I don't know how many of you bothered to read it, but over at the Valve there was an interesting discussion of Derrida and Signs this week. The discussion ended up being primarily about whether Derrida was an idealist. While arguably not a lot was decided upon in the thread, I think the problematic status of an unqualified use of labels like "idealist" or "monist" was shown. However what perhaps ended up being the underlying issue and what wasn't agreed upon was the nature of a Derridean sign. Now as is well know Derrida makes use of Peirce's notion of a symbol. (See chapter 2 of the first section of On Grammatology) However, as I discussed the other day, Peirce has three kinds of signs: symbol, icon, and index. A common interpretation of Derrida is that he only makes use of the symbol in his work.
This isn't the only criticism of Derrida though. Interestingly I was reading a paper by Robert Scholes today from Critical Inquiry (Autumn 1980). The paper was "Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative" (pg. 204). In it Scholes argues that Derrida rejects the sign as a trichotomy. That is that Derrida's sign isn't the Peircean sign. Now he accepts the interpretant and sign aspects of the sign but feels that Derrida doesn't make use of the object aspect of the sign.
Peirce's "tri-relative" notion of semiosis places him close to Frege, to Carnap, and to Ogden and Richards and far from Saussure and his followers. We can display their terminologies in the following way, placing the comparable (but by no means identical) terms of each formulation in the same column:
| Frege | Expression | Sense | Reference |
| Carnap | Expression | Intension | Extension |
| Ogden/Richards | Sign | Interpretant | Object |
| Saussure | Signifier | Signified | _________ |
The Saussurian formulation, like most "linguistic" views of language, eliminates the third column and with this gesture erases the world. There are two possible justifications for this. One is that question of reference are outside linguistic discourse. A discipline may set its own boundaries, and in the case linguistic scholars have chosen to eliminate a potentially awkward portion of their possible field. The second justification is more ambiguous, more philosophical. It argues that reference is a mirage of language, that there is no simple reference or unmediated perception, that hte world is always already textualized by arche-writing or system of differentiation which effectively brackets or sets aside questions of reference, eliminating the terms in the third column not by choice but b necessity. This is (very roughly) the position articulated by Derrida in Of Grammatology.
Now this isn't completely wrong, in my opinion. As I said in the Valve thread, everything is mediated for Derrida. However this isn't true just for Derrida. That's true for Peirce as well. Yet Peirce clearly still keeps the Object aspect of the sign.
I would argue (and may make the argument explicit in a future post) that for Peirce while we can talk about the object of a sign, this is still talk mediated by signs. Thus we never have absolute cognization of the object. All we have access to are signs. Put an other way, for Peirce, thinking is always a matter of thirdness and thus of signs. While we can talk about pure quality (firstness) or pure action (secondness) our thinking of them are always mediated. Unlike Descartes we have no privileged (unmediated) access to phenomena. All phenomena arrives as understood in a mediated form.
Peirce, however, doesn't deny the reality objects in the least. However this existence of objects (or secondness as Peirce deems it - see CP 8.330) generates object of thought (thirdness or signs). Put an other way when we talk about mind we're always talking about signs and thereby the sign of the object. We never reach the object itself in thought. But we must not confuse the absent object as implying that the sign has no object beyond other signs. It is true that the interpretant of a sign is always an other sign. (As Derrida notes and makes use of) But objects are an other thing entirely.
What one must consider for Peirce is that for Peirce there is a necessary and presumably irreducible aspect of vagueness in all signs. This logic of vagueness is key for understanding Peirce and I believe makes Derrida make a lot more sense as well. For Peirce we never know absolutely. There is always fallibility and vaguess is the ""continuum of uncertainty and of indeterminacy" in which we think. Vagueness is for Peirce what Phillys Chiasson calls, "a veil of ignorance." Vagueness brings us to demand inquiry and is key to Peirce's critical common-sensism. Within the vague the principle of non-contradiction does not apply. Within it we find antimonies but these are manifestations of the logic of vagueness.
Peirce makes this conception of the object of a sign in terms of vagueness rather explicit in his Dec 23, 1908 letter to Lady Welby (EP 2:478) There he splits the object of a sign into two parts, the dynamic or dynamoid object and the immediate object. This is roughly the object as absent (or as Peirce puts it, "the Object outside of the sign") and the object as present to mind. The dynamic object (what we'd think of as the object) determines the immediate object which determines the sign which then determines the interpretant. Peirce breaks the intepretant down as well, but for now we can skip that. Peirce notes that "the interpretant is all that the sign conveys."
What is key for our purposes is that "the sign must indicate [the dynamic object] by a hint; and this hint, or its substance, is the immediate object.
This signifying entails that signs always are made up of other signs (since the object is part of the sign and the object is itself partially this other sign) The fact that the immediate object indicates the dynamic object by means of a hint implies that all signs indicate their objects vaguely. An other way to consider this is that the immediate object is "the object as the sign represents it." (482)
Now how does this relate to Derrida? Well Derrida quotes Peirce relative to symbols and considers what we'd call unlimited semiosis is terms of the meaning of a symbol being an other symbol with no ultimate end. However people assume that because Derrida doesn't quote Peirce on "going the other way" (towards the object instead of towards the interpretant) that Derrida is either excluding objects, ignoring indexes, and limiting Peirce. Hopefully I've made clear that Peirce adopts a position explicitly identical to Derrida.
For Derrida the objects themselves are always absent. Yet Peirce explicitly says, that the dynamic object is the "really efficient but not immediately present object." This never immediately present object (or, put an other way, essential absent object) is identical to what Derrida calls the other. However for Peirce all signs indicate this object and are thus, relative to the object, indexes. This is the same for Derrida.
Now given that we have only vague access through a hint for Peirce, we're always left in an undecided state. Further since, going backwards towards the object, we can never reach the object in thought, our index is always undecided between whether the dynamic object hinted at is this absent object that started off the semiosis or if it is just a prior immediate object. (An other representation) This is what Derrida is getting at by his point about our signs being undecided between reference (to the ultimate dynamic object) or to sense (or an other representation of the object). This conclusion of Derrida's is part of Peirce's logic of vagueness as applied to the formal consideration of signs.
Nice post, Clark; I agree with it so totally that I can say little more in response to it than, "yes (yes)".
I would argue (and may make the argument explicit in a future post) that for Peirce while we can talk about the object of a sign, this is still talk mediated by signs.
At the risk of reducing your excellent argument to a slogan, the above is what I take to be the implication of Peirce's claim that "we think only in signs". And I think it's no accident that Derrida not only cites that claim (p.48), but reiterates it by italicising it (p.50). The key passage linking Derrida's work to your account of Peirce's account of the object is toward the bottom of p.49, when Derrida follows Peirce's argument that "the idea of manifestation is the idea of a sign" with the following:
There is thus no phenomenality reducing the sign of the representer so that the things signified may be allowed to glow finally in the luminosity of presence. The so-called "thing itself" is always already a representamen shielded from the simplicity of intuitive evidence. The representamen functions only by giving rise to an interpretant that itself becomes a sign and so on to infinity.
None of this is to tell you anything you don't already know. But I did want to add that I think that for those people who would largely accept Peirce's work but nevertheless object to Derrida the key to their objection is the "and so on to infinity". You've kind of captured that supplement with the phrase "unlimited semiosis" (which is a relatively widely used term). The standard objection here is that, while Peirce "is a pragmatist" and therefore recognises that "infinite regression" is always limited by practical constraints, Derrida (somehow) does not understand that semiosis is thus limited.
Now I think this not only is a ridiculous assessment of Derrida, but also sells Peirce short. That it's a ridiculous assessment of Derrida is no surprise: as with every charge of "linguistic idealism" the assessment studiously ignores the fact that "writing" stands not simply for "sign of a sign" but for secondariness, externality, materiality generally. In other words, the whole point of the Grammatology is to underscore that all that is — and hence everything that could be appealed to as some kind of ground, etc. — is precisely of the order of the "practical constraints" that limit "unlimited semiosis". At the same time, though, such practical constraints (what may be called a "context") remain of the order of writing, which is to say derivative, auxiliary, exterior, accidental, etc. (i.e. precisely the kind of "qualities" in which a metaphysics may never ground itself): the "limits" to unlimited semiosis are always contingent, provisional, etc.
And when we can see that argument in Derrida's work, we can see why I think the attempt to distinguish Peirce from Derrida along the lines set out above are in fact unfair to Peirce. Far too many people read, do they not, Peirce's "pragmatism", his insistence on the practical constraints to semiosis, as a kind of metaphysics, a simple, undivided foundation for meaning, experience, action, etc?
With that in mind, I would love to see what you've called Peirce's "logic of vagueness" set out in terms that can show up the necessary vagueness of a context, of the practical constraints or "pragmatic considerations" which a certain class of "Peirceans" (or language philosophers generally) attempt to use as a trump card against unlimited semiosis.
Cheers
BTW, I wonder if you've ever come across a book by Horst Ruthrof called Semantics and the Body: Meaning from Frege to the Postmodern? From what I've seen you write here and in the Valve discussion you might find it interesting, if only as confirmation of what you already know.
I think the Peirceans who, by and large, get upset at Derrida do so because they know Derrida only second hand (and then badly through "exposes" like Habermas') or else they truly dislike the style of Derrida's writing. I have to admit that there are many of Derrida's writings I like, however even I find the style to be a bit much at times. As you can see even though I largely consider myself a Heideggarian as much as a Peircean my style of writing is much more analytic. I still think the other style is appropriate at times, mind you. But I tend to accept Peirce's entreaty to make our ideas as clear as possible.
The problem with standard objection you raise as it applies to Peirce is that Peirce requires that there be infinities in almost everything. Indeed one of the main reasons folks reject Peirce is over his doctrine of continuity which suffuses nearly every part of his thought. More so than any other pragmatist I suspect. While Peirce allows that we know the truth now, we can't be sure we know it. (It becomes a stability point of belief - something that Derrida's talk about at times) However Peirce's notion of truth as being "in the long run" ultimately only makes sense in the context of his views on transfinite numbers. If you or anyone else reading is interested in this Kelly Parker's excellent book The Continuity of Peirce's Thought is an amazingly well written discussion of this. It's also an excellent introduction to Peirce's thought.
An other objection I've heard is that Peirce's rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself goes against the Levinasian and Derridean notion of the absolute Other which can never be totally brought into the light. I think there is perhaps something to this criticism. However one has to recognize that for Levinas and Derrida this is always the issue of a finite totality (and perhaps infinity as well if it is considered in terms of the two lower transfinite sets: aleph0 and aleph1). However as I mentioned for Peirce, while many things may be knowable by a community in full, everything is knowable in full only in the indeterminate "in the long run" which, as I mentioned, is tied up into transfinite sets larger than aleph1.
As to context and vagueness. All context is itself signs. The meaning of a sign is often determined via "argument" (broadly construed) which is roughly taking various items and relating them in law-like relations to produce a conclusion. Logic as hermeneutics. This kind of sign-process is certainly discussed a lot by Peirce. Since all of the signs involved are vague (except in the case of absolute deductive logic - but for Peirce that always deals only with possibilities) then vagueness never exits. Inquiry always proceeds via abduction.
I've not read that book of Ruthrof's I confess. It's always the same problem: so much to read so little time. And between readings of new books one always has to return to the "important" texts and reread those carefully.
Joe Ransdell's "The Uses and Abuses of the Immediate/Dynamical Object Distinction" was just put up at Arisbe (the Peirce repository). It's relevant here although I don't agree with everything Ransdell argues relative to Peirce and phenomenology.
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