Jeff, list,
It does get tricky when we consider the percept as a sign — as the excerpts you quote in your first two paragraphs (below) demonstrate; and I think it gets equally tricky when we consider the qualisign as a percept. But my more specific responses here will be inserted below, starting with your third paragraph … Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] Sent: 14-Dec-15 09:12 List, 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 does say that percepts are, in some respects, vague. Here is one place in "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism: "But not to interrupt our train of thought, let us go on to note that while the Immediate Object of a Percept is excessively vague, yet natural thought makes up for that lack (as it almost amounts to), as follows. A late Dynamical Interpretant of the whole complex of Percepts is the Seme of a Perceptual Universe that is represented in instinctive thought as determining the original Immediate Object of every Percept.†2 Of course, I must be understood as talking not psychology, but the logic of mental operations. Subsequent Interpretants furnish new Semes of Universes resulting from various adjunctions to the Perceptual Universe. They are, however, all of them, Interpretants of Percepts. CP 4.539 I.e., A complex of percepts yields a picture of a perceptual universe. Without reflection, that universe is taken to be the cause of such objects as are represented in a percept. Though each percept is vague, as it is recognized that its object is the result of the action of the universe on the perceiver, it is so far clear." CP 4.539 Fn 2 p 425 Here is a place where he says that percepts have a singular character: "the reader questions, perhaps, the assertion that conclusions of reasoning are always of the nature of expectations. "What!" he will exclaim, "can we not reason about the authorship of the Junius Letters or the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask?" In a sense we can, of course. Still, the conclusion will not be at all like remembering the historical event. In order to appreciate the difference, begin by going back to the percept to which the memory relates. This percept is a single event happening hic et nunc. It cannot be generalized without losing its essential character. For it is an actual passage at arms between the non-ego and the ego. A blow is passed, so to say. Generalize the fact that you get hit in the eye, and all that distinguishes the actual fact, the shock, the pain, the inflammation, is gone. It is anti-general. The memory preserves this character, only slightly modified. The actual shock, etc., are no longer there, the quality of the event has associated itself in the mind with similar past experiences. It is a little generalized in the perceptual fact. Still, it is referred to a special and unique occasion, and the flavor of anti-generality is the predominant one." CP 2.146 For the sake of understanding the division in NDTR between signs based on the mode in which they are apprehended (i.e., qualisign, sinsign, legislgn), I do think it would help to spell out the manner in which each of these types of signs is determined by its object. GF: Peirce does not say that his first trichotomy in NDTR is based on the mode in which they are apprehended; rather he says it is “according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law.” I’ve been accustomed to referring to this parameter as the “mode of being” of the sign in itself. Later, in his 1908 letter to Welby, Peirce’s first trichotomy of signs is “According to the Mode of Apprehension of the Sign itself.” Until now, I’ve been thinking that this was equivalent to the Sign’s “mode of being,” and that his first trichotomy in the Welby letter is equivalent to the first trichotomy in NDTR. Now I think there may be a difference significant enough to explain why the names of the first-trichotomy sign types in 1908 are not qualisign, sinsign, and legisign as they are in NDTR. If we are looking at two different trichotomies here (rather than one trichotomy differently named), then Peirce’s 1908 list of “The Ten Main Trichotomies of Signs” completely dispenses with the first trichotomy in NDTR, so that it does not include a division according to the mode of being of the sign in itself. I think this too is plausible, but before giving my reasons, I’d better quote the whole discussion of the first trichotomy in the 1908 letter so we can compare it with the qualisign/sinsign/legisign trichotomy. Here it is (EP2:483): I. A Sign is necessarily in itself present to the Mind of its Interpreter. Now there are three entirely different ways in which Objects are present to minds: First, in themselves as they are in themselves. Namely, Feelings are so present. At the first instant of waking from profound sleep when thought, or even distinct perception, is not yet awake, if one has gone to bed more asleep than awake in a large, strange room with one dim candle. At the instant of waking the tout ensemble is felt as a unit. The feeling of the skylark's song in the morning, of one's first hearing of the English nightingale. Secondly, the sense of something opposing one's Effort, something preventing one from opening a door slightly ajar; which is known in its individuality by the actual shock, the Surprising element, in any Experience which makes it sui generis. Thirdly, that which is stored away in one's Memory; Familiar, and as such, General. Consequently, Signs, in respect to their Modes of possible Presentation, are divisible (σ) into A. Potisigns, or Objects which are signs so far as they are merely possible, but felt to be positively possible; as, for example, the seventh ray that passes through the three intersections of opposite sides of Pascal's hexagram. B. Actisigns, or Objects which are Signs as Experienced hic et nunc; such as any single word in a single place in a single sentence of a single paragraph of a single page of a single copy of a book. There may be repetition of the whole paragraph, this word included, in another place. But that other occurrence is not this word. The book may be printed in an edition of ten thousand; but THIS word is only in my copy. C. Famisigns, familiar signs, which must be General, as General signs must be familiar or composed of Familiar signs. (I speak of signs which are “general,” not in the sense of signifying Generals, but as being themselves general; just as Charlemagne is general, in that it occurs many times with one and the same denotation.) I think I might as well have marked this division δ instead of σ, [i.e. ‘clear’ instead of ‘partly clear’] except that perhaps the question may arise whether I ought not to have recognized a division according as the sign is a natural sign, which has no party to the dialogue as its author, or whether it be an uttered sign, and in the latter case, is the very sign that is getting uttered or another. But it seems to me that this division turns upon the question of whether or not the sign uttered is a sign of a sign as its Object. For must not every sign, in order to become a sign, get uttered? I think the family resemblance, as it were, between this trichotomy and the one in NDTR is clear, but there is also a subtle difference; and I included that last paragraph of the Peirce excerpt because his question there seems to me quite relevant to what we’re discussing here. (If the percept is a sign, is it a natural sign or an uttered sign?) Turning to the qualisign, we might also ask: When is a sign not a sign? Oddly enough, Peirce gives a direct answer to this question in MS 7 (c. 1903): “The reference of a sign to the quality which is its ground, reason, or meaning appears most prominently in a kind of sign of which any replica is fitted to be a sign by virtue of possessing in itself certain qualities which it would equally possess if the interpretant and the object did not exist at all. Of course, in such case, the sign could not be a sign; but as far as the sign itself went, it would be all that [it] would be with the object and interpretant.” This seems to agree pretty closely with what Peirce says about the qualisign in NDTR: “A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign.” On the other hand, it also seems to agree with what Peirce had written earlier in MS 7: “A quality, in itself, has no being at all, it is true. It must be embodied in something that exists. But the quality is as it is positively and in itself. That is not true of a sign, which exists only by bringing an interpretant to refer to an object. A quality, then, is not a sign.” So is a Qualisign a sign or not a sign? In a way, this is like asking whether the quality of a feeling is the same as the feeling of a quality; or whether the mode of apprehension of something is the same as its mode of being. “For must not every sign, in order to become a sign, get uttered?” And must not every sign, in order to become a sign, get apprehended? To that last question I would say Yes, it must; and therein lies my guess at why Peirce in 1908 does not mention a trichotomy of signs according to their “mode of being”, but instead begins with a trichotomy according to their “mode of apprehension.” This is of course no more than a guess, and I’m not sure whether it offers answers to the questions you’ve raised in the remainder of your post. But it’s just about all I have to say at the moment, so I’ll leave the rest to you … JD: For example, in the Minute Logic, which was written in 1902 (one year before NDTR), Peirce says the following about the relation between the percept and the perceptual jugment: "The most ordinary fact of perception, such as "it is light," involves precisive abstraction, or prescission. But hypostatic abstraction, the abstraction which transforms "it is light" into "there is light here," which is the sense which I shall commonly attach to the word abstraction (since prescission will do for precisive abstraction) is a very special mode of thought. It consists in taking a feature of a percept or percepts (after it has already been prescinded from the other elements of the percept), so as to take propositional form in a judgment (indeed, it may operate upon any judgment whatsoever), and in conceiving this fact to consist in the relation between the subject of that judgment and another subject, which has a mode of being that merely consists in the truth of propositions of which the corresponding concrete term is the predicate. Thus, we transform the proposition, "honey is sweet," into "honey possesses sweetness." CP 4.235 Is Peirce suggesting in this passage that a visual impression of light or a taste impression of sweetness can function as a sign (e.g., a qualisign) because the feeling is abstracted--both prescissively and hypostatically--from the percept? Another possibility is that the impressions of light and taste can function as qualisigns insofar as they are precissively abstracted from the object, and then something like a diagram (what he will later call a percipuum) comes in as the interpretant of the qualisign. The remarks he makes about the conventional symbols expressed as part of a perceptual judgment (e.g., "it is light" "honey is sweet") are the data that we can analyze for the sake of sharpening our account of how signs that are mere feelings (i.e., qualisigns) might function in an uncontrolled inference to a perceptual judgment. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354
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