I don't think Frederik wants to get into an dispute over words any more than I do.
HP: Word choice is not the issue. Frederik has explained why Peirce avoided the words "subject-object."
GF: Howard, to the extent that you've clarified what you mean by "the subject-object dichotomy" it should be clear that Peircean semiotic has no problem with that distinction, and uses it as much as any philosopher or physicist.
HP: Top say there is "no problem with the distinction" is to miss the issue. Peirce did recognize the epistemic problem connecting the mathematics (the symbols) with the experiment (with matter). Peirce: ". . . the power that connects the conditions of the mathematicians diagram with the relations he observes in it is just as occult and mysterious to us as the power of Nature that brings about the results of the chemical experiment." Because mathematical models are symbolic I also call this the symbol-matter problem, and like physicists I recognize the necessity of this distinction (called the epistemic cut) if any experiment is to make sense. (Wigner called this connection "the most fundamental problem of all.")
Peirce found something "occult and mysterious." If you don't like my words, then can you, or anyone, please express in your own words the nature of the connection that you think Peirce found "occult and mysterious."
Howard
At 12:09 PM 5/10/2015, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
In a letter to Lady Welby (dated 1908 Dec. 14), Peirce says that he does not âmake any contrast between Subject and Object, far less talk about âsubjective and objectiveâ in any of the varieties of the German senses, which I think have led to a lot of bad philosophy, but I use âsubjectâ as the correlative of âpredicate,â and speak only of the âsubjectsâ of those signs which have a part which separately indicates what the object of the sign isâ (SS, 69).
As for âsubjective and objective,â Peirce does occasionally use these terms, when he sees a need to conform to terminology which less scrupulous users will understand. For example:
[[ The acquiring [of] a habit is nothing but an objective generalization taking place in time. It is the fundamental logical law in course of realization. When I call it objective, I do not mean to say that there really is any difference between the objective and the subjective, except that the subjective is less developed and as yet less generalized. It is only a false word which I insert because after all we cannot make ourselves understood if we merely say what we mean. ]]
âAbstract of 8 lecturesâ, undated, NEM IV, 140 (quoted by Stjernfelt 2007, fn 16, p.426).
He also makes (better) use these terms elsewhere, not in reference  to what you call âthe subject-object dichotomyâ but in reference to a logical distinction between two kinds of generality as for instance when explaining pragmaticism in the following excerpt from his article âWhat Pragmatism Isâ (EP2:342).
[[ Whatever exists, ex-sists, that is, really acts upon other existents, so obtains a self-identity, and is definitely individual. As to the general, it will be a help to thought to notice that there are two ways of being general. A statue of a soldier on some village monument, in his overcoat and with his musket, is for each of a hundred families the image of its uncle, its sacrifice to the union. That statue, then, though it is itself single, represents any one man of whom a certain predicate may be true. It is objectively general. The word âsoldier,â whether spoken or written, is general in the same way; while the name âGeorge Washingtonâ is not so. But each of these two terms remains one and the same noun, whether it be spoken or written, and whenever and wherever it be spoken or written. This noun is not an existent thing: it is a type, or form, to which objects, both those that are externally existent and those which are imagined, may conform, but which none of them can exactly be. This is subjective generality. The pragmaticistic purport is general in both ways. ]]
I donât expect any of this to make sense to you, Howard, but it may clarify Peirceâs logic for others.
Gary f.
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