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I agree with you on that,
Gary. I don't think it is profitable to regard it as being about
metaphysics, though it involves noting some metaphysical considerations.
He seems to be mainly concerned with keeping the metaphysical considerations as
peripheral as possible relative to what he is really concerned to address.
Maybe it would be most accurate just to say that it is mainly about the
special kind of relationship a symbol has with its interpretant. Of course
it could be said to be about a lot of different things, but I am just thinking
about the problematics he is addressing.
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 6:39
PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS:
What is Part III about?
Joe, Bernard, List,
I too would agree that Peirce is
concerned with methodeutic here, and that indeed philosophical rhetoric
bridges normative science and metaphysics.
But even as one accepts--as
Peirce does--the Kantian notion that metaphysical principles are truly but
logical principles applied to the consideration of reality, one does
distinguish normative science from metaphysics, and the New Elements would
appear to be more closely allied to the former than to the latter discipline
as methodeutic == rhetoric is the last of the three normative semeiotic
sciences, followed by metaphysics. (see, e.g., Ben Udell's recently
posted version of Peirce's Classification of the Sciences).
Still, the
rhetorical point is well made, and one will see that for the most part I have
agreed with Bernard in that, although not in this matter that the New Elements
is all about METAPHYSICS. Should one say that it's all about PHILOSOPHICAL
RHETORIC, well then I might be somewhat more willing to grant you the
point (although all those caps have got me worried, while I'd still maintain
that it's all about LOGIC, that is, logic as semeiotic, again, rhetoric
being the last branch of logic. . . .. . . . :-)
Oh, well. I
think I'll give up on trying to make that for me obvious point.
But the
most important matter, perhaps finally to prove Bernard right about it
all being about metaphysics is suggested by the last paragraph of the New
Elements piece where Peirce writes:
We can now see what judgment and assertion are. The
man is a symbol. Different men, so far as they can have any ideas in common,
are the same symbol. Judgment is the determination of the man-symbol to have
whatever interpretant the judged proposition has. Assertion is the
determination of the man-symbol to determining the interpreter, so far as he
is interpreter, in the same way. (EP2:324) Profounder words were
never writ, imho. As he comments a few passages earlier (after an explication
in 2 or 3 paragraphs of a cosmic birth & early evolution--Peirce's
alternative to the Big Bang--a precis of the many pages of the same kinds of
cosmic and proto-metaphysical arguments to be found in the 1898 Cambridge
Lecture series--) it's all about the possibility of the interpretant
sign correcting the symbol ( == learning == evolution), so that the
interpretant--as growing--represents the object even more truly than the
original replica, a point Peirce makes clear enough in his analysis. This is
cosmic evolution, or the growth of love, or the evolution of consciousness,
etc.
The symbol--such as the reality of being a human being in
all-temporal-and-spacial-reality--can grow. A person seeks the truth of
reality, and this is the matter of the judgment, the "determination of the
man-symbol to have whatever interpretant the judged proposition has" and he
finds agreement and "common cause" with his fellow human being.
But
there is that additional rhetorical step, namely, that the man-symbol should
act to bring this truth of reality about, that is, that s/he should assert it,
in the sense that assertion means "the determination of the man-symbol to
determining the interpreter" (which appears at the very end of the New
Elements). We ought to live according to what we believe is true, that is,
developing the new healthier habits which follow from out evolved
understanding (cf. Peirce: "Belief is what we are willing to act upon."--I'm
not sure that's an exact quote).
I recently commented off the
CG-list:
The point for now is that [Peirce] finds a place in
his work for a scientific metaphysic, and while opposed to theology as such,
includes a religious branch within it. To my understanding, the intellectual
distancing of, for example, many philosophers from spiritual concerns
(towards materialism, nominalism, atheism, etc) has had the effect of giving
up all that territory to such fundamentalisms as are now sweeping the world.
We need, I believe, spiritual ideas which are appropriately advanced for our
times, and especially the Bohm-Peirce connection (if one can be established)
might be promising towards reviving interest in an approach to spirituality
which is reality based (as in Scholastic Realism, not unlike Bohm's
definition. . .), deep, scientific (in the sense in which it can form a wing
of metaphysics, etc), and lively, imbuing cold science, logic, computer sci,
etc. with the warm glow of our humanity finally beginning to explore its
deep connectedness to the cosmos at the moment of what I believe to be its
most serious ecological crisis. Gary
Joseph
Ransdell wrote:
I should add to my recent message that my view of what Part III is about is
consistent with Bernard Morand's view that it can be regarded as being about
the basis for philosophical rhetoric since it is concerned especially with
the symbol's relation to its interpretant. I agree. The discussion of the
conceptions of belief, affirmation, judgment, assertion (assuming assertion
is not simply being identified with affirmation, as I believe it is not),
credenciveness, and acceptance is very interesting, and Part III can be
read as being as much about that and other aspects of philosophical rhetoric
as it is about the topic I described, . . .
Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 12:09 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] NEW ELEMENTS: What is Part III about?
Considered as an introduction to a book on mathematical reasoning, the New
Elements is probably best regarded as incomplete because Peirce does not in
fact get around to saying anything specifically about that sort of reasoning
except for the definition in Part II of "diagram", which is important but is
not followed up in Part III although some groundwork is laid for doing do.
If the introduction were complete I would expect Peirce to have gone ahead
to a Part IV in which the distinction between corollarial and theorematic
deduction is drawn, and the differing role of the diagram in the two kinds
of deduction is explained, and if not there then in still another new part
there would be other things to be explained, too, at least briefly, as, for
example, the peculiarly hypothetical status of distinctively mathematical
reasoning. But since, as it stands, there is actually very little in the
New Elements which seems to be designed specifically to explain or provide
the logical basis for understanding the nature of mathematical reasoning in
particular, I conclude that it is simply incomplete and therefore best
understood in respect to what Peirce actually does accomplish, or at least
attempt to accomplish as far as he got with it.
Looking at it that way, it seems to me, then, that the question is, what is
Part III about? What is it mainly attempting designed to accomplish? And I
would say that Peirce is mainly attempting there to make clear to the reader
what is implicit in understanding a symbol as essentially dependent on its
interpretant for its identity as the particular symbol it is. The
peculiarity of the symbol is that no conclusion can be drawn as to what it
is, as a symbol, on the basis either of an intrinsic characteristic of it,
or on the basis of it as something in existential relationship with other
entities. It is essentially dependent on its interpretant for its identity
as a symbol, which supplies what is missing in the symbol itself considered
as replicated in something which has no properties of its own, qualitative
or existential, that account for its meaning.
This is what makes semiosis essentially dialogical: the actually occurring
sign is "hostage to the future" in the sense that, apart from what its
interpretant can do for it, it is meaningless and is not really a symbol at
all. (See Thomas Riese's recent message on this in the interchange with
Gary Richmond.) Contrary to what some interpreters of Peirce think, there
is no implication in this that it is hostage to some infinitely remote
interpretant: any authentic interpretant of it will do, provided it is an
interpretation of it as significant in the sense of being connotative or
having sense or logical intension (i.e.. signifying a quality or character).
If it is an interpretation of it as denotative or referential (having
logical extension) it must, as a matter of logical priority, already be
significative connotationally. And this is true of it a fortiori if it is
an interpretation of it as propositional since that presupposes referential
interpretation. So if we suppose that a given symbol actually has been
replicated in a sinsign occurrence, we are supposing that an authentic
interpretant of it either has occurred or will occur.
Nevertheless, Peirce also wants to make clear, before going into the special
considerations involved in understanding mathematical representation and the
way symbolism works in that respect, that the critically reflective symbol
user should understand that there is indeed the promise of an infinitude of
prospective future interpretation to be taken duly into account, the
practical import of which is that the critical interpreter will understand
that there is indeed a potentially infinitely interpretational future
implicit in the symbol which precludes the possibility of absolute certainty
that interpretation of it at any given time is not mistaken. And he seems
especially concerned to convey the understanding that the relation of the
symbol to its interpretant is driven by the symbol itself, which cannot be
itself other than in its transference of its own identity to the sign that
interprets it, which must therefore also be a symbol with the same absolute
need to reproduce itself in its offspring in order to be what it is.
Now all of this is paradoxical -- seemingly incoherent, in fact -- since it
seems to say at once that the symbol is essentially at the mercy of the
interpretant and that it is itself responsible for what the interpretant is.
The conception which he relies upon here for explicating this idea in such a
way as to show that it may be paradoxical but is not really incoherent --
for Peirce certainly is not aiming at being perceived as the sort of
romantic nihilist who celebrates incoherence as a good higher than reason
(much less as a higher form of reason) -- is the concept of determination,
which is why it seems to me to be an unusually important paper in spite of
its often puzzling character. It is the only account I know of in which the
concept of determination is discussed so closely in connection with the
notion of causation, and the only place I know of where he relates his view
to the Aristotelian four-fold causal analysis. (I am especially interested
in it myself for just this reason since I put in quite a lot of time, a good
many years back, in some unpublished stuff, in trying to see if I could
accommodate the Aristotelian fourfold analysis within Peirce;s account of
semiosis, as I had reconstructed that. I distributed some of that on
PEIRCE-L a few years ago but I had not read the New Elements at that point
and could make no comparison then. I'll have to dig back into that as soon
as I get the time to see if it agrees with Peirce's own account or not, but
I haven't tried that yet.)
Part III ends, then, after some exploration of the apparent paradoxes which
this being in futuro of the symbol harbors within it, and it would perhaps
be in a missing Part IV that the account of the role of iconicity implicit
in the conception of symbolism would be explained in such a way as to throw
light on the nature of mathematical reasoning in particular. It is, I
think, made clear enough that the conception of the symbol cannot be
understood without understanding the role of the icon in its functioning in
semiosis, but precisely how it functions therein is only sketched out
minimally in this paper as it stands.
So it seems to me that the best bet interpretationally is to proceed as if
Part III of the New Elements is all there is to it and see what it adds up
to on that assumption. I am not, of course, dictating how anybody else is
to interpret it but just describing my own view.
Joe Ransdell
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