Pragmatism, logic, and manuscript R318

3.1 The background

In an important stage in his development of his pragmatism, Peirce returned in the first of three articles published in 1905 to a problem raised in the Lowell lectures on logic of particular interest to the present study, namely to the question of the symbol. As he stated in the earlier Ethics of Terminology from the 1903 Syllabus, which set out “rules” and conventions framing the technical language to be employed in the composition of scientific reports, for example in EP2: 266, 1903, in Peirce’s view, the symbol, the most complex type of sign, was the essential vehicle of scientific thought: “the woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols” (EP2: 219, 1903).

In order to bring out the defining characteristics of his version of pragmatism in the Monist paper “What pragmatism is” (EP2: 331–345, 1905), Peirce introduced a dialogue between himself and an imaginary questioner, in the course of which he acknowledged pragmatism’s restricted conception of meaning when challenged by his questioner to explain what the proper noun “George Washington” meant. He replied that “it must be admitted that pragmaticism fails to furnish any translation or meaning of a proper name, or other designation of an individual object,” that “the pragmaticistic meaning is undoubtedly general; and it is equally indisputable that the general is of the nature of a word or sign,” and that the “word ‘soldier,’ whether spoken or written, is general in the same way; while the name, ‘George Washington’, is not so” (EP2: 341–342, 1905). In short, pragmatism is a theory of meaning that is unavoidably restricted to the interpretation of the sorts of symbols – concepts – mentioned in the Ethics of Terminology. Consequently, a theory of the concept is inapplicable to the determination of the meaning of indices such as proper names, and, logically, to the determination of the meaning of icons, too. Moreover, it is the concept, the symbolic entity par excellence, that is the subject of his famous formula: “The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason” (CP 5.212, 1903). Like the irrelevance of icons and indices to a theory of meaning, the “gate of perception” principle apparently doesn’t apply explicitly to icons and indices either. Pragmaticism is, in short, then, a theory of that most symbolic sign, the concept, and its relation to logic is obvious: only symbols have meaning. Nevertheless, symbols cannot function in logic alone, for, as Peirce had determined as early as 1885, an exhaustive logical theory additionally requires indices and icons (EP1: 225–227, 1885).

3.2 Meanings

Pragmatism being “merely a method of ascertaining the meaning of hard words and of abstract concepts” (R318: 15, 1907), at one point in the manuscript we find the following series of meanings, these being the bases of his numerous descriptions in R318 of the interpretants to which they correspond: “Thus there are emotional meanings, or meanings that are feelings; there are existential meanings, or actual things or events, whether physical or psychical resulting from the significance of signs; and conceptual or logical meanings” (R318: 397, 1907). These meanings correspond to the three interpretants with which he is concerned in his demonstration of pragmatism: “It is now necessary to point out that there are three kinds of interpretant. Our categories suggest them, and the suggestion is confirmed by careful consideration. I term them the Emotional, the Energetic, and Logical Interpretants. They consist respectively in feelings, in efforts, and in habit changes” (R318: 251). The corresponding interpretants he also describes thus:

Philosophers find it needful to distinguish two “objects” of a sign; the object as the sign represents it and the object as it really is. In like manner, there are three “interpretants” or “meanings”; the meaning as explicitly set forth in the sign; the actual, real effect intended, and the ultimate logical consequences in view. Still finer distinctions are sometimes needed. (R318: 369, 1907)

Now, the basis of his explanation of pragmatism is the discrepancy between two objects and three interpretants. In this respect, he restricted the status of the object to real, i.e. existent, dynamic objects and qualitative immediate objects. At the same time, he was at pains to insist that there were signs which had no object at all and that concepts – unlike either of the other two example signs he referred to in the manuscript, namely the “Ground arms!” example, to be discussed below, and the air played on the guitar or piece of concerted music – were a type of sign of which the “third,” i.e. logical interpretant, corresponds to no object. The following passage illustrates this unexpected combination of sign, objects, and the three freshly named interpretants:

But all logicians have distinguished two objects of a sign; the one, the Immediate object or object as the sign represents it, (and without this sign would not be a sign); the other Real object, or object as it is independent of any particular idea representing it. Of course, many signs have no real objects. We turn to the interpretant, to see whether there is any corresponding distinction; and we find that in place of two, there are three different interpretants. First, there is the “emotional interpretant”, which consists in a feeling, or rather in the quality of a feeling. It is sometimes formed into an image, yet is more usually merely a feeling which causes the interpreter of the sign to believe he recognizes of [sic] the import and intention of the sign. A concerted piece of music, for example, brings a succession of musical emotions answering to those of the composer. This is an extreme case; usually the emotional interpretant consists merely in a sense, more or less complex, perhaps amounting to an image, perhaps not, of the meaning of the sign. All signs whatsoever must, in order to fulfil their functions as signs, first of all produce such emotional interpretants. Next, many signs bring about actual events. The infantry officer’s word of command “Ground arms!” produces as its existential interpretant, (the sign having been first apprehended in an “emotional interpretant”) the slamming down of the musket-butts. The less thought intervenes between the apprehension and this act, the better the sign fulfills its function. All signs that are not to evaporate in mere feelings must have such an existential interpretant, or as I might perhaps better have called it, such an energetic interpretant. These two interpretants correspond respectively to the two objects of a sign. The emotional interpretant, immediately produced by the sign, corresponds to the immediate object. The existential, or energetic, interpretant, corresponds to the real object whose action is obscurely and indirectly the active cause of the sign. But now there is a third interpretant, to which no object of the sign corresponds. It is what we commonly call the meaning of the sign; but I call it the logical interpretant, or logical meaning of the sign. (R318: 373–379, 1907)

The relations described in the text can be summarized in Table 4, which displays the correspondence relation holding between object and interpretant characteristic of three types of signs, here a piece of concerted music – represented simply by the term “sonata” in Table 1 – the military command and the type of sign with which Peirce’s symbol-based vein of pragmatism was principally concerned, the concept.

According to the passage, the sonata is typically a sign determined simply by an immediate object to produce an emotional interpretant and no other – it is a sign without a real, “existent” object. The command, on the other hand, is a sign determined by both real, i.e., existent, and immediate objects to produce an emotional and an energetic interpretant but, surprisingly, since we know a verbal command has semantic values ‒ has a meaning, in other words ‒ it corresponds to no logical interpretant. The existential, deictic nature of the command and its incapacity to determine a logical interpretant is reminiscent of the remark in “What pragmatism is” in which Peirce declares that pragmatism cannot deal with, cannot translate, an index such as the proper noun George Washington, as it doesn’t have a meaning – identified in R318 as the logical interpretant – in the way that an intellectual concept such as the common noun soldier has. Finally, the concept, the principal preoccupation of pragmatism, by definition necessarily produces an emotional, an energetic, and a logical interpretant but, most strikingly Peirce asserts here, corresponds to no object, a remark to which, like the earlier reference to signs that have no real, i.e., dynamic, object, we return below. But first we examine the innovative nature of the military command.

3.3 “Ground arms!”

The choice of a military command was a brilliant move on Peirce’s part, since iteration of the command is considered the means of inducing certain habits in untrained military recruits. However, as Peirce describes it, the command is ontologically severely circumscribed. In selecting the command as an existential “event,” he introduced novel elements into the logic of the action of the sign. To begin with, the object in this case is the officer’s will, i.e. volition, a very different sort of object from the earlier photographic model: “A better example [of an informational Index] is a photograph. The mere print does not, in itself, convey any information. But the fact, that it is virtually a section of rays projected from an object otherwise known, renders it a Dicisign” (EP2: 282, 1903), the object “otherwise known” being, typically, the subject of a portrait, or someone in a family group. Now, volition is the second, “existent,” element of the three composing mental life: feeling, volition, cognition:

Experience is that state of cognition which the course of life, by some part there of, has forced upon the recognition of the experient, or person who undergoes the experience, under conditions due usually, in part, at least, to his own action; and the Immediate object of the cognition of Experience is understood to be what I call its “Dynamical”, that is, its real object […]. By a “cognitive” state, as opposed to a state markedly involving only elements of feeling and volition, I mean a state which, as it is in itself, and not as it may be represented reflectively, is a sign of an object for an interpretant state, which last may involve feeling, volition, or cognition, alone or in combination with either of the other of these elements of mental life. (LI: 344–345, 1906)

Furthermore, in the military command, the interpretant, here too a pure, singular event classifiable within the 1903 phenomenological system as partaking of Secondness, is an action, a process which is existent and which therefore inevitably interrupts continuity, and, therefore, access to meaning, this being a significant break with statements associating interpretation and continuity in 1902, and interpretable as continuous, “unlimited” semiosis:

Genuine mediation is the character of a Sign. A Sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to the same Object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum. (CP: 2.92, 1902)

And:

Anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum. No doubt, intelligent consciousness must enter into the series. If the series of successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby rendered imperfect, at least. (CP: 2.303, 1902)

In R318 we now have exemplification of the second degree of the thought–action–quality of feeling distinction evident in Peirce’s thinking at least since 1904, when he applied it to the triadic interpretant function (SS: 31, 1904). Returning to the actual example, one would, strictly speaking, expect a verbal sign such as Ground arms! to qualify as conceptual, since morphosyntactically and semantically it resembles any other well-formed combination of verbal elements, and if written up on a blackboard in a linguistics classroom, for example, it might be qualified as imperative, causative, metonymical, elliptical, etc., and might be translated into French as “Armes à terre!” or something of the sort. However, for Peirce, the expression, although translatable in theory, is unavoidably deictic, that is, limited to a single, once-uttered-gone-forever context.^[4] Contra all the principles of theoretical linguistics, as it functions within a single event, this verbal expression is restricted to a singular communicative context. Unlike the same expression set out on a blackboard in a seminar or a class, like the proper noun George Washington, although Peirce never states this explicitly in the manuscript, the result of the command cannot be translated in the conventional manner and would be classified as a pure singular Secondness within the 1903 categorial system: it participates in a singular event, and it is impossible to translate an event such as the crashing of musket-butts to the ground. On the parade ground, the command can only be repeated indefinitely or until it has ultimately produced the requisite habit in the squad of soldiers, repetition of the same process in identical circumstances being the basis of habit:

Habits differ from dispositions in having been acquired as a consequence of the principle, virtually well-known even to those whose powers of reflexion are insufficient to its formulation, that multiply reiterated behaviour of some kind, under similar combinations of percepts and fancies produces a tendency, – the habit, – actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future. (R318: 113, 1907)

Peirce is claiming in R318 that the concept alone has a logical interpretant and, concomitantly, that it has no existent object. This discrepancy between the numbers of objects and interpretants is, in effect, the basis of his explanation of pragmatism: concepts such as a common noun, soldier, soldat, 士兵, or an adjective such as green, for example, vert, verde, 绿色的, etc., can be translated but cannot be determined by a singular object. The concept only functions linguistically when actualized in utterances such as The grass is greener next door or Soldiers are trained to kill. However, in the case of the military command, probably to the horror of all linguists as suggested above, occurring in unique individual but repeatable events, such an utterance is not translatable. In other words, in individual deictic cases such as the Ground arms! example, the expression’s conceptual content is as though demoted from generality to the singularity of existence. This is a logical as opposed to a linguistic conception of verbal elements and their actualization, a remarkably innovative way of looking at verbal communication and its effects: Peirce’s description of the command here is not semantics or even general linguistics anymore, but logic as semeiotic, a much broader discipline.

In this way, the Ground arms! example takes the logic forward in exemplifying a new type of dynamic object determining a non-translatable verbal expression, and also two new kinds of interpretants, namely simple sentiments and, importantly as here, actions, which necessarily interrupt continuity. As can be seen from Tables 1 and 2 displaying material from 1908, only necessitant objects, through the medium of a type, can produce continuity, indicated in entry eight in Table 2 as the production of self-control; necessitant and existent objects can produce actions; and objects from all three universes can produce qualities of feeling (through the medium of “gratific” signs). By 1908 Peirce had developed the theoretical background to his conception of signification by defining the three universes of existence given above, and these replaced the categories of 1903 as the theoretical foundations of revised typological distinctions. They allowed, notably, for the dynamism of semiosis, that is of the innumerable communicative exchanges engaged by an utterer (human or nonhuman, animate or even inanimate^[5]) and an interpreter, since either of the objects could belong to one of three universes as possible, existent, and necessitant agencies. Importantly, too, for the development of his logic, Peirce introduces and exemplifies existence in R318 as one of the three ontological universes of existence to be posited the following year.

3.4 The logical interpretant and semiosis

In R318, Peirce states that there are many signs that have no real objects and that there is a type of interpretant to which no object can possibly correspond. These surprising statements are justified by the meaning of a logical interpretant as described in R318, namely as a habit: “Consequently, the most perfect account of a concept that words can convey will consist in the habit which that concept is calculated to produce. But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with a specification of the conditions and of the motive?” (R318: 155–157). Clearly, no habit can have a singular, existent object producing it, only an iteration of objects occurring over time. Nevertheless, positing that there were signs with no real objects and a logical interpretant to which no object corresponds ‒ an interpretant determined by no object, in other words ‒ contravenes all the definitions of the sign and was effectively cancelled, as was seen in Section 2, by Peirce’s return to his earlier, more conventional classificatory principles. Thus, while it was revolutionary in many respects, manuscript R318 contained the elements of its own “deconstruction,” so to speak. Peirce’s explanation-not-proof of his pragmatism was based on the numerical difference between objects and interpretants in semiosis. This immeasurably important theoretical construct he defines as follows:

It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects [whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially] or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. (EP2: 411, 1907)

Therein, however, lies a problem which returns us to the description of the hexadic typology from the 23 December 1908 letter to Lady Welby discussed above. The present paper suggests that this hexad is not only a typology but also the description of the actual process of semiosis. Now, examination of one of Peirce’s late definitions of the sign shows that the three subjects mentioned in the definition of semiosis cannot produce either an empirical or a logical process: all the definitions place the sign in a triadic relation. The problem here is that a relation composed simply of sign, object, and interpretant, as in the definition of semiosis, can define the sign but cannot produce a sign. Consider, for convenience, the “sop to Cerberus” definition: “I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former” (SS: 80–81, 1908). The definition states that the interpretant is mediately determined by the object through the medium of the sign, a situation that might be interpreted as implying that the sign itself is immediately determined by the object. But such an object–sign relation is logically impossible, since Peirce defines the term “immediate” in the following succinct manner: “to say that A is immediate to B means that it is present in B” (R339: 243Av, 1905). Consequently, no object triggering the process of semiosis could possibly have the sign “present” in it; if this were the case, the sign could not function as a sign. It is the sign that must have something of the triggering object “present” in it, and this something is the immediate object.

Thus, the three subjects in Peirce’s definition of semiosis given above have to be understood logically in the manner shown in an earlier text, manuscript R939, where he analyzes these three “basic” subjects of the definition of semiosis into six correlates, namely one sign, two objects, and three interpretants:

However, this much is clear; that a sign has essentially two correlates, its Object and its possible Interpretant sign. Of these three, Sign, Object, Interpretant, the Sign as being the very thing under consideration is Monadic, the Object is Dyadic, and the Interpretant is Triadic. We therefore look to see, whether there be not two Objects and three Interpretants. There obviously are two Objects, the object as it is in itself (the Monadic Object), and the object as the sign represents it to be (the Dyadic Object). There are also three Interpretants; namely, 1st, the Interpretant considered as an independent sign of the Object, 2nd, the Interpretant as it is as a fact determined by the Sign to be, and 3rd the Interpretant as it is intended by, or is represented in, the Sign to be. (R939: 43–44, 1905)

With this expansion in mind, we return to the logical interpretant and the process of semiosis. The problem of the logical interpretant being a habit to which no real, existent object corresponds might be resolved by Peirce’s conception of the relation between perception and the identification of signs as described in the manuscript. Signs and the generality of meaning (significance), he suggests, are not perceived directly, but are recognized by inference:

If […] someone had asked me to guess in how many unrelated ways a sign could first come to be recognized as such […] the right answer is, By one only […] namely, By inference. For decidedly, significance can neither be seen, nor heard, nor smelled, nor tasted, nor known by touch, nor otherwise be directly perceived; and that which cannot be directly perceived can only become known by inference. (R318: 345–347, 1907)

Whereas a real, existent object like the officer’s “existent” volition is necessarily perceivable and can provoke some sort of similarly existent event such as the slamming down of musket butts, such perceivability is impossible for the signs producing general interpretants such as habits. It might be objected that the assertion explains how there can be many signs that have no real, i.e., existent object and that “there is a third interpretant, to which no object of the sign exists”: while not existent they are inferable. Nevertheless, as seen above, since the object is dyadic, there can be no such third object. It has, therefore, to be said that to maintain, in the very projected article in which semiosis is defined, that there are signs with no real objects, that there could be an interpretant to which no object corresponds, and that what was, in effect, the dynamic object was restricted to the universe of existence, is an invitation to confusion.

While it is precisely in MS318 that he defines semiosis, that is, the processual action of the sign, in these variants, his purpose obviously lies outside the strict remit of his previous typological work on classes of signs, and outside that to come. His preoccupation, as can be seen in Table 4 and in the long quotation given above (R318: 373–379), is less with signs than with an explanation of what pragmatism consists in, and this leads to a presentation of how the meaning of concepts might depend upon the relation between two objects and three interpretants. The actual concrete functioning of semiosis, although mentioned in the variants, seems to be of lesser interest in the context of a search for a method of establishing and explaining the meaning of the hard words and concepts in the definition of pragmatism. This search leads Peirce to explain the reasons for the unequal distribution of two objects and three interpretants. Although given by the categories, there have to be three interpretants in order to account for the fact that generality can be inferred independently of existent, real perceptual data. This means that the explanation of pragmatism, a theory of interpretation, is only indirectly related to the general logic, even though Peirce specifically associates the objectless logical interpretant with the process of semiosis (R318: 99). Whether because of repeated failure to have his article published or through the desire to abandon explanations of pragmatism and to return to the investigation of the sign and classes thereof, as seen in Section 2, within a year Peirce had abandoned this project of the explanation of pragmatism and had resumed the more generally recognizably Peircean preoccupation with three-way classifications of signs in which all six correlates, the two objects included, could belong to all three universes used as discriminants in typologies of the sign.