Jerry, you're simply using the word 'individual' in another way than
Peirce does. When Peirce uses the word 'individual' he generally means
something such as this horse (Bucephalus), that building (the Empire
State Building), yonder tree (located on 7th St. in Manhattan), etc. In
"Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are
Determined" (starting on p. 289 in EP 2, also appearing in CP 2.233-72)
Peirce introduces his 10-class system made out of three trichotomies of
signs; he recapitulates it in a 1904 letter to Lady Welby in CP
8.327-41. In that system, any individual serving as a sign is a sinsign;
also in that system, all symbols are legisigns, none are sinsigns, i.e.,
no symbols are individuals. He's explicit about it. Peirce also
discusses there and elsewhere how the same sign can incorporate icons,
indices, symbols. You see a chemical analogy with Peirce's sign
classifications, but if the analogy puts you at odds with what Peirce
said in plain English, then your analogy isn't quite working. Trying to
get me to be less "rigid" in my interpretation of Peirce won't help your
analogy if I'm correct about Peirce. Anyway, Peirce may have been
inspired by some chemical analogies, and his meditations on complex
chemical structures surely helped him think more skillfully about other
complex structures, but he was quite explicit about not basing
philosophical semiotic (or any other kind of cenoscopy) _/logically/_ on
any idioscopic principles or theories (such as physics or chemistry).
I didn't mention species, but since you bring it up: The word 'species'
in Peirce's time was taken to refer to a _/kind/_ as opposed to a total
population of that kind. There is a relatively recent shift of meaning,
as John Collier has pointed out, by some biologists to refer by the word
'species' not just to the species as a kind but to the species' total
population during the course of the species' existence - that total
population as a somewhat scattered and long-existent collective
individual - sort of like an individual swarm or flock, etc., but with
much more dispersion, longevity, and turnover in membership. In that
sense, the sense of a concrete individual (soever scattered, etc.), a
species is an individual even in Peirce's sense. Is that your sense of
'biological species'? Meanwhile, I look up 'chemical species' and find
that definitions vary on whether it is an _/ensemble/_ of identical
atoms or identical molecules or identical ions etc. under observation,
or whether it is simply the unique _/kind/_ to which the identical atoms
or identical molecules, etc. belong. An individual ensemble is a
collective individual, as far as I can tell. But if 'chemical species'
just means the kind to which identical atoms (or the like) belong, then
it is not an individual in Peirce's sense, except in an abstract
universe of discourse with abstract singulars. Now, we often talk that
way, speaking of 'individual kinds' and so on. I suspect that that's
what you mean by 'individual species' both in biology and in chemistry -
you mean a (taxically more-or-less bottom-rung) _/kind/_. Or maybe you
do mean this or that individual ensemble. In any case I really don't
think that by 'chemical species' you mean, for example, the total
population of O_2 molecules as a single concrete collective (though
dispersed) object throughout space and time. Anyway in Peirce the main
sense of 'individual' is not that in the phrase 'individual kind'.
You have not clarified your sense of the word 'individual'. In calling
an atomic symbol 'individual', do you mean (A) an individual instance of
the symbol, a symbolic expression appearing on a certain page of a
certain copy of a certain book? Or do you mean (B) that atomic symbol in
general, across all its instances in a given language or (C) that atomic
symbol in general, across all its instances in all languages and
thought? (B) and (C), in Peirce's system, are legisigns, i.e., generals
serving as signs. If you mean (B) or (C), then you're simply using the
word 'individual' in another way than Peirce does.
Best, Ben
On 7/24/2015 4:17 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:Ben, List:
Although we discussed aspects of this question before, fresh citations
may shed a different hue on the meaning of the CSP's usage in various
contexts. Frankly, I think that your reading of the meaning of the
term "symbol" is to rigid.
First, CSP's trichotomy separates the concept of a sign (qualisign,
sinsign and legisign) sharply and distinctly from the concept of
symbol (and its association of symbol, index and icon) as the
identities associated with and related to the first row terms.
If my recall is correct he asserts that the terms (icon, index and
symbol) contains parts of one another. (This is consistent with
chemical units where all three are used in representation and all
three are representations are products of the human mind from analysis
of data and historical precedence.
In this sense, the formulations of arguments (rhema, dicisign,
arguments, that is logically meaningful terms) necessary draws on the
immediacy of (icon, index, symbol) meanings to formulate the
arguments, general or not.
In Natural Propositions, FS cites the book of Mark Greaves, the
Philosophical Status of Diagrams, (from the Stanford group). This book
compares CSP's logical diagrams with various other forms - Aristotle,
the Square, Venn, and so forth. This book is an historical perspective
that compares logics and diagrams. An extra-ordinary book to be sure!
Are symbols used in diagrams? Are symbols used in graphs? Are symbols
used in calculations?
CSP writes wrt 'beta' graphs,
"It reasonings generally turn upon the properties of individual
objects to one another." 4.510-4.511, (Greaves, p. 167 )
When looking at the trichotomy as a whole, I believe that you are
seeking to outlaw the intertwining and interlacing of meanings of
terms, under the guise of "independence". For example,
Nevertheless, a symbol that incorporates an index (supplied by one's
mind or more physically) makes a sign that can represent an
individual action as an instance of a practice, a form of conduct, a
norm, a general.
makes no sense to me. The atomic symbols incorporate indices
(physically measurable attributes. And they are NOT generals.
More generally speaking, to the extent that an individual is an
instance of a general, it is the individual that represents the
general, not vice versa, Peirce's idea here being that generals,
norms, etc., govern, more-or-less determine, individuals, not vice
versa (or not significantly vice versa); and objects influence,
more-or-less determine, signs to represent them, not vice versa, so
the individuals take the sign role, the generals the object role, in
such cases.
Again, I find this gloss to be meaningless. In the natural sciences,
a species is a species is a species. The concept of a individual
(species) is fundamental to the logic of biology and medicine as well
as chemistry. It is necessary for logic.
The sentence seems to me to be an ad hoc mixture of concepts of set
theory, mathematical independence, and shapeless philosophical usages.
In the pragmatic world, a symbol may represent you as your name, Ben,
or a collection (your family). Grammatically, this is merely a case
of single or plural with respect individuals. What philosophical
point is gained by invoking this sort of sentence?
For closure, I return to my opening remark, your gloss here is to
rigid for my simple mind.
Cheers
Jerry
On Jul 23, 2015, at 11:52 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Hi, Jerry,
You're welcome again. Now, in Peirce's view, symbols not only are
generals but also do not, of themselves, symbolize anything but
generals, so that excludes individual actions from being symbolized.
Nevertheless, a symbol that incorporates an index (supplied by one's
mind or more physically) makes a sign that can represent an
individual action as an instance of a practice, a form of conduct, a
norm, a general. More generally speaking, to the extent that an
individual is an instance of a general, it is the individual that
represents the general, not vice versa, Peirce's idea here being that
generals, norms, etc., govern, more-or-less determine, individuals,
not vice versa (or not significantly vice versa); and objects
influence, more-or-less determine, signs to represent them, not vice
versa, so the individuals take the sign role, the generals the object
role, in such cases. (I give an example in an appendix to this
message.) A symbol is itself individually instanced, in Peirce's
system, not by a concrete individual symbol, which doesn't exist in
Peirce's system, but instead by a kind of indexical sinsign that
points to one's experience of the symbolized object.
But is the question you're asking something more like: Are there
unconscious, instinctual, merely animal-level symbols? In Peirce's
system, they're certainly allowed, since a symbol is a sign that
represents by norm or disposition of interpretation regardless of
(non-)resemblance or dynamical (non-)connection to its object. Such a
norm or disposition could be instinctual. There are places (I forget
where off-hand) Peirce says that not all symbols are artificial (I
mean in the sense that words are), some are natural in some sense.
Unfortunately I don't remember those discussions well.
Best, Ben
Appendix: So, let's say you have an accurate computer-program model
of a storm. Indices help make the program part of a representation of
the storm; but without the indices, the program is a general diagram,
and the actual storm an individual diagram, of the same object, a
mathematical structure. (It would be an impossibly lucky program, to
have been made without indexical connection to the actual storm yet
mirror the storm so well that indices merely need to be added to make
the result able to represent the storm to an interpretant.)
On 7/23/2015 11:38 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
Thanks again, Ben.
(Where would this list serve be without you?)
After reading this again, it became obvious to me (I am a slow
learner) that the underlying issue here is the origin of
symbolization with respect to biological / human actions.
Ben, do you suppose that instinctual actions (such as those that are
directly comparable to animal behavior, such as fight or flight, or
feeding,) are not symbolized? The quasi-hypotheses being merely
mental patterns of spontaneous neuronal assemblies that manifest the
material reality by activating communication toward the ecosystem
through internal electrical musculatures?
Cheers
Jerry
On Jul 23, 2015, at 10:16 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Hi, Jerry, you're welcome. Yes, some of the pages contain few
words. If something looks wrong, you can check it against the
manuscript online at
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:12486086 (also linked at my
transcription
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms831/ms831.htm )
and please do let me know if something's missing. I don't think I
missed anything but sometimes it takes one a few days to see an
error, because, I guess, of slowness of change of frame of mind.
MS 831 is undated but one can see that it must have been written
after the publication of _Studies in Logic_ (1883) because Peirce
mentions its publication.
Another way maybe to narrow the date down: In MS 831, Peirce uses
the words "inference" and "reasoning" to mean pretty much the same
thing, and uses "quasi-inference" to mean instinctive or otherwise
automatic inference. There comes a time when he uses "reasoning" to
mean "conscious, deliberate inference," thus widening the sense of
"inference" to encompass instinctive inference (quasi-inference in
MS 831). I'm not sure how consistent he was about that in later
years, but assembling the dates of later quotes on reasoning and
inference might help suggest a more specific time period during
which he wrote MS 831.
Best, Ben
On 7/23/2015 10:46 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote
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