List, Peirce-L members most likely know Andre de Tienne from his articles on Peirce (I provided a link to his "Iconoscopy Between Phaneroscopy and Semeiotic" in my first post in this thread, but others are available online) and as editor (or co-editor) of several books. Andre is also the current Director and General Editor of the *Peirce Edition Project*. Yesterday he responded off List (addressed to Gary f, Jon Alan Schmidt, and me) to my initial post in this thread.
I was delighted to discover that he is "of the same mind" as Gary, Jon and myself regarding Peirce's phenomenology, being fairly fully in agreement with Gary's brief essay on phenoscopy in his book *Turning Signs*, as well as my initial post in this thread which he referred to as a "manifesto in favor of phaneroscopic practice" but which I have come to think of as a kind of outline of a possible phenomenological project. Andre mentioned that these are matters he has thought deeply about but which he has not yet gotten around to articulating in writing; he seemed pleased that we had. Caught up in personal business, and so with no time left for extensive comments, he instead copied a letter he'd written about a year ago in response to a person asking the following question: Has anyone to your knowledge done an actual phaneroscopic analysis of anything (anything from a poem to a dog show) and published a report on what he or she discovered using this method? The method, as far as I can understand, appears to have practical potential but it is hard to see how one actually applies it in a concrete situation. As you know, watching someone actually make an omelette is a lot more instructive than just being told about it. Andre offered the following "impromptu" answer which, I believe, offers some considerable, yet non-technical insight into phaneroscopic practice/analysis, both what it is and what it is not, as well as several examples, including some from Peirce which connect his phaneroscopic practice with the development of his semeiotic. He generously gave me permission to forward his answer to the question to Peirce-L. Yes, watching people in action is more instructive than reading the recipe for that action. Hence a recipe is no phaneroscopic analysis. Still, watching people in action is no phaneroscopic analysis either. In the first place, “scoping the phaneron” as such is no analysis per se, because usually an analysis looks for separable parts which, when separated, lose the very connection to the whole that was their reason for being (and manifesting). In this phaneroscopy doesn’t seek to separate things abruptly, otherwise it fails to observe what gets manifested in its very manifestation. Peirce explained that the phaneroscopic activity was intrinsically challenging because of the peculiar mindset it requires. It is a peculiar act of attention, one that seeks to observe, without any bias or preset goal, the patterns that govern any sort of manifestation, and take notice of such patterns because they are precisely the very agents of that manifestation. Watch someone making an omelette, and as long as you are fixated on the making of the omelette as such you shall never see the manifesting of the phaneron, biased as you are in the activity itself and its desirable outcome. To conduct a phaneroscopic observation of the activity, the least interesting aspects of it are the eggs, the developing omelet, the ingredients, the pan, the stove, and the cook in action. After all, such kind of observation can be done by anyone anywhere and requires no special competence, least of all that of a phaneroscopist. Phaneroscopy sits between mathematics and the normative philosophical sciences (aesthetics being first, but aesthetics of course has nothing to do with what is usually called aesthetics, like Peirce’s ethics has no connection to what is usually called ethics, because Peirce’s approach has a fundamentality to it that is lacking in the more ordinary kind of inquiry such terms designate). Phaneroscopy is the first research activity preoccupied with the positivity of experience. Its preoccupation is entirely about that: the elements that preside over experiencing as such. Not experiencing someone making an omelette. Merely experiencing the experience of it for the sake of that experiencing. As a research activity, phaneroscopy does have a goal, but not one that is biasing. Its goal is to identify patterns that govern the coming of something into experiencing. Those patterns are not arbitrary, not fictive: they structure the dough of what goes on in experience. They are mathematizable in the sense that they manifest persistent forms that allow them to condition in various ways the emergence of other forms that could not emerge otherwise. Phaneroscopy makes good use of such mathematical clues to make out the phylogenetic rules (as it were) that govern relations of dependencies among forms within processes of manifestation. Who has conducted such kind of phaneroscopic observations and reported them in ways not assertive but suggestive? Why, Charles Peirce himself of course. Most of his semiotic distinctions arose from a preliminary long-sustained phaneroscopic observation. Take the distinction between three types of sign-manifestations: qualisign, sinsign, legisign. Being able to appreciate their distinctive experiential character in their presentification does require phaneroscopic competence. Making them out is not the result of a semiotic analysis but of phaneral alertness. Other example: Peirce’s MSS 940/941 (“Logic of events”, 1897-98). That document shows Peirce as his phaneroscopic best, especially from p. 9 to 11 in MS 940 and the whole of MS 941 regarding quale-consciousness, where Peirce seeks to establish fundamental patterns of quale-consciousness. As to the omelette-maker, focus not on what he or she’s doing but on how certain qualia emerge that appear to predominate in ways that govern the experiencing or witnessing of the activity. What is it about the level of brownness that is somehow desirable up to but just short of excess, at which point the omelette-maker will remove the pan from the heat? What about the complex of smells? What about the joyfulness of the affair? What about the growing pangs of hunger? What about the rhythm of distinct sub-actions? What about the manner in which quick decisions appear to be taken? What about the musical humming in the omelette-maker’s mouth? And so on. What phaneral dependencies do they govern that one usually ignores despite the fact that they fashion every aspect of the flowing manifestation? Usually such things are captured by poets, without their knowing they are good at phaneroscopy. Somewhere in a letter to Lady Welby, Peirce praised her for her distinction between sense, meaning, and significance, ascribing her making such a distinction to her power of sensitive apprehension. He contrasted that ability with his own, more theoretical, which forced him to discover the roots of the manifestations of distinct forms less through direct observation than through educated guesses or predictions of what forms ought to be expected to emerge and become manifest on the basis of patterns whose forms had already been ascertained (I am writing from home and don’t have the letter in front of me, so what precedes is no quotation). I took Peirce to mean that, when it came for him to classify all sorts of signs, and thus name them as appropriately as possible, that exercise was less based on some sort of direct apprehension than on the speculation that (for instance) if I harbor the sense that I am still lacking an essential triad of sign forms, and that such a lack forces me to create all sorts of ad-hoc complexifications that don’t hold up with any sort of elegance (e.g., “hypoicons”, “hyposemes”) there must be something I have neglected and I must go back to the drawing board. So Peirce goes back to the drawing board, studies the prescissive rules when applied to triadic relations, and realizes, from theory, that he had missed the most important triad of all, the one that acknowledges the distinct phanerality of each major type of sign. Hence he had to surmise the reality of the triad qualisign, sinsign, and legisign, decades after he had elaborated the other two triads. That new triad then gave him a path back toward observation: there ought to be in the manifestable something whose phanerality corresponds to such categories when it comes to signs. That’s the theoretical prediction. And lo and behold, so do they now appear! They had always been there, but it took Peirce a preparation of thought to finally sense their phanerality (or better [to a francophone ear], their phanerance). We can infer that phaneoscopy may be harder on some types of mind than on others, and that there is no unique royal road to the phaneral. But the road is open to everyone if only a whole range of effective and alternate practices could be worked out. For now I would especially like to emphasize the last sentence which, I believe, functions in the present context as an invitation to phaneroscopic practice.Best,Gary R “Let everything happen to you 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* On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 6:36 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote: > Gary f, Jon A.S., List, > > [I have changed the Subject to reflect a difference in emphasis.] > > Thank you, Gary, for your excellent primer on phaneroscopic practice. > https://gnusystems.ca/TS/pheno.htm > There has surely been too little discussion of that practice -- not to > mention *far* too little practice! -- one which I tend to think of as > quasi-necessary for the fullest and deepest comprehension and most fruitful > possible application of Peirce's categories as they concern, especially, > the cenoscopic sciences including, and perhaps especially, logic as > semeiotic and metaphysics. It simply makes good sense, I think, to ground > any such work relating to the categories in phaneroscopic practice. You > wrote: > > Gf: When the subject of Peirce’s “categories” arises, the discourse > always seems to jump directly into theoretical issues and applications. > > > I certainly agree with you that there's been a tendency to leap to theory > with scant attention given to its phaneroscopic grounding in practice, and > this is perhaps most clearly and frequently the case as regards applying > the categories to logic as semeiotic. That is, I believe, in part the > result of Peirce himself having done so much work there relating to the > categories that for some it may appear that all -- or, at least, most all > -- of the categorial work in semeiotics has already been accomplished! Yet > Peirce repeatedly urged others to duplicate the intellectual experiments he > had made, not "taking [his] word for it" but re-discovering for oneself > what he'd uncovered. Attempting to recreate such experiences and > experiments would seem to be especially valuable for anyone engaging in > phenomenology or employing the categories in other sciences. > > Looking at the Peircean literature as a whole, it seems to me that > insufficient attention has been given not only to the practice you outlined > and which Andre de Tienne terms *phaneroscopy* to distinguish it from the > *iconoscopy* he posits in his paper, "Iconoscopy Between Phaneroscopy and > Semeiotic" > https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/rssi/2013-v33-n1-2-3-rssi02379/1035282ar/ > (it > would appear that you do not make such a distinction in your handbook), > while it seems to me that insufficient attention has been given to Peirce's > science of phenomenology *as a whole*. Yet, the neglect of phaneroscopic > practice in particular is no doubt one of the principal reasons why it > hasn't yet been developed very far even, and especially, given that in his > *classification > of sciences* it is positioned as *firs**t *cenoscopic science (with > normative science, including logic as semeiotic, metaphysics, and > the special sciences following). As a consequence of that neglect it seems > to me to remain yet a *possible* science, that is in the sense of it's > far from being a fully developed one. > > While Peirce was certainly deeply interested in phenomenology and applied > his categories to many sciences, he principally saw himself as a logician. > Perhaps, in part because of that, not only was phenomenology undeveloped by > him *qua* science, but so were his theoretical ethics and theoretical > esthetics. In any case, one can predict, I think, that no significant > progress can be expected in the science as such until a sufficient number > of scholars take it up in earnest commencing with phaneroscopic practice > and, then, considering the essential role of prescission in moving it > beyond that essential practice, thus, to the development of the theory and, > ultimately, to the fuller development of the science itself. > > I have in the past discussed on the List two other possible branches of > phenomenology which might follow phaneroscopy, the one posited by de > Tienne, *iconoscopy*, and a third, *Peircean category theory*, by me. > These have been put forward on the assumption that as soon as we prescind > any categorial appearances from the phaneron, or extract a triad of > categorial elements and begin to identify and assign names to these triads > and their categorial constituents (or to otherwise discuss them), that > we've passed beyond pure phaneroscopy and are moving toward theory. > > Jon quoted Peirce on the the practice of phaneroscopy as "the faculty of > seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced > by an interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or that > supposed modifying circumstance: (CP 5.42, EP 2.147) and the categories as > non-conceptual: "Perhaps it is not right to call these categories > conceptions; they are so intangible that they are rather tones or tints > upon conceptions'' (CP 1.353, 1885). That is most surely the case for pure > practice. > > But one requires, I think, 'interpretation' (of the data) and an abundance > of related 'concepts' in developing a science. So, it is my sincere belief > that if a Peircean science of phenomenology is to be developed that it will > surely be necessary to go beyond practice (*phaneroscopy*) to the > prescinding, identifying and naming of, first, categorial appearances of > 1ns, 2ns, 3ns (de Tienne's *iconoscopy*) and, *then*, identifying > and analyzing various triads of categories (as well as the six paths, or > trichotomic vectors, which the categories may follow) which present > themselves to the phenomenological practitioner (*trichotomic*, > or Peircean c*ategory theory*) See: > *Outline of trikonic: Diagrammatic Trichotomic *for a brief introduction: > https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic.htm > ). > > Some have argued that this development of phenomenology as an independent > science isn't really possible and/or necessary, or that the development of > iconoscopic and, especially, trichotomic theory is outside the province of > phenomenology itself, that it ought to be the work of, say, semiotics. > Needless to say, I am not one of these. Rather, I believe such activities > as just mentioned ought to be developed *within* the science of > phenomenology properly understood as essentially a *theoretical* > science, albeit it a 'strange' one having an initial non-theoretical > phaneroscopic practice *necessarily* preceding the theory. > > It is important, I believe, to remember that in his classification that > *all* of Peirce's sciences of discovery, including phenomenology, are > considered 'theoretical' in nature. This, more than perhaps anything else, > suggests to me that *phenomenological theory *needs to be developed > alongside *phaneroscopic practice.* In my view, the practice is *not* yet > the theory; but that the theory cannot be well established and developed > without the practice; and that the theory ought *immediately* follow the > practice within the *science of phenomenology* itself.. > > > These three great divisions, Idioscopy, Cenoscopy, and Mathematics, > together constitute the aggregate of those sciences which are sometimes > called Theoretical Sciences. . . . (1906 [c.] | L [R] | MS [R] 601:24-25 > in *Commens *DIctionary). > > > You allude to this, I think, in commenting that you "agree with Jon Alan > [Schmidt] that this practice, and especially the act of *prescission*, is > the experiential basis of whatever we can say about Peirce’s 'categories' > or the 'formal elements of the phaneron'." In my own experience 'doing' > phenomenology, prescission, by its very nature a kind of abstraction, > points to this theoretical character and for the need of further > development within the science of phenomenology itself. > > My own experience has been that such theoretical constructs follow quickly > -- sometimes almost instantaneously, sometimes after some reflection -- > upon some actual period of pure practice, but that those theoretical > insights ought to be distinguished from the practice as such. This is to > say that while the phenomenologist commences with, shall we say, *pure* > phaneroscopic appearance, he quickly begins to identify descriptive > 'characters' within the phaneron including, of course especially monadic, > dyadic, and triadic characters, and at a later stage further identifying > specific trichotomies as well (I have found this latter activity to be > fraught with difficulties and dangers of possible misrepresentation). As > earlier mentioned, I would also include research into the six vectors and > their interrelations as a part of this third branch, viz., Peircean > category theory. All of this work can, and indeed in my view must, be > done at least primarily with a *logica* *utens *which, in my view, has > its own 'natural' modes of abstracting, prescinding, etc. Leaping into > phenomenological theory from the standpoint of logic as semeiotic -- or, > worse, as a task of it -- seems to me to be just the sort of "jump[ing] > directly into theoretical issues and applications" which you warn > against, Gary. > > [A brief, albeit relevant, aside: One might imagine that in his original > phaneroscopic explorations that Peirce *first* found quality, reaction, > and representation to present themselves in the phaneron and *then* > abstracted these primitive characters as kinds of 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns > rather than the reverse. He seems to hedge a bit on this, however, at one > point suggesting that he first 'discovered' the categories in phenomenology > and thus had reason to expect to find them in mathematics; at another he > suggests that the *valencies of the simplest mathematics* guided him > toward the categories in phenomenology.] > > Jon quoted Vincent Colapietro: "It may be the case that not only the > categories themselves are tones and tints of conceptions (rather than fully > realizable modes of conceptuality) but also especially effective means for > identifying the most subtle tones, tints, and textures of phenomena > themselves" and commented. > > JAS: ". . . I now believe that it [is] the right approach in general for > exploring 'theoretical issues and applications; of Peirce's categories." > > I can't say that I see it exactly this way since, for example, the > categories as they are employed in Peirce's semeiotic, notably in its first > branch, semeiotic grammar, seem to me less "subtle tones, tints, and > textures of phenomena themselves" (although they sometimes can be that as > well) than, especially in combination, something more like 'organizing > principles'. I would point not only to Peirce's several diagrams of > sign relations -- and especially to his triangular diagram of the 10 > classes of signs (not to mention the many valental diagrams), but he made > it clear that his last classification of sciences (sometimes referred to as > the 'perennial' classification') was itself organized around the categories > in the trichotomic sense. In such organizational structures one recalls > that Peirce termed his categories 'cenopythagorian' which brings to mind > the valental and even mathematical (monadic, dyadic, triadic) characters of > them apart from the "tones, tints, and textures" which, again, are > explicitly those of the "phenomena themselves," finding, perhaps, their > 'tonal' locus in phenomenology far more than anywhere else among the > sciences of discovery. > > There is, of course, more to be said regarding the possibility of Peircean > phenomenology becoming a fully developed theoretical science (again, albeit > of a peculiar nature). So I hope that interested scholars, drawing on the > work such scholars such as you, Jon Alan Schmidt, Andre de Tienne, Marc > Champagne, Vincent Colapietro, and Richard Atkins (who, however, takes a > essentially semeiotic approach), will indeed develop it further including > its expansion to include not only phaneroscopy, but also iconoscopy and > trikonic (or something like them). If I were a young Peircean scholar with > an aptitude for phenomenological observation, and looking for an area of > research relatively untouched, I would think that Peirce's phenomenology > might be well worth exploring in some depth. In any event I would imagine > that we'd all agree that the very first work ought to be explorations > within phaneroscopic practice. > > Yet in the sciences following phenomenology, I believe that the principles > established in the theoretical part of that science can eventually be given > free reign to express themselves however they may. > > Best, > > Gary R > > “Let everything happen to you > 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* > > > > > > > > On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 11:03 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > >> When the subject of Peirce’s “categories” arises, the discourse always >> seems to jump directly into theoretical issues and applications. Even in >> published studies there seems to be little discussion of the *practice* >> of phenomenology or phaneroscopy (or phenoscopy, the term Peirce introduced >> in the *Century Dictionary*). But I agree with Jon Alan that this >> practice, and especially the practice of *prescission*, is the >> experiential basis of whatever we can say about Peirce’s “categories” or >> “formal elements of the phaneron.” >> >> I have accordingly tried to draft a short introductory-level ‘manual’ for >> this practice: https://gnusystems.ca/TS/pheno.htm. (This is now >> incorporated as the “Presign” into *Turning Signs >> <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/index.html>*, as its introduction to Thirdness >> leads into some basics of semiotics.) Of course it’s possible that someone >> else has done something like this, perhaps done it better, somewhere on the >> Net, and if anyone knows of such a text I’d appreciate notification of it. >> Meanwhile I’d welcome any discussion of my attempt on the list, with a view >> to improving or expanding it. >> >> Gary f. >> >> } I want to ask the meaning of spring's coming, but even the plum >> blossoms do not know. [Dogen] { >> >> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ living the time >> >> >> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ >> ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON >> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to >> [email protected] . >> ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to >> [email protected] with no subject, and with the sole line "UNSubscribe >> PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at >> http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . >> ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; >> and co-managed by him and Ben Udell. >> >
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