John, you wrote, “If Peirce ever said that there are things in the mind, in thought, or in the phaneron that are not signs, I'd like to see the quotation.”
Peirce to James, 1904: “Percepts are signs for psychology; but they are not so for phenomenology” (CP 8.300) On the “ultimate logical interpretant,” MS 318: “It can be proved that the only mental effect that can be so produced and that is not a sign but is of a general application is a habit-change; meaning by a habit-change a modification of a person's tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause” (CP 5.476). But really, there is no need for Peirce to say that any phenomenon is not a sign, because by defining “sign,” Peirce was differentiating it from other phenomena. If all phenomena were signs, there would be no difference between semiotics and phenomenology, even in the sense of one being a branch of the other. And, even more obviously, the fact that all signs are phenomena (and especially interesting phenomena for a logician) does not imply that all phenomena are signs. Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> Sent: 13-Sep-18 23:06 To: tabor...@primus.ca; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Categories and Modes of Being (was How should semeiotic be classified? Edwina and Jon AS, ET > My concern is that this list seems to focus almost exclusively on > debates about terminology and classification of research areas, and > doesn't venture outside the seminar room into the mud and dirt of the > real matter-as-mind world. Peirce had a long career in science and engineering. He certainly knew how to apply mathematics and science to build things and make them work. And his engineering work influenced what he wrote about the practical sciences in his classifications. One reason why I like Peirce's classification is that it shows how all the sciences are related to each other, to mathematics, to philosophy, to the methodeutic that "digs in the dirt" to discover facts, and to the practical sciences that build things. If you can find anything "in the mud and dirt" that it doesn't cover, I'd like to see that. > JFS: The subject matter of phenomenology is the totality of signs > that appear to the mind, and CP 1.300 calls the semiotic categories > "conceptions drawn from the logical analysis of thought". > > JAS: This does not seem right to me; it presupposes that anything > that appears to the mind must be a Sign. Two points: (1) if the phaneron contains anything that is not a sign, semiotic could be defined as the study of the signs in phenomenology. (2) In any case, it's hard to imagine anything that appears to the mind that is not a sign. If Peirce ever said that there are things in the mind, in thought, or in the phaneron that are not signs, I'd like to see the quotation. John
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