Jon,
Part of what you're saying:
The Object always determines the Sign.
The Sign always determines the Interpretant.
The Object always determines the Interpretant through the mediation of
the Sign.
makes sense to me if we're talking about something like the "signs" from
the Mississippi River that Mark Twain learned to interpret as a steamboat
pilot. We can select some, or not know all, of them, but we can't create
them. And, when we get creative about what they mean, we do so at our own,
and the shipowner's, peril. The other things you list about signs:
The Sign sometimes creates the Object.
The Sign always creates the Interpretant.
The Object always creates the Interpretant through the mediation of the
Sign
don't make sense.
On the other hand, where a "sign," such as a term or a concept, iconically
represents the object, we can change your "sometimes" into "always," and it
is the second list that makes sense while the first one doesn't.
I'll admit that when the discussion turns to the 10, much less the 60-some,
versions of signs, I change the channel. But perhaps we can make sense of
the relevant distinction here in terms of these examples?
Thanks,
Tom
On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Gary F., List:
>
> GF: This passage is unusual in using the verb “create” as pretty much
> synonymous with “determine.”
>
>
> By contrast, as I recently pointed out in another thread, the two
> immediately preceding paragraphs of the very same letter seem to draw a
> clear *distinction* between determination and creation.
>
> CSP: A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined
> (i.e., specialized, *bestimmt*,) by something *other than itself*, called
> its Object ... while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or
> potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created
> by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by
> the Object ... It may be asked, for example, how a lying or erroneous Sign
> is determined by its Object, or how if, as not infrequently happens, the
> Object is brought into existence by the Sign. To be puzzled by this is an
> indication of the word "determine" being taken in too narrow a sense ...
> The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the sign. (CP
> 8.177-178, EP 2:492-493; 1909)
>
>
> Taken together, and assuming that Peirce was being very deliberate in his
> use of terminology in this personal letter, these passages seem to imply
> the following.
>
> - The Object always determines the Sign.
> - The Sign always determines the Interpretant.
> - The Object always determines the Interpretant through the mediation
> of the Sign.
> - The Sign sometimes creates the Object.
> - The Sign always creates the Interpretant.
> - The Object always creates the Interpretant through the mediation of
> the Sign.
>
> So determination *is not* equivalent to creation in the (dyadic)
> Sign-Object relation--in fact, sometimes they even go opposite ways--but
> determination *is *(apparently) equivalent to creation in the (triadic)
> Object-Sign-Interpretant relation.
>
> GF: But what popped out at me today is Peirce’s observation that the
> interpretant is *not *determined by a qualisign, sinsign or legisign *as
> such*. In other words, we should not think of “determination” as a dyadic
> action of sign upon interpretant (or upon mind).
>
>
> This is consistent with our recent discussion of the third trichotomy in
> the 1903 Sign classification as being the (triadic)
> Object-Sign-Interpretant relation, rather than the (dyadic)
> Sign-Interpretant relation as is commonly supposed--even by Peirce himself
> in some of his subsequent writings about semeiotic.
>
> GF: Neither should we think of the determination of sign by object as a *fait
> accompli* or event *preceding *the determination of interpretant by sign.
> The sign-action is irreducibly triadic because the determination of and by
> the sign are just two *aspects *of a single process, not successive steps
> in the process; not events separated in time, but objects hypostatically
> abstracted from its flow.
>
>
> How do we extend this observation to the three Interpretants of Peirce's
> later Sign classifications? I would suggest that what you say here is only
> strictly true of the Immediate Interpretant, which *every *Sign has as
> the internal Oi-R-Ii triad; but not the Dynamic or Final Interpretants,
> since some Signs never *actually *determine/create those external
> correlates.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
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