> On Nov 30, 2015, at 6:15 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote: > > Probably the most common distinction made by Peirce in this connection is > that between real relations and relations of reason
Yes, that section of The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus I linked to yesterday goes through that a bit. > “Relations which are mere comparisons, the members being related only in > virtue of characters which each cou1d equally well have were the other > annihilated, were called relations of reason by the old logicians, in > contrast to real relations. They are the seconds of the internal type.” But > that doesn’t help much in sorting out triadic relations. I’m not sure I’d go that far. I think they are helpful. After all a triadic relation involves the token that associates the interpretant to the object. Knowing how the interpretant and object are related thus deals with a large class of triadic relations although it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the object-token relationship. It’s Scotus who makes what today we’d call the externalist move and which Peirce makes as well. That is instead of distinguishing mental signs he notes there’s no division among objects. Scotus quips “rose is not divided into real roses and merely conceptual roses for they are two modes of being of the same thing.” That’s pretty important for understanding thirdness. (I think it relates heavily to Heidegger’s notion of being as well) I also think Scotus’ notions of third-mode relation gives us a lot of the structure of the sign-relation that Peirce emphasizes. (That is the relation to the dynamic object is via a guess due to the dependence relation being one direction) That section on Scotus and relations I linked to also explains why these relationships aren’t merely relations of reason. While that book doesn’t get into it I also think Scotus’ work on transitivity of signs relates to Peirce as well. A sign of the sign of a is also a sign of a. That effectively gives us Peirce’s continuity. But more importantly it gives Scotus his argument for externalism. So this entails, according to Scotus’ argument, that signs can’t merely be mental. But since for any sign you can create a new sign with the same relation between object and interpretant you get continuity. Finally I think this explains the sign-token since if you can always create a new sign you can always have this intermediate sign. This gives you the dynamic object and immediate object but the immediate object can always be seen as a sign-token when looking at one of these associated signs. Now usual caveats apply. It’s been years since I last studied Scotus closely. And to be honest most of my reading was relative to Heidegger, not Peirce. But I do think he’s an important source for understanding a lot of this. Further I think looking at it from a source with a different sort of arguing and terminology can be helpful to clarify the terminology around Peirce. Often translating our arguments or assertions is a very helpful endeavor for clarity.
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