Edwina and Jon, ET
And again - all we are doing is quoting the same passages to each other, and interpreting them in different ways. I suggest we allow each other the 'grace' to do this - rather than insisting that one or the other is 'right' - and the other is a 'misinterpretation.
Yes. The practice of quoting clouds of words out of context is useless for resolving any questions about what Peirce meant. To avoid endless debates, I suggest a methodeutic for analyzing the quotations and determining their relevance. For Peirce, logic and mathematics are a solid and dependable foundation. If there is any dispute of any kind, translate the interpretation to EGs as a check. If the dispute is about EGs, translate the EGs to Peirce's algebraic notation and/or the equivalent in any of the more recent notations. Finally, if the dispute is about Peirce's technical terminology, translate the questions to ordinary language and use commonsense examples that can be stated without any of his technical terms. Analyze those examples without those terms. Then determine how and whether those terms could clarify the issues. JAS
Whether or how any particular Instance of a Sign is actually interpreted has no bearing whatsoever on what its Dynamic object is. Different Dynamic Interpretants can... CSP: In its relation to the Object, the Sign is passive; that is to say, its correspondence to the Object is brought about by an effect upon the Sign, the Object remaining unaffected. (EP 2:544n22; 1906).
This is just one of eight short quotations, all taken out of contexts in which Peirce never denies the obvious: When you see a rock, the thing you see is a sign that it exists where you happen to see it. That is the commonsense example. For the context, note the continuation of EP 2:544n22: "That which is communicated from the object through the Sign to the Interpretant is the Form." The sign you see is the form of a rock. That form defines a monadic predicate. The direction of your gaze determines an index of the rock's position. That index, combined with the predicate, determines the proposition "There is a rock at the location and position where I'm looking." Neither the predicate nor the index nor the proposition is the rock. But parts of the statement of the proposition (in English or an EG) refer to the rock and to its location. That kind of knowledge is the basis for everything we do in our daily lives -- and we get it from the signs of things in our environment *and* the background knowledge learned from previous experience. Peirce's term for background knowledge is "collateral experience". See below for CP 6.338, where he says that "the substance of thought" consists of three "species of ingredients": icons, indices, and collateral observations or experience. Every one of those three ingredients is mapped to some part or parts of any proposition stated in English, EGs, or the algebra. Whatever does not appear in the proposition is irrelevant. It conveys no information directly or indirectly related to the object. CSP (CP 8.177, EP 2:492; 1909) as quoted by JAS:
A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt) by something other than itself, called its Object...
That is another quotation taken out of context. It's part of a long letter to William James (NEM 3:836-866). Immediately after that quotation, Peirce wrote: CSP (NEM 3:839)
(or, in some cases, if the Sign be the sentence 'Cain killed Abel,' in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the Object is accurately the Universe of which the Special Object is member, or part)
Note that the interpretation of a sign may be "something other than itself", but it stays within the same universe of discourse. There may be propositions that involve more than one universe. But that occurs only when a different universe is explicitly introduced, as Peirce discussed on the next page. CSP (NEM 3:840)
The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the Sign... The Object of the sentence "Hamlet was insane" is the Universe of Shakespeare's creation sofar as it is determined by Hamlet being part of it.
These points show that the objects of a sign remain in the same universe at the sign itself, unless there is some sign that creates or moves to a new universe. It shows that nothing in Peirce's semeiotic justifies the assumption that any sign about anything in the universe of actuality implies anything outside that universe. If anyone wishes to discuss any of Peirce's beliefs about God, that's a reasonable topic for Peirce List. But the claim that anything in Peirce's semeiotic implies anything pro or con about God is unjustified. This example shows how the methodeutic provides criteria for resolving some of the endless debates. John ___________________________________ CP 6.338 All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent. Consequently, all thinking is conducted in signs that are mainly of the same general structure as words; those which are not so, being of the nature of those signs of which we have need now and then in our converse with one another to eke out the defects of words, or symbols. These non-symbolic thought-signs are of two classes: first, pictures or diagrams or other images (I call them Icons) such as have to be used to explain the significations of words; and secondly, signs more or less analogous to symptoms (I call them Indices) of which the collateral observations, by which we know what a man is talking about, are examples. The Icons chiefly illustrate the significations of predicate-thoughts, the Indices the denotations of subject-thoughts. The substance of thoughts consists of these three species of ingredients.
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