Clark, list,
In regard to the Peirce quote from 1907 that you provided, it's also
pertinent to the discussion of biosemiosis, physiosemiosis, etc., taking
place lately here. It was in the 1906 "Prolegomena to an Apology for
Pragmaticism" that he discusses quasi-mind, quasi-utterer,
quasi-interpreter http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/quasi-mind . In
the 1907 passage that you quote, mentioning the Jacquard loom, he
doesn't mention the "quasi-"s although they seem pertinent. But in
another 1907 from the same MS 318, published in CP 5.473 (the famous
"semeiosy" passage), he says that a Jacquard loom should be regarded as
a "quasi-sign", because the action is that of automatic regulation,
which he distinguishes from semeiosy (semiosis).
[Quote]
In these cases, however, a mental representation of the index is
produced, which mental representation is called the _immediate
object_ of the sign; and this object does triadically produce the
intended, or proper, effect of the sign strictly by means of another
mental sign; and that this triadic character of the action is
regarded as essential is shown by the fact that if the thermometer
is dynamically connected with the heating and cooling apparatus, so
as to check either effect, we do not, in ordinary parlance speak of
there being any _semeiosy_, or action of a sign, but, on the
contrary, say that there is an "automatic regulation," an idea
opposed, in our minds, to that of _semeiosy_. For the proper
significate outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the interpretant
of the sign. The example of the imperative command shows that it
need not be of a mental mode of being. Whether the interpretant be
necessarily a triadic result is a question of words, that is, of how
we limit the extension of the term "sign"; but it seems to me
convenient to make the triadic production of the interpretant
essential to a "sign," calling the wider concept like a Jacquard
loom, for example, a "quasi-sign."
[End quote]
I tend to see this distinction as allied a distinction that he makes in
an unpublished MS which the Robin Catalogue describes as follows:
831. [Reasoning and Instinct]
A. MS., n.p., n.d., pp. 2-29, incomplete.
The fine gradations between subconscious or instinctive mind and
conscious, controlled reason. Logical machines are not strictly
reasoning machines because they lack the ability of self-criticism
and the ability to correct defects which may crop up. Three kinds of
reasoning: inductive, deductive, hypothetical. Quasi-inferences.
Well, I don't know what to make of "quasi-inferences" - I'd have thought
that he would regard instinctive or automatic inferences as
quasi-reasonings. I'll be very interested to read MS 831 if it ever
becomes available.
Anyway I've tended to think of genuine semiosis as involving the
capacity to learn, capacity for self-correction etc. (and I've heard
that this is De Tienne's view) - I mean not merely self-correction to
maintain homeostasis or balance while walking etc. (which could be done
by automatic regulation), but 'design-level' self-correction, correction
of one's own methods, correction of one's own semiosic habits, etc.
But one finds inferences embodied in vegetable-level and physical
phenomena, are they not semioses? Are they quasi-semioses? The prefix
"quasi-" starts to seem too vague to capture the possible senses. I also
don't have too firm an idea of all the things that Peirce means by
"mind". Does mind, in Peirce's sense, always involve the capacity to
learn? If I call something a quasi-mind, should that mean like a mind
but not learning? Or could it mean learning like a mind without being a
mind capable of consciousness (I've thought of biological evolution as
having a 'quasi-mind'). Vegetable-level (quasi-)semiosis seems like we
ought to strongly distinguish it from whatever strictly dynamic or
material/chemical (quasi-) semiosis we think there is, because at the
vegetable level, signs or signals are 'interpreted' in terms of highly
specific kinds of pertinence to the organism for the end of the thriving
of the species. It indeed _/seems/_ rather like semiosis as we
ordinarily think of it because, although vegetable-level organisms don't
learn (at least last that I heard of), they behave by seemingly
specific-purposeful interpretants, thanks to the trial-and-error
(quasi-)learning by evolution that made them that way. People set up
the Jacquard loom, put its cards in place, etc., evolution sets up
(vastly more complex) vegetable organisms. The hypothetical Gaia seems
like another case. One might say that it is 'quasi-alive'. I guess it
also has a 'quasi-mind'. Evolving over time, it has 'quasi-mind' in the
(quasi-)learning sense. We need more prefixes, this is turning into mush.
Best, Ben
On 9/16/2014 12:32 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Clark, list
I thought that Cornelis de Waal had found another passage where Peirce
identifies philosophy as logical analysis and logical analysis as
phaneroscopic analysis. I've tried but I can't dig up either Waal's
mention of it or the passage itself.
Yes, analytic philosophy seems tepid next to Peirce. I hardly know
what analytic philosophers mean by 'analysis' or, more importantly, by
'philosophy'. Decades ago I got a similar vagueness from continental
philosophy. In the preface to his _Phenomenology of Perception_,
Merleau-Ponty mentioned that his own kind of philosophy "cannot define
its own scope," at least not yet, insofar as it "has existed as a
movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a
philosophy".
Anyway, for me your question is a difficult one. The question is not
just what Peirce meant or would have meant by the phrase "logical
analysis" by his own lights, but what Peirce thought other people
meant by it (he speaks of " 'so-called' logical analysis"). Peirce
would have been strongly aware of mathematical, logical,
philosophical, and chemical connotations, of course. Adding to the
difficulty is that "analysis" takes on specialized meanings in
specialized contexts. Peirce did not join the authors of the Baldwin
Dictionary till after the definitions of 'analysis' had already been
written, but here's what it says about analysis in logic
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/A3defs.htm#Analysis%20%28in%20logic%29
:
*Analysis* (in logic): Ger. /logische Analyse/; Fr. /analyse
logique/; Ital. /analisi logica/. Literally a resolution, an
unloosening of that which has been combined. The kinds of analysis
may therefore be analogous, but each will have its special
character determined by the nature of the combination to be resolved.
Even within the sphere of logic, this difference is observable.
Analysis means, in one sense, the exhibition of the logical form
involved in concrete reasoning. In another sense, it is logical in
kind, when the attempt is made to show the common character
involved in all special cases where the procedure is of the nature
of resolution of a given whole.
That Aristotle called the central portion of his logical work
_Analytical Research_ indicates that in his view the problem of
logic was to resolve the concrete facts of reasoning and
demonstration into their elements. He distinguished Prior
Analytics (theory of inference) from Posterior Analytics (theory
of proof). The Greek mathematicians worked out in detail the
relations of the analytical to the synthetical method (cf. Pappus,
_Coll. Math._, Bk. VII), and Descartes' general description of his
method (see _Port Royal Logic_, Pt. IV) is an attempt to apply the
same general conceptions as the Greek mathematicians had used to
the whole sphere of knowledge. Modern logic exhibits the tendency,
not wholly justified, to identify analysis with induction and
synthesis with deduction.
/Literature/: D. STEWART, Philos. of the Human Mind, Pt. II. viii;
DUHAMEL, Méth. dans les Sci. de Raisonnement; G. C. ROBERTSON,
Philos. Remains, 82-99; WUNDT, Logik, II. I, i; BIBLIOG. C, 2, /l/
. (R.A
<http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/colls.htm#ra>
.) [Professor R. ADAMSON, Glasgow University.]
One can also look at the Century Dictionary definition of 'analysis'.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PZ6nlaaBWuwC&pg=PA195&dq=%22analysis%22
The P.E.P.-UQÀM list of Peirce's Century-Dictionary words
http://web.archive.org/web/20120209081908/http://www.pep.uqam.ca/listsofwords.pep
includes 'analysis', 'analytic', 'analytics', 'analyze'. Under
'Analytic' the CD includes 'In the _/Kantian logic/_, explicatory;
involving a mere analysis or explication of knowledge, and not any
material addition to it."
Anyway, here is the passage mentioning philosophy as logical analysis,
from the brief 1904 intellectual biography (various drafts). Here one
might get a sense of how Peirce regards philosophy as analysis even
when philosophy includes pragmatism.
[Quote]
Mathematics merely traces out the consequences of hypotheses
without caring whether they correspond to anything real or not. It
is purely deductive, and all necessary inference is mathematics,
pure or applied. Its hypotheses are suggested by any of the other
sciences, but its assumption of them is not a scientific act.
Philosophy merely analyzes the experience common to all men. The
truth of this experience is not an object of any science because
it cannot really be doubted. All so-called 'logical' analysis,
which is the method of philosophy, ought to be regarded as
philosophy, pure or applied. Idioscopy is occupied with the
discovery and examination of phenomena, aided by mathematics and
philosophy. It is extremely doubtful which of its two wings should
be placed first.
[End quote]
Here's the bibliographic information that I have on the intellectual
bibliography:
Peirce, C. S. (1904), Intellectual autobiography in draft letter L 107
(see the Robin Catalog http://www.iupui.edu/%7Epeirce/robin/robin.htm
) to Matthew Mattoon Curtis. Published 1983 in "A Brief Intellectual
Autobiography by Charles Sanders Peirce" by Kenneth Laine Ketner in
_American Journal of Semiotics_ v. 2, nos. 1–2 (1983), 61–83. Some or
all of it is in pp. 26–31 in _Classical American Philosophy: Essential
Readings and Interpretive Essays_, John J. Stuhr, ed., Oxford
University Press, USA, 1987. L 107 and MS 914 are in "Charles Sanders
Peirce: Interdisciplinary Scientist" (first page viewable and article
purchasable at De Gruyter
http://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783050047331/9783050047331.35/9783050047331.35.xml
) by Kenneth Laine Ketner in the 2009 Peirce collection _Logic of
Interdisciplinarity_ http://www.cspeirce.com/newbooks.htm#peirce_bisanz .
Best, Ben
On 9/16/2014 2:27 AM, Clark Goble wrote:
On Sep 15, 2014, at 9:23 AM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com
<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com> > wrote:
(He came to regard philosophy as consisting of "so-called" logical
analysis (intellectual autobiography, 1904, Ketner editor), and to
regarding such logical analysis as really being phaneroscopic
analysis (Peirce to James, 1909, CP 8.305); obviously by "logical
analysis" in that context Peirce did not mean the study of logic _
/per se/ _.)
What do you think he meant by that term broadly speaking? (“so called
logical analysis”) I ask, not because I don’t have some vague sense
of the term, but because that seems to be my limit. Earlier on he
seemed to speak of three degrees of clarity with the second degree
logical analysis and the third degree to be the pragmatic maxim.
However later on he seems to accord “logical analysis” as much more
finding accurate definitions for concepts. (He suggests this for
instance in the letters to Lady Welby but also the Neglected Argument)
It’s tempting to see it as somewhat akin to what happened to analytic
philosophy. However I’ve long found many elements of analytic
philosophy rather tepid relative to what I find in Peirce. I think
his logic of vagueness and generals is rather key to a difference
with how analytic philosophy developed in the 20th century.
In particular his MS 318 is a great example of how he uses this term
(I’m not sure I could easily define it)
Everybody recognizes that it is no inconsiderable art, this
business of “phaneroscopic” analysis by which one frames a
scientific definition. As I practice it, in those cases, like the
present, in which I am debarred from a direct appeal to the
principle of pragmatism, I begin by seizing upon that predicate
which appears to be most characteristic of the definitum, even if
it does not quite apply to the entire extension of the definitum.
If the predicate be too narrow, I afterward seek for some
ingredient of it which shall be broad enough for an amended
definitum and, at the same time, be still more scientifically
characteristic of it.
Proceeding in that way with our definitum, “sign,” we note, as
highly characteristic, that signs mostly function each between
two minds, or theatres of consciousness, of which the one is the
agent that utters the sign (whether acoustically, optically, or
otherwise), while the other is the patient mind that interprets
the sign. Going on with my account of what is characteristic of a
sign, without taking the least account of exceptional cases, for
the present, I remark that, before the sign was uttered, it
already was virtually present to the consciousness of the
utterer, in the form of a thought. But, as already remarked, a
thought is itself a sign, and should itself have an utterer
(namely , the ego of a previous moment), to whose consciousness
it must have been already virtually present, and so back.
Likewise, after a sign has been interpreted, it will virtually
remain in the consciousness of its interpreter, where it will be
a sign,— perhaps, a resolution to apply the burden of the
communicated sign,— and, as a sign should, in its turn have an
interpreter, and so on forward. Now it is undeniably conceivable
that a beginningless series of successive utterers should all do
their work in a brief interval of time, and that so should an
endless series of interpreters. Still, it is not likely to be
denied that , in some cases, neither the series of utterers nor
that of interpreters forms an infinite collection. When this is
the case, there must be a sign without an utterer and a sign
without an interpreter. Indeed, there are two pretty conclusive
arguments on these points that are likely to occur to the reader.
But why argue, when signs without utterers are often employed? I
mean such signs as symptoms of disease, signs of the weather,
groups of experiences serving as premisses, etc . Signs without
interpreters less manifestly, but perhaps not less certainly,
exist. Let the cards for a Jacquard loom be prepared and
inserted, so that the loom shall weave a picture. Are not those
cards signs? They convey intelligence,— intelligence that,
considering its spirit and pictorial effect, cannot otherwise be
conveyed. Yet the woven pictures may take fire and be consumed
before anybody sees them. A set of those models that the
designers of vessels drag through the water may have been
prepared; and with the set a complete series of experiments may
have been made; and their conditions and results may have been
automatically recorded. There, then, is a perfect representation
of the behavior of a certain range of forms. Yet if nobody takes
the trouble to study the record, there will be no interpreter. So
the books of a bank may furnish a complete account of the state
of the bank. It remains only to draw up a balance sheet. But if
this be not done, while the sign is complete, the human
interpreter is wanting.
Rather different from what we find in analytic philosophy I think.
While not quite what Husserl was doing, it is much more hermeneutic
an analysis than one typically sees among analytic philosophers. The
very constructive has a strong dialogical nature perhaps more
Socrates than Quine.
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