Ben, lists,
Thanks for this excellent work, even if I'm left with the same question you
had concerning the fate of the singular symbol.
I'm about to be traveling again--btw, I understand Frederik is as well from
an off-list email message today saying he's traveling to Paris to give an
address--but this time I'm taking NS with me and hoping I have good
internet connections during my travels. I'll be back in NYC by Monday and
hope to rejoin the conversation then if, perhaps, I can't connect on the
road.
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*
On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> Gary R., Gary F., lists,
>
> A little more on what happened to the abstract and singular symbols.
>
> The singular symbol / the subindex designates, names, or says 'this' or
> 'that', etc. Earlier Peirce had accounted those functions as indexical. In
> 1885 he said that demonstrative and relative pronouns and some other things
> that he later called subindexes are nearly pure indices:
>
> The index asserts nothing; it only says "There!" It takes hold of our
> eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and
> there it stops. Demonstrative and relative pronouns are nearly pure
> indices, because they denote things without describing them; so are the
> letters on a geometrical diagram, and the subscript numbers which in
> algebra distinguish one value from another without saying what those values
> are.
> ('On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation',
> W 5:162-3, 1885
> https://web.archive.org/web/20130301083318/http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html
> (Commens's new site is temporarily down for maintenance)
>
> In "Sundry Logical Conceptions" (1903) in EP 2, he introduces ideas of the
> singular symbol and the subindex, which seem to be the same thing.
> According to that text, the symbol is always a general, the index is always
> an individual. In "Nomenclature" (1903) in EP 2, he introduces the idea of
> the indexical legisign, which will let us use the type-token
> (legisign-sinsign) division with indices like 'this'.
>
> In the Dec. 24 1908 draft letter to Lady Welby on the ten trichotomies,
> Peirce has a trichotomy consisting of (1) the descriptive sign, (2) the
> designative/denominative sign, and (3) the copulant/distributive sign. To
> keep a long story short, that alone tells you that the classification will
> result either in iconic and indexical designatives, or in indexical and
> symbolic designatives. According to Peirce's tentative co-classifications
> in that letter, the result is iconic and indexical designatives, and no
> symbolic designatives. Of course, Peirce did not complete the ten
> trichotomies to his own satisfaction, so far as we now. Here's an image
> http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/attachment/2204107/2/10ad5.GIF of some of
> Peirce's co-classifications in the Dec. 24, 1908 letter, consisting of,
> first, an illustration of his famous co-classifications of the members of
> the three sign-trichotomies in "Nomenclature" (1903); second, an
> illustration of his expanded co-classification including the old three now
> numbered 1st, 4th, and 9th, by Peirce, along two new trichotomies numbered
> 2nd & 3rd by Peirce, in which I stick to the numbering of the trichotomies;
> and, finally, an illustration of those same co-classifications by Peirce
> but with the trichotomies re-ordered (3, 2, 1, 4, ...9) so that the lines
> indicating Peirce's co-classifications follow the pattern of the standard
> three trichotomies.
>
> As to what happened to the abstract symbol: In a previous post, I
> mentioned that Peirce got into the abstract/concrete issue in the ten
> trichotomies. The sign trichotomy abstractive-concretive-collective
> consists in signs classified by the mode of being (phenomenological
> category) of their object. (The abstractive sign is a sign of a quality or
> possibility, the concretive sign is the sign of an individual, a fact,
> etc., and so on.). According to Peirce's tentative co-classifications in
> the Dec. 24, 1908 letter, an abstractive sign is always a descriptive
> qualisign icon. So, there's no getting an abstract symbol by that route.
> Yet obviously a word like 'redness' is a symbol and refers to an
> abstraction of a quality. I guess the real question in terms of "Sundry
> Logical Conceptions" (in "Syllabus", 1903), is, if the singular and
> abstract symbols were both degenerate symbols, what about afterward, when
> the idea of the singular symbol seems to have absorbed back into the idea
> of the index via the idea of the indexical legisign? Well, I don't know.
>
> Best, Ben
>
> On 10/1/2014 6:48 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>
> Gary R., Gary F., lists,
>
> Yes, I think that the subindex is the singular symbol. Well, I can't say,
> for example, that Peirce didn't have in mind more than one kind of singular
> symbol, but I found no textual evidence for that. Anyway the singular
> symbol is a sign for an individual thing, and is singular in the same sense
> as a name like 'Socrates' is said in standard logic to be a singular term -
> not because the symbol or term itself is a singular object, but instead
> because it refers to a singular object. It really seems like the subindex,
> which, Peirce said, is not an individual. The simplest explanation is that
> the subindex is the singular symbol. I remember years ago looking very hard
> for a passage where comes out and says so, but I didn't find one.
>
> Personal names, demonstratives, designations, etc., things that Peirce had
> customarily classified as indices but then classified instead as subindices
> in MS 478 (third section of "syllabus" - "Sundry Logical Conceptions"), are
> once again classified as indices in his writings after MS 478. So he quite
> seems to have dropped the non-index subindex.
>
> I said that I wasn't sure that he stuck with the idea of the singular
> symbol. If he flatly identified it as the subindex, then I'd say that he
> dropped it. I don't know what he did with the abstract symbol, which I take
> to include abstract terms like 'redness'. Peirce was very likely aware of a
> traditional division of terms in logic into singular and general and into
> concrete and abstract, and he gets into the concrete/abstract thing in his
> ten sign-trichotomies.
>
> Best, Ben
>
> On 10/1/2014 5:41 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
>
> Ben, Gary F, lists,
>
> So, putting your posts together, Ben, I think that you're saying that the
> *Singular Symbol* is better understood as the "Subindex" (you earlier
> remarked that Peirce didn't stick with the Singular Symbol notion)? Or are
> they equivalent terms?
>
> And what do you make of the "Abstract Symbol" in the same sentence in
> which the "Singular Symbol" occurs?
>
> Here are the Subindices quote followed by the Singular/Abstract Symbol
> quote again for ready reference for whomever may be interested in this
> analysis.
>
> Subindices or Hyposemes are signs which are rendered such principally by
> an actual connection with their objects. Thus a proper name, personal
> demonstrative, or relative pronoun or the letter attached to a diagram,
> denotes what it does owing to a real connection with its object but none of
> these is an Index, since it is not an individual. CP 2.284
>
> There are two kinds of degenerate symbols, the Singular Symbol whose
> Object is an existent individual, and which signifies only such characters
> as that individual may realize; and the Abstract Symbol, whose only Object
> is a character. CP 2.293
>
> Best,
>
> Gary
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690
> <718%20482-5690>*
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>
> Gary R., Gary F., lists,
>
> I'm not sure that Peirce stuck with his idea of a Singular Symbol. CP
> 2.293-4 is from the "Syllabus" (circa 1902, according to the CP editors).
> In a "Syllabus" passage - the one on subindices a.k.a. hyposemes, dated
> 1903, he said that indices are individuals - he had not embraced the idea
> of the indexical legisign yet.
>
> [Quote]
> _*Subindices*_ or _*hyposemes*_ are signs which are rendered such
> principally by an actual connection with their objects. Thus a proper name,
> [a] personal demonstrative, or relative pronoun or the letter attached to a
> diagram, denotes what it does owing to a real connection with its object
> but none of these is an Index, since it is not an individual.
> [1903 | Syllabus: Syllabus of a course of Lectures at the Lowell Institute
> beginning 1903, Nov. 23. On Some Topics of Logic | EP 2:274]
>
> I dimly remember another passage touching on this issue in "Syllabus" but
> it's been years and years.
>
> Best, Ben
>
> On 10/1/2014 1:04 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
>
> Gary F, lists,
>
> Gary wrote that in rereading the Speculative Grammar part of the Syllabus
> that this struck him:
>
> GF: that the interpretant of a dicisign or proposition represents the sign
> itself as well as its object, and represents it as an *index* -- which,
> strictly speaking, lacks the *generality* which makes the argument a
> symbol and thus more genuine.
>
> I think that your rewording *is* helpful (but then see the CP 2.293-4
> quoted below which tends to complicate the matter for me); and, further,
> that your notion that the reason that Peirce did so much self-rewording was
> "to get through to the real, general, genuine Thought that was . . . a
> piece of the Truth" and not a more (mere) personal expression of it, makes
> good sense. I'm not sure that his re-wordings *always* made his thinking
> more transparent, but often enough they did.
>
> You also asked why I thought that Peirce's comment that "A proof or
> genuine argument is a mental process which is open to logical criticism"
>
> GR: . . . is in any way incompatible with the notion that the dicisign
> might be described as 'degenerate' relative to the argument.
>
> First, would you say that a 'proof' is but a species of genuine argument?
> While it makes a kind of sense to me to say that the dicisign is degenerate
> relative to the argument, I wonder if this isn't straining Peirce's
> terminology a bit. Perhaps I was thinking that Peirce speaks in places of
> degenerate symbols *per se*. For example:
>
> . . . while the complete object of a symbol, that is to say, its meaning,
> is of the nature of a law, it must denote an individual, and must signify a
> character. A genuine symbol is a symbol that has a general meaning. There
> are two kinds of degenerate symbols, the Singular Symbol whose Object is an
> existent individual, and which signifies only such characters as that
> individual may realize; and the Abstract Symbol, whose only Object is a
> character. CP 2.293
>
> I think the meaning here is fairly clear, that there is one kind of
> genuine symbol (one having a "general meaning"--but that would seem to
> apply to symbols other than the 'proof' would it not?) and two kinds of
> degenerate symbols, the Singular (its object being an individual) and the
> Abstract (its object being a character). But in speaking of" the immediate
> interpretant of an index," Peirce goes on to say:
>
> Although the immediate Interpretant of an Index must be an Index, yet
> since its Object may be the Object of an Individual [Singular] Symbol, the
> Index may have such a Symbol for its indirect Interpretant. Even a genuine
> Symbol may be an imperfect Interpretant of it. So an icon may have a
> degenerate Index, or an Abstract Symbol, for an indirect Interpretant, and
> a genuine Index or Symbol for an imperfect Interpretant. CP 2.294
>
> I'm having considerable difficulty parsing this second paragraph,
> especially as to how he's using the terms 'imperfect' and 'indirect' (as
> opposed to 'intended'?) But it seems to me that it might be
> important--especially in getting at the concept of "genuine"--to try to
> grasp Peirce's meaning here.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690
> <718%20482-5690>*
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
>
>
>
>
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