Francesco, List:
Welcome! I am delighted that you are joining the discussion on the List.
I appreciated your recent book on speculative grammar and am very much
looking forward to the (hopefully still forthcoming) sequels on logical
critic and speculative rhetoric.
My position regarding the Immediate Object (IO) has evolved since I offered
the specific comment that you quoted, but I still maintain that *every *Sign
has one. Peirce said so explicitly in at least two places, and certainly
implied it in various others; so I think that any definition of the IO
that *excludes
*any class of Signs *cannot *be correct. Specifically, I find it
unwarranted to infer from his *temporary *use of vague/singular/general as
the division of the IO that *only *a proposition has one. Instead, we can
say that quantification is always *part *of the IO of any *proposition*;
but this by no means entails that a less complete Sign--i.e., a Rheme--does
not have an IO *at all*.
Indeed, "all men" (or "any man") is *not *a Rheme, but "man" certainly is;
Peirce would have represented it as "_____ is a man" accordingly. "Mortal"
is also a Rheme; Peirce would have likewise represented it as "_____ is
mortal" accordingly. Quantification only becomes necessary when we *combine
*two general Rhemes to form a proposition; e.g., "Any man is mortal." As
Peirce realized by 1908, all Symbols are Copulatives according to the IO;
in this case, the continuous predicate is "_____ possesses the character of
_____," where the first blank is for a Designative and the second blank is
for a Descriptive ("mortality"). The quantifier is what enables a *general
*term ("man") to serve as a Designative ("any man," "this man," or "some
man").
This ties in with my recent proposal that a Sign (Type) is in a
*genuine *triadic
relation with a General Object and the Final Interpretant, while an
individual Sign-Replica (Token) is in a *degenerate *triadic relation with
a Dynamic Object and a Dynamic Interpretant. Quantification, as part of
the (internal) IO, is how a Replica of a proposition *delineates *its
Dynamic Object from the General Object of the Sign that serves as its
subject. This is evident in passages where Peirce referred to a "general
subject."
CSP: We know very well that universal propositions have general subjects …
Thus the subject of a proposition if not an index is a precept prescribing
the conditions under which an index is to be had. (EP 2:168; 1903)
CSP: But a general subject is either an indesignate individual or a
quodlibetical individual [any individual you please] of the universe to
which no descriptive character is attached … It involves merely directions
as to what one is to do to find an individual such as is intended, without
at all describing that individual. (EP 2:224; 1903)
CSP: A subject of a proposition is either *singular*, *general*, or *abstract
*(*Summulae*). It is singular if it indicates an otherwise known
individual. It is general if it describes how an individual is to be
selected. A general subject is (as commonly recognized) either *universal *or
*particular *(and indefinite). (CP 2.324, EP 2:284; 1903)
Without a quantifier, a common noun like "man" has only a General Object,
not a Dynamic Object. Being a Symbol, it is a Copulative as the Rheme,
"_____ is a man"; but it is also a Descriptive in the sense that its IO is
whatever possesses the necessary and sufficient set of *characters *that
constitutes *what it means* to be a "man" as that term is *defined *in
standard written English. It is no different from an adjective like
"mortal" in that regard.
CSP: Now a common noun [such] as "man," standing alone, is certainly an
index, but not of the object it denotes. It is an index of the mental
object which it calls up. It is the index of an icon; for it denotes
whatever there may be which is like that image. (EP 2:17-18; 1895)
CSP: For what is a "term," or "class-name," supposed to be? It is
something which signifies, or, to use J. S. Mills' objectionable
terminology, "connotes" certain characters, and thereby denotes whatever
possesses those characters. That is, it draws the attention to an idea, or
mental construction, or diagram, of something possessing those characters,
and the possession of those characters is kept in the foreground of
consciousness. What does that mean unless that the listener says to
himself, "that which is *here* (before the attention) possesses such and
such characters"? (CP 2.341; c. 1895)
CSP: A general term denotes whatever there may be which possesses the
characters which it signifies … (CP 2.434; 1901-1902).
This notion of the IO as a "mental object" or "mental construction" is what
I take Peirce to have intended when he called it "the idea which the sign
is built upon" (EP 2:407; 1907). The IO is thus the Essential Breadth of
the Sign-Replica, the collection of Objects that corresponds to its
Essential Depth--i.e., the Immediate Interpretant (II). Hence the IO and
II are in a *doubly degenerate* triadic relation with the Sign-Qualities
(Tones) of the Sign-Replica that make it *recognizable *as an Instance
(Token) of the Sign (Type) *within *a particular Sign System--in this case,
the sequence of shapes that spell out "m-a-n" or "m-o-r-t-a-l."
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 1:46 AM, Francesco Bellucci <
bellucci.france...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I am new in this list, so I think I should introduce myself. My name is
> Francesco Bellucci, I am Assitant Professor at the University of Bologna in
> Italy, and my principal research interest is in Peirce's logic.
>
> Since some of the things which I wrote in my book (*Peirce's Speculative
> Grammar*, 2017) have been mentioned in a couple of threads here on
> Peirce's notion of immediate object, I would like to offer some further
> thoughts on this matter, in the hope to make some progress in the
> discussion.
>
> One of the bones of contention is whether or not all signs have immediate
> objects. I think one argument in favour of the idea that not all signs have
> immediate objects is the fact – which has drawn little attention – that in
> the classification of signs of the period 1904–1906 (let's postpone
> discussion of 1908 for the moment) signs are divided according to their
> immediate object into vague, singular, and general. Now, the
> vague/singular/general division is, as Peirce sometimes says (Kaina
> Stoicheia) and as should be evident to those who know a little bit of the
> history of logic, a division of propositions according to their quantity:
> Peirce calls "vague" the proposition which traditionally is called
> particular (some men is wise), and "general" the proposition which
> traditionally is called universal (all men are wise). That the
> vague/singular/general division is a propositional division should suggest
> that in the phrase "signs divided according to their immediate object
> into...", we should take "sign" to mean "proposition". I think there has
> been some good posts in this list by Gary F. arguing that sometimes we
> should take "sign" to mean "proposition", or "complete sign", or at least
> that with "sign" we should sometimes mean what Peirce considered the
> "principal variety of signs", i.e. propositions.
>
> Now, if the vague/singular/general division is a propositional division,
> then rhemes should not be capable of being divided according to their
> immediate objects. If the vague/singular/general division were applicable
> to rhemes, then I think we should conclude that "all men" is a rheme (a
> "general" rheme). For what does it mean that a trichotomy is applicable to
> a genus of signs, if not that that genus of signs has species corresponding
> to the members of that trichotomy? Thus I think that the supporters of the
> idea that all signs have immediate objects are forced to conclude that "all
> men" is a rheme.
>
> But here is an argument why "all men" cannot be a rheme. Peirce defines a
> rheme as that which remains of a proposition after something replaceable by
> a proper name has been removed from it, where "replacebale" means that when
> the replacement has occurred, we have again a proposition. Thus, if "all
> men" is a rheme, there must exist a proposition from which it has been
> extracted by removing something replaceable by a proper name. Let us
> imagine that "all men" has been extracted from the proposition "all men are
> mortal" by removing "are mortal". If we replace the removed part with a
> proper name, like "Hamlet", this does *not *yield again a proposition:
> "all men Hamlet". From this I conclude that "all men" is not a rheme. And
> since the only justification I can imagine for calling "all men" a rheme is
> that this would allow us to extend the vague/singular/general distinction
> to *all* signs, I conclude that this extension is unjustified.
>
> Let me also ask a question about the following observation made by Jon:
>
> "a Sign denotes its Dynamic Object (Matter/2ns), signifies some of that
> Object's characters/qualities (Form/1ns)--which, taken together, constitute
> its Immediate Object--and determines its Interpretants to represent the
> unity of Matter and Form (Entelechy/3ns)"
>
> If the Object's characters taken together constitute the Immediate Object
> of the Sign, what does it mean that such Immediate Object can be vague,
> singular, or general? Let's suppose the Sign mentioned here is the
> proposition "Halmet is mad". According to Jon, the Sign denotes the Dynamic
> Object (arguably, Hamlet), and signifies one of the Object's characters
> (arguably, his madness). Is this character vague, general, or singular? Can
> you provide examples of three propositions (which, arguably, are Signs) in
> one of which the character/Immediate Object is vague, in another is
> general, and in the third is singular? And can you provide an example of a
> proposition in which the characters signified are, taken together, singular?
>
> Best,
> Francesco
>
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