Gary R., List:
GR: First, "habit-consciousness" is *not *Peirce's term but your invention
based on the phrase he used in outlining that trichotomy.
Peirce does not provide a single term for the 3ns counterpart of qualisense
and molition in his 1909 letter to William James. Instead, he refers to
"the recognition of Habit in any kind of consciousness" (CP 8.303) and
"Consciousness of habit" (CP 8.304), prompting my equivalent use of
"habit-consciousness." He defines it as "a consciousness at once of the
substance of the habit, the special case of application, and the union of
the two" (ibid). Admittedly, this only loosely matches his earlier
definition of "medisense" as "the consciousness of a thirdness, or medium
between primisense and altersense, leading from the former to the latter
... the consciousness of a process of bringing to mind ... the
consciousness of means," as well as its division into "three modes,
*Abstraction*, *Suggestion*, *Association*" (CP 7.551, c. 1896).
GR: And it is also the case that your final "fudging" of Peirce's two
phaneroscopic trichotomies by combining them as you have ("we could replace
"primisense" with "qualisense") will have to be treated with at least as
much "contempt and indignation" as my seeing parallels in semeiotic
terminology (viz., "sinsense" and "legisign" to go along with Peirce's
"qualisense") which, rather than possibly conflating facets of the two
sciences might possibly prove helpful in showing significant relations
between them.
The difference is that "qualisense" is still *Peirce's *term, and at least
arguably names the very same phenomenon. Moreover, he proposes it some 13
years later than "primisense," so we can plausibly interpret it as
reflecting his more considered view of the matter. He invents "molition" on
the same occasion for a very specific reason, defining it as "volition
minus all desire and purpose, the mere consciousness of *exertion *of any
kind" (CP 8.303)--desire and purpose manifesting 3ns rather than 2ns--as
well as "a double consciousness of exertion and resistance" (CP 8.304), all
quite consistent with "altersense" as "The sense of reaction or struggle
between self and another" (CP 7.543). By contrast, he *never *uses
"sinsense" or "legisense," and I am not yet convinced that borrowing
prefixes from speculative grammar is a good idea within phaneroscopy. For
one thing, I notice that you accidentally wrote "legisign" rather than
"legisense" in this quoted statement.
Nevertheless, your other points are well-taken. Even in speculative
grammar, Peirce replaces qualisign/sinsign/legisign (1903) with
tone/token/type (1906-1908) and experiments further with alternatives for
"tone." However, most of that is in unpublished manuscripts and personal
letters, so it seems harsh to criticize him as violating his own ethics of
terminology where he is not deliberately writing for the wider scientific
community. In our current context, I fully agree that we are each making
"good faith attempts to arrive at a terminology we can serviceably use in
discussing Peirce's phaneroscopic practice."
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 12:35 AM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Jon, Gary F, List,
>
> JAS: I did not say that the terminology of "qualisense," "sinsense," and
> "legisense" conflates phaneroscopy with semeiotic, I said that it *runs
> the risk of fostering* such conflation.
>
>
> GR: A subtle distinction; perhaps you are right. But I think that it's a
> *slight* risk and, as I've wrote yesterday, the very different roots
> ("sense" and "sign") not only make it *quite* unlikely that the terms
> will be conflated, but that the prefixes suggest a possible relation
> between those trichotomies, re: "senses" and "signs," in their respective
> sciences, viz., phenomenology and logic as semeiotic.
>
> Below you yourself suggest a trade off of terminology from one trichotomy
> to another. But first:
>
>
> Jon quoted me:
>
> GR: (2) primisense/altersense/medisense are yet three 'novel' terms to add
> to the already problematic neologistist terminology employed by Peirce.
>
>
> Then wrote:
>
> JAS:True, but "sinsense" and "legisense" are even more novel (and arguably
> even more problematic) as terms that Peirce himself never used. With that
> in mind, consider this passage from his text on the ethics of terminology
> [the complete Peirce passage can be found in JAS's post below].
>
>
> GR: Yes, that familiar, for Peirceans, rather famous passage on the
> ethics of terminology makes it imperative that not only does the
> scientist who introduces a new concept into a particular science have the
> right and duty to assign it *suitable* scientific terminology, and at least
> as important, that "it becomes the duty of all [. . .] to accept his
> [terminology and . .] that whoever deliberately uses a word or other symbol
> in any other sense than that which was conferred upon it by its sole
> rightful creator commits a shameful offense against the inventor of the
> symbol and against science, and it becomes the duty of the others to treat
> the act with contempt and indignation. (CP 2.224, EP 2:265, 1903)
>
> JAS: In short, we should *not *invent new names for conceptions that
> [have been] already introduced into science under other names, unless those
> original names are "utterly unsuitable." Accordingly, if we wish to
> preserve "qualisense" from 1909, it should be accompanied by "molition" and
> "habit-consciousness" as in that same passage, rather than the neologisms
> "sinsense" and "legisense." On the other hand, if we wish to preserve
> "-sense" as the consistent root word for all three categories, then we
> should stick with "primisense," "altersense," and "medisense" from c. 1896.
> Or I suppose that *we could replace "primisense" with "qualisense" as a
> later and more descriptive alternative, giving us
> qualisense/altersense/medisense* as a trichotomy that is even more
> suggestive of quality/reaction/mediation applied specifically to
> consciousness [bold emphasis added by GR].
>
>
> GR: First, "habit-consciousness" is *not* Peirce's term but your
> invention based on the phrase he used in outlining that trichotomy. I
> personally have no problem with this.
>
> And it is also the case that your final "fudging" of Peirce's two
> phaneroscopic trichotomies by combining them as you have ("we could replace
> "primisense" with "qualisense") will have to be treated with at least as
> much "contempt and indignation" as my seeing parallels in semeiotic
> terminology (viz., "sinsense" and "legisign" to go along with Peirce's
> "qualisense") which, rather than *possibly *conflating facets of the two
> sciences might *possibly* prove helpful in showing significant relations
> between them.
>
> But I hope and expect that neither of us -- nor others -- will see our
> separate attempts at developing a potentially useful phaneroscopic
> terminology as anything more nor less than *that*: good faith attempts to
> arrive at a terminology we can serviceably use in discussing Peirce's
> phaneroscopic practice.
>
> And, indeed, what I rudely referred to as your "fudging" ought to remind
> us that while Peirce may not have exactly "fail[ed] in his duty either by
> giving no name or an utterly unsuitable one," that he had a very strong
> penchant to reconsider and revise terminology that he has previously
> introduced. Perhaps there is no science in which this is clearer than in
> *logic
> as semeiotic* (I'm sure we could all provide examples of this), but it
> appears in other sciences as well -- including, as I've been arguing,
> phaneroscopy.
>
> So, in a significant sense one might say, that Peirce doesn't -- at least *not
> strictly* -- observe his own terminological ethic, and not doing so -- in
> his modifying and revising terminology throughout his career so that it
> becomes problematic to decide what terms to settle on -- makes it extremely
> difficult for us who come more than a century after him to settle on just
> that optimal terminology which he might approve of and which we might
> advantageously use to help further develop his phenomenology.
>
> I'll conclude this post with what I consider to be an important question:
> what is to be *our* ethics of terminology given this challenge which
> Peirce, a "backwoodsman" not only in semeiotic but also in phenomenology as
> well as other sciences, has perhaps inadvertently set before us?
>
> Your post is a bit too rich and complex for me to respond to in a single
> email, Jon, so I'll try to deal with the rest of it in another message.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
>
> Beauty and terror
> Just keep going
> No feeling is final”
> ― Rainer Maria Rilke
> *Gary Richmond*
> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
> *Communication Studies*
> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
>
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