Jon S., Gary F., Peirce does say that the percept serves, in the first instance, as the immediate object, where the qualisign is brought into a relation to the percipuum--so that the percipuum is determined to be in relation to the same object as the qualisign. Collecting a group of percepts together, they can also serve as the dynamical object in relation to the perceptual judgment, which is the dynamical interpretant. This process, whatever it might amount to, should be conceived as inferential in character. My aim is to see if we can learn a little more about the character of the qualisign by looking more closely at the kind of inference that can take us from a collection of percepts to a perceptual judgment.
The point Gary F. makes is well taken. At the early phases of our inquiry into the character of different kinds of signs and sign relations--where we are trying to set up some nomenclature and make some divisions--accuracy and precision are not essential. We can live with some vagueness in the way we are developing the conceptions. I wonder: what are the ordinary purposes of logic? Whatever they are, I take these ordinary purposes to be something that is preparatory to doing things in a more exacting way. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Jon Alan Schmidt [jonalanschm...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2015 2:41 PM To: g...@gnusystems.ca Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations Thanks, Gary F. Continuing to muse out loud ... If the percept is not a sign of some other object, but rather the (only?) object of the sign that is the perceptual judgment, and "perceptual judgments are the first premises of all our reasonings" (CP5.116), then how are our thoughts (i.e., subsequent signs) ever connected with objects other than percepts? Jon S. On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 3:25 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>> wrote: Jon A.S., IF (I say If!) we can consider the percept as the subject of the perceptual judgment, then I think rhematic indexical sinsign is probably how I would classify it. However, I think we can just as well (maybe better) consider the percept as the object of the sign (the perceptual judgment). If we consider the percept as a sign, then it must have an object of its own, and it’s hard to say how any phenomenon could be the object of a percept. Remember we’re talking logic/semiotic here, not the psychology of perception, which would probably locate the percept in the brain/mind and its object in the external world. But that analysis makes all kinds of metaphysical assumptions that phenomenology eschews. If we stick to phenomenology, we can say that the percept appears, i.e. it is a phenomenon, but it does not appear to mediate between some other phenomenon and a perceiver, as a sign does. It certainly doesn’t mean anything. I think your questions are nice, in the sense used by Peirce when he wrote in NDTR (CP 2.265): “It is a nice problem to say to what class a given sign belongs; since all the circumstances of the case have to be considered. But it is seldom requisite to be very accurate; for if one does not locate the sign precisely, one will easily come near enough to its character for any ordinary purpose of logic.” Gary f. } Throughout the universe nothing has ever been concealed. [Dogen] { http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>] Sent: 9-Dec-15 13:22 Gary, List: Based on the excerpt below, would a perceptual judgment be properly classified as a dicent sinsign? And would the percept itself be a rhematic indexical sinsign? Or is the percept not yet a sign at all? 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 Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 11:39 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>> wrote: GF: I can only assume that you are referring to CP 7.619, and observe that Peirce does not say explicitly that the percept serves as immediate object. That proposition seems at best dubious to me, because the percept is precisely the point where the dynamic/immediate object distinction does not apply. In fact it’s difficult to apply the sign/object distinction to the percept. Moreover, Peirce has almost nothing to say about signs in that entire long essay, and the little he does say is in reference to the perceptual judgment considered as a kind of natural proposition: 633. The other mode of definiteness of the percept consists in its being perfectly explicit. The perceptual judgment carelessly pronounces the chair yellow. What the particular shade, hue, and purity of the yellow may be it does not consider. The percept, on the other hand, is so scrupulously specific that it makes this chair different from every other in the world; or rather, it would do so if it indulged in any comparisons. 634. It may be objected that the terms of the judgment resemble the percept. Let us consider, first, the predicate, 'yellow' in the judgment that 'this chair appears yellow.' This predicate is not the sensation involved in the percept, because it is general. It does not even refer particularly to this percept but to a sort of composite photograph of all the yellows that have been seen. If it resembles the sensational element of the percept, this resemblance consists only in the fact that a new judgment will predicate it of the percept, just as this judgment does. It also awakens in the mind an imagination involving a sensational element. But taking all these facts together, we find that there is no relation between the predicate of the perceptual judgment and the sensational element of the percept, except forceful connections. 635. As for the subject of the perceptual judgment, as subject it is a sign. But it belongs to a considerable class of mental signs of which introspection can give hardly any account. It ought not to be expected that it should do so, since the qualities of these signs as objects have no relevancy to their significative character; for these signs merely play the part of demonstrative and relative pronouns, like “that,” or like the A, B, C, of which a lawyer or a mathematician avails himself in making complicated statements. In fact, the perceptual judgment which I have translated into “that chair is yellow” would be more accurately represented thus: “[cid:image001.jpg@01D13298.32207220] is yellow,” a pointing index-finger taking the place of the subject. On the whole, it is plain enough that the perceptual judgment is not a copy, icon, or diagram of the percept, however rough. It may be reckoned as a higher grade of the operation of perception. On that basis, I don’t think we can extract from this passage any good information about what a qualisign is or how it works. What it does make clear is that the perceptual judgment is not iconic. So at this point I’m going to jump down to your concluding paragraph. GF: There is no vagueness in a percept; it’s a singular. So I don’t see how the concept of qualisign can serve the purpose you suggest here. I think the qualisign is simply a necessary result of Peirce’s introduction of the trichotomy of signs based on the sign’s mode of being in itself. It has to be First in that trichotomy. ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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