Gary F, list,
As I said, I'll leave you the last (substantive) word in these two matters
in this thread. So, as your last word included questions, I'd suggest that
we move the discussion off-list. We seem to be talking past each other and,
again, that may be (1) because our purposes are different and/or (2) you
are still very focused on NDTR and I'm taking a more general view of both
(a) the 9 parameters and (b) the 6 vectors.
But, honestly, I'm surprised at the distance there is between us in both
these matters. Perhaps there's even a (3), that we're working at different
levels of abstraction. This 'surprise' of mine is especially so for the 9
parameters which seem to me to be a pretty standard arrangement--nothing
particularly novel there except an emphasis on the categoriality of all
s-o-i and the 3 x 3 parameters (and my diagramming that categoriality in
the way I do).
Similarly, I pointed to Parmetier as regards the mirror of determination
and representation, so at least I'm not alone in seeing it this way. That
you're not seeing my (his) kind of example as expressing this may also be
the result of (1), (2) or (3). But to be so far apart on what seem to me to
be rather fundamental issues is, I must admit, a bit unnerving.
So, let's take this off-list and, perhaps, onto the "mirror" thread (I'd
rather prefer to discuss all 6 vectors and 3 mirrors there rather than just
the 'determination'/'representation' one as I'll maintaing that one can
find vectors--and even mirrored vectors--throughout Peirce's science and
logic as semiotic (so the consideration of specific examples, that is, any
particular disagreement as to whether something is a 'mirror' or not may be
a not quite to the point--at least as I'm looking at it at the moment).
Perhaps the entirety of this discussion needs a bit 'cooling off'--it
certainly seems to me that I need to distance myself a bit from it, reread
your posts, and try to figure out why we seem to me to be talking past each
other.
I'm also working on a post to introduce an entirely new thread in the
consideration of Peirce's late thinking on pragmatism, and perhaps I'd
prefer to concentrate on that at the beginning of the new year. (My sense
in reading your latest post to the 'mirror' thread is that I'll need to
reflect on your comments there for a while as well before responding).
Best,
Gary R
[image: Gary Richmond]
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <718%20482-5690>*
On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 10:11 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Gary R,
>
>
>
> My responses interleaved.
>
>
>
> } All particulars become meaningless if we lose sight of the pattern which
> they jointly constitute. [M. Polanyi] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
>
>
> *From:* Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 30-Dec-15 17:27
>
> Gary F. list,
>
>
>
> As we discussed off-list, I'll try to answer the questions you posed in
> your post of 12/24, give you "the last word" in response if you'd like it,
> then move this facet of the discussion off-list and, hopefully, to the
> 'mirror' thread, hardly begun.
>
>
>
> I'm away from my NYC apartment until 1/4, so I'll just give brief answers
> with no textual support for now. As I noted earlier, trying to incorporate
> the connection to the longish Peirce quotes you provided has, perhaps,
> slowed down my response. However, since as you off-list suggested, those
> quotes may have more to do with your interests than with mine, I won't much
> refer to them. Also, this discussion seems to have moved on, and some of
> the comments by myself and others in this and associated threads may have
> already offered at least part of the answer to one of them. You wrote:
>
>
>
> GF: In the case of the three trichotomies which you refer to as “this
> particular trichotomy of trichotomies,” I’m not sure whether you meant
> “this *triad* of trichotomies,” or are claiming that the three
> ‘parametric’ trichotomies represent a division of something else into
> three. (Or maybe you’re just rhetorically elevating the status of this
> triad, as in the expression “King of Kings”?) If you do regard them as a
> trichotomy (in the way that icon/index/symbol is a trichotomy *of the
> possible relations of the sign to its object*), then I’d like to know
> what it is that this meta-trichotomy divides into three.
>
> GR: As I've remarked in several posts this year and, really, over the
> years, I use the term "trichotomy" *exclusively* in the sense of such
> tricategorial divisions that Peirce describes in 'Trichotomic', 'A Guess at
> the Riddle', and many other places. So, I do *not* mean simply "this
> triad of trichotomies," but, indeed, "this trichotomy of tirchotomies."
>
> GF: OK, so this trichotomy of trichotomies divides something into three,
> in the sense that Peirce divides signs according to their mode of being to
> give three types (qualisign/sinsign/legisign). But I still don’t see what
> you are dividing into three to give the three trichotomies of signs in
> NDTR, or what the parameter is according to which this thing is divided. (I
> am of course using the word “thing” in the broadest possible sense, not
> limited to *existing* things.)
>
> GR: Still, it's possible that we are discussing, or perhaps *emphasizing,*
> different things, you centered on the text of NDTR (which I was not in any
> of my earlier posts in this thread), I on what I've been referring to as
> the nine parameters of the three trichotomies.
>
> GF: But the three trichotomies we’re talking about are the three which
> Peirce defines in the text of NDTR, are they not? If not, then we shouldn’t
> be using the same names for their members that Peirce gave for the three
> trichotomies of signs in NDTR.
>
> GR: So, employing the kind of diagram I typically do to show trichotomic
> relations around a symbol I call the 'trikon', an equilateral triangle on
> its side pointing to the right, where the three categories of a genuine
> trichotomic (tricategorial) division are always in the same places, so:
>
> 1ns (firstness)
>
> |> 3ns (thirdness)
>
> 2ns (secondness)
>
> Although some do not agree, many Peircean semioticians consider a
> fundamental semiotic trichotomy to be:
>
> 1ns (Sign = Representamen)
>
> |> 3ns (Interpretant)
>
> 2ns (Object)
>
> GF: Is this equivalent to Peirce’s statement that “A *Representamen* is
> the First Correlate of a triadic relation, the Second Correlate being
> termed its *Object,* and the possible Third Correlate being termed its
> *Interpretant*” (CP 2.242)? If so, can we assume that “1ns” is inherent
> in the first correlate of any triadic relation, “2ns” in the second
> correlate, and “3ns” in the third correlate? And are these the same
> “Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness” which Peirce calls the “elements of
> the phaneron”? I think we need answers to those questions in order to
> consistently interpret these diagrams around the trikon, because it is not
> at all obvious that the three categories as elements of the phenomenon are
> exactly equivalent to the three correlates of a triadic relation.
>
> GR: If one accepts *that* categorial division, then one can diagram the
> trichotomy of trichotomies, yielding what I've termed the 9 parameters, as
> follows:
>
> As to the Sign itself:
>
> 1ns (Qualisign)
>
> |> 3ns (Legisign)
>
> 2ns (Sinsign)
>
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . .As to the Interpretant:
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . .1ns (Rheme)
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . |> 3ns (Argument)
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . .2ns (Dicent)
>
> GF: Is this equivalent, in your view, to Peirce’s trichotomy “according as
> its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility or as a sign of
> fact or a sign of reason”? I don’t think so, and if I’m right, then it’s
> problematic for you to use the same terms for the members of the trichotomy
> that Peirce uses. But I’ll wait for your answer before explaining the
> difference I see.
>
> As to the Object:
>
> 1ns (Icon)
>
> |> 3ns (Symbol)
>
> 2ns (Index)
>
> GF: Is this equivalent, in your view, to Peirce’s trichotomy “according as
> the relation of the sign to its object consists in the sign's having some
> character in itself, or in some existential relation to that object, or in
> its relation to an interpretant”? I don’t think so, because your division
> is “as to the Object” while Peirce’s is as to the *relation* of the sign
> to its object. Divisions of sign types as to their objects are certainly
> possible — Peirce gives two of them in his 1908 ten-trichotomy analysis —
> but that’s different from what Peirce is doing to come up with this
> particular trichotomy. But maybe you’re just using a kind of shorthand
> here, and it is the representamen’s *relation* to the object that you are
> trichotomizing?
>
> GR: There seems to be growing consensus on this list (and more generally)
> that, whether you call these nine 'parameters', as I do, or 'TERMS', as
> does Jon, they are most certainly *not* 'monadic signs' as Sung seemed to
> be arguing (I discussed the ambiguousness, as I see it, of the term 'sign'
> in Peirce's usage in another post).
>
> As to your question regarding 'Involution' you wrote:
>
> GF: Another term you’ll need to define is “involution.” Where Peirce uses
> this term — notably in “The Logic of Mathematics” (c.1896) — it is
> implicitly defined by being paired with “evolution,”
>
> and you quoted several passages from that paper. For now I'll just say
> that my understanding of what Peirce is getting at in these passages is
> that 'evolution'--and, as he's uses it in "The Logic of Mathematics," he is
> *not
> at all* referring to his own agapastic theory of evolution (which follows
> a different vectorial path), but, rather, of Hegel's dialectical one, which
> we sometimes over-simplify as (and here I'll use 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (as
> distinct from 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns which are abbreviations for the categories
> themselves), to point to what in trikonic I refer to as a particular order
> of the paths, the six possible 'vectors' through which one might 'pass' in
> a genuine tricategorial relation):
>
> GF: I think it’s clear that in the “Logic of Mathematics” (and in other
> papers from around that time) Peirce is referring to *logical* (not
> biological or cosmological) evolution and involution, which he explicitly
> equates with logical synthesis and analysis respectively.
>
> GR: Hegelian 'Evolution' (dialectical order):
>
> 1st, 1ns (Thesis)
>
> |> 3rd, 3ns (Synthesis)
>
> 2nd, 2ns (Antithesis)
>
> Although he does not give it in "The Logic of Mathematics," Peirce makes
> clear elsewhere that his own version of this dialectical order is:
>
> 1st, 1ns (Something)
>
> |> 3rd, 3ns (Medium)
>
> 2nd, 2ns (Other)
>
> As I see it, in "The Logic of Mathematics" Peirce immediately offers the
> mirror path to this order as 'Involution', and he strongly suggests that it
> is by 'involution' that one 'derives' the three categories, that is, by
> *commencing* at thirdness (3ns):
>
> Involution:
>
> 3rd, 1ns (Monad)
>
> |> 1st, 3ns (Triad, involves Dyad and Monad)
>
> 2nd, 2ns (Dyad, involves Monad)
>
> GF: Yes, and this confirms the equivalence of involution and analysis (as
> opposed to synthesis). Thirdness involves secondness and secondness
> involves firstness, thus we can by prescission abstract both secondness and
> firstness from the thirdness of the phenomenon by analyzing the universal
> phenomenon.
>
> Yes, of course there's a *seeming* contradiction, he remarks, because in
> vectorial progression one *1st*, *commences* at 3ns (and this, he
> suggests, is what makes categorial thinking so difficult for even--and
> especially, he says--the best and strongest minds). So, as I see it, for
> him this vector represents a way of representing how the categories are
> derived. (This can be nothing more than a brief sketch here, so I am hoping
> that we'll be able to discuss it further in the 'mirror' thread, along with
> other mirrored paths.)
>
> GF: OK, and I hope my questions can help to fill out the sketch.
>
> Gary f.
>
>
> -----------------------------
> 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 . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L
> but to 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
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>
-----------------------------
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 . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to 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 .
