Jon, Gary R, Evidently I was wrong to think that I can follow your reasoning, so I’d better leave this thread to those who can follow it, or those looking for more definitive answers to questions that Peirce left open. What I can do is provide here a more complete quotation from the letter to James (14 March 1909) that Gary mentioned, which includes several examples, and may be of some further use in the discussion:
We must distinguish between the Immediate Object,—i.e., the Object as represented in the sign,—and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision. It is useless to attempt to discuss the genuineness and possession of a personality beneath the histrionic presentation of Theodore Roosevelt with a person who recently has come from Mars and never heard of Theodore before. A similar distinction must be made as to the Interpretant. But in respect to that Interpretant, the dichotomy is not enough by any means. For instance, suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day. I reply, let us suppose: “It is a stormy day.” Here is another sign. Its Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine,—not the character of it, but the identity of it. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual and Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. Now it is easy to see that my attempt to draw this three-way, “trivialis,” distinction, relates to a real and important three-way distinction, and yet that it is quite hazy and needs a vast deal of study before it is rendered perfect. Lady Welby has got hold of the same real distinction in her “Sense, Meaning, Significance,” but conceives it as imperfectly as I do, but imperfectly in other ways. Her Sense is the Impression made or normally to be made. Her Meaning is what is intended, its purpose. Her Significance is the real upshot. [EP2:498] Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> Sent: 20-Mar-18 21:42 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Three Interpretants Gary F., List: On the contrary, it merely implies that the Intentional Interpretant of a given Sign is not determined by that Sign itself, but by the Signs that come before it in the uttering Quasi-mind; and I am assuming, along the same lines as Gary R., that each Sign is determined by exactly two Objects and determines exactly three Interpretants, but I am still trying to sort out the latter. Perhaps an abstract example of what I am proposing, rather than a concrete one, will be helpful for keeping everything straight. Suppose that Quasi-mind A utters Sign Y, which determines Quasi-mind B to a further Sign Z as its Effectual or Dynamic Interpretant. The Communicational Interpretant of Sign Y is simply its Immediate Interpretant--the Form that Sign Y communicates from Quasi-mind A to Quasi-mind B as a determination of their overlap, the Commens (A ∩ B). The Intended or Intentional Interpretant is Sign X, the preceding determination of Quasi-mind A by the same Dynamic Object, such that Sign Y is the Dynamic Interpretant of Sign X. Let me also tentatively suggest that the Immediate Interpretant of Sign X serves as the Immediate Object of Sign Y, and the Immediate Interpretant of Sign Y serves as the Immediate Object of Sign Z. The continuity of semiosis is thus once again evident here. No matter how long or short the interval of time that we posit from start to finish, there is an inexhaustible continuum of Signs "beginning" at the Dynamic Object (what they all denote) and "terminating" (in this particular analysis) in Sign X, whose actual effect on Quasi-mind A is Sign Y, whose actual effect on Quasi-mind B is Sign Z--and the process keeps going from there. Each of these Signs, as "a Medium for the communication of a Form" (EP 2:544n22; 1906), takes its predecessor's Immediate Interpretant (the Form communicated by that Sign) as its own Immediate Object (the Form signified by this Sign). Peirce's theorem of "the science of semeiotics" is also relevant--"if any signs are connected, no matter how, the resulting system constitutes one sign" (R 1476:36[5-1/2]; c. 1904). That is precisely why every Quasi-mind "is itself a sign, a determinable sign" (SS 195; 1906); it is the system that results from the connection of all of the Signs that have previously determined it. Sign X is the Intentional Interpretant of Sign Y, but it is not determined by Sign Y; it is determined by the complex of Signs that constitutes the utterer, Quasi-mind A. "For any set of Signs which are so connected that a complex of two of them can have one interpretant, must be Determinations of one Sign which is a Quasi-mind" (CP 4.550; 1906). Notice that I have not said anything yet about the Final Interpretant of Sign Y. Is it the same as the Intentional Interpretant? This would entail that, contrary to everything that I have ever read by Peirce and others, the Final Interpretant determines the Sign itself. On the other hand, it clearly does have a purposive or intentional aspect, based on how Peirce labeled the divisions associated with it in his late taxonomies. Is it perhaps a clue that he called it the Eventual Interpretant in 1906 and (at least arguably) the Destinate Interpretant in 1908? This warrants its own discussion once we are ready to move on from the current one. Regards, Jon S. On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:50 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> > wrote: Jon, OK, I think I can follow your reasoning, though I don’t find it persuasive. It implies that there is no such thing as an intended interpretant of any given sign, if that means an interpretant intended by the utterer. This makes me wonder what Peirce could possibly be referring to as “the Influence the Sign is intended to exert" (R 339:424[285r]” (quoted in your earlier message), if neither Seme nor Pheme nor Delome can have an intended interpretant. Are you assuming (or are you convinced) that the Intentional/Effectual/Communicational trichotomy of interpretants differs in name only from the Immediate/Dynamical/Final trichotomy? Are there really only three interpretants, not six or more? Gary f.
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