I am reposting this under the subject description for the thread on naming definite individuals so it will show up under that heading in the archives. Joe Ransdell
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 7:29 AM Subject: [peirce-l] REAL RELATION (passages from Collected Papers) The passages below were retrieved from the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce by a string search on "real relation": Joe Ransdell -------------------------- REAL RELATION (passages from the Collected Papers) CP 5.287 (1868) 287. We must now consider two other properties of signs which are of great importance in the theory of cognition. Since a sign is not identical with the thing signified, but differs from the latter in some respects, it must plainly have some characters which belong to it in itself, and have nothing to do with its representative function. These I call the material qualities of the sign. As examples of such qualities, take in the word "man," its consisting of three letters -- in a picture, its being flat and without relief. In the second place, a sign must be capable of being connected (not in the reason but really) with another sign of the same object, or with the object itself. Thus, words would be of no value at all unless they could be connected into sentences by means of a real copula which joins signs of the same thing. The usefulness of some signs -- as a weathercock, a tally, etc. -- consists wholly in their being really connected with the very things they signify. In the case of a picture such a connection is not evident, but it exists in the power of association which connects the picture with the brain-sign which labels it. This real, physical connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign. Now the representative function of a sign lies neither in its material quality nor in its pure demonstrative application; because it is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought, while both of the characters just defined belong to the sign independently of its addressing any thought. And yet if I take all the things which have certain qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to each, they become fit to be signs. If they are not regarded as such they are not actually signs, but they are so in the same sense, for example, in which an unseen flower can be said to be red, this being also a term relative to a mental affection. CP 1.372 (1885) 372. We have seen that the mere coexistence of two singular facts constitutes a degenerate form of dual fact; and in like manner there are two orders of degeneracy in plural facts, for either they may consist in a mere synthesis of facts of which the highest is dual, or they may consist in a mere synthesis of singular facts. This explains why there should be three classes of signs; for there is a triple connection of sign, thing signified, cognition produced in the mind. There may be a mere relation of reason between the sign and the thing signified; in that case the sign is an icon. Or there may be a direct physical connection; in that case, the sign is an index. Or there may be a relation which consists in the fact that the mind associates the sign with its object; in that case the sign is a name [or symbol]. Now consider the difference between a logical term, a proposition, and an inference. A term is a mere general description, and as neither icon nor index possesses generality, it must be a name; and it is nothing more. A proposition is also a general description, but it differs from a term in that it purports to be in a real relation to the fact, to be really determined by it; thus, a proposition can only be formed of the conjunction of a name and an index. An inference, too, contains a general description.... CP 1.365 (1890) 365. Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual exemplification of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer upon this preliminary exposition of them. There is, however, one feature of them upon which it is quite indispensable to dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of Secondness and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so called, or they are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight lines is called a degenerate conic. So plane cubic curves are either the genuine curves of the third order, or they are conics paired with straight lines, or they consist of three straight lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics. Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate sort which does not exist as such, but is only so conceived. The medieval logicians (following a hint of Aristotle) distinguished between real relations and relations of reason. A real relation subsists in virtue of a fact which would be totally impossible were either of the related objects destroyed; while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of the relates. Such are all resemblances: for any two objects in nature resemble each other, and indeed in themselves just as much as any other two; it is only with reference to our senses and needs that one resemblance counts for more than another. Rumford and Franklin resembled each other by virtue of being both Americans; but either would have been just as much an American if the other had never lived. On the other hand, the fact that Cain killed Abel cannot be stated as a mere aggregate of two facts, one concerning Cain and the other concerning Abel. Resemblances are not the only relations of reason, though they have that character in an eminent degree. Contrasts and comparisons are of the same sort. Resemblance is an identity of characters; and this is the same as to say that the mind gathers the resembling ideas together into one conception. Other relations of reason arise from ideas being connected by the mind in other ways; they consist in the relation between two parts of one complex concept, or, as we may say, in the relation of a complex concept to itself, in respect to two of its parts. This brings us to consider a sort of degenerate Secondness that does not fulfill the definition of a relation of reason. Identity is the relation that everything bears to itself: Lucullus dines with Lucullus. Again, we speak of allurements and motives in the language of forces, as though a man suffered compulsion from within. So with the voice of conscience: and we observe our own feelings by a reflective sense. An echo is my own voice coming back to answer itself. So also, we speak of the abstract quality of a thing as if it were some second thing that the first thing possesses. But the relations of reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one thing upon another. CP 2.357 (1901) 357. Whether or not every proposition has a principal subject, and, if so, whether it can or cannot have more than one, will be considered below. A proposition may be defined as a sign which separately indicates its object. For example, a portrait with the proper name of the original written below it is a proposition asserting that so that original looked. If this broad definition of a proposition be accepted, a proposition need not be a symbol. Thus a weathercock "tells" from which direction the wind blows by virtue of a real relation which it would still have to the wind, even if it were never intended or understood to indicate the wind. It separately indicates the wind because its construction is such that it must point to the quarter from which the wind blows; and this construction is distinct from its position at any particular time. But what we usually mean by a proposition or judgment is a symbolic proposition, or symbol, separately indicating its object. Every subject partakes of the nature of an index, in that its function is the characteristic function of an index, that of forcing the attention upon its object. Yet the subject of a symbolic proposition cannot strictly be an index. When a baby points at a flower and says, "Pretty," that is a symbolic proposition; for the word "pretty" being used, it represents its object only by virtue of a relation to it which it could not have if it were not intended and understood as a sign. The pointing arm, however, which is the subject of this proposition, usually indicates its object only by virtue of a relation to this object, which would still exist, though it were not intended or understood as a sign. But when it enters into the proposition as its subject, it indicates its object in another way. For it cannot be the subject of that symbolic proposition unless it is intended and understood to be so. Its merely being an index of the flower is not enough. It only becomes the subject of the proposition, because its being an index of the flower is evidence that it was intended to be. In like manner, all ordinary propositions refer to the real universe, and usually to the nearer environment. Thus, if somebody rushes into the room and says, "There is a great fire!" we know he is talking about the neighbourhood and not about the world of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. It is the circumstances under which the proposition is uttered or written which indicate that environment as that which is referred to. But they do so not simply as index of the environment, but as evidence of an intentional relation of the speech to its object, which relation it could not have if it were not intended for a sign. The expressed subject of an ordinary proposition approaches most nearly to the nature of an index when it is a proper name which, although its connection with its object is purely intentional, yet has no reason (or, at least, none is thought of in using it) except the mere desirability of giving the familiar object a designation. Among, or along with, proper names we may put abstractions, which are the names of fictitious individual things, or, more accurately, of individuals whose being consists in the manner of being of something else. A kind of abstractions are individual collections, such as the "German people." When the subject is not a proper name, or other designation of an individual within the experience (proximate or remote) of both speaker and auditor, the place of such designation is taken by a virtual precept stating how the hearer is to proceed in order to find an object to which the proposition is intended to refer. If this process does not involve a regular course of experimentation, all cases may be reduced to two with their complications. These are the two cases: first, that in which the auditor is to take any object of a given description, and it is left to him to take any one he likes; and, secondly, the case in which it is stated that a suitable object can be found within a certain range of experience, or among the existent individuals of a certain class. The former gives the distributed subject of a universal proposition, as, "Any cockatrice lays eggs." It is not asserted that any cockatrice exists, but only that, if the hearer can find a cockatrice, to that it is intended that the predicate shall be applicable. The other case gives the undistributed subject of a particular proposition, as "Some negro albino is handsome." This implies that there is at least one negro albino. Among complications of these cases we may reckon such subjects as that of the proposition, "Every fixed star but one is too distant to show a true disk," and, "There are at least two points common to all the circles osculating any given curve." The subject of a universal proposition may be taken to be, "Whatever object in the universe be taken"; thus the proposition about the cockatrice might be expressed: "Any object in the universe having been taken, it will either not be a cockatrice or it will lay eggs." So understood, the subject is not asserted to exist, but it is well known to exist; for the universe must be understood to be familiar to the speaker and hearer, or no communication about it would take place between them; for the universe is only known by experience. The particular proposition may still more naturally be expressed in this way, "There is something in the universe which is a negro albino that is handsome." No doubt there are grammatical differences between these ways of stating the fact; but formal logic does not undertake to provide for more than one way of expressing the same fact, unless a second way is requisite for the expression of inferences. The latter mode is, on the whole, preferable. A proposition may have several subjects. Thus the universe of projective geometry being understood, it is a true proposition that "Whatever individuals, A, B, C, and D may be, there are individuals E and F, such that whatever individual G may be, there is an individual H, and an individual I, such that, if A, B, C, and D are all straight lines, then E and F are straight lines, each intersecting A, B, C, and D, and E and F are not coincident; and if G is a straight line, not coincident with E, and not coincident with F, and if G intersects A, B, and C, it does not intersect D, unless H is a one-sheeted hyperboloid of which A, B, C, and D are generators, and J is a set of generators of H, to which A, B, C, and D all belong"; or, in our usual phraseology, any four straight lines in space are intersected by just two different straight lines, unless these four straight lines belong to one set of generators of a one-sheeted hyperboloid. Such a proposition is called a relative proposition. The order in which the selection of individuals is made is material when the selections are different in respect to distribution. The proposition may relate to the frequency with which, in the course of ordinary experience, a generic event is of a certain species. De Morgan wishes to erect this into the general type of propositions. But this is to overlook a vital distinction between probability and that which a universal proposition asserts. To say that the probability that a calf will not have more than six legs is 1, is to say that in the long run, taking calves as they present themselves in experience, the ratio of the number of those with not more than six legs to the total number is 1. But this does not prevent there being any finite number of calves with more legs than six, provided that in the long run, that is, in an endless course of experience, their number remains finite, and does not increase indefinitely. A universal proposition, on the other hand, asserts, for example, that any calf which may exist, without exception, is a vertebrate animal. The universal proposition speaks of experience distributively; the probable, or statistical proposition, speaks of experience collectively. CP 4.464 (c. 1903) 464. Every symbol is an ens rationis, because it consists in a habit, in a regularity; now every regularity consists in the future conditional occurrence of facts not themselves that regularity. Many important truths are expressed by propositions which relate directly to symbols or to ideal objects of symbols, not to realities. If we say that two walls collide, we express a real relation between them, meaning by a real relation one which involves the existence of its correlates. If we say that a ball is red, we express a positive quality of feeling really connected with the ball. But if we say that the ball is not blue, we simply express -- as far as the direct expression goes -- a relation of inapplicability between the predicate blue, and the ball or the sign of it. So it is with every negation. Now it has already been shown that every universal proposition involves a negation, at least when it is expressed as an existential graph. On the other hand, almost every graph expressing a proposition not universal has a line of identity. But identity, though expressed by the line as a dyadic relation, is not a relation between two things, but between two representamens of the same thing. CP 5.448 Fn1 (1901) 1. These remarks require supplementation. Determination, in general, is not defined at all; and the attempt at defining the determination of a subject with respect to a character only covers (or seems only to cover) explicit propositional determination. The incidental remark [447] to the effect that words whose meaning should be determinate would leave "no latitude of interpretation" is more satisfactory, since the context makes it plain that there must be no such latitude either for the interpreter or for the utterer. The explicitness of the words would leave the utterer no room for explanations of his meaning. This definition has the advantage of being applicable to a command, to a purpose, to a medieval substantial form; in short to anything capable of indeterminacy. (That everything indeterminate is of the nature of a sign can be proved inductively by imagining and analyzing instances of the surdest description. Thus, the indetermination of an event which should happen by pure chance without cause, sua sponte, as the Romans mythologically said, spontan¨ment in French (as if what was done of one's own motion were sure to be irrational), does not belong to the event -- say, an explosion -- per se, or as explosion. Neither is it by virtue of any real relation: it is by virtue of a relation of reason. Now what is true by virtue of a relation of reason is representative, that is, is of the nature of a sign. A similar consideration applies to the indiscriminate shots and blows of a Kentucky free fight.) Even a future event can only be determinate in so far as it is a consequent. Now the concept of a consequent is a logical concept. It is derived from the concept of the conclusion of an argument. But an argument is a sign of the truth of its conclusion; its conclusion is the rational interpretation of the sign. This is in the spirit of the Kantian doctrine that metaphysical concepts are logical concepts applied somewhat differently from their logical application. The difference, however, is not really as great as Kant represents it to be, and as he was obliged to represent it to be, owing to his mistaking the logical and metaphysical correspondents in almost every case. CP 8.266 (1903) 266. The practical exigencies of life render Secondness the most prominent of the three. This is not a conception, nor is it a peculiar quality. It is an experience. It comes out most fully in the shock of reaction between ego and non-ego. It is there the double consciousness of effort and resistance. That is something which cannot properly be conceived. For to conceive it is to generalize it; and to generalize it is to miss altogether the hereness and nowness which is its essence. According to me, the idea of a reaction is not the idea of two plus forcefulness. On the contrary to think of two dots as two is to have a little experience of reaction and then to tell ourselves that that is to be taken only in a Pickwickian sense, as a mere reaction within the world of ideas, the experience of reaction itself at once leading us to think of a world of seconds or existences and a world of mere tame ideas; the one resistant, the other subject to our wills. We also find ourselves thinking of the things without us, as acting on one another, as really connected. Now it is your business as a psychologist to say how that comes about, not mine. I merely look at the phenomenon, and say that all idea of real relation, or connection, has in it that same element of irrational reaction. All the actual character of consciousness is merely the sense of the shock of the non-ego upon us. Just as a calm sea sleeps except where its rollers dash upon the land. CP 8.330 (1904) 330. The type of an idea of Secondness is the experience of effort, prescinded from the idea of a purpose. It may be said that there is no such experience, that a purpose is always in view as long as the effort is cognized. This may be open to doubt; for in sustained effort we soon let the purpose drop out of view. However, I abstain from psychology which has nothing to do with ideoscopy. The existence of the word effort is sufficient proof that people think they have such an idea; and that is enough. The experience of effort cannot exist without the experience of resistance. Effort only is effort by virtue of its being opposed; and no third element enters. Note that I speak of the experience, not of the feeling, of effort. Imagine yourself to be seated alone at night in the basket of a balloon, far above earth, calmly enjoying the absolute calm and stillness. Suddenly the piercing shriek of a steam-whistle breaks upon you, and continues for a good while. The impression of stillness was an idea of Firstness, a quality of feeling. The piercing whistle does not allow you to think or do anything but suffer. So that too is absolutely simple. Another Firstness. But the breaking of the silence by the noise was an experience. The person in his inertness identifies himself with the precedent state of feeling, and the new feeling which comes in spite of him is the non-ego. He has a two-sided consciousness of an ego and a non-ego. That consciousness of the action of a new feeling in destroying the old feeling is what I call an experience. Experience generally is what the course of life has compelled me to think. Secondness is either genuine or degenerate. There are many degrees of genuineness. Generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon another, -- brute action. I say brute, because so far as the idea of any law or reason comes in, Thirdness comes in. When a stone falls to the ground, the law of gravitation does not act to make it fall. The law of gravitation is the judge upon the bench who may pronounce the law till doomsday, but unless the strong arm of the law, the brutal sheriff, gives effect to the law, it amounts to nothing. True, the judge can create a sheriff if need be; but he must have one. The stone's actually falling is purely the affair of the stone and the earth at the time. This is a case of reaction. So is existence which is the mode of being of that which reacts with other things. But there is also action without reaction. Such is the action of the previous upon the subsequent. It is a difficult question whether the idea of this one-sided determination is a pure idea of secondness or whether it involves thirdness. At present, the former view seems to me correct. I suppose that when Kant made Time a form of the internal sense alone, he was influenced by some such considerations as the following. The relation between the previous and the subsequent consists in the previous being determinate and fixed for the subsequent, and the subsequent being indeterminate for the previous. But indeterminacy belongs only to ideas; the existent is determinate in every respect; and this is just what the law of causation consists in. Accordingly, the relation of time concerns only ideas. It may also be argued that, according to the law of the conservation of energy, there is nothing in the physical universe corresponding to our idea that the previous determines the subsequent in any way in which the subsequent does not determine the previous. For, according to that law, all that happens in the physical universe consists in the exchange of just so much vis viva 1/2m(ds/dt)®2¯ for so much displacement. Now the square of a negative quantity being positive, it follows that if all the velocities were reversed at any instant, everything would go on just the same, only time going backward as it were. Everything that had happened would happen again in reversed order. These seem to me to be strong arguments to prove that temporal causation (a very different thing from physical dynamic action) is an action upon ideas and not upon existents. But since our idea of the past is precisely the idea of that which is absolutely determinate, fixed, fait accompli, and dead, as against the future which is living, plastic, and determinable, it appears to me that the idea of one-sided action, in so far as it concerns the being of the determinate, is a pure idea of Secondness; and I think that great errors of metaphysics are due to looking at the future as something that will have been past. I cannot admit that the idea of the future can be so translated into the Secundal ideas of the past. To say that a given kind of event never will happen is to deny that there is any date at which its happening will be past; but it is not equivalent to any affirmation about a past relative to any assignable date. When we pass from the idea of an event to saying that it never will happen, or will happen in endless repetition, or introduce in any way the idea of endless repetition, I will say the idea is mellonized ({mell"n}}, about to be, do, or suffer). When I conceive a fact as acting but not capable of being acted upon, I will say that it is parelelythose ({parel,lyth"s}, past) and the mode of being which consists in such action I will call parelelythosine (-ine = {einai}, being); I regard the former as an idea of Thirdness, the latter as an idea of Secondness. I consider the idea of any dyadic relation not involving any third as an idea of Secondness; and I should not call any completely degenerate except the relation of identity. But similarity which is the only possible identity of Firsts is very near to that. Dyadic relations have been classified by me in a great variety of ways; but the most important are, first, with regard to the nature of the Second in itself and, second, with regard to the nature of its First. The Second, or Relate, is, in itself, either a Referate, if it is intrinsically a possibility, such as a quality, or it is a Revelate if it is of its own nature an Existent. In respect to its First, the Second is divisible either in regard to the dynamic first or to the immediate first. In regard to its dynamic first, a Second is determined either by virtue of its own intrinsic nature, or by virtue of a real relation to that second (an action). Its immediate second is either a Quality or an Existent. 335. In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects, I divide signs into Icons, Indices, and Symbols (a division I gave in 1867). I define an Icon as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object by virtue of its own internal nature. Such is any qualisign, like a vision, -- or the sentiment excited by a piece of music considered as representing what the composer intended. Such may be a sinsign, like an individual diagram; say a curve of the distribution of errors. I define an Index as a sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of being in a real relation to it. Such is a Proper Name (a legisign); such is the occurrence of a symptom of a disease. (The symptom itself is a legisign, a general type of a definite character. The occurrence in a particular case is a sinsign.) I define a Symbol as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object only in the sense that it will be so interpreted. It thus depends either upon a convention, a habit, or a natural disposition of its interpretant or of the field of its interpretant (that of which the interpretant is a determination). Every symbol is necessarily a legisign; for it is inaccurate to call a replica of a legisign a symbol. . 337. In regard to its relation to its signified interpretant, a sign is either a Rheme, a Dicent, or an Argument. This corresponds to the old division, Term, Proposition, and Argument, modified so as to be applicable to signs generally. A Term is simply a class-name or proper-name. I do not regard the common noun as an essentially necessary part of speech. Indeed, it is only fully developed as a separate part of speech in the Aryan languages and the Basque, -- possibly in some other out of the way tongues. In the Shemitic languages it is generally in form a verbal affair, and usually is so in substance, too. As well as I can make out, such it is in most languages. In my universal algebra of logic there is no common noun. A rheme is any sign that is not true nor false, like almost any single word except 'yes' and 'no,' which are almost peculiar to modern languages. A proposition as I use that term, is a dicent symbol. A dicent is not an assertion, but is a sign capable of being asserted. But an assertion is a dicent. According to my present view (I may see more light in future) the act of assertion is not a pure act of signification. It is an exhibition of the fact that one subjects oneself to the penalties visited on a liar if the proposition asserted is not true. An act of judgment is the self-recognition of a belief; and a belief consists in the deliberate acceptance of a proposition as a basis of conduct. But I think this position is open to doubt. It is simply a question of which view gives the simplest view of the nature of the proposition. Holding, then, that a Dicent does not assert, I naturally hold that an Argument need not actually be submitted or urged. I therefore define an argument as a sign which is represented in its signified interpretant not as a Sign of that interpretant (the conclusion) [for that would be to urge or submit it] but as if it were a Sign of the Interpretant or perhaps as if it were a Sign of the state of the universe to which it refers, in which the premisses are taken for granted. I define a dicent as a sign represented in its signified interpretant as if it were in a Real Relation to its Object. (Or as being so, if it is asserted.) A rheme is defined as a sign which is represented in its signified interpretant as if it were a character or mark (or as being so). CP 5.457 (1905) 457. Let us now take up the case of that diamond which, having been crystallized upon a cushion of jeweler's cotton, was accidentally consumed by fire before the crystal of corundum that had been sent for had had time to arrive, and indeed without being subjected to any other pressure than that of the atmosphere and its own weight. The question is, was that diamond really hard? It is certain that no discernible actual fact determined it to be so. But is its hardness not, nevertheless, a real fact? To say, as the article of January 1878 seems to intend, that it is just as an arbitrary "usage of speech" chooses to arrange its thoughts, is as much as to decide against the reality of the property, since the real is that which is such as it is regardless of how it is, at any time, thought to be. Remember that this diamond's condition is not an isolated fact. There is no such thing; and an isolated fact could hardly be real. It is an unsevered, though presciss part of the unitary fact of nature. Being a diamond, it was a mass of pure carbon, in the form of a more or less transparent crystal (brittle, and of facile octahedral cleavage, unless it was of an unheard-of variety), which, if not trimmed after one of the fashions in which diamonds may be trimmed, took the shape of an octahedron, apparently regular (I need not go into minuti'), with grooved edges, and probably with some curved faces. Without being subjected to any considerable pressure, it could be found to be insoluble, very highly refractive, showing under radium rays (and perhaps under "dark light" and X-rays) a peculiar bluish phosphorescence, having as high a specific gravity as realgar or orpiment, and giving off during its combustion less heat than any other form of carbon would have done. From some of these properties hardness is believed to be inseparable. For like it they bespeak the high polemerization of the molecule. But however this may be, how can the hardness of all other diamonds fail to bespeak some real relation among the diamonds without which a piece of carbon would not be a diamond? Is it not a monstrous perversion of the word and concept real to say that the accident of the non-arrival of the corundum prevented the hardness of the diamond from having the reality which it otherwise, with little doubt, would have had? -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 3/17/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 3/17/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 3/17/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com