[Inquiry] Re: Manifolds Of Diverse Impressions

[Jon Awbrey]

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MODI.  Note 13

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| Section 8.  The Interpretant (concl.)
|
| It must not be supposed that in giving a definition of interpretant, we
| admit at all that reference to an interpretant is a compounded conception.
| This definition is only a verbal one;  for the conception of representation
| which it introduces itself contains that of reference to an interpretant.
| Reference to an interpretant, is simply the 'addressing' of an impression
| to a conception.  To 'address' or 'appeal to', is an act we, in fact,
| suppose everything to perform, whether we attend to the circumstance
| or not.  It is unanalyzable, I think;  though it may be expressed
| more perspicuously by a periphrasis, as above.
|
| It may perhaps be objected, that since an interpretant
| is necessarily a correlate, reference to an interpretant
| is merely a particular determination of the conception of
| reference to a correlate, and should be co-ordinated with
| the latter.  But an interpretant is not referred to as
| establishing a relation to a correlate, in so far as
| it is a correlate;  it is not therefore 'quatenus
| ipsum' a correlate.
|
| Reference to an interpretant is rendered possible and justified
| by that which renders possible and justifies comparison.  But this
| is clearly the diversity of impressions.  It is plain, that if we had
| but one impression, this impression would not require to be reduced to
| unity, and would, therefore, not need to be thought of as referred to an
| interpretant and the conception of reference to an interpretant would not
| arise.  But the moment there are several impressions, that is a manifoldness
| of impression, we have a feeling of complication or confusion, which leads us
| to differentiate this impression from that, and they require to be brought to
| unity.  Now they are not brought to unity until we conceive them together as
| being 'ours', that is, until we refer them to a conception as their interpretant.
| Thus the reference to an interpretant arises upon the holding together of diverse
| impressions, and therefore it does not join a conception to the substance, as the
| other two references [to a ground and to a correlate] do, but unites directly the
| manifold of the substance, itself.  It is therefore the last conception in order,
| in passing from 'being' to 'substance'.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, 523-524
|
|["On a Method of Searching for the Categories"], MS 133 (1866), pp. 515-528 in:
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition, Vol. 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

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