[Inquiry] Attribute, Impute, Represent -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 1

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BM = Bernard Morand

Re: AIR 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/002383.html
In: AIR.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/thread.html#2383

BM: Thanks Jon for these quotes that made me return to the source text from 1866.
    I am not sure that I had ever read it. I discovered some additional elements
    that I can't resist to partake with the list because they give some water to
    Joe's mill (as we say in French) in his controversy with Tom Short, even if
    I feel uncomfortable with some of Joe's arguments, as it is the case with
    the icon supposed to be implied into the symbol for example.

Bernard,

The English idiom is more often "grist for the mill",
except for the good ol' boy, who may prefer "grits".

I was led back to these passages because I had the impression
of having read an early (pre-1865) usage of "imputed quality"
in the sense that Joe was calling attention to in a later
excerpt.  I haven't located that yet, if it even exists,
but I did find these very illuminating transitional
passages where Peirce is exploring the complex of
connotations that involves the words "attribute",
"impute", "represent", that would also involve
words like "allege", "inform", "report",
"repute", "purport", "purpose", "use".

BM: First, the introduction for this chapter 1 on Logic.
    After some considerations on the significance of Logic
    according to Aristotle then Kant, CSP writes (CE1, p. 351):

CSP:| Now upon the table of the categories philosophy is erected, --
    | not merely metaphysic but the philosophy of religion, of morals,
    | of law, and of every science.  To form a table of the categories is,
    | therefore, the great end of logic.

BM: This could be taken to my sense as the preamble summary of the New List
    to appear one year later.  To refuse to acknowledge the status of leading 
    research program for CSP to the New List, as Tom is doing, seems to me (a)
    render semiotics independent from logic and (b) render logic independent from
    philosophy.  This is not to say that CSP could not have got it wrong straight
    from the beginning, in particular with regard to such epistemological ordering
    of concerns, but if something was wrong it would have to be shown on this basis
    or in its resulting analysis into reference to ground-relation-representation as
    CSP called it at the time.  This observation makes me think that many controversies
    that we see about the work of Peirce conform to this simple and same schema:  arguing
    from the narrow point of view of one or the other actual discipline although Peirce's
    work was aiming at their unity with the help of logic.

BM: The fact that semiotics is perceived as the same thing
    as logic is clear from the beginning even on the topic
    of index that Tom is discussing.

Yes, though, strictly speaking, I think that it's best to
follow Peirce in saying that logic is formal semiotics,
where "formal" means "quasi-necessary" or "normative".
This leaves room for a descriptive semiotics that we
clearly have use for in many circumstances.

BM: In this same text from 1866 we find also (CE1, p. 355):

| As relations separate into two kinds on account of the double reference they contain,
| so representations from containing a triple reference separate into three kinds.  For
| the relation of a repraesentamen to its object (correlate) may be a real relation and,
| then, either an agreement or a difference, or it may be an ideal relation or one from
| which the reference to a correspondent (subject of representation) cannot be prescinded
| by position.  In the first case, that is where the repraesentamen has a real agreement
| with its object, the representation consists in the 'likeness';  a simple quality of
| the object is shown but the object itself is not said to exist.  In the second case,
| there is a real difference of the repraesentamen from its object, that is to say not
| a mere difference in quality but also a bringing of them together in nature;  in this
| case the representative character of the one will consist in constant accompaniment
| by the other, so that it 'indicates' the existence of the latter without noting any
| characters of it.  Such a representation may be termed an 'index'.  In the third
| case, where the relation of the repraesentamen to its object is ideal, the ground
| of this relation is an attribute of the correlate 'attributed' to the relate, and
| then the relate or repraesentamen represents the object or correlate on account of
| the quality attributed to it.  This gives a 'general sign', a word or conception,
| for the repraesentamen will necessarily apply to everything which contains its
| attributed quality.  ...
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, 355
|
| C.S. Peirce, "Logic Chapter 1", MS 115 (1866), pp. 351-356 in:
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition',
|'Volume 1, 1857-1866', Peirce Edition Project,
| Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

BM: So, just speaking of the second case, the case of the index,
    which elements will be discarded or changed further by Peirce
    among what is written here?  I think that the answer is nothing.
    But it is true that Peirce will further study this same relation
    from other points of view, in particular the phaneroscopic one,
    which will just amount to corroborate the brilliant hypothesis
    of the New List.  Then the annoying result according to which
    everything is built on the 1, 2, 3 trivium.

If I had to negotiate a compromise position, I might say that almost
nothing will change about the understanding of what an index is, except
perhaps (1) the sharpening up of "disquiparance" to "opposition" and then
to "reaction" and (2) the welcoming back of indices and icons to the realm
of logic, which Peirce had early restricted to a concern with symbols alone.
This seems to me more of an accidental turf issue, concerning the definition
of logic, than it is an essential definition of the kinds of signs themselves.

Jon Awbrey

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