[Inquiry] Re: Sign Relations -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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SR.  Discussion Note 20

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CP = Charles Pyle

CP: How bout this then:

CSP: | every correlate of an existential relation is a single object
     | which may be indefinite, or may be distributed;  that is, may
     | be chosen from a class by the interpreter of the assertion of
     | which the relation or relationship is the predicate, or may be
     | designated by a proper name, but in itself, though in some guise
     | or under some mask, it can always be perceived, yet never can it
     | be unmistakably identified by any sign whatever, without collateral
     | observation.  Far less can it be defined.  It is existent, in that
     | its being does not consist in any qualities, but in its effects --
     | in its actually acting and being acted on, so long as this action
     | and suffering endures.  Those who experience its effects perceive
     | and know it in that action;  and just that constitutes its very
     | being.  It is not in perceiving its qualities that they know it,
     | but in hefting its insistency then and there, which Duns called
     | its haecceitas -- or, if he didn't, it was this that he was
     | groping after ...
     |
     | C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 6.318

CP, emphasizing CSP:

CSP: | Those who experience its effects perceive and know it ...
     | It is not in perceiving its qualities that they know it ..."

CP: I [read] Peirce as asserting that there is a knowing that
    comes from direct experience, not indirect experience as
    mediated by signs.  This is not to deny that there is
    also a kind of knowledge that is mediated by signs.

Charles,

This is the sense of the word "knowledge" that I previously
acknowledged as falling under the heading of "acquaintance".
It is the sense in which we can say we know a thing without
really knowing anything about it.  I have to regard that as
very peculiar sense, most likely generated by a process of
"idealizing to the limit", and like most limiting concepts,
for instance, "haecceitas" or "individual", nobody really
uses them in any literal fashion, but only approximately.
Abstract idealizations, like Peirce's categories, in this
case secondness, are useful to the extent that we can use
them to describe actual experiences, becoming a nuisance
when reified and geneticized into metaphysical substance.
Peirce himself usually avoided this extreme, but was not
always so careful as to avoid endangering his readers,
no doubt underestimating their precipitous natures.

Jon Awbrey

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