SUO: Re: Determination
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| The October remarks [i.e. those in the above paper] made the
| proper distinction between the two kinds of indeterminacy, viz.:
| indefiniteness and generality, of which the former consists in
| the sign's not sufficiently expressing itself to allow of an
| indubitable determinate interpretation, while the [latter]
| turns over to the interpreter the right to complete the
| determination as he please.
|
| It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that a sign
| should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning; but the
| explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the entire universe --
| not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe,
| embracing the universe of existents as a part, the universe which
| we are all accustomed to refer to as "the truth" -- that all this
| universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively
| of signs. Let us note this in passing as having a bearing upon the
| question of pragmaticism.
|
| The October remarks, with a view to brevity, omitted to mention that
| both indefiniteness and generality might primarily affect either the
| logical breadth or the logical depth of the sign to which it belongs.
| It now becomes pertinent to notice this. When we speak of the depth,
| or signification, of a sign we are resorting to hypostatic abstraction,
| that process whereby we regard a thought as a thing, make an interpretant
| sign the object of a sign. It has been a butt of ridicule since Molière's
| dying week, and the depth of a writer on philosophy can conveniently be
| sounded by his disposition to make fun of the basis of voluntary inhibition,
| which is the chief characteristic of mankind. For cautious thinkers will
| not be in haste to deride a kind of thinking that is evidently founded
| upon observation -- namely, upon observation of a sign. At any rate,
| whenever we speak of a predicate we are representing a thought as
| a thing, as a 'substantia', since the concepts of 'substance' and
| 'subject' are one, its concomitants only being different in the two
| cases. It is needful to remark this in the present connexion, because,
| were it not for hypostatic abstraction, there could be no generality of
| a predicate, since a sign which should make its interpreter its deputy to
| determine its signification at his pleasure would not signify anything,
| unless 'nothing' be its significate.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.448, note 1
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