ONT Re: Logic Of Relatives
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LOR. Discussion Note 16
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Burks, the editor of CP 8, attaches this footnote
to CP 8.342-379, "On the Classification of Signs":
| From a partial draft of a letter to Lady Welby, bearing
| the dates of 24, 25, and 28 December 1908, Widener IB3a,
| with an added quotation in 368n23. ...
There is a passage roughly comparable to CP 8.343 in a letter
to Lady Welby dated 23 December 1908, pages 397-409 in Wiener,
which is incidentally the notorious "sop to Cerberus" letter:
| It is usual and proper to distinguish two Objects of a Sign,
| the Mediate without, and the Immediate within the Sign. Its
| Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with
| its Object must be gained by collateral experience.
|
| The Mediate Object is the Object outside of the Sign; I call
| it the 'Dynamoid' Object. The Sign must indicate it by a hint;
| and this hint, or its substance, is the 'Immediate' Object.
|
| Each of these two Objects may be said to be capable of either of
| the three Modalities, though in the case of the Immediate Object,
| this is not quite literally true.
|
| Accordingly, the Dynamoid Object may be a Possible; when I term
| the Sign an 'Abstractive'; such as the word Beauty; and it will be
| none the less an Abstractive if I speak of "the Beautiful", since it is
| the ultimate reference, and not the grammatical form, that makes the sign
| an 'Abstractive'.
|
| When the Dynamoid Object is an Occurrence (Existent thing or Actual fact
| of past or future), I term the Sign a 'Concretive'; any one barometer
| is an example; and so is a written narrative of any series of events.
|
| For a 'Sign' whose Dynamoid Object is a Necessitant, I have at present
| no better designation than a 'Collective', which is not quite so bad a
| name as it sounds to be until one studies the matter: but for a person,
| like me, who thinks in quite a different system of symbols to words, it
| is so awkward and often puzzling to translate one's thought into words!
|
| If the Immediate Object is a "Possible", that is, if the Dynamoid Object
| is indicated (always more or less vaguely) by means of its Qualities, etc.,
| I call the Sign a 'Descriptive';
|
| if the Immediate is an Occurrence, I call the Sign a 'Designative';
|
| and if the Immediate Object is a Necessitant, I call the Sign a
| 'Copulant'; for in that case the Object has to be so identified
| by the Interpreter that the Sign may represent a necessitation.
| My name is certainly a temporary expedient.
|
| It is evident that a possible can determine nothing but a Possible,
| it is equally so that a Necessitant can be determined by nothing but
| a Necessitant. Hence it follows from the Definition of a Sign that
| since the Dynamoid Object determines the Immediate Object,
|
| Which determines the Sign itself,
| which determines the Destinate Interpretant
| which determines the Effective Interpretant
| which determines the Explicit Interpretant
|
| the six trichotomies, instead of determining 729 classes of signs,
| as they would if they were independent, only yield 28 classes;
| and if, as I strongly opine (not to say almost prove), there
| are four other trichotomies of signs of the same order of
| importance, instead of making 59,049 classes, these will
| only come to 66.
|
| The additional 4 trichotomies are undoubtedly, first:
|
| Icons*, Symbols, Indices,
|
|*(or Simulacra, Aristotle's 'homoiomata'), caught from Plato, who I guess took it
| from the Mathematical school of logic, for it earliest appears in the 'Phaedrus'
| which marks the beginning of Plato's being decisively influenced by that school.
| Lutoslowski is right in saying that the 'Phaedrus' is later than the 'Republic'
| but his date 379 B.C. is about eight years too early.
|
| and then 3 referring to the Interpretants. One of these I am pretty confident
| is into: 'Suggestives', 'Imperatives', 'Indicatives', where the Imperatives
| include the Interrogatives. Of the other two I 'think' that one must be
| into Signs assuring their Interpretants by:
|
| Instinct, Experience, Form.
|
| The other I suppose to be what, in my 'Monist'
| exposition of Existential Graphs, I called:
|
| Semes, Phemes, Delomes.
|
| CSP, 'Selected Writings', pp. 406-408.
|
|'Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)',
| edited with an introduction and notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover,
| New York, NY, 1966. Originally published under the subtitle
| in parentheses above, Doubleday & Company, 1958.
But see CP 4.549-550 for a significant distinction between
the categories (or modalities) and the orders of intention.
Jon Awbrey
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