Auke, yes, I’m in agreement with all your points here, except maybe one, which I’ll get to later. When we are analyzing in terms of tone/token/type, or qualisign/sinsign/legisign, we sometimes forget that the token/type distinction has more than one ‘level’ or ‘dimension’. My analysis was of that text as a token of a type of text, but at another level its appearance on my screen is one token, and its appearance on your screen another token, of a text considered as a type. At another level, any ‘individual’ phenomenon is a token of the type which Peirce calls the phaneron or (earlier) the phenomenon. (Only rarely does he use a plural form of phaneron.)
By the way, I noticed a mistake in my post, where I cited the introduction to “CP 8” but meant to refer to the Writings Voume 8, where “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” appears. You say at one point that when focussing on text-as-phenomenon “we start with the manifold of sensuous impressions that must be brought to unity.” I think this is true for a biological/psychological analysis of perception, but maybe not for phenomenology. I think that by the time Peirce included “phenomenology” in his classification of sciences, he had doubts about the Kantian formulation that he had used in 1867: [[ The idea of prime precedes all assertion, all differentiation. There is no synthetical unity in it, no wholeness nor consistency; it is the sheer wonder and manifold of first impressions. In itself, however, it is not manifold; it has no parts; but because it has no wholeness nor consistency, the understanding analyzes it into an infinitely varied manifold. Kant talks inaccurately of the manifold of sense; in fact the first impression has no parts, any more than it has unity or wholeness; yet it may be allowed to be potentially a manifold, if we say that all that the intellect evolves from it lies involved within it. ] Peirce, W5:299 ] I quote this by way of clarification (not correction) of what you wrote; so maybe I don’t disagree on that point either! Gary f. From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Auke van Breemen Sent: 29-Mar-21 05:50 To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy, Iconoscopy, and Peircean Category Theory Gary F., You wrote: I’m not sure whether it’s the kind of analysis that other contributors to this thread have been suggesting, but it’s about as close as I can come, for now anyway. and: This was an attempt to begin with a Peircean phenomenological analysis of a text-as-phenomenon -- First an answer to your question. At the same time it is and it isn't what I had in mind. I start with the latter. I had in mind not (1) a-text-as-phenomenon, but (2) text-as-phenomenon. It's firstness consists in the series of feelings that co-determine the apprehension of the (symbol) sign as an object. Logic may abstract from that, but if we are going to phenomenology that is not longer the only way. At the same time, I think that the adequate categorical scaffolding, in principle, ought to be the same in both cases. For instance: In perception we fill in the blind spot, cf Ramachandran, Hirstein, Three laws of qualia: https://philpapers.org/archive/RAMTLO-8.pdf in conception we immediately compensate for typo's as you probably did. The difference however is that in (2) we start with the manifold of sensuous impressions that must be brought to unity. While in (1), as you put it, we already have intellectual constructs. Turning to Gary R's original mail about the possibility to utilize meditation in phenomenological research, and having in mind his educational work in critical thinking, I would say that with meditation it is possible to guide (2), while critical thinking can be guided by (1). For us, I think, (2) always is involved in (1). Lets suppose humans extinct and an alien civilazation visiting earth finding your message. They would have to conclude that the message consists of legisigns before they are able to dig up the accompanying symbols and start their (library) search for the meanings you convey. Best, Auke van Breemen Op 29 maart 2021 om 4:45 schreef [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> : List, Just to give a concrete example, I’ll venture here a phenomenological analysis of a paragraph of text that was posted to the list recently. You will notice in this text the familiar phenomenon of cherry-picking quotations to reinforce an argument, but the phenomenon I’d like to analyze here is less common and less visible to the casual reader. Here’s the text, exactly as it appeared on the list: And since matter-is-mind within Peircean analysis, then, this triadic process is operative throughout the physical, chemical, biological and conceptual realms. 'Matter is effete mind" 6.25. And "what we call matter is not completely dead bu is merely mind hidebound with habits" 6.158. "he whole action of the mind [is] a part of the physical universe" 6.61 Obviously the element of Thirdness is predominant in this item, as it is in any text, especially a symbol composed of words. (It is also an “intellectual construction,” to use a term that has occurred repeatedly in this thread.) Its Secondness consists primarily in its reactivity to other actual texts (i.e. Secondness to them), but also in its specific references directing our attention to one of the texts to which it is Second, Volume 6 of the Collected Papers of C.S. Peirce. These (shorthand) references are symbols functioning indexically. Its Firstness is its ‘theme’ or unifying idea, which does not exist in the strict Peircean sense until it is embodied. I’ll use “matter-is-mind” as a shorthand for its verbal embodiment in this text. The next phrase, “within Peircean analysis”, might represent the Firstness of the Secondness of this text, as it presupposes the prior (and continuing) existence of a discipline called “Peircean analysis” and situates matter-is-mind as characteristic of that discipline, without giving us any further information about it. Now we can turn to the “less common and less visible” phenomenon which occurs in this text. For that purpose I’ll begin with the indexical citation at the very end of the text. If we actually look up the prior text it refers to, we find it embedded in an 1892 text by Peirce entitled “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined,” Peirce's attack on the determinism which was very much in vogue at the time, and the article where he introduced his anti-necessitarian doctrine tychism (see the introduction to CP 8 for details). The paragraph cited in the text above, CP 6.61, begins with one of many reasons Peirce gives for rejecting the doctrine of the necessitarians: “Necessitarianism cannot logically stop short of making the whole action of the mind a part of the physical universe.” But in the text we are analyzing, this text is “quoted” as follows: "he whole action of the mind [is] a part of the physical universe" 6.61. The missing first letter of “the” is just an ordinary typo, but the “quote” as a whole exemplifies the phenomenon of misquotation. It not only represents the original text inaccurately, it represents Peirce as asserting an idea which in fact he was ascribing to the necessitarians, against whose doctrine he was arguing. (The rest of Peirce’s paragraph goes on to explain why that idea is untenable.) A further question arises when we focus on the Thirdness of this phenomenon, because then we have to consider the interpretant of the text we are examining (as well as its putative object, “Peircean analysis,” and the idea which it predicates of that object, “mind-is-matter.”) If we take the interpretant as the information conveyed to the reader, we ought to ask whether this particular misquotation belongs to the species of misinformation or disinformation. This distinction has become a matter of public debate lately, especially in the U.S., where it makes a crucial pragmatic difference whether a disseminated untruth is merely mistaken or was actually intended to deceive. Donald Trump’s lies about the “stolen election” are a paradigmatic example: were they “honest mistakes” (because he was himself misinformed) or were they criminal acts intended to subvert American democracy? Should disinformation sites be shut down by the social media platforms on which they appear? The question is nowhere near so consequential in the case of the misquotation we are analyzing, but it still makes a pragmatic difference. If it was just an “honest mistake” on the writer’s part, an honest scholar would own up to it when it was flagged, and perhaps correct it. But if it deliberately misrepresented Peirce’s views as conforming to the writer’s own idea, then it would be much more damaging to the scholar’s reputation for trustworthiness, at least among those familiar enough with Peirce’s writings to recognize the misrepresentation. And if that kind of “disquotation”, to coin a term, emerged over time as a recognizable pattern in the writer’s work, especially within a pattern of quoting only phrases out of context and rarely whole sentences, trust would simply evaporate. This was an attempt to begin with a Peircean phenomenological analysis of a text-as-phenomenon and develop it step by step into a semiotic (and informational and pragmaticistic) analysis. I’m not sure whether it’s the kind of analysis that other contributors to this thread have been suggesting, but it’s about as close as I can come, for now anyway. Gary f. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► 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] <mailto:[email protected]> . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> with no subject, and with the sole line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. 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