Frances to listers... This curiosity of mine is about the term "intermediate" as used by Peirce in the passage quoted below. It is a thread however that seems related to the topic. The use of the term "intermediate" by Peirce may of course have been merely a casual one, rather than strictly a categorical one. It is tempting however to align it categorically and thus tridentially as mediate and intermediate and mediate, where the intermediate might embrace the dynamic and energetic and clearly the indexic. Nevertheless, the intent by Peirce might have been to broadly include both indexes and symbols under the raw intermediate umbrella. There is also a clear distinction here in the passage between the immediate and the direct, which presumably are not to be identified as similar, because the term "immediate" is not used.
My access to digital versions of Peircean writings is limited, but it would be interesting to seek and find out how many occasions the term "intermediate" appears in his texts, if indeed it has not already been done and posted to the list archive. "The necessity for a sign directly monstrative of the connection of premiss and conclusion is susceptible of proof. The proof is as follows. When we contemplate the premiss, we mentally perceive that that being true the conclusion is true. I say we perceive it, because clear knowledge follows contemplation without any intermediate process. Since the conclusion becomes certain, there is some state at which it becomes directly certain. Now this no symbol can show; for a symbol is an indirect sign depending on the association of ideas. Hence, a sign directly exhibiting the mode of relation is required. This promised proof presents this difficulty: namely, it requires the reader actually to think in order to see the force of it. That is to say, he must represent the state of things considered in a direct imaginative way." (Charles Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 4.75) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
