This corresponds to my understanding. I think it also corresponds to what I have been saying about the incapacity to experience "bare" icons. More diaphanous is possible, but absolute fades to nothing. That each category serves as a representamen is what I understand to allow the connection of signs in thought (or in experience more generally, though I use "thought" in this way myself). Every thought is connected to another thought, as Peirce says, though I have trouble expressing this clearly to my students, and always raise questions about how this is to be interpreted. The idea of infinite regress is to be found as early as the 1868 Questions Concerning Certain Faculties paper, although the order there is reversed (every thought depends on a previous thought).
I agree with your following analysis, although I might put it differently. I think we are converging on a better explication of Peirce's views.
Best,
John
At 11:48 PM 2014-08-25, Gary Richmond wrote:
Edwina, Helmut, list
As I've argued my position repeatedly in the past, all I'll add to what I've already said is that, for Peirce, the interpretant is itself a representamen as is the object (immediate object).
CP 1.339. The easiest of [the ideas in which Thirdness is predominant] which are of philosophical interest is the idea of a sign, or representation. A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit. The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series.
So, "sign, or representation"
and "the object of representation can be nothing but a representation"
and "the first representation is the interpretant"
and "the meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation"
and "the interpretant is nothing but another another representation [and] it has its interpretant again.
So it is all "sign, or representation."
And yet it is a leading principal of Peircean semiotics that these (sign, object, interpretant) stand in triadic relation, that they can be distinguished, but I'd maintain, only de post facto and analytically. There is nothing 'linear' about that even while it is possible to imagine that semiosis happens in time and is processual in at least that sense (although I certainly have never held for something along the lines of 'object then representamen then interpretant'--the very passage above argues against such a linear progression).
And why shouldn't there be characteristic types of firstness in consideration of the sign in itself--qualisign, sinsign, and legisign--and yet these all be expressions of firstness with categorial 'flavors' shall we say? It's not as if these three are necessarily characters of the same sign (although they could be). There are myriad firstnesses, so that in the analysis of signs one can distinguish these three characters, the monadic, the dyadic, and the triadic, which Peirce does--thus, for example, the statement of a syllogism taken as a sign has the dominant character of a legisign (while one can find aspects of sinsign and qualisign as well--no sign stands alone, and far from it)
To try to clarify this somewhat from a standpoint emphasizing the categories more than the application of phenomenological insights to semiotics, the phaneron is one, yet there are to be discovered in it three categories. Further, one finds that, expect in certain types of analyses, one never finds one category independent of the others (although it might dominate). Well, that's just a hint. But surely it would be an error to hypostatize the three categories, would it not?
Returning to semiotics, I'd say that taking an ax to these analytical matters represents to me the profoundest error. After all, the several trichotomies and the various classes of signs (10-classes, 64-classes, etc.) are meant to be guides to our analysis and understanding, and it appears to me to be a grave mistake to hypostatize them (this, of course, holds a fortiori for the categories as well).
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
- As I keep pointing out, I consider it a serious error to confuse Peirce's linear order of the processing semiosis of the triad (moving from Object via Representamen to Interpretant and also, within the mediative Representamen reasoning, to Object to Interpretant)..as having anything at all to do with the modal categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness!
- Therefore, your (Gary R's) outline of the Sign - even though you declare that 'many' agree with you - I certainly don't - and I'm not going to bring in any 'ad populum' appeal. Again, I consider it a profound error to merge the three categorical modes with the linear processing order of the act of semiosis. Your outline below contradicts the other small tables, a, b, c, which show the nine Relations - with which I DO agree. After all, if the representamen relation can be in a mode of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness...then how can you confine it to 1ns, as you do below?
- Sign:
- representamen (1ns)
- |> interpretant (3ns)
- object (2ns)
- Edwina
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Gary Richmond
- To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee ; Peirce-L
- Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 4:02 PM
- Subject: [biosemiotics:6515] Re: Abduction,
- Helmut,
- I think what you are pointing to as the "overall role" of the interpretant as 3ns is reflected in this passage:
- CP 2.274. A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason the Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the Object, but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself does. Nor can the triadic relation in which the Third stands be merely similar to that in which the First stands, for this would make the relation of the Third to the First a degenerate Secondness merely. The Third must indeed stand in such a relation, and thus must be capable of determining a Third of its own; but besides that, it must have a second triadic relation in which the Representamen, or rather the relation thereof to its Object, shall be its own (the Third's) Object, and must be capable of determining a Third to this relation. All this must equally be true of the Third's Thirds and so on endlessly; and this, and more, is involved in the familiar idea of a Sign. . .
- Many Peirce scholars, although not Edwina, I believe, see the following categorial relation in semiotics.
- Sign:
- representamen (1ns)
- |> interpretant (3ns)
- object (2ns)
- Then I think we all agree that each of these has it tricategorial relations:
- (a) Representamen:
- qualisign (1ns)
- |> legisign (3ns)
- sinsign (sin==single, 2ns)
- (b) Object:
- icon (1ns)
- |>symbol (3ns)
- index (2ns)
- (c) Intepretant:
- Rheme ('term' generalized for semiotic, 1ns)
- |> Argument (3ns)
- Dicisign ('proposition' generalized for semiotic, 2ns)
- In introducing the three trichotomies and, then, the 10-adic sign classification, Peirce writes:
- CP 2.243. Signs are divisible by three trichotomies; first [(a) above], according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law; secondly [(b) above], according as the relation of the sign to its object consists in the sign's having some character in itself, or in some existential relation to that object, or in its relation to an interpretant; third [(c) above], according as its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility or as a sign of fact or a sign of reason.
- Explicating the trichotomies (by which word, trichotomy, Peirce virtually always means some categorial trichotomy involving1ns, 2ns, and 3ns) based on CP 2.243 we get:
- (a) Representamen:
- qualisign (the sign is a mere quality)
- |> legisign (the sign is a general law)
- sinsign (the sign is an actual existent)
- (b) Object:
- icon (the relation of the sign to its object is some character in itself)
- |>symbol (the relation of the sign to its object is a relation to the interpretant)
- index (the relation of the sign to its object is an existential one)
- (c) Intepretant:
- Rheme (the interpretant represents the sign as one of possibility)
- |> Argument (the interpretant represents the sign as one of reason)
- Dicisign (the interpretant represents the sign as one of fact)
- Immediately before introducing the 10-adic sign classification and descriptions of the 10 sign classes Peirce writes:
- CP 2.254. The three trichotomies of Signs result together in dividing Signs into TEN CLASSES OF SIGNS, of which numerous subdivisions have to be considered. The ten classes are as follows: [he then gives descriptions of the 10]
- So, in this sense (and whether or not one sees the Interpretant as in itself _expression_ of 3ns), Edwina is correct that only the Argument is an Interpretant representing its sign as a sign of reason, or, 3ns. Yet each and all of the 10 signs has within it a relation to its interpretant which is either rhematic, dicentic, or argumentative.
- Best,
- Gary
- Gary Richmond
- Philosophy and Critical Thinking
- Communication Studies
- LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
- C 745
- 718 482-5690
- On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 3:08 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:
- Edwina, with my classification of representamen, object, and interpretant as 1ns, 2ns, 3ns I have meant just the overall role in a sign, like Peirce said "a first, a second, a third". With "overall role" I mean, before you look at the sign classes. Object being nontemporal, ok, that was an exaggeration: I meant to say, that it is (quite) permanent in the looked-at time scale (and a representamen is not. It is rather like an impulse: It appears, calls the object, then it is gone). Final interpretant turning into immediate object: Complicated, so just a reference: (Charles S. Peirse´s philosophy of signs, essays in comparative semiotics" by Gerard Deledalle, page 74, Indiana University Press 2001.)
- This was not an attempt to convince you, Edwina, I am just hoping to not disagree with you about absolutely everything.
- Best, Helmut
- Von: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
- Helmut - we'll just have to disagree - on just about everything.
- In my view, the Interpretant is NOT always in a mode of Thirdness. Indeed, in Peirce's classification of signs (CP 2.254)...you will see that the Interpretant Relation is in a mode of Thirdness only in ONE sign - the pure Argument. Otherwise, in the other nine classes of signs, it is in a mode of either Firstness or Secondness.
- I also disagree that Secondness is atemporal (nontemporality). It is, in my view, very specifically temporal (in perfect time; i.e., like a clock). If a sign was atemporal, then, it couldn't exist 'as itself'..in brute interaction with another sign. Matter organized in a mode of Secondness is in local space and 'this hic-et-nunc' time.
- The Representamen Relation, the relation of mediation, can be in any one of the three categorical modes. When it is in Thirdness, it is in progressive or continuous time. When it is in Secondness, it is in 'perfect' hic et nunc time. When it is in Firstness it is in 'now' time..which is non-linear with no past or future.
- I don't see how a final interpretant turns into an immediate object; the final interpretant is objective while the immediate object is subjective.
- And I think your speculation about induction/deduction is too 'hopping convoluted' to answer in a reasonable manner.
- Edwina
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Helmut Raulien
- To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
- Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 2:12 PM
- Subject: [biosemiotics:6512] Abduction,
- And I think, nonlocality and nontemporality (into the future) indicates an interpretant (3ns), while locality (and nontemporality) indicates an object (2ns). (Temporality indicates a representamen (1ns)) Might it be, that the question whether deduction is 2ns or 3ns is based on the fact, that the conclusion in a deduction is true, therefore a final interpretant (3ns), but a final interpretant then turns into an immediate object (2ns)? And the question, whether induction is 2ns or 3ns maybe based on the following: There are three kinds of induction: crude, quantitative, qualitative, said Peirce. I havent read it, but: If the induction is complete, it is a deduction (3ns). And if the number of elements in the set is known (I have seen only 309 frogs, all green, and there are 16754391 frogs existing), a deduction (3ns) about subjective probability (eg. that the next hopping-by frog will be green, or that all frogs are green) is implied in the elsehow 2ns induction.
- Helmut
- Von: "Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
- To add another twist, isn't it the case that deduction determines non-local necessary conclusions while induction is strictly local? That is, in my view, deduction provides a general rule that is valid and thus necessary in ALL cases, regardless of spatial and temporal domain. Induction, on the other hand does provide a general rule but it is valid only for the local spatial domain and current time. Therefore deduction operates within a mode of Thirdness and induction within a mode of Secondness. Secondness, as Phyllis points out, is most certainly 'necessary' in that the interactions are determined by the facts of existentiality, but they are confined to that local space and current time.
- Edwina
- ----- Original Message -----
- From: Gary Richmond
- To: Phyllis Chiasson
- Cc: peirce-l@list iupui. edu ; biosemiotics@lists ut. ee ; cl...@waikato.ac.nz ; Mary Libertin ; Helmut Raulien
- Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2014 9:39 PM
- Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: PEIRCE-L] Abduction, 1ns, Induction, 2ns, Deduction, 3ns and Peirce's brief "confusion"
- Phyllis, all,
- It may be that rather then your brain being fogged, Phyllis, that I am simply wrong in, perhaps, overstating my position. Peirce remained indecisive, not completely certain in this matter as the material he substituted for the undelivered notes suggests. And there is even some hesitancy to come down definitively in the direction I've suggested in those very notes.
- As Nathan Houser suggests somewhere, Peirce never quite fully reconciled in his own thinking the relationship between those two trichotomies, that is, the three categories and the three inference patterns.
- As for "where I'm headed," all I can say is that I have not been able to see things differently than I've presented them and I've found following this way of seeing things helpful. But fallibility remains my watchword in this as in other philosophical matters.
- So, keep getting stronger, take your meds, listen to your doctors, and don't stop posting!--it may well be that my analytical abilities are the ones that are muddy.
- Best,
- Gary
- Gary Richmond
- Philosophy and Critical Thinking
- Communication Studies
- LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
- C 745
- 718 482-5690
- On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 9:24 PM, Phyllis Chiasson <ath...@olympus.net> wrote:
- Gary, et all,
- Well, the docs warned me that there would probably be any of several cognitive consequences while I am taking these high doses of prednisone. This posting is probably a result of one or more of these effects, as I can't grasp where you are headed and I have a sense that my posting may be coming from an entirely different planet than this discussion is on. I think I know what I mean, but can't think how to clarify it.
- So, my response will have to wait until my brain fog clears (if ever). Meanwhile, I'm going to refrain from posting until I feel confident that at least some of my analytical abilities have returned.
- Regards,
- Phyllis
- Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
- Phyllis,
- I must say that I find some of your remarks confusing, You wrote:
- PC: Since deduction produces necessary results, it seems a little like brute actuality to me.
- But necessity (as lawfulness, as habit-taking, as necessary, that is, mathematical reasoning) is itself a character of thirdness for Peirce and exactly requires that there be brute actuality (vizl, that which has no reason, 2ns) for it to work on (embodied laws, existential 'results').
- This is also the notion of would-be's (i.e., would necessarily be if the habits/conditions were to come into being) in Peirce's letters to James. Would-be's are 3ns, as May-be's are 1ns and Is's are 2ns.
- On the other hand brute actuality is most decidedly given by Peirce as existential synonym for secondness.
- Actuality is something brute. There is no reason in it. I instance putting your shoulder against a door and trying to force it open against an unseen, silent, and unknown resistance. We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense of actuality. On the whole, I think we have here a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is. I call that Secondness. (CP 1.24)
- You continued:
- PC: Also, hasn't the later Peirce always ascribed generalization to induction of all kinds (universal propositions as crude; qualitative & quantitative as gradual)? So, Hypothesis = 1st, deduction as explicatation/demonstration= 2nd, and Induction as classification, testing, verification (which seems like a generalizing process to me) = 3rd.
- I see it differently: "deduction as explication" is, in inquiry, the explication of the hypothesis for the purpose of devising tests to see to what extent the hypothesis conforms to reality. In such reasoning the 'demonstrations' are essentially mathematical, necessarily following from the hypothesis if true. While any given test certainly has it "generalized" characters, the testing is typically in the context of some 'brute actuality'.
- PC: Of course, the collapse of a universal proposition is a second, but I think that would be because the collapse is a necessary because the proposition (premise, etc) no longer holds. Not because it was inductively derived.
- I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning here. For example, what do you mean by "the collapse of a universal proposition" in this context?
- For my own part, I'm thinking along the line of this quotation, that the general "consists in governing individual events":
- The very being of the General, of Reason, consists in its governing individual events. So, then, the essence of Reason is such that its being never can have been completely perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth. , , [T]he development of Reason requires as a part of it the occurrence of more individual events than ever can occur. It requires, too, all the coloring of all qualities of feeling, including pleasure in its proper place among the rest. This development of Reason consists, you will observe, in embodiment, that is, in manifestation. (CP 1.615)
- Best,
- Gary
- Gary Richmond
- Philosophy and Critical Thinking
- Communication Studies
- LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
- C 745
- 718 482-5690
- On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Phyllis Chiasson <ath...@olympus.net> wrote:
- Gary asked: Are you saying that you see him changing his mind yet again in that regard, Phyllis?
- I'm not sure. Since deduction produces necessary results, it seems a little like brute actuality to me. Also, hasn't the later Peirce always ascribed generalization to induction of all kinds (universal propositions as crude; qualitative & quantitative as gradual)? So, Hypothesis = 1st, deduction as explicatation/demonstration= 2nd, and Induction as classification, testing, verification (which seems like a generalizing process to me) = 3rd. Of course, the collapse of a universal proposition is a second, but I think that would be because the collapse is a necessary because the proposition (premise, etc) no longer holds. Not because it was inductively derived.
- Of course, you're correct that I'm thinking of inferences for inquiry (methodeutic) rather than
- Regards,
- Phyllis
- Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
- Phyllis, all,
- Ah, so Peirce changes his mind as to the subdivisions he will make of abduction and induction as he delves ever deeper into these in the N.A., there in consideration of inquiry, not merely as forms of inference. But I see no evidence in the N.A. (or elsewhere) that he changed his mind about the categoriality of induction and deduction. Are you saying that you see him changing his mind yet again in that regard, Phyllis?
- Best,
- Gary
- Gary Richmond
- Philosophy and Critical Thinking
- Communication Studies
- LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
- C 745
- 718 482-5690
- On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Phyllis Chiasson <ath...@olympus.net> wrote:
- Gary R wrote:that Induction split, at once, into the Sampling of Collections, and the Sampling of Qualities. . . " (*Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism*, Turrisi, ed. 276-7).
- Yet later, in1908 in NA, Peirce identified 1. Retro. 2 deduction types (theorematic & axiomatic sp?) And 3 kinds of induction (crude, qualitative, quantitative).
- Phyllis
- Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:
- On several occasions over the years I've taken up the matter of the categorial assignations Peirce gave deduction and induction, the most recent being a peirce-l post of March, 2012, in response to Cathy Legg writing: "I don't see how one might interpret induction as secondness though. Though a *misplaced* induction may well lead to the secondness of surprise due to error." https://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@listserv.iupui.edu/msg00747.html
- One can find in Patricia Ann Turrisi's edition of the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism notes for "Lecture 5: The Normative Sciences" a long note (#3) from which the following excerpt gives an account of Peirce's lapse (his brief change of mind in the categorial assignations), the reason for it, and his late tendency to more or less settle his opinion again as deduction being 3ns and induction 2ns. He writes:
- Shortly after this he comments on his brief period of "confusion" in the matter.
- In the sense that for a few years Peirce was "confused" about
- these categorial associations of the inference patterns, he is at
- least partially at fault in creating confusion in the minds of many
- scholars about the categorial associations of the three inference
- patterns. Still, he finally sees the error of his ways and corrects himself:
- And yet he adds that he "will leave the question undecided."
- anything but 3ns, nor induction with anything but 2ns.
- As I wrote in 2012:
- Best,
- Gary
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