Gary F., List: Browsing through Peirce's multiple drafts for the preface to a proposed collection of his essays on "Meaning" (R 618-640; 1909 Mar-Oct) led me to two subsequent manuscripts that he entitled "Significs and Logic" (R 641-642; 1909 Nov). They include a number of interesting passages, but for this thread I will focus on what they say specifically about Percepts and Perceptual Judgments. The following passage appears within a discussion of Reality and Externality, right after an annotated quotation from Peirce's own 1901 review of Pearson's *Grammar of Science* (EP 2:62).
CSP: Thus, the Signs of the Reality of an appearance are, 1st, its Insistency (of which Sign its Vividness is again a Sign,) 2nd, its sameness to all witnesses, except for differences that are but corroborative, and 3rd, its physical reactions; and the Reality is that which these Signs go toward proving; so that we have only to ask what they do prove, and the answer to that question will be the Definition of the Reality *of a Percept* . What they prove as thoroughly as any Actual Fact can be proved, is that genuine Percepts represent, both in their qualities and their occasions, Facts concerning Matter, as independent of themselves, the Perceptions. ( *NOTE*. Permit me, by the way, to express my satisfaction that every competent critic will recognize in me a disciple of Berkeley, although I am utterly opposed to his Nominalism, and although his denial of Matter, bad enough in his own day, has become ridiculous in ours. His attack on infinitesimals is of a piece with his Nominalism. But the Truth of Berkeleianism lies in his hinging all philosophy,--all *Coenoscopy*, to borrow Bentham's excellent word,--on the concept of *SIGN*; and in his Methodeutic of Noology. No doubt lurks in my mind that his view of Perception as a revelation from God is, in this particular, quite correct. Indeed, if one admits the Reality of God, it is all but a truism. Yet the Percept certainly does not profess explicitly to be such; nor can it be regarded as involving any Assertion by God addressed to the Percipient. On the contrary, it is just a plain Sign, or indication, of the Existence of Matter. (R 641:17-19; 1909 Nov 6-7) Besides the remark that Berkeley's "view of Perception as a revelation from God is ... quite correct," two statements here strike me as noteworthy--"Percepts represent ... Facts concerning Matter, as independent of themselves"; and a Percept is not an "Assertion by God," but instead "is just a plain Sign, or indication [Index], of the Existence of Matter." This seems to confirm my interpretation that Peirce considered Percepts to be Semes of external Objects. After a further digression about God, which I might end up quoting in another thread, he stated the following. CSP: I have enumerated three means that we use to assure ourselves that Percepts are Real. Of course, many things that are Real are not capable of being directly perceived. Berkeley himself admits this; for he makes spirits, or Minds, to be Real, notwithstanding his *esse est percipi*. In §89 of the second edition of his *Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge* he further acknowledges that there are Real Relations between things. Like other Metaphysicians, he admits the distinction between Substance and Accident (as may be seen, for example, in §§90, 91 of the same work) among Reals. (R 641:23; 1909 Nov 7) Being *directly perceivable* is not a requirement for being *Real*, even though my interpretation of Peirce is that being *knowable *is. This points to the distinction that I have suggested between *direct *knowledge/experience as what we acquire from Percepts vs. *indirect *knowledge/experience as what we acquire from other kinds of Signs. Peirce went on to discuss the Modes of Being of Substances and Accidents, and their analogy to the "Modes of Meaning" of subjects and predicates, respectively; I might end up quoting that text in another thread, as well, but for now will only mention the following. CSP: As to the predicates that can be truly predicated of that which an adjective or common noun in the singular *Denotes*, or stands for, that for a direct perception of which its utterance is intended to be a substitute, a few are predicable with a stronger "*Modality*" than that of the May-be. (R 641:25[24-1/2]; 1909 Nov 12) Untangling this a bit, it says that the *utterance *(Token) of an adjective or common noun is intended to be a substitute for a *direct perception* of the predicate that such a word denotes. To me, this concisely describes how *indirect* knowledge/experience is possible--an Instance of another Sign assumes the role that an external Object plays in *direct *knowledge/experience. Next, an alternate draft about Reality and Externality includes the following. CSP: ... it is plain that Externality, in my sense, belongs primarily to Facts, since it has reference to the possible effects of Actual Cognition, and the substance of a complete Cognition is Logically expressed as a Proposition. For example, a Percept does not involve an act of Judgment, that is, does not utter to oneself a Proposition, but yet it *immediately*, that is, without any additional reason, to trust the Percept is to trust to the truth of a Proposition or Propositions that Attention to the Percept will cause me to utter to my other Self; and Propositions so arising I denominate Perceptual Judgments. (R 642:10-11[17-18]; 1909 Nov 27) Here we see the usual distinction between a Percept and a Perceptual Judgment, where the former serves as the Object that determines the latter. Although the second sentence is not grammatically correct, it seems to be saying that *attending to* a Percept is what causes me to utter a Perceptual Judgment *about it* to myself, and that *trusting *a Percept--which, at that moment, I cannot help doing--amounts to trusting the *truth *of the resulting Perceptual Judgment; i.e., its correspondence to an External Fact. This notion of trust perhaps reflects the *Retroductive *nature of the involuntary process; from a strictly *formal *standpoint, the Perceptual Judgment is merely *plausible*, not certain (Deductive) or even probable (Inductive). Peirce continued ... CSP: A Perceptual Judgment need not be uttered to myself in the Syntax of speech. I far prefer, for my own part, some Diagrammatic Syntax; but it Essentially discriminates one Predicate, simple or compound, and one or more Subjects, according as the Proposition is Categorical or Relative, and besides these a Copula, which in Propositions is either Problematic, Assertoric, or Apodictic. An ordinary Perceptual Judgment, however, is always Assertoric. (R 642:11[18]; 1909 Nov 27) Like any Proposition, a Perceptual Judgment must be formulated in accordance with some Syntax, whether linguistic or diagrammatic. Here Peirce said that it must discriminate not only a single Predicate and one or more Subjects, but also a Copula that expresses the Proposition's *Modality*. Early explanations of EGs treated Spots as Rhemes with the Copula included, but this may be a clue as to why later expositions instead treated them as Semes and omitted it--Modality, and thus the Copula, can only be properly represented in EGs by the *surface *on which a Graph is scribed, rather than any *part* of the Graph itself. As Peirce stated elsewhere, "Abelard reckoned the copula as a third part; and in a certain sense, it is a part of an assertion, but not in the sense in which the subject and predicate are parts" (R 339:492; 1908 Oct 17). Again, I might eventually start another thread by quoting more of what Peirce wrote about Modality in R 641-642. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt >
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