Gary R, Edwina, Jon S, list,
I probably shouldn’t intervene in this discussion, but I have to say (one more time) that if we want to understand Peirce’s terms — especially what he means by a triadic relation — we need to read them in the context where Peirce uses them, not lift them out of their context and drop them into a scheme of our own invention. Edwina refers to an “'umbrella image' of the triad [1.347], which is something like a three spoked umbrella: -<.....but one can see even from this that there are THREE spokes or Relations in that image.” But in its context, that image is NOT a diagram of the S-O-I relation, the essential “sign relation.” That image is in fact an existential graph with three “tails.” The context, CP 1.343-9, is “From the “Lowell Lectures of 1903,” III, vol. 1, 3d Draught.” The larger context is the Lowell lectures (pieces of which are unfortunately scattered here and there in the CP) and the Syllabus which Peirce wrote to accompany them. The Syllabus of course includes the “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”, which ought to be the go-to text for Peirce’s explanation of the triadic relations involved in semiosis. But even from the fragment published in CP 1.343-9, one can glean some of Peirce’s key insights on the subject, given some slight acquaintance with existential graphs. In graphs such as the one at 1.347, the lines (Peirce calls them “tails” here) are lines of identity each representing that something exists. The relation is represented in the graph by the labelled spot to which they are all attached, and the three “tails” are the relata. In propositional terms, the graph represents a predicate (the spot) with three subjects, (i.e. with a “valency” of three). To read the lines in the graph as relations is to misread the graph. The graph is itself a diagrammatic sign, but there is no attempt to represent its object(s) or its interpretant on the sheet of assertion. In fact, I have never seen, anywhere in Peirce’s writings, an attempt to represent the basic triadic sign relation in a single diagram. I think the reason is simple: that kind of triadic relation cannot be represented that way. But if someone can show me a text where Peirce has done that, I’ll happily retract that claim. This would explain, by the way, why it is that Edwina “can't 'imagize' what 'one triadic Relation' would look like or how it would function.” If you represent relations as lines (or “spokes”), you can only represent dyadic relations. Then Peirce’s graph can only appear to you as a triad of (dyadic) relations. Gary’s point about the time dimension is crucial here: existential graphs are “moving pictures of thought” in which semiosis is represented by transformations of the graphs. I think an attentive reading of CP 1.343-9 should clarify why it is that the essential sign relation, and the Thirdness of semiosis, cannot be adequately represented in a single image. In that passage, Peirce is trying to give an experiential account of Thirdness and triadic relations to his audience. CP 1.345: “I will sketch a proof that the idea of meaning is irreducible to those of quality and reaction. It depends on two main premisses. The first is that every genuine triadic relation involves meaning, as meaning is obviously a triadic relation. The second is that a triadic relation is inexpressible by means of dyadic relations alone. Considerable reflexion may be required to convince yourself of the first of these premisses, that every triadic relation involves meaning.” If anyone wants to study this passage from the Lowell lectures but doesn’t have access to the Collected Papers, let me know and I’ll provide you with a copy. Or post it here, if there’s enough interest. But I hope that at least those who do have access to CP will take a closer look at it. Gary f. From: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com] Sent: 12-Apr-17 16:45 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs Edwina, Jon S, List, First, I will have to disagree with you, Edwina, on one point since I think the three pronged spoke does exactly represent a triadic relation, not three relations (how do you figure that?) As I see it, the single node from which the three spokes protrude make it one relation, not three. But for a moment I'd like to refer to Peirce's notion of time--which I've discussed in the past as having some relationship to Bergson's flow and duration (durée)-- as a kind of analogy of the three 'moments' of semiosis. For Peirce there is a continuous melding of the past into the present anticipating the future. Andre de Tienne quotes Mihai Nadin on this in "Peirce's Logic of Information" http://www.unav.es/gep/SeminariodeTienne.html (a paper, btw, which I find both intriguing, but have some reservations about--but not regarding the present point). De Tienne comments and then quotes Nadin, who here concentrates on 'anticipation' and Peirce's notion of 'final cause' (and teleology). In a remarkable programmatic paper titled "Anticipation: A Spooky Computation" Mihai Nadin has written that "every sign is in anticipation of its interpretation". He explains (NADIN 2000: §5.1.1): Signs are not constituted at the object level, but in an open-ended infinite sign process (semiosis). In sign processes, the arrow of time can run in both directions: from the past through the present to the future, or the other way around, from the future to the present. Signs carry the future (intentions, desires, needs, ideals, etc., all of a nature different from what is given, i.e., all in the range of a final cause) into the present and thus allow us to derive a coherent image of the universe. Actually […], a semiosis is constituted in both directions: from the past into the future, and from the future into the present, and forward into the past. […] The two directions of semiosis are in co-relation. In the first case, we constitute understandings based on previous semiotic processes. In the second, we actually make up the world as we constitute ourselves as part of it. This means that the notion of sign has to reflect the two arrows. De Tienne's comments just following this quotation relate directly to a consideration of the nature of the growth of symbols (" as having the nature of a law, symbols are partly general, partly vague enunciations of what could happen in the future given certain antecedent conditions that they spell out to some degree"), as I remarked in an earlier post. Thus they have this living quality--"symbols grow" Peirce says. Anticipation is a process through which the representation of a future state determines a present semiotic event, and this implies a teleological dimension, not of an Aristotelian, but of a Peircean kind. Put briefly, one simply needs to remember that for Peirce every symbol is teleological in the sense that, being preoccupied with its own development into new interpretants, some of which are dynamic and thus anchored in an experience they modify, it adopts a conditional (would-be) form that orients it toward the future. As legisigns, thus as having the nature of a law, symbols are partly general, partly vague enunciations of what could happen in the future given certain antecedent conditions that they spell out to some degree. Such an evolving, self-correcting outlook toward the likely future is structurally embedded within symbols and distinguishes them from other types of signs. In addition, all symbols are signs that seek to "replicate" themselves, since there is no law that governs no event. Replicated symbols are a special kind of sinsigns: they are rule-bound semiotic events whose instantiation occurs under the rule’s guidance. Each instantiation thus anticipates the rule that it replicates, and in doing so it anticipates the future: the instantiation takes it into account, and thus is determined by it, although that determination is, as Nadin says, in the range of a final cause rather than of an efficient cause. Semiotic events are vectorized, they happen not at random but within an inferential continuum that ensures that propositions that conclude arguments, especially ampliative ones, become themselves premises to new arguments, in the same way as any symbolic sign has first been an interpretant before serving as a sign solicitor of new signs. And recall that while Nadin is especially concerned with the symbol in the passage quoted above, he's written that " "every sign is in anticipation of its interpretation," or, better, its interpretant. Best, Gary R <https://d22r54gnmuhwmk.cloudfront.net/photos/0/ia/il/nnIAIlpwAddaFAz-44x44-cropped.jpg> Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York C 745 718 482-5690 On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 4:02 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> > wrote: Yes, that's what I've been mulling over for years - where I think that there are three relations rather than one triadic relation. A large issue is the definition of 'sign'. Is it the representamen alone? Or is it the triad of the Immediate Object-Represntamen-Immediate Interpretant? Or is it even larger - and includes the Dynamic Object? My problem is that I can't figure out what ONE triadic Relation means. I can understand the 'umbrella image' of the triad [1.347], which is something like a three spoked umbrella: -<.....but one can see even from this that there are THREE spokes or Relations in that image. They may certainly interact and affect each other, but - this doesn't reduce them to ONE triadic Relation. I simply can't 'imagize' what 'one triadic Relation' would look like or how it would function. I can imagine ONE Sign SET [not a Relation], as an irreducible set, made up of three Relations. I can even imagine ONE Sign SET - made up of that image as outlined by JAS, made up of the Immediate Object-Representamen-Immediate Interpretant - and this triadic Sign would interact with the Dynamic Object - which is itself made up of a triad of an Immediate Object-Represntamen-Immediate Interpretant...and forms a Dynamic Interpretant, which is itself made up of an Immediate Object-Representamen-Immediate Interpretant. But- that's making me dizzy and I'll stop. Edwina
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