Re: Kaina Stoicheia -- Rambling Review of Past Discussions

Peircers,

Rummaging through the Arisbe and Inquiry List archives of old discussions,
I find an early allusion to Kaina Stoicheia in a post by Martin Lefebvre,
where he quotes a long passage from near the end of the Essential Peirce
text of "New Elements".  As far as I can tell from the archive record,
this appears in a thread titled "Questions Involving Pure Symbols".
Here is a copy of my reply that quotes Martin's excerpt and remarks,
slightly reformatted for the sake of archive and browser page widths.

@ Jon Awbrey (Wed May 18 11:30:20 CDT 2005)
• http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2005-May/002710.html
• http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002690.html

> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> 
> QUIPS.  Discussion Note 24
> 
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> 
> ML = Martin Lefebvre
> 
> Cf: QUAGS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2658
> 
> Martin,
> 
> Thanks for saving me a mess of typing, as I had already
> begun slouching my way toward these very passages from
> the "New Elements" on the closely related QUAGS thread
> when other issues intervened.  But I am way behind in
> my correspondence, both my double and my triple ones,
> and as it will be a while before I can get to this,
> I will simply archive this note where I can find
> it later.
> 
> Jon Awbrey
> 
> ML wrote:
>>
>> (I've been away from the list for some time due to various
>> committments -- but I'll take this opportunity to thank
>> everyone who had responded to my post regrding Rorty
>> some time ago).
>> 
>> Catching up on the discussion regarding the (im)possibility
>> of "pure symbols" [I am in complete agreement with what I have
>> read so far by Joe Ransdell and others contra Jon Awbey's claim]
>> I would like to propose the following (taken from "New Elements",
>> in EP II) where Peirce posits the symbol as origin of the universe.
>> Surely one would think that if there's a "pure symbol" to be found
>> in Peirce, this is where it should be found: the originary Nothing
>> of the universe. And yet, in reading this difficult passage one
>> sees that this is not the case:
>>
>> - - - - - - - - - - - Beginning of quote - - - - - - - - - - -
>> 
>> "If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was
>> in the beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no
>> reaction and no quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and
>> no time, but just nothing at all.  Not determinately nothing.  For
>> that which is determinately not A supposes the being of A in some
>> mode.  Utter indetermination.  But a symbol alone is indeterminate.
>> Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute beginning, is
>> a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of things can alone
>> be understood. What logically follows? We are not to content ourselves
>> with our instinctive sense of logicality. That is logical which comes
>> from the essential nature of a symbol. Now it is of the essential nature
>> of a symbol that it determines an interpretant, which is itself a symbol.
>> A symbol, therefore, produces an endless series of interpretants.  Does
>> anybody suspect all this of being sheer nonsense?  Distinguo.  There can,
>> it is true, be no positive information about what antedated the entire
>> Universe of being; because, to begin with, there was nothing to have
>> information about. But the universe is intelligible;  and therefore it
>> is possible to give a general account of it and its origin.  This general
>> account is a symbol; and from the nature of a symbol, it must begin with
>> the formal assertion that there was an indeterminate nothing of the nature
>> of a symbol.  This would be false if it conveyed any information.  But it
>> is the correct and logical manner of beginning an account of the universe.
>> As a symbol it produced its infinite series of interpretants, which in the
>> beginning were absolutely vague like itself.  But the direct interpretant
>> of any symbol must in the first stage of it be merely the tabula rasa for
>> an interpretant. Hence the immediate interpretant of this vague Nothing
>> was not even determinately vague, but only vaguely hovering between
>> determinacy and vagueness; and its immediate interpretant was vaguely
>> hovering between vaguely hovering between vagueness and determinacy and
>> determinate vagueness or determinacy, and so on, ad infinitum. But every
>> endless series must logically have a limit.
>>  
>> Leaving that line of thought unfinished for the present owing to the feeling
>> of insecurity it provokes, let us note, first, that it is of the nature of a
>> symbol to create a tabula rasa and therefore an endless series of tabulae rasae,
>> since such creation is merely representation, the tabulae rasae being entirely
>> indeterminate except to be representative. Herein is a real effect; but a symbol
>> could not be without that power of producing a real effect. The symbol represents
>> itself to be represented; and that representedness is real owing to its utter
>> vagueness. For all that is represented must be thoroughly borne out.
>> 
>> For reality is compulsive. But the compulsiveness is absolutely hic et nunc.
>> It is for an instant and it is gone. Let it be no more and it is absolutely
>> nothing. The reality only exists as an element of the regularity.  And the
>> regularity is the symbol.  Reality, therefore, can only be regarded as the
>> limit of the endless series of symbols.
>> 
>> A symbol is essentially a purpose, that is to say, is a representation
>> that seeks to make itself definite, or seeks to produce an interpretant
>> more definite than itself. For its whole signification consists in its
>> determining an interpretant; so that it is from its interpretant that
>> it derives the actuality of its signification.
>> 
>> A tabula rasa having been determined as representative of the symbol
>> that determines it, that tabula rasa tends to become determinate.  The
>> vague always tends to become determinate, simply because its vagueness
>> does not determine it to be vague (as the limit of an endless series).
>> In so far as the interpretant is the symbol, as it is in some measure,
>> the determination agrees with that of the symbol.  But in so far as it
>> fails to be its better self, it is liable to depart from the meaning
>> of the symbol.  Its purpose, however, is to represent the symbol in
>> its representation of its object; and therefore, the determination
>> is followed by a further development, in which it becomes corrected.
>> It is of the nature of a sign to be an individual replica and to be
>> in that replica a living general.  By virtue of this, the interpretant
>> is animated by the original replica, or by the sign it contains, with
>> the power of representing the true character of the object.  That the
>> object has at all a character can only consist in a representation that
>> it has so, a representation having power to live down all opposition.
>> In these two steps, of determination and of correction, the interpretant
>> aims at the object more than at the original replica and may be truer
>> and fuller than the latter. The very entelechy of being lies in being
>> representable.  A sign cannot even be false without being a sign and so
>> far as it is a sign it must be true.  A symbol is an embryonic reality
>> endowed with power of growth into the very truth, the very entelechy of
>> reality.  This appears mystical and mysterious simply because we insist
>> on remaining blind to what is plain, that there can be no reality which
>> has not the life of a symbol.
>> 
>> How could such an idea as that of red arise?  It can only have been by
>> gradual determination from pure indeterminacy.  A vagueness not determined
>> to be vague, by its nature begins at once to determine itself.  Apparently
>> we can come no nearer than that to understanding the universe.
>> 
>> That is not necessarily logical which strikes me today as logical;
>> still less, as mathematics amply exemplifies, is nothing logical
>> except what appears to me so.  That is logical which it is necessary
>> to admit in order to render the universe intelligible.  And the first
>> of all logical principles is that the indeterminate should determine
>> itself as best it may.
>> 
>> A chaos of reactions utterly without any approach to law is absolutely nothing;
>> and therefore pure nothing was such a chaos.  Then pure indeterminacy having
>> developed determinate possibilities, creation consisted in mediating between
>> the lawless reactions and the general possibilities by the influx of a symbol.
>> This symbol was the purpose of creation.  Its object was the entelechy of being
>> which is the ultimate representation.
>>
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - End of quote - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>> 
>> As mentioned above, this is a difficult passage.
>> I'll venture a brief commentary nonetheless.
>> 
>> The "indeterminate of the absolute beginning", claims Peirce, is a symbol,
>> because only a symbol is indeterminate (unlike symbols, whatever makes icons
>> and indices signs of some object -- resemblance and existential relation --
>> remains such even if they are not interpreted.  Thus what makes the symbol
>> a sign has no statute whatsoever outside interpretation: a symbol has no
>> relation to its object outside an interpretative law or habit which is what
>> makes it a sign in the first place).  Following Peirce's argument here it
>> would seem that this symbol is interpreted by another (less vague) symbol
>> and so on and so forth until the purpose that is the originary symbol finds
>> ever more individual (or replicated/existential/real -- i.e. "real" in this
>> instance is understood in existential term) manifestations of it.  Now, it
>> follows from this that the interpretant of this symbol, though itself a symbol,
>> must be indexically connected to the symbol it interprets (i.e. it is an index
>> of the relation between the symbol and its object, and therefore an index of
>> the object in some respect). Morover, because the interpretant is also a symbol
>> of the object of the first symbol -- object which is itself of the nature of
>> a symbol in that it is general -- it also follows that both the symbol and its
>> interpretant must be iconic (at least in some respect): all three of them must
>> share the quality of being symbols.

-- 

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