SUO: Re: Determination
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| These remarks require supplementation. Determination, in general, is not
| defined at all; and the attempt at defining the determination of a subject
| with respect to a character only covers (or seems only to cover) explicit
| propositional determination. The incidental remark [5.447] to the effect
| that words whose meaning should be determinate would leave "no latitude of
| interpretation" is more satisfactory, since the context makes it plain that
| there must be no such latitude either for the interpreter or for the utterer.
| The explicitness of the words would leave the utterer no room for explanation
| of his meaning. This definition has the advantage of being applicable to a
| command, to a purpose, to a medieval substantial form; in short to anything
| capable of indeterminacy. (That everything indeterminate is of the nature
| of a sign can be proved inductively by imagining and analyzing instances of
| the surdest description. Thus, the indetermination of an event which should
| happen by pure chance without cause, 'sua sponte', as the Romans mythologically
| said, 'spontanément' in French (as if what was done of one's own motion were sure
| to be irrational), does not belong to the event -- say, an explosion -- 'per se',
| or as an explosion. Neither is it by virtue of any real relation: it is by
| virtue of a relation of reason. Now what is true by virtue of a relation of
| reason is representative, that is, is of the nature of a sign. A similar
| consideration applies to the indiscriminate shots and blows of a Kentucky
| free fight.) Even a future event can only be determinate in so far as it
| is a consequent. Now the concept of a consequent is a logical concept.
| It is derived from the concept of the conclusion of an argument. But an
| argument is a sign of the truth of its conclusion; its conclusion is the
| rational 'interpretation' of the sign. This is in the spirit of the Kantian
| doctrine that metaphysical concepts are logical concepts applied somewhat
| differently from their logical application. The difference, however, is
| not really as great as Kant represents it to be, and as he was obliged to
| represent it to be, owing to his mistaking the logical and metaphysical
| correspondents in almost every case.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.448, note 1
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