Facing objects of haecceity: advantages of Peirce’s categories
-
Donna E. West
Donna E. West (PhD, Cornell University) is Professor Emerita of linguistics at the State University of New York. She has presented and published internationally (nearly 80 articles/chapters) on Peirce’s semiotic. She has served two terms on the Board of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, as well as on several editorial boards. Her 2013 book, Deictic Imaginings: Semiosis at Work and at Play, investigates the ontogeny of indexical signs. Her 2016 edited volume on Peirce’s concept of habit offers a fresh, global perspective (scholars from twelve nations). She has likewise edited the “Mathematics and Cognition” section for the Handbook on Cognitive Mathematics (Springer, 2022) – her own contribution explores the formidable role of chunking in abductive rationality. Following the 2021 publication of two guest-edited journal issues on Peirce and consciousness (Cognitive Semiotics, Semiotica), her 2022 book, Narrative as Dialectic Abduction (Springer) presents retrospective narratives as the scaffold toward Peirce’s retroductive logic. She now embarks upon her fourth book, Dialectic Operation and Transcendental Dialogue: Living on the Edge of Abductive Virtue (Lexington).
Abstract
This inquiry demonstrates Scotus’ and Peirce’s shift from representing haecceities as momentary objects in Secondness (depending heavily upon sensation), to the recognition that haecceities force their way into the awareness as mental objects. As such, both conclude that mental objects to be haecceities. Nonetheless, it is Peirce who more clearly determines that haecceities materialize as apparitions (cognitions) – incorporating physically absent places, objects, and moments. Peirce’s continuum, and his commitment to realism are responsible for considering apparitions to be haecceities. Both Peirce and Scotus contend that although haecceities are individual, they, nevertheless should be folded into the continuum. In line with the Scholastic record, Peirce defines haecceity as “thisness,” which encompasses the riveting effect of Objects (including places) – proximate to observers (inward and outward) space and/or time. Haecceities allow for intrusion of present objects and places upon interpreters’ consciousness – noticing properties of objects with some degree of awareness. This beckoning effect of objects in single, intense experiences accounts for selection of certain objects over others in the attentional stream. As such, context illuminates the core meaning within the sign (synchronic, diachronic) – demonstrating the need for Peirce’s continuum. But, Peirce’s continuum does not stop at present objects (mental, physical); it proposes the need for “concretion,” rather than Scotus’ adherence to “contraction.” In other words, the “all cannot be in the one” (as Scotus claims) if possible objects are not incorporated into the continuum. In short, Peirce’s “concretion” supplies a fuller account of object meaning, given that it integrates future objects and future meanings (would-bes).
About the author
Donna E. West (PhD, Cornell University) is Professor Emerita of linguistics at the State University of New York. She has presented and published internationally (nearly 80 articles/chapters) on Peirce’s semiotic. She has served two terms on the Board of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, as well as on several editorial boards. Her 2013 book, Deictic Imaginings: Semiosis at Work and at Play, investigates the ontogeny of indexical signs. Her 2016 edited volume on Peirce’s concept of habit offers a fresh, global perspective (scholars from twelve nations). She has likewise edited the “Mathematics and Cognition” section for the Handbook on Cognitive Mathematics (Springer, 2022) – her own contribution explores the formidable role of chunking in abductive rationality. Following the 2021 publication of two guest-edited journal issues on Peirce and consciousness (Cognitive Semiotics, Semiotica), her 2022 book, Narrative as Dialectic Abduction (Springer) presents retrospective narratives as the scaffold toward Peirce’s retroductive logic. She now embarks upon her fourth book, Dialectic Operation and Transcendental Dialogue: Living on the Edge of Abductive Virtue (Lexington).
References
Baddeley, Alan D. 2007. Working memory, thought, and action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198528012.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Bergman, Mats. 2016. Melioristic inquiry and critical habits: Pragmatism and the ends of communication research. Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 7(2). 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1386/ejpc.7.2.173_1.Search in Google Scholar
Deely, John Nathaniel. 2009. Purely objective reality. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9781934078099Search in Google Scholar
DiLeo, Jeffrey. 1991. Peirce’s haecceitism. Transactions of the Charles S Peirce Society 27(1). 79–109.Search in Google Scholar
Ingham, Mary Beth & Mechthild Dreyer. 2004. The philosophical vision of John Duns Scotus: An introduction. The Catholic University of America Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Mandler, Jean Matter. 2004. The foundations of mind: Origins of conceptual thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00369.xSearch in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1866–1913. In Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss (eds.), The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. I–VI. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1931–1935, Vols. VII – VIII ed. Arthur Burks (Same publisher, 1958).Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. (1992–1998). In N. Houser & C. Kloesel (eds.), The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 1; Vol. 2, ed. Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, Cited as EP.Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, C.S. (i.1866–1913). Unpublished manuscripts are dated according to the Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, ed. R. Robin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967), Cited according to the convention of the Peirce Edition Project, using the numeral “0” as a place holder.Search in Google Scholar
Riley, Gresham. 1974. Peirce’s theory of individuals. Transactions of the Charles S Peirce Society 10(3). 135–165.Search in Google Scholar
Scotus, John Duns. 1290–1295/2005. Early Oxford lecture on individuation. Trans. A.Wolter. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Press.Search in Google Scholar
Short, Thomas, L. 2007. Peirce’s theory of signs. New York: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Spade, Paul. 1994. Five texts on the mediaeval problem of universals: Porphyry, boethius, abelard, Duns Scotus, and Ockham. Indianapolis: Hackett.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2013. Deictic imaginings: Semiosis at work and at play. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-3-642-39443-0Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2016a. Indexical scaffolds to habit-formation. In D. West & M. Anderson (eds.), Consensus on Peirce’s concept of habit, 215–240. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_13Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2016b. Archaeology of concepts, 13–22. Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center Press.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2017. Virtual habit as episode-builder in the inferencing process. Cognitive Semiotics 10(1). 55–75. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2017-0005.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2018. Fashioning episodes through virtual habit: The efficacy of pre-lived experience. Studia Gilsoniana 7(1). 81–99.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2019. Index as scaffold to logical and final interpretants: Compulsive Urges and modal submissions. Semiotica Special Invitation Issue 2019(228). 333–353. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2018-0085.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2021. Peirce’s vocation for consciousness: An evolutionary account. Semiotica 243. 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2021-0123.Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2022a. Narrative as dialectic abduction. Cham: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-3-031-15093-7Search in Google Scholar
West, Donna E. 2022b. Linguistic and visuospatial chunking as quantitative constraints on propositional logic. In M. Danesi (ed.), Handbook of cognitive mathematics. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-3-031-03945-4_44Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Foreword
- Articles
- The semiotic phenomenology of inverse alteroception
- The cultural semiotics of Jingshen and cognitive homeostasis
- Facing objects of haecceity: advantages of Peirce’s categories
- Apple-and-pin drawings by blind novices show occluded features: region theory
- Art, pictoriality and semiotics – a reflection on Göran Sonesson’s contribution to art theory
- Enhanced agency and the visual thinking of design
- Comparing verbal and visual rhetoric – and the danger of “empirical shorthands”
- Dialogue and the “miracle of language”: the early and late Bakhtin
- Psychologism in the study of children’s semiotic development
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Foreword
- Articles
- The semiotic phenomenology of inverse alteroception
- The cultural semiotics of Jingshen and cognitive homeostasis
- Facing objects of haecceity: advantages of Peirce’s categories
- Apple-and-pin drawings by blind novices show occluded features: region theory
- Art, pictoriality and semiotics – a reflection on Göran Sonesson’s contribution to art theory
- Enhanced agency and the visual thinking of design
- Comparing verbal and visual rhetoric – and the danger of “empirical shorthands”
- Dialogue and the “miracle of language”: the early and late Bakhtin
- Psychologism in the study of children’s semiotic development
