I feel the notion Peirce had a complete philosophy is unfair to him and as
a characterization, any more than Nietzsche or Wittgenstein could be said
to have such a philosophy. Aside from the fact that completeness is
impossible, I explicitly sense that Peirce developed what might be perfect
control and understanding and knowing to his personal satisfaction I more
and more sense that his philosophy is bifurcated both by his interpreters
and by himself. There is not much point in going on as my posts here are
not exactly dialog creators. I think that is actually one way of
understanding him, ironic but perhaps the case. Best, S
amazon.com/author/stephenrose
On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 11:48 AM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Francesco, Gary R., List:
>
> I agree that Peirce explicitly characterized the blank Phemic Sheet as
> both a Seme and a Pheme. It is a Seme in the sense that it serves as a
> substitute for its Object, "the Truth," for the purpose of diagramming
> Propositions. It is a Pheme in the sense that it represents the aggregate
> of all Propositions that the Graphist and Interpreter *already *take to
> be true, and anything scribed on it is likewise a Proposition. This
> reflects the fact that Seme/Pheme/Delome is a division of Signs according
> to the *relation *with the Final *Interpretant*, and thus has no bearing
> whatsoever on the *nature *of the Dynamic *Object*.
>
> I also agree that "The mortality of man" is a Seme that serves as the
> *grammatical
> *subject of the sentence, "The mortality of man should induce everyone to
> be careful with EGs," and that the *logical *subject when the latter is
> expressed in accordance with modern predicate logic is the quantified
> variable. I will add that the latter *also *satisfies Peirce's
> definition of a Seme--it serves as a substitute for its (indefinite)
> Object. Moreover, an alternative and equally valid analysis would throw
> *everything
> possible* into the logical subject, treating most of the words in the
> original sentence as Semes and leaving only a continuous predicate as the
> indecomposable form of relation that marries them into a Proposition
> (Pheme).
>
> Finally, I agree that Peirce sought to construct his entire philosophy in
> a way that would *not *be vulnerable to "destruction" by removal of a
> single "weak link." While he clearly held that all of the *positive *sciences
> depend on Mathematics as "the science which draws necessary conclusions"
> and "is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional
> propositions" (CP 4.239-240; 1902), those other sciences--including
> Phenomenology and Semeiotic--involve not only Retroductively formulating
> and Deductively explicating their principles, but also Inductively
> evaluating them. As such, any and all of their results are "eminently
> fallible" (CP 2.227; c. 1897); and a conclusion drawn from a false
> premiss--even within a logically valid Argument--is liable to be false, as
> well.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 6:33 AM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Francesco, list,
>>
>> Francesco concluded:
>>
>> FB: Note [. . .] that in being both ("at one") a Seme and a Pheme, the
>> Sheet of Assertion is both a first and a second. Thus there is something
>> that admits of trans-categorial attributions, but this hardly involves a
>> collapse of the system.
>>
>>
>> Francesco, thank you for this thoughtful contribution to what has been at
>> times a contentious discussion. While I've no idea if it will satisfy all
>> parties in the discussion, I found it most helpful; or, better, it most
>> certainly satisfied me.
>>
>> Your concluding sentence ("Thus there is something that admits of
>> trans-categorial attributions, but this hardly involves a collapse of the
>> system.") also brought to mind this famous passage (recalling that
>> Peirce considered logic as semeiotic--including critical logic--to be a
>> science within cenoscopic philosophy):
>>
>> Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so
>> far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to
>> careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its
>> arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not
>> form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but may be ever so
>> slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected (CP
>> 5.265).
>>
>>
>> However, it now occurs to me that this passage might be used in support
>> of either side in the recent debate.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Gary R
>>
>> *Gary Richmond*
>> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
>> *Communication Studies*
>> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 3:05 AM Francesco Bellucci <
>> bellucci.france...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> let me add the following remarks, starting from a passage in the
>>> "Prolegomena":
>>>
>>> "The matter which the Graph-instances are to determine, and which
>>> thereby becomes the Quasi-mind in which the Graphist and Interpreter are at
>>> one, being a Seme of The Truth, that is, of the widest Universe of Reality,
>>> and at the same time, a Pheme of all that is tacitly taken for granted be
>>> tween the Graphist and Interpreter, from the outset of their discussion,
>>> shall be a sheet, called the Phemic Sheet upon which [graphs can be scribed
>>> and erased]" ("Prolegomena", pp. 525–526)
>>>
>>> Note, first, that this is the published version of the paper, not a
>>> rejected draft of it.
>>>
>>> In the second place, Peirce is here saying – if I interpret him
>>> correctly – that the Sheet of Assertion is both a Seme and a Pheme. It is a
>>> Seme "of the truth"i, i.e. of the universe of discourse ("universe of
>>> reality") and a Pheme of that which utterer and interpreter take for
>>> granted in their discussion about that universe. As a Pheme, it is a
>>> proposition (like "all we know is true", or "there exists a universe of
>>> discourse and all we know about it is true", etc.). As a Seme, it is the
>>> universe of discourse to which all graphs scribed upon it refer. Now the
>>> question is, is the universe of discourse in logic a subject or a predicate?
>>>
>>> Recall that a Seme was defined in an earlier passage of the same
>>> published version "anything which serves for any purpose as a substitute
>>> for an object of which it is, in some sense, a representative or Sign". In
>>> that context, Peirce also said that the term "The mortality of man" is a
>>> Seme. If the subject of a sentence in ordinary language cannot be a Seme,
>>> what should we think of the sentence "The mortality of man should induce
>>> everyone to be careful with EGs"? In this sentence, that which Peirce says
>>> is a Seme is the grammatical subject. Of course, when formalized through
>>> FOL that "grammatical" subject will become a predicate, while the "logical"
>>> subject would be a quantified variable ("there is an x such that x is the
>>> mortality of man and for every y, x should induce y to be careful with
>>> EGs"). This Peirce was certainly aware of. But this does not prevent "the
>>> mortality of man" from being the subject of an ordinary sentence, and thus
>>> some Semes are subjects.
>>>
>>> Note, in the third place, that in being both ("at one") a Seme and a
>>> Pheme, the Sheet of Assertion is both a first and a second. Thus there is
>>> something that admits of trans-categorial attributions, but this hardly
>>> involves a collapse of the system.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Francesco
>>>
>>
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