Clark, your quotes from CP 3.433-5 jogged my memory and sent me back to their source, Peirces 1896 Monist article The Regenerated Logic; and I found there a good example of a Dicisign, given by Peirce several years before he invented the term, yet fairly clear about the role of iconicity in the dicisign. CP 3.433:
When an assertion is made, there really is some speaker, writer, or other signmaker who delivers it; and he supposes there is, or will be, some hearer, reader, or other interpreter who will receive it. It may be a stranger upon a different planet, an æon later; or it may be that very same man as he will be a second after. In any case, the deliverer makes signals to the receiver. Some of these signs (or at least one of them) are supposed to excite in the mind of the receiver familiar images, pictures, or, we might almost say, dreams that is, reminiscences of sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells, or other sensations, now quite detached from the original circumstances of their first occurrence, so that they are free to be attached to new occasions. The deliverer is able to call up these images at will (with more or less effort) in his own mind; and he supposes the receiver can do the same. For instance, tramps have the habit of carrying bits of chalk and making marks on the fences to indicate the habits of the people that live there for the benefit of other tramps who may come on later. If in this way a tramp leaves an assertion that the people are stingy, he supposes the reader of the signal will have met stingy people before, and will be able to call up an image of such a person attachable to a person whose acquaintance he has not yet made. Not only is the outward significant word or mark a sign, but the image which it is expected to excite in the mind of the receiver will likewise be a sign a sign by resemblance, or, as we say, an icon of the similar image in the mind of the deliverer, and through that also a sign of the real quality of the thing. This icon is called the predicate of the assertion. But instead of a single icon, or sign by resemblance of a familiar image or dream, evocable at will, there may be a complexus of such icons, forming a composite image of which the whole is not familiar. But though the whole is not familiar, yet not only are the parts familiar images, but there will also be a familiar image of its mode of composition. Now, the tramps chalk mark is NOT an icon of its object, rather its a conventional symbol; but its replication on a particular fence is a proposition and a dicisign, and functions as such because its placement there is an index involving an icon, which is the predicate of the proposition (and thus of the assertion). I thought this worth quoting because it might be a more perspicuous example of a nonverbal proposition than the Gun Country example. Besides, the last two sentences anticipate Peirces later doctrine (covered in NP 3.7) of the syntax of the proposition, which is itself iconic in a special way. (So I changed the subject line here from Chapter 3.5 to 3.6.) gary f. From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] Sent: 3-Oct-14 3:11 PM To: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions, Chapter 3.5 On Oct 3, 2014, at 12:30 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> wrote: Perhaps we should distinguish between different ways that the word 'intention' is used in Peirce's texts. There is the common meaning that is expressed when I say, for instance, that my intention in writing the sentences above is to engage in a discussion with colleagues in the hopes of improving our shared understanding of these questions. There is also the more technical meaning of the term that is involved in the distinction between first and second intentions in the theory of logic. I think this is right. The word intention has so many connotations that can lead us astray if we arent careful. Although when Gary says intention need not be conscious I think hes moving us to the world of virtuality within Peirce and so its not intentionality of the sort we usually encounter in philosophy of mind. Frederick definitely does not see intentional acts necessarily accompanying the dicisign. (See his post of Sept 1) As for an example, I cant think of an unintentional dicisign off the top of my head. (Give me time - Im sure someone will) However this statement by Peirce on icons might be of interest in determining his use of intents. The sort of idea which an icon embodies, if it be such that it can convey any positive information, being applicable to some things but not to others, is called a first intention. The idea embodied by an icon which cannot of itself convey any information, being applicable to everything or to nothing, but which may, nevertheless, be useful in modifying other icons, is called a second intention. (CP 3.433) and a few pages later Neither the predicate, nor the subjects, nor both together, can make an assertion. The assertion represents a compulsion which experience, meaning the course of life, brings upon the deliverer to attach the predicate to the subjects as a sign of them taken in a particular way. This compulsion strikes him at a certain instant; and he remains under it forever after. It is, therefore, different from the temporary force which the hecceities exert upon his attention. This new compulsion may pass out of mind for the time being; but it continues just the same, and will act whenever the occasion arises, that is, whenever those particular hecceities and that first intention are called to mind together. It is, therefore, a permanent conditional force, or law. The deliverer thus requires a kind of sign which shall signify a law that to objects of indices an icon appertains as sign of them in a given way. Such a sign has been called a symbol. It is the copula of the assertion. (CP 3.435) This is interesting since it does break with traditional speech act theory where intentionality plays such a significant role. Personally I see Peirces semiotics reversing the usual way signs or interpretation are thought of in philosophy. Thus its objects that determine the interpretant rather than an interpreter interpreting an object to create an interpretation. Rather than a traditional interpretation with conscious creation we have compulsions. And of course, since Ive brought up Derrida & Heidegger a few times that last sentence is relevant to what Ive spoken of before.
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