Abstract
This inquiry advances the claim that Indexes in Secondness constitute the earliest and firmest foundation for the establishment of habit, undergirded by habit-change and logical interpretants. Convincing evidence for the primacy of Index as an implicit source to determine regularities in lived experience and in objective logic is proffered. The case is made that Indexical regularities form directional templates early in development which prime the semiosis of more objective logic-based regularities (played out in revisions of logical interpretants). While a predisposition may preempt salience of indexical templates (gaze trajectories, motion and force toward objects), more complex indexical regularities (perspective-taking), and focus with the mind’s-eye on potentialities (virtual habit) constitute acquired, more consciousness-based habits. Ultimately, Peirce’s use of habit transcends conformity to compulsory participation in events—occasional non-conformity to a pattern is essential to what he means by “habituescence,” or, the conscious awareness of taking a habit (c. 1913: MS 930).
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Notes
- 1.
Short (2007: 178) claims that the Immediate, Dynamic, and Final Interpretants comprise one trichotomy; the Emotional, Energetic, and Logical Interpretants apply to Peirce’s phaneroscopy, allowing each latter member to be enjoined to any member of the former triad.
- 2.
While Robin’s (1967) catalogue determines the manuscript to be undated, subsequent investigation by the Peirce Edition Project has revealed that Peirce composed the manuscript in 1913.
- 3.
Peirce defines Logical Interpretant in MS 318 (1907) as follows: “meaning of a general concept.”
- 4.
“An index is a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant.”
- 5.
“[Logical interpretants] must, therefore, be identified with that ‘meaning’ which we have all along been seeking. In that capacity, they are habits of internal or imaginary action, abstracted from all reference to the individual mind in which they might happen to be implanted, and those whose future actions they would guide.”
- 6.
This notation signifies age in years followed by months; this is the convention employed in developmental science literature.
- 7.
“[To] believe the concept in question is applicable to anything is to be prepared under certain circumstances, and when actuated by given motives, to act in a certain way” (1907: EP 2: 432).
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West, D.E. (2016). Indexical Scaffolds to Habit-Formation. In: West, D., Anderson, M. (eds) Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45920-2_13
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