Section 3.9 of NP brings us one of those Peircean ideas that is startling at
first, but illuminates his whole system of semiotics in the light of
continuity. In this post I'll just give some of the highlights directly from
Frederik's text. By the way, we haven't heard from Frederik for over a week
and don't know why; possibly the illness he was being treated for has turned
out to be more serious than he thought. Let's hope not.
Here are the highlights I've pulled from 3.9:
p. 76: "The triple structure of the Argument refers to the idea that it not
only is a sign for its object by means of the Rheme and the Dicisign
presented in the premise, but also involves the same object a third time,
now appearing as that to which the conclusion pertains."
Here I'll include the entire quote from p. 77-8 of Peirce MS 295 (1906),
since it's not widely available online. Here Peirce uses the terms
Seme/Pheme/Delome instead of Rheme/Dicisign/Argument:
It is only the terminology, and the extension of the division to all signs,
(with the consequent necessary modifications,) that is not to be found in
every treatise on Logic. Every such book tells about the triplet, Term,
Proposition, Argument; but not every book makes it quite clear what it is
that there is a division of. If we are to say that it is a division of all
signs, we shall have to change the definitions of the three classes, not to
their very bottom, but superficially, and so much that precision demands
that new terms should be substituted for 'term', 'proposition', and
'argument'. (...)
Now until I constructed the System of Existential Graphs, and for longer
after than it would be agreeable to me to confess, I never so much as
dreamed of there being any fault to be found with the doctrine of the books
which goes back to the time of Abelard, and without doubt much earlier, that
a Syllogism is composed of three Propositions, and a Proposition of two
Terms. But after this system had been constructed, and after I had found by
experience that its teachings are trustworthy, it one day attracted my
notice that this system represents the relations of Terms, Propositions, and
Arguments quite differently. The exposition of this can wait until the
Reader is in possession of the system. I will now only say that, while this
system does present Semes, yet it would not be incorrect to say that
everything scribed according to this system, down to its smallest parts, is
a Pheme, and is not only a Pheme, but is a Proposition. Delomes (dee'loamz)
also are brought to view. Yet no Delome (dee'loam) is ever on the diagram. A
Graph in this system is a type which expresses a single proposition. Without
just now troubling you with an adequate description of the Delome
(dee'loam), I may point out that it represents no statical determination of
thought but a process of change from one state of belief to another.
But in the last sense, which alone is the essential one, an Argument is no
more built up of Propositions than a motion is built up of positions. So to
regard it is to neglect the very essence of it. (...) ... Positions are
either vaguely described states of motion of small range, or else (what is
the better view,) are entia rationis (i.e. fictions recognized to be
fictions, and thus no longer fictions) invented for the purposes of clear
descriptions of states of motion; so likewise, Thought (I am not talking
Psychology, but Logic, or the essence of Semiotics) cannot, from the nature
of it, be at rest, or be anything but inferential process; and propositions
are either roughly described states of thought-motion, or are artificial
creations intended to render the description of thought-motion possible; and
Names are creations of a second order in service to render the
representation of propositions possible. An Argument may be defined as a
Sign which intends itself to be understood as fulfilling its function.
p. 78: "the reasoning process as such is taken as primitive in the sense
that arguments form the basis and frame for the description of the machinery
that makes it possible. Dicisigns, then, are tools for the description of
phases of reasoning-we may add: tools for making explicit propositions with
the aim of conducting arguments. Thus both Rhemes and Dicisigns may be seen
as potential or truncated Arguments rather than autonomous figures:
"I have maintained since 1867 that there is but one primary and fundamental
logical relation, that of illation, expressed by ergo. A proposition, for
me, is but an argumentation divested of the assertoriness of its premiss and
conclusion. This makes every proposition a conditional proposition at
bottom. In like manner a "term," or class-name, is for me nothing but a
proposition with its indices or subjects left blank, or indefinite." ("The
Regenerated Logic", 1896, CP 3.440)
p. 79: So, all three parts of the Rheme-Dicisign-Argument distinction are
conceived of functionally, in their relation to the ongoing chain of
inference.
This has the important corollary that the Rheme-Dicisign-Argument relation
is not that of compositionality. Even if Rhemes can be derived from
Dicisigns and Dicisigns from Arguments, and even if the Dicisign requires
the involvement of (at least) two Rhemes and the Argument that of (at least)
two Dicisigns, it would be erroneous to say the Dicisign is composed from
two Rhemes and the Argument from two Dicisigns. This is because the syntaxes
of Dicisigns and Arguments, again, are taken to be continuous so that both
Dicisign and Argument may be parsed in different ways and with different
reinterpretations of their constituents. This continuity, granting the
unities of the functions of Dicisigns and Arguments, respectively, is the
basic level of which the functional parts form but aspects-cf. the idea that
any genuine part of a Dicisign must be, in itself, a Dicisign.
All of this flows from the basic idea that semiosis is a continuous process
which reaches its most complete form in the Argument. In this perspective
the whole Universe is not only "perfused with signs" but is a single very
complex sign in itself: "the Universe is a vast representamen, a great
symbol of God's purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities.
Now every symbol must have, organically attached to it, its Indices of
Reactions and its Icons of Qualities; and such part as these reactions and
these qualities play in an argument that, they of course, play in the
universe,-that Universe being precisely an argument" (EP2:193-4).
gary f.
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