Peirce, Charles Sanders 1982-2000. The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. 6 volumes. (The Peirce Edition Project. Fisch, Max H.; Kloesel, Christian J. W.; Houser, Nathan, eds.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [In-text references are to W.]
Private Thoughts principally on the conduct of life [MS 55: 7 June 1860 to 17 March 1888]
Love is the foundation of everything desirable or good. (W 1: 4)
Very general. Do humans not desire also things that are repugnant? Ambition for power and wealth?
(W 1: 4)
I Reason
FaithGoodness Love of Order Unity Reality Permanence THOU Affection
LoveBeauty Love of Men Totality Limitation Causality IT Sensation
HopeTruth Love of World Plurality Negation Community
In my opinion this still (cf. Topa 2012; 2018) like a mess. Were it up to me, I'd rearrange it thusly:
| I | Sensation Hope | Beauty | Love of World | Unity | Reality | Permanence |
| THOU | Affection Love | Goodness | Love of Men | Plurality | Negation | Causality |
| IT | Reason Faith | Truth | Love of Order | Totality | Limitation | Community |
The reasons being that it is I who senses, it is Another whom one loves and has affection for, and faith in IT is third; Beauty a quality of sensation, Goodness a quality of conduct towards others, and Truth the quality of reasoning; one senses the world and order is the quality of the world; I am one, others are many, and together we are all. With the last two columns I have no qualms, don't understand Kant that well yet.
The difference between Wisdom and Knowledge is this: - Knowledge is that which we get empirically but Wisdom is wrought by the unfolding of the mind. (W 1: 4)
Knowledge born from "empirical conception", Wisdom from "pure conception".
The fact, that human errors are always those which addition or amendment will rectify, has given rise to the common saying that "genius never errs" and to the philosophers' boast "that science has never been in the wrong." The fact is, essential error can only arise from perversion, from wickedness, or from passion. Sincere and philosophic production have no other falsity than that which is inseparable from every human proposition. (W 1: 5)
Be unwilling to admit accusations against the man who is studious of wisdom. (Sextus 1818: 195)
The terms of every proposition are presupposed to be comprehended; therefore no proposition can give us a new conception, and Wisdom is not learnt from books. (W 1: 5)
Only if you're operating with the Kantian conception of "conception", and your understanding of Wisdom presupposes pure conceptions.
It is impossible for a man to act contrary to his character. It is foolish for him to try to do it; he would be no better man for doing it since the character makes the man. The Very Law of the Growth of Character is contained in the Character. (W 1: 6)
One should try to improve his or her character. Man makes his own character.
It is on account of man's finite nature that he has a free will. His will is free only when he is in doubt - only therefore in certain critical moments. Hence the practical part of Ethics is the study of these critical moments. (W 1: 6)
Were man infinite, indeed, he would have no need to choose. The point here being that free will requires conditions (say, of doubt) to operate. If there is nothing to choose from, there is no choice.
I pray thee, O Father, to help me to regard my innate ideas as objectively valid. I would like to live as purely in accordance with thy laws as inert matter does with nature's May I, at last, have no thoughts but thine, no wishes but thine, no will but thine. (W 1: 7)
A broken triad. If wishes accord to "desire", "will" is superflous - wishes and will coincide.
Man is nature's first essay towards the production of an intellectual animal. He is not that, but is a prophecy of it, perhaps. (W 1: 9)
Nature does not have a plan. Man is not the only animal who thinks. We've developed our intellectual abilities through reading and writing, learning and teaching.
The best maxim in writing, perhaps is really to love your reader for his own sake. (W 1: 9)
Nicomachean Ethics, this.
The Sense of Beauty never furthered the Performance of a single Act of Duty [MS 12: 26 March 1857]
Schiller, in his Esthetic Letters, observes that the sense of beauty never furthered the performance of a single act of duty. (Ruskin). Is it possible that the great philosophical poet of the age has contented himself with an "observation" on such a subject - an observation, too, so contrary to daily experience? Ruskin is one of those who, without pretending to understand what they term the "German Philosophy," yet presume to censure it. If he had read the letter which follows the one to which he refers he would have found the words: "Beauty is in the highest degree fruitful with respect to knowledge and morality." (W 1: 10)
Schiller incorrigibly triadic:
The first thing to be done is to define beauty. This is Chiller's definition:All things which can ever be objects of perception may be considered under four different relations. A fact can relate directly to our sensuous condition (our existence and well-being), that is its physical quality. Or it can relate to the understanding and furnish us with knowledge; that is its logical quality. Or it can relate to our will, and be considered as an object of choice for a rational being; that is its moral quality. Or finally, it can relate to the entirety of our different powers, without being a definite object for any single one of them; that is its æsthetic quality.(W 1: 10)
Already quoted here (Schiller 1845: 96; ff). Proof that despite reading it in German during breaks at school, Peirce had John Weiss's translation at hand already in 1857. Already pointed out the obvious influence on Mukařovský, but now it appears that the aesthetic function is, in Charles Fourier's terms, the pivot of other functions - a "meta-function". Since I'm making an effort to collect the triads into an all-encompassing table, perhaps for a thesis of some kind, let it stand:
Man consists of Person and Condition - analysis can go no further. (W 1: 11)
Or, in other words, Character and Circumstances.
At first sight these impulses, because contrary seem contradictory, but this is not the case. It is true no third fundamental impulse reconciling the two is possible, but since they do not conflict in the same objects they can easily coexist, nad in perfect harmony, whence arises a third impulse, the result of the perfect balance of the other two, which since it is the condition of a complete humanity and relates to the entirety of our different powers, thus coincides with our original definition, may be regarded as the impulse which creates beauty. (W 1: 11)
As always, "the third is a medium between the other two" (Iamblichus 1818: 70).
Schiller calls it the play-impulse, because play, that which is neither internally nor externally constrained and, while we are in the esthetic state, the balance of the two fundamental impulses, produces perfect freedom. (W 1: 11)
I don't recall this aspect in Schiller, but then again I read it before I knew of pythagorean harmony (complementarity of opposites).
Raphael and Michael Angelo compared as men [MS 21: 22 October 1857]
Thus, in their best days, Michael Angelo was old, Raphael young, and we can discern, by comparing them together that they have corresponding faults. (W 1: 14)
Michael Angelo = Goethe; Raphael = Schiller ?
But observe how Michael Angelo in his old age is still young; he retains his vivacity, he retains his power, and when he can no longer hope to improve and sees himself outdone by a stripling, envy, which would seem almost inevitable, finds no place in his bosom. (W 1: 14)
Define:stripling - old-fashioned + humorous: a boy or young man.
May I venture, now, to question the usual statement of the difference between the male and female nature?
The common notion, I believe, is thatThe Understanding:Man = The Heart:Woman(W 1: 14)
Understanding should be second, hence woman comes first (evolutionarily correct).
The heart is that which loves; which flies toward a fellow being, as such. The sensibilities do not do this, neither do they conceive; hence they are a distinct element of the soul. In my opinioncompose the inward nature. Why I think these include everything, I will not detail here, thus much I have been obliged to say as a key to what follows. (W 1: 15)
- The Intellect &C. or that which says I,
- The Herat &c. or that which says THOU,
- The Sense &c. or that which says IT,
There is indeed a certain logic to what "says" what, but it is odd because Peirce, at this time, commences from Pure Reason towards the Senses.
Raphael was inferior to Michael Angelo in power on account of their difference in kind. Self was a centre for the latter; his intellectual faculties were self-directed, self-poised, self-ordered. In the former there is a conglomeration of the finest qualities - sympathies and sensibilities without a centre. (W 1: 16)
Now I'm in doubt - are these a triad? Poise and order would be second and third, but how is direction first?
A Scientific Book of Synonyms [MS 20: November-December 1857]
The differences no longer suggest themselves to him, but he has to suggest them to himself. Now as it is commonly said that no two words have exactly the same meaning, so it is also true that none have exactly the same force in any respect. (W 1: 17)
The takeaway here being that words have both meaning and force.
Whatever is actual is real, viz. that which is a possible object of sensation. But, as we shall presently see, actuality refers to the relation of the object to our understanding, reality to the existence of the object itself. An examination of their opposites will best explain this. Reality is opposed to shadowiness and non-existence. By shadowiness I mean a sort of half-way between existence and non-existence, in the object itself. Actuality stands between Possibility and necessity, and therefore refers you see to the modality of the conception. The same difference exists between asserting and affirming between being and existing (not strictly observed) subsisting again meaning dependent existence, predicating corresponds to it. (W 1: 18)
"Shadowiness" not bad. What stands out that Peirce really took Kant's distinction between empirical and pure conceptions to heart. Here, "real" refers to empirical, "actual" to pure conceptions.
Think Again! [P 1: Harvard Magazine 4 (April 1858): 100-105]
Johnson never could wade through Homer, although he was well read on most other branches of Greek literature. (W 1: 20)
Just now downloaded some pleasant-looking copies of Iliad and Odyssey. Wading through them is another story.
Compare such critics with Goethe, Schlegel, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Wilson, Douce, Knight, Collier, White, and Wolf, Lachmann, Mure, Tyler, and Gladstone. All of these sit rather as disciples than judges of the authors they criticise; all recognize their unvarying truth. It is not, then, to the age of the world, but to the age of the critics, that we must ascribe a distaste for Homer and Shakespeare in College. (W 1: 21)
A matter of attitude. Do not "preside" over authors you're criticizing, follow them.
Analysis of Genius [MS 42: 19 March 1859]
It is important to observe that we have been desired to discuss not the meaning of the word "genius" but the question what genius itself consists in; it is not the question whether Dr. Johnson applied the word "genius" to the right thing, but whether the thing to which he applied it consists in "large general powers accidentally determined in a particular direction." (W 1: 25)
This definition of genius curiously in line with Lotman's cultural explosion. Both inidividual genius and cultural explosions have an "accidental determination" about them.
I am now going to begin with a remark that sounds like a definition. A FACULTY is an original power of doing a SPECIAL thing. I will not venture to state positively that this is the meaning established by usage. (W 1: 26)
Peirce's own definition of faculty. Might come in handy later on, especially with regard to "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man".
I only wish to use it so, myself. I will therefore write the word in blue ink throughout the remainder of the forensic, to avoid introducing a general abuse of the term. Otherwise my class-mates might hear my definition and adopt it, the College might adopt it from them, the alumni might adopt it from them, America might adopt it from them; and if it went on any further all would be well. But suppose that those who use the word with more propriety should here make a vigorous stands against the encroachments of the new definition. The contest would wax high. A score of mediators would come forward with new definitions and the end would be that the word would be so loaded with contradictory definitions as to be utterly useless and would be discarded by the wise and degenerate into a slang or meaningless word. (W 1: 26)
Something like the growth of signs. The last bit is reminiscent of his abuse of "loose thinkers".
I will elucidate my definition a little. I did not say that Faculty is an original power of doing a particular thing. I might as well have said so but in order to be more emphatic I said A faculty is an original power of doing an especial thing. Dr. Johnson says the man of genis has only general powers. I say he has special powers. (W 1: 26)
Genius is not general but special, is another way of putting it (presumably, the opposite of "particular" would be "universal").
Mental faculties I should have said; for bodily, it is very evidently we [|] have faculties. I have a faculty of bending my arm in one direction and have none of bending it in any other. Indeed it is obviously inevitable that whatever has organs has faculties; and so it is with those actions which are on the boundaries between the mental and the corporeal but which still depend upon or are connected with a complexity of organism, as seeing, remembering and recollecting. (W 1: 26-27)
Mental and corporeal faculties. Seeing, remembering and recollecting are presumably faculties. On this note I have to quote a piece from "Private thoughts" I left unquoted above. This is a note "On the Classification of the Human Faculties":
Who will give us the true on at last? Here is one which I offec as presenting some merits: ManI have elsewhere advanced the classification of the I-impulse, the it-impulse and the Thou-impulse, but that is not a classification according to faculties. That the present classification includes everything needs no proof, everything is there which has been inserted into any other system. (W 1: 8)
- awakens and rouses himself
- he sees
- he thinks
- he desires
- he does
- he enjoys and suffers
- he respects and loves
Personally I find this unsatisfactory, as on the one hand it could be condensed into three, and on the other hand Chase's table of faculties reaches 120 items.
But independently of the argument from universality and necessity, I still cannot see how relative knowledge differs from knowledge in general. Knowledge of a thing is having it in my consciousness - not the thing itself surely - what then but something to which the thing is related? This related thing - this idea - is born of my consciousness and of the object - and was produced partly by the object partly by me; now in so far as it took its origin in my mental constitution it is an innate idea. (W 1: 28)
Still arguing about innate ideas. This is not in perfect accord with Kant, as ideas are supposed to transcend the possibility of experience, and the part produced by me should be pure conception, i.e. notion.
You may put the deficiency where you please. If it is a deficiency of faith - we have a faculty of faith; if of seeing himself - we have a faculty of inner sense. If of logic, it still indicates a faculty. (W 1: 30)
Now I have to start gathering faculties Peirce claims for man. Here: the faculty of faith, the faculty of inner sense, and the faculty of logic.
The Axioms of Intuition After Kant [MS 50: May 1859]
All Intuitions are Extensive Quantities. An extensive quantity is that wherein the representation of parts renders possible (and therefore necessarily antecedes in the synthesis) the representation of the whole. (W 1: 31)
Is the mind extended? Quantities certainly appear to be. I'll have to take Peirce at his word until my third or fourth reading of Pure Reason.
Space has three dimensions. Proof. Space is the form of the external sense. Our knowledge of external things can only be of qualities; and since all knowledge is discrimination I can only know them by their difference of quality. And this difference of quality must exist at each moment of time. It cannot be a mere difference in quantity, because different quantities differing also in quality must be observable at the same time. And diffference in quality necessitates the possibility of entire difference of quality; and this therefore must be expressed in the conditional form of intuition. (W 1: 31)
I can only hope that reading Peirce will illuminate Kant. Here, clearly, he is paraphrasing the following: "By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space" (Kant 1855: 23). Beyond that, I have little conception of what is going on here, or why.
Let now a and b be lines, as they can be since lines are intuitions; and let β be the quality of running in the direction of b. (W 1: 32)
Intuitions are lines?
An essay on the Limits of Religious thought written to prove that we can reason upon the nature of God [MS 53: August 1859]
What can we discuss? Can we discuss nothing we do not comprehend? Can we not even discuss that which has no existence in nature or the imagination? We can discuss whatever we can syllogise upon. We can syllogize upon whatever we can define. And strange as it is we can give intelligible comprehensible definitions of many things which can never be themselves comprehended. (W 1: 37)
Has this anything to do with William Hamilton and the infinite?
Suppose someone should tell me he could imagine two persons interchanging identities. I should proceed to reason on the pretended imagination and show that it was inconceivable. (W 1: 37)
Science fiction. Sadly, Remsu's Kurbmäng Paabelis didn't go there, fully. Altering identities, yes, twin doubles, yes, but interchanging identities, no.
Can the infinite be defined? Is it not a simple conception? The term simple conception has not its metaphysical sense in Logic. In Metaphysics it signifies one that is formed by the energy of a single faculty. And in this sense most simple ideas may be defined. For they may have complex and crossing relations by which we can draw their coordinates. And in this way I propose to define the infinite. (W 1: 38)
Predictable. "Complex and crossing relations" a phraseological find that can be connected with the figure of "cobwebs".
Every dependency has one of three necessary modes. The first is community. This is where there is no dependency and therefore no event at all, as two balls at the same time instant of time. The second necessary mode is causality, which is the mode of dependence everything at each moment has upon things at the last moment. The third necessary mode is influx which is the mode of the dependence substance to form, character to acts, things to qualities. I call these the necessary modes of dependence. It is merely a more true and philosophical expression for the modes of necessary dependence. (W 1: 38)
Supposedly these are the categories of relation (cf. Kant 1855: 64), i.e. relation of "Inherence and Subsistence", "Causality and Dependence", and "Community". Not sure how there is no dependency in community.
Not the necessary modes of dependence only but all modality whatever has one of three perfect degrees. The first is Possibility; this is where we merely think a thing and it really exists in no mode whatever. The second perfect degree is Actuality; this is where the thing is or occurs. The third perfect degree is Necessity, where it could not have been otherwise. I call these perfect degrees because, not meaning by possibility, numerical probability nor by necessity syllogistic sequence, - nothing subjective but something objective - I consider them as standing for those degrees of modality. (W 1: 38)
And these, of course, are the categories of modality, i.e. Possibility, Existence, and Necessity.
Not only the perfect degrees of modality, but all degree whatever has one of three successive stages. The first is nullity, the second Positivity, and the third Perfection. I call these successive and not retrogressive or contemporaneous because they are stages towards perfection. (W 1: 38)
These look somewhat like the categories of quality, or the converse of them (e.g. Positivity - Negation). They might be Peirce's own. The really catching thing is that they are "stages towards perfection", i.e. the first inkling of the protocol of degeneracy. The categories of quality come last (on the next page), and Peirce calls them "three Influxual Dependencies of Quality".
What is infinity? How is that defined? What is infinity? It is not the conception of a thing, neither is it the conception of the quality of a thing. If we can think of a good man, it is because in the first place we have a notion of man and in the second place we have the conception of good and in the third place we can combine one conception with the other. when this is done, I express the synthesis by saying that an influxual dependency of good upon man is conceived of. Influxual dependency has three degrees. 1st It may be negative as when we say the man is not good. 2nd It may be real as when we say the man is more or less good or pretty good or very good, in short when he has goodness in degree. And 3rd it is infinite when we say he is perfectly good. Then he has goodness beyond degree. Infinity then is only to be predicated of qualities and only of qualities conceived to be possessed. We can therefore analyse the conception of infinity; we can state its relations to other conceptions although the conception itself we never have. (W 1: 41)
It looks like Peirce has transformed or modified Kant's categories of quality. Thus, while the original reads (1) Reality, (2) Negation, and (3) Limitation, Peirce's are (1) Negation, (2) Reality, and (3) Infinity (or Perfection?). The statement about the third place being a combination echoes this sentence, which I've already quoted numerous times in this blog: "the third category in each triad always arises from the combination of the second with the first" (Kant 1855: 67).
When a thing influences the soul its effect comes into the field of consciousness or not. In the former case we call the modification of consciousness a true thought; in the latter case we may call its influence an unconscious idea. Now FAITH says, the infinite does influence the soul - as infinite. It follows that we have an unconscious idea of it. There then is where the infinite belongs. (W 1: 42)
Familiar psychological tropes. Especially interesting is modification, which Clay gives as "self and its modifications".
When we think of a mind thinking of a thing, our thought has 5 elements. Common analysis enumerates them thus. 1st the noumenon or the thing regarded simply, 2nd the object or the thing regarded as thought of, 3rd the act of thinking, 4th the phenomenon or thought, and 5th the thinker or Ego. (W 1: 42)
A passing definition of object.
The second case is where the elementary conceptions do not refuse to be combined, but where our power of synthesizing is inadequate and the combination never can be completed. Such are the four grand ideasUnityPseudo-conceptions of this kind may or may not be true; in this respect they stand just where limited conceptions stand. On the other hand their truth is not susceptible of positive truth; we never can be certain that what we think is infinite is anything more than very. (W 1: 43)
Reality or Infinity
Substance
Necessity.
Interestingly, he picks the first category in the first three (in Kant's table of the categories), but Necessity is the third category of modality.
I, IT, and THOU: A Book giving Instruction in some of the Elements of Thought [MS 65: Spring 1861]
If conceptions which are incapable of definition are simple, I, It, and Thou are so. Who could define either of these words, easy as they are to understand? Who does not perceive, in fact, that neither of them can be expressed in terms of the others? I here, for the first time, begin a development of these conceptions hoping that this will be accompanied with a development of the souls of those who read. (W 1: 45)
I, It, and Thou are simple conceptions that defy definition. Very keen to see how these two pages will develop my soul.
Though they cannot be expressed in terms of each other, yet they have a relation to each other, for THOU is an IT in which there is another I. I looks in, It looks out, Thou looks through, out and in again. I outwells, It inflows, Thou commingles. I is self-supported, IT leans on a staff, THOU leans on what it supports. (W 1: 45)
The definition of Thou curious. Though an object in which there is another subject. How it "looks through, out and in again" seems cryptic, but what he probably means is that, being another I, Thou also looks through me, out towards It and inwards, too. "Outwells" can be understood in the sense of "expression", "inflow" similarly as "impression" (e.g. emotive and conative), but how Thou "commingles", I cannot say.
The Three Persons have nothing in common. True(W 1: 45)
- The I may be IT - as when we think of ourselves objectively
- The IT may become THOU - in apostrophe
- The THOU may become IT - in cruelty or rather hardness
- The IT may even become I - in Pantheism
- The THOU become I - in Love
- Or the I become THOU
"It" is a person? The third person. The first is familiar enough from Kant - being an object for oneself; the second is illustrated by Jakobson as when we address God or the whole world as "You"; the third indicates that in cruelty, one is treating a living being as inanimate; in Pantheism, one identifies with the world; and in Love two persons become one.
The IT of the I contains nothing which either the I of the I contains, nor which the THOU of the I contains. Nor have these anything in common with each other. (W 1: 46)
Cryptic. So, if I'm reading this correctly, the objective part of oneself (the IT of the I), self-consciousness pure and simple (the I of the I), and the part of one's lover in you (the THOU of the I) do not overlap. There are two more such paragraps for each (the IT of the IT, the THOU of the THOU), concluding that these "are therefore in Three different worlds. Okay. Not sure if this developed my soul.
The Modus of the IT [MS 66: Spring 1861]
There are three Celestial Worlds. 1 that whose heaven is a speck, or the manifold of sense, 2 that whose heaven is of extensive manifestation or the world of consciousness, 3 that whose heaven is of immense manifestation or the world of abstraction. (W 1: 47)
Intuition, conception, and ideas. The giveaway is "the manifold of sense", as Kant's Experience (which includes sense) is "the manifold of perception in a consciousness" (cf. Kant 1855: 132-133).
Consciousness is the only one of the worlds which is real and tangible to us. How shall sense become consciousness? This is not meant as a skeptical question; I ask it of faith. (W 1: 47)
The manifold of sense is Possibility; the world of abstraction is Necessity; but the world of consciousness is Reality. His faith-based approach to this philosophy is somewhat off-putting.
The relations of the triad being apprehended, it will be clear that which is in the sensible world can only enter the mental world by having in it a revelation which is in the abstract world. Now there are three abstract revelations, 1 that whose abstraction is in a world of time or arbitrariness, 2 that whose abstraction is in a world of space or dependence, and 3 that whose abstraction is in a celestial world or absoluteness. Of these only dependence is revelation to us. Why was the abstraction spatial not temporal, the revelation dependence not arbitrariness? Because to the arbitrariness was joined absolute existence. [An absolute existence is one which is determined indeed but determined by its very self; it is so utterly determined as to become, as it were, arbitrary again.] (W 1: 47)
Arbitrariness, dependence, and absoluteness an interesting triad, which completely upsets any attempt to consolidate his system with de Saussure's. This specific arbitrariness may have to do with the ground of the subject. Altogether this is another take on the third being the consolidation of the first and second; with the caveat that here it is the second term which mediates between the first and third (it sometimes happens, especially with Peirce). I particularly like the "determined by its very self", which kinda indicates the interpretation that "ideas" (third) are beheld in the mind of god, so "arbitrary again" because in a world of time on a supernal level.
Now there are three kinds of absolute existence: for if the absoluteness is only a revelation in the world of sense, the existence is mere possibility - feasibility; if the absoluteness is of mental revelation then the existence is actuality; and if the absoluteness is abstract absoluteness the existence is necessity. Of these only actuality is existence to us. (W 1: 47)
I have to say, it's pretty neat to see Peirce's thought developing here, transforming Kantian metaphysics into semiotics.
Now there are three kinds of necessary mode, 1 that whose necessity is a logical necessity i.e. of abritrary existence so that this mode is company, community. 2 that whose necessity is a physical one i.e. of dependent existence - the mode, causality. 3 that whose necessity is absolute, and self-dependent or the mode of existence of a quality, influx. Of these only causality is a mode for us, and why should the necessity have been physical instead of merely logical, why should there have been not mere company but causation? Because the phenomena which were in community had also an influxual derivation or sequence so that fortuitousness disappeared. (W 1: 48)
Going by the preceding, this all makes sense. Yet it is quite evident that Peirce has turned some of Kant's categories on their head. For example, "company, community" makes no damn sense - why should the manifold of sense be logical? Isn't logical the third? (as in Schiller) - the second term, though, is right on spot - causality/dependence makes sense (though it being "physical", again, offset from Schiller, for whom physical was first - interestingly, these are two different senses of the physical, Schiller refering to corporeality, Peirce to causality; perhaps something to analyse further some fine day). While absoluteness and self-dependence makes sense, his whole ordeal with "influx" leaves me baffled, so that the last sentence in this paragraph reads like complete gobbledygook (how does fortuitousness disappear? what is fortuitousness in this context anyway?). I have an inkling that the key is provided some pages earlier, with "It inflows" (W 1: 45), but at the moment I am unable to explain it, other than perhaps he means by this the mind's embrace of an object in general?
But there are three kinds of influxual derivation. 1 that whose influx is of possible mode or negation, 2 that whose influx is of actual mode or reality, and 3 that whose influx is of necessary mode (the possibility and actuality being coextensive) or infinity. (W 1: 48)
Clumsy. These are Kant's categories of quality, that much is clear. But what should we make of "influxual derivation"? I truly hope that after 1864, after he had read Chase, he finds a way to make his ideas clearer.
Of these only reality is anything to us. Why was the influx actual and the derivation more than negation? Because into the negation was worked an infinite quality which since in it all that was possible was actual turned the negation to a reality. (W 1: 48)
This is the part that makes me uncomfortable in Kant's categories. It feels like there's a definite system at play but that it is extremely obscure and nearly incomprehensible. The best guess I currently have is that it may have something to do with the cosmology of Archytas: "Archytas tells of a scenario in which he is at the effective edge of the fixed stars. He says that if he outreaches his arm, or his stick (staff), that his hand will push the limit of what the edge is. He is then free to move into the newly created space and outstretch his staff once more, thus increasing the limit of space. With his argument, he attested that space, the region of the fixed stars, is infinite."
Now there are three kinds of infinite quality but all relate to quantity since it is that which everything must have in order to be 1 unity which is an infinite quality indeed since the influx of its derivation is necessary and yet its infinity is derived from the community since it would be a total which is another thing were it not for a denied plural. 2 plurality which is an infinite quality (even a unity being a plural by continued existence) and yet one whose infinity is derived from the steps of the counting process hence from causality. 3 totality which is an infinite quality (every thing being a total in itself) and whose infinity is of that sort of derivation the necessity of whose mode is of self-dependent existence. (W 1: 48)
Fuck me with a rolled up paperback copy of Critique of Pure Reason. I have no clue what's going on here. Quoting the whole paragraph because it's an perfect specimen of what going way deep into Kantianism can get you - something completely incomprehensible. Peirce Kandib täiega.
Of these only plurality belongs to the mental world. But the Unity took Total shape to become plurality. Now shape is that subsidiary form which a thing takes up for the sake of being itself form and which though not its true form exactly coincides with that. (W 1: 48)
Finally something on this damned page I half-way understand. Only plurality belongs to the mental world, that is, becomes a conception of consciousness, because the first, Unity, is so fleeting, that it does not reach consciousness with any awareness - the process of perception "integrates", so to say, sense perceptions so that you are not conscious of the photons hitting your retina, for example, but only of the already formed image in your mind, of what's out there. Another way of putting this is that you experience the plurality of objects in the world but not the individual parts of that whole picture... Hmmm. Perhaps it is clearest in computer idiom: once you have downloaded and opened an image file in an image viewer, you are no longer dealing with the data of individual pixels - the whole image is displayed on the screen. I now realize that this illustration includes extra steps. Let's put it this way: reality/consciousness/plurality is WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) but possibility/sense/unity is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).
There are three total shapes. The first is that whose totality is a negative quality. It is mere point, elementariness. The second is that [|] whose totality is a real quality. It is extension. The third is that whose totality is an infinite quality. It is immensity. (W 1: 48-49)
Very keen to see if he changes his mind when or if he gets to the Pythagoreans, who reportedly held the elements to be four - point, line, area, and solid - "referring the point indeed, as being impartible, to the monad; but a line, as the first interval, to the duad; and again, a superficies, as having a more abundant interval, to the triad; and a solid to the tetrad" (Taylor 1818: 219-220).
Of these only extension is in the world of consciousness. But Elementariness has become extension by taking on Immense manifestation. (W 1: 49)
So the mind is extended, and only extended.
There are three immense manifestation. That whose immensity is a Unitary Shape or Time. That whose immensity is of plural shape or space. That whose immensity is of total shape or Heaven. (W 1: 49)
Ooh boy, that Faith, huh. That's a hellova drug.
Views of Chemistry: sketched for Young Ladies [MS 69: Summer-Fall 1861]
Chemistry is the Science of Kinds of Matter. I shall devote the first number to a sketch from this far-distant upland. (W 1: 50)
I guess we tend to forget that Peirce "was educated as a chemist".
Once, men were contented with facts and names and uses. Now, we always ask What is the meaning of this thing? Now the meaning of a thing is what it conveys. Thus, when a child burns his finger at the candle, he has not only excited a disagreeable sensation, but has also learned a lesson in prudence. Now the mere matter cannot have given him this motion, since matter has no notions to give. Who originated it, then? It must be that this thought was put into nature at the beginning of the world. It must have been meant because it was conveyed. Further, what is the necessary condition to matter's conveying a notion? It is that it shall present a sensible and distinct form. It must obviously possess a form, since formless matter is chaos, - is matter untouched by mind. It must be sensible in order to be anything to us, and it must be distinct or distinguished in order to be a form to us. (W 1: 50)
This is really odd. Practically the first time he's dealing with meaning, and it's hella weird. Prudence is cautiousness. The child learns caution from burning his finger. With this illustration, I'm familiar through Clay: "The infant's recognition of the flame before experience has taught him that it is the subject of a hurtful quality, is an example of non-redintegrative recognition." (It is still up to determination whether the industrialist Kelley's philosophical book that aimed to give psychology a set terminology was really either inspired or right out ghost-written by Peirce. Don't quote me on that, it's just one of those suspicions I have.) In any case, it's his god damn Faith operating here again - providence putting "meaning" into the world in these sort of quaint lessons (you fall down and learn not to fall down, etc.). Again, I have to now quote something I left before unquoted, because it seemed too passing, but appears in hindsight relevant, from his "Private Thoughts":
When a child burns his finger at the candle, he has not only excited a disagreeable sensation, but has learnt also a lesson in prudence. Now the mere matter cannot have given him a notion since it had none to give; therefore, it must have been God who at the creation of the world put this through into nature. Now this heat was a form, and all powers are forms. And matter we know nothing of. All forms are also powers, since to affect is to effect, and are therefore spiritual manifestations. If this is so every form must have a meaning. But since all phenomena are forms, all things must have meanings. The transparency of the drop of water must actually convey a meaning to our conscious affections as truly as the Whose Sea itself. (W 1: 7)
If anything, I take issue with the use of "notion" here. Notion is supposed to be pure conception, i.e. not empirical - not given by matter.
Thus it is the form of a thing that carries its meaning. But the same thing conveys different meanings to the different faculties. So there are different orders of meaning in nature. The poet with his esthetic eye reads the secret of the sea. Solomon with his moral eye reads the secret of the ant. The man of science with the eye of reason reads the secret of Nature as a system. He sees nature as a system because he studies the relations of things and he must study the relations of things in order [|] to distinguish their forms. The meaning that he sees may be termed the idea of the thing. Natural History, therefore, which is one great division of Natural Science studies the Ideas of things and therefore their forms or kinds. A branch of this, of course, is the study of the kinds of matter. (W 1: 50-51)
Early take on meaning. As in the paragraph above, "every form must have a meaning". That the same thing conveys different meanings to the different faculties is more or less understandable, at least if we have three faculties, so that every thing can be attended by how we feel about it, what we should do about it, or what we think of it.
Now, all the chemists in the world use the word salt in one perfectly determined sense and they all would recognize that definition as inadequate. If you ask why it is that the lexicographer could not define salt, I answer 'It is because the word indicates an idea which it requires the salt itself to convey'. (W 1: 51)
The meaning of a thing is contained in the thing itself?
But - "what is the meaning of this thing?" - is not the question every science puts to nature. "What makes the rainbow? What makes the top stand up?" are the kind of inquiries belonging to Mechanics, Otpics, Acoustics, and all the branches of Physics. They are questions of force. Force is that in every change which causes that the change unless stopped shall keep itself up and expend itself on its own continuity. Force must be wherever matter is known, since matter is known by the affections of our senses which must be effects of force. The science of kinds of matter must then treat questions of force - it is therefore a branch of Physics. (W 1: 53)
Perhaps relevant, as words have both meaning and force, as was put forth above (cf. W 1: 17).
Nature is a book which science interprets, and yet all its poetry which is a form and all its pathos which is a force are foreign to science.She walks in beauty like the queen of night.This line contains a poetical image. Is it in the ink? Yet no Englishman can look at this ink without the form and the thrill coming to him can he? Not if he can read. What is this reading? It is an interpretation according to a system agreed upon beforehand. That establishemnt, then, contains the elements of the form; - it was the establishment of a correspondence between material forms and the forms of the imagination. Natural language by which we read the poetry of nature is a natural correspondence between material forms and the forms of the imagination. This correspondence cannot lie. Therefore, forms of beauty are merely perceptions of another mind and not material at all. In scientific procedure, then, we must establish rules to prevent our taking forms of the imagination and forces of passion for material forms and forces. (W 1: 55)
Pathos is the force of poetry. The definition of reading so classical that it is practically de Saussure's: material forms = signifiers; forms of the imagination = signified.
A Treatise on Metaphysics [MS 70: 21 August 1861 - 30 March 1862]
The word metaphysics is derived from the title of a work of Aristotle which treats, according to its author, of that science "which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowledge," and which is preeminent over the others (Aristotle Metaphysics 1.2.7). (W 1: 58)
Some goods "are eligible for their own sakes, and not for the sake of another thing" (Archytas 1818: 155), and this is felicity, which stands as the third, in the same tab as knowledge.
"Definition," says Sir William Hamilton, "is the resolution of the comprehension of a notion into its parts." I say that Definition is the statement of equivalence in conception. (W 1: 58)
It is no wonder Jakobson found support in Peirce for his understanding of the metalingual function - in definition, too, the operative principle is that of equivalence.
By his system of nomenclature, Sir William Hamilton has conferred an immense boon not alone on his own school but on all English philosophers who believe in anchoring words to fixed meanings. I deeply regret that I am not one of these. That is the best way to be stationary, no doubt. But, nevertheless, I believe in mooring our words by certain applications and letting them change their meaning as our conceptions of the things to which we have applied them progress. (W 1: 58)
Another glimmer of "the growth of signs" to come.
a. No definition proper states more than the signification of its object. But Sir William Hamilton would have it state of what its object is composed. Perhaps, this is making it state too much. (W 1: 58)
"Signification" now set - it will be interesting to see if I can find "denotation", too, and discover the sources of Morris' semiotics.
b. A definition must either be of a thing, a word, or a notion; and to state what either of these is, is to give its equivalence in conception. But all mankind acknowledge that, in Aristotle's words, "a definition is a sentence signifying what a thing is"; hence my definition of Definition is correct. (W 1: 58)
Another iteration of equivalence. Definitions of words and things easy to find, but what would a definition of a notion look like?
[The best discussion of Definitions is in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. "Doctrine of Method," Ch. 1, Sect. 1.] (W 1: 58)
Naturally. That's the part I found so eerily resembling Iamblichus (1818: 85).
No subsequent thing can be preëminent over [i.e. ruler of] a previous thing. (W 1: 58)
Or, "that which has a precedency is more honorable than that which is consequent in time" (Iamblichus 1818: 17-18).
Equivalent notions are those which may suggest each other without any mediating conceptions. (W 1: 59)
An interesting tidbit. Something to test out, should I look deeper into Jakobsonian conception of equivalence.
To understand a proposition it is necessary to comprehend the terms of it. The conceptions of a proposition are contained in its terms. Hence, the primal philosophy is not to be learnt from propositions nor from books which are series of propositions, but from meditation. That meditation which gives us new conceptions is a cultivation resulting in a growth of thoughts, and the result of a growth of the mind as displayed in the thoughts is called Wisdom. (W 1: 60)
A reiteration of what he wrote in his private notes a year or two before (cf. W 1: 5). The growth of signs naturally connected with the "growth of thought" ("All thought, therefore, must necessarily be in signs", CP 5.252). The novel connection here is that the growth of thought (and signs) involves the growth of new conceptions (notice that "growth" and "cultivation" are equivalents that suggest themselves, as in the figure of planting and growing a plant).
The distinction upon which my system is based is between the potentially thought and the potentially thought-of. The common, and as I think, erroneous view of the relation of the Thing known to the Person knowing is as follows: - First, there is the Subject, the Ego. The thing known, is known by an affection of the consciousness, consequently only by its effect. Therefore, a distinction is drawn between (2) the Noumenon or thing as it exists which is entirely unknown (except, according to some philosophies, by reason), and (3) the Object or thing as thought. (4) There is the affection of the consciousness or Phenomenon and (5) there is the relation of Causality between the Object and the Phenomenon. (W 1: 50)
He has slightly altered this exposition from the previous iteration (cf. W 1: 42), or so it seems. Let's compare:
| the thinker or Ego | the Subject, the Ego |
| the phenomenon or thought | the affection of the consciousness or Phenomenon |
| the act of thinking | - |
| the object or the thing regarded as thought of | the Object or thing as thought |
| the noumenon or the thing regarded simply | the Noumenon of thing as it exists which is entirely unknown |
| - | the relation of Causality between the Object and the Phenomenon |
a. If the noumenon is thought of it is known. If it is not thought of, it has no relation to the consciousness. But it is represented as both totally unknown, yet the ground of knowledge. (W 1: 60)
That is indeed a paradox of sorts: that which we cannot know conditions all our knowledge? This must be the first appearance of "ground" in this book. The problem of the noumenon becoming known if it enters our consciousness eerily reminiscent of the borders of the semiosphere: that which is outside of it, cannot be known, as once it is known, it has already entered the semiosphere. Go figure. (I take these to be equivalent problems as I take Lotman's semiosphere to be a development of Pjatigorski & Mamardašvili's "sphere of consciousness". So don't quote me on that. Not that anyone would, just remarking that I have idiosyncratic views on the semiosphere.)
b. "Thing as thought" contains mental elements, but the mind does not really affect the things that it knows. Hence the word object like noumenon is a mere logical form, incapable of comprehension. (W 1: 61)
Another passing but profound statement on the concept of the object.
I represent the relationship as follows: - (1) There is the soul (2) There is the field of consciousness in which we know the soul (3) There is the thing thought of (4) There is the power it exerts on the soul (5) There is the Idea or impression it makes on the soul (6) There is the thought or the idea as it appears in the consciousness. (W 1: 61)
Oh snap. I had an inkling that I'd have to amend that table, but not so soon. First column from page 42, second from 60, third from 61:
| the thinker or Ego | the Subject, the Ego | the soul |
| the phenomenon or thought | the affection of the consciousness or Phenomenon | the power [the thing thought of] exerts on the soul |
| the act of thinking | - | - |
| the object or the thing regarded as thought of | the Object or thing as thought | the thing thought of |
| the noumenon or the thing regarded simply | the Noumenon of thing as it exists which is entirely unknown | the field of consciousness in which we know the soul |
| - | the relation of Causality between the Object and the Phenomenon | the Idea or impression it makes on the soul |
| - | - | the thought or the idea as it appears in the consciousness |
Again, the fundamental distinction of psychology is between the soul and the body. To show that this is a metaphysical distinction. The soul is that which moves itself; the body is that which moves but does not move itself. When I say, by the way, that the soul moves itself, I do not mean that it originates any force, but that a certain amount of force which is in it always moves in it and never out from it (so that every force passing through it is subjected to modification by a force within it and belonging to it). (W 1: 61)
For my purposes, this is invaluable.
How purely mental are these distinctions! In the former section in a subjective view metaphysics was considered as all philosophy of which psychology is a branch. In our objective view it appears as a branch of psychology and in our final view it will appear to be nothing else than Psychology itself. Yet I have based each of these sciences on a separate distinction. How to reconcile them. Perhaps it will turn out that Images à priori are only Images à posteriori viewed as Images, that those à posteriori are only those à priori excited as Representations, that to view an image as an image it must indispensably have come from within and that such as do so come we cannot regard as representations but as immediate consciousness. (W 1: 62)
- The distinction upon which All Philosophy is based, lies between Images à priori and Images à posteriori
- The distinction upon which Psychology is based, lies between Inner Images and Outer Images
- The distinction upon which Metaphysics is based, lies between Images as Images and Images as Representations.
In what sense is Peirce using "image" here? My best guess is that he must mean Kant's empirical conceptions, going by this: "A pure conception, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding alone, and is not the conception of a pure sensuous image, is called notio" (Kant 1855: 224-225). That is, pure conceptions are notions and empirical conceptions would be sensuous images. In Meiklejohn's translation, there are no better clues. Perhaps any of these instances might be relevant?
- "The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination [...]" (Kant 1855: 110)
- "For the external sense the pure image of all quantities (quantorum) is space; the pure image of all objects of sense in general, is time." (ibid, 110)
- Phænomenal substance is not an absolute [|] subject; it is merely a permanent sensuous image, and nothing moret han an intuition, in which the unconditioned is not to be found." (Kant 1855: 326-327)
- Very different is the nature of the ideals of the imagination. Of these it is impossible to present an intelligible conception; they are a kind of monogram, drawn according to no determinate rule, and forming a vague picture - the production of many diverse experiences - than a determinate image." (Kant 1855: 352)
- "We may assume that this life is nothing more [|] than a sensuous representation of pure spiritual life; that the whole world of sense is but an image, hovering before the faculty of cognition which we exercise in this sphere, and with no more objective reality than a dream [...]" (Kant 1855: 473-474)
Now there is such a knowledge; that of the PERFECT. Accordingly, all the higher life is strengthened by metaphysics. And we find metaphysicians are generally Holy Men. (W 1: 62)
Are metaphysicians generally Holy Men? Was Kant a Holy Man?
If there is any positive science of psychology - that is the science of the mind itself - it must be that the mind is more than a unit. It must have parts, and these will be faculties. Each of these faculties will have special function and these functions will be simple conceptions. We [|] can only know faculties, however, through their functions; accordingly the knowledge of simple conceptions will be the knowledge of the mind itself and the analysis of conceptions will be psychological. Moreover, if the mind has these faculties, every thought will be an action of the faculties by whatever means excited, and there must always be an occasion for such excitation. (W 1: 63-64)
Returning to faculties. Chase's tables are of "simple conceptions", e.g. Spontaneity → Energy → Concentrativeness → Patience → Perseverance → Inflexibility. It looks like there might be something in comparing the "faculty psychologies" of both Chase and Peirce.
Now experience unreasoned upon (which has no ancestry) cannot be universal. Neither can it be negative; for instance, the proposition This is not Green cannot be an experience, for it is a thought of Green and that thought Green experience, by the very statement, did not give. (W 1: 64)
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
The triplicity of the conception, and the impossibility of achieving the synthesis of it, creates naturally three true schools of metaphysics: - the dogmatical, the psychological, and the logical schools. The procedure of each of these, depending as it does on a partial conception, is liable to abuse, although that must be in reality contrary to the normal mode of the very view assumed. I shall designate these errors as follows -To the two former, I shall devote one chapter each of the introduction; but as I myself belong to the logical school, the abuse of it will be the constant topic of Book I, and need not be specially considered here. (W 1: 65)
- The abuse of dogmatism, I call dialectics
- The abuse of psychology, I call transcendentalism
- The abuse of logic, I call rationalism.
Looks general enough that I most likely will have to refer back to this. With the original triplicity in this manuscript (philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical) the middle term remains the same, but is philosophy in relation dogmatism and metaphysics with logic?
When the notion that metaphysics is philosophy antecedent to all other science is carried so far as to prudence a denial that it is the study of our own consciousness merely and also of the fact that it adds nothing to our knowledge but only analyzes it, this notion produces dialectics, that is to say, a system which seeks to investigate truth by elaborate reasoning from first principles. Dialectics is thus a genuine outgrowth of dogmatism only, but it may nevertheless be pursued by a psychologist or a logist. (W 1: 65)
If I'm reading this correctly, metaphysics becomes "dialectics" (in Peirce's specific sense here) when the metaphysician starts thinking that the first principles do not pertain to the human mind, but the universe. Does he, himself, succumb to this in the end?
The ground of dogmatical dialectics is that the light of necessary truths is a participation of the infinite reason. (W 1: 66)
"[...] that which is the sensible world can only enter the mental world by having in it a revelation which is in the abstract world" (W 1: 47), no?
According to dogmatic dialectics we partake of the divine nature in the inward light of reason. (W 1: 66)
...no?
All thoughts come to us from God. (W 1: 66)
"All knowledge must, therefore, ultimately rest on revelation" (Chase 1863: 464). This is, Peirce qualifies "in a general way, the view of Leibnitz" (ibid, 66).
The ground of psychological dialectics is that the consciousness contains not mere images of the object thought of but is an immediate seizing of the object itself. Proof. Psychological dialectics affirms that the sheer study of consciousness is not a mere study of impressions but also a science of things themselves. (W 1: 66)
Illuminating the concept of "image", which here turns out to be the equivalent of "impression". "Images of the object thought" indicates that what he means are simply "mental images". This does not aid us much in distinguishing à priori, à posteriori, inner, outer images, or images as images and images as representations, but it's something. Every little bit helps. The next page concludes psychological dialectics with "This system implies that the things themselves are taken into the consciousness" (ibid, 67), and not, say, images of things.
The subjects are those which are most difficult to think correctly about, because they are abstract and we cannot figure an abstraction to our imagination but have to clothe it so that we are actually thinking of specialties whose properties may not be in all respects the same as their generals. But men are very apt to neglect this toilsome work of examining abstractions; they forget to clothe them and thus talk of words instead of abstractions. The Hamiltonian school, according to me, are chargeable with this fault. (W 1: 69)
What does he mean by "figuring" here? What are those "specialties"? This was intended to be a 100-page book but left unpublished; for whom was it written - who could understand this terminology?
I have now shown that Dialectics must be lowered from a system to a tendency, and that it cannot even be a true tendency but only an intention. In this view also it is fundamentally wrong for there reasons.(W 1: 71)
- It seeks to substitute common-sense or what we know already for observation of what we have still to learn. Thus, it is lazy.
- It substitutes human speculation for fact. It is arrogant.
- It thinks by divining knowledge to add to it. It is trifling.
Always triplicities! This shows a progression: intention → tendency → system. The qualifications of what makes Dialectics (as Peirce understands it here) lazy, arrogant, and trifling could have done with better illustrations.
Kant's Work
An inference is involved in every cognition.
Proof. Relative cognition si the recognition of our relations to things.
All cognition of objects is relative, that is we know things only in their relation to us.
Every cognition must have an object (the subject of the proposition). The faculties whereby we become conscious of our relation to things are known as perceptions or sense.
∴ Every cognition contains a sensual element.
Now the information of mere sensation is a chaotic manifold, while every cognition must be brought into the unity of one thought.
∴ Every cognition involves an operation on the data.
An operation upon data resulting in cognition is an inference. ∴ &c.
This demonstration is extracted from Kant. It does not extend to the cognition "I think."
Nothing is certain except what rests on the combined testimony of the senses and I think. (W 1: 75)
An apt summary of Kant's work. The four moments I've emphasized: (1) cognition is phenomenal; (2) the object is, in Kant's system, analogous to a part of a logical proposition; (3) intuition itself is incoherent, it must be unified in conception; (4) certainty rests on both sense and understanding.
Hume's Work
Hume separates cognitions into Impressions (as when we see, hear, will, love, &c.) and Thoughs (reflections, remembrances, &c.).
All Thoughts are copies of Impressions. (W 1: 76)
The distinction itself is not all that different from Kant's sense and understanding, but thoughts are not "copies" of impressions, but rather impressions organized. Mõtted on korrastatud muljed.
In reflection the mind travels from the impression by three paths of "Association of Ideas," viz.: - Resemblance, Contiguity, Causality. It is necessary to inquire whether all pretended thoughts exist in the nature of things as manifested in impressions or mere experience. Resemblance and Contiguity are not examined. Causality has the idea of Necessary Connection. Necessity cannot be discovered in any external or internal impression. Hence causality or power is no thought at all. (W 1: 77)
Hume sounds awfully interesting.
It [Faith] is the vigour of that part of the mind which is in communication with the eternal verities. By this, mountains are moved. (W 1: 78)
Nice.
True is an adjective applicable solely to representations and things considered as representations. It implies the agreement of the representation with its object. (W 1: 79)
We've reached semiotic grounds! The two terms of his primary triad, representation (representamen, sign) and object are both present.
The simplest kind of agreement of truth is a resemblance between the representation and its object. I call this versimilitude, and The representation a copy. (W 1: 79)
Evidently applying, for the moment, Hume's "Association of Ideas", the first being Resemblance. Define:verisimilitude - "the appearance of being true or real". The representation of truth copies its object.
Resemblance consists in a likeness, which is a sameness of predicates. Carried to the highest point, it would destroy itself by becoming identity. All real resemblance, therefore, has a limit. Beyond the limits of resemblance, verisimilitude ceases. ∴ Verisimilitude is partial truth. (W 1: 79)
Iconicity. The "object" being "the subject of the proposition" - is this predicate? As similarity destroying itself by becoming identity, this was one of Lotman's takes on the metaphor, i.e. instead of using something similar to represent something, use itself to represent itself. (See "intrinsic coding".)
Whatever claims to be a representation (a portrait for example) is a representation. Truth is that which, claiming to be a representation, is a representation. ∴ Truth has no absolute antithesis. (W 1: 79)
Whatever is used as a sign is a sign.
A representation agreeing with its object, without essential resemblance thereto, is a sign. The truth of a sign, I denominate veracity. Veracity consists in a constant connection between the sign and the thing; for if the sign sometimes goes without the thing, then it may speak falsely, and if the thing goes without the sign, it may be belied in negative cases. Moreover a sign cannot exist as such the first time it is presented, because it must become a sign. (W 1: 80)
This is such an early state that he appears still to have a limited conception of signs. Also, it puts "agreeing" into focus - resemblance can be called agreeing, but does the form of "agreeing" here accord with contiguity or causality? What is the nature of this "constant connection"? It rather looks like the thing unsaid is conventionality, or collective agreement - sign becomes a sign, how? The pair, verisimilitude and veracity, I like. Define:veracity - "conformity to facts; accuracy; habitual truthfulness". Actually, he gives collective agreement on the same page: "Conceive, however, veracity to be perfect - to be founded not upon convention but upon the very nature of things and what have we?" (ibid, 80).
Hence perfect veracity is of a distinct character from cognizable veracity and it approaches quite as nearly perfection of verisimilitude. I will call it verity, and the representation a type. (W 1: 80)
And we have a triad! Verisimilitude, veracity, and verity. Define:verity - "the state or quality of being true; accordance with fact or reality".
The nature of a product is derived from its producer. When we think of a thing (whether present or absent), our thought is a product of the action of the thing on the mind. (W 1: 81)
Again, the agency of objects I already noted somewhere above in a table comparing his various iterations of "influxual dependency" or whathaveyou (cf. W 1: 61).
The acting of one thing upon another is a state of things which has three elements: - 1st The state of the agent, 2nd the state of the patient, 3rd the static relation of agent to patient. (W 1: 81)
As always, complementarity of opposities. Note that here the object is the agent, and the subject the patient.
Every thought has three elements and possibly a fourthThe nature of the thought-of as an element of thought is Truth, which we considered in §1. The second element, to be considered now, is Innateness. The third element is Externality, the subject of §3. The possible fourth element will be considered in the conclusion to this Chapter, for the present we must suppose this not to exist. (W 1: 81)
- The Nature of the Thing
- The Nature of the Mind
- The Relations of the Thing to the Mind
- The Occult Relations of the Thing and of the Mind.
Very nearly body, soul, and intellect: instead of the body, there's a thing, which makes the tab of the intellect a matter of "Externality" (as opposed to, say, sensation, which would be a matter of internality). The fourth, I suspect, suggests the unconscious.
If now we wished to make a determinating analysis of Innateness, since it is the constitution of the mind as an element of thought, we should consider what the Constitution of the Mind is so far as it thinks of anything. The prime element in it is clearly its receptivity. Receptivity enters into of-thought as mere sensation. Sensation has neither [|] truth nor falsehood for whether it be predicated or not doesn't alter the fact. It is not even thought of as external. Sensation then is the first category of Innateness. (W 1: 81-82)
"To this form of Consciousness, which corresponds very nearly to the Passion (θυμός) of Pythagoras, the name of Passivity or Receptivity might be given, to designate the condition of the mind as the recipient of an impulse not originating in itself" (Chase 1863: 472).
This analysis, however, is not necessary now. It suffices to consider that in each element of motion of the mind, a faculty is exerted in the only manner in which it is constructed to act. (W 1: 82)
Motivity? This was dated as 1962, so a year before Chase's "Intellectual Symbolism" was published, or two years before Peirce got his hands on it.
Idealism. The only possible definition of the person (self) is that which one thinks of when he closes his senses and excludes all thought but simple consciousness. That is, it is the thought-of, when the only [|] thought-of is the thought. By Cor. III nothing external to the self exists. (W 1: 82-83)
"I, as thinking, am an object of the internal sense, and am called soul. That which is an object of the external senses is called body" (Kant 1855: 237) - Peirce is here as if suggesting that one's true self is beyond both sense and understanding, in other words, the intellect. This could be what "the thought-of, when the only thought-of is the thought" refers to. Just a guess.
Here then we have three worlds Matter, Mind, God, mutually excluding and including each other, as I showed was possible in one of my letters. (W 1: 83)
Boom! "The Diagram of the IT (W 1: 530) and the Letter Draft, Peirce to Pliny Earle Chase (W 1: 115f.) represent the first (June 1859) and last (April 1864) evidence for Peirce's commitment to this theoretical framework" (Topa 2018: 168) - technically proved invalid. Now all one has to do is to figure out how those worlds could relate to Matter, Mind, and God, which is easy enough: Matter says IT (Sense), Mind says I (Intellect), and God says THOU (Heart). A wholly different matter would be to connect these, in turn, to the foregoing in this context: Idealism, Materialism, and Realistic Pantheism. The corrections, too, are interesting: according to idealism, nothing but the self exists; according to materialism, nothing but matter exists; and according to realistic pantheism, nothing but god exists.
Analysis of Creation [MS 71: Fall-Winter 1861]
Whence are these thoughts, sensations, and passions? Or to substitute an abstract for concrete terms whence is modification of consciousness? A feeling or thought pure and simple and perfect divested of all that is special, accidental, or external becomes such things as Causality, Space, Love - which are abstractions. An abstraction, however, is no longer a modification of consciousness at all, for it has no longer the accident of belonging to a special time, to a special person, and to a special subject of thought. Abstraction, therefore, to become modification of consciousness needs to be combined with that which modification of consciousness as yet unrelated to any abstraction is, that is to the perfectly unthought manifold of sensation. Well, how shall abstraction be combined with manifold of sensation? By existing as a form for matter, by expression. The first condition of creation is then expression. (W 1: 85)
Thoughts, sensations and passions not a triad: sensations and passions are both first; the second is missing.
1 Whence is expression? That is what are thec onditions of its existence? 2 Expression perfectly free from the extraneous and accidental is mere meaning, which is of course no longer expression at all, because it will be shorn of its matter altogether. (W 1: 86)
What?
Expression is form but mere form in its purity being deprived of matter is only form because the intellect regards it as such and not really. Meaning to become expression needs to be combined with that which expression is before it has any meaning, or Language. This Language is not matter but is a partial form which permits the existence of that ideal form Meaning to become a realizable form. The means therefore by which meaning enters into language, is the determination, the regulation of language. (W 1: 86)
Again, what? Expression combines with Language and becomes meaning? Only the last sentence makes some halfway sense, I think, but am unable to regulate my language to express it.
Nothing can be clearer than the necessity of the regulation of Language, meaning the mode of expression between man and man, by Meaning - whether this Language consists of gestures or speech or music or what. (W 1: 86)
Very little is clear here. Language is the mode of expressing... what? If Meaning is the thing that regulates language, what does language express?
The animal kindgom is a Language. (W 1: 86)
Hwat??
How is this regulation possible? Regulation carried to perfection becomes in the case of the curve a straight line, thus in the illustration the meaning of the curve is regularly increasing increase but when this is carried out in the language to the utmost the curve becomes a straight line where the idea is no longer conveyed. (W 1: 87)
This makes very little sense. I like the last sentence, but only because this obscure figure makes some little sense, perhaps by way of analogy, with phatic communion, which is communication that does not convey ideas. Utterances in phatic communion are indeed "straight lines" in the sense that they are cliches, completely uninformative. This is not, naturally, what Peirce here means, I suspect.
This perfect regulation ceasing to be regulation I will call Normality. Normality to become Regularity must have formality - or the regularity of meaningless language. The mode in which this must take place is by the introduction of an element into language which shall be unaffected by the meaning simply - such an element of language I will call diflection. (W 1: 87)
"Meaningless language", again, would ideally pertain to phatic communion. "Diflection" without definition, unless he meant "deflection" and misspelled it. Otherwise it is the first neologism. Diflection is meaningless language?
By diflection we do not mean the diametric element, itself, of language but the influence, the inworking of this element. If this diflection is carried to perfection the language becomes as incapable of expressing the meaning as though there were no diflection and the difference between the two cases will be merely subjective. (W 1: 88)
This could be appropriated for phatic purposes, the "inworking" be understood as the mechanical utterance, but that would be to miss whatever point it is that Peirce wants to make here.
If the body is absolutely under physical and physiological control there is no more gesture than if there were no fixity of body at all. If the mind tries to turn to the Manifold of sense wholly there is the same negation of thought that there would be if it tried to turn wholly to the Absolute. If the second dimension of a curve is infinitely drawn out a straight line is produced just as if it had no second dimension. (W 1: 88)
I think the point here is simply the "Golden Mean". Too much regulation would be the same as no regulation. Only the middle, "reality", is really accessible to us.
If human frailty were absolute we should be mere machines, so we should if human principles were absolute. Lovers would be as indifferent if they had nothing in common as they would if they had everything in common. Obviously the diflection perfect and the diflection null are to be combined by coördination. But as one of these is coincident with the tendency of the meaning and the other opposed to it, this coördination is tantamount to an ordination in the meaning expressed. (W 1: 88)
Some of this is starting to dawn on me. The example of lovers is key. What it reminds me of is Lotman's model of the overlapping of phenomenal worlds (cf. Lotman 2001: 14). If the worlds overlap, "diflection" is perfect, if they do not overlap at all it is null.
SPQR [MS 72: Winter 1861-1862]
(W 1: 91)
Quantities applied to things S Unity
Plurality
Totalityare the kinds of Quantity that we must regard a //thought-of/thing// as having Predicates applied to Qualities P Negation
Reality
Infinityare the different extents to which a Quality may be possessed Amounts of time applied to Relations Q Community
Causality
Influxare the different Dependencies a Quality can have, dependent on the time of the relation Position in the Intellect applied to forms of fact R Possibility
Actuality
Necessityindicate the thoughts belonging to the Imagination, Perception, or Reason
S is not problematic. P he has already explained at some length. That Q pertains to time is news to me. Instead of "Inherence and Subsistence" he has influx. R makes most sense - imaginations are possible, perceptions indicate reality/actuality, and reason is of course lawful necessity.
Now the dependency is Absolute, through the spiritual exhibition being real. Now what is time that it should enable a spirit a-hold of matter and by it in connection with another spirit to communicate itself thereto? It is action-room, is it not? (W 1: 92)
No idea, once again, of what is going on here.
Let us go back and try another road. You will notice that there are there kinds of Infinity - The Infinity of Unity - the Infinity of Plurality - and the Infinity of Totality. Bear in mind what infinity is, The perfect influxual dependence of a quality. Now Unity, plurality, totality all being perfectly dependent and Infinite. Yet the dependence is not the same.The unity depends not merely on the thought of its own substance but on other coëxistences. Dependence on coexistences is communitive dependence. The infinity of unity therefore is a communitive or conditional infinity. (W 1: 93)
- A unit is one of a number
- A plural is an incomplete series
- A total is a series viewed as one, the perfect number.
Here only the definition of Unity, Plurality, and Totality makes sense. Unit - for example, the number 1; Plural - a serios, 1, 1, 1; Totality - the series constituted as 3.
The Chemical Theory of Interpretation [P 11: American Journal of Science and Arts 2d ser. 35 (January 1863): 78-82]
We require an explanation of forces. Now a force is only a mathematical function of a change, and a change in space can only be conceived of a priori as a motion. (W 1: 95)
When words have both meaning and force, or when passion is the force of poetry, is there "a mathematical function of a change"?
I shall now attempt to show that the facts of chemistry are explicable by the view of Kant, that matter is not absolutely impenetrable [|] and that chemical union consists in the interpenetration of the constituents. (W 1: 97-98)
The paper does not mention Kant again and am unable to discern anything Kantian in what follows. Oh well.
0 comments:
Post a Comment