Jeff & list,
I happened to stumble across this when I checked the Peirce-list, which I do intermittently although I do not generally participate in the discussions. The “letter to Giovanni Vailati” was an embarrassing slip on my part, which has not been corrected although I have requested the NDPR to do so. The 1907 letter (MS L327) was addressed to Giovanni Papini, not Giovanni Vailati. In the letter, Peirce states that just “as all signs necessarily have Immediate Objects, but not all have Real Objects, so every sign has an emotional interpretant; but a piece of concerted music, for example, has no other”. He also asserts that “logicians distinguish the Immediate Object of a sign from its Real Object. I look for an analogous distinction as to the Interpretant; but I find there are not two, but three Interpretants; namely, 1st, the immediate, or as I call it, the emotional interpretant, involving (at least) in every case a sense of comprehending the sign, as something familiar in some sense; 2nd, the Existential Interpretant, or the actual events which the sign, as sign, may bring about, by however indirect a process; and 3rd, the Logical Interpretant, which is imperfectly represented in the definition of the sign.” This is of interest because of the claim that “emotional interpretant” and “immediate interpretant” are practically synonyms as well as the evident limitation to three interpretants. I cannot recall another passage where Peirce would put matters in exactly these terms. It is of course always difficult to say how much weight one should place on a single letter; but in recent discussions concerning semiotic matters, much has also been made of provisional remarks and classifications found in Peirce’s notebooks. All best, Mats From: Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> Sent: 26 September 2018 20:13 To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Terminology of Peirce's final sign classification List, Mats Bergman has written a review of Franceco's monograph. Here is a link in case you are interested: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/peirces-speculative-grammar-logic-as-semiotics/ Towards the end of the review, Bergman makes the following points: The final developments of speculative grammar (discussed in chapter eight) constitute a colossal challenge for the interpreter. Peirce's semiotic grows rapidly, but these changes emerge mainly in unfinished manuscripts, experimental notebook entries, and fragmentary correspondence. Many scholars have become captivated by this potentially fertile but problematic phase -- and especially by the 66-class system that Peirce envisioned. In these notoriously perilous terrains, Bellucci adopts a cautious stance, stating that he is "not concerned with finishing what Peirce left unfinished" (p. 352). This seems like a sensible approach, but it is not always easy to sustain. As he documents minute changes in ideas and terminology, Bellucci faces the challenges involved in trying to put together a puzzle with many mismatched and missing pieces, and he ends up streamlining certain aspects of Peirce's semiotic. To some extent, this is inevitable; but there are instances where I believe that Bellucci does not sufficiently consider contradictory evidence. For example, he confidently asserts that only propositions and proposition-like signs have so-called "immediate objects" (p. 294) -- that is, objects that are in some sense internal to the representation afforded by the sign, in distinction from the "dynamical" aspect of the object. This contention is backed up by Peirce's tentative suggestion that signs can be classified as vague, singular, and general according to the mode of the immediate object -- a partition that bears more than passing resemblance to the traditional division of propositions according to quantity. However, the existence of such a lineage does not suffice to prove that Peirce would hold that terms or "rhemas" lack immediate objects. Whatever analytical merits Bellucci's reconstruction may possess, it is dubious from a strictly exegetical point of view. When Peirce directly addresses the matter at hand -- e.g. in a 1907 letter to Giovanni Vailati -- his position is that all signs necessarily have immediate objects, while some lack real dynamical objects. I'm not able to find the 1907 letter of Vailati online or in other sources. If anyone has a link or a copy they would be willing to share, I'd appreciate it. For my part, I find the question of how we might interpret what Peirce says about the immediate object to be of interest because of the light it might help to shed on the division between possibles, existents and necessitants that is guiding the classification of signs in the later works. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 _____ From: Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com <mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com> > Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2018 10:56 AM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Terminology of Peirce's final sign classification Jeff, Robert, Jon S, Francesco, List, Jeff, This is very helpful, perhaps especially this quotation: In point of fact, we do find that the immediate object and emotional interpretant correspond, both being apprehensions, or are "subjective"; both, too, pertain to all signs without exception. The real object and energetic interpretant also correspond, both being real facts or things. But to our surprise, we find that the logical interpretant does not correspond with any kind of object. This defect of correspondence between object and interpretant must be rooted in the essential difference there is between the nature of an object and that of an interpretant; which difference is that former antecedes while the latter succeeds. The logical interpretant must, therefore, be in a relatively future tense (Boldface added GR). I currently happen to be rereading a short article on the perennially disputed topic of the relationship of the 1906 interpretant trichotomy and that of 1909 by Brendan Lalor ( Semiotica 114-1/2, 31-40, 1997) available here: http://thereitis.org/the-classification-of-peirces-interpretants/ Abstract. After characterizing the role of the interpretant in semiosis, I consider two passages in which Peirce makes a threefold division of interpretants, one from 1906, one from 1909. Then I suggest that Thomas Short and others are wrong in holding that in the two passages, Peirce put forward two completely separate trichotomies. Instead, I argue that the 1906 trichotomy is in fact a special case of that put forward by Peirce in the 1909 passage, not a separate trichotomy. I then explain more specifically how we ought to conceive the relationship between these two classifications. As we know, Peirce's 1906 trichotomy is into the emotional, energetic, and logical interpretants. BL: ‘The first proper significate effect of a sign is a feeling produced by it,’ hence the emotional interpretant (5.475). The energetic interpretant is any further effect a sign might produce; this will always involve a mental or muscular effort and will always be mediated through the emotional interpretant. Thus, any energetic interpretant will involve an emotional interpretant as its condition. . . Peirce designates the logical interpretant as the meaning of a concept. In 1909, however, he introduces another trichotomy, the immediate, dynamic, and final interpretants: BL: These are, respectively, the total unanalyzed effect the sign first produces, the direct actual effect on the interpreter, and finally, ‘the effect the Sign would produce upon any mind upon which circumstances should permit it to work out its full effect.’ The relationship of these two trichotomies has been debated now for decades. Lalor summarizes two prominent views: Two main views have been put forward as to the relation of the 1906 and 1909 terminologies, the first asserting their semantic uniformity, the second their semantic distinctness. In the first camp, some scholars have held that the 1909 trichotomy is coextensive with the one of 1906 — that Peirce was simply exploring various terminological possibilities. Others in this camp, such as J.J. Liszka (1990), hold that the terminologies are not merely synonymous, but complementary in the sense that they clarify one another.] Scholars in the second camp, most notably Thomas Short (1981: esp. 212f., 1982: esp. 286-288), have held that the 1909 classification is a distinct second trichotomy of interpretants [Short goes so far as to argue that each of the immediate, dynamic, and final interpretants may be divided into emotional, energetic, and logical interpretants, the intersection of the two trichotomies yielding 9 interpretants. GR] Lalor's own hypothesis, different from these, is that the 1909 classification is a generalization of the 1906 classification, that the 1906 classification pertains specifically to concrete human semiosis, while the latter pertains to semiosis more generally. BL: This relation is analogous (but only analogous) to the relation of the phenomenological to the metaphysical categories. That is, for example, just as a quality of red which exists intentionally in a feeling is how we experience quality (i.e. firstness), so also, an emotional interpretant (i.e. a feeling produced by a sign), is our version of the immediate interpretant of a sign (i.e. ‘the total unanalyzed effect the sign … might be expected to produce'. . . So, the relation of Peirce’s references to the interpretant-trichotomy, and his references to other interpretant-trichotomy terminologies might be said to be that of genus to species. Yet Lalor is hesitant to restrict the initial effect of a sign to conscious feeling since, and as has been briefly discussed on the list recently, the initial effect may be unconscious. BL: It may possibly be, for example, that I am taking too narrow a conception of the sign in general in saying that its initial effect must be of the nature of feeling, since it may be that there are agencies that ought to be classed along with signs and yet that at first begin to act quite unconsciously. (MS 318: 43, in Peirce (1907: 392)) It may be that Peirce saw the need for its generalization into the latter trichotomy. Lalor concludes that the two trichotomies ought be distinguished as outlining two levels of analysis, the first anthroposemiotic, the second generalized for all possible semiosis, the second being considerably more abstract. BL: I suggest that Peirce’s 1909 trichotomy is the result of his generalization of these human conceptions in an attempt to characterize semiosis universally. On this view, the immediate, dynamical, and final interpretants are Peirce’s meta-theoretical generic place-holders for interpretants which play a role in semiosis taking place at any and all levels of reality — even levels of concreteness too low, or levels of abstraction too high, for humans to notice without the aid of instruments or theoretical speculation. Emotional, energetic, and logical interpretants are the theoretical terms for a species of interpretants with which humans are intimately acquainted. Although Lalor's paper doesn't discuss the immediate object as such, I've introduced this comparison of the 1906 and 1909 trichotomies of the interpretants in the hope that it might shine some light on the current discussion of the nature and role of the immediate object seemingly having a unique semiosic relation to the emotional -> immediate interpretant. (Parenthetically, Short replied to Lalor's thesis, defending his own view.) Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5690 On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 11:56 AM Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu <mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> > wrote: Francesco, Jon S., Robert, List, The list Robert has compiled contains an entry that bears on the question of how we might understand the character of the immediate object. The entry the 40th in the list, and it is from MS 318, Pragmatism (1907). I am now prepared to risk an attempt at defining a sign, --since in scientific inquiry, as in other enterprises, the maxim holds: nothing hazard, nothing gain. I will say that a sign is anything, of whatsoever mode of being, which mediates between an object and an interpretant; since it is both determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determining the interpretant in reference to the object, in such wise as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of this "sign". The object and the interpretant are thus merely the two correlates of the sign; the one being antecedent, the other consequent of the sign. Moreover, the sign being defined in terms of these correlative correlates, it is confidently to be expected that object and interpretant should precisely correspond, each to the other. In point of fact, we do find that the immediate object and emotional interpretant correspond, both being apprehensions, or are "subjective"; both, too, pertain to all signs without exception. The real object and energetic interpretant also correspond, both being real facts or things. But to our surprise, we find that the logical interpretant does not correspond with any kind of object. This defect of correspondence between object and interpretant must be rooted in the essential difference there is between the nature of an object and that of an interpretant; which difference is that former antecedes while the latter succeeds. The logical interpretant must, therefore, be in a relatively future tense. The relevant passage is the one where he says of the immediate object and the emotional interpretant that "both, too, pertain to all signs without exception." This seems to suggest that any sign that involves the apprehension of an object does so in virtue of its having a relation to an immediate object. While some external signs may not, at some point in time, be apprehended by an interpreter, all are capable of being so apprehended. This suggests that all signs have an immediate object--at least as a possible sort of thing--even if the object is not actually apprehended at some given time. When the sign of any type is interpreted in actu, it will come to be apprehended in this way--and the immediate object appears to be essential for the interpretation of every sign. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 _____ From: Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com <mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > Sent: Monday, September 24, 2018 11:13:58 AM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu <mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Terminology of Peirce's final sign classification Robert, List: How can our understanding of the different correlates be "superfluous" to the classification of Signs accordingly? For one thing, the internal/external distinction helps explain why there are additional trichotomies for the (external) relations between the Sign and the Dynamic Object/Interpretant, but not the (internal) relations between the Sign and the Immediate Object/Interpretant. Again, why did Peirce divide Signs according to the Mode of Presentation of the internal correlates vs. the Mode of Being of the external correlates, if he did not consider both of these distinctions to be noteworthy and perhaps connected? I have come across your "76 Definitions" in the past, but have not reviewed it recently. I agree that many of the editorial choices for CP were unfortunate, and wish that the Peirce Edition Project had made much better progress to date at publishing the Writings in chronological order. As for your animation, it reflects the notion of infinite semiosis, although it only proceeds forward rather than also reaching backward. My understanding of Peirce's late view is that he came to recognize the termination of semiosis upon the production of a feeling or effort as the Dynamic Interpretant, rather than another Sign, or a habit or habit-change as the ultimate Logical Interpretant. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 5:51 AM, <marty.rob...@neuf.fr <mailto:marty.rob...@neuf.fr> > wrote: Would you agree that these internal vs. external distinctions (which I readily admit) are superfluous with regard to the classification of signs? It is a necessary condition to continue the debate, it seems to me ... In addition, do you know my thesaurus http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM ? Having made this work (which seemed to me absolutely necessary to avoid the bias of the arbitrary choices made by the editors of the CP , with in addition an anarchic chronological dispersion of the items) I am engaged me in a kind of linear regression by the method of the least squares, a good metaphor for me to describe one "method of the least gaps with the thinking of the master". I made an animated gif which expresses my choices globally ... it dynamically represents semiosis with successive triads ad infinitum ; it can be complicated by introducing the 2 objects and the 3 interpretants : http://semiotiquedure.online/images/sch038.gif do you think it is compatible with your own choices? Best Regards, Robert Marty
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