Hello Jon S., Gary F., List, Jon, given what you say in 1&2 below, then we do have a question. Gary F. says that qualisigns are always icons, while you say that the icons are always based on the relation of the sign to the dynamical interpretant.
What, then, should we say about the following kind of case that Peirce explicitly considers in his writings on perception. In seeing a yellow chair with a green cushion, the awareness of the chair and pillow is a percept that serves as the immediate object. The percept does not represent the chair. Rather, it is a vague awareness that is largely characterized in following terms: "it appears to me," "makes no professions of any kind," "It does not stand for anything," "I can’t dismiss is, as I would a fancy." Peirce asks: what logical bearing does the percept have upon knowledge and belief? He says that it can be summed up in three precepts: a. It contributes something positive. b. It compels the perceiver to acknowledge it. c. It neither offers any reason for such acknowledgement nor makes any pretension to reasonableness. If the person perceiving the chair attends to the feeling of yellow, then this quality of feeling can stand as a qualisign so long as it bears the right kind of relationship to an interpretant. In this case, the immediate interpretant is something like a schema in the imagination, which he describes as having the form of a skeleton of a set, which is a formal set of relations that can serve as a diagram of sorts. To put things in quite simple terms: the quality of the feeling of "yellow" can be thought of as a dot (a monadic kind of thing), that stands in a relation to the quality of feeling of "color," which is also pictured by Peirce as a dot on a page, and the relation of containment between yellow and color is pictured as a line between the dots. So, what is the qualisign? It is not the quality of the feeling of yellow considered in isolation. In order for such a quality to serve as a qualisign, Peirce claims that it must be considered in its relation to other qualities of the feeling--such as the various shades of yellow, the color green or the quality of color itself. What is the immediate interpretant? It is a possible diagram consisting of a skeleton of a set that can be constructed of the formal relations between these colors. He calls the immediate interpretant the percipuum. When he lays out what the percipuum is, it turns out that this interpretant is quite rich in its relation to past and future anticipated feelings--all of which are ordered in terms of such things are relative intensity, time, being spread in space, etc. What then, is the character of the relation between the qualisign (the quality of the feeling of yellow) and the immediate object (the vague awareness of the yellow chair with the green cushion as a percept)? Jon suggest that this relationship is not one of iconicity. Such a term does not apply because this is an internal relation. I suspect that this language of internal relation may prove to be quite helpful, because it is a general way of describing an important distinction between kinds of relations. In "On a New List of Categories," Peirce draws on the scholastic distinction between relations of equiparance and disquiparance. The former can fruitfully be thought of as internal relations of similarity. How does this help us understand the opening moves in NDTR? Peirce later found it necessary to modify the account of what relations of equiparance consist in: In my paper of 1867, I committed the error of identifying those relations constituted by non-relative characters with relations of equiparance, that is, with necessarily mutual relations, and the dynamical relations with relations of disquiparance, or possibly non-mutual relations. Subsequently, falling out of one error into another, I identified the two classes respectively with relations of reason and relations in re. (CP 1.567) My hunch is that Peirce's examination genuinely triadic sign relations in NDTR is guided by his evolving understanding of what is necessary for establishing the kinds of ordered relations between the vague qualities of feelings in our percepts that are necessary for making comparisons between such things as the hue of a yellow chair and the hue of a green pillow. In fact, I think he is attributing to the qualisign the features that are necessary to explain how such comparisons are possible (e.g., in the relatively uncontrolled inferences that give rise to our perceptual judgments). --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Jon Alan Schmidt [jonalanschm...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, December 07, 2015 1:29 PM To: Jeffrey Brian Downard; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations Jeff, List: To answer your corrected questions ... 1. Yes, icon/index/symbol is always based on the relation between sign and dynamical object. 2. No, icon/index/symbol is not a classification of signs that includes the relation of sign to immediate object. I am not going to be able to provide specific references regarding internal vs. external; to be honest, I am not sure whether that terminological distinction comes directly from Peirce's own writings or from the secondary literature. However, my understanding is that the trichotomy for the immediate object/interpretant itself is interchangeable with the trichotomy for its relation to the sign; it is precisely this lack of a separate relation that makes them immediate, rather than dynamical. In fact, that letter to Lady Welby is exactly what I had in mind when I mentioned the "earlier" classification of the immediate interpretant as feelings/experiences/thoughts (vs. hypothetic/categorical/relative). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 1:14 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu<mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu>> wrote: Hello Jon, List, Quick responses and a further question. J.S.: No, icon/index/symbol actually corresponds to the relation between sign and dynamical OBJECT. J.D.: Yes, my apologies for the error. I meant to say: is the icon is a class of signs that is always based on the relation between sign and dynamical object? Or, is it also a classification of signs that includes the relation of sign to immediate object as well? J.S.: Peirce did not propose separate trichotomies for the relations between sign and immediate object or between sign and immediate interpretant, presumably because both of those are INTERNAL to the sign. J.D.: Can you point me to some places where Peirce explains what is internal and what is external to a sign? I'd like to take a look. Note: while I agree that Peirce did not offer a set of terms for classifying signs based on the relation of sign to immediate object or the relation of sign to immediate interpretant, he does talk about kinds of signs that are based on those relations. Here is what he says a letter to Lady Welby. In respect to its immediate object a sign may be 1. a sign of a quality 2. of an existent 3. or of a law. (CP 8.336) Relation of sign to immediate interpretant: 1. those interpretable in qualities of feelings or appearances 2. those interpretable in actual experiences 3. those interpretable in other signs of the same kind in infinite series. (CP 8.339) What aren't these included in the list of the most important kinds of relations that we need to consider when classifying signs. Even if they are not the most important, what light do they shed on Peirce's larger classificatory system for signs and sign relations? --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354<tel:928%20523-8354>
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