[Inquiry] Re: Questions Involving Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 24

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ML = Martin Lefebvre

Cf: QUAGS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2658

Martin,

Thanks for saving me a mess of typing, as I had already
begun slouching my way toward these very passages from
the "New Elements" on the closely related QUAGS thread
when other issues intervened.  But I am way behind in
my correspondence, both my double and my triple ones,
and as it will be a while before I can get to this,
I will simply archive this note where I can find
it later.

Jon Awbrey

ML wrote:
>
> (I've been away from the list for some time due to various committments -- but I'll take this opportunity to thank everyone
> who had responded to my post regrding Rorty some time ago).
> 
> Catching up on the discussion regarding the (im)possibility of "pure symbols" [I am in complete agreement with what I
> have read so far by Joe Ransdell and others contra Jon Awbey's claim] I would like to propose the following (taken from
> "New Elements", in EP II) where Peirce posits the symbol as origin of the universe. Surely one would think that if there's a
> "pure symbol" to be found in Peirce, this is where it should be found: the originary Nothing of the universe. And yet, in
> reading this difficult passage one sees that this is not the case:
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - Beginning of quote- - - - - - - - - -
> 
> "If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was in the beginning a state of things in which there was
> nothing, no reaction and no quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and no time, but just nothing at all. Not
> determinately nothing. For that which is determinately not A supposes the being of A in some mode. Utter indetermination.
> But a symbol alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute beginning, is a symbol. That is
> the way in which the beginning of things can alone be understood. What logically follows? We are not to content ourselves
> with our instinctive sense of logicality. That is logical which comes from the essential nature of a symbol. Now it is of the
> essential nature of a symbol that it determines an interpretant, which is itself a symbol. A symbol, therefore, produces an
> endless series of interpretants. Does anybody suspect all this of being sheer nonsense? Distinguo. There can, it is true, be
> no positive information about what antedated the entire Universe of being; because, to begin with, there was nothing to
> have information about. But the universe is intelligible; and therefore it is possible to give a general account of it and its
> origin. This general account is a symbol; and from the nature of a symbol, it must begin with the formal assertion that there
> was an indeterminate nothing of the nature of a symbol. This would be false if it conveyed any information. But it is the
> correct and logical manner of beginning an account of the universe. As a symbol it produced its infinite series of
> interpretants, which in the beginning were absolutely vague like itself. But the direct interpretant of any symbol must in the
> first stage of it be merely the tabula rasa for an interpretant. Hence the immediate interpretant of this vague Nothing was
> not even determinately vague, but only vaguely hovering between determinacy and vagueness; and its immediate
> interpretant was vaguely hovering between vaguely hovering between vagueness and determinacy and determinate
> vagueness or determinacy, and so on, ad infinitum. But every endless series must logically have a limit.
>  
> Leaving that line of thought unfinished for the present owing to the feeling of insecurity it provokes, let us note, first, that it
> is of the nature of a symbol to create a tabula rasa and therefore an endless series of tabulae rasae, since such creation
> is merely representation, the tabulae rasae being entirely indeterminate except to be representative. Herein is a real effect;
> but a symbol could not be without that power of producing a real effect. The symbol represents itself to be represented;
> and that representedness is real owing to its utter vagueness. For all that is represented must be thoroughly borne out.
> 
> For reality is compulsive. But the compulsiveness is absolutely hic et nunc. It is for an instant and it is gone. Let it be no
> more and it is absolutely nothing. The reality only exists as an element of the regularity. And the regularity is the symbol.
> Reality, therefore, can only be regarded as the limit of the endless series of symbols.
> 
> A symbol is essentially a purpose, that is to say, is a representation that seeks to make itself definite, or seeks to produce
> an interpretant more definite than itself. For its whole signification consists in its determining an interpretant; so that it is
> from its interpretant that it derives the actuality of its signification.
> 
> A tabula rasa having been determined as representative of the symbol that determines it, that tabula rasa tends to
> become determinate. The vague always tends to become determinate, simply because its vagueness does not determine it
> to be vague (as the limit of an endless series). In so far as the interpretant is the symbol, as it is in some measure, the

> determination agrees with that of the symbol. But in so far as it fails to be its better self, it is liable to depart from the
> meaning of the symbol. Its purpose, however, is to represent the symbol in its representation of its object; and therefore,
> the determination is followed by a further development, in which it becomes corrected. It is of the nature of a sign to be an
> individual replica and to be in that replica a living general. By virtue of this, the interpretant is animated by the original
> replica, or by the sign it contains, with the power of representing the true character of the object. That the object has at all
> a character can only consist in a representation that it has so,‹a representation having power to live down all opposition. In
> these two steps, of determination and of correction, the interpretant aims at the object more than at the original replica and
> may be truer and fuller than the latter. The very entelechy of being lies in being representable. A sign cannot even be false
> without being a sign and so far as it is a sign it must be true. A symbol is an embryonic reality endowed with power of
> growth into the very truth, the very entelechy of reality. This appears mystical and mysterious simply because we insist on
> remaining blind to what is plain, that there can be no reality which has not the life of a symbol.
> 
> How could such an idea as that of red arise? It can only have been by gradual determination from pure indeterminacy. A
> vagueness not determined to be vague, by its nature begins at once to determine itself. Apparently we can come no nearer
> than that to understanding the universe.
> 
> That is not necessarily logical which strikes me today as logical; still less, as mathematics amply exemplifies, is nothing
> logical except what appears to me so. That is logical which it is necessary to admit in order to render the universe
> intelligible. And the first of all logical principles is that the indeterminate should determine itself as best it may.
> 
> A chaos of reactions utterly without any approach to law is absolutely nothing; and therefore pure nothing was such a
> chaos. Then pure indeterminacy having developed determinate possibilities, creation consisted in mediating between the
> lawless reactions and the general possibilities by the influx of a symbol. This symbol was the purpose of creation. Its
> object was the entelechy of being which is the ultimate representation."
> 
> - - - - - - - - - - End of quote- - - - - - - - - -
> 
> As mentioned above, this is a difficult passage. I'll venture a brief commentary nonetheless.
> 
> The "indeterminate of the absolute beginning", claims Peirce, is a symbol, because only a symbol is indeterminate (unlike
> symbols, whatever makes icons and indices signs of some object -- resemblance and existential relation -- remains such
> even if they are not interpreted. Thus what makes the symbol a sign has no statute whatsoever outside interpretation: a
> symbol has no relation to its object outside an interpretative law or habit which is what makes it a sign in the first place).
> Following Peirce's argument here it would seem that this symbol is interpreted by another (less vague) symbol and so on
> and so forth until the purpose that is the originary symbol finds ever more individual (or replicated/existential/real -- i.e.
> "real" in this instance is understood in existential term) manifestations of it. Now, it follows from this that the interpretant of
> this symbol, though itself a symbol, must be indexically connected to the symbol it interprets (i.e. it is an index of the
> relation between the symbol and its object, and therefore an index of the object in some respect). Morover, because the
> interpretant is also a symbol of the object of the first symbol -- object which is itself of the nature of a symbol in that it is
> general -- it also follows that both the symbol and its interpretant must be iconic (at least in some respect): all three of
> them must share the quality of being symbols.

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