John, all,
One may need to look at Peirce's defiinitions of "interpretant" in The
Monist to guess better whether the idea of the interpretant as an effect
upon "a person" was Peirce's sop to editor Carus. There are other
things that I could check, but I have to run. Peirce does mention the
interpretant as an effect on a Quasi-mind in "Prolegomena" (which was
published in The Monist), but the Commens.org site's other quotes on
"interpretant" include no other passages that I remember as published in
The Monist. So maybe (as far as I can recall at the moment) Peirce did,
as you suggest, have a problem with Carus about the interpretant.
Meanwhile:
In CP, W 1-6, & PW1 (incl. CN), I found two instances of "Cerberus":
One is in "Evolutionary Love" The Monist, vol. 3, pp. 176-200 (1893).
Early in the article's Section 1, CP 6:291, QUOTE :
291. I open a handbook of political economy †1 — the
most typical and middling one I have at hand — and there find some
remarks of which I will here make a brief analysis. I omit
qualifications, sops thrown to Cerberus, phrases to placate
Christian prejudice, trappings which serve to hide from author and
reader alike the ugly nakedness of the greed-god. But I have
surveyed my position. The author enumerates "three motives to human
action:†2
The love of self;
The love of a limited class having common interests and feelings
with one's self;
The love of mankind at large."
Remark, at the outset, what obsequious title is bestowed
on greed — "the love of self." Love! The second motive is love. In
place of "a limited class" put "certain persons," and you have a
fair description. Taking "class" in the old-fashioned sense, a weak
kind of love is described. In the sequel, there seems to be some
haziness as to the delimitation of this motive. By the love of
mankind at large, the author does not mean that deep, subconscious
passion that is properly so called; but merely public-spirit,
perhaps little more than a fidget about pushing ideas. [....]
END QUOTE
The other instance of "Cerberus" is in CP 1, in what the editors call
"a manuscript of notes for a projected, but never completed, History of
Science, c. 1896"
CP 1:75 in Ch. 2, "Lessons from the History of Science", "§11. The Study
of the Useless" QUOTE:
75. . . . The old-fashioned political economist adored, as alone
capable of redeeming the human race, the glorious principle of
individual greed, although, as this principle requires for its
action hypocrisy and fraud, he generally threw in some dash of
inconsistent concessions to virtue, as a sop to the vulgar
Cerberus . But it is easy to see that the only kind of science
this principle would favor would be such as is immediately
remunerative with a great preference for such as can be kept secret,
like the modern sciences of dyeing and perfumery. Kepler's discovery
rendered Newton possible, and Newton rendered modern physics
possible, with the steam engine, electricity, and all the other
sources of the stupendous fortunes of our age. But Kepler's
discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of
conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler — such penetrating minds as
Descartes and Pascal — were abandoning the study of geometry (in
which they included what we now call the differential calculus, so
far as that had at that time any existence) because they said it was
so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost
trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections
already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that
only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, [prevailed] the
nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which
distinguish it from the ancien régime.
76. True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For
the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific
men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam
engine by burning diamonds.
END QUOTE
Best, Ben
On 1/20/2023 12:04 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
Literally, Cerberus was the three-headed dog that guarded the gates to the
underworld. But who did Peirce have in mind when he wrote the following
paragraph in a letter to Lady Welby on 25 December 1908?
"I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else,
called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect
I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by
the former. My insertion of 'upon a person' is a sop to Cerberus, because I
despair of making my own broader conception understood."
Could it be Carus, who guarded the gates to the Monist? Note that both
names begin with C and end with RUS.
John
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