Helmut, List: HR: But why are there more than three interpretants?
There are *not *more than three interpretants, just multiple ways of naming them in different contexts. The relevant debates among Peirce scholars have to do with whether "the divisions of interpretant into immediate, dynamic, and final are archetypal, all other divisions being relatively synonymous with these categories" (Liszka as quoted by Atkin, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/). I have come to agree with this "received view." One alternative that I used to find persuasive is that the emotional/energetic/logical interpretants are *orthogonal *to the immediate/dynamical/final interpretants (Short), supposedly based on CP 4.536 (1906). However, this passage says only that the *actual *effect of a sign on an interpreter--its *dynamical *interpretant--is either a feeling, an exertion, or another sign. As I discuss at length in my *Semiotica *paper, "Peirce's Evolving Interpretants" (https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHPEI-12), after carefully studying the only texts where Peirce employs the specific terminology of emotional/energetic/logical interpretants (or meanings)--his various manuscript drafts for "Pragmatism" (1907)--it seems clear to me that these are the familiar effects of signs that humans routinely experience as "modifications of consciousness," while the immediate/dynamical/final interpretants are the *corresponding *effects of signs in general. Please note, no one is claiming anything about Peirce's *intentions*. Like other scholars of his thought (including Liszka and Short), I am merely offering a plausible interpretive hypothesis grounded firmly in his own words. As William J. Abraham rightly observes ( https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=asburyjournal), "Hermeneutics is not so much the study of what an author intended as the study of what the author achieved. If meaning has an equivalence, it is to be located less in intention and more in achievement. What is achieved may be more or less than what the author intended; happily we can be generous and charitable in our initial judgments and trust that intention and achievement may coincide more often than not." Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 10:42 AM Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote: > John, List, > > I vaguely remember, that at some point in the last weeks, somebody quoted > somebody, who said, that the theory is more complicated than the reality it > is for. I think, it (the theory) is a fractal. A fractal looks very > complicated, but it has a very simple generator formula (like Mandelbrot´s > appleman). > > From Peirce we know, that a firstness has one part (itself), a secondness > has two, and a thirdness three. For example, this is so with S-O-I, and > with primisense, altersense, medisense. But why are there more than three > interpretants? > > I tentatively propose an elaboration of this generator: A secondness has > two ways of dividing it into two parts, and a thirdness has three ways of > dividing it into three parts. These two respectively three ways are also > categorial: the two ways of dividing a secondness are firstnessal and > secondnessal, and the three ways of dividing a thirdness into three parts > are of 1ns, 2ns, 3ns. > > Like this, there are three times three interpretants. > > Or many more, if you keep on divi(di)ng. > > Best, Helmut >
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