Jon, my responses inserted.
Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> Sent: 4-Mar-19 18:05 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Bedrock Beneath Pragmaticism Gary F., List: GF: Is it not remarkable that after working with EGs for over 10 years, including lecturing and publishing about them, he should be so unsure of his ability to describe the System or even state its purpose? JAS: I suspect that it was quite clear in his own mind, GF: Peirce was quite capable of saying what was clear to him and what wasn’t. Your suspicion in this case directly contradicts what Peirce actually says on that point in the sentence I quoted. and the struggle was primarily with how to explain it to others in a way that they could easily understand. It seems plausible that he felt like he had failed to do so in all of that previous lecturing and publishing. As John Sowa has repeatedly pointed out, he finally came up with a tutorial on EGs that successfully accomplished this objective the following year (1909), in R 514. GF: Neither in MS 514 nor in any later presentation that I’ve seen does Peirce make any attempt to iconize the three Universes of Capacities, Actualities and Tendencies (by using different surfaces and “provinces”). He explains in the draft of MS 300 what motivated his 1906 attempt to do that (in the “Prolegomena”) and why that attempt is clearly inadequate, especially in its iconicity. That’s why I say that Peirce abandoned the gamma graphs — which he had said in 1903 were far more important than the alpha and beta. That leaves us with a system which, as John S. has pointed out repeatedly, is logically equivalent to his earlier algebraic notation, rather than being a major improvement on it as Peirce had hoped (until 1908). This could also explain why Peirce abandoned the attempt to base his proof of pragmaticism on EGs. GF: This is what the Graphs and their transformations are about: the Universe of Discourse, or simply the Universe. This Universe is to discourse as the phaneron is to experience. JAS:I agree with the first statement, but not the second; as I already stated, I believe instead that the three Universes are to Experience as the three Categories are to the Phaneron. GF: You are trying to regularize Peirce’s usage of the term “Universe” by ignoring its actual context in MS 300. When in doubt about what a term denotes (as we usually are with common nouns), the context is the main clue for directing our attention, as Peirce himself points out. The Phaneron consists of whatever could be presented to the mind, while Experience consists of whatever is urged to the mind; in other words, there is a compulsive aspect of the latter that is lacking, or at least less prominent, in the former. GF: Now you are ignoring the contextual use of the term “Experience” in this part of MS 300. I see this as a recurring problem with your attempt to regularize Peirce’s terminology, especially in respect to terms which were not neologisms but common philosophical terms. GF: I call this triad of Universes (or subuniverses of the one Universe) phenomenological because they are different ways in which the Universe “makes its power felt” experientially. Again, I worry that this conflates phenomena in their 1ns (Phaneron) with phenomena in their 2ns (Experience), since I associate such forcefulness primarily with the latter--although reaction as 2ns is obviously one of the irreducible elements that we directly observe in the former. The "Outward Clash" that ultimately leads us to the hypothesis of Reality (cf. CP 8.41; 1885) is a matter of actual Experience, not just possible "seeming"--which is why it is studied in Normative Logic as Semeiotic, rather than Phaneroscopy. At least, that is how I see it right now. GF: The three Universes correspond in logic to the modalities of the propositions represented by the Graphs. JAS: That is not what Peirce wrote in the quoted passage. GF: No, it is an inference from what Peirce wrote, based on his writings about EGs and modality in 1906-08. CSP: It is clear that their differences are not differences of the predicates, or significations, of the graphs, but of the predetermined objects to which the graphs are intended to refer. (R 300:38-39) The different Universes do not correspond to the modalities of the propositions represented, nor their Interpretants as signified by their predicates, but rather their Objects as denoted by their subjects--which, as you noted, must already be known to both Graphist and Interpreter from previous Collateral Experience. In EGs, these subjects are represented by the heavily drawn Lines of Identity, whose continuity is derived from that of the underlying surface of the Sheet of Assertion, GF: Here you are ignoring Peirce’s careful distinction between the continuity of the two-dimensional sheet and that of the one-dimensional line, which makes a difference in what they can represent iconically; also his statement that the three Universes cannot be represented by the icons which make up the Graphs, and can only be represented by differentiation of the surfaces on which those icons are drawn. which represents the Universe--just like the continuity of a white chalk line is derived from that of the clean blackboard on which it is marked (cf. CP 6:203; 1898). The thinly drawn line of a Cut is then a discontinuity between the Universe of Truth (recto) and the Universe of Falsity (verso), which is why in a Ligature the Line of Identity inside a Cut must be understood as distinct from the one outside it. GF: Peirce does not deal with the cuts in the text I quoted, but he does in other parts of the “Bedrock,” in a way that spells trouble for the whole system of EGs. I’ll have to deal with that in a separate post. GF: Jon, since I think your approach to Peircean studies is rather different from mine, I haven’t responded to your post in detail, lest we sink into purely terminological issues. Understood, although I hope that this post helps clarify the relevance of my previous one. 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, Mar 4, 2019 at 11:21 AM <g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> > wrote: Jon, list, I will quote below the specific text to which I was referring as the one in which Peirce explains the relationship between his Existential Graphs and his phenomenological “categories” or experiential Universes, with a few ellipses and my comments interspersed. [[ in regard to the purpose, or idea, of Existential Graphs, you will not be surprised to hear that, never, from the first, having arrogated to myself the function of being the fabricator of that system, but having all along perceived that I had only stumbled upon it, {34} at first stupidly describing, in place of it, a System that I now call that of ‘Entitative Graphs’, I am half-confident of descrying, deep below the superficies of distinct attention, a far more unitary idea of the system than the somewhat disjointed one that I can alone, as yet, either indicate or even describe, in the sentences following. ]] Is it not remarkable that after working with EGs for over 10 years, including lecturing and publishing about them, he should be so unsure of his ability to describe the System or even state its purpose? His perception that he “had only stumbled upon it” — a phenomenological observation, referring to the manner in which it first appeared to him — is intimately related to the idea of the system being inaccessible to his “distinct attention.” [[ Loosely, (though, mind you, just in such loose ideas can any rational system be first laid open,) I might say that the system of Existential Graphs is designed to afford a sort of geometrical παρασκευή,— or diagram,— for logical analysis, i.e. for illustrating and facilitating the same. In order that that end should be attained, all students of precise logic will agree that there must be a method of exhibiting rational procedures under high logical magnifications. ]] The best translation I could find for this use of παρασκευή is “apparatus.” Notice that the Graphs are designed to facilitate logical analysis of the reasoning process, not to facilitate reasoning itself — a point Peirce had already insisted on in the 1903 Lowell lectures and elsewhere. [[ To this end, it is requisite that, as in mathematics, and as the deepest and most thorough studies of Logic that {35} have hitherto been attained show us to be clearly requisite, there should be (1) illustrations of the logical procedure that shall represent it, (2) not merely by force of any rule or habit of interpretation, and still less by any actual, or dynamical, connexion between the sign, or representamen, and the object signified, but, as far as possible, by and in an analogy, or agreement in the very forms themselves, between a (3) visual, or optico-muscular, presentment and the thought itself. ]] The idea that the iconic “presentment” should be “optico-muscular” (in order to be analogous to “the thought itself”) reminds me of Einstein’s letter to Hadamard (1945, 142-3), where he says that the “psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought” are, for him, “of visual and some of muscular type” (as opposed to being verbal). This is again a phenomenological observation — and one that Peirce seems to be making about his own experience. This is confirmed, I think, by the fact that in his writings about geometry and topology Peirce often speaks of a line as a point in motion, a film as a line in motion, and so on (the motion being the “muscular” aspect of the phenomenon). [[ The very nature of reasoning demands such an iconic mode of representation, while the nature of the human mind, to which the representamen is to appeal, strongly recommends the optico-muscular form of the icon. But this plan-germ having been settled upon, there may be different ways of developing it into a definite plan…. I must [add] that (4) that visible surface of which the Graph icons are differentiata, is to denote that object (as utterly indefinite as to its signification as it is quite unmistakable in its denotation,) which the Graphs, from their very first, find to have been {37} settled upon, by a previous understanding between the Graphist and the Interpreter, as that to which all their significations must refer. ]] This previous understanding is functionally equivalent to the collateral experience which, in semiosis, furnishes that acquaintance with the object which the sign itself cannot provide. While the Graphs iconize the form of the thought process being analyzed, the matter of the process is denoted by the surface on which the Graphs are scribed. This is what the Graphs and their transformations are about: the Universe of Discourse, or simply the Universe. This Universe is to discourse as the phaneron is to experience. [[ This one and unvarying subject of all discourse whatsoever is the Universe. Yet since the Universe, which force[s] upon us all those enduring thoughts that we call truths, makes its power felt in three ways so utterly different that we may well liken them to a set of three mutually perpendicular directions from which any object may be viewed, we must distinguish, Firstly, those thoughts that come to us, as we may [say], from a star-light aspect of the Universe; suppositions that seem to us to be our own untrammeled fabrications, although we are still bound down in them, somehat loosely, it is true, to the Universe, in ways of which the psychologists have, as yet, only begun to furnish us with some slight and fragmentary accounts, which thoughts {38} refer to what we may entitle the Universe of Real Capacities; then, Secondly, those thoughts which, as we are sensible, are forced upon us by the brute force of experience, the Universe of Actual Fact; and Thirdly, those thoughts into which the growth of our own souls together with the vicissitudes of life give us as insight as features of the ideal destiny toward which the course of events is forever to approach nearer, the Universe of Tendencies. ]] I call this triad of Universes (or subuniverses of the one Universe) phenomenological because they are different ways in which the Universe “makes its power felt” experientially. Now, if we try to eliminate from phenomenological discourse all terminology that belongs to logic, metaphysics and psychology, we are left with almost nothing to say — unless we borrow terms from mathematics, which are also limited in their application because mathematics is not a positive science which appeals to experience. Despite Peirce’s insistence on distinguishing all these sciences from one another, he often uses terms borrowed from the others in his own phenomenological or phaneroscopic discourse. In the convoluted sentence above he even refers directly to “the psychologists” as beginning to furnish some data which can be organized according to phenomenological principles in order to account for their experiential nature. Of course, psychology and neuroscience have made great strides in this respect since Peirce’s time, although many of the workers in the field of cognitive science are not philosophically astute enough to recognize this phenomenological aspect as such. (I tried to remedy that situation in some chapters of my book Turning Signs). [[ While there are other features of the plan of the System that it matters more than these that you should appreciate, I hope you may be able to see that these three, though they shade into one another, are nevertheless different. Yet the imperative need of the manifold differentiation of each of them is even more apparent. It is clear that their differences are not differences of the predicates, or significations, of the graphs, but of the predetermined objects {39} to which the graphs are intended to refer. Consequently, the Iconic idea of the System requires that they should be represented not by differentiations of the Graphs themselves but by appropriate visible characters of the surfaces upon which the Graphs are marked. ]] This is the major point of the whole passage. The three Universes correspond in logic to the modalities of the propositions represented by the Graphs. Dealing with modality requires that not only the differences among the three Universes, but also the manifold differentiation of each of them, need to be represented “by appropriate visible characters of the surfaces upon which the Graphs are marked” — but there is simply no good way to do this, as Peirce goes on to explain. To me, this marks the point where Peirce essentially gave up on the Gamma Graphs as a tool for logical analysis — because he found no good way of representing the phenomenological variations within the thought process which manifest in logic as modality, and in metaphysics as “modes of being.” [[ There are no sensuous appearances of surfaces that to our knowledge are in plain prose analogous to these subuniverses; so that we are driven to call upon fancies to help us out. If we could fancy or pretend that there were any respective similarities between the three fundamental hues, Vermilion, Emerald and Ultramarine and the three Universes of Capacities, Actualities and Tendencies, then the countless intermediate Hues with their variations in Luminosity and in Chroma would furnish us with all the differences we could ever need. But since the actual {40} coloring would be unhandy and in print impracticable, I have suggested that we resort to the heraldic tinctures; to wit, to color for the Universe of Capacities, to metal for the Universe of actuality, and to fur for the universe of tendencies; further differentiations separating each of these subuniverses into “provinces.” The whole differentiation of the surface remains, however, the most unsatisfactory feature of the system. ]] And that is the bottom line, as far as EGs are concerned, for Peirce in 1908. The reason for my own interest in this is that ever since I wrote a chapter on “meaning spaces” in Turning Signs, I’ve been looking for a way to represent them diagrammatically, and I thought Existential Graphs would at least suggest a way to do this, if not serve that purpose themselves. I now see this as an illusion on my part. More generally: during all this time I’ve been looking to Peirce for more exact ways of expressing the ideas I developed in my book, and that’s been the main motivator for my Peircean studies. As we all do, I’ve found traces or precursors of my own ideas in Peirce, but now I’m thinking increasingly that many of my ways of expressing those ideas are already better (for my purposes) than Peirce’s ways. Further adapting of Peirce’s philosophy to my own would misrepresent Peirce without making my own ideas clearer, I think. Jon, since I think your approach to Peircean studies is rather different from mine, I haven’t responded to your post in detail, lest we sink into purely terminological issues. I hope this will do as a response, and that we can continue to explore the “Bedrock” in this way. Gary f.
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