Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[Jerry LR Chandler]

List, John:

3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."


On Dec 6, 2015, at 6:26 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote:


> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> Jerry,
> 
> I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of 
> firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking 
> about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You 
> aren’t talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when 
> we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. 
> 
>  
> 
> Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.
> 
>  
> 
> Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views on 
> firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion).
> 
> 
> 
Basically, John, your response is irrelevant to what I am saying.
 
By way of background, I have had a lifelong interest in metaphysics and the 
relations between the sciences and metaphysics. Obviously, my interest is 
closely related to medicine and the biological sciences where the science of 
physics can contribute by contributing utterly simplistic calculations of the 
relevant but relative units for particular situations (identities.)  The 
physical units, in and of themselves, are given biological meaning only by the 
union of them.

Back to the issue at hand. Metaphysics, as an mode of human thinking and 
communication, must start with words, words with meaning for the author, either 
as utterances or symbolic expressions on a 'sheet of assertion' or another 
media. 

No one individual (such as physicist) can impose, for humanity as a whole, a 
particular meaning on the starting units, or the union of such starting units, 
or, more generally, on part-whole relatives and part-whole relations. 

More directly, a metaphysical proposition may be stated in many different 
languages and symbol systems. Thus, the mereology of metaphysical propositions 
may draw upon terms and symbols as desired by the author of metaphysical 
propositions. Further, a metaphysics without part-whole relations (scaling) and 
identity can hardly be a metaphysics AT ALL as neither emergence or evolution 
could be relatives.

Frankly, I interpret your metaphysics, after reading your posts for more than a 
decade on this and other list serves as well as personal conversations from 
time to time, your metaphysics is merely the science of physics (unless you 
have had a recent epiphany.)

>From my perspective, you capture the essence of being with your defense of the 
>phrase, "It's from bits". 

CSP is clear enough about meaning of a fact or a unit of measure:

3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."

Let's just agree to disagree, John.

Cheers

Jerry 


 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hello Edwina, List,

Thank you for offering some examples drawn from other texts.  

It looks to me like Peirce, in this part of the 1903 Lowell Lectures, is being 
more fine grained in his analysis than you are being in your quick explanation. 
 Two quick observations.  First, Peirce is characterizing degenerate and 
genuine forms of both (1) seconds and (2) secondness.   Second, my conjecture 
in interpreting these two sets of distinctions (i.e., genuine and degenerate 
seconds, and genuine and degenerate secondness) is that the first distinction 
between forms of seconds is based on the character of the relations the objects 
(or subjects) stand in, and the second distinction between forms of secondness 
is based on the character of the relationships themselves--considered in 
abstraction from any particular kind of object that might be a part of the 
relation.  

If my interpretative hypothesis is correct, then you are confusing matters (at 
least as far as the interpretation of this particular essay goes) when you 
describe the distinction between genuine and degenerate forms of secondness as 
a distinction between relations.  The distinction between forms of secondness 
pertains to kinds of relationships considered in abstraction.  Having said 
that, it appears that the examples you've offered are probably best thought of 
as highlighting differences in the objects that stand in the relations.

As I have suggested, the distinctions are rather fine grained. Consequently, it 
might be tempting to think that we can ignore such details.  My hunch is that 
such details matter, and that we are easily confused about what Peirce is doing 
when he examines various aspects of the universal categories because we are not 
sufficiently sensitive to what he is trying to analyze.  As a result, we don't 
have a very clear idea about how to put the account of the phenomenological 
categories to work as we build, for instance, an account of how signs and signs 
relations might be classified in a natural way.  We'll need to understand these 
kinds of subtle distinctions if we are going to make any progress in 
understanding difficult arguments of this sort--such as those on the 
nomenclature and division of dyad and triadic relations.

--Jeff

Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354

From: Edwina Taborsky [tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2015 7:22 AM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Jeffrey, list - I think the differentiation between 2-2 and 2-1 as modal
categories refers to their functioning within an interaction (Relation) as
independent or dependent.

So, a Relation in a mode of pure Secondness acknowledges the separate
existential reality of the two 'nodes' - the wind pushing the wooden
weathervane is a 2-2 Relation between the Representamen/wooden ground and
the wind.

A Relation in a mode of degenerate Secondness acknowledges the non-separate
existential reality of the two nodes - the photocopy of the painting..This
photocopy 'second' is a 'Firstness/icon' of the painting. Or, as the
Peircean example - a spontaneous cry as a reaction.

Edwina
- Original Message -
From: "Jeffrey Brian Downard" 
To: "Peirce-L" 
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2015 10:16 PM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations


Gary R., List,

My suggestion was that we look at what Peirce has to say about degenerate
cases in the Lowell Lectures of 1903.  Let's start with the examination of
seconds and secondness at CP 1.528.  Let me try to provide a little bit of
order to what he says so that we can pinpoint anything that catches our
attention:

1.  Thus we have a division of seconds into those whose very being, or
Firstness, it is to be seconds, and those whose Secondness is only an
accretion.
a.  This distinction springs out of the essential elements of Secondness.
b.  For Secondness involves Firstness.
c.  The concepts of the two kinds of Secondness are mixed concepts composed
of Secondness and Firstness.
d.  One is the second whose very Firstness is Secondness.
e.  The other is a second whose Secondness is second to a Firstness.

2.  The idea of mingling Firstness and Secondness in this particular way is
an idea distinct from the ideas of Firstness and Secondness that it
combines.
a.  It appears to be a conception of an entirely different series of
categories.
b.  At the same time, it is an idea of which Firstness, Secondness, and
Thirdness are component parts, since the distinction depends on whether the
two elements of Firstness and Secondness that are united are so united as to
be one or whether they remain two.

3.  This distinction between two kinds of seconds, which is almost involved
in the very idea of a second, makes a distinction between two kinds of

RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[John Collier]

Jerry, List:



I believe my metaphysics are those of C.S. Peirce.  Peirce's pope-positivism is 
also assumed explicitly in our book, Every Thing Must Go, which does take 
modern physics as a starting point. So perhaps I have made my ideas clear, and 
the resulting argument is pretty straight-forward. Most metaphysical problems, 
especially of the sort you are concerned with, are dissolved on this approach, 
which was certainly Peirce's intention. As I said in  my response to Franklin, 
you can take the negation of some of Peirce's central claims, and get other 
results. I have yet to see a clear statement of either your objections to the 
Peircean position, or what you consider to be an alternative. Starting by 
stating explicitly which parts of Peirce's methodology you reject might help me 
here. I have been using Peircean methodology more and more explicitly since my 
PhD thesis (1984), which uses Peirce's pragmatic maxim (a version of it - he 
had many versions that are presumably equivalent at some level - much like 
Kant's categorical imperative) and his positivist motives.  I have been 
minimizing my metaphysical commitments for some time, though I spent a period 
as a raving Platonist when I was an undergraduate, probably under the influence 
of reading too much B. Russell rather naively.



This is a Peirce list, after all. But I think that it is actually a relevant 
question which of Peirce's basic assumptions (all thought is in signs, 
objectivity requires that differences in meaning are determined by differences 
in expectations of possible experience, there is an identifiable set of 
external object to which some of our signs pick out that are mostly accessible 
through sensory observations - some exceptions involving evaluation of 
outcomes, but still involving observation and possible observations) one can 
coherently give up. Assuming we disagree, and I am not convinced there is any 
meaningful basis for the apparent disagreement, and I don't yet see what it is, 
I proposed some possibilities recently of where we disagree, like rationalism 
of a form that rejects the Pragmatic Maxim, or Peirce's empirical criterion for 
cognitive significance, or both. (Rationalism I take to be, as is traditional, 
that there are synthetic a priori truths, i.e., truths discoverable and 
justifiable by reason that are not the results of definitions and/or 
methodological commitments). Unlike the Logical Positivists, I don't think it 
is possible or wise to try to eliminate metaphysics entirely. Their program 
collapsed in its own terms. But it is best to keep it minimal. I think the 
alternative produces unclear ideas of an especially convoluted (involuted?) 
sort. However that may be, I am still not at all clear what our different 
presuppositions are, let alone what the basis of the difference might be.



My metaphysics is not just physics, but a physics supported but not implied 
position called Structural Realism in the philosophical literature. Actually, I 
have a slightly more restrictive form that Cliff Hooker and I call Dynamical 
Realism. Being more restrictive means that it requires additional argument, the 
arguments being distinctly metaphysical and not physical.  It is the starting 
point for many of my recent papers that have something like "A dynamical 
approach to ..." in the title. My scientific background (I did research in 
government, business and academics) is in planetary science, which is mostly 
the study of inorganic dynamical systems, so it is my touchstone for scientific 
methodology (arguably the notion of complexly organized systems originated in  
a lab in the building that held most of my classes, run by Lorenz - planetary 
dynamics is another source).



John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier



From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]

Sent: Sunday, 06 December 2015 7:13 PM

To: Peirce-L

Cc: John Collier

Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of 
units unify the unity.



List, John:



3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."





On Dec 6, 2015, at 6:26 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote:







On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier  wrote:



Jerry,

I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of 
firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking 
about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You 
aren't talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like





[John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we 
get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.



Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.



Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[John Collier]

Dear Franklin, List members:

I left out a more fundamental part of the argument that I will lay out now. It 
is basically a very simple argument, though perhaps it is a bit subtle. I left 
it out because the argument is fairly well known to Peirce scholars It appears 
in several places in slightly different forms in Peirce’s writings. I would 
argue that it is very difficult if not impossible to accept many of Peirce’s 
more systematic ideas without accepting this argument I lay out.

Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to 
something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or we 
go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to Peirce). 
Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the objectivity test. 
Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has to be given up. Now 
that there are experiences, including mental experiences, is objective, but 
meaning cannot be referred ultimately to mental experiences alone without 
making it depend on psychology rather than objective conditions. Other than for 
logic, which has its own grounds for objectivity in things that are external, 
the experience ultimately referred to has to be of the senses, roughly (I would 
include emotions, which I see to have a propositional or cognitive component) 
that also must have an external aspect in order to support objective 
differences in meaning. Peirce resolves this by setting aside a class of 
experiences that are of external things. The child, he says, learns to 
recognize that not all things are under his control, but must be at least in 
part caused by external influences, so some experience is composed of signs of 
the external. This is a very early and necessary abduction. Membership in this 
class of supposed externally based experiences (which Peirce often just 
identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further evidence (there are 
illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most extreme case – and 
dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ examples – though 
Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, but Peirce would 
require an additional reason for doubt over the mere possibility – a “defeater” 
in terms of contemporary pragmatist epistemology), but the basic way to check 
membership is whether or not they are at least in part not under our control. 
This needs to be tested, as we can be wrong about it in specific cases, but in 
general (or we violate the defeater requirement).

Physicalism is rather hard to define, and there are a number of definitions 
floating around the philosophy and scientific world. Quine defines the physical 
as that which is accessible through the senses (not what physics tells us is 
physical). This won’t quite do for Peirce (or me) since there are the 
afore-mentioned sensory illusions, etc. What physics tells us is physical is a 
good place to start, but of course physics has been wrong, so this is more of a 
control than a criterion. I think it is safe to say, though, that everything 
that science has been able to study effectively so far has a physical basis. I 
would think that the physical has a number of signs, and that there is a 
consilience that eventually leads to a clearer idea of what is physical. Peirce 
was, in fact, a kind of idealist (the objective kind, for one thing), so there 
is presumably no contradiction  between his views about experience, and the 
physical, and at least one form of idealism. I don’t share Peirce’s idealism, 
but that is neither here nor there; it is not relevant to Peirce’s argument 
that I have reconstructed here. All thought is in signs. Some thoughts (or 
mental experiences, if you want) are of external things. Other than logical, 
mathematical, and the like, being external is to be physical at the least. In 
order to make our ideas clear we need to make reference to this external 
component, on pain of subjectivism, psychologism, and making distinctions in 
thoughts that have no distinction in their objects. So Peirce’s prope-postivism 
also takes us back to the Pragmatic Maxim, that thought is all in signs, and 
his notion of the basis of experience.

Obviously there are some assumptions here, and one could reject any one of them 
(accept subjectivism, or psychologism, or other forms of antirealism, as 
examples), which many philosophers do. But the assumptions are made deeply in 
Peirce’s philosophy. I think he was right about this.

I could give a bunch of references to Peirce’s writings that support my 
interpretation, but this is long enough already and I have to go shopping. I 
hope it is at least close to sufficient to respond to your worry.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Franklin Ransom [mailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, 06 December 2015 2:26 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Edwina Taborsky]

Jeffrey, list - I think the differentiation between 2-2 and 2-1 as modal 
categories refers to their functioning within an interaction (Relation) as 
independent or dependent.


So, a Relation in a mode of pure Secondness acknowledges the separate 
existential reality of the two 'nodes' - the wind pushing the wooden 
weathervane is a 2-2 Relation between the Representamen/wooden ground and 
the wind.


A Relation in a mode of degenerate Secondness acknowledges the non-separate 
existential reality of the two nodes - the photocopy of the painting..This 
photocopy 'second' is a 'Firstness/icon' of the painting. Or, as the 
Peircean example - a spontaneous cry as a reaction.


Edwina
- Original Message - 
From: "Jeffrey Brian Downard" 

To: "Peirce-L" 
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2015 10:16 PM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations


Gary R., List,

My suggestion was that we look at what Peirce has to say about degenerate 
cases in the Lowell Lectures of 1903.  Let's start with the examination of 
seconds and secondness at CP 1.528.  Let me try to provide a little bit of 
order to what he says so that we can pinpoint anything that catches our 
attention:


1.  Thus we have a division of seconds into those whose very being, or 
Firstness, it is to be seconds, and those whose Secondness is only an 
accretion.

a.  This distinction springs out of the essential elements of Secondness.
b.  For Secondness involves Firstness.
c.  The concepts of the two kinds of Secondness are mixed concepts composed 
of Secondness and Firstness.

d.  One is the second whose very Firstness is Secondness.
e.  The other is a second whose Secondness is second to a Firstness.

2.  The idea of mingling Firstness and Secondness in this particular way is 
an idea distinct from the ideas of Firstness and Secondness that it 
combines.
a.  It appears to be a conception of an entirely different series of 
categories.
b.  At the same time, it is an idea of which Firstness, Secondness, and 
Thirdness are component parts, since the distinction depends on whether the 
two elements of Firstness and Secondness that are united are so united as to 
be one or whether they remain two.


3.  This distinction between two kinds of seconds, which is almost involved 
in the very idea of a second, makes a distinction between two kinds of 
Secondness;
a.  namely, the Secondness of genuine seconds, or matters, which I call 
genuine Secondness, and
b.  the Secondness in which one of the seconds is only a Firstness, which I 
call degenerate Secondness;
c.  so that this Secondness really amounts to nothing but this, that a 
subject, in its being a second, has a Firstness, or quality.


Notice that, in (1) and (3), he points to two distinctions:  two kinds of 
seconds; and two kinds of secondness.  It would help, I think, if we could 
pair up some examples of each of these things.  What would count as an 
example of the two sorts of seconds, and what would count as an example of 
each of the two sorts of secondness?


As we reflect on these distinctions and try to come up with some examples, I 
wonder how these distinctions compare to the table that Nathan has offered 
for the universal categories.  One thing that bothers me about Nathan's 
table is that it does not appear to match Peirce's account of these 
different sorts of degeneracy and genuiness of seconds and secondness.  The 
same holds when it comes to thirds and thirdness.  My aim is to trace, as 
best as we are able, Peirce's suggestions for how we should bring better 
clarity to our understanding of relatives, relationships and relations.  His 
recommendation is that we draw on the pragmatic maxim for clarifying our 
understanding of the key notions.  At the second grade of clarity, here is 
what we have:


I.  A relative, then, may be defined as the equivalent of a word or phrase 
which, either as it is (when I term it a complete relative), or else when 
the verb "is" is attached to it (and if it wants such attachment, I term it 
a nominal relative), becomes a sentence with some number of proper names 
left blank.
II.  A relationship, or fundamentum relationis, is a fact relative to a 
number of objects, considered apart from those objects, as if, after the 
statement of the fact, the designations of those objects had been erased.
III.  A relation is a relationship considered as something that may be said 
to be true of one of the objects, the others being separated from the 
relationship yet kept in view. Thus, for each relationship there are as many 
relations as there are blanks.


This account is meant to help us clarify our conceptions of logical 
relatives, relationships and relations.  How might this logical analysis 
help clarify the tones and conceptions that we are working with in 
phenomenology?  My hunch, and it is only a guess, is that it might help to 
think of what is first, second or third as kinds 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Edwina Taborsky]

Jeffrey- you wrote:

"the first distinction between forms of seconds is based on the character of 
the relations the objects (or subjects) stand in, and the second distinction 
between forms of secondness is based on the character of the relationships 
themselves--considered in abstraction from any particular kind of object 
that might be a part of the relation. "


This is where I become confused in the analysis. To me, a 'form' is only 
operative within a triad (O-R-I). We can certainly microanalyze the 
interactive process where we can say that the Representamen 'node' FIRST 
receives an input from a SECOND, that external Object, and then, mediates 
this to its output THIRD, the Interpretant.


But this ordinality is not, to my understanding, equivalent to any of these 
nodes being in itself, a categorical mode, eg, a 'mode of Secondness'. In my 
view, Secondness refers to a modal category of a Relation. Certainly, the 
full triadic Sign, can have all three Relations in a mode of Secondness (the 
Dicent Sinsign).


As Peirce noted, 'Secondness is not a compound of two facts" CP 1.526. "It 
is a single fact about two objects". ..


So- I don't see how you can have a genuine or degenerate 'Second' - that 
ordinal number. You CAN, however, have a genuine and degenerate modal 
category of Secondness. And that can vary within the dyadic interaction of 
Subject-Object; that is, one or the other can be IN a genuine or degenerate 
interaction.


So, for Peirce, one node of the two is 'the first, while the other remains 
the second'. 1.527. The one that is, in the dyad, first (in the ordinal 
sense) might be interacting in a mode of genuine or degenerate Secondness, 
while the other (the second in the ordinal sense) might be interacting in 
either a genuine or degenerate mode.


BUT - this description of their interactive RELATIONS does not 'bleed 
through' to fully confine their original natures. It's the Relation of that 
moment that defines them. Now, as Peirce notes, "But the matter on the other 
hand, has no being at all except the being a subject of qualities. This 
relation of really having qualities constitutes its existence" 1.527. This 
doesn't contradict my first sentence - for a triad, the Sign, can have 
multiple possible Relations; at one time, the matter [as ground, as 
Representamen] can be interacting within a mode of genuine Secondness (brute 
force) and another time, that same matter can be interacting within a mode 
of degenerate Secondness (qualitative interaction).


So, if that windmill is turning, because it is determined by the wind, then, 
both the First and Second nodes in the interaction have set up an 
interaction of genuine Secondness. If, however, the Second node (a cry) is a 
qualitative reaction to the First action (a blow to the knee as you fall off 
your bicycle)...then, the interaction (blow-cry) is in a mode of degenerate 
Secondness.


At least, that's how I see it at the moment. I am willing to be persuaded 
otherwise!


Edwina


- Original Message - 
From: "Jeffrey Brian Downard" 

To: "Peirce-L" 
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2015 10:15 AM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations


Hello Edwina, List,

Thank you for offering some examples drawn from other texts.

It looks to me like Peirce, in this part of the 1903 Lowell Lectures, is 
being more fine grained in his analysis than you are being in your quick 
explanation.  Two quick observations.  First, Peirce is characterizing 
degenerate and genuine forms of both (1) seconds and (2) secondness. 
Second, my conjecture in interpreting these two sets of distinctions (i.e., 
genuine and degenerate seconds, and genuine and degenerate secondness) is 
that the first distinction between forms of seconds is based on the 
character of the relations the objects (or subjects) stand in, and the 
second distinction between forms of secondness is based on the character of 
the relationships themselves--considered in abstraction from any particular 
kind of object that might be a part of the relation.


If my interpretative hypothesis is correct, then you are confusing matters 
(at least as far as the interpretation of this particular essay goes) when 
you describe the distinction between genuine and degenerate forms of 
secondness as a distinction between relations.  The distinction between 
forms of secondness pertains to kinds of relationships considered in 
abstraction.  Having said that, it appears that the examples you've offered 
are probably best thought of as highlighting differences in the objects that 
stand in the relations.


As I have suggested, the distinctions are rather fine grained. Consequently, 
it might be tempting to think that we can ignore such details.  My hunch is 
that such details matter, and that we are easily confused about what Peirce 
is doing when he examines various aspects of the universal categories 
because we are 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hi Gary R., Gary F., (and Nathan and Ben if you reading this), List,

My aim is to see how the methods for attaining the three grades of clarity 
about the conceptions of relative, relationship and relation might give us 
insight into the phenomenological account of the categories in their more 
genuine and more degenerate forms.  One reason I am focusing on this approach 
to the problem is that, in the Carnegie Application, Peirce characterizes the 
techniques we should use in phenomenology in the following way:

"My aim in this paper, upon which I have bestowed more labor than upon any 
other, beginning two years before my first publication on the subject in May 
1867, is far more ambitious than that of Kant, or even that of Aristotle, or 
even the more extended work of Hegel. All those philosophers contented 
themselves mainly with arranging conceptions which were already current. I, on 
the contrary, undertake to look directly |103| upon the universal phenomenon, 
that is, upon all that in any way appears, whether as fact or as fiction; to 
pick out the different kinds of elements which I detect in it, aided by a 
special art developed for the purpose; and to form clear conceptions of those 
kinds, of which I find that there are only three, aided by another special art 
developed for that purpose.*"  In his discussion of this passage, Joe Ransdell 
asked on the Arisbe site what this second special art might amount to.  I tried 
to answer his question by lining these special arts up with Peirce's account in 
the Harvard Lectures of 1903 of the faculties we need to employ in doing 
phenomenology.  Here is what he says there:  

1.  The first is "that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in 
the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, 
unsophisticated by any allowance for this or supposed modifying circumstance."
2.  The second faculty "is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like 
a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever 
it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises." 
3.  The third faculty "is the generalizing power of the mathematician who 
produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature 
under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant 
accompaniments." (Essential Peirce, vol. 2, p. 147).

On my interpretation of the remarks in the Carnegie application, the faculty 
described in (1) is the first of the special arts he describes, and the faculty 
described in (3) is the second special art.  My hunch is that, for the purposes 
of phenomenological analysis (as opposed to logical analysis), the first of the 
faculties is essential for arriving at the first grade of clarity, the second 
of the faculties is essential for arriving at the second grade of clarity, and 
the third faculty is essential for arriving at the third grade of clarity.  The 
efforts made at the later stages in clarifying our ideas build on the results 
arrived at the earlier stages.  In doing so, we need to correct for possible 
errors made in the earlier stages.

So, if we put these three faculties to work, how might we arrive at a third 
grade of clarity about the phenomenological categories?  This, I think, is not 
an easy question.  For starters, let just compare the different sets of terms 
that Peirce uses in the various drafts of the Carnegie application to describe 
the universal categories to the table that Nathan provides in his essay.  Here 
is the list the Joe Ransdell provides:
1. quality, relation, representation
2. flavor, reaction, mediation
3. qualities of feeling, reaction, mediation
4. qualities, occurrences, meanings
5. qualities, things, meanings
6. simple qualities, subjects of force, mind
7. quality, reaction, mediation
8. quales, relates, representation
9. feeling or immediate consciousness, sense of fact, conception or mind 
strictly

Once again, here is Nathan's list:

Structure of the Phaneron
1.  Universal categories:  forms of firstness
a.  Firstness
b.  Secondness
c.  Thirdness

2. Universal categories:  forms of secondness
a. Qualia (facts of firstness)
b. Relation (facts of secondness)
c. Representamen (facts of thirdness)

3.  Universal categories:  forms of thirdness
a.  Feeling (signs of firstness)
b.  Brute fact (signs of secondness)
c.  Thought (signs of thirdness)

I see that Nathan is taking the most general terms used for the universal of 
the categories (firstness, secondness and thirdness), which he takes to be 
forms of firstness, and he is trying to line these up with forms of secondness 
and forms of thirdness.  The main idea in picking out a list for forms of 
secondness is that a representamen is taken to be a token instance of a 
continuous process of representation.  If we follow that general idea, we might 
try to picture qualia and relation as token instances of an occurance of a 
quality of feeling, and an occurrence of a 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[Franklin Ransom]

John,

You said:

The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference
> in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with
> Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it
> that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist.


I've been trying to figure this one out for myself, but am having some
trouble, in particular with the "idea that the physical is just what we can
experience." Would you be willing to clarify how you mean this? Is physical
opposed to mental, and thus the mental is not something we can experience?
And/or the spiritual? Or would you include mental and/or spiritual as
subdivisions of the physical? My sense of physicalism, aside from your
characterization, is that it's the idea that what is real is whatever
physics discovers or says is real, which is quite different from what you
are suggesting. I hope that you can understand my concern. After all,
clearly an idealist could just as easily say that what is mental is
whatever we can experience, and I think you can understand that idea.
What's the point of calling all of experience one or the other?

-- Franklin


On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier  wrote:

> Jerry,
>
>
>
> I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of
> firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking
> about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You
> aren’t talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like
>
>
>
> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise
> when we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.
>
>
>
> Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical
> perspective.
>
>
>
> Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views
> on firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion).
>
>
>
> Unless you understand  this you are going to be asking questions without
> an answer because the presuppositions are false. It has nothing to do with
> my physcalism (which is not, actually, materialism I have come to believe).
> The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference
> in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with
> Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it
> that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. Basically,
> you err, as I see it, in making a distinction that implies no difference in
> meaning, however much it might seem to. It violates Peirce’s
> prope-positivism, which he uses to deflate a lot of metaphysics.
>
>
>
> Of course you can reject either the Pragmatic Maxim, or the notion of
> experience Peirce uses, or both, in  order to save your distinction. But
> then you aren’t talking about Peirce’s firsts when you say they have
> structure.
>
>
>
> John Collier
>
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>

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RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[gnox]

Helmut, you ask,

 

Have I understood correctly:

--Embodiment means, that it is a complete triadic sign, eg.:

(1), qualisign, is not embodied, (1.1), iconic qualisign, is not completely 
embodied either, but (1.1.1), rhematic iconic qualisign, is embodied?

 

No, that can’t be it, because any qualisign has to be rhematic and iconic.

Since its mode of being is that of a logical possibility, a qualisign has to be 
embodied in something actual or existing (perhaps a sinsign) in order to act as 
a sign. Just as the quality of redness has to be embodied in something red in 
order to be perceived as red. That’s my guess.

 

--Degenerate is everything that is not all thirdness, so the only sign that is 
not degenerate at all, is the argument?

 

I think it’s possible that the argument, being also symbol and legisign, could 
be regarded as fully genuine so that all other sign types would be considered 
more or less degenerate. But I don’t know of anyplace where Peirce says exactly 
that, and I don’t see him comparing sign types across trichotomies. — However 
we apply it, we have to base Peirce’s concept of degeneracy on the conic 
section (see EP2:545 if you have it). A straight line is a degenerate form of 
the parabola, and so degenerate as a conic section; but a straight line 
considered as a moving point (for instance) is not degenerate. Likewise, 
Firstness is not degenerate in itself, nor is Secondness. But considered as a 
triadic relation, which can be quite complex, something as simple as a mere 
likeness of two correlates is degenerate, compared to, say, the relation 
between a symbol, its object, and its interpretant. 

 

Gary f.

 

Best!

Helmut


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RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[gnox]

Jeff,

 

I see that the list has been busy while I’ve been off doing other things, so it 
might take me awhile to catch up, starting with this message of yours.

 

I too would like to learn more about the way Peirce is drawing on the 
phenomenological categories as he categorizes different kinds of signs and sign 
relations. I see the concept of degeneracy as very much entwined with that 
inquiry, and in fact it was trying to get a handle on Vinicius Romanini’s 
treatment of degeneracy as applied to sign relations that got me started on 
this line of inquiry lately. I’ve just started reading the Nathan Houser piece 
that you cited, and so far I’m finding it both concise and accurate.

 

This excerpt especially impressed me as a helpful summary of the three 
trichotomies in NDTR:

“Perhaps it is evident that Peirce's categories inform all of these triadic 
divisions; that the rows descend from firstness to thirdness and the columns 
move right from firstness to thirdness.

 


The sign's ground (the nature of the sign in itself)

QUALISIGN

SINSIGN

LEGISIGN


The sign's relation to its object

ICON

INDEX

SYMBOL


How the sign is represented in its interpretant

RHEME

DICENT

ARGUMENT


“Bearing in mind that higher categories can involve components from lower 
categories, but not vice versa …”  (The Routledge Companion to Semiotics 
(Routledge Companions) (pp. 92-93). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

 

Now, one way of referring to the “categories” is as three “modes of being,” as 
Peirce does in the “Logic of Mathematics” for instance.

 

So we can say that the first trichotomy is according to the mode of being of 
the sign in itself, which is the First Correlate of a triadic relation. If that 
mode of being is Thirdness, then we have a Legisign; and so on down to the 
Qualisign.

 

The second trichotomy, though, is according to the mode of being of the sign’s 
relation to its object, which of course is a dyadic relation (CP 2.239). If the 
mode of being of that relation is Thirdness, then we have a Symbol, and so on. 
We could also trichotomize sign types according to the other two dyadic 
relations (S-I and O-I), as Peirce says in 2.239, and combining those 
trichotomies would give us a different set of ten sign types from the one 
Peirce gives in NDTR. As far as I know, Peirce never carried out that kind of 
analysis, not even in his ten-trichotomy division a few years later. Why not? I 
think that’s an interesting question which has some bearing on what the mode of 
being of a relation can be.

 

The third trichotomy is according to the mode of being of the representation of 
the sign in its interpretant, which of course is a triadic relation. If the 
mode of being of that triadic relation itself is Thirdness, then we have an 
Argument, and so on.

 

But that’s all I have time for tonight!

 

Gary f.

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] 
Sent: 5-Dec-15 17:02



Hello Gary F., List,

 

I'd like to learn more about the way Peirce is drawing on the phenomenological 
categories as he categorizes different kinds of signs and sign relations.  
Focusing on this first division between qualisign, sinsign and legisign, what 
guidance are we getting from Peirce's account of the more degenerate and more 
genuine features of the categories.  In "Peirce, Phenomenology and Semiotics," 
(In the Routledge Companion to Semiotics), Nathan Houser provides the following 
table as a way of clarifying Peirce's account of the universal categories.

 

Structure of the Phaneron

 

1.  Universal categories:  forms of firstness a.  Firstness b.  Secondness c.  
Thirdness

 

2. Universal categories:  forms of secondness  

a. Qualia (facts of firstness)

b. Relation (facts of secondness)

c. Representamen (facts of thirdness)

 

3.  Universal categories:  forms of thirdness

a.  Feeling (signs of firstness)

b.  Brute fact (signs of secondness)

c.  Thought (signs of thirdness)

 

While I like the general idea of trying to figure out how the different aspects 
of Peirce's account of the categories might be fitted together, I'm not able to 
square what Nathan is providing in this table with the various texts on 
phenomenology and phaneroscopy.  Does anyone have suggestions for how we might 
either justify this account or how we might modify it to make it fit better 
with what Peirce says?  

 

The reason I ask is that Nathan offers a number of rich suggestions for 
thinking about the ways that Peirce is drawing on the universal categories in 
phenomenology for the purposes of setting up the 10-fold classification of 
signs in the semiotic theory.  As such, I'd like work this out in some more 
detail.

 

In order to stimulate some discussion, let me point out that Peirce offers some 
interesting remarks about the degenerate forms of the universal categories in 
the Collected Papers at 1.521-44.  He describes, for instance, the differences 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[Jerry LR Chandler]

List, John:

On Dec 6, 2015, at 8:04 AM, John Collier wrote:

> Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to 
> something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or 
> we go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to 
> Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the objectivity 
> test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has to be given 
> up. Now that there are experiences, including mental experiences, is 
> objective, but meaning cannot be referred ultimately to mental experiences 
> alone without making it depend on psychology rather than objective 
> conditions. Other than for logic, which has its own grounds for objectivity 
> in things that are external, the experience ultimately referred to has to be 
> of the senses, roughly (I would include emotions, which I see to have a 
> propositional or cognitive component) that also must have an external aspect 
> in order to support objective differences in meaning. Peirce resolves this by 
> setting aside a class of experiences that are of external things. The child, 
> he says, learns to recognize that not all things are under his control, but 
> must be at least in part caused by external influences, so some experience is 
> composed of signs of the external. This is a very early and necessary 
> abduction. Membership in this class of supposed externally based experiences 
> (which Peirce often just identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further 
> evidence (there are illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most 
> extreme case – and dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ 
> examples – though Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, 
> but Peirce would require an additional reason for doubt over the mere 
> possibility –

Well said!

While several phases are open to refinement, the paragraph captures several of 
CSP's philosophical positions in a rhetorical sense.

The units of thought which ground CSP's trichotomy are readily categorized from 
the assertion: 

 Meaning has to be referenced to something, and that something cannot be 
internal (mental in  one sense), or we go in circles (which is acceptable to 
some philosophers, but not to Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is 
that it fails the objectivity test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or 
his realism has to be given up .


Roughly speaking, the external objectivity test (thing - representation - form) 
was the then nascent science of chemistry.  Like mathematics, chemistry used 
highly abstract symbols to relate invisible objects to one-another, but the 
logical meaning of chemical symbols was obscure in 19 th Century.  

CSP was aware that certain mathematical indices were EXACT physical 
representations of physical measurements and that broad classes of such 
mathematical calculations were consistent  with one-another.
(Today, we refer to the logical terms of molecular weight and molecular 
formula. These are generic terms, that can be applied to any chemical identity.)

One of the big "open questions" that CSP studied throughout his life was the 
question: What is a molecule?
Clearly, each chemical element is a relative of every other chemical element.  
As a collection, the concept of "table of elements" was used to express the 
relatedness of all elements. 
The relatedness of all elements was a fact based on analysis of molecules and 
the difference in the quali-signs of molecules and the fact that certain 
molecules (Water, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Ammonia) could be 
made from elements.

Thus, CSP sought to develop a logic of relatives that was consistent with his 
knowledge of mathematical calculations of molecular weight and molecular 
formula, the chemical table of elements, and the diagram  as he understood it 
as a molecular formula.

In CSP 3.416, "A relation is a fact about a number of things" is a wide-ranging 
assertion about his beliefs about his objectivity of facts.  It should (must) 
be contrast with the definitions of relations as variables or as sets. 

Sections 3.415-3.424 deserve careful reading in this context of his objectivity.

Section 3.468-3.483 shows directly the role of chemical relatives, taken as 
objective facts of chemical relations, are extended into his logic of relatives 
and his notion of graph theory. 

Can one conclude that CSP referenced the meaning of objectivity, the meaning of 
objects and meaning of logic to the nascent generalizations of the consequences 
of physical measurements expressed in chemical symbols?

The union of these units of thought give a unity to a substantial fraction of 
CSP's claims for realism and the objectivity of the sciences.

 The three trichotomies, which ground his system of signs, offer substantial  
support for a recursive system of objective logic consistent with chemical 
relatives and chemical relations.
The critical 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

[Franklin Ransom]

John,

I don't think I have any significant disagreement with much of what you've
had to say concerning Peirce's commitment to the external element in
experience. I am curious though as to whether you believe you experience
external minds, and if so, whether you would count them as physical? I feel
as though asking this question might be somehow perceived as obnoxious, but
I confess that I have a sincere desire to understand how you think about
it; since what you've had to say seems to imply, so far as I can tell, that
you would probably admit that you experience external minds (like my mind),
but that you also have to admit that you think of the experience of my mind
as of something physical, not mental (i.e., not referring to illusions,
dreams, etc.), since it is something external to you. Have I ascertained
your point of view rightly on this, or am I guilty of warping your meaning
in some unfortunate way?


-- Franklin


On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 9:04 AM, John Collier  wrote:

> Dear Franklin, List members:
>
>
>
> I left out a more fundamental part of the argument that I will lay out
> now. It is basically a very simple argument, though perhaps it is a bit
> subtle. I left it out because the argument is fairly well known to Peirce
> scholars It appears in several places in slightly different forms in
> Peirce’s writings. I would argue that it is very difficult if not
> impossible to accept many of Peirce’s more systematic ideas without
> accepting this argument I lay out.
>
>
>
> Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to
> something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or
> we go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to
> Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the
> objectivity test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has
> to be given up. Now that there are experiences, including mental
> experiences, is objective, but meaning cannot be referred ultimately to
> mental experiences alone without making it depend on psychology rather than
> objective conditions. Other than for logic, which has its own grounds for
> objectivity in things that are external, the experience ultimately referred
> to has to be of the senses, roughly (I would include emotions, which I see
> to have a propositional or cognitive component) that also must have an
> external aspect in order to support objective differences in meaning.
> Peirce resolves this by setting aside a class of experiences that are of
> external things. The child, he says, learns to recognize that not all
> things are under his control, but must be at least in part caused by
> external influences, so some experience is composed of signs of the
> external. This is a very early and necessary abduction. Membership in this
> class of supposed externally based experiences (which Peirce often just
> identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further evidence (there are
> illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most extreme case – and
> dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ examples –
> though Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, but
> Peirce would require an additional reason for doubt over the mere
> possibility – a “defeater” in terms of contemporary pragmatist
> epistemology), but the basic way to check membership is whether or not they
> are at least in part not under our control. This needs to be tested, as we
> can be wrong about it in specific cases, but in general (or we violate the
> defeater requirement).
>
>
>
> Physicalism is rather hard to define, and there are a number of
> definitions floating around the philosophy and scientific world. Quine
> defines the physical as that which is accessible through the senses (not
> what physics tells us is physical). This won’t quite do for Peirce (or me)
> since there are the afore-mentioned sensory illusions, etc. What physics
> tells us is physical is a good place to start, but of course physics has
> been wrong, so this is more of a control than a criterion. I think it is
> safe to say, though, that everything that science has been able to study
> effectively so far has a physical basis. I would think that the physical
> has a number of signs, and that there is a consilience that eventually
> leads to a clearer idea of what is physical. Peirce was, in fact, a kind of
> idealist (the objective kind, for one thing), so there is presumably no
> contradiction  between his views about experience, and the physical, and at
> least one form of idealism. I don’t share Peirce’s idealism, but that is
> neither here nor there; it is not relevant to Peirce’s argument that I have
> reconstructed here. All thought is in signs. Some thoughts (or mental
> experiences, if you want) are of external things. Other than logical,
> mathematical, and the like, being external is to be physical at the least.
> In order to make our ideas