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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 34

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AB = Auke van Breemen
JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: QUIPS-DIS 33.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002720.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

AB: If indeed the "pure symbols" you introduce have to be taken as continuants
    or "continuous predicates" then it turns out that as a matter of fact Joe
    and you may have been concentrating on different aspects of what Peirce
    did not clearly distinquish before (the Welby correspondence) in his
    sign-classificational system.  Since the second triad gives the mode
    of presentation while the fourth gives the relation between sign and
    dynamical object.

AB: I wonder if this resolves the issue concerning pure symbols into:

    1.  a symbolical relation between sign and object
        involves iconical relations in semeiosis.

    2.  if we think to discuss symbols, we in fact discuss the nature of
        the immediate object (descriptives, designatives, and copulants).

AB: But then the whole issue comes down to Joe discussing 1 and
    Jon discussing 2, the use of 'symbol' hiding the difference.

AB: Regarding the continuity of Peirces semeiotics
    it would come down to indicating that:

AB: It is a continuous development, at least characterized by making explicit
    what was thought of before in a more indistinct manner, not indistinct
    concerning the dealing with the subject itself but concerning the
    sign classificational consequences, the tagging of the aspects
    on a symbolical icon (Oops, there we go again.  A descriptive (?)
    that is symbolical, iconical related to its dynamical object)
    representing the sign aspects and relations.

Auke,

Let me check out some aspects of your reading before proceeding.

The Lady Welby correspondence in Wiener's volume is some of my
first reading in Peirce, but all in all I find no innovations
but the purely expository there, and the passages that we are
discussing in CP 8 are noted by the Editors as being revised
in way that is "unintelligible", which led them to leave the
text as it was originally given.  All of this would put us
on extremely shaky ground if we try to say that this was
Peirce's last, best thoughts on the matter.  In cases
like this I have to be ruled by what interpretation
makes the most consistent overall account, when
taken in the context of a writer's known work.

The analysis of continuants repeats a form of recursive
or fermatian development that Peirce uses over and over
again from the very beginning of his inquiry into signs.
Indeed, the form of it is not limited to sign relations,
but can be used in the analysis of relations in general.
It is one of the ways of getting at what is irreducible
in a given type of complex structure.

So what's at stake here?

Well, I think Joe Ransdell expressed
it rather well in another connection:

JR: Habit is what holds everything together in Hume
    much as 3rdness does in Peirce's thinking.

The way I see it 3rdness and 3-adic relations hold everything together
without needing icons and indices as supports -- that would make about
as much sense as putting training wheels on a tricycle.

Therefore, given the fundamental nature of 3-adic sign relations,
iconic and indexical sign relations arise as reduced derivatives
of genuine sign relations, the bits and pieces of Humpty Dumpty
from which he cannot be put together again.  In other words,
thirdness is the first category that has any real reality
to it -- the others are but shadows of it.

Qualifiers like "mode of apprehension" (MOA), "mode of presentation" (MOP),
and "immediate", as it's used here, should warn us of the fact that we are
talking about residual aspects of allegation and imputation, that is, what
the interpreter thinks he/she is thinking about at the moment in question.
Thus, the phrases "immediate object" and "immediate interpretant" really
refer to ancillary descriptions, whether explicit or unexamined, that is,
just more signs.  The best way to handle these is through the analysis
of the sign domain S, once again invoking complex signs, rather than
adjoining more dimensions to the 3-adic relation L c O x S x I.

Now, I cannot say whether Joe is mainly interested in (1),
but I know that what I am mainly interested in is not (2).
Indeed, this smacks of the "syncat dodge" that we've seen
nominal thinkers resorting to time and time again, and it
is a fact that Peirce's most solid treatments of logical
symbols do not resort to it, but present the denotations
of logical symbols as real objects, no matter how formal.

Jon Awbrey

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