A Note on Peirce's Way of Wisdom Sent to the Peirce List

A Note on Peirce's Way of Wisdom  Sent to the Peirce List
On page 250 of  Kenneth Laine Ketner's  A Thief of Peirce  begins a remarkable short essay  on the importance of  religion for Peirce.  Ketner says,  "Perhaps we we should refer  to his whole output  as being a way of wisdom."  I have, instinctively,  from my background  in theology and  radical criticism of Christianity,  assumed this  from the beginning  of my recent exposure to CSP.  Anyone interested  in how I have parsed this  can find bits and pieces  on my blog.  This is the best gateway:  Search results for Triadic Philosophy  http://buff.ly/Yq5sYQ  or in two short Kindle Books at Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 

Ketner's book features Walker Percy 

who was a good friend of 

my 40 year colleague and friend 

Will Campbell 

who would probably pass muster 

as a person after CSP's own heart.

Best, S

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Triadic Philosophy - Where 1 2 3 Works and When It Does Not

Charles Sanders Peirce spent  a life of reasonable length  elaborating what he always thought. He thought, among other things, that  we move forward and that we are social,  collaborative sorts.
Foundationally, Peirce thought 1 2 3,  that is to say, in threes. And he structured the categories at the heart of philosophy as First Second and Third. By the time Peirce elaborated everything, he had a truckload of triads and a massive fleet of elaborations.
Peirce did not think we are ciphers who will follow even such a one as he. He thought we might build on his notions, as folk for two thousand years built on Aristotle - to the detriment of ethics, as Aristotle lacked a proper value system.
Now it is Promethian and unnecessary to so immerse ourselves in Peirce's Threes that we end up arguing about  what he may have meant  as a twenty year old  or as a seventy year old. He might say  I am  merely pointing to what an ordinary sort might infer from living life. Peirce said many things in passing that are, for the rock-ribbed quasi-nativist he was, oddly democratic, oddly tolerant, oddly helpful  and most certainly non-idolatrous.
The utility of 1 2 3,  if Peirce is right, (and he is) is we can (and do)  all work creatively  to evolve reality,  trying daily to get things right.
So, yes, read and benefit from Peirce. But, more than that, use your bean. Conjure up more of the magic he was on to.
Published Works of C.S. Peirce 
http://buff.ly/XH9OLM  
Downloadable PDF
Charles Sanders Peirce: 
ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY   Home Page of the International Peirce Community
http://buff.ly/XH9b2 
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Triadic Philosophy - Integrating My Categories with Pierce's Icons, Indices, Symbols

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Introductory Note The best introduction far and away to Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics (theory of signs) is my Kindle book The Essential Peirce Selected Philosophical Writings Volume Two beginning at Chapter Three and continuing. The short text below derives from reading this and catching my first true glimmer of  the utility of Peirce's division of signs into Icon, Index and Symbol. As he writes, Peirce indicates how fluid logic is and, implicitly, the infantile state of our intellectual efforts. It is enough to induce humility among academics if not among those of us who natter at them.  
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The root triad Reality, Ethics, Aesthetic seems  naturally to segue with Charles Sanders Pierce's terms for the division of signs. The Peirce triad for signs is icons, indices and symbols. The images, thoughts and ideas which arise in Reality are icons. We create and name them. They point to something. In the realm of Ethics we find indices.  They are the elements needed for understanding the sign. This may constitute a blunt truth, even a barrier,  to the sign we are considering. The fruit of the triadic process is in Aesthetics our symbolic realm of activation. The symbol so derived becomes our reality.
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I do not seek to represent  Peirce but to observe points where his thinking may - I stress may - amplify what is essentially  an original philosophy that integrates inspirations traceable to Peirce, Assagioli, Nietzsche and the Gospel of Mark. Applying the sign divisions icon, index and symbol to my root triad adds depth and functionality. To understand this existentially seems to me a serious advance.
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On 15 February the second series of Triadic Philosophy Aphorisms is available for $0 at Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store


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Charles Sanders Peirce has inspired me to understand values as ontological

CSP

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Charles Sanders Peirce has inspired me to 

understand values as ontological 

and tied to human will. 

Charles Sanders Peirce has encouraged me to

 herald the death of culture religion  (see Barth)  

and its evolution into a global spirituality 

based on values - 

lived in the immanent frame.
Charles Sanders Peirce has inspired me to 

wonder about my past 

as his family arrived in Watertown, MA, 

at about the same time  my ancestor 

Captain Hugh Mason settled there (1639) 

and I share many traits that have been 

ascribed to CSP and have had 

a “career” similar in some respects to his. 

Charles Sanders Peirce saw through things 

and was plain in his description of what he saw. 

Those who find him obscure 

may have vision problems 

or not. 

It depends on your philosophy.

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Locating Peirce's Division of Signs - Icons, Indices Symbols

In my Triadic Philosophy the base triad is Reality Ethics Aesthetics Peirce felt all thought is in signs and his triadic relations of performance or fact are Icons Indices Symbols An Icon points to but need not represent its object (Nike comes to mind) An index relates to the object it represents A symbol stands in some way for what it represents Peirce divided his base triads according to kinds facts and laws
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Triadic Philosophy accepts all triads as spurs to thought but builds on  Reality Ethics and Aesthetics Reality covers the limit the mind has reached within the continuity of our  existence It is what we can perceive measure and describe It is not supposition It is boundaryless and yet limited by our common fallibility and its chronological continuity
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The Semiotic in Triadic Philosophy describes the manifold nature of reality as it manifests itself and in this context Peirce's categorical triads function as modes of knowing The uses of triads within Triadic Pholospophy are mainly in the realm of willed thought in which one applies mind to what rises from reality then encounters its capture by some blunt truth and then moves to a measurable resolution  or action
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Peirce and Nietzsche Wandered Free - A Quatrain

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Peirce and Nietzsche wandered free And wrote on scraps of paper Nomads solitarily Can kick up quite a vapor
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Charles Sanders Peirce - His "remarkable theorem" regarding triadic relations

This remarkable text is drawn from Joseph Brent,  Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life  Blomington and Indianapolis 1993 Page 331
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"There are only three fundamental kinds of relations: monadic, dyadic and triadic; ...  by combining triads, all relations greater than the number  three can be generated; and ... all those of a greater number than three can be reduced to triads. Since, in addition,  triads cannot be reduced to dyads, nor dyads to monads, monads, dyads and triads constitute the fundamental categories of relations. At the same time, triads are made up of dyads and monads, and dyads of monads. Hence, in logical order, monads are first, dyads second, and triads third., which gives a second group of relations: first, second, and third. Hypostatic abstraction provides a third group of relations: firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which contain first second and third, which in turn contain monads, dyads, and triads. Altogether, these elements constitute the abstract,formal mathematical categories and relations that constitute the elements of thought."
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Triadic Philosophy Two Reality Word Epistemology

The logic of the initial triad Reality Ethics Aesthetics is enhanced by the creation of a few added first level  triads The triad suggested by the images above clearly locates word and epistemology in the scheme of things
Top First is Reality The penumbra from whence signs or signals or impulses rise Ungraspable until named  ...
Second is Word So primary is word that it seems almost one with signs  but it represents the interposition of a highly confining element The product of Reality and Word is knowledge  I use the term Epistemology to denote the primacy of Reality and Word in the creation of knowing
Third is Epistemoloigy
Epistemology is the product of the knowledge that results from the union of word and reality  It is literally the method of knowing or the realization of knowledge We know because we put reality into words Knowledge results when a word takes root in will  and understanding And clearly enough knowledge is never complete Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store

More Stacked Images in quest of Peirce's semeiotic

Continuing a highly experimental  guessing at three elaborations of Charles Sanders Peirce's semeiotic AKA logic AKA the truth derived from signs 
Top First Speculative Grammar (the study and organization of signs)
Second Critical Logic (examination of signs in terms of truth or veracity)
Third Speculative Rhetoric (Method, Methodeutic) (the communication of findings rising from  the application of logic to selected signs)
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The images suggest to me 1.  a sense of the place from whence all signs arise 2. the collision between signs and critical analysis  and 3. a hypothetical notion of how the results might be organized along with any applications rising from the process
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There is a step beyond all religions as the world embraces universal spirituality

Pragmaticism was Charles Sanders Peirce's term for his evolved philosophy It was pragmatism with a step into reality which Peirce understood to be evolving Continuity was Peirce's keyword for the way reality expresses itself We move forward inexorably in chronological time My argument is that Peirce brought us to the threshold of the cyber-era  We are first generation all of us young or old The cyber era is based on the discovery within ourselves of values that can be inferred  as provable in practice I submit the following candidates tolerance helpfulness democracy non-idolatry These are the practical practiced values that make progress out of continuity   It is to the recognition of these values and their practice that pragmaticism leads
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Logic is not founded upon philology - Charles Sanders Peirce

To change language does not mean to change logic Nor does logic depend upon certain psychological necessities and tendencies Logic need not be founded on a group of similar languages There is no standard form for the expression of logical conclusions
These texts are drawn from Feibleman's comprehensive  parsing of Peirce MIT 1969 Page 84 In some cases they include inferences aimed at underlining or clarifying In any case they stand alone as signs in themselves and make no pretense of interpreting or representing
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The logician need not decide if there is such a thing as reality

We cannot hide from ourselves that there are objects  very nearly like real things We are obliged to suppose that there is knowledge  embodied in some form and that there is inference and that one embodiment of knowledge affects another
I see in this parsing of Feibleman on Peirce 1969 83-84 a clear suggestion of Peircean threes and one of the remarkable instances in which  the wonder of Peirce can be apprehended The key word for me is suppose After suppose in the text comes the parenthetical ("it need not assert") a delicious reminder of the degree of supposition (vagueness, musement) involved in all thinking
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Logic is not about how we think but about how we ought to think

A computer requires no psychology to arrive at a logical conclusion Neither do we Logic is not about thinking but about what thinking presents to the mind
Drawn from Feibleman on Charles Sanders Peirce 1969 83
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Logic arises from the temporal circumstances of thinking - Charles Sanders Peirce | ShortFormContent at Blogger http://buff.ly/Q5kSCf 
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In all reasoning there is a more or less conscious reference to a general method

There are no false feelings No judgment can judge itself to be true No reasoning can conclude that it is itself sound In all reasoning therefore there is a more or less conscious reference to a general method
Peirce in Feibleman 1969 82
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Freedom consists in uncontrolled variety - Charles Sanders Peirce

Diversity is as primitive as law Freedom consists in uncontrolled variety in freshness spontaneity originality and novelty This aspect of reality is (also) destiny
CSP 1.162 1.302 1.357 in Feibleman 1969 pp 189-190
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The Versatile Mind - Charles Sanders Peirce

Peirce's Arisbe: The Rationale of the Website "Born 1839 and died 1914, Peirce's adult life spanned the period from the American Civil War to the beginning of the First World War, but he is of special and growing interest at present, both internationally and to people in many fields and disciplines, not because of his historical influence -- still largely unappreciated by most historians of the period -- but rather because of his remarkable and unparalleled anticipation of the emerging themes of the 21st Century: 

Thought as virtual 

Meaning as experimental and interpretational 

Mind as a multi-dimensional communicational process 

Sciences as collaborative communicational communities 

Truth and knowledge as social and distributed 

Formal reasoning as graphical inference 

Humanities and sciences conceived unitarily 

Education as inquiry and exploration 

 

To these from Arisbe I would add 

Theology as way rather than creed

Christianity alert to the dominant hypocrisies and oriented to the best interest of the other

And coworker with his (unknown) co-worker Nietzsche to create the basis in thought for transcendence within the immanent frame.

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For Charles Sanders Peirce language is a subspecies of of semiosis

Gene Halton:  "In the Peircean perspective, language, if you mean by that linguistic language, is but a subspecies of the inferential and communicative process of semiosis, even within human communication. Two examples: “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture,” as Thelonius Monk once said to quiet a critic’s question. Or as the great modern dancer Isadore Duncan said, “If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.” Or consider felt, wordless empathic communication. Or this: Someone I know who studied with a Native American wise man told me that the man gathered all of his students, former and current, to spend a month with him for his last teaching. His last teaching he gave to them was his death, as it unfolded over that month."

ADDENDUM

Peirce: “Nor must any synechist say, 'I am altogether myself, and not at all you.' If you embrace synechism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarist delusion of vanity.”

From the Peirce list

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No matter how smart one is, compassion trumps wit.

From a fellow member of the Charles Sanders Peirce list

 An excellent movie version of the play Wit, directed by Mike Nichols with Emma Thompson, shows the value of compassion, literally feeling with, in the experience of death and life. In the end, no matter how smart one is, compassion trumps wit.

Gene Halton

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Charles Sanders Peirce: What distinguishes a man from a word?

What distinguishes a man from a word? There is a distinction doubtless. … It may be said that man is conscious, while a word is not. But consciousness is a very vague term. It may mean that emotion which accompanies the reflection that we have animal life. This is a consciousness which is dimmed when animal life is at its ebb in old age, or sleep, but which is not dimmed when the spiritual life is at its ebb; which is the more lively the better animal a man is, but which is not so, the better man he is. … Again, consciousness is sometimes used to signify I think, or unity in thought; but this unity is nothing but consistency, or the recognition of it. Consistency belongs to every sign, so far as it is a sign; and therefore every sign, since it signifies primarily that it is a sign, signifies its own consistency. …there is no element whatever of man’s consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word; and the reason is obvious. It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. That is to say, the man and the external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself...  -- Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Ed. by the Peirce Edition Project. Vol. 2, Bloomington, 1984, P. 240-241

SOURCE (PDF)
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Why Charles Sanders Peirce Is a Posthumous Threat

Salient post from our Peirce List

Between 1865 and 1870, C.S. Peirce had already begun to set out the rudiments of an information-theoretic semantics for inquiry, communication, and thought in general, along with a logic of relatives that is powerful enough to handle polyadic relations, in particular, the triadic relations that one requires in the theory of signs and throughout mathematics.

This is the palette of ideas that Peirce found himself forced to develop to paint a picture of inquiry that could even hope to be “true to life”.Many of these ideas we would not see again until the late 20th century.

When it comes to the reception of this picture, this style, by judges from another school, I think we have to sort the aesthetic or affective impacts from the cognitive or intellectual factors. Personally, I don't suppose I will ever have the investigative resources or skills to find out what really happened in the case of Peirce, but common sense tells me that handing out his relics like favors at a scalping party must betoken some form of active, if unconscious hostility.

And if I were to speculate on the springs and catches of that hostility, I would guess that there is probably a link between fearing the message and counting coup on the messenger.

- Jon Awbry

Nietzsche and Peirce in my sense of things are the key influences on what is actually happening, though both are barely acknowledged in the contexts in which their influence may turn out to be strongest. Were I to suggest that it is in the metaphysical realm, I would be offering a clue. Not to deny it in other realms but to suggest that both men make it possible to live within the immanent frame with a modicum of transcendence.


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