inferences.
>
> With this much said, let me ask a question that I think is really basic for
understanding Peirce's phenomenology: is there any kind of formal relation
between the parts of a figure, image, diagram (i.e., any hypoicon) that does not
have the form of a monad, dyad or triad? That is, take the space in which a
diagram or other figure might be drawn, and take the relations between the parts
of any diagram (both actual and possible), and ask yourself: how are the actual
parts of the token diagram connected to each other and to all of the possible
transformations that might be made under the rules that are used to construct and
interpret the diagram? Is there any formal relation between the parts of the
diagram and the space in which it is constructed that does not have the character
of a monadic, dyadic or triadic relation?
>
> We see that Peirce makes much of the role of icons in necessary reasoning,
including the necessary reasoning by which mathematicians deduce theorems from the
hypotheses that lie at the foundations of any given area of mathematics. The
suggestion I'm making is based on the idea that icons have a similarly essential
role in the framing of a hypothesis and the drawing of an inductive inference. Do
you know of a place where Peirce argues this kind of point? One sort of place
that comes to my mind is the discussions he provides of the process of formulating
hypotheses in mathematics.
>
> --Jeff
>
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Gary Richmond [[email protected]]
> Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2014 11:15 AM
> To: Peirce-L; Gary Fuhrman; André De Tienne
> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy, iconoscopy, and trichotomic category theory
>
> Gary, list,
>
> I suppose I expected--or at least, hoped--that Gary F. would respond to my
post on some of the issues we'd been discussing recently regarding phenomenology,
a topic of some considerable interest to both of us and, hopefully, to others on
the list as well. So, in an off-list email to him I expressed this hope, and Gary
wrote back in a message he said I could reproduce here. (I've interleaved my own
comments within the substantive parts of that message)
>
> Ive already agreed that iconoscopy is probably the only way to make
phaneroscopy scientific, if its formulations themselves are scientific.
>
> I would concur, especially if your qualification is met. But, for now, iconoscopy is
the subject of but a single, as far as I can tell, unpublished article by Andre de Tienne
(who, as I earlier suggested, thought the term 'iconoscopy' didn't exactly catch his
meaning, that something like 'imagoscopy' might come closer). There were also several
discussions of de Tienne's ideas in 2009 (as interest was shown in then by Martin Lefebvre,
myself, and others) and again in 2011 when both Gary F. and I discussed them in the slow
read of Joe's paper, "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?" See:
https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00043.html
>
> Still, the idea of this second phenomenological science seems sound to me,
and even necessary. Continuing:
>
> But I dont have a proper response to this:
> So what exactly are "the elements of the phaneron" once one's stated the
obvious, that is, the three universal categories?
> I dont think thats obvious at all, or maybe I dont get what you mean by
obvious here. Its not even obvious to many list members what it means that the
three categories are universal . So Im stumped for an answer to that question.
>
> Hm. I guess I'm stumped by your being stumped. It may be that some, perhaps many, list
members don't 'get' Peirce's categories at all, let alone see them as 'universal'. But some
people do observe "the elements of the phaneron" and do see them as universal. I
would even suggest, by way of personal example, that I saw them before I was even exposed to
Peirce's writings, and before I could give them names (certainly not firstness, secondness,
and thirdness, but, perhaps, something vaguely approaching something, other, medium). This
is merely to say that, if Peirce is correct and that the elements of the phaneron are truly
universal, then there's no reason why anyone attuned to that kind of observation shouldn't
and couldn't have touched upon them before having Peirce's precise and helpful names for
them.
>
> Phenomenology is admittedly a difficult science to grasp and even more
difficult to 'do', so I can imagine that many folk, including many philosophers,
haven't developed, or fully developed, the kinds of sensibilities and abilities
which Peirce thought were essential in doing this science--that is, they haven't
developed them any more than, for example, I've developed some of the mental
skills necessary for taking up certain maths. But, as to our interests and
talents, vive la difference!
>
> Also its still not clear to me how category theory or trichotomic is
related to phaneroscopy and iconoscopy, or why its part of Peircean
phenomenology (rather than logic or semiotic, or even methodeutic). It seems to
take the results of phaneroscopy (as articulated by iconoscopy, I suppose) and
apply them to the analysis and classification of more complex phenomena such as
semiotic processes. If so, then it should be subordinate to phenomenology in the
classification of sciences, not part of it
>
> Here I must completely disagree. While it is true that trichotomic can and
will be applied in principle to semiotic, it is my opinion--well, more precisely,
my experience--that trichotomies are discovered in phenomenological observation.
And I personally have no doubt that Peirce observed them in this way. It may be
that one needs a kind of logica utens to sort out some of these structures after
the fact of the observation of them, but, for example, it is possible in observing
many phenomena, to 'see' that firstness, secondness, and thirdness form a
necessary trichotomy within them,so to speak; and that 'something', 'other',
'medium' requires a vectorial progression from 1ns, through 2ns, to 3ns, and in
precisely that (categorial, in this case, dialectical) order.These are, of course,
two of the most basic expressions of (a) trichotomic and (b) vectorial
progression. At the moment I can see no other place for the observation of such
trichotomic structure and the establishing of this as a principle for the use by
sciences which follow phenomenology except at the end (the putative third
division) of it.
>
> In logic, of course, Peirce considers diagrams more essential than language;
but I dont see how diagrams can be used in phenomenology to avoid language, so I
dont have a useful suggestion for doing that either, although I wouldnt want to
say that it cant be done. I was hoping somebody else would have a better response.
>
> But certainly very many, perhaps most, diagrams of considerable value to and
use in science necessarily require language, or use language as an adjunct. This,
for example, is the case for some of the trichotomic diagrams Peirce offers in
certain letters to Lady Welby. The diagrams I use in trikonic are meant, first, to
show the categorial associations of the terms of a genuine trichotomic
relationship (those icons/images identified in what might be called an iconoscopic
observation, then given names) and, second, to show the possible vectors (or
paths) that are possible--and, some times, evident-- in some of them. A logica
utens allows one to extrapolate rather far in this vectorial direction, in my
opinion. But such a use of logica utens is the case in theoretical esthetics and
ethics as well. Ordinary logic (logica utens) need not and probably cannot be
avoided in the pre-logical (i.e., pre-semiotic, pre-logica docens) sciences.
>
> If any of the above is useful as a prompt for a further explanation of category
theory , feel free to quote it and reply with a correction! Meanwhile, yes, I am busy
with a number of things these days &
>
> Yes, your remarks have been at least personally useful, especially in seeing
that until the first two branches of phenomenology, phaneroscopy and, especially,
iconoscopy, are much further developed, trichotomic category theory will lack a
solid basis. Still, important science has been accomplished in all the
post-phenomenological sciences without this grounding and I expect this to happen
in trichotomic as well.
>
> Peirce clearly saw the categories as a kind of heuristic leading him to a
vast array of discoveries along the way. It is not surprising, then, that late in
life he settled on an essentially trichotomic classification of the sciences. It
seems to me that if one allows for a second phenomenological science, iconoscopy,
that it makes sense to at least look for yet a third one--perhaps especially in
this science which discovers three universes of experience.
>
> And further, it seems to me that the first of the semiotic sciences,
theoretical or semiotic grammar, gets one of its most important principles,
namely, trichotomic structure (cf. object/sign/interpretent;
qualisign/sinsign/legisign; icon/index/symbol; rheme, dicent, argument; the
trichotomic structure of the 10-adic classification of signs; etc.) not out of
thin air, but from some science preceding it according to Comte's principle of the
ordering of the sciences, that those lower on the list drawn principles from those
above them.
>
> Suffice it to say for now that in my opinion trichotomic category theory ought be
placed in phenomenology, not further down in the classification of the sciences (Gary, you
suggested methodology, which makes no sense to me at all), And, rather than being
"subordinate to phenomenology," it seems to me that, within phenomenology, and at
the conclusion of it, that it provides exactly the bridge leading to the normative sciences,
but especially to semiotic grammar.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary
>
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> C 745
> 718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690>
>
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