[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
RE: the complaint below The messages of condolence were not accepted for distribution because of the repeated use of multiple masked identities on the list by a person or persons using "cispec" (or "cispeirce") as address, and bcause of the emanation of messages harassing the manager of PEIRCE-L from the same address. . As a point of list policy, it should be understood that it is NOT the use of a nom de plume (pseudonym) masking the identity of an individual person that is objectionable since there are sometimes legitimate reasons why a person would wish to participate in the discussion using a masked identity. Anyone doing so, however, should always use the same pseudonym so that, for purposes of discussion here, his or her contribution will carry with it the force of a consistent personal identity. This is important for the following reason. Whether two persons A and B agree or disagree is significant for discussional purposes here and the significance is based on the fact that it will be assumed by others that A and B are in fact two persons rather than one. When they are not, others on the list are misled logically by the false assumption, which means that the person who has pretended to multiple identities has practiced logically relevant deception as a participant here, and that is contrary to the purposes of the forum. Joseph Ransdell manager of PEIRCE-L - Original Message From: ALASE _Asociación Latinoamericana de Semiótica_ [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Sunday, October 8, 2006 12:28:45 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Death of Arnold SheppersonThe 30 October, 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent repeatedly to peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu a message of condolence for Arnold Shepperson's death (see below) that has not been diffused. We want to know the reason of that ignominy, Mr. list manager. Fecha: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 22:54:19 + (GMT) De: "Centro Interamericano de Semi¨tica" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Añadir a la Libreta de contactos Yahoo! DomainKeys confirm¨ que el mensaje fue enviado por yahoo.com.ar. Más info. Asunto: Death of Arnold Shepperson A: peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Arnold has been a brother for us. We are deeply aching. Cispeirce Preguntá. Respond¨. Descubr¨. Todo lo que quer¨as saber, y lo que ni imaginabas, está en Yahoo! Respuestas (Beta). Probalo ya! --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What
s alluding to, given that his aim in the paper was primarily to establish an understanding of the fourth method only. As regards why I think the two psychological laws might have had something to do with neural responsiveness, I say this because of the reference to that sort of consideration at the end of section 3 of the Fixation article. Whatever these laws are, though, they would have to be ones that could be instantiated by the will of the person threatened with the prospect of losing a belief, such that a result would be the reinforcement of the shaky belief such as would be involved in deliberately avoiding any further exposure to possible doubt-inducing ideas and in the repeating of reassuring experiences. But how to formulate anything like that which might pass muster as a psychological law simply escapes me. Joe[EMAIL PROTECTED]- Original Message From: Jeff Kasser [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:15:49 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: WhatThis is intriguing stuff, Joe and I'd like to hear more about what you have in mind.First, I'm not sure what sort of special relationship the twopsychological laws in question need to bear to the method of tenacity.If they're in fact psychological (i.e. psychical) laws, then it would be unsurprising if the other methods of inquiry made important use of them.I thought that the only special connection between the laws and tenacity is that the method tries to deploy those laws especially simply and directly.Next, can you help me see more clearly how the passage you quote in support of your suggestion that Peirce has in mind laws concerning the properties of neural tissue, etc. is supposed to yield *two* psychological (in any sense of ""psychological," since you rightly point out that idioscopic laws might be fair game at this point) laws?I don't love my interpretation and would like to find a way of reading Peirce as clearer and less sloppy about this issue.But I don't see how your reading leaves us with two laws that Peirce could have expected the reader to extract from the text.Thanks to you and to both Jims and the other participants; Ithis discussion makes me resolve to do less lurking on the list (though I've so resolved before).Jeff-Original Message-From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduDate: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:57:59 -0700 (PDT)Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Jeff Kasser says: JK:First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place.These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation.""If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it."In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws."Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.REPLY: JR:The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws".What would the second one be: If x is a belief thenx is a habit?That doesn't even sound like a law.And as regards the first, what exactly would it be?If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends?Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at?But nothing like either of these seems muchlike something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods?He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believingis a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions".That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular. I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when he says "… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce on personality, individualism and science
Bill, you say:BB: Were Arjuna of right mind, he would be dead to self and all earthly cares,his mind clearly fixed on the Absolute. REPLY: But according to my understanding of the Gita the idea is that to be of the right mind is to clearly fixed on your earthly task, on what you are doing right now, like any craftsman at work in his craft. That is a very different matter than being "fixed on the Absolute", which does not seem to me to be recommended anywhere in the Gita. What could that mean in Hinduism? Of course, the objection is obvious, given my interpretation, namely, who says what your task is? Well, Arjuna was a general; and the dramatic context provides the task there: be a general and do what that dictates now. But then in real life that is frequently the way it is. Wriggle around any way you like, at times; there is no getting around what your task appears to you to be, unless you are in the business of rejecting all obligations in principle. Now, Arjuna might well be faulted for never having asked himself before that moment, when all the troops are lined up, whether he really thinks he ought to be try to be a general, instead of raising that question at the last minute. But then he might have said, well, but is there no legitimate occasion ever to be a general, the task of whom is precisely to slaughter the enemy at certain times, no matter who the enemy is? And then we would have a wholly different kind of moral reflection going on. But do you think the point the Gita makes is simply wrong, regardless of context, or isn't it right in saying, in effect, "Hey, the world contains many unspeakably vile things, never to be justified by any reasoning based on practical worldly consequences. There is no solution at the level of this-worldly understanding, and no conclusion to be drawn about this world except that it is constructed in an unspeakably vile and unjust way, if you try to assess it in calculative terms of good and bad produced. But in fact these armies are drawn up and are going to be slaughtering one another regardless of what you decide now. But don't confuse yourself with the being that decided that the world would be like this, if it makes sense to say that there is any such being." There is something that simply passes the possibility of a mere stance of moral self-righteousness about such situations. And sometimes there is nothing to do but what is wrong, any way you want to look at it. (He is not, after all, being urged to slaughter needlessly -- any more than, say, he is being urged to torture people by proxy, as generals and commanders-in-chief frequently are, Western and Eastern alike. Would that the products of Western civilization and the Christian religion could be expected to rise routinely to the level of a sincere and intelligent devotee of the Gita and just do their job instead of exploiting its power! ) So the only way out, when you are in such a situation of moral impossibility is just to do your job, assuming you know what your job really is." In my opinion, the next stage of development after Hinduism is Socratic Platonism -- Plato is acually a Reform Hindu in my opinion -- where you take as your job the task of, say, trying to get clear on what it means to be a general. Not that that gets you off the hook of these morally imponderable situtations, but at least you've got a better job! And if you ever find yourself in position to be the executive ruler of a great country you might be able to avoid disgracing your office and your political and religious tradition when such questions as, What is the job of a President? and What is the job of a torturer? arises! I am reminded just now, by the way, of that passage in the l898 lectures on "vitally important topics" where Peirce says that the vivisectionist becomes immoral precisely at the moment when he tries to justify his actions in slicing up the dog on the grounds that it will have beneficial results. Joe --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l]Re: Arisbe archives availability
Irving Anellis asks: Is there a possibility of setting up a dedicated server for Arisbe at your university, at the Peirce Edition Project offices in Indy, or some similar venue such as the Peirce Project at U Montreal or some other university? If I can figure out the technicalities of how we might incorporate it into the Peirce Publishing web site at http://www.peircepublishing.com, I'd be willing to give it free space as a public service to our community. REPLY: Thanks very much for your offer, Irving. I should be finding out today whether or not the change in management at my local ISP, The Door, to a nationally based ISP called "Windstream", will involve a reinstatement of a hosting commitment there, and if so at what expense. The Door was doing it pro bono, the new company probably not. Since ARISBE is not a huge site, compared to some -- it uses a little less than 70 megabytes of space, which is not much anymore -- the monthly fee will probably be pretty small, small enough at least to stay with them for a little longer even at my own expense, if necessary. But the real need is to establish both ARISBE and PEIRCE-L on the same server and to integrate them as effectively as possible. Just how this is to be done is not at all clear to me, simply as a question of efficieny of function, But on the technical side, it will also entail getting a first-rate listserver program, such as the one that used to be called "listserv", for example -- I forget the current name for it -- that has an archival system which is more usable than any others I am acquainted with, which requires quite a bit more money for the deluxe version. But that is what is needed as far as the list server goes. (Although it is questionable whether I can actually retrieve all of the old messages -- going back to August 1993 -- from the computing people at Texas Tech, who have changed the server system several times over the years and never yet lived up to their obligation to port the archives from server to server when they did so, I have copies myself of nearly everything from the beginning, perhaps with an occasional loss of a few messages at certain times but with no big gaps; but the conversion of them into a common format will be a time consuming task since ti cannot be fully automated. But it can be done and should be done.) The upshot of all this is that what is really wanted is a new home, as permanent as possible, for both ARISBE and the list, a functional integration of them, and a reconstituting of the archives for the list from its beginnings some thirteen years ago up to the present.. Okay, one problem this poses is that it seems clear that to do this right is going to require making the combined server system self-sustaining financially, and that raises the question of how, since I take it for granted that neither the ARISBE website nor the PEIRCE-L list should have any registration fee or any other impediment to universal access and use. My non-expert impression is that although there is not much problem with the maintenance of a server for a website like ARISBE as it presently stands, the same cannot be said for a list server owing, first, to the many technical complications which email systems introduce under the best of conditions, and second, to the fact that the onslaught of spammers, invasive and malicious hackers, and the like is both constant and is constantly changing as regards the kind of invasive and destructive strategies being used and likely to continue at the same or even greater pace into the indefinite future as spies and saboteurs of every type -- governmental, commercial, religious fanatics, and miscellaneous indiividual nihilists, cranks, and adventurers -- continue to figure out new ways to eavesdrop and sometimes simply disrupt communication of every sort. In short, it is my impression that it is probably unwise for well-intentioned individuals such as yourself, with small business or non-commercial organizations or projects, to take on the responsibility for maintaining list servers in particular, since they are a constant headache and are not likely to be any less so for the foreseeable future. This then raises the question of what sort of institutions should be turned to for hosting these things, and of course one immediately thinks of universities as the natural home for such entities. However, the problem with that is that universities are, as a general rule, no less unscrupulous in respect to any matters that they regard as part of their proper concern than commercial organizations or governments (and of course they sometimes are just a part of a governmental system). There are no doubt exceptions to this, but this has little to do with their prestige as universities and if you do not know the inner workings of the given university you cannot know which are and which are not scrupulous in the way you want them to be. Far from it being the case that you can turn to
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce-James question
It's just a typing error for "1869". But as regards the question, it is reasonable to suppose that James was influenced by that article even if there is no evidence other than the evidence for him having read it, provided there is something in it which suggests this. It was during a period in which James would have been susceptible to such an influence (e.g. the metaphysical club was formed in l871). Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Jorge Lurac [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Wednesday, October 4, 2006 5:19:59 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce-James questionAre you sure? James died August 26, 1910. J. Lurac _You wrote: I've been away from the list a while and don't know whether this has been discussed before. Perhaps you can help me. I've been concerned with James lately, particularly his comment about Peirce's essay which he found in "comprehensible," despite Peirce's "vocal elucidations," but which "interested me [James] strangely."Despite Peirce's "crabbed" writing, I think James studied the printed essay later and figured it out. I also think - but want some confirmation - that parts of that "strangely interesting" essay influenced James' with respect to the will to believe and with respect to risk. This is not to say that Peirce would have agreed with what James made of Peirce's essay. The essay which James alluded to, in his letter to Bowditch, seems to have been, "The Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic," written in 1969. __Correo Yahoo!Espacio para todos tus mensajes, antivirus y antispam ¡gratis! Reg¨strate ya - http://correo.espanol.yahoo.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: Memorial: Arnold Shepperson
Fprwarded to PEIRCE-L for Keyan Tomaselli: A memorial for Arnold Shepperson- Forwarded Message From: Keyan Tomaselli [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: undisclosed-recipientsSent: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 5:06:49 AMSubject: Memorial: Arnold SheppersonA memorial has been organised to pay our last respects to Arnold:Venue:Grobler Room, Afrikaans, HowardCollege, UKZNDate:Friday 6 OctoberTime:1.15pmCondolences have been received from all over the world.Many ofArnold's colleagueshave inquired about the possibility of donating toa fund for the education of Arnold's adopted young son,Eddie-Lou Please lodge any cash donations (of any amount) with Ms Santie Strong,CCMS Postgraduate Administrator.Alternatively and preferably, pleasedeposit your donation in: Name of account:Arnold SheppersonABSA Flexi Save account no.917-200-1854Branch Code:632005Swift code:ABSA ZAJJCards and e-mailed condolences can be sent to Keyan. These will bepassed on to the family. Keyan Tomaselli, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli, Marc Caldwell and graduatestudents, CCMSJohn Collier and Julia Clare (Philosophy)Please find our Email Disclaimer here: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
Jeff Kasser says: JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.REPLY: JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular. I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when he says "… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?" This involves reiteration of effort with anticipation of it having a result in consequence of it , and thus implicitly makes reference to a possible sequential regularity of a lawlike nature. The two psychological laws might then be idioscopic rather than coenoscopic laws, having to do with the responsiveness of neural tissue to repeated stimulation and the like, which Peirce would know something about. It doesn't make any difference that it is not cenoscopic or properly philosophical since he is referring to it as something the devotee of tenacity exploits, not as something logic is based upon. This means that in referring to the two laws he is NOT referring to the basic principle that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as constituted by what would be logically described as a formal contradiction.Now, as regards that principle, the idea that inquiry -- thinking in the sense of "I just can't seem to think today" or "he is a competent thinker" -- is driven by doubt in the form of an exerienced contradiction is not a modern idea but has its origins at the very beginning of philosophy in the West in the practice of the dialectical craft of Socrates. Let me quote myself, from a paper I wrote a few years back, on the Socratic tradition in philosophy, which I claim to be the proper logical tradition to which we should be putting Peirce in relation In its origins Socratic dialectic probably developed as a modification of practices of eristic dispute that made useof the reductio techniques of the mathematicians, perhapsas especially modified by the Parmenidean formalists. Socratic dialectic differs importantly from the earlier argumentation, though, in at least two major respects,first, by conceiving of the elenchic or refutational aspect ofthe argumentation not as a basis from which one could then derive a positive conclusion either as the contradictory ofthe proposition refuted, as in reductio argumentation, orby affirming the alternative because it was the sole alternative available, but rather as inducing an aporia or awareness of an impasse in thought: subjectively, abewilderment or puzzlement. Second, it differs also by usingthe conflicting energies held in suspense in the aporia as the motivation of inquiry. (Ransdell, "Peirce and the SocraticTradition in Philosophy", Proceedings of the Peirce Society, 2000)
[peirce-l] Death of Arnold Shepperson
John and Gary: As you suggested, Gary, I have made the paper by Arnold on safety and the logic of hazard -- which is an application of Peirce's economy of research -- available at ARISBE, on the page for Peirce-related papers. The URL for that is: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf I discovered, though, that the link for the paper he did with Tomaselli, on cinematic consciousness., does not work, apparently because it is on a page on the website for the Journal of South African and American Studies called Safundi that has restricted access: the link merely leads to the home page of that journal (which looks like an excellent journal, by the way). I wonder if John, or somebody who knows Keyan Tomaselli could find out about making that available without restriction somehow. I could mount a copy of it at ARISBE, for example, or it could appear on somebody else's website to which I am given a URL that I can use. Arnold also did a transcription of a Peirce MS which I have a copy of . I don't know what plans he had for that but I am sure he would like to make it generally available. I forget the number of the MS at the moment but I can find the transcription, I am sure, and will mount that on the web page for Peirce's own work after checking it over to see if it needs any tweaking. I will be pleased to post anything else which he did which anyone thinks he would like to see made generally available in this way. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Death of Arnold Shepperson
My characterization of Arnold's paper "Safety and the Logic of Hazard" is not adequate and, after going through it again -- very hurriedly but with a better focus of attention than the first time through -- I realized that both his title and my brief characterization of it as being an application of Peirce's Economy of Research hardly even begins to suggest what it is really about. In fact, I don't know how to describe it in such a way as to do justice to it, but I do want to say that I find the range of things he is concerned with in it astonishing and extraordinarily exciting and I will be reading it again and again at the pace which it deserves. There is, for example a several page overview of Peirce's career and his philosophy which is masterfully done, well worth reading for that alone, as can also be said about his account of some of the principles of Peirce's pioneering theory of economy of research. But what especially interested me is a remarkable and lengthy discussion of the history of various and sometimes competing and contradicting conceptions of culture, tradition, and custom that have flourished at one time and another in the discourse of social theorists of various sorts, this being presented within the contextual frame of Peirce's categories of Quality, Actuality, and Representation which Arnold provides. The paper as a whole is so rich conceptually, and done with such a light touch and magisterial skill, that I can't imagine that there would be anyone in this forum who would not find what Arnold is doing in this paper to be of unusual interest for one reason or another. I would be very much interested myself in other people's reactions to it. Here is the URL again: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]- Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:29:14 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Death of Arnold SheppersonJohn and Gary: As you suggested, Gary, I have made the paper by Arnold on safety and the logic of hazard -- which is an application of Peirce's economy of research -- available at ARISBE, on the page for Peirce-related papers. The URL for that is:http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/shepperson/safety.pdf I discovered, though, that the link for the paper he did with Tomaselli, on cinematic consciousness., does not work, apparently because it is on a page on the website for the Journal of South African and American Studies called Safundi that has restricted access: the link merely leads to the home page of that journal (which looks like an excellent journal, by the way). I wonder if John, or somebody who knows Keyan Tomaselli could find out about making that available without restriction somehow. I could mount a copy of it at ARISBE, for example, or it could appear on somebody else's website to which I am given a URL that I can use.Arnold also did a transcription of a Peirce MS which I have a copy of . I don't know what plans he had for that but I am sure he would like to make it generally available. I forget the number of the MS at the moment but I can find the transcription, I am sure, and will mount that on the web page for Peirce's own work after checking it over to see if it needs any tweaking. I will be pleased to post anything else which he did which anyone thinks he would like to see made generally available in this way.Joe Ransdell[EMAIL PROTECTED]--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamental psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
Jim Piat and list: Jim, your analysis (see below) agrees with something I worked out on this from a different but complementary perspective some years ago in the process of teaching from "The Fixation of Belief" in my intro classes. I've also used it here a number of times but perhaps never explained adequately how I had derived it. I regard your analysis as a sort of verification of mine (or mine as a verification of yours) since it is clear that you did in fact come up with it from a different perspective. When that happens it is like the sort of corroboration or verification one gets which Peirce refers to in that marvelous passage where he says: ==quote Peirce CP 5.407= . . . all the followers of science are animated by a cheerful hope that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they apply it. One man may investigate the velocity of light by studying the transits of Venus and the aberration of the stars; another by the oppositions of Mars and the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites; a third by the method of Fizeau; a fourth by that of Foucault; a fifth by the motions of the curves of Lissajoux; a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, and a ninth, may follow the different methods of comparing the measures of statical and dynamical electricity. They may at first obtain different results, but, as each perfects his method and his processes, the results are found to move steadily together toward a destined centre. So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. ===end quote= Anyway, my analysis goes like this. Like you, I think of the fourth method as including the first three in a sense, though I would put it more exactly as including that distinctive element in each of the three which they respectively take account of. (Whether or not it would be possible to conceive of the third method as doing something analogous with the first two, and the second method as doing something analogous with the first method -- which would make for a very nice symmetry in the whole account -- I do not know since I have never tried to work that out.) The frame I use here is the formulation for the necessary components of what I call a "primary research publication", meaning by that the kind of publication often called in the sciences a "primary publication", in which one is making a research claim in the form of a report to other researchers in the same field about a conclusion one has come to about the subject-matter of common interest to those in the field, though only provisionally, on the assumption that others will or would come to the same conclusion about it provided that they were to start from the same agreed upon understanding of the subject-matter, already and independently established and thus to be taken for granted, and on the basis of this prior agreement were to draw an inference -- described as such in this paper -- from some specified premises to the conclusion which constitutes the research claim the paper is making. In other words, in putting the paper forth as a publication one is addressing one's research colleagues -- one's research peers -- and saying, in effect: "Here is a conclusion I have come to about our subject-matter, and I believe that you -- any of you -- will agree with me on this if you start from where I am starting [the premises of this particular claim] and draw the following inference [which could be any of the three basic types of inference -- deductive, inductive, or abductive -- or any co-ordinated sequence of such inferences] to this conclusion." This could be the description either of an observational or an experimental procedure, which are essentially the same thing since a scientific observation is one which is understood to occur consequent upon certain specified conditions of observation being met. Thus implicit in the making of the research claim is something essential in each of the methods. The essential element of the first method, which concerns only the conviction of the individual (which could be an individual group or team, by the way), is there at the most fundamental level of the claim: " I have come to the following conviction or conclusion . . .
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamental psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
But I would disagree with this part of what you say, Jim. Considered simply as methods in their own rights, I don't think one wants to speak of them as being incorporated AS methods within the fourth method. As a methodic approach to answering questions the method of tenacity is surely just a kind of stupidity, and it seems to me that the turn to authority, not qualified by any further considerations -- such as, say, doing so because there is some reason to think that the authority is actually in a better position to know than one is -- apart, I say, from that sort of qualification, the turn to authority as one's method seems little more intelligent than the method of tenacity, regarded in a simplistic way. The third method, supposing that it is understood as the acceptance of something because it ties in with -- coheres with -- a system of ideas already accepted, does seem more intelligent because it is based on the properties of ideas, which is surely more sophisticated than acceptance which is oblivious of considerations of coherence. But it is also the method of the paranoid, who might reasonably be said to be unintelligent to a dangerous degree at times. But I think that what you say in your other message doesn't commit you to regarding the methods themselves as "building blocks", which is a mistaken metaphor here. It is rather that what each of them respectively appeals to is indeed something to which the fourth method appeals: the value of self-identity, the value of identification (suitably qualified) with others. the value of recognition of a universe -- all of which are redeemed as valuable in the fourth method by the addition of the appeal to the force majeure of the real given the right sort of conditions, i.e. objectiviy. Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ - Original Message From: Jim Piat [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 3:56:39 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamental psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Dear Folks,Part of what I'm trying to say is that its not as though the scientific method were an entirely independent alternative to the other three methods. On the contrary the scientific method is built upon and incorporates the other three methods. The lst threeare not discredited methods they are the building blocks of the scienfic method. What gives sciences its power is that in combining the three methods (plus the emphasis upon observation -- which can or can not be part of the method of tenacity)it gives a more reliable basis for belief than any of the other three methods alone. But as for one and two -- yes I'd say they are the basis of the whole structure. Tenacity and authority can both include reason and observation. So if we include reason and observation in the lst two then we have all the elements of the scientific method. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
critical thought involved. The method of tenacity, by definition, involves none. The method of authority may involve some, though not necessarily by the believer, but by the authority. It is not excluded, by definition, that the authority in question may have arrived at the belief by a process involving critical thought, as well as having gained the authority for a reason. Well, I don't know. Don't remember Peirce ever writing along these lines. But it is an ordering of "intellectual enditions". So the method of tenacity would imply a conscious belief, in contrast to all the beliefs forced upon us by experience which we are not aware we are holding. CP 5.524 ""...For belief, while it lasts, is a strong habit, and, as such forces the man to believe until some surprise breaks the habit." Kirsti Määttänen [EMAIL PROTECTED]25.9.2006 kello 02:02, Joseph Ransdell kirjoitti: Dear Kirsti:: I'm short on time today and can't really answer you until tomorrow, but I ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch he describes what he was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as follows. (I'm just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at the moment and will get back with you tomorrow, when I have some free time again. In a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564, Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from the proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when satisfaction is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then goes on to consider how: "...the conception of truth gradually develops from that principle under the action of experience; beginning with willful belief, or self-mendacity [i.e. the method of tenacity], the most degraded of all intellectual cnditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society [the method of authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and finally reaching the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the method of experience]." My words are in brackets Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Kirsti Määttänen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe Bill, Joe, I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote: JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible? And later in the discussion you wrote: JR:Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of when one thinks of one's identity. To my mind the logic in the order Peirce is here following is based on the degree of 'goodness' of methods, not on motives, or order in evolution, or any other kind of (logical) order. And the goodness has to do with 'summum bonum", the ultimate aim and purpose, which is not necessarily an aim or a purpose held by any (one) individual person. So, the method of tenacity, in spite of being the lowest in degree of goodness,IS STILL A CONSISTENT METHOD. Which, if persisted in, will, in the long run (if the person persisting will live long enough), show to the person its truth or falsity. If false, it will be som
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
Bill, Kirsti, et al: In my earlier message I mischaracterized the method he describes in MS 165. And of course what later becomes the fourth method or method of reason is only alluded to rather than described except in the last paragraph of this MS where he talks about "the Children of This World" in contrast with the "Divine, Spiritual, or Heavenly" world of the fundamentalists, the "Children of this world" being those who realize that "things are not just as we choose to think them", which is nearly equivalent to saying that they recognize that there is such a thing as reality, the recognition of which is of the essence of the fourth method, which Peirce defines in terms of that which is so regardless of what anyone thinks it to be. I was thinking of this simplistically as the method of tenacity, but in fact what he is describing includes both the tenacity component and the authority component and I would say that it also includes the a priori component as well, though what he means by the latter, in the Fixation article, is not easy to get completely clear on. Anyway, I think we can see how, after writing this, further rewrites by Peirce will show him recognizing that he needs to draw some further distinctions, which ends up finally as the four methods of the Fixation paper -- and there are many, many rewrites of this in the MS material, some of which is available in Writings 2 and 3 and some of which is available in Volume 7 of the Collected Papers (in the part called "The Logic of 1873"), which is somewhat misleadingly titled since Peirce was working on this text from the time of the MS presently in question from 1869-1870. If you go to the ARISBE website, you will see that on the page for the primary Peirce writings as made available there http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm I have arranged the material which the Peirce Edition Project has made available from Volume 2 of the Writings from that period (a few years earlier than the publication of the Fixation paper in l877) in a fairly perspicuous way and the development of his thinking on this can be traced through to some extent there in addition to what can be learned from what is available in the Collected Papers in Volume 7. But there is much MS material still available only in the unpublished manuscripts. Perhaps we can get copies of some of that transcribed and distributed in the next few weeks. (If anybody has an digitized transcriptions of that particular MS material, let me know and I will put it up on-line.) Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Monday, September 25, 2006 11:10:36 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Bill, Kirsti, and list generally: Let's go back to a short MS from 1869-70 (available on-line, from Vol 2 of the Writings), which is the earliest MS I am aware of -- but not necessarily the earliest one there is -- in which we find Peirce explicitly approaching logic, in what is clearly a projected introductory logic text, from the perspective of logic as inquiry. In German "inquiry" would be "Forschung", as in Karl Popper's Logik der Forschung of 1914, which was disastrously -- for the course of logic in the 20th Century -- mistranslated as "Logic of Scientific Discovery". (More on that later.) The immediate point of interest is that in it we find Peirce working initially with only two methods, tenacy and what will later be called the "method of reason" or "method of science" or, in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, "the experiential method". It is short and I include the whole of it here and wll as follows: =quote Peirce http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_37/v2_37.htm Practical Logic (MS 165: 1869-70) Chapter I "All men naturally desire knowledge." This book is meant to minister to this passion primarily and secondarily to all interests that knowledge subserves. Here will be found maxims for estimating the validity and strength of arguments, and for deciding what facts ought to be examined in the investigation of a question. That the student may attain a real mastery of the art of thinking, it is necessary that the reasons for these maxims should be made clear to him, and that the maxims themselves should be woven into a harmonious code so as to be readily grasped by the mind. Logic or dialectic is the name of the science from which such rules are drawn. For right reasoning has evidently been the object of inquiry for Aristotle in all the books of the Organon except perhaps the first, as it was also that of the Stoics, of the Lawyers, of the medieval Summulists, and of modern students of Induction, in the additions which they have made to the doctrines of the Stagy
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
Title: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Pei Martin -- and Bill: Martin, I find what you are saying both plausible and resulting in a gemerally consistent view. Something can be done, too, to put a more positive face on the first two methods, which need not be construed as negatively as Peirce does, e.g. by pointing out that tenacity, in spite of there being nothing that one can cite at a given time that supports one's viewand the evidence seems actually to be against it, this sort of stubborness seems to be a pretty important factor at times in winning through to a better view. Of course everything really depends on good judgment and being willing, finally, to give up on something. But there is a positive element in tenacity that needs to be identified and salvaged finally as part of the fourth method. And so also for authority, which is, in some cases, simply the overwhelming forcefulness of well-deserved good reputations. Peirce is definitely aware of this sort of thing. I ran across a passage within the past day or so that illustrates this and I'll see if I can find it again. Peirce is expressing a kind of scorn, as I recall, about scientists who are overly impressed by the recognition given in official commendations and awards and the like and says that the individual scientist has to be the best judge of his or her own competence. In other words, competence actually requires one's own ability to be the best judge of one's own competence, that is, one ought to regard the matter that way. I think though that you are probably right that it is only in the case of the third method that it even appears that we can reasonably talk about it as being a rational method, that being highly qualified, of course, by noting it as a "degenerate" form, as you suggest. That goes back to what Bill Bailey was saying about the decision about the planet Pluto being a committee decision. I think myself that it is not correct to say that they really did settle anything by making that decision. I mean their vote may well have the effect of bringing that change about, but this is simply a causal result, not a logical consequence, i.e. they didn't really decide to do anything other than to lend persuasional weight to what will turn out de facto to be accepted about Pluto from now on. I would argue myself -- have argued elsewhere -- that acceptance in science can mean only one thing, namely. the fact that future inquirers do in fact make use of the proposition in question as a premise or presupposition in their own futuire inquiry, essentially including that part of it which consists in making a public claim to a research conclusion which is put forward as based on the propositon in quesion in that way. Otherwise it makes no difference what any scientists say about Pluto's status. It is up to the future to determine whether the resolution to actually use the proposition in that way or not has the effect of actual such use of it. And of course the last word on that is never in. As it stands, the confusion about what is meant by "acceptance" in science -= and inhumanistic scholaraship, too -- is massive and sometimes grotesque, as when it is confused with gettting a paper accepted by a prestigious journal! Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] From Martin Lefebvre To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Monday, September 25, 2006 11:40:01 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to? Joe, Kristi, list, At the risk of offering a post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument, I'll try looking at the issue from the prespective of Peirce's more mature views. I consider the "Fixation" essay to be organized around a sort of development/growth principle that leads to the scientific method as the method of choice of reason. I believe that growth here can be thought of categorially. The method of tenacity "works" as long as the individual is considered monadically (the social impulse must be held in check) and as long as there is no attempt to examine a belief against experience. A "monadic" mind (what could that be???) would think what it thinks, irrespective of anything else. Of course, the individual (the self) is not a monad (see Colapietro's work on this) and the social impulse cannot be held in check forever. With the method of authority belief is achieved in relation to the belief of others (those in authority) -- not in relation to experience. There is a growing sense of dualism here with the introduction of "others". With the third, a priori, method we find something interesting. This third method is "far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed", says Peirce (italics mine). He adds, however: "It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste". Now, as you know, Peirce (much) later introduced esthetics to the normative sciences and saw both ethics and logic as requiring the
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
Dear Kirsti:: I'm short on time today and can't really answer you until tomorrow, but I ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch he describes what he was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as follows. (I'm just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at the moment and will get back with you tomorrow, when I have some free time again. In a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564, Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from the proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when satisfaction is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then goes on to consider how: "...the conception of truth gradually develops from that principle under the action of experience; beginning with willful belief, or self-mendacity [i.e. the method of tenacity], the most degraded of all intellectual cnditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society [the method of authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and finally reaching the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the method of experience]." My words are in brackets Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message From: Kirsti Määttänen [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Joe Bill,Joe, I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote: JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the order wrong: might it not be argued that method #1 should be authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible?And later in the discussion you wrote:JR:Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of when one thinks of one's identity.To my mind the logic in the order Peirce is here following is based on the degree of 'goodness' of methods, not on motives, or order in evolution, or any other kind of (logical) order. And the goodness has to do with 'summum bonum", the ultimate aim and purpose, which is not necessarily an aim or a purpose held by any (one) individual person.So, the method of tenacity, in spite of being the lowest in degree of goodness,IS STILL A CONSISTENT METHOD. Which, if persisted in, will, in the long run (if the person persisting will live long enough), show to the person its truth or falsity.If false, it will be some kind of a nasty surprise to the person. If still persisted in, more nasty surprised are to follow.- Well, it might as well be a pleasant surprise. For example with the (common) belief that humans beings are by nature evil and egoistic. Being surprised in this way, according to my somewhat systematic observations, follows a different course. But Peirce does not give examples of this kind.But I do not see any justification given in this particular paper to:CSP: In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity.It can only be the 'summum bonum', which could act as an (ultimate) justification in considering the method of authority as far superior to the method of tenacity. But Peirce does not take that up here.Anyway, the IF's in the following may be worth considering:CSP: "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit"How I find, is, that these are the premisses from which Peirce proceeds in this chapter. So these give the perspective Peirce is here taking in view of the answers he offers, pertaining as well to the logic of the order of the methods in presenting them.As to the "two
[peirce-l] Re: What fundamenal psychological laws is Peirce referring to?
As regards tthe logical vs. psychological distinction: Jeff Kasser wrote an important paper on what that distinction meant for Peirce a few years ago. The title is "Peirce's Supposed Psychologism". It;s on the ARISBE website: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/kasser/psychol.htm Jeff makes it pretty clear, I think, that what Peirce meant by "psychologism" -- which Peirce frequently inveighs against but is often accused of himself -- is not what most people who talk about this now assume that it is. I won't attempt to state Jeff's conclusions here with any exactitude -- he will be joining the discussion himself in a few days when he gets some free time -- but just roughly indicate what he is getting at -- or at least what I learned or think I learned from his paper -- namely, that the conception of thought or mind is not uniquely the proper province of any special science, be it psychology (scientific or otherwise) or sociology or linguistics or the theory of computing machines or whatever. The idea of mind or thought is also a basic commonsense conception which has been around in the West in an overt form since the time when people first started speculating about thought and mind in ancient Greece. In the terminology Peirce adopted from Jeremy Bentham, we should distinguish between a COENOSCOPIC sense of "mind" or "thought" or other mentalistic term and an IDIOSCOPIC sense of such terms.. The former is the sense of "mind" or "thought" which we have in mind [!!] when we say something like "What are you thinking about?", "What's on you mind?", "He spoke his mind", and so forth, as distinct from the sense which is appropriate for use in the context of some special scientific study of mind. To understand what is meant by the word "mind" as used in scientific psychology, let us say, we have to find out what people who have established or mastered something in that field understand by such terms since the meaning of such terms in that context is a matter of what the course of special study of its subject matter has resulted in up to this point. That is the idioscopic sense of "mind", "thought", etc. But long before there was anything like a science of psychology and long before we were old enough to understand that there is any such thing as psychology we had already learned in the course of our ordinary dealings with people something about the nature of mind in the "coenoscopic" sense of the term. For we all learn early on, as small children, that we have to figure out what people are thinking in order to understand what they are wanting to say, for example; we learn that people can be sincere or insincere, saying one thing and thinking another; we learn that they sometimes lie, pretending to think what what they do not actually think or believe; people change their minds; they tell us what is on their minds; and we learn also that they believe us or doubt us, too, when we say something, and so forth. We become constantly -- I don't mean obsessively but just as a mater of course -- aware of that sort of thing in any conversation we have or any communications we read. In other words it is just the plain old everyday understanding that is indispensable for ordinary life, which may be shot through with contradiction and incoherence but,.for better or worse, is indispensable nonethelessNow it is a nice question to get clear on exactly what we must be minimally assuming or taking for granted in drawing such commonsense distinctions in our ordinary day-in, day-out dealing with people, and we may very well make big mistakes in trying to say what they are; but whatever the right analysis of that yields -- which may take some considerable skill to get right -- it will be our common sense understanding of what mind is, what thinking is, etc. That is our "coenoscopic" understanding of what mind is and that is what philosophers -- including logicians -- are (or ought to be) concerned to explicate when they are doing their proper job..Such is, I believe, Peirce's view of the distinction of two kinds of understanding of what mind is. There is, by the way, a corresponding distinction to be drawn between our ordinary commonsense (coenoscopic) physics -- our understanding of the purely physical aspect of the things we have to deal with in moving about and moving other things in the world, and then there os the special scientific (ideoscopic) understanding. Now, at one point Jeff quotes a passage from Peirce in which he claims that at the basis of the special sciences we in fact find coenoscopic conceptions which we think of as being idioscopic though they are not. ==quote Peirce= Now it is a circumstance most significant for the logic of science, that this science of dynamics, upon which all the physical sciences repose, when defined in the strict way in which its founders understood it, and not as embracing the law of the conservation of energy, neither is nor
[peirce-l] Re: SEED journal
Thanks for the tip on the science blog, Clark. Some of the people associated with SEED seem to be Peircean in orientatian and some not, but a significant number certainly are. Joe - Original Message From: Clark Goble [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Friday, September 15, 2006 12:30:06 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: SEED journalOn Sep 9, 2006, at 4:30 AM, Joseph Ransdell wrote:Here is the URL for the on-line journal SEED, which has a lot of papers by Peirceans: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.htmlNote that Seed has a collection of science blogs that are quite good as well - especially some of the cognitive science ones. There are enough authors that the typical problem of blogging (you get busy for a few months or run out of creative ideas) doesn't affect things too much. I know several of the bloggers and we've discussed Peirce relative to cognitive science a fair bit.http://www.scienceblogs.com/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: reduction of the manifold to unity
Just now getting arond to addressing your question of several days ago, Jim: you formulate it towards the end of your message as follows: JP: I don't see how a sign can represent without there being an observor role which is functionally distinct fromthe role of mere participant. So anyway that's my question -- is Peirce's theory of representation and the sign meant to imply or address this issue of an observor or am I just misreading something into it that is not there. I will be greatly dissapointed if such a notion or something akin to it is not part of what is intended by the idea of a triadic relation as being above and beyond that of a mere dyadic relation. But then there are those Peirce comments about consciousness being a mere quality or firstness so I'm not so sure. OK -- I hope I have made clear the nature of my concern and look forward to any comments you might have. I realize I'm drifting a bit from the initial question that started this exchnage but Ifor me the questions are very much related. I'm trying to get at and understand the relation of the sign as carrier of meaning and as that which gives rise tothe feeling we have of being not simply participants in a world (like colliding billiard balls) but of also being observors of this participation -- aware of our nakedness and so on. The notion that in the beginning (of awareness) was the word. REPLY: REPLY: I would say that his theory of representation has to be capable of articulating that distinction or there is something wrong with it, but I don't think that it is to be looked for merely in the distinction between the dyadic and the triadic but rather in something to do with the different functions being performed by icons, indices, and symbols, and that the distancing or detachment you are concerned with is to be understood especially in connection with the understanding of the symbol as involving an "imputed" quality. What this says is, I think, that we do not interpret a symbol as a symbol unless we are aware both that the replica we are interpreting is one thing and that what it means is something other than that, namely, the entity we imagine in virtue of its occurrence. Explicating that will in turn involve appeal to the functioning of a quality functioning as an icon of something the replica indexes. Of course we are not normally aware of all of that when we are actually undergoing the experience of understanding what someone says, for example, but something that is actually very complex really must be going on nonetheless, as seems clear from, say, what is happening when we are watching a drama on a stage in front of us and are capable of understanding what is being said and done in the play AS action in a play and are able to be engaged by the actor's actions as being at once the entity enacted and a mere enacting which is NOT what is enacted. What never ceases to amaze me is the way in which I find myself able to be responsive to the actors as if they are something which I know at the very moment to be quite different from what they actually are. How is that dual consciousness possible? What is all the more amazing to me is that the ability to interpret actions as mere representative acts rather than as the actual acts which they appear to be actually seems to be earlier in our development than our ability to interpret things for what they literally are. Why do I say this? Because I am thinking about the way in which young animals -- like dogs and cats, say -- spend their early lives merely pretending to be fighting with one another and only later put the skills acquired in play into action as serious or non-playful actions. They bite but from the very beginning do so in such a way as to make it only a pretense bite by stopping just before it gets serious. Of course they are not always successful at this. I have a cat who is extraordinarily playful but unfortunately doesn't always judge accurately just how far to go in playing, whereas other cats I have had usually are pretty good about never making that sort of mistake from the beginning. But one would think that the playful act is necessarily more complex than the serious act since it seems to involve the animal being aware both of what it is to bite and of what is required in order for it to only seem like but not be a real bite. How is it that play can come first? it bespeaks a complexity that somehow is accomplished without any awareness at all on our part. I am sort of rambling on on this point, but let me try to illustrate it another way. It seems at first to be reasonable to suppose that our ability to understand the nature of symbolism is something that we are, as highly enculturated people with a long history of accumulated sophistication about things, just now acquiring an ability to grasp, as is shown by the way we flounder around in our theories of meaning and representation long after we have figured out so much about the nature of mathematical
[peirce-l] SEED journal
Here is the URL for the on-line journal SEED, which has a lot of papers by Peirceans: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/SEED_Journal.html It's edited by Edwina Taborsky. You might want to jot the URL down now or go there and get a "bookmark" or "favorites" URL for your browser. Don't count on being able to find it easily by googling later. I spent several frustrating hours in the prrocess of trying to locate it, starting from the URL Vinicius provided recently for one of the papers from it (by Andre DeTienne). The University of Toronto keeps it well-hidden: their search facility never heard of it, apparently. I've got a paper there myself and didn't realize it. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Dennett
Jim and list:: Sorry to be slow in responding. I just discovered that about half of my email has been going intothe spam folder. It's a new account and the version ofit I am using is a newformat for yahoo and still a bit clunky and erratic.(The new yahoo mail isa lot like Outlook Expressthough it looks as if it will be an improvement on that once they get the bugs out of it.But there are annoying glitches here and there, such as e.g. there being a mark by the side of the spam folder which says "empty" even when it is not, and I've been wondering why the messages recently sometimes seem so disconnected when in fact many of them have been hidden away in my mail in the supposedly empty spam folder.) Anyway, as regards yourquestion: I will try to respond to it, but Ican only talkabout it loosely and suggestively here, inorder to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all, I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, Iwill go on to say that I think that one of the things that is likely to be misleading about the NewList is that it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of theKantian phrase "reduction ofthe sensuous manifold to unity" which Peirceuses at the very beginning of the New List to be talking abouta unification of sense-data in the technical sense of "sense-datum" developed by philosophers somewhere around the beginning of the 20thCentury, stressed especially by the positivists, especially since Peirce takes as his example theproposition "The stove is black". Butregardless of what Kant might have had in mind in talking about the "manifold of intuitions"in the Critique, there is no reason to think that Peirce ever hld to the view that a theory of cognition is supposed to be begin by explaining how sense-data like color patches and the like, regarded as meaningless atoms ofquality, are what is primitively given, then named by fiat, to provide a primitive level of cognition constituted by sense-data plus interpretation. I take it that thepoint to the denial of intuition in the 1868 papers that follow immediately upon the New List and are clearly of a piece with it shows that the reason Peirce started with an example like that was to be able to make the point that, even in cases that might seem to us to be cases of a simple perceptual given involving no interpretation at all, itis in reality the interpretation of a product of an unspecifiable number of levels of priorinterpretation.(See his argumentation towards the very beginning of the Questions article about things like the unnoticed blind spot on the retina, the example of tactile sensation, the tricks of the stage magicians, and so forth, which all underscore that even what seems like it must beutterly simple sensation is actually the result of unconscious interpretation. So, the point is that the items in the "sensuous manifold" of perception that mind is required to synthesize (to reduce to unity through application of a unifying conception) are always already meaningful and the "reduction" -- which is to say, the successful predication -- is always just further interpretation of disparate materials which are already results of prior interpretation. Why must they be unified? Why are they disparate? What is it that is driving the need to unify the "manifold" by the formation of a proposition bearing the force of an assertion, which is to say, by the application of an explanatory predicate? The answer is contradiction:the unification process -- which is the thought process generally --beginsfrom the tension of unresolved contradiction, itself constituted bywhat must be assumed to be (from the logical point of view) the conflict of "repugnant" propositions (as he says in the Fixation article) --felt experiential incoherence --which isthe incipient beginning of all doubt and questioning. Bear in mind that most conscious cognitive perception is not of simple occurrence of color properties, tingles of feeling, and so forth, but of macrocopic objects, such as theordinary "furniture of the earth" that makes up our perceived and recognized environment -- people and things in our environment, both local and remote, that come to our conscious attention for some special reason, the idea being that if you were to analyze any particular instance of ordinary conscious perception of something you would find. at the bottom of that analysis, as it were, what would always be something which first came to our attention because of some oppositional factor that our perception funtioned to overcome by a reconciliation of the opposition in some sort of unity.No opposition, noneed for attention being paid to it. So the beginning of cognition of which we are conscious,
[peirce-l] reduction of the manifold to unity
Jim and list: This is just a repeat of my previous message,spell-checked and punctuated correctly, with a couple of interpolated clarifications, and minus the unphilosophical paragraphsat the beginning and end: (I will try to state it better in a later message.) As regards your question: I will try to respond to it, but I can only talk about it loosely and suggestively here, in order to say enough to convey anything at all that might be helpful, and you will have to tolerate a lot of vagueness as well as sloppiness in what I am saying. If I bear down on it enough to put it into decently rigorous form it will not get said at all [because of the length], I'm afraid. But then this is just a conversation, not a candidate for a published paper. Okay, that self-defense being given in advance, I will go on to say that I think that one of the things that is likely to be misleading about the New List is that it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of the Kantian phrase "reduction of the sensuous manifold to unity" which Peirce uses at the very beginning of the New List to be talking about a unification of sense-data in the technical sense of "sense-datum" developed by philosophers somewhere around the beginning of the 20th Century, stressed especially by the positivists, especially since Peirce takes as his example the proposition "The stove is black". But regardless of what Kant might have had in mind in talking about the "manifold of intuitions" in the Critique, there is no reason to think that Peirce ever held to the view that a theory of cognition is supposed to begin by explaining how sense-data such as color patches and the like, regarded as meaningless atoms of quality, are what is primitively given, then named by fiat, to provide a primitive level of cognition constituted by sense-data plus interpretation. I take it that the point to the denial of intuition in the 1868 papers that follow immediately upon the New List (and are clearly of a piece with it) shows that the reason Peirce started with an example like that was to be able to make the point that, even in cases that might seem to us to be cases of a simple perceptual given involving no interpretation at all, it is in reality the interpretation of a product of an unspecifiable number of levels of prior interpretation. (See his argumentation towards the very beginning of the "Questions" article about things like the unnoticed blind spot on the retina, the example of tactile sensation, the tricks of the stage magicians, and so forth, which all underscore that even what seems like it must be utterly simple sensation is actually the result of unconscious interpretation. So, the point is that the items in the "sensuous manifold" of perception that mind is required to synthesize (to reduce to unity through application of a unifying conception) are always already meaningful and the "reduction" -- which is to say, the successful predication -- is always just further interpretation of disparate materials which are already results of prior interpretation. Why must they be unified? Why are they disparate? What is it that is driving the need to unify the "manifold" by the formation of a proposition bearing the force of an assertion, which is to say, by the application of an explanatory predicate? The answer is contradiction: the unification process -- which is the thought process generally -- begins from the tension of unresolved contradiction, itself constituted by what must be assumed to be (from the logical point of view) the conflict of "repugnant" propositions (as he says in the Fixation article) -- felt experiential incoherence -- which is the incipient beginning of all doubt and questioning. Bear in mind that most conscious cognitive perception is not of simple occurrence of color properties, tingles of feeling, and so forth, but of macrocopic objects, such as the ordinary "furniture of the earth" that makes up our perceived and recognized environment -- people and things in our environment, both local and remote, that come to our conscious attention for some special reason, the idea being that if you were to analyze any particular instance of ordinary conscious perception of something you would find, at the bottom of that analysis, as it were, what would always be something which first came to our attention because of some oppositional factor that our perception functioned to overcome by a reconciliation of the opposition in some sort of unity. No opposition, no need for attention being paid to it. So the beginning of cognition of which we are conscious, then, is always in an as-yet-unresolved conflict of some sort perceived as such because in our "processing" of it we had to make the effort of a unification of oppositional entities of some sort, the awareness of each of which at a preconscious or unconscious level is due to the funded result of prior unification, i.e. prior learning. The important point here is that this holds true
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben: I was just now rereading your response to Charles, attending particularly to your citation of Peirce's concern with verification, and I really don't see in what you quote from him on this anything more than the claim that it is the special concern for making sure that something that someone -- perhaps oneself -- has claimed to be a fact or has concluded to be so (which could be a conviction more or less tentatively held) really is a fact by putting the claim or acceptation of that conclusion to the test, in one way or another. This verificational activity could involve many different sorts of procedures, ranging from, say, reconsidering the premises supporting the claim as regards their cogency relative to the conclusion drawn to actively experimenting or observing further for the same purpose, including perhaps, as a rather special case, the case where one actually attempts to replicate the procedure cited as backing up the claim made. Scientific verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on something about which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong concern for establishing something as definitively as possible, which is of course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on something so thoroughly that no real question about it will ever be raised again.But it is no different in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to make sure of something that we think might be so but about which we are not certain enough to satisfy us. My point is that it is surely obvious that we don't take steps to verify something in ordinary life unless we have some special reason to do so, and that any steps actually taken to verify anything are taken only if something has come to our attention as requiring such action. Ordinarily, we just accept what we unreflectively learn (come to believe or to think to be so) either in the ordinary course of living and perceiving things or in the course of learning about what other people think to be so, supposing we have a normal regard for the competence of others as regards the sort of thing in question (which of course varies a lot). Always, though, something of the nature of an acceptance or claim to the effect that something is so is presupposed by the activity of verifying it. It cannot be the case, then, that all of our understanding of things includes verification as an essential part of it. In fact, it must be only a very small percentage of the opinions, beliefs, etc., that we acquire in the normal course of living involve verification in their acquisition. And this makes it quite out of the question to suppose that verification especially and essentially involves or includes something which is of a categorial nature which is not already present in all cognition, which must surely include much that involves no verification and is never considered to be in any need of it. This is not to say that you are mistaken in stressing the importance of verification as a philosophical topic. it is remarkable just how little attention has been paid to it even by philosophers of science, where it has usually been discussed only in the context of (1) the verificationist theory of meaning and (2) the context of induction and the problem of establishing its validity as a mode of inference. Those are not trivial contexts and what you are saying may have considerable importance relative to those contexts of interest and some others as well, perhaps. Thus I don't intend any discouragement or disparagement of what you are concerned about as regards those contexts of interest. But I think you may be inadvertently blunting the significance of what you are driving at by relativizing it to the context of interest which concerns the categorial conceptions, and, moreover, the attempt to make it relevant to the problematics of the categories may actually be distorting your thinking in some way. I think it may in fact be doing precisely that, and the reason for my thinking so is that I keep finding myself unable to make what you are saying add up to anything, regardless of how impressive it may seem prima facie. It is my experience in doing philosophy over the years that one frequently has to trust one's intuitive judgment or intuitive sense as regards whether something being said really makes any sense. Sometimes one has to go with something that seems clearly not to do so because, in spite of that, one also has the feeling that it really does make good and important sense even though one can't figure out what exactly that might be at the moment. And this also holds for things that may seem to make sense, though one is not really sure of that and one is suspicious of it as probably being senseless in spite of seeming, on the face of it, to do so. In fact, on most topics of interest one's hunches along these lines must be relied upon or else one will never get to anything very interesting or worthwhile. And
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben says: BU: Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, andit seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies. JR: Perhaps it never did. BU: Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and willnot onlydevelop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now). JR: yes that certainly happens BU: However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily. JR: That is right, but none of this shows that recognition -- or cognition -- is not capable of being analyzed and explicated in terms of complexes of sign-object-interpretant relationships -- along with the secondness and firstness relationships they presuppose --as they structurea process the peculiar complexity of which is made possible by the changing identities and differences of the entities in the processthat occur and recur in it. Your unleashing ofyour verbal abilitiesat this point in your response in a tirade of verbal dazzle,where you should be focusing your efforts in a carefulanalytical way instead,is blinding you to the task at hand. That is how what you say from this point on in your message appears to me, Ben. This is positively my last response to you on this particular topic. If others are persuadedthat you have actually shown what needs to be shown instead of burying it verbally, that will no doubt impress me. But at this timeI don't see it and have a strong sense of being intimidated verbally rather than reasoned with.Perhaps I am merely being obtuse. Irecognize this as a possibility but I find no tendency in myself to believe it. Perhaps at another time things will appear differently to one of the two of us. Joe Jim below says things pretty near to that which I'm saying in terms of the distinction between object and sign, andit seems that the "bad regression" stuff that I've said about his previous stuff no longer applies. Object and signs are roles. They are logical roles, and their distinction is a logical distinction, not a metaphysical or physical or material or biological or psychological distinction, though it takes on complex psychological relevance insofar as a psyche will be an inference process and willnot onlydevelop structures which manifest the distinction, but will also tend consciously to employ the distinction and even thematize it and make a topic (a semiotic object) out of it (like right now). However, my argument has been that, when one pays sufficient attention to the relationships involved, one sees that a verification is _not_ a representation, in those relationships in which it is a verification, -- just as an object is not a sign in those relationships in which it is an object. Even when a thing-in-its-signhood is the object, the subject matter, then it is _in that respect_ the object and not a sign, though it wouldn't be the object if it were not a sign (and indeed every object is a sign in some set of relationships). These logical distinctions don't wash away so easily. Meaning is formed into the interpretant. Validity, soundness, etc., are formed into the recognition. Meaning is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of interpretants. Validity, soundness, legitimacy, is conveyed and developed through "chains" and structures of recognitions. One even has some slack in "making" the distinction between interpretant and verification -- it's a slack which one needs in order to learn about the distinction so as to incorporate those learnings into oneself as a semiosic sytem and so as to employ the distinction in a non-reckless but also non-complacent manner. (For everything -- (a) boldness, (b) confident behavior, (c) caution, (d) resignation -- there is a season -- (a) bravery, (b) duely confident behavior, (c) prudence, (d) "realism" -- an out-of-season -- (a) rashness, (b) complacency, (c) cowardice, (d)
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
W will just have to leave it as a stand off, Ben. I have no more to say on this than I have already said. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 2:21 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor Joe, Gary, Jim, Charles, Jacob, list, It's obvious that in _some_ sense or other I disagree with Peirce about how semiosis is related to experience. However, I think I find sufficient material in Peirce to make the argument in Peirce's own terms, especially in Peirce's discussions of collateral experience, where he plainly says that one needs experience collateral to sign and interpretant of the object in order to identify the object. And I don't get the idea of finding the equation or dis-equation of an experience and a sign/interpretant so confusing that "it literally makes no sense," so confusing that one can't make sufficient sense of it in order to argue against it in terms of what experience is, what interpretation is, etc. If it were true that it is, -- in your words, "a confusion in virtue of talking about the interpretant as being an 'experience or observation.' In talking about the sign-object-interpretant relationships we are doing so in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation (or verification) and it literally makes no sense to me put in that way," -- then Peirce's discussions of collateral experience would make no sense. He's far too specific in delineating relationships of semiosis to experience for those delineations to be compatible with that which you say. Why would Peirce say things like "All that part of the understanding of the Sign which the Interpreting Mind has needed collateral observation for is outside the Interpretant. It is...the prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the sign." Why would Peirce say, "Its Interpretant is all that the Sign conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience"? Note that he does not say that _collateral_ acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience. He is not stating such a truism. Instead, he says that acquaintance, any acquaintance at all, must be gained by collateral experience. Peirce is saying that the _representing_ of the object is never an _acquainting_ with the object (except, as usual, in the limit case where the representing sign and its object are the selfsame thing). But that is just the sort of statement which you say _makes no sense_ to you. How do you account for that? Do you deny that that's what he is saying? If so, how do you justify such a denial? I don't know why it makes no sense to you to speak of denying or affirming that one's experience of an object is or isn't one's sign of an object, least of all can I understand why this would be a consequence of talking about object-sign-interpretant relationships in the process of analyzing such things as experience or observation. You talk as though experience were something like the moon or the color green or the letter "C," which one would certainly not expect to see treated as basic semiotic elements on a par with object, sign, and interpretant. But we have Peirce right above characterizing _all_ signs in terms of experience and, in particular, distinguishing them -- _all_ of them -- from acquaintance, observation, experience of the object. How could this make sense if it doesn't make sense to speak of an object experience as being a sign of the object or not being a sign of the object? I have only one Peirce collateral-experience discussion which presents me with any problems for my views or, more specifically, for my use of his views -- you have all the rest of his collateral-experience discussions contradicting you. You say, "The semeiotical terminology is properly used in explication of such notions as that of experience, observation, verification, etc. and therefore signs and interpretants cannot except confusedly be equated with such things as observations or experiences or verifications." I would say that conceptions of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications are all of them analytic tools for analyzing processes of objects, signs, interpretants, and verifications (and more generally, experiences), and none of this stops us from clearly dis-equating experiences/verifications from interpretations, etc. Or maybe you mean that sometimes one's experience of the object is one's sign of the object, and sometimes not? I.e., that one only confusedly equates or confusedly dis-equates them because there's no such general rule? But I don't understand why anybody would think, that, even if only sometimes, something serving as _another_ sign of the object
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben: If I am understanding you correctly you are saying that all semeiosis is at least incipiently self-reflexive or self-reflective or in other words self-controlled AND that the adequate philosophical description of it will REQUIRE appeal to a fourth factor (which is somehow of the essence of verification) in addition to the appeal to the presence of a sign, of an object, and of an interpretant, allowing of course for the possibility of there being more than one of any or all of these, as is no doubt essential for anything of the nature of a process. The appeal to the additional kind of factor would presumably have to be an appeal to something of the nature of a quadratic relational character. To be sure, any given semeiosis might involve the fourth factor only in a triply degenerate form, just as the third factor might be degenerate in a double degree in some cases, which is to say that the fourth factor might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis, just as thirdness might go unnoticed in a single semeiosis. That seems possible. Is that your view? I pose it in this abstract way to make sure we are talking about something on par with the sign, the object, and the interpretant. If so how do you know that semeiosis cannot be adequately described without recourse to that factor, i.e. cannot be described on the basis of an appeal to some complexity possible through recursion and referential reflexivity involving only three kinds of elements or factors -- as Peirce would have to claim? Joe Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] . - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 2:40 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor Jacob, Joe, Gary, Jim, list, [Jacob] Theres been a lot of debate on this issue of verification, and it almost sounds like patience is being tried. If I could just give my input about one remark from the last posting; I hope it helps some. [Jacob] Ben wrote: I dont know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, thats about all. I dont have some hidden opinion on the question. [Jacob] Prof. Ransdall (or do you prefer Joe?) replied: I dont think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirces approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesnt mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. [Jacob] I want to agree with Joe; its hard for me to see Peirce overlooking that bit, for several reasons. But the question of why verification isnt a formal element in inquiry needs some unpacking. [Jacob] The discussion sounds like everyones talking about isolated instances. All the examples given to illustrate testing here are particular, individual cases where one person observes something, draws a conclusion, and checks to see if hes right. Thats not the only way to view the development of thought. [Jacob] Take Joes common-sense example: You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) [Jacob] I dont think anyone finds this sort of thing unusual; the difficulty with this illustration is in *how* it bolsters the case Joe is making. [Jacob] It also seems to me theres some confusion about what were arguing about. The role of verification in *inquiry* or *thought*? At the level of individuals or in general? Let me try to illustrate what I mean. [Jacob] When checking your work, you might discover that youd made an error (often the case with me), or even that you initially had the right answer but somehow messed up (not often the case with me). This occurs at the individual level. But animals reason too, though they dont verify. And thats telling. (This was Bens point when quoting Lewes on Aristotle: science is science because of proof, testing, verification.) Animals don't deliberately verify. Even most human verification is not carried out with a specifically
[peirce-l] Re: Doctoral Defense
Dear Vinicius: Good to hear that your dissertation is being completed in time for you to take advantage of theconference which is occurring a few daysbefore that so that Nathan and Tom could bepresent for your defense.For personal reasons, I had to decline Lucia's invitation to appear at the conference,as one of the invited speakers, along with Nathan, Tom, and Vincent as well,an occasion which I deeply regret missing out on for several reasons, and to learn of the further missed opportunity of attending the discussion at your defense makes it all the more regretful.But I'll belooking forward to readingyour dissertation myself as soon as youcan make it generally available. (I won't trouble you for further information on what conclusions you arrived at until after the defense,but the topic has been under discussion recently on the list and I am sure there are a number of people who will want to raise some questions with you about what you came up with when you have the time free to be responsive to that.) But as I say this it occurs to me that noannouncement of that conference was ever made on the list, and I should perhaps provide some context for this. Theconferencereferred to wasdescribedby Lucia Santaella, who arranged it, as "an International Conference on Consciousness, Mind, and Thoughtin Peirce to be held in August 24-25, 2006, during which theCenter of Peirce Studiesat Sao Paulo Catholic University will be transformed into an International Center." Lucia is the creator of the Center, which originates as a program at that university which has been developed under her leadershipfor many years now and islargely (though by no means exclusively) responsible for a remarkably vitaland continually growing and burgeoning tradition of Peirce-related research and scholarship whose equal is difficult to find anywhere in the world. The occasion is thus a celebrational one, and anyone interested in matters Peircean who is in position to be in attendance in Sao Paulo during this periodis certain to find it worth while to do so. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Vin¨cius Romanini To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 8:11 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Doctoral Defense Dear list members, particularly Brazilians or whoever happens to be in Brazil by the end of August. I would like to invite you to the public defense of my doctoral dissertation on Peirce¨s classification of signs. Lucia Santaella, Nathan Houser and Thomas Short are part of the committee. Vincent Colapientro and Winfried Noth will be attending to it too. I think it will be a great opportunitie to discuss some hot topics of Peirce¨s logic and semiotic, as well as to hear leading scholars on the field. Needless to say that I will try to put an English version of it available online as soon as possible. Best, Vinicius Romanini The School of Communication and Arts (ECA) of the University of S¨o Paulo (USP) is pleased to invite you to the public defense of the doctoral dissertation of Vin¨cius Romanini entitled Minute Semeiotic Speculations on the Grammar of Signs and Communication based on the work of Charles S. Peirce Committee: Lucia Santaella (Pontifical Catholic University) Mayra Rodrigues Gomes (University of S¨o Paulo) Dulcilia Helena Buitoni (University of S¨o Paulo) Nathan Houser (Indiana University) Thomas Short (Independent Scholar)Abstract:The work is dedicated to the branch of Semiotic that Charles S. Peirce called Speculative Grammar: the study of the formal conditions that enable a Sign to function as such, the survey of all possible types of Signs and their ordered classification. The Speculative Grammar is the first branch of Semiotic, Logic is the second and Communication is its third one. A fruitful semiotic treatment of the Communication depends, therefore, on that the Grammar and Logic are sufficiently developed. This was the motivation of this work. After an introduction about Peirce and the development of his Theory of Signs, we present a proposal for a generation of 66 Classes of Signs and make some considerations on how this table could help to solve some problems of Logic and to construct of a formally semiotic Theory of Communication.The defense will happen on Monday August 28, at 2:00 pm at the Department of Journalism of the School of Communication and Arts (ECA) on the University of Sao Paulo (USP) campus, Av. Prof. Lúcio Martins Rodrigues, 443, Cidade Universitária, S¨o Paulo, Brazil. There will be simultaneous translation English/Portuguese. Do you Yahoo!?Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version:
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben Says: I don't know how Peirce and others have missed the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively. REPLY: I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail, though. Take a common sense case of that. You tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the idea.So what is the big deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.) The question is, why have philosophers of science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to count as such? You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest forabsolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the form of a major philosophical industrydevoted to the production of theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be explained in terms of somenatural confusion of thought like those which make it seem so implausible at first that we can get better control over our car when it goes into a skid if weturn the car in the direction of the skid instead of by responding in the instinctively reasonable way of trying to turn it in opposition to going in that unwanted direction.Okay, not a very good example, but you know what I mean: something can seem at first completely obvious in its reasonableness that is actually quite unreasonable when all relevant considerations are taken duly into account. some of which are simply too subtle to be detected as relevant at first.Thus people argue interminably over no real problem. It happens a lot, I should think. In any case,a will-of-the-wisp is all that there is in the supposed need for some general theory of verification. There is none to be given nor is there any need for one. People make claims. Other people doubt them or accept them but want to be sure and so they do something that satisfies them, and others, noting this, are satisfied that the matter is settled and they just move on.Of maybe nobody is ever satisfied. That's life. Of course it can turn out at times that it is not easy to get the sort of satisfacion that counts for us as what we call a verification because it settles the matter in one way, or a dissatisfaction because it settles it in a contrary way. But that is all there is to it. Maybe there are fields or types of problems or issues in which the course of experience of inquiry about them has resulted in the development and elaboration ofprocedures that are regarded as having verification or disverification as their normal result, but that will surely just be because that particular sort
[peirce-l] Re: The composite photograph metaphor
Ben: JR: I must say that I think you are missing mypoint because of some mistaken assumption that I can't identify. The reason I gave the simple example of a common sense verification was to make as clear as I could that there is no deep logical point involved. Consider again my simple example: You see something and tell me about it and I take a verifying look. I see what I expect to see given what you told me to expect and that's enough for me. That is a verification. It doesn't follow that either of us grasped the truth of the matter, but if you did indeed grasp it by taking a look as you passed by the object and I did indeed graspit by taking another look thenwe are both correct. But where in all of that is this all important difference you keep talking about between mere interpretation and experience" There was no more or less experience in my look than in yours, and no more or less interpretation, as far as that goes, other than the memory that the reason I took a look myself was because I wanted to see if what you saw is what you thought it to be, which I am willing to credit if, after taking a look myself, the description matches up. There is no denial of verification involved in any of this. It is an imaginary account of a very simple case of verification. JR: Now you can complicate it as much as you want, turn the look at a macroscopic object requiring no special instruments of vision(a burning fire) into, say, the look at the object which is involved in the case of scrutinizing a bunch of measurement data gathered from cranking up a particle accelerator at CERN with the help of a thousand other people, and the basic idea of verification or disverification is unchanged except for being required to be vastly more sophisticated, given the enormously different conditions of perceptual access to the object, and of course given the equally enormously greater amount of inference involved in the one case than in the otherwhen we move fromunderstanding the perceived object to be a burning building to the compared case ofunderstanding the perceived object to be, say, a quark doing its thing under this and those conditions. Exactly the same sort of gross macro description of it applies assemiotically construed: an object is perceived as manifesting this or that, which, semiotically, is talked about in the same terms regardless of the difference between beingan object with manifest qualities functioning asrepresentations interpreted as being aburning fire or quark doing whatever quarks do. JR: So I just don't get it, Ben. Of course there is much of philosophical interest, at a specialized level, if one wants to deal with highly complexexperiences instead of simple ones. I am not denying that. I assumed that you would understand that. You say: BU: One might make similar remarks on abductive inference, which is belief-laden and context-sensitive and would require getting into lots of details and variation case by case. Note that the kind of hypotheses which inferential statistics characteristically produces are "statistical hypotheses" rather than explanatory ones, and it is not as if statisticians never had an interest in the subject; a few years ago one statistician wrote here at peirce-l about being interested in general approaches to the production of the content of hypotheses which go beyond the usual statistical kind. Statistics deals with phenomena in general and, though often applied in idioscopy, is not itself about any special class of phenomena. Yet one does, in at least some philosophy,attemptand pursue general characterizations_of_ abductive inferenceand this is becauseabductive inference is a logical process of a general kindand is therefore part of philosophy's subject matter. JR: Yes, of course, but why would I deny any of that? You then say: BU: Verification is also a logical process of a general kind. The question is, is it some kind of interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof? Or is it something else? JR: Now that baffles me. Of course it is some kind of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof." Why would you even say such a thing? Is it something else? Well, it is supposed to be all of that considered as occurring subsequent to some prior instance of "interpretation, representation, or objectification, or combination thereof", relating to that prior instance as sufficient like it (or in some other way relevant to it) to count as something that might verify or disverify a claim made that cited the prior instance as evidential relative to that claim. Yes, it is one thing to be a verification and quite another to be that which is verified. But what is all of this talk about the one being a mere sign and interpretant whereas the latter is an experience? Both are equally describable in semiotic terms and are equally experiential. And then you say:
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben, I'm wondering if you are acquainted with the paper Fourthness, by Herbert Schneider in what has come to in the 1952 collection of essays _Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_, ed. Wiener Young (Harvard U Press). It is sometimes referred to retrospectively as the First Series since a volume subsequently appeared which is also called Studies in the Philosophy of CSP, but differentiated from the first by being called the Second Series of this collection. It was published, however, by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1964 and edited by Moore and Robin. Schneider calls the supposed fourth factor importance (which he distinguishes from import) and explicates it in terms of satisfaction, which seems to have much the same logical function as what you discuss in terms of verification. I am not saying that I see your view in his exactly but rather that I seem to see some similarity with your view in his explication of it as being required in order to account for the universal as concrete rather than merely an abstraction. (Peirce does talk somewhere of concrete reasonableness as being a fourthness while denying at the same time that this introduces something not formally resolvable in terms of the other three factors. That is, I seem to recall this, but I can find nothing in my notes that says where that passage is. Does anyone else recall this, I wonder, or have I merely hallucinated it?) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:10 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Jim, list, [Ben] That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from books. There is good reason for this. [Ben] The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about math problems and working those math problems yourself. [Jim] Dear Ben, [Jim] Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! [Jim] You seem to be saying that we can have two types of aquaintance with objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Yes and no. No: Direct and unmediated don't mean the same thing. There's lots of sub-logical or sub-semiotic stuff going on. I don't mean illogical, instead I mean, not inference-processing. We perceive directly, but there's lots of mediation by things -- dynamic, material, biological -- which we don't perceive. Likewise in conscious experience there are contributions by unconscious inference processes. If we order by principles of knowledge, principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know thing, then experience comes first. When we analyze experience, we start breaking it down into elements whereby we explain what we do experience. We can break experience down into, for instance, dynamic processes (in which I've said in the past that we should look for the involvement of 'inverse' or multi-objective optimization), material stochastic processes, and vegetable-level information processes. In idioscopy, if we order by explanatory principles then we will put physics first, as usual. If we order by knowledge principles, we will put inference processes first (in idiosocopy this means the sciences of intelligent life). The maths are typically ordered in the order of knowledge rather than an order of being -- ordered on principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know things, and structures of order and deductive theory of logic are usually considered more basic and foundational. This is the opposite of the situation in idioscopy. Anyway, recognition, interpretation, representation, and objectification are elements in a logical a.k.a. semiotic process. If we order by explanatory principles aka the traditional order of being, which corresponds to the order of semiotic determination, then we explain by the object. Yet there is more than objects in semiosis, and there is more than forces and motion in the concrete world. Yes: One can experience things (1) as semiotic objects and (2) as
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Sorry, Ben, for the garbled message. I sent it off accidentally before rereading it to pick up on rewordings without corresponding correction of the syntax. The first sentence should read: I'm wondering if you are acquainted with the paper Fourthness, by Herbert Schneider in the 1952 collection of essays _Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce_, ed. Wiener Young (Harvard U Press)? Joe - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 6:55 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Ben, It is sometimes referred to retrospectively as the First Series since a volume subsequently appeared which is also called Studies in the Philosophy of CSP, but differentiated from the first by being called the Second Series of this collection. It was published, however, by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1964 and edited by Moore and Robin. Schneider calls the supposed fourth factor importance (which he distinguishes from import) and explicates it in terms of satisfaction, which seems to have much the same logical function as what you discuss in terms of verification. I am not saying that I see your view in his exactly but rather that I seem to see some similarity with your view in his explication of it as being required in order to account for the universal as concrete rather than merely an abstraction. (Peirce does talk somewhere of concrete reasonableness as being a fourthness while denying at the same time that this introduces something not formally resolvable in terms of the other three factors. That is, I seem to recall this, but I can find nothing in my notes that says where that passage is. Does anyone else recall this, I wonder, or have I merely hallucinated it?) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:10 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Jim, list, [Ben] That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from books. There is good reason for this. [Ben] The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about math problems and working those math problems yourself. [Jim] Dear Ben, [Jim] Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! [Jim] You seem to be saying that we can have two types of acquaintance with objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Yes and no. No: Direct and unmediated don't mean the same thing. There's lots of sub-logical or sub-semiotic stuff going on. I don't mean illogical, instead I mean, not inference-processing. We perceive directly, but there's lots of mediation by things -- dynamic, material, biological -- which we don't perceive. Likewise in conscious experience there are contributions by unconscious inference processes. If we order by principles of knowledge, principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know thing, then experience comes first. When we analyze experience, we start breaking it down into elements whereby we explain what we do experience. We can break experience down into, for instance, dynamic processes (in which I've said in the past that we should look for the involvement of 'inverse' or multi-objective optimization), material stochastic processes, and vegetable-level information processes. In idioscopy, if we order by explanatory principles then we will put physics first, as usual. If we order by knowledge principles, we will put inference processes first (in idiosocopy this means the sciences of intelligent life). The maths are typically ordered in the order of knowledge rather than an order of being -- ordered on principles of how (on what basis, in what light) we know things, and structures of order and deductive theory of logic are usually considered more basic and foundational. This is the opposite of the situation in idioscopy. Anyway, recognition, interpretation, representation, and objectification are elements in a logical a.k.a. semiotic
[peirce-l] MS 339.663f transcription on-line
I just now added the transcription of the 1909 definition of a sign in the Logic Notebook -- pages MS 339.663f -- to the copies of the MS pages http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/mspages/ms339d-663f.pdf It reads better than the version I posted to the list a couple of days ago because the pdf format can exactly duplicate Word format in a way that HTML format cannot, and that enabled me to show the cross-outs as actually crossed out though still legible. Also, this on-line version is more complete, as I transcribed material that I had omitted in the version posted for the reason I gave in that post, namely, because the additional material primarily concerns the question of whether one can know that one knows something (which is something that arises in the context of fallibilism), rather than the topic I was primarily concerned with when I posted it, namely, the conception of a sign as a substitute or surrogate for the object. Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] URL for Notes on Logic (MS 171)
Ben: The complete text from which that passage you were concerned with was taken is already available on-line in transcribed form at the PEP website (it was published in Writings 2): http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_42/v2_42.htm There is a link to it from Arisbe, too. Joe -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
I agree with you on this, Jim. I am wondering if Ben really thinks that there is any such cognitive acquaintance. I had thought he was simply misstating whatever point he was trying to make and didn't intend that. I am looking forward to his answer on that. Joe - Original Message - From: Jim Piat [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Friday, July 28, 2006 12:12 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate Ben Udell wrote: That signs and interpretations convey meaning, not experience or acquaintance with their objects, is not only Peirce's view but also the common idea of most people. For instance, most people might agree that expertise can sometimes be gained from books about their subject, but they will disagree that experience with the books' subjects can be gained from books. There is good reason for this. The expertise consists of conveyable information from books. The experience involves dealing with and learning about the objects of experience in situations with actual consequences. Even in math, when you stop to think about it, you notice a big difference between reading about math problems and working those math problems yourself. Dear Ben, Thanks for another helpful and interesting post! You seem to be saying that we can have two types of aquaintance with objects. Either we can experience objects directly without the mediation of signs or we can experience the meaning of objects (but not the entirety of the objects themselves) through signs. Before continuing I want to make sure I'm understanding you on this point. Does your notions of direct aqauintance with objects (unmediated by signs or the process of representation) provide one with knowledge of the objects meaning? Is it your view that even without signs (or the process of representation) that experience would be meaningful to us? Is it your view that that signs and the process of representation are (merely) tools for comunicating or thinking about our experience but are otherwise not required for experience to be meaningful? Personally I don't think Peirce meant that we can conceive of objects without engaging in representation. We may have aquaintance with objects in the same sense that two billiard balls are aquainted when they collide but this is not triadic aquaintance for the billiard balls and conveys no meaning to them. For me, all meaningful experience is triadic and representational. That one conception of an object is taken as foundational for a particular discussion does not priviledge that object as the real object but merely as the object commonly understood as the criteria against which the validity of assertions will be tested. Its as though the discussants were saying that the object ultimately under discussion is that one over there or the one described in this sentence or whatever -- but hopefully always one which all participants to the discussion have at least in theory equal access. The issue of what constitutes a collateral object rests less on the distinction between direct aquaintance vs aquaintance through signs but one of private vs public access to the object. A useful collateral object is one to which all discussants have equal access. The question being raised by collateral experience is really one of public vs private experience. The question is not whether the collateral object is known through representation or somehow more directly through dyadic aquaintance because (in my view) all meaningful experience (even so called direct experience) is mediated through signs. The difference between reading about something and doing it is not a matter of representational vs non representational aquaintance but between two different representations of the same object. There are folks who can read about pro football who can not play it and there are folks who can play pro football who can not read. Representation of experience is required for both activities. The common object represented is neither the football-done nor the football-read but the quality of football that is common to and inheres in both. Some of the habits acquired in mastering one respresentation or conception are not the same as required for mastering the other. I don't mean for these last two paragraphs above to leap frog your answers but more as guides to what is troubling me and what I mean by my questions. Thanks again for your comments, Ben. I am still studying them, but want to make sure I'm understanding you as I go. Making sure I understand your distinction between direct aquaintance and sign mediated aquaintance seems an important lst step. Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben says: I thought I was so concise that it was okay to pull the topic in my favorite direction, since it seemed brief. But I have to make some additions and corrections. Ben, I hadn't read your latest message in responding to your earlier message as I do below, and am not sure whether your subsequent comments bear on what I say or not but will just go ahead and post them anyway. (I should add that the MS from which the quote you are commenting on is drawn was not completely quoted by me and what was omitted is perhaps pertinent to it, given the direction you went from it. I will perhaps post the whole thing separately in a later message.) Ben says: ===QUOTE BEN Peirce: The point of contact is the living mind which is affected in a similar way by real things and by their signs. And this is the only possible point of contact. The mind alone recognizes sign and interpretant as corresponding to the real. Yet that mind's recognition of the signs' corresponding to the object is not the mind's sign for the object yet is the mind's _something_ regarding the object, something involving experience of the object. Maybe it's just that, experience, and experience is something outside semiosis, technically non-semiotic in that sense, and supporting semiosis by external pressure? (No, I don't think that, in case anybody is wondering :-)) ==END QUOTE=== REPLY: I wonder if in talking about correspondence, you are looking for something that just isn't to be found, Ben, namely, a statement of verification of a certain cognitive claim that is something other than a mere repetition of the same claim because it claims that the claim corresponds to the way the object actually is. (I say this in view of your opinion that confirmation or verification is a logically distinct factor that Peirce fails to take due account of as a logically distinct fourth factor in his category theory.) Let us suppose that some person, P1, makes a certain knowledge claim, C1, about a certain object, O, namely, that O is F. And let us suppose that a second person, P2, makes a claim, C2, about that claim, saying, yes, O really is as P1 claims it is, namely, F. (In other words, he makes what may seem to be a verifying claim.) And suppose that P2's claim differs from P1's claim not as regards any difference in evidential basis for saying that O is F but only because C2 is about the relationship between claim C1 and O and their observed correspondence, whereas C1 is just about O. (In other words, P1 is merely saying that O is F whereas P2 is saying not only that O is F but also that P1 is saying that O is F and is therefore speaking the truth.) Supposing that the two persons are equivalent as regards their generally recognized status as people who try to speak the truth. Question: Is P2's claim that P1 is speaking the truth a verification of P1's claim? Given that there is no difference in their evidential base and that P1 and P2 are on par as recognized truth-tellers, it would seem not. Why? Because P1's simple claim that O is F could just as well be taken as verification by P1 that P2 is right in claiming that O is F. The general point is that in thinking about the need for verification you are thinking of a verifying statement -- a verification -- as differing from the statement being verified because the verifier is performing an act of comparison of correspondence that is of a different logical type than the act of making the claim being verified, whereas the one is logically on par with the other. Thus e.g. when one gets a second opinion from another physician, let us say, one is not ipso facto getting an opinion that can either verify or disverify the first, though we may mistakenly think that this is what we are doing. But a second opinion is just a further opinion, as a third, fourth, etc., and it doesn't make any difference which one comes first. Of course, we could take the second opinion as verification of the first provided we brought to bear some further considerations, but amongst them would NOT be the fact that one of them could be construed as differing from the other because it involved a comparison of the other as an opinion with the object of that opinion. In other words, there is never really any such thing as a correspondence comparison of opinion and fact or sign and object of sign in the sense you implicitly have in mind. Joe Joe Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 7/21/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: MS 399.663f On the sign as surrogate
Ben, list: Thanks for the response, Ben, and for the news from Gary about the conference. I hope Stjernfelt's paper is made generally available soon. He has an important paper in Transactions of the Peirce Society 36 (Summer 2000) called Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircean Epistemology.. I'm caught by a luncheon engagement and can't do more at the moment than to add some more quotes to provide some background for sorting out the imputation factors along the lines you are suggesting: These are all from the early years (1865-1873): ==QUOTE PEIRCE=== Writings 1,172f (1865) MS 94 Harvard Lecture I Concerning words also it is farther to be considered, [Locke] says, that there comes by constant use to be such a connection between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. Now this readiness of excitation obviously consists in this, namely, that we do not have to reflect upon the word as a sign but . . . it comes to affect the intellect as though it had that quality which it connotes. I call this the acquired nature of the word, because it is a power that the word comes to have, and because the word itself without any reflection of ours upon it brings the idea into our minds. . . . Now, I ask, how is it that anything can be done with a symbol, without reflecting upon the conception, much less imagining the object that belongs to it? It is simply because the symbol has acquired a nature, which may be described thus, that when it is brought before the mind certain principles of its use -- whether reflected on or not -- by association immediately regulate the action of the mind; and these may be regarded as laws of the symbol itself which it cannot _as a symbol_ transgress. Writings 1, 280 (1865) MS 106 Harvard Lecture X Inference in general obviously supposes symbolization; and all symbolization is inference. For every symbol as we have seen contains information. And in the last lecture we saw that all kinds of information involve inference. Inference, then, is symbolization. They are the same notions. Now we have already analyzed the notion of a symbol, and we have found that it depends upon the possibility of representations acquiring a nature, that is to say an immediate representative power. This principle is therefore the ground of inference in general. Writings 1,477, Lowell Lecture IX 1866 Representation is of three kinds -- Likeness, Indication or Correspondence in fact, and Symbolization. . . . A representation is either a Likeness, an Index, or a Symbol. A likeness represents its object by agreeing with it in some particular. An index represents is object by a real correspondence with it -- as a tally does quarts of milk, and a vane the wind. A symbol is a general representation like a word or conception. Scientifically speaking, a likeness is a representation grounded on an internal character -- that is, whose reference to a ground is prescindible. An index is a representation whose relation to its object is prescindible and is a Disquiparance, so that its peculiar Quality is not prescindible but is relative. A symbol is a representation whose essential Quality and Relation are both unprescindible -- the Quality being imputed and the Relation ideal. Thus there are three kinds of Quality Internal Quality (Quality proper) -- The Quality of an Equiparent and Likeness External Quality -- The Quality of a Disquiparant and Index Imputed Quality -- The Quality of a Symbol And two kinds of Relation Real Relation (Relation proper) -- The Relation of Likeness and Index Ideal Relation -- The relation of a Symbol . . . Having thus made a complete catalogue of the objects of formal thought, we come down to consider symbols, with which alone Logic is concerned -- and symbols in a special aspect; namely, as determined by their reference to their objects or correlates. The first division which we are to attempt to make between different kinds of symbols ought to depend upon their intention, what they are specially meant to express -- whether their peculiar function is to lie in their reference to their ground, in their reference to their object, or their reference to their interpretant. A symbol whose intended function is its reference to its ground -- although as a symbol it must refer also to an object and an interpretant, and although the nature of its reference to its object is alone the study of the logician -- is nevertheless intended to be nothing more than something which has meaning and to which a certain character has been imputed; in other words it is a symbol only because the imputation of a certain character has made it one -- the imputation of the character is the same as putting it for a thing or things -- so that it is merely
[peirce-l] Fw: Programa II Jornadas Peirce en Argentina
This was forwarded to me by Alfredo Horoch, one of the participants in the conference in Argentina which is described below. It is gratifying to see how many scholars are involved and how widely they are dispersed throughout Central and South America now, though I can only guess at the location of a good many of them. Perhaps a later version of the program will indicate the institutional affiliations more explicitly. (The acronyms used are not informative to me.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 1:08 PM Subject: Programa II Jornadas Peirce en Argentina II Jornadas Peirce en Argentina 7 y 8 de septiembre de 2006 ACADEMIA NACIONAL DE CIENCIAS DE BUENOS AIRES Av. Alvear 1771 3er. Piso (PROGRAMA PROVISIONAL) 7 de Septiembre de 2006 14:00 Recepci¨n-Acreditaci¨n 14:20 Apertura: Palabras de la Lic. Catalina Hynes, Coordinadora GEP Argentina. 14:25 Conferencia Inaugural: Dr. Roberto Walton (Centro de Estudios Filos¨ficos Eugenio Pucciarelli): Peirce y la fenomenolog¨a. Presentaci¨n a cargo del Dr. Jaime Nubiola (Universidad de Navarra). Trabajo en comisiones: Sal¨n de Actos: Mesa panel sobre verdad y error Coordinadora: Evelyn Vargas 15:30 ANDR¨S HEBRARD (UNLP), FEDERICO L¨PEZ (UNLP-CIC): Razones para la convergencia: realidad, comunidad y m¨todo experimental 16:00 EVELYN VARGAS (UNLP- CONICET) La inferencia como s¨mbolo 16:30 CRISTINA DI GREGORI (UNLP- CONICET), CECILIA DURAN (UNLP) John Dewey: acerca del pragmatismo de Peirce 17:00 MARIA AURELIA DI BERNARDINO (UNLP) Máxima Pragmática y abducci¨n Sala CEF: Coordinador: Roberto Marafiotti 15:30 ROBERTO FAJARDO (Univ. de Panamá) Hacia una l¨gica de lo indeterminado; creaci¨n art¨stica y semiosis 16:00 CLAUDIO CORT¨S L¨PEZ (Univ. Finis Terrae - Chile) Semi¨tica y est¨tica de la pintura: una aproximaci¨n desde la teor¨a Peirce-Bense 16:30 IVONNE ALVAREZ TAMAYO ( Univ. Pop. Aut. del Estado de Puebla) Abducci¨n y fenomenolog¨a de Peirce aplicada en procesos de diseño visual y audiovisual 17:00 LORENA STEINBERG (UBA) La semi¨tica aplicada al análisis de las organizaciones 17:30 Pausa caf¨ Trabajo en comisiones: Coordinador: Javier Legris Sal¨n de Actos: 17:45 EDGAR SANDOVAL (Univ. de Panamá) Peirce y la semi¨tica de las afecciones 18:15 DANIEL KAPOLKAS (UBA - CONICET) Verdad, realidad y comunidad: una lectura realista de la teor¨a de la cognici¨n de Charles Sanders Peirce 18:45 CARLOS GARZ¨N (Univ. Nac. de Colombia), CATALINA HERN¨NDEZ (Univ. Nac. de Colombia) C. S. Peirce: realidad, verdad y el debate realismo-antirrealismo 19:15 CATALINA HYNES (UNSTA- UNT) El problema de la unidad de la noci¨n peirceana de verdad 19:45 Mesa Panel (Sal¨n de Actos): El origen de la cuantificaci¨n en Peirce: Javier Legris (UBA), Gustavo Demartin (UNLP), Gabriela Fulugorio (UBA), Sandra Lazzer (UBA) Coordinador: Ignacio Angelelli Sala CEF: Coordinadora: Natalia Rom¨ 17:45 ALEJANDRO RAM¨REZ FIGUEROA (Univ. de Chile) Peirce desde la inteligencia artificial: la abducci¨n y la condici¨n de consistencia 18:15 GUIDO VALLEJOS (Univ. de Chile) Autonom¨a de la abducci¨n e inferencia hacia la mejor explicaci¨n 18:45 SANDRA VISOKOLSKIS (UNVM -UNC) Metáfora, ¨cono y abducci¨n en Charles S. Peirce 19:15 V¨CTOR BRAVARI (Pontificia Univ. Cat¨lica de Chile) Abducci¨n colectiva 19:45 Presentaci¨n del libro (Sala CEF): E. Sandoval (Comp.): Semi¨tica, l¨gica y epistemolog¨a. Homenaje a Ch. S. Peirce (UACM, M¨xico, 2006): Jaime Nubiola (Universidad de Navarra) y Edgar Sandoval (UACM) 8 de Septiembre Sal¨n de Actos: Coordinador: Jorge Roetti 14:00 ROSA MAR¨A MAYORGA (Virginia Tech) Pragmaticismo y Pluralismo 14:30 SARA BARRENA Y JAIME NUBIOLA (Universidad de Navarra) El ser humano como signo en crecimiento 15:00 ALFREDO HOROCH (ARISBE) Arisbe 1888-1914: un hogar para Julliette, Charles, y un refugio para la ciencia estadounidense 15:30 HEDY BOERO (UNSTA) Juicio de consejo y abducci¨n: Tomás de Aquino y C. S. Peirce Sala CEF: Coordinador: Mariano Sanginetto 14:00 CATALINA HERN¨NDEZ Y ANDERSON PINZON (Univ. Nac. de Colombia) Peirce, mente y percepci¨n: una posible cr¨tica 14:30 ALEJANDRA NI¨O AMIEVA (UBA) La abducci¨n en el análisis semi¨tico de imágenes 15:00 OSCAR ZELIS, GABRIEL PULICE (Grupo de Investigaci¨n en Psicoanálisis) Las tres categor¨as Peirceanas y los tres registros lacanianos. La estructura triádica del acto de semiosis como nudo de convergencia entre ambas teorizaciones 15:30 MAR¨A GRISELDA GAIADA (UNLP), CHRISTIAN ROY BIRCH La tercerdidad en la experiencia psicoanal¨tica 16:00 Pausa caf¨ Sal¨n de Actos: Coordinadora: Sara Barrena 16:15 BERNARDITA BOLUMBURU (Univ. de Chile) Peirce, la abducci¨n y los modelos mentales 16:45 JO¨O QUEIROZ (Univ. Federal de Bah¨a, Brasil), CLAUS EMMECHE (Univ. de Campinas, Brasil), CHARBEL NI¨O EL-HANI (Univ. de Copenhagen, Dinamarca) Information and meaning in living sistems 17:15 LUIS ANDRADE, LUC¨A VELASCO (Univ. del Valle,
[peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe
Arnold, Wilfred, and list: I just noticed -- and corrected -- a transcription error that occurs in Section 3 of the 1893 version in the footnote embedded in that paragraph: I had typed "intention" where it should have been "attention". That could easily induce a conceptual error. I also corrected a couple of typos, one was a spelling of "priscindible" as "priscindable" and I forget the other, but it is something trivial, too. Also, that glitch on the last page, at the top, disappeared when I figured out that it was due to some confusion induced in the program that was caused by using the switch that keeps the two lines together at the page break. That was corrected, too, and the box enclosing the text now stays open where it was mistakenly closing at the page break before. The only important error, though, was the attention/intention mistake. And they are all corrected now. (If you find any other seeming mistakes please let me know so I can correct them, too.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Arnold Shepperson To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:11 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: MS 403 available at Arisbe Joe, Wilfred I had a quick squizz at MS 403, and agree that it could be quite an important document in getting an idea of the combined continuity and growth of Peirce's thought. Thanks for doing this: I am at this moment taking a break from preparing an article on the contributions to social inquiry that Peirce's philosophical, semeiotic,and logical possible inquiries make possible, and this document (even if I don't cite it directly) does seem to clarify ways of showing reader only partly familiar with Peirce that he is definitely worth the further effort in the reading. BTW: the article in question is for a relatively new journal, _The Journal of Multicultural Discourses_, based at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. An earlier version by Keyan Tomaselli and I was sent back with a referee's request that the article say less about what Africans purportedly think about GW Bush's America, and a lot more about Peirce. I have been giving this a full go for the last week, and expect to be busy for another week or two yet: anybody who wants more Peirce, can have as much as I can give, and whatever else they can get from all the resources!! Hence the rather peculiarly personal relevance of your posting MS 403 to Arisbe, because this is a source I can pass on as part of the article's review of the change in peirce Scholarship resources as a result of the Internet. I had asked the journal's editor whether his university had had any contact with Charls Pearson's project, but haven't had a respone yet. Cheers Arnold Shepperson--- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/394 - Release Date: 7/20/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/394 - Release Date: 7/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] MS 403 available at Arisbe
I just now mounted a transcription of MS 403 (1893), The Categories, at Arisbe. http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms403/ms403.pdf This is a rewrite -- up to a point -- of the 1867 paper on the categories, and I include in the transcription of the later paper a copy of the 1867 paper interleaved with it in such a way as to make it easy to compare the two as regards what is and is not changed. The changes are, in general, explainable in terms of the different audiences for which they are written. In the case of the later paper, the audience would be the reader of a logic text in which it (MS 403) was to appear as Chapter 1. The name of the logic text (never published) was to be The Art of Reasoning and -- judging from the name -- it seems to have been intended for people of the same type as those whom he recruited for his distance education course (correspondence course) in the late 1880's since that was also the advertised name of his course. (See Nathan Houser's account of this remarkable endeavor in Volume 6 of the Writings of CSP, Indiana University Press). I don't know whether Peirce was still thinking in terms of that correspondence course in 1893, which seems to be several years after he gave up on the course; but the reference to logic as an art rather than a science and the use of the word reasoning rather than, say, reason, suggests that the intended readership was the same, adults primarily concerned with what logic could do for them as good thinkers generally. Needless to say, perhaps, Peirce's idea of what would appeal to those interested primarily in practice rather than theory seems a bit odd and unrealistic at times. But watching Deadwood has convinced me that Americans may well have tended to think about things in a more eloquent and intelligent way in those days than we are presently accustomed or inclined toward nowadays -- an idea which has occurred to me a number of times in the past when reading not only Peirce but some other American writers of the late 19th Century -- so maybe Peirce wasn't so far off in his expectations about his prospective students as we are inclined to think. Anyway, I find the modifications Peirce did and did not make in his 1893 rewrite of the New List helpful in understanding his thinking generally and perhaps others will as well. Unfortunately, MS 403 stops just one sentence short of the passage in the New List where he defines the symbol in terms of imputed quality, though he has just drawn the distinction between an internal quality and a relative quality, as in the New List but does not complete that with the notion of the imputed quality nor make use of the talk of three kinds of quality to define the icon/index/symbol distinction. The reason seems fairly clear when we turn to MS 404, which was apparently composed as a continuation of 403 but introduces something for which there is no corresponding passage in the New List, namely, an attempt at a loose, suggestive, intuitive, poetic appreciation of the three-category conception. One obvious reason is that he could not reasonably expect someone who is reading a book on the art of reasoning to understand what is happening in distinguishing between internal, relative, and imputed quality. I do not think it was because he had abandoned the earlier idea of the symbol as being grounded in an imputed quality, since this is really the same as to say that the proper interpretant of a symbol interprets it as if it were an icon conventionally associated with the symbol which is being indexed by the symbol replica. (This is his later doctrine, stated again and again by him from the 1890's on, ) But I don't think it is only that he had decided on a better way of saying the same thing, but also had something to do with the distinction between three kinds of quality: roughly, monadic, dyadic, and triadic (i.e.internal, relative, and imputed quality). What is problematic in this is that in order to make sense of that distinction he had to distinguish between the firstness of firstness itself and the firstness of secondness and the firstness of thirdness since the quality could not otherwise iconize existential or dyadic relations and three-term representation relations. He does of course recognize THAT distinction later, but that is a complication that he would not want to be burdened with explaining in an introductory text in logic! Anyway, I doubt that he had realized the necessity for that when writing the 1867 paper, but I see no reason why it should be thought of as inconsistent with it. All that is required to recognize the foundational character of the New List for his later as well as his earlier work is to be able to understand it as consistent with such further developments of it as turned out later to be required. Nobody holds -- so far as I know -- that Peirce's thought did not DEVELOP across his lifetime:
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
In response to me saying:. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! Ben says: It's also difficult to believe that anyone eats all the way through a rich, multi-layered Italian pastry. And yet, we do (usually). Kidding aside, I have literally no idea why Joe says it's difficult to believe that anybody could read all the way through it. Too much coherence? Too much mix of coherence and incoherence? Now, it's fun to try to work a certain amount of seeming incoherence into one's writing. Conversations, for instance, don't have to be written as give take where speakers understand or even address each other's previous remarks in any direct way. It's a literary technique, or challenge, which one sees here and there. REPLY: Good point, Ben, and incoherence certainly is not always bad. Maybe it is the mix, as you suggest, but reading that whole book -- instead of just dipping into it now and again to see if one can find firm footing (which I never could) -- seems to me rather like reading the same joke told in many different ways. Shaggy dog stories: do you remember when they were all the rage as avant garde humor? -- they are fun heard once, though it seems to depend upon the realization that it is just a shaggy dog story and funny because of its pointlessness, i.e. because you recognize it as a practical joke comparable to having the chair jerked out from umder you when you are trying to sit in it. But to listen to variations on the same shaggy dog story knowing that it is a shaggy dog story for 135 pages? It makes me suspect that there is a sense to it that I am missing and you are picking up on, being more wiedely read than I and in the relevant way. Well, I do seem to remember owing a copy of _t zero_, too, but I probably jmissed the point to it, toom since I remember notihng about it except the title! But I'll give it a try -- maybe -- if I can track it down. Joe === _Teitlebaum's Window_ by Wallace Markfield has some of it. Some of the conversations in _Mulligan Stew_ by Gilbert Sorrentino. In real life, of course, that kind of talk is often motivated by evasiveness. One year at a Thanksgiving dinner, a relative asked a question about another relative, a question which those of us in the know didn't want to answer. So I answered that the reason why the relative in question had gone to California (we're in NYC), was in order to buy some shoes. There followed about an hour's worth of purposely non-responsive conversation by all the relatives, both those in the know and those not in the know (conversation which really confused some of the non-family guests), which was really jokes, puns, whatever we could muster. But the point wasn't incoherence, but, instead, unusual coherences intensified and brought into relief against the lack of some usual kinds of coherence. Years ago I read a newspaper column doing this, by Pete Hamill of all people, and it was really pretty funny. Also don't miss _t zero_ with The Origin of Birds. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Michael said: [MD:] Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's Cosmicomics, [but] I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is titled The Ends of the Universe, which posits an asymptotic end of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that preceded the sporting emergence of Firstness. RESPONSE: [JR:] Well, I'm not sure what the moral of it is supposed to be, Michael. I put all that down rather impulsively, not thinking much about what might justify it or what it might imply. In retrospect I think that what I was doing was trying to re-express what I thought Peirce was expressing in the following passage from the MS called Answers to Questions Concerning my Belief in God which Harshorne and Weiss published in the Collected Papers, Vol. 6: ==QUOTE PEIRCE 508. Do you believe Him to be omniscient? Yes, in a vague sense. Of course, God's knowledge is something so utterly unlike our own
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of opinion, representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Claudio Guerri [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as that object for which truth stands I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that Lo is So) Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help!
attempt to conceptualize the cosmic stew or not. But thanks for the thoughtful response to a rather impulsive post, Michael. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! So I wouldn't count on it as a solution to anything. But it's a good read as far as you can stand it nonetheless! Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:37 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's Cosmicomics, by I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is titled The Ends of the Universe, which posits an asymptotic end of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that preceded the sporting emergence of Firstness. -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 5:19 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Michael J. DeLaurentis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of opinion, representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -Original Message- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in How to Make Our Ideas Clear: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented
[peirce-l] Fw: NeuroQuantology New Issue Published, June 2006
For what it's worth: the reason for my query about Neuroquantology was receipt of the message below. The unusual range of interests and accomplishments of the people on PEIRCE-L makes it a good place to raise questions about possible resources like this, doesn't it? Others should feel as free as I do to raise such questions as this. There is no need to summarize results since it would add nothing substantive to the opinions expressed. It's useful and sometimes important to know to what extent a journal is mainstream or marginal, but that in itself says nothing about its intellectual value. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: NQ Editorial [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 3:19 AM Subject: NeuroQuantology New Issue Published, June 2006 Dear NeuroQuantology Readers NeuroQuantology Journal has just published its latest issue at http://www.neuroquantology.com We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles FREE and items of interest. Thanks for the continuing interest in our work, Vol 4, No 2 (2006) Table of Contents * www.neuroquantology.com * Editorial Is Quantum Physics Necessary to Understanding Consciousness? Sultan Tarlaci 91-92 Men Who Made a New Science My Scientific Odyssey ¨ner TAN 93-100 Perspectives Psychomotor Theory: Mind-Brain-Body Triad in Health and Disease ¨ner TAN 101-133 Invited Article Phenomenal Awareness and Consciousness from a Neurobiological Perspective Wolf Singer 134-154 Review Article Brain Research: A Perspective from the Coupled Oscillators Field Jose Luis Perez Velazquez 155-165 Original Article Quantum, Consciousness and Panpsychism: A Solution to the Hard Problem F Gao Shan 166-185 The Mechanism of Mourning: An Anti-entropic Mechanism F Giuliana Galli Carminati, Federico Carminati 186-197 NQ-Biography Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) 198-200 Abstract from NQ literature Selected Abstract from Literature Details 201-290 -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] question about neuroquantology journal
In case there was any misunderstanding, my recent message about the response to my question about the neuroquantology journal was not intended to discourage further response but rather to encourage further such questions from others as the occasion should arise. It struck me as a use for the list which we have not exploited sufficiently. Nor was there any intention to be critical of any of the responses. Quite the contrary, I was feeling pleased about the quality of the responses and thinking about how helpful they all were. Frank expressions of judgment and surmise are always valuable. I was merely remarking that any conclusions drawn about the journal on that basis would have to be drawn by us as individual assessments for personal purposes, rather than as pseudo-objective impersonal conclusions about its value or status.. I suppose that is all obvious enough, but sometimes I sense that my position as manager as well as participant has unintentionally suggested something unintended. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.3/374 - Release Date: 6/23/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I was intending to warn Ben against adopting a bullying tone toward you, as his frustration seemed to be mounting. Perhaps a mistake on my part but a response in part to your own complaints about his tone, which you were construing as an attempt to silence you. Also I had been about to answer you with the same point that Ben made and didn't want to feel required to duplicate it. Joe . - Original Message - From: Jean-Marc Orliaguet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 1:18 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: Ben: I don't think you or your position would lose any credibility by letting Jean-Marc have the last word on the matter. Joe Ransdell That's unfair in my opionion. Being accused of not answering, I answer to Ben with counter-arguments and now the question should be shoved under the carpet ... /JM - Original Message - *From:* Benjamin Udell mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* Peirce Discussion Forum mailto:peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu *Sent:* Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:14 PM *Subject:* [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Jean-Marc: In reading Joe's response to you, I am reminded that you still haven't taken a stand on the three main trichotomies and their categorial correlations. If you do in fact understand the correlations, you may feel that it destroys your argument to admit that you understand them. But then it comes to the same thing. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I agree, Ben. Peirce used capitalization to mark his use of a term as a technical one, a term of art. It is a common practice of his and I am certain that there is at least one place where he states this explicitly. Ill try to track down a verifying passage but it may be difficult to find. Joe Ransdell . - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:39 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Aw Jim, you're a trouble maker! 66~~ *A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of detemining a Third, called its _Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.* ~~99 Normal English? With capitalization of the ordinals, no less? In English we would say a given thing, a second thing, etc. English is characterized by intransigent normalcy. So Peirce is going to use some capitalized ordinals without explicit referents, as if he were talking about Firsts, Seconds, Thirds in the usual Peirce way, in order to say simply something, another thing, and a third thing? Peirce is complicated but he is not sadistic toward the reader. The Sign's correlate, when no further specification is provided, is the Object. On a New List of Categories: Secondness is reference to a correlate. The Object is the Correlate is the Second. On a New List of Categories: Thirdness is reference to an interpretant. The Interpretant is the Third. Argh, Ben, on three glasses of wine - Original Message - From: Jim Piat [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:12 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list-- For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms first, second and third in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness. OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting. But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting discussion which I hope will continue. That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to something. And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that in a separate post. Best wishes, Jim Piat --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Here is a verifying passage:, from the neglected Argument paper
Peirce: CP 6.452
The word God, so capitalized (as we Americans say), is the
definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really
creator of all three Universes of Experience.
Some words shall herein be capitalized when used, not as vernacular,
but as terms defined. Thus an idea is the substance of an actual unitary
thought or fancy; but Idea, nearer Plato's idea of {idea}, denotes
anything whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully
represented, regardless of any person's faculty or impotence to represent
it.
Joe Ransdell
- Original Message -
From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:18 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
I agree, Ben. Peirce used capitalization to mark his use of a term as a
technical one, a term of art. It is a common practice of his and I am
certain that there is at least one place where he states this explicitly.
Ill try to track down a verifying passage but it may be difficult to find.
Joe Ransdell
.
- Original Message -
From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 9:39 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Aw Jim, you're a trouble maker!
66~~
*A _Sign_, or _Representamen_, is a First which stands in such genuine
triadic relation to a Second, called its _Object_, as to be capable of
detemining a Third, called its _Interpretant, to assume the same triadic
relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object.*
~~99
Normal English? With capitalization of the ordinals, no less? In English we
would say a given thing, a second thing, etc. English is characterized
by intransigent normalcy. So Peirce is going to use some capitalized
ordinals without explicit referents, as if he were talking about Firsts,
Seconds, Thirds in the usual Peirce way, in order to say simply
something, another thing, and a third thing? Peirce is complicated but
he is not sadistic toward the reader.
The Sign's correlate, when no further specification is provided, is the
Object. On a New List of Categories: Secondness is reference to a
correlate. The Object is the Correlate is the Second.
On a New List of Categories: Thirdness is reference to an interpretant.
The Interpretant is the Third.
Argh,
Ben, on three glasses of wine
- Original Message -
From: Jim Piat [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 10:12 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list--
For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms
first, second and third in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as
Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved
when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to
something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as
a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand
the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness.
OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's
trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories
and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting.
But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an
interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting
discussion which I hope will continue.
That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a
sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the
characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up
with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we
can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not
to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as
themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a
sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to
something.
And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special
interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that
in a separate post.
Best wishes,
Jim Piat
---
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[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
The numbers can be ignored altogether as far as I am concerned, or one could use, say, the Greek alphabet instead of numbers or just leave the numbers off. All that is important for me is the class names and the understanding that it is presuppositiional from the top down, which could be shown by using down-pointing arrows for connective lines. The use I would have for the figure doesn't require that it have the properties required to transform it in the various ways graph theory requires. For my purposes its use is primarily as a mnemonic for remembering what presupposes what. so that if, in the process of analyzing a bit of discourse, say, one has identified something as being of this class or that one knows ipso facto that a sign of this or that other class is either presupposed by it or presupposes it, directly or indirectly.. I imagine the use of it to be that of being able to figure out what is going on in or going wrong with some actual bit of persuasive argumentation, in a very broad sense of argumentation in which even a work of visual art or a piece of music might be thought of as being constructed argumentatively, supposing one can make good on the prospect of being able to understand artworks\as arguments, coherent or incoherent. The application of this sort of thing to infrahuman life would be via the collapse of genuine into degenerate forms (in the special sense of degeneracy Peirce uses), the elimination of levels of reflection, and whatever other modifications are necessary to account for higher developments of life. This view of its use could conceivably be at odds with Peirce's own aims in devising graphical representations of the classes, which might require that the graphs have the properties you require of them because his aim was to be able to learn some things simply from manipulating the graphs in various ways. But it seems to me that something gets lost there. Perhaps something of great philosophical interest will result from the use of graph theory, but focus on what that might yield could be at the expense of what is lost by conforming to its constraints where there is no need to do so since all one needs is a graphical representation for mnemonic and other intuitional purposes. I am not at present aware of what may in fact have been accomplished philosophically with the use of graph theory, but I can imagine it being of interest for a great many other purposes which, for all I know, may be far more important than the philosophical ones. Moreover, I am not saying that what has been done has no philosophical interest but only that I am not myself aware of any such results from it -- and I lay no claim to being well informed about it, which I am not.. I \am just saying that what interests me does not seem to require anything more than I indicate above. Anyway, one thing that occurs to me when I note that Peirce's trek through the presuppositional order in 2.254 through 2.263 begins with quality and ends with the argument is that it seems comparable to regarding thought in the Kantian way as a process of unification of the manifold. as in the New List. If I understand Peirce correctly, he thinks of a quality as being a given unity and simplicity which is, however, also regardable, reflectively, as if it were an achieved unity -- the achievement being forgotten once completed -- brought about through a unification process which builds the given quality from a manifold of elements of synthesized qualia, themselves regardable as if they are the simplified results of still prior qualitative elements logically synthesized in the same way. Or looking at it the other way around, the completion of the argument yields a new quality -- the argument assumes the appearance of a new quality -- which may or may not play a similar role in a further synthesizing unification of the same sort, and so forth. In other words, there is something comparable in that sequence to the line of development one finds in the New List, though at a finer grained level of resolution, as it were. This is a lame description of what I am trying to draw attention to, intended only suggestively. That passage in CP 2 is not comparable in rigor to what happens in the New List. to be sure, but the progression does have a presuppositional complexity which seems comparable.. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Jean-Marc Orliaguet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:20 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: Jean-Marc says: I am surprised that you are claiming that the classes can be traversed by a unique, natural, ordered sequence from 1 to 10 while at the same time you claim to have come up with a structure similar to a lattice, these are contradictory assertions. REPLY: I made no such claim, I said
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Jean-Marc: What you say below suggests a chaos in Peirce's work and in the scholarship about it which does not exist, as regards this matter in question. I have said several times here and once quite recently that all talk about Peirce's work on the trichotomies past the three presented in the Syllabus of Logic of 1903 where the stuff about the ten sign classes first appears is about material in Peirce's notebooks which is very much of the nature of work in process that never reached even a provisionally satisfactory status in Peirce's own estimation. It cannot be talked about as if it is on par, as representing Peirce's view, with the material in the Syllabus where the first three trichotomies are developed systematically and were in fact made publicly available by Peirce.. So far as I know, no one who is aware of this in virtue either of studying the MS material themselves or hearing about how problematic it is from me or someone else disagrees with that, so far as I know. Ben's comments about the three trichotomy set which Peirce himself made publicly available are quite reasonable as a way of contrasting the present status of that with the unsettled status of the material in his notebooks. I am less concerned with defending Ben, though, than I am with there not being a misunderstanding about the present scholarly situation. There is no assumption, of course, that any settlement of opinion on any of this is definitive or absolute. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Jean-Marc Orliaguet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:48 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Benjamin Udell wrote: Jean-Marc, list, I don't even agree in the end with Peirce's classification but it's pretty obvious that whether one partially or totally orders the 10 classes depends on the criteria. And it's pretty obvious that the trichotomies are ordered (or orderable) in a Peircean categorial way, specifically: the 1st trichotomy pertains to the sign's own category, the 2nd to the category in which the sign refers to its object, and the 3rd to the category in which the sign entails its interpretant. If one incorporates this ordering of the trichotomies into the ordering of the classes, then one ends with a complete ordering of the classes. One can also so prioritize as to arrive simply at the partially ordered lattice. This is at least partly a matter of whether one prioritizes the Peircean category of the trichotomy (the ordinality of the parameter) or the Peircean category of the term IN the trichotomy (the ordinality of the parametric value). How does one decide? Well, one looks at it both ways, both ways have their illuminative aspects, so one ends up finally not choosing one way dispensing permanently with the other way. So there seems to be some optionality in how one orders these things. Jean-Marc, however, seems to believe that the ordering question is quite determinate, and leads inevitably to the partial ordering. He does this by dismissing without analyzing the certainly very categorial appearance of the ordering of the trichotomies. Certainly Peirce was quite conscious of this categorial structure of the trichotomies, since his 10-ad of trichotomies is obviously an attempt to extend that structure. Where most Peirceans seem to regard this matter as settled and fairly simple, Jean-Marc differs, which is his right. But I don't see in any of this thread where Jean-Marc addresses what certainly appears to be a Peircean categorial orderability of the trichotomies. Instead he has merely asserted that they are like categories of male/female and old/young, and he has not actually pursued a comparison of his example with the Peircean trichotomies in order to argue for his counter-intuitive assertion. So I think that we're still awaiting an argument. If this argument is supposed to be in Robert Marty's book, then perhaps Jean-Marc can summarize it. If Jean-Marc is unprepared to do that, perhaps Robert can do it. Best, Ben Udell Which Peirceans are you thinking of? I'll tell you about the Peirceans, concerning the ordering of the trichotomies. First Peirce, among the Peirceans, gives over the years five different orderings of the trichotomies. Beginning with the triad (S, S-Od, S-If), then continuing with the 6 trichotomies (1904 and 1908) in different orders and the finally with the ten trichotomies (letter to Lady Welby 1908 and 8-344) yet again in different orders - This is summarized on page 231 of Marty's book. None of the orderings are the same, by the way. This is for Peirce's account. Then two other authors Lieb (1977) and Kawama (1976) listed in the same table propose a different ordering of the 10 trichotomies. Marty also mentions on the same page that Jappy proposed a non-linear ordering of the
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
gn or qualisign). I have the analogous question here as I asked above. (You start out saying that the sign is a qualisign, and (3,1) seems to be a collective qualisign, and (2,1) seems to be a concretive qualisign, and (1,1) seems to be an abstractive qualisign. (3,1) (2,1) seem excluded by the usual rules of sign-parametric combination, and then you say that the sign a qualisign or a sinsign or a legisign. Etc.) Best, Ben Udell Whatever the case the trichotomie n¨ IV is enterely determined by the trichotomies I and III and consequently the distinction brought forth this trichotomie is not operative and I conclude that is redundant. The same argument can be advanced for the trichotomies VII and IX, generally for the trichotomies concerning relations betwen elements of which the nature is otherwise know . The case of tne trichotomie number X is different and I admit willingly that I don't see what can be a trichotomy of a triadic relation especially when I represent It by a branching Y. If anyone can give to me an idea on this matter I should be grateful to him... Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ - Original Message - From: "Benjamin Udell"To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 12:56 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: redundancies of trichotomies Robert, list,I wrote,"In that case (3,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) legisign and (2,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) sinsign,..."Things are confusing enough without my typos. I meant,"In that case (3,2) would be a (2) concretive (3) legisign and (2,2) would be a (2) concretive (2) sinsign,..."- Best, Ben Udell - Original Message - From: "Joseph Ransdell" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 4:39 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Jean-Marc:What you say below suggests a chaos in Peirce's work and in the scholarship about it which does not exist, as regards this matter in question. I have said several times here and once quite recently that all talk about Peirce's work on the trichotomies past the three presented in the Syllabus of Logic of 1903 where the stuff about the ten sign classes first appears is about material in Peirce's notebooks which is very much of the nature of work in process that never reached even a provisionally satisfactory status in Peirce's own estimation. It cannot be talked about as if it is on par, as representing Peirce's view, with the material in the Syllabus where the first three trichotomies are developed systematically and were in fact made publicly available by Peirce.. So far as I know, no one who is aware of this in virtue either of studying the MS material themselves or hearing about how problematic it is from me or someone else disagrees with that, so far as I know. Ben's comments about the three trichotomy set which Peirce himself made publicly available are quite reasonable as a way of contrasting the present status of that with the unsettled status of the material in his notebooks. I am less concerned with defending Ben, though, than I am with there not being a misunderstanding about the present scholarly situation. There is no assumption, of course, that any settlement of opinion on any of this is definitive or absolute. .Joe Ransdell- Original Message - From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:48 PMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)Benjamin Udell wrote: Jean-Marc, list, I don't even agree in the end with Peirce's classification but it's prettyobvious that whether one partially or totally orders the 10 classes depends on the criteria. And it's pretty obvious that the trichotomies are ordered (or orderable) in a Peircean categorial way, specifically: the 1st trichotomy pertains to the sign's own category, the 2nd to the category in which the sign refers to its object, and the 3rd to the category in which the sign entails its interpretant. If one incorporates this ordering of the trichotomies into the ordering of the classes, then one ends with a complete ordering of the classes. Onecan also so prioritize as to arrive simply at the partially orderedlattice. This is at least partly a matter of whether one prioritizes thePeircean category of the trichotomy (the ordinality of the "parameter") orthe Peircean category of the term IN the trichotomy (the ordinality of the"parametric value"). How does one decide? Well, one looks at it both ways,both ways have their illuminative aspects, so one ends up finally notchoos
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
J-MO = Jean-Marc Orliaguet JR = Joseph Ransdell J-M: Also note that the various trichotomies are not ordered. It is purely a convention to call a trichotomy the first, second, or third trichotomy, etc. So deducing an ordering of the classes from that information only, as it has been done many times including on this list, is incorrect. JR: It is not a matter of convention only: the three trichotomies are based on the difference between firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which is sufficient in itself to make the ordering of them as first, second, and third something having informative content of some possible importance. J-M: yes, but this does no influence the results in any way, especially this has nothing to do with ordering the classes. If one started with the second trichotomy instead of the first, one would get let us say an (index, sinsign, rheme) instead of a (sinsign, index, rheme) ... but in a different order if one followed your method (3 would be 5 or something) no, really... the order relations between the classes of signs comes from the internal relations of determination between the sign, object and interpretant. That is totally independent of the way in which you perform the trichotomies. REPLY BY JR: The sequential order is not conventional. Peirce begins, in CP 2.254 with the simplest possible sign, the qualisign, which is so simple that its peculiar value as a sign can be due to nothing other than what it is by hypothesis: sign and object are the same, thus it can only be in icon when considered in relation to its object. That same simplicity constrains it to be only a rheme by constraining its interpretant to being the only thing it can possibly be, the quality which is the sign itself. This is the first class of sign: the rhematic iconic qualisign. When we get to 2.263, nine paragraphs later, for the tenth class of signs, we have traversed a path of continually increasing complexity through the intervening eight classes. In what sense of complexity? I couldn't describe informatively, at this time, what that sense is, but I can say that if you analyze what you have at the end of the process -- the argument (i.e. argument symbolic legisign) -- you find that it involves an instance of a sign class of the ninth class (the dicent symbol legisgn or, for short, the proposition), which in turn involves an instance of the eighth and an instance of the seventh, each of which involve signs of still prior classes, and so forth until you end at the beginning with the qualisign involved. I just now put in a few hours going through the chapter from Merkle's dissertation where he goes through, compares, and comments upon the many graphical representations of the sign concepts, including the various forms of the lattice structure of involvement which I described above, which is not constructed as a mere convention/ When I was working on this material myself I had constructed a representation of that as a lattice of involvement or presupposition of exactly the same form as that which Merrel and Marty had independently constructed, unknown to me, Merrel's apparently being before mine but I was unaware of it, and Marty's around the same time as mine but, again, not in my awareness. (His book was published around the time my attention was diverted from working further with that sort of thing, which dates from the time of a convention in Perpignan in 1989 where I recall learning that Marty had published his magnum opus, which I never read because I had another agenda from that time on in virtue of something that happened at that convention.) I mention all this because it is clearly unlikely that we would each have come up with that same peculiar lattice structure independently on the basis of independent decisions to so construct it as a matter of convention. There were logical necessities of involvement motivating it all the way. I am much impressed by all that has been done graphically in representing the sign classification system, and especially by Luis Merkle/s masterful handling of it all in that part of his dissertation, as well as further work by others in Brazil and elsewhere as well, but my own interest in the classification system is not with what can be learned from it by manipulating graphical models of it but with understanding what use it might have when it comes to understanding how to apply it in the analysis and understanding of distinctively philosophical problems such as have formed the staple of philosophical concern from the time of the Greeks on. I wonder if anyone knows of any attempts to do that. :Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Jean-Marc says: For the record, it must be added that a lot of the information found in this very exhaustive piece of work has readily been available to researchers since the 80s and before, including the work done by Robert Marty on lattices (see the chapter on 'partially ordered sets' for an overview of why the linear representation of the classes of signs from 1 to 10 is a bit of a problem... Also note that the various trichotomies are not ordered. It is purely a convention to call a trichotomy the first, second, or third trichotomy, etc. So deducing an ordering of the classes from that information only, as it has been done many times including on this list, is incorrect. REPLY: It is not a matter of convention only: the three trichotomies are based on the difference between firstness, secondness, and thirdness, which is sufficient in itself to make the ordering of them as first, second, and third something having informative content of some possible importance. And I don't recall anyone deducing the ordering of the classes from that information only, though I may have overlooked such a demonstration. Could you be more specific about that? Peirce himself presents the ten classes in a certain sequence (CP 2.254-263) which is at least in large part deductive in character, though whether or not the deduction that occurs there is based on that information only depends upon what you mean by that information only: what information, exactly? This is not nitpicking. The question of precisely what is going on there is an important one. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Digitization of Peirce's work
Thanks for the suggestions, Bill. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Bill Hall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 6:41 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Digitization of Peirce's work All, I am not yet a Peirce scholar, but I do know a bit about Web technology and its social capabilities. I agree that it is particularly important to preserve Peirces work in a way that makes it accessible to a wide range of scholars and interested parties. Two avenues for doing this suggest themselves. 1. Contact the Internet Archive - they are particularly interested in preservation and have mobile technology (and I seem to recall reading something about an established facility in the Harvard Library). It may take some work to identify who to contact, however I suggest starting with http://www.archive.org/about/about.php. 2. The other possibility is to take advantage of Google's Library Project - http://books.google.com/googleprint/library.html. This is also set up in the Harvard Library. If you can convince either of these organizations in the value of preserving Peirce's body of work, they would be powerful allies in locating the necessary funding. I hope the idea is helpful. Bill William P. (Bill) Hall, PhD Documentation KM Systems Analyst Head Office/Engineering Nelson House Annex, Nelson Place Williamstown, Vic. 3016 Australia Tel: +61 3 9244 4820 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.tenix.com Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations URL: http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/ Visiting Faculty Associate University of Technology Sydney Senior Fellow Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society History and Philosophy of Science University of Melbourne email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.acsis.unimelb.edu.au/ --- [The] skyhook-skyscraper construction of science from the roof down to the yet unconstructed foundations [is] possible because the behavior of the system at each level [depends] on only a very approximate, simplified, abstracted characterization of the system at the level next beneath. H. Simon 1996 - The Science of the Artificial - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 9:14 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) I do not doubt the merit of the exercise - only the suggested source of funds. Individual scholars on well understood tracks can get funding from a variety of sources - or so I am led to believe. Project funding for something like this probably needs to come from within an institution that understands the merit. With respect, Steven Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen wrote: Well I am pretty sure that a better understanding of Peirce can and will lead to raising the standards of public education. It already has in some aspects of education. Think it would not be hard to make some convincing discourse about importance of Peirce's discourses for past and current and future society. Like I stated in previous mail, even if Bill Gates Foundation is not willing to help, there will probably be other sources. But, like I said, it would first be needed in my opinion to at least have real figures about costs for digitalization. Then some good preparation about what to say and how to say so (some good rhetoric) to get the money. And this is not about some arbitrary scholarly endeavors it is about very relevant philosophical material that will help lots of intellectuals to improve society and also education. I myself will also concentrate a lot on getting my PhD finished as soon as possible. And mention the relevance of CS Peirce's thoughts in it. This does not appear to be that helpful, but I just guess it will because of the huge relevance and impact of my findings. But well, we'll see ;-). Kind regards, Wilfred -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Steven Ericsson Zenith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 23:36 Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) My understanding is that this would not be a project within the bounds of those that interest the Gates Foundation. The focus there is on raising the standards of public education - not arbitrary scholarly endeavors. With respect, Steven Joseph Ransdell wrote: Wilfred says:: I think we should ask the Bill Gates foundation for this! And also just mention the importance of this to be done wherever we can. Regarding the bill gates foundation, maybe he should first know then where the electronic switch idea originates from. But I guess we could give it a try, preferably with lots of names and tittles and so on to make things happen. That's an idea worth investigating, Wilfred, particularly in view
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Ben and list: As regards the question of which of the three images of the triangle of boxes in the manuscript material is the one which was actually relied upon by the editors of the Collected Papers for the image of it that appears at CP 2.264, it is reasonably certain that it is the second one, i.e. the one from MS page 540.17, that was used. The passage in the CP that begins at 2.233 and ends at 2.272 is derived from MS pages 540.2 through 540.23. (If there is any further question about the accuracy of Hartshorne and Weiss's transcription of Peirce's document, let me know what passage you have in mind and I can check it against the original Peirce MS and make a copy of that page of the MS and post it, too, if that seems desirable or necessary.) That seems to me to settle the matter of the origin of the Roman numerals: it is an artifact of the editorial work of Hartshorne and Weiss. In addition to what Ben says below, there is also what is said in the scribbled note at the bottom of page MS 540.17 towards the left bottom corner, which is by some later editor, who is saying that the rationale for the Roman numerals is to be found in the footnotes to CP 2.235 and 2.243, where Hartshorne and Weiss are giving their interpretation of the modal principles underlying the tenfold classification.. It may be more legible in the copy I have than in the copy I distributed. To be exact, it reads as follows: [See [235] and [243] for explanation of the roman numerals] So it must be by some later editor, who is referring to what Hartshorne and Weiss did as editors of the CP. I remarked earlier in this discussion that I found a marginal note to myself in my copy of the CP, written many years ago when I was working with this material with some intensity, that I thought Hartshorne and Weiss were making some sort of mistake in their account of what Peirce is saying. I have not yet attempted to find out why I thought this is so, but I will try to do that now to see if there is anything in that.. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 1:45 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Looking at all three triangles, I get to feeling that it's unlikely that Pierce, having included no numbers in one triangle, would then in the other two triangles throw numbers in like afterthoughts and, in both triangles, change them, and begin and finish the numbers so that they looked a bit scattered and visually sloppy -- when he has written the sign class names with some care. Especially the MS540-17 triangle. I had noticed in the smaller graphic image of MS540-17 that the lettering looked careful, with serifs -- I thought it might even be medieval style. But in fact it was the bolding which Peirce did, which gave a medieval lookto some of the lettering when seen in the smaller, less-easy-to-read graphic image . I keep wanting to crack a joke here about Peirce being not a profligate bolder but showing here that he was clearly not inexperienced at it . Anyway, great work, Joe! Thanks for these images of Peirce's own writing. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 2:01 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Image came through beautifully! Look carefully at the MS799.2 triangle of boxes and you can that the numbers are change from an earlier set of numbers. I originally thought that the little earlier numeral 8 was an extra numeral 3 CURRENT: 1 ~ 5 ~ 8 ~ 10 ~ 2 ~ 6 ~ 9 ~~ 3 ~ 7 ~~~ 4 EARLIER: 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~~ 8 ~ 9 ~~~ 10 Best, Ben --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
-Vinicius, Robert, and list: Hold the presses! I have found two other instances of the triangle of boxes in the MS material which I will forward in separate messages. Do they solve the problem? I can't say yet but will just pass the images along in a few minutes. Bear in mind that the basic problem is that it is difficult to be certain of what is actually on the original MS page and what is on a photocopy of that page that was made by Fisch, Ketner, et al in 1974 or thereabouts whena team from Texas Tech (including Fisch, who was there as a visiting university professor at that time) went to Harvard and did a photocopy of the Harvard holdings thatcould replace the Robin microfilm copy. Are the arrows and other notations (such as the numerals)whichseem to be due to editors all due to them or are some of them actually notations onthe original MS by Peirce himself?Or if they are due to editors, are any of them due to Fisch, Ketner, et al whenthey made their photocopy, which was then subsequently photocopieditself! WhatI have is a photocopy of their photocopy -- or perhaps a photocopy of a photocopy of their photocopy! Aaarrrgh! (Sound of wailing and gnashing of teeth!) Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 7:54 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) Vinicius, Robert, and list: I take it that you have received in the previous message the image of the original MS version of the boxed triangle, in MS 799.02 (i.e. the second page in the MS 799 folder). Notice the following: 1. There are no Roman numerals, so that is clearly an editorial artifact (Hartshorne and Weiss). 2. The numerals "1" through "10" appear instead, but seem clearly to have been added after the image was drawnand the names of the sign classes were entered, raising the question of whether they are due to Peirce or to some later editors. (More on this below) 3. The numerals associated with the boxes differ in one respect from the Roman numerals that were editorially added in the CP version, namely, in respect to the boxes at the middle and the bottom of the pyramid 4. The names assigned to the boxes also differ in that same respect. Thus both the boxes and the numerals associated with them have been, in effect, interchanged in the transition from the original drawing to the version in the CP. 5. Someone has indicated with the line with an arrowhead at both ends that an interchange should be made, i.e. it seems very likelythat this is the meaning of that line. 5. This interchangemakes the numbering on the original page the same, in effect, as the numbering by the Roman numerals in the CP version. Hence it is possible that, although there are no Roman numerals on the original, the ones on the CP version could be based on the numbering used on the original and very probably are, and therefore possible that the Roman numerals are justified as well in the sense that they reflect the original numbering. But that is true only if we suppose that the numerals on the original were put there by Peirce. But since they were put there after the drawing was otherwise completed, it is also possible that they were put there by the editors, too, in which case the Roman numerals are only an editorial artifact. as we first conjectured. 6. This also supposes, though, that the line with the arrowheads at both ends that is presumably used to indicate the need to interchange the boxes is also an editorial artifact. But what if that line was put there by Peirce? In that case, the Roman numerals would be justified as an ordering device after all even if due entirely to editors, supposing that Peirce intended to number them at all. 7. But did he intend to number them at all? 8. And who is responsible for the idea of the interchange? Peirce himself or his editors? There may be some clue to that in the editorial comments to be found in the CP which are attached to paragraphs 2.235n and 2.243n. 9. For what it is worth, I have not yet worked with those comments in the CP, but I do notice that in my copy of the CP I made a note to myself many years ago adjacent to the beginning ofthe note2.235n,when I was studying this material closely at that time, that says: "This is not what Peirce is saying above", meaning that I did not at that time think that what the editors were interpretingPeirce as saying in 2.235 was in fact correct. Ino longer recall why Isaid this, but I seemed to have spotted something I took to be wrong in the editorial understanding at that time. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: robert marty To: Peirce Discussion F
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
That's all for the moment from me. There arre other MS pages that might throu some light on things but it will take me some time to browse through the MS material, which is from several different file folders, to see what is truly worth adding as grist for the present discussion. P.S.:And thanks to Ben for the earlierhelp -- off-list as well as on --with the graphics and for the recent provision of the color version of the triangle of boxes. Joe Ransdell No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)
Damn, it looks like the images all shrank somehow. Hang in there and I will send all three again in the right size. It will take me a while since I have to stop for breakfast first! Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 9:38 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) You're welcome, Joe. Before you go, do you have a clearer view of the words written in the third set of boxes? Here's what it looked to me like it was saying: Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 10:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected) That's all for the moment from me. There arre other MS pages that might throu some light on things but it will take me some time to browse through the MS material, which is from several different file folders, to see what is truly worth adding as grist for the present discussion. P.S.:And thanks to Ben for the earlierhelp -- off-list as well as on --with the graphics and for the recent provision of the color version of the triangle of boxes. Joe Ransdell---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Please Have Mercy on Pierce-L Digest Subscribers
I don't know the solution off-hand, Richard. Sometimes we have to do graphics and when we have some collaborative scholarship going I am not going to disturb that by worrying about the digest, which gets little use. Another platform than lyris is one answer -- it is , to be sure, an abomination of a listserver (though not an abomination of my making) -- but that involves a move to another listserver provider, which is going to be happening one of these days. There may be other possibilities. Joe Ransdell. - Original Message - From: Richard Hake [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Cc: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 11:13 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Please Have Mercy on Pierce-L Digest Subscribers I realize that most Pierce-L subscribers never see the Pierce-L Digest, so why should they care that it is probably one of the greatest abominations on the internet? Pierce-L is the only discussion list that I know of in which HTML seems to be encouraged and attachments are not automatically deleted from incoming posts. I wonder if there are any subscribers, other than myself, who are stupid enough to subscribe to the gibberish-loaded Digest [see APPENDIX for a brief sample]? If so, IMHO, they should be advised to: (a) immediately cancel their subscription to the Digest, and (b) monitor Pierce-L by means of the Backup Archive http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l%40lyris.ttu.edu/. On the Backup Archive the HTML gibberish and the interminable pages of code are translated into English, even if the senseless reply-button pushing repeats of previous already archived posts persist. Regards, Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University 24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi XX APPENDIX [Severely Truncated Copy of the 179 kB Pierce-L digest of June 13, 2006 1/3. (The gibberish continues for two more 179 kB installments!!) Status: U Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:06:26 -0500 Subject: peirce-l digest: June 13, 2006 To: peirce-l digest recipients peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu From: Peirce Discussion Forum digest peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Reply-To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu List-Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] X-ELNK-AV: 0 X-ELNK-Info: sbv=0; sbrc=.0; sbf=00; sbw=000; PEIRCE-L Digest for Tuesday, June 13, 2006. 1. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 2. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 3. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 4. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 5. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 6. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 7. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 8. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 9. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 10. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 11. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 12. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 13. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 14. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 15. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 16. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 17. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 18. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign 19. Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign -- Subject: Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 03:05:22 -0400 X-Message-Number: 1 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --=_NextPart_000_0140_01C68E96.35D86310 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary==_NextPart_001_0141_01C68E96.35D86310 --=_NextPart_001_0141_01C68E96.35D86310 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Gary R., Robert, Bernard, Wilfred, Claudio, List, I thought I'd try to the branching style chart of Peirce's ten-adic = division of sign parameters. (These parameters are not mutually = independent). I supposed that the same formal relations applied as with = the main three trichotomies of parameters (qualisign/sinsign/legisign, = icon/index/symbol, and rheme/dicisign/argument). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Best, Ben Udell. qualisign descriptive abstractive iconic hypothetical sympathetic = suggestive gratific rhematic assurance of instinct=20 sinsign =20 designative =20 concretive =20 indexical =20 categorical =20 percussive =20 imperative =20 to produce action =20 dicent =20 assurance of experience=20 / / =20 legisign-- \ =20 \ descriptive abstractive iconic hypothetical sympathetic = suggestive gratific rhematic assurance of instinct=20 designative =20 concretive =20 indexical =20 categorical =20 percussive =20 imperative =20 to produce action =20 dicent =20
[peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)
Yes, there is already a movement afoot and maybe more than one, and all of the things you mentioned are being considered or coming under consideration. If you'll give me two or three days to get some information together for you on this in a systematic way, I'll try to convey to you and others on the list who may be interested in this sort of project a definite idea of what is being and might be done and what you might be able to do to help and also to get your own ideas on this. It will take a collaborative effort to do it and there are indeed shortcuts that can be taken to get it moving, I believe. But bear with me for just a couple of days so I can figure out how to organize the discussion effectively without interfering with the normal discussion function of the list. I should say, perhaps, that the people at Harvard won't be of any special help at this particular time, but there are contacts with the Peirce Society that will be to the point. Joe Ransdell . - Original Message - From: Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:12 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) So, who are the we who need how to get the money? I mean, are there already people working on getting things digitalized? SO yes, 80.000 pages is a lot. But I can hardly imagine it would cost more than 1 dollar per page or so to get it digitalized? And should be able to do that job within 2 years or so? With more people and some more equipment, some months?? Yes and maybe special lightning. But still not milliard dollar I suppose?? I think it is first of all needed to get exact figures about what such digitalization of only the Peirce pages at Harvard would cost. The camera's we would probably be able to just borrow or get from some good supplier of this stuff. And time to do so decreasing it to just put more persons on the job. I myself would be willing to think about ways to get this done. As it also interests me a lot. And it is just important that this happens as soon as possible. Does anyone here have contact info for the Charles Peirce Society. And any other foundation or society working on encouragement of study/communication of Charles Sander Peirce. And maybe some good contact address at Harvard, the people there responsible for the Peirce collection. Kind regards, Wilfred -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Verzonden: zaterdag 17 juni 2006 21:33 Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Wilfred and the list: The MS pages reproduced here are from photocopies of photocopies of the manuscripts which constitute Peirce's Nachlass (literary remains) insofar as Harvard has possession of them. They are located in the Harvard Library, not in the Philosophy Department, and there are 80,000 or more pages of them, still largely unpublished. (There are several tens of thousands of pages more than that elsewhere, by the say, but the bulk of the philosophical stuff is largely in the Harvard collections. Since a lot of the manuscripts have been rotting away for years, the librarians aren't eager for people to poke around in them and there has to be some special and persuasive reason to get permission to do so at this time. They ought, of course, to be digitized with high res color cameras and special lighting that minimizes the effects of the scanning on them and plans are supposedly in the offing to do that -- along with a vast quantity of other holdings there in the library which they want to digitize. We may all be dead before they get around to it -- unless, of course, some benevolent patron with a spare million dollars or so does what he or she ought to be doing with his or her money; but you don't find a whole lot of them around these days who don't already have other things they want to support. Know anyone smart enough, wealthy enough, and moral enough to understand the value of doing this sort of thing for Peirce? If so let me know and I can assure you it will be done. Ask the U.S. government for it? Sorry, but what with the need for the manufacture and development of ever more fearsome weapons of mass destruction, for the financing of covert armies, and for the destruction of foreign governments in the interest of spreading freedom and religious salvation to the grateful survivors, American taxpayers -- or at least their supposed representatives -- aren't much inclined to support such frivolous enterprises as this at this time. But speaking less facetiously, the digitization of the MS material so that the originals can be retired from use and the digitized material made generally available is an enormous task, far more difficult than one might at first suppose. One complication that has to be taken into account stems from the fact that the people who were supposed to take good care
[peirce-l] Re: Remarks on manuscripts
David and list: I have to correct you about the photocopies, David. Any photocopies that bear the stamped numbers you describe derive from a (paper) photocopy of the manuscripts which was made independently of the Robin microfilms and any photocopies derived from \it. This second source of photocopies was created by a team of people from Texas Tech University in the Summer of 1974 (as I recall) who wanted to establish a new set of photocopies taken directly from the manuscripts which would contain information inscribed on them about the original which the black-and-white and relatively primitive photocopies of that time could not pick up from the original. (The participants in that second copying of the originals were Max Fisch, Kenneth Ketner, Charles Hardwick, Joe Esposito, and Christian Kloesel, as I recall.) That photocopy is still at Texas Tech in the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, and a copy made from it provided the basis for the copy or copies originally in use at the Peirce Edition Project in Indianapolis, though the latter has long since been augmented by photocopies of other manuscripts located at places other than Harvard. The difference between the two distinct sets of first-generation paper photocopies (and their respective descendants) is that those derived from the Robin microfilm will not show the markings which were made on those derived from the 1974 photocopying project I describe above. The rationale for this second copying was to make it unnecessary to go back to Harvard to pick up that additional information, and also to correct some mistakes made in the Robin microfilming. It resulted in a degree of independence from Harvard not otherwise possible at that time. I agree with what you say about the situation at the Harvard Library, but it may be possible to bypass the problems there by not depending upon any new scanning of the originals except for a few especially problematic manuscripts. It is not clear to me whether your comment that The easiest access to Peirce's papers is of course to work directly from the Robin microfilms is intended o bear upon that or not. But I am running out of time today. Thanks for the input, David, and I hope to hear more from you on these things.. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: David Lachance [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 3:14 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Remarks on manuscripts Dear listers, I hope I am not repeating anything that's been said before, in which case I apologize, but here are just a few remarks on Peirce manuscripts to avoid confusion. (Joseph's reply just arrived, as I was writing this). The two images here are (at least) second generation photocopies of the Robin microfilms of Peirce's papers (held in Harvard's Houghton library). These photocopies bear rubber-stamped numbers in the lower righthand side corner indicating MS (799) and page no. (2), not found of course on the originals. The MS no. also appears in pencil, top left, in the hand of P. Weiss, written directly on the original. Photocopies such as those submitted here often bear annotations about ink color and such, since this information is lost after filming mss in b/w. In the present case (say, the 1st image), the title Ten Classes of Signs, the arrows, the indications about brown and red ink, etc. are NOT Peirce's. From what I can make out I would say the numerals are his though. When the Peirce edition Project publish a ms in the Writings, everything that is not Peirce's is of course taken out, and important information (such as the brown-red change in ink color by Peirce) is noted so as to give the clearest possible idea of the appearance of the original. Contrary to the Writings, neither the CP nor EP are critical editions in the strict sense (although the latter are based on the PEP's editorial work done for the Writings). The easiest access to Peirce's papers is of course to work directly from the Robin microfilms. I might be wrong but I think the Bill Gates idea has been tried already (computer switch, name dropping and all). As for digitization, Harvard Libraries are rather reluctant as the rules for the protection of the manuscripts are quite strict; in any case they wouldn't let just anyone bring in a scanner and do it, obviously. Digital microfilm viewers/scanners are the easiest way to view the microfilms onscreen, but there are copyright issues with the scanning of the films, which remain Harvard's property. David --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber
[peirce-l] representing the ten classes of signs
Bernard, Ben, and list: I am still working on the question of what, if anything, is wrong in my account of the ten sign classes (as resulting from the cross-combination of the three basic sign trichotomies) in my paper on Peirce's semiotic in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics (commissioned and edited by Tom Sebeok and Umberto Eco), originally published in 1986 and presently available in a revised version at Arisbe: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds/eds.htm From what I have been able to figure out thus far, there is one important error in the original version which I eliminated in the revised version, so there is nothing formally wrong with the version at Arisbe as it presently stands. There is, however, one infelicity -- which is a euphemistic way of talking about something that might well be misleading even though not formally erroneous. My elimination of the formal error in the revision was, I think, only a fortunate accident since the corrective move I made was made only in order to eliminate something from the diagram which I adjudged to have no real role to play in anything that I said in the rest of the paper. In short, you were right in sensing something wrong there, Fortunately, it is not the catastrophic blunder I feared that it might be. Let me explain what I did -- or didn't -- do or say that was misleading and, in the original version, strongly so, though considerably less so in the revised version that has been available for the past six years or so. In the original version I did not use a tree diagram but rather a tabular form which is equivalent to and easily transformed into a tree diagram: (1) qualisigns: (i) icons: (i) rhemes (I) (2) sinsigns: (a) indexes (including symbol replicas): (i) rhemes (II) (ii) dicisigns (III) (b) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (IV) (3) legisigns-- (a) symbols: (i) rhemes (V) (ii) dicisigns (VI) (iii) arguments (VII) (b) indexical signs: (i) rhemes (VIII) (ii) dicisigns (IX) (c) iconic signs: (i) rhemes (X) Notice that if you read across the lines with Roman numerals at the end and simply collapse the table appropriately into ten corresponding lines you get a list of the ten classes of signs: qualisigns icons rhemes(I) sinsigns indices rhemes(II) sinsigns indices dicisigns (III) sinsigns icons rhemes (IV) legisigns symbols rhemes (V) legisigns symbols dicents (VI) legisigns symbols arguments (VII) legisigns indices rhemes (VIII) legisigns indices dicents(IX) legisigns icons rhemes (X) Now, this does indeed list out the ten classes according to their differing three-component combinations and is not mistaken in itself. However, when we notice the correlation with the ten roman numerals we find the important mistake, which is owing to the fact that in the passage from the Syllabus of Logic that this is based upon Peirce himself used Roman numerals to number the classes and he numbered them differently. The proper numbering, following Peirce, would rather be: qualisigns icons rhemes (I) sinsigns indices rhemes (III) sinsigns indices dicisigns (IV) sinsigns icons rhemes (II) legisigns symbols rhemes(VIII) legisigns symbols dicents(IX) legisigns symbols arguments(X) legisigns indices rhemes (VI) legisigns indices dicents (VII) legisigns icons rhemes (V) That gives us Peirce's ordering both in the diagram of the ten-box triangle at CP 2.264, where Peirce inserts the Roman numerals in the boxes, and in the several pages just prior to that where he gives paragraph-long descriptions of each of the ten classes, wherein he does not use Roman numerals but does use ordinal English numbers (first, second, etc.). Thus the ordering I suggested with my numbering in the original version was simply mistaken insofar as it suggested that Peirce ordered them numerically in that way, which he clearly did not. My numbering there was not absolutely mistaken because neither way of ordering them makes any difference as to what the ten classes actually are, as regards their differing defining elements. But still, it was clearly a mistake. That mistake was corrected in my revised version when I simply omitted the numbering of the classes after noting that there was no need to include them since I made no use of the numbers in that paper. But still, it could be misleading in case someone were to mistakenly think that the tree diagram which I
[peirce-l] URL for my paper at Arisbe
Sorry, but I gave you a bad URL. Here is the right one for my paper: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds.htm Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/367 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices
I pushed every button I could find and nothing happened. .??? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: robert marty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Cc: BENAZET [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:53 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Generator of lattices Create lattices with n trichotomies ( 3= n = 10 ): http://www.univ-perp.fr/see/rch/lts/marty/lattices/lattice.htm (built with the collaboration of Patrick Benazet) Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices
Thanks Pat and Dennis: The problem may be that I am still using Internet Explorer 6.0 for email. I use Netscape 7,2 for the web, but it still didn't work even though I did a cut and paste with that one. I suppose that the old version of IE may somehow be interfering with the Netscape browser. I don't know. Anyway, I guess I will have to start by trying an upgrade of IE. But that won't be today. Joe - Original Message - From: Patrick Sullivan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 2:57 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices You might also try cutting and pasting the link On 6/15/06 1:52 PM, Dennis Leri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joe, It may depend on your browser. Firefox and Internet Explorer opened it while Safari didn't. Dennis Leri On Thursday, June 15, 2006, at 11:06 AM, Joseph Ransdell wrote: I pushed every button I could find and nothing happened. .??? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: robert marty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Cc: BENAZET [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:53 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Generator of lattices Create lattices with n trichotomies ( 3= n = 10 ): http://www.univ-perp.fr/see/rch/lts/marty/lattices/lattice.htm (built with the collaboration of Patrick Benazet) Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Patrick F. Sullivan, Ph.D. Information Security Governance, Risk and Compliance Management 939 North Graham Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46219 317-352-1362 (voice fax), 317-752-5316 (mobile) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Confidentiality Warning: This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the intended recipient(s), are confidential, and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, retransmission, or conversion to hard copy, copying, circulation or other use of this message and any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return email, and delete this message and any attachments from your system. Thank you. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices
No, still didn't work for me. Thanks, anyway. Joe - Original Message - From: Drs.W.T.M. Berendsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 1:16 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices Well...just make sure not pushing any button but just choosing some number first with the drop down menu. By pointing with your mouse on the arrow at the right of the number (specify the number of trichotomies). Then choose ok. Worked for me :-) Wilfred -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Verzonden: donderdag 15 juni 2006 20:06 Aan: Peirce Discussion Forum Onderwerp: [peirce-l] Re: Generator of lattices I pushed every button I could find and nothing happened. .??? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: robert marty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Cc: BENAZET [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:53 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Generator of lattices Create lattices with n trichotomies ( 3= n = 10 ): http://www.univ-perp.fr/see/rch/lts/marty/lattices/lattice.htm (built with the collaboration of Patrick Benazet) Robert Marty http://robert.marty.perso.cegetel.net/ --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/360 - Release Date: 9-6-2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.3/360 - Release Date: 9-6-2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.4/364 - Release Date: 6/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign
Bernard says::, Joe and list, I agree with the idea of being very cautious with the 10 trichotomies classification. You are right I think in recalling that it was work in progress for Peirce. I would be very interested too in reading the material you are refering to below if you can make it available to the list in one way or the other. However, I think that your concluding sentence is excessively narrow when you write that 1) the theory did not reach any stable state and 2) it can't be reasonably represented as being Peirce's view. REPLY: I'll reply more extensively later in the day, Bernard, but the basis for my saying this is as follows, from MS 339D.662 (1909 Nov 1) =quote Peirce During the past 3 years I have been resting from my work on the Division of Signs and have only lately -- in the last week or two -- been turning back to it; and I find my work of 1905 better than any since that time, though the latter doubtless has value and must not be passed by without consideration. Looking over the book labelled in red The Prescott Book, and also this one [the Logic Notebook, MS 339], I find the entries in this book of Provisional Classification of 1906 March 31st and of 1905 Oct 13 particularly in imporant from my present (accidentally limited, no doubt) point of view; particularly in regard to the point made in the Prescott Book, 1909 Oct 21, and what immediately precedes that in that book but is not dated. Namely, a good deal of my early attempts to define this difference besween Icon, Index, Symbol, were adulterated with confusion with the distinction as to the Reference of the Dynamic Interpretant to the Sign. end quote== Joe Ransdell -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.2/357 - Release Date: 6/6/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign
Gary: Would you mind reposting the diagram you refer to below? I don't recall what was said about that at that time but I think it important to get clear on what can and cannot legitimately be imputed to Peirce, and the absence of availability of the relevant MS material is important to bear in mind and I don't recall if that was sufficiently stressed at that time. Joe . - Original Message - From: Gary Richmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 10:35 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign Claudio, Ben, Robert, Bernard, Joe, list, Claudio, so goo to see you on list. I too am pleased to see all the diagrammatic discussion and especially some of Ben's abductions relating diagrams (one I believe he hasn't posted yet, but which I hope he will, shows a possible correspondence between Robert's lattice structure--which I want to discuss this summer with I want to respond to just one of your questions, Claudio, as it concerns the diagram of the 10 classes of signs which I devised and which Ben produced in power point. You asked: I am sure that also Ben/Gary's diagram has a criteria for that rotation...? Which is the purpose of that change? --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.2/357 - Release Date: 6/6/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.2/357 - Release Date: 6/6/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign
Frances: In view of what I was just now relating to Ben, I would have to regard the sort of enterprise you speculate about below as a timewaster of monumental proportions, promising to generate word salad that startle even the inmates at Bedlam, given that it would be based on an unreliable understanding of Peirce's view to begin with (as I explained to Ben), taken together with what is surely a misguided attempt to conflate Peircean semiotic with the radically different conception of Charles Morris (as Gene Halton reminds us now and again). In short: fuhgeddaboutit! (as T. Soprano might state the point). Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Frances Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 10:59 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign Frances to listers... The broad theme of this topic and its leading threads is a subject that remains intriguingly foggy for me. At the core of my haze perhaps is the forced application of categorics upon semiotics, yet with synechastics lurking in the wings. In my attempt to wrestle with the many classes of signs in acts of semiosis as listed by Peirce, it is tempting to take various kinds of signs he mentioned and organize them within a sort of tridential diagram of soles and pairs and terns. Some of those signs would require a tentative assumption that they are not mere synonyms of each other. These signs might include potisigns and actisigns and famsigns as immediate representamen signs or moderating vehicles, and then qualisigns and sinsigns and legisigns as immediate object signs of fundamental reference, and then icons and indexes and symbols as dynamic object signs of advanced reference. These might also include semes or rhemes and sumisigns and terms as immediate interpretant signs of initial effect, and then phemes and dicisigns or dicents and propositions as dynamic interpretant signs of obstinate or remediate effect, and last delomes or dolemes and suadisigns and arguments as final interpretant signs of destinate and culminate and ultimate effect. Another thorn here for me is that those classes of dynamic object signs and dynamic interpretant signs are of secondness, but are not listed or structured in a trichotomically consistent manner. In other words and for example, icons would be a sole first, with indexes and symbols as a subsequent dual pair under some categorical umbrella, which is seemingly missing here. All these signs furthermore might rest only within the first semiosic division of grammatics, often called the inscriptive information of signs by Morrisean semioticians. Many of the signs mentioned correctly as other interpretant signs might very well be kinds of super signs that rest further within the other semiosic divisions of critics and rhetorics, where critics is often called the descriptive evaluation of signs, and rhetorics is often called the prescriptive evocation of signs, again by Morrisean semioticians. Those other interpretant super signs that could be deemed post grammatic might include normative assurances to the signer or semiotician of the sign. Another thorn for me is whether Peirce intended that these further divisions of critics and rhetorics, and seemingly infused with advanced interpretant signs, would be categorically structured as phenomenal trichotomies. In this regard, it remains tempting for me to structure the Peircean divisions of grammatics and critics and rhetorics each with the Morrisean dimensions of syntactics and semantics and pragmatics. This might then allow for advanced interpretants to take on the critical characteristics of appraised syntactic values and defined semantic meanings and inferred pragmatic judgements or worths, and for further advanced interpretants under rhetorics to deal with the syntactic means of communication and the semantic signification of modes and the pragmatic methods of responsive actions. All signs would of course be speculative. The further assumption by me is that while these signs in acts of semiosis are all objective logical constructs, semiotics or logics in the broadest sense actually embraces both nonlingual and lingual signs, and lingual signs would presumably embrace both nonverbal and verbal signs, but linguistics and its languages is held to a practical science by Peirce, and thus excluded from semiotic concern as having no logical import. Of course, all logical signs used by humans are seemingly proposed by Peirce as degenerate forms of pure logic, so that there should be little problem in permitting lingual signs into semiotics and thus into logic. This may imply however that semiotics with linguistics is degenerate logics, while the normative sciences aligned as aesthetics and ethics and logics is less so. Nonetheless, interpretants like terms and propositions are both held by Peirce to be either nonlingual or lingual, thereby probably yielding arguments where some
[peirce-l] Re: Graphics in posts
What is the functional difference between using the DIV and the BR tag, Ben? You say that it makes some sort of difference in email but I don't understand what you mean. Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 3:41 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Graphics in posts List, I've been considering Richard Hake's complaints about html, graphics, etc., in messages. Believe it or not, I have some sympathy for his views (otherwise I wouldn't clean up my html markup or strive to make images be as low-KB as I can with my amateur means). This sympathy developed and hardened in the course of work experience some years ago at a corporation whose internal branding requirements during the middle part of my time there were dreamt up by some PC-semiliterate folks quite separately from awareness about kilobytes, server capacity, and mass-pho'py stickiness. I've also noticed that the Lyris server adds some sort of coding, with a lot of 20s equality signs, which makes my html messages harder to read in the message source as some people try to do. So I'm willling to take a few ameliorative steps. I am very glad that Joe maintains a policy of allowing html images etc., but, since I've seemed to be the most frequent user of the graphic capabilities, I'm willing to send a plaintext version to those who prefer it, with links to the graphics which I'll put at some free image-hosting service like imageshack.us or Flickr. I do not believe that listers generally should be required to do this, but again, I'm currently the lister making the most frequent use of graphic capabilities and I happen to find it easy to take the described measures. I'll use html only when I'm including tables or other graphics. So when you see html from me, you'll know that you can just delete it because I'm sending you a plaintext version if--if--if you've let me know (off-list) that that's what you prefer. Those who already simply delete any message at all from me don't need to change their behavior at all, of course, and they, too, have at least some of my sympathy! Actually, I don't expect to hear from anybody about this, but I could be wrong, so I thought that I should at least offer. It is already the case that my html posts to peirce-l can be converted to plaintext without loss of info as to italicization, etc., and I generally arrange it so that the paragraphs are separated into email divisions (with the DIV tags) rather than using the simple breaks (with the BR tags) which some modes (I forget which) of plaintext conversion lose. I do recommend that any respondents delete whatever is unneeded in the response, including my graphics if they're irrelevant. I don't know how every email program works, but in the Microsoft ones, you can convert to plaintext by clicking on Format, Plain Text. MS Outlook Express automatically deletes images in the textbody in conversion to plain text; some other email programs seem to allow incorporation of images in the supposedly plaintext (or unformatted) mode. Best, Ben Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.7.4/351 - Release Date: 5/29/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.7.4/351 - Release Date: 5/29/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: CFP: Science in 19th-Century Britain (8/10/06; collection)
-- a CFP of special relevance to PEIRCE-L; forwarded to the list by Joseph Ransdell - Original Message - From: Don Howard [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 11:12 AM Subject: Fwd: CFP: Science in 19th-Century Britain (8/10/06; collection) Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 17:50:48 +0100 Reply-To: Stephen Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: Philosophy in Europe [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Stephen Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CFP: Science in 19th-Century Britain (8/10/06; collection) - Forwarded message from Amanda Mordavsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 20:48:12 +0100 From: Amanda Mordavsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Amanda Mordavsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CFP: Science in 19th-Century Britain (8/10/06; collection) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CALL FOR PAPERS Interdisciplinary Essays on Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain Papers are being sought for a collection of essays on Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Edited by Amanda Mordavsky Caleb, the collection will be printed by Cambridge Scholars Press in Spring/Summer 2007. Papers are invited on all aspects of research broadly relating to science in nineteenth-century Britain. Proposals may focus on areas including, but not limited to: art, astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, continental influences, history, literature, mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, religion, sociology, and zoology. Deadline for submissions: 10th August 2006. Essays are to be 5-6,000 words in length and follow the author/date system (Chicago style). Inquiries and submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Amanda Mordavsky Department of English Literature University of Sheffield Sir William Empson House Shearwood Mount, Shearwood Road Sheffield S10 2TD Fax: +44 (114) 222 8481 == From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: [EMAIL PROTECTED] == - End forwarded message - Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Prolonged discussions should be moved to chora: enrol via http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html. Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal. -- Don Howard Department of Philosophyor Program in History and 100 Malloy Hall Philosophy of Science University of Notre Dame309 O'Shaughnessy Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 University of Notre Dame 574-631-7547 (Office) Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 574-631-6471/7534 (Dept.) 574-631-5015 (Program) 574-631-0588 (Fax) 574-631-7418 (Fax) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nd.edu/~hps http://www.nd.edu/~dhoward1 -- -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 5/19/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 5/19/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: CFP Graduate Conference at SIUC
Forwarded by Joseph Ransdell : - Original Message - From: Kelly Booth [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 8:55 PM Subject: CFP Graduate Conference at SIUC Joseph, Could you please post this CFP to the Peirce List? Thanks. Kelly Booth Department of Philosophy Southern Illinois University Carbondale IL 62901 CALL FOR PAPERS: “THE SELF IN AMERICAN AND CONTINENTAL THOUGHT” NINTH ANNUAL “BUILDING BRIDGES” GRADUATE PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE: Southern Illinois University Carbondale November 3 – 4, 2006 Keynote Speaker: Mitchell Aboulafia. (Chair, Department of Liberal Arts, Juilliard) Deadline for Submissions: September 23, 2006 The purpose of this conference is to bring various strands of Continental thought, from the late Nineteenth Century onward, into dialogue with the American tradition from Transcendentalism and Pragmatism to contemporary philosophy. The theme is “The Self.” We welcome any paper that brings together at least one thinker from each of these two broadly defined traditions. Submission Guidelines: Papers should not exceed 3000 words and should be prepared for blind review. Do not include any personal information in the paper. On a separate cover page include the following items: 1) The paper’s title 2) Author’s name 3) Institutional affiliation 4( Email address 5) Telephone number 6) Word count (3000 words maximum) 7) An abstract (150 word maximum) Email your paper and cover sheet as a Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text (.rtf) attachment to [EMAIL PROTECTED], subject line “Building Bridges.” Label the attachment with a shortened paper title. Some papers may be selected for publication in Kinesis: Graduate Journal in Philosophy. Deadline for Submissions: September 23, 2006 For further information, contact: Kelvin Booth, Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale IL 62901 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph. 618-536-6641 Conference Statement: The purpose of “Building Bridges” is to bring into dialogue diverse elements not commonly associated. We seek interdisciplinary as well as intra-disciplinary themes that address problems from multiple philosophical standpoints, from different traditions, or in which two or more thinkers not customarily brought into conversation are compared. Our goal is to provide a pluralistic forum for constructive and critical communication across boundaries. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/5/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/5/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Entelechy
Just one point to add to what Gary says, namely, that the word perfection,
as used by Peirce in this context (and wherever the concept of a process is
pertinent) should be understood as implying completion.
Joe Ransdell
- Original Message -
From: gnusystems [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 7:07 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Entelechy
Wilfred,
I have a smattering of classical Greek, maybe enough to provide you with
a little information.
Aristotle apparently coined the term, and didn't define it, so one has
to figure out its meaning from context. (There is no listing for it in
Liddell and Scott's Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, which is the
only Greek dictionary i have at hand.) J.A. Smith's translation of De
Anima renders it as actuality.
It is sometimes transliterated entelechia and sometimes entelecheia
(the latter is closer to the actual Greek), so an Internet search on
either of those spellings will bring up some useful items.
As for Peirce, the term plays a prominent role in his New Elements
essay, which you'll find in EP2 and online at Arisbe. Another
illuminating passage is CP 6.356: [[[ It must not be forgotten that
Aristotle was an Asclepiad, that is, that he belonged to a family which
for generation after generation, from prehistoric times, had had their
attention turned to vital phenomena; and he is almost as remarkable for
his capacity as a naturalist as he is for his incapacity in physics and
mathematics. He must have had prominently before his mind the fact that
all eggs are very much alike, and all seeds are very much alike, while
the animals that grow out of the one, the plants that grow out of the
other, are as different as possible. Accordingly, his dunamis is
germinal being, not amounting to existence; while his entelechy is the
perfect thing that ought to grow out of that germ. ]]]
Another term he gives as equivalent to it is perfection of being (CP
6.341).
I hope this is of some help, though the more accomplished Peircean and
Aristotelian scholars can probably provide more.
gary F.
}The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical
with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation.
[The Bab]{
gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin Island, Canada
}{ [EMAIL PROTECTED] }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/ }{
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[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben quotes Peirce as follows: 66~ A symbol, in its reference to its object, has a triple reference:-- 1st, Its direct reference to its object, or the real things which it represents; 2d, Its reference to its ground through its object, or the common characters of those objects; 3d, Its reference to its interpretant through its object, or all the facts known about its object. What are thus referred to, so far as they are known, are:-- 1st, The informed _breadth_ of the symbol; 2d, The informed _depth_ of the symbol; 3d, The sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate, or the _information_ concerning the symbol. ~99 And then says: Information may in some sense incorporates that which involves representational relations, but I don't think that that's the dimension of represenational relations per se. Well, why not, Ben? Think of information in terms of an informing of something, or of becoming informed by somethingof or about something.think of it as an impression of form on something that thus becomes informed by it, i.e.takes on a certain form in virtue of thatt. I am reminded of the locution It impresses me (or him or her)-- or perhaps he or she -- is impressed by such-and-such.) The predicate brings form to the subject, in-forms the subject. Infomation could be regarded as a certain aspect of representation, i.e. the diminsion of represeentation as regarded in a certain special way. Predication is a synthesizing of predicate and subject, as informationis is a synthesizing of breadth and depth, and informing of breadth with depth. I'll continue with your response later, Ben.. But this seemed worth remarking by itself. Joe . -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/5/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? (CORRECTION)
CORRECTED VERSION OF PREVIOUS POST : Ben quotes Peirce as follows: 66~ A symbol, in its reference to its object, has a triple reference:-- 1st, Its direct reference to its object, or the real things which it represents; 2d, Its reference to its ground through its object, or the common characters of those objects; 3d, Its reference to its interpretant through its object, or all the facts known about its object. What are thus referred to, so far as they are known, are:-- 1st, The informed _breadth_ of the symbol; 2d, The informed _depth_ of the symbol; 3d, The sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate, or the _information_ concerning the symbol. ~99 And then says: Information may in some sense incorporates that which involves representational relations, but I don't think that that's the dimension of represenational relations per se. MY RESPONSE: Well, why not, Ben? Think of information in terms of an informing of something, or of becoming informed by something or about something; .think of it as an impression of form on something that thus becomes informed by it, i.e.takes on a certain form in virtue of that. (I am reminded of the locution It impresses me (or him or her)-- or perhaps he or she is impressed by such-and-such.) The predicate brings form to the subject, in-forms the subject. Infomation could be regarded as a certain aspect of representation, i.e. the dimension of representation as regarded in a certain special way. Predication is a synthesizing of predicate and subject, as information is a synthesizing of breadth and depth, an informing of breadth with depth. I'll continue with your response later, Ben.. But this seemed worth remarking by itself. (Sorry for the sloppiness of the uncorrected copy originally posted.) Joe . -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/5/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Fw: What is Category Theory?
Does anybody know anything about category theory in math, which is what the book in the forwarded message below is about. What is it? Does it actually have any philosophical interest? Is it relevant to Peirce? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: G. Sica [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 10:50 AM Subject: What is Category Theory? Please allow me to bring to the attention of list members a recent publication about the foundations of Category Theory: WHAT IS CATEGORY THEORY? Editor: Giandomenico Sica http://www.polimetrica.com/polimetrica/389/ Price: 30 Euro. Forwarding and delivery charges are not included in the price. Publisher: Polimetrica International Scientific Publisher. Contributions and authors: Abstract and Variable Sets in Category Theory (John L. Bell) Categories for Knotted Curves, Surfaces and Quandles (Scott Carter) Introducing Categories to the Practicing Physicist (Bob Coecke) Some Implications of the Adoption of Category Theory for Philosophy (David Corfield) Sets, Categories and Structuralism (Costas A. Drossos) A Theory of Adjoint Functors ��� with some Thoughts about their Philosophical Significance (David Ellerman) Enriched Stratified Systems for the Foundations of Category Theory (Solomon Feferman) Category Theory, Pragmatism and Operations Universal in Mathematics (Ralf Kr��mer) What is Category Theory? (Jean-Pierre Marquis) Category Theory: an abstract setting for analogy and comparison (Ronald Brown ��� Tim Porter) On Doing Category Theory within Set Theoretic Foundations (Vidhy��n��th K. Rao) The best way to purchase this book is to buy it directly from the publisher's web-site: http://www.polimetrica.com . I hope you can be interested in this information. If not, please accept my sincere apologies for the trouble: this is not a spam message. Many thanks. All the best, Giandomenico Sica -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.0/325 - Release Date: 4/26/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.0/325 - Release Date: 4/26/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop
Gary, Auke, and Ben: My initial response was due in part to having first encountered the idea of knowledge management in contexts in which the knowledge managers were in fact what I regard as aspiring technocrats, namely, university administrators who were -- at least in that context -- concerned primarily about university property rights as regards both copyright and patents considered as economic assets of universities. It is possible that they were also concerned with the sort of thing Ben described, but if so it was not readily apparent, and my acquaintance with university life suggests to me that they probably were not, in which case it may be that knowledge management as practiced in academia is a different sort of thing than knowledge management as practiced elsewhere. (I say as practiced elsewhere, not as conceived elsewhere; for it is a peculiarity of academic life that the theorizing that goes on within it is rarely applied to it. Thus this is consistent with the fact --- supposing it is a fact -- that the theorists of knowledge management will often or even mostly be found in universities.) In any case, in the context in which I first heard of knowledge management, those who talked from what seemed to be that perspective were clearly thinking of the universities as knowledge factories the chief products of which are the cognitive products of faculty research (publications, inventions, and methods of material production), and the argumentation going on was couched chiefly in terms of economic profit and loss, e.g. questions about electronic rather than paper based publication were being settled on the basis of economic calculations. I notice that Aldo seems to be thinking primarily in terms not of the knowledge systems of corporations, though, be they commercial or governmental or academic, but rather of communicational communities and their communicational technologies, with the general aim of addressing the distinctive problems involved in understanding how to solve the technological problems that would enable them to communicate more efficiently and effectively as communities, while recognizing that focus on the technology leaves unaddressed the questions that might be raised about them as regards the efficiencies and effectiveness of the practices that these technologies are designed to enable and subserve, which involve considerations of a quite different sort -- considerations about goals and motivations and what sort of practices are important or valuable in view of those considerations and what these practices are actually like. I think he correctly diagnoses the cause of my uneasiness about the possible technocratic implications of the development of knowledge management as a field of study; for it is indeed typical of the technocratic mentality to think of the potentialities of the technological revolution purely in terms of how to gain control over the technology itself -- how to position themselves at strategic positions of use of the new instruments -- in order to gain control of the practices they enable and inform. I will take his word for it that he is also quite aware that getting our technological act together is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for developing more enlightened information and knowledge systems. It seems to me -- and Aldo might agree -- that the reason why the idealism of the information technology revolution, which was so evident and inspiring up to the time of, say, the commercialization of the web, has undergone such rapid deflation in recent years is due to not keeping enough focus on the problem of learning what the needs really are which actually motivate people to engage in the practices they already engage in but which serve them poorly or hardly at all. When I first got interested in this sort of thing myself and perceived (vaguely of course) that there might be something important in the offing in the development of computer networking -- this was at the time when Steve Jobs was about to start marketing his beautiful black box, labeled as the interpersonal computer because it was to establish itself on the basis of being designed ab initio as an instrument of communication rather than computation -- I discovered that there were really only two significantly large groups of persons in academia that were fully aware of and enthusiastic about this: on the one hand, there were the computer professionals, and on the other, the librarians. With exceptions, administrators had no interest in the topic nor were there a significant number of the established or about to be established faculty, and this continued to be true up until about the time the web became available with a graphical interface in the mid-90's. The difference between the two factions that were interested, though, was a sharp one, epitomized in the attitude of a friend of mine in the computer world with whom I was then collaborating who spoke about how it made him
[peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop
Sounds to me like you should be at that meeting, Ben. Do you think they are posing the right questions? I mean the ones in the CFP that Gary posted? I am convinced that there is something important happening in this, but with an uneasy feeling that they are not picking it up by the right handle. I googled the term knowledge management and immediately found a very informative website, very intelligently structured as an answer to the question of what knowledge management is. Here is the URL: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/knowledge+management Very informative, particularly taken together with your testimony, which is most helpful, Ben. Yet I can't shake a certain feeling of distrust about it.as being, perhaps, a form of technocracy. . Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 7:24 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop Joe, I don't know how Gary will respond, but I googled around a bit and I think that the main thing to keep in mind is that the knowledge involved is not at all necessarily _theoretical_ knowledge. It could be practical facts about who sits where, what's their phone number, who's in charge of what, who reports to whom, etc. Then it could be facts about their work groups or departments, etc. Who to call about what, all the facilities info. The knowledge system might be a corporate intranet with all kinds of info that people can think of. Then there are the locations of the various service centers, how many at each, and so on. Even a glossary of departmental terms lingo. This knowledge needs to be kept updated. When I worked at a major corporation, I developed, maintained, and continually updated distributed a hardcopy one-page knowledge system with at least 50 different fonts, crammed with all the secretarial (aka administrative) and facilities info anybody could possibly want, an immense amount, and this saved around 60 secretaries hundreds of others lots of work frustration. Between the tasks of getting all that info right (because I hated every experience in which I had spent excessive time to get wrong info, so I wanted it right for _everybody_) and the MS-Word formatting challenges down to tiny spacings and crashing serifs, -- well, it was the right combination for me, I actually was almost stakhanovist for a while, and worked largely unsupervised on my self-generated projects and on presentations for all askers for a good year a half. But all good things And that's already ancient times now. Intranets have come on big and by now I'm sure they're much more powerful. Or the knowledge system could be the distilled practical knowledge of skilled auto mechanics for all kinds of cars, trucks, etc., turned into a program that's like a superglorified Help button, and which auto mechanics everywhere could buy. It would be updatable, too. The knowledge system could be a medical diagnosis system, software with the distilled knowledge of diagnosticians, and kept updated. It could be an online system of listing of real estate properties for sale or rent, with lots of attendant info plust photos, continually updated, and searchable by many kinds of criteria, etc. It would allow searching for nearest local schools, searching on real estate agents, etc. Many a business purpose will end up with custom-designed software. It could be customer information and that's a big deal these days! It could be information about online behavior. That corporate intranet becomes a way to manage the extranet (interface with clients/customers). Then one can allow people to find out about programs, to fill out applications, etc. And the management and improvement of the extranet is an intranet capability. As systems get interconnected, maybe the sky's the limit as people figure out ways for diverse systems to query one another. Best, Ben - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 3:38 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop Gary: I am wondering what is meant by a knowledge system? Is it the same thing as an accepted theory about this or that subject-matter? If so why not just call it a theory? But I doubt that that is what is meant. I know that people are now hired by corporations and by universities in particular as being knowledge management experts, but I never have been able to figure out what there is to manage about knowledge. Is that what you are talking about when you talk about knowledge systems: batches of knowledge owned by a corporation and put to work in producing some goods or services? Or is it just something like keeping track of patents owned? Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Gary
[peirce-l] kinds of relations (from Century Dictionary)
Peirce did the entry for relation for the Century Dictionary, an enormously long entry from which I pick out a few of the many different kinds of relations he defines there, namely, those that I recall him distinguishing for one purpose or another for philosophical purposes: KINDS OF RELATIONS, from Century Dictionary, p. 5058 --Accidental relation: an indirect relation of A to C, constituted by A being in some relation to B, and B being in an independent relation to C. Thus, if a man throws away a date-stone, and that date-stone strikes an invisible genie, the relation of the man to the genie is an accidental one. --Alio relation: a relation of such a nature that a thing cannot be in that relation to itself: as, being previous to. -- Double relation, dual relation: relation between a pair of things, or between a relate and a single correlate. --Extrinsic relation: a relation which is established between terms already existing. --Plural relation: a relation between a relate and two or more correlates, as when A aims a shot, B, at C. --Prime relation: a relation not resulting from the conjunction of relations alternatively satisfied. --Real relation: a relation the statement of which cannot be separated into two facts, one relating to the relate and the other to the correlate, such as the relation of Cain to Abel as his killer. For the facts that Cain killed somebody and that Abel was killed do not together make up the fact that Cain killed Abel: opposed to relation qf reason. --Relation of disquiparance: a relation which confers unlike names upon relate and correlate. --Relation of equiparance: a relation which confers the same relative name upon relate and correlate: thus, the being a cousin of somebody is such a relation, for if A is cousin to B, B is cousin to A. --Relation of reason: a relation which depends upon a fact which can be stated as an aggregate of two facts (one concerning the relate, the other concerning the correlate), such that the annihilation of the relate or the correlate would destroy only one of these facts, but leave the other intact: thus, the fact that Franklin and Rumford were both scientific Americans constitutes a relationship between them with two correlative relations; but these are relations of reason, because the two facts are that Franklin was a scientific American and that Rumford was a scientific American, the first of which facts would remain true even if Rumford had never existed, and the second even if Franklin had never existed. --Self-relation: (a) A relation of such a sort that a thing can be in that relation to itself: as, being the killer of; but better (b) a relation of such a sort that nothing can be so related to anything else, as the relations of self. consciousness, relative self-depreciation, self-help, etc. --Transcendental relation: a relation which does not come under Aristotle's category of relation, as cause and effect, habit and object. -- Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 3/17/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] REAL RELATION (passages from Collected Papers)
The passages below were retrieved from the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce by a string search on real relation: Joe Ransdell -- REAL RELATION (passages from the Collected Papers) CP 5.287 (1868) 287. We must now consider two other properties of signs which are of great importance in the theory of cognition. Since a sign is not identical with the thing signified, but differs from the latter in some respects, it must plainly have some characters which belong to it in itself, and have nothing to do with its representative function. These I call the material qualities of the sign. As examples of such qualities, take in the word man, its consisting of three letters -- in a picture, its being flat and without relief. In the second place, a sign must be capable of being connected (not in the reason but really) with another sign of the same object, or with the object itself. Thus, words would be of no value at all unless they could be connected into sentences by means of a real copula which joins signs of the same thing. The usefulness of some signs -- as a weathercock, a tally, etc. -- consists wholly in their being really connected with the very things they signify. In the case of a picture such a connection is not evident, but it exists in the power of association which connects the picture with the brain-sign which labels it. This real, physical connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign. Now the representative function of a sign lies neither in its material quality nor in its pure demonstrative application; because it is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought, while both of the characters just defined belong to the sign independently of its addressing any thought. And yet if I take all the things which have certain qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to each, they become fit to be signs. If they are not regarded as such they are not actually signs, but they are so in the same sense, for example, in which an unseen flower can be said to be red, this being also a term relative to a mental affection. CP 1.372 (1885) 372. We have seen that the mere coexistence of two singular facts constitutes a degenerate form of dual fact; and in like manner there are two orders of degeneracy in plural facts, for either they may consist in a mere synthesis of facts of which the highest is dual, or they may consist in a mere synthesis of singular facts. This explains why there should be three classes of signs; for there is a triple connection of sign, thing signified, cognition produced in the mind. There may be a mere relation of reason between the sign and the thing signified; in that case the sign is an icon. Or there may be a direct physical connection; in that case, the sign is an index. Or there may be a relation which consists in the fact that the mind associates the sign with its object; in that case the sign is a name [or symbol]. Now consider the difference between a logical term, a proposition, and an inference. A term is a mere general description, and as neither icon nor index possesses generality, it must be a name; and it is nothing more. A proposition is also a general description, but it differs from a term in that it purports to be in a real relation to the fact, to be really determined by it; thus, a proposition can only be formed of the conjunction of a name and an index. An inference, too, contains a general description CP 1.365 (1890) 365. Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual exemplification of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer upon this preliminary exposition of them. There is, however, one feature of them upon which it is quite indispensable to dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of Secondness and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so called, or they are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight lines is called a degenerate conic. So plane cubic curves are either the genuine curves of the third order, or they are conics paired with straight lines, or they consist of three straight lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics. Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate sort which does not exist as such, but is only so conceived. The medieval logicians (following a hint of Aristotle) distinguished between real relations and relations of reason. A real relation subsists in virtue of a fact which would be totally impossible were either of the related objects destroyed; while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of the
[peirce-l] re: naming definite individuals (REAL RELATION defined)
I am reposting this under the subject description for the thread on naming definite individuals so it will show up under that heading in the archives. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 7:29 AM Subject: [peirce-l] REAL RELATION (passages from Collected Papers) The passages below were retrieved from the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce by a string search on real relation: Joe Ransdell -- REAL RELATION (passages from the Collected Papers) CP 5.287 (1868) 287. We must now consider two other properties of signs which are of great importance in the theory of cognition. Since a sign is not identical with the thing signified, but differs from the latter in some respects, it must plainly have some characters which belong to it in itself, and have nothing to do with its representative function. These I call the material qualities of the sign. As examples of such qualities, take in the word man, its consisting of three letters -- in a picture, its being flat and without relief. In the second place, a sign must be capable of being connected (not in the reason but really) with another sign of the same object, or with the object itself. Thus, words would be of no value at all unless they could be connected into sentences by means of a real copula which joins signs of the same thing. The usefulness of some signs -- as a weathercock, a tally, etc. -- consists wholly in their being really connected with the very things they signify. In the case of a picture such a connection is not evident, but it exists in the power of association which connects the picture with the brain-sign which labels it. This real, physical connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign. Now the representative function of a sign lies neither in its material quality nor in its pure demonstrative application; because it is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought, while both of the characters just defined belong to the sign independently of its addressing any thought. And yet if I take all the things which have certain qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to each, they become fit to be signs. If they are not regarded as such they are not actually signs, but they are so in the same sense, for example, in which an unseen flower can be said to be red, this being also a term relative to a mental affection. CP 1.372 (1885) 372. We have seen that the mere coexistence of two singular facts constitutes a degenerate form of dual fact; and in like manner there are two orders of degeneracy in plural facts, for either they may consist in a mere synthesis of facts of which the highest is dual, or they may consist in a mere synthesis of singular facts. This explains why there should be three classes of signs; for there is a triple connection of sign, thing signified, cognition produced in the mind. There may be a mere relation of reason between the sign and the thing signified; in that case the sign is an icon. Or there may be a direct physical connection; in that case, the sign is an index. Or there may be a relation which consists in the fact that the mind associates the sign with its object; in that case the sign is a name [or symbol]. Now consider the difference between a logical term, a proposition, and an inference. A term is a mere general description, and as neither icon nor index possesses generality, it must be a name; and it is nothing more. A proposition is also a general description, but it differs from a term in that it purports to be in a real relation to the fact, to be really determined by it; thus, a proposition can only be formed of the conjunction of a name and an index. An inference, too, contains a general description CP 1.365 (1890) 365. Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual exemplification of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer upon this preliminary exposition of them. There is, however, one feature of them upon which it is quite indispensable to dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of Secondness and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so called, or they are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight lines is called a degenerate conic. So plane cubic curves are either the genuine curves of the third order, or they are conics paired with straight lines, or they consist of three straight lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics. Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate sort which does not exist as such, but is only so conceived. The medieval logicians (following a hint
[peirce-l] Re: question about century dictionary
David LaChance says: Joseph, I can't recall what that message was, but the quote you are looking might be this one, where Peirce says that his CD [i.e. Century Dictionary] definitions “were necessarily rather vaguely expressed, in order to describe the popular usage of terms, and in some cases were modified by proofreaders or editors; . . . they are hardly such as I should give in a Philosophical Dictionary proper.” No, that wasn't the passage I had in mind, David, but it is directly to the point. The one I had in mind turns out to be in a message I posted myself in which I was quoting something Nathan Houser said in his introduction to Vol. 6 of the new edition, which runs as follows: ==quote Nathan Houser Overall Peirce was quite satisfied with the results of his work, even though he would often remark, as he did to Paul Carus on 25 September 1890, God forbid I should _approve_ of above 1/10 of what I insert. ==end quote The passage you quote from Peirce helps in understanding what Peirce meant in the seemingly negative judgment that Nathan alludes to, namely, that the reader of the definitions in the dictionary should bear in mind that Peirce was under the constraint of being required to give a report on actual usage of the words he is providing definitions for since the Century is not, after all, a philosophical dictionary but rather a dictionary primarily dedicated to reporting popular usage, though it also contains descripitions of specialized usage, too, and perhaps even preferred -- i.e. implicitly recommended -- usage now and then as well. You go on to say: It appears at the end of the Reply to the Necessitarians Monist article. It could induce some rather severe pessimism about any hopes we might have in trusting that Peirce's definitions in the Century Dictionary can be considered to reflect his own views, but I can say he is being overly pessimistic himself in that passage as we find many gems in his CD work, philosophical and otherwise. Everything considered, I don't think it need be read as expressing pessimism but only as saying something like Bear in mind what I could and could not do there. What had bothered me about the passage Nathan quoted was, of course, that it seemed that we might be compelled to infer that Peirce officially approved of something which he did not in fact approve of, thus behaved dishonestly. But he put such an extraordinary amount of time and labor in on that dictionary as to make it highly implausible that he did so in violation of his own intellectual integrity. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.4/282 - Release Date: 3/15/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] question about century dictionary
Gary and list: I think it was Gary who posted a message some time back -- a couple of weeks ago? -- that had a quotation in it from Peirce about the definitions in the Century Dictionary for which he was responsible where he says something to the effect that he did not necessarily want to endorse of all of those for which he was responsible. That's not quite it, but, anyway, I can't find that message and need to get clear on exactly what he was saying. Does anybody remember what message that was? Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.4/282 - Release Date: 3/15/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: on continuity and amazing mazes
Arnold says: I would venture to suggest (subject to the better sense of those on the list who have greater experince with the MSS than I have) that the notion of a Sign contains the concept of a transitive function, making a very strong case for what Thomas has said on this subject. Other transitive functions in Peirce can be found in Vols III and IV of the CP (see especially 3.562)RE RESPONSE: You won't get any objections from me on that, Arnold. Let me quote myself (from mydissertation many year ago (1966) on CSP's conception of representation):"Peirce indicates in several places that he regardsthe nota notae as the generic inference principle (see esp. 5.320 and 3.183). [Nota notae est nota rei ipsius: the mark of the mark is the mark of the thing itself.] Further, he identifies this with the dictum de omni (4.77) [which is in Aristotle], and with what De Morgan called the principle of the transitiveness of the copula. (2.591-92). The latter is in turn identified with the illative relation (3.175), and this, again, is explicitly said to be the "primary and paramount semiotic relation." (2.444n1). I suggest, therefore, that all of Peirce's statements of the representation relation may thus be taken as so many variant expressions of what he understands to be expressed by the nota notae, the dictum de omni, the notion of the transitivity of the copula, or the principle of illation." (Charles Peirce: The Idea of Representation, 63) Joe Ransdell No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
, even if it can't be semeiotically analyzed--or at least not in much depth--that is, triadically (but see Thomas Sebeok's Global Semiotics, Indiana U., 2001, passim). Peirce did not invent the term, by the way.In the Century Dictionary, Peircedefines it as follows: "In metaph., representation, an object serving to represent something to the mind." This is attributed to Sir W. Hamilton. This is most interesting. But can one really equate representation with the representamen? Perhaps. I don't know. It remains a question in my mindGary Richmond Joseph Ransdell wrote: Neither Theresa nor I disagree with what you are saying about the vernacular word "sign" being more narrow in scope of application than the word "representamen" and I assume you agree that there are several quotations which make clear that he regards the one as a technical explication of the other. If so there is no disagreement there. I think I was mistaken, though, in identifying confusion about the nature of that distinction as being what would account for the unintelligibility I find (or think I find) in her message. Also, I agree with Theresa in objecting to what Frances says in the passage she quotes from her: quote Frances= In myguess, it may be that for Peirce in the evolution of things"representamens" are more say monadic or dyadic and primitive then"signs" where objects that act as "signs" require them to be saytriadic and the "thought" of organisms, while "representamens" maynot. ===end quote== I take it that what she objects to in Frances saying that representamens need not be triadic. Are they not defined as being triadic, just as signs are? We are talking about entities which represent in either case, and that is surely a relation.Can a monad, consideredas such, be a representation? Can a mere other as such be a representation? What would be the point in calling a monad or a dyad something that represents? Perhaps we could make sense of it if he means to saythat a representamen is a sign that is not a symbol but only an icon or an index, but then why talk about it as a definitional explication of the idea of a sign anddefine it again and again in just the way he defines sign? The onlyother possibility I can see is that it is --as Frances seems to think -- aterm for referring to things asthey would beif there were no minds to take account of them. Are we to suppose that he would put this forth as his basic term for the sort of entity which semiotic is particularly concerned to study? Peirce did not invent the term, by the way.In the Century Dictionary, Peircedefines it as follows: "In metaph., representation, an object serving to represent something to the mind." This is attributed to Sir W. Hamilton. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 7:54 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from "Peircean elements" topic) Joe, Frances, and List,Joseph Ransdell wrote: I can only say that I find Frances's usage of words so idiosyncratic in sentence after sentence that I cannot figure out any way to restate her view in sentences that make any sense to me. Perhaps because at one point several years ago I studied rather intensely for a few weeks some of Frances's work and consequently go rather familiar with her admittedly idiosyncratic terminology, I am having none of this difficulty whatsoever. Indeed, I find her thinking quite clear and, as earlier mentioned, persuasive--that is, for one who is not totally turned off and revulsed by her strange locutions. I will, however, await Ben's response to Frances to comment much further regarding the substantive issues. I thought perhaps there might be some one misunderstanding that would account for this in a systematic way, and guessed that it might be due totaking the distinction between "sign" and "representamen" as a distinction to be drawn within semiotic analysis, so that e.g. one can speak of signs as if they are a special case of representamens, whereas in fact it is a distinction between a vernacular term and a technical term which Peirce used as a replacementfor theoretical purposes and it makes no sense to talk that way: if
[peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements)
Steven I agree with you in being unable to find what Frances is saying intelligible, but I want to take the occasion to ask you what you mean by immediacy, which seems to have a special meaning in your writings which is of special importance to you that I don't understand. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 12:41 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Representamens and Signs (was Design and Semiotics Revisited was Peircean elements) Dear List, I was hoping to keep out of this. Mostly I think the deconstruction of Peirce's writings concerning representamen / sign is a waste of time and simply unable to produce any meaningful result. This message by Frances simply makes no sense to me. How do you, Frances or Gary, propose a representamen that is prior to all existent objects and 'signs' and semiosis - this assertion makes no sense ontologically or epistemologically. Indeed, even if I consider such an argument viable, any such representamen would not be accessible to apprehension. It leads me to believe that there is a misunderstanding in Frances argument concerning the very nature of semeiosis. I think you are both reading too much into Peirce's exploration - which he clearly testifies to. Consider the two terms a property of the immediacy of his manifest refinement (his analysis). With respect, Steven Frances Kelly wrote: Gary... Thanks for your search and post. As you implied, the distinction attempted to be made by me is in deed the difference between representamens that are broader and prior to all else in the world, including existent objects and signs and semiosis, and that are independent of thought and mind and sense and life itself. The reason for my making this attempt is simply the seeming distinction made by Peirce himself in his many passages quoted here. Agreeably, it may certainly prove useful to distinguish between signs conveying notions to human minds and those representamens which can not or need not do so. My train of thought on this matter may of course be way off track, in that there may be no substantial distinction at all. The Peircean writings recently posted to the list by you on the terms representamen and representamens and representamina will be read by me in detail for some insight. -Frances --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
Gary, Frances, and list: I think I was sloppy in my statement, Gary, which was not intended as a general attack on Frances's views but was a comment on what she is saying in a particular message. I regret not making that clear. I could be mistaken about what was happening that I was objecting to, too, but I need to reread the messagecarefully and then if I still find it off the mark to state exactly what I was objecting to, which I didn't do. In the meanwhile, I agree with your admiration for her courage in putting up with a lot of harsh criticism earlier on, in particular.Ben's view is another matter altogether, and I said nothing about that. I do think it is a mistake for her to indulge the tendency to introduce neologisms of her own, though, when one of the main problems in interpreting Peirce has to dowith problems of terminology. Each new coinage just adds one more difficulty to understanding what he is saying. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 11:45 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from "Peircean elements" topic) Frances, Joe, Ben, List,While I have for some years now thought that Frances' neologisms create an impediment to her analyses being given a sympathetic hearing, and have at moments even deplored her seemingly revisionist approach to Peirce on this list and at least one other (the Esthetics forum of which I was briefly a member), I do not at this point think "that something is going very wrong" in her understanding of Peirce. While I will certainly reflect on Joe's analysis/critique of the 'sign' 'representatmen' distinction as she employs it, at the moment I do not think that whatever may be decided in that matter--certainly an issue hardly 'settled' in Peircean scholarship or in Peirce's own thinking as even Joe seemed to imply in his post--that it fundamentally undermines Frances' acute analysis. Indeed, at the moment, I find her argument rather persuasive (strengthened, perhaps, by a sense in which she accepts her fallibility and incomplete understanding of these difficult issues). Her courage (Ben's too) in the face of so much criticism neglect over the years is to me inspiring, sometimes humbling. Perhaps it goes without saying that for these reasons--and others--that I have a great deal of respect for both Ben and Frances. I have also learned a great deal from them.More to the present point as I see it, Frances is one of the very few on this list who has even begun to make a good faith attempt at grappling with Ben's 'recognizant' and 4th semeiotic category (including the whole matter of its relation to collateral observation, the status of the object, etc.). I applaud her for this and look forward to Ben's response to her analysis. It seems to me likely that I would want to take up Ben's recognizant, proxy, need for a fourth category (something certainly considerably more radical even than Frances' tendency towards neologism, revisionism, etc.), etc., once again in the light of Ben's (likely?) response to Frances and hope that others on the list might join this discussion. What's at stake is--as I see it--is nothing less than the acceptance or undermining of a conception of Three Universes of experience, three Universal, Existential, and Logical-semeiotic categories, etc.But very few here or, for that matter, anywhere have really struggled with Ben's revolutionary semiotic notions. For example, Joe has seemingly thrown up his hands at understanding them at all, suggesting in one recent post that he'd have to leave such analysis to such as me to struggle with (viz., someone who could grasp anything at all of Ben's radical tetradic abduction, and this despite my expressed antipathy to it, which most any reader of this list--and certainly Ben--has observed). One would of course yet very much like to see Joe reflect on Ben's 4's at some point (certainly Ben and I have both been responsive to much of Joe's extraordinary philosophical analysis over the years and my own sense of Peirce's semeiotic has been deeply informed by reading Joseph Ransdell on the topic).But for now, I would simply like to say that Frances has contributed in "good faith" something of value in this dialogue with Ben.GaryJoseph Ransdell wrote: It seems to me that something is going very wrong in your understanding of Peirce, Frances, apparently stemming from a misunderstanding of the "sign" and "representamen" distinction. The word "representamen" seems to be introduced as the name for the refined conception of a sign that enables him to understand interpretational processes more broadly than "sign" would permit, as ordinarily understood, t
[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from Peircean elements topic)
gapasticism. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, anancism, and agapismSo, for example, we have here agapasm (==agapastic evolution], agapasticism (the doctrine of this) and agapism (the simple notion of this). In addition, while on the one hand Frances is here using fewer of these coinages than in the past, terms like 'semiosic' are not infrequently found in the semiotic literature (if not necessarily the semeiotic). On the other hand, 'semiosics' is not, and her use of such expressions seems idiosyncratic and at least off-putting. Also, and as noted in much earlier discussions, we already have a perfectly good term identifying the science, indeed we have three terms, or at least spellings, viz., semeiotic, semiotic, and semiotics (a number of scholars have taken to using the first spelling, one of several Peirce used, to refer to the specifically Peircean version of logic as semeiotic). On the other hand (I think I now have a three handed beast here!) within her own revisionary project involving a consideration of all possible arts and sciences, Frances apparently continues to find it necessary to conceive terminology along the lines of the kinds of distinctions Peirce is making in 6.302. But, again, I mainly agree with you, Joe, that less of this is more, so that one would hope that new terminology would be rare and to some significant purpose (whereas, again, 'semiosics' appears not to be).I too, as mentioned, will take a closer look at Frances' post and in the light of your earlier comments, while I look forward to reading "exactly what [you were] objecting to." I imagined that since her entire message concerned an analysis of a fundamental thrust of Ben's tetrastic project, and that the sign/representamen distinction might play a significant role in the discussion of collateral knowledge, the status of the object, etc. that you were indeed commenting in some way on Ben's theory. I see from your comments that you were not.Gary Joseph Ransdell wrote: Gary, Frances, and list: I think I was sloppy in my statement, Gary, which was not intended as a general attack on Frances's views but was a comment on what she is saying in a particular message. I regret not making that clear. I could be mistaken about what was happening that I was objecting to, too, but I need to reread the messagecarefully and then if I still find it off the mark to state exactly what I was objecting to, which I didn't do. In the meanwhile, I agree with your admiration for her courage in putting up with a lot of harsh criticism earlier on, in particular.Ben's view is another matter altogether, and I said nothing about that. I do think it is a mistake for her to indulge the tendency to introduce neologisms of her own, though, when one of the main problems in interpreting Peirce has to dowith problems of terminology. Each new coinage just adds one more difficulty to understanding what he is saying. Joe Ransdell ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] beware of gmail filter
If you use Gmail beware of the spam filter. I just discovered that it misrouted about a dozen peirce-l messages to the spam folder in the last month, and presumably a bunch more from before that time (which it has already deleted permanently).. I had not checked it before. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: changing e-address
To avoid the usual Catch-22, just send me a message stating both addresses and I'll do it for you. Joseph Ransdell list manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] \\ - Original Message - From: John Rooney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 3:07 PM Subject: [peirce-l] changing e-address How does one go about changing one's e-address for purposes of this list? Inquiring minds want to know. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/278 - Release Date: 3/9/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Are there authorities on authority?
Larry: Thanks for the extensive reply to my criticisms. Sorry for the delay in responding but it will take me a few days more before I am ready to do so properly. I've been reading the various material by you that provides background understanding in some depth for what you say in your messages here, and I am increasingly intrigued by the issues implicit in this project, though not yet convinced that -- as presently conceived -- it is either viable in principle or achievable to a significant degree in practice without turning into something else that you will eventually want to dissociate yourself from. But your attempt to develop a philosophically sound conception of it, and to do so both by extensive dialogue and by practical involvement and experimentation in actual implementation of it is the last thing I would wish to discourage in any way, as long as the idealism is still there and you stay open to criticism. The reason I am so slow in response is that I don't want to present only a negative view of your project but to suggest a somewhat different perspective to entertain, if I can describe it properly, which might be of some help in developing a more profitable understanding of its prospects and problematics than achieved thus far. I don't mean to be speaking as if from some superior vantage point but only from a somewhat different one, in virtue of different experience acquired in pursuit of what seem to be relevantly similar goals. Let me explain one reason why I say this, though I should apologize in advance for the length of it. I don't expect a response in detail. It is mainly just FYI. Hopefully, I will be able to come up with something of more value to you later. The interest I have in the sort of thing you are concerned with stems from two distinct but related aims. The first is one which has gradually formed itself over the years in connection with the standing problem in Peirce scholarship posed by the fact that Peirce's philosophical work still remains largely entombed in a vast quantity of unpublished manuscript material which is available, as a practical reality, only to a privileged few, and even for them in a largely unordered form that often defeats the possibility of shared access to it convenient enough to build effectively on the basis of it. The recent developments of computer-based information and communication technology make it possible to solve the problem of universal access to it and to develop instruments of organization and analysis and scholarly communication that could do justice to it, but attempts to do this have yet to be successful, and my own efforts in this direction thus far have caused me to think of the practice of scholarship and of philosophy rather differently than I otherwise would and in ways that seem to me to bear on what you are trying to do, too. More to the point, though, is the second aim, which is one which I acquired more or less by accident in virtue of my philosophical interest in the role of communication and publication in the process of inquiry motivated by the purpose of getting at the truth about something. From the Peircean perspective, which regards the inquiry process as fundamental in understanding epistemological matters, inquiry is to be understood as a essentially of the character of a dialogical process, which means that one has to be concerned with the question of what the role of publication is in that process, which is usually just ignored by philosophers of science because they think of publishing as something one does only to communicate results after they have been arrived at and already recognized as being acquired knowledge. In working out the implications of this I was led to the question of what is or can be meant by peer review, which is supposedly a validation process that occurs in the process of attempted publication, justifying the publication by somehow certifying or validating the document submitted as worthy of publication. But how can It do that if the judgment of a peer is logically on par with the judgment of the author, as is implicit in the concept of a peer? A second opinion is just another opinion nor can any piling up of further peer opinions change the logical status of the opinion reviewed, regardless of whether they agree or disagree. Omitting the reasons here, let me just say that I came to the conclusion that the common understanding of this practice is seriously flawed, and what is usually referred to as peer review is actually only a degenerate form of it at best since authentic peer review is something that can occur only in consequence of publication rather than being something that occurs prior to it that can justify it, as it is usually but mistakenly conceived. But at about this time I discovered that something had been happening in certain of the hard sciences which also lent support to this conclusion, namely, the movement,
[peirce-l] Re: Peirce invented the electric switching computer?
Steven: Thomas is referring to Writings of CSP, vol. 5. It contains a copy of a letter of Dec 30, 1886, of which there is a copy (with an image of a page from it), to Allan Marquand in which Peirce explains to Marquand how the electronic switch (the logic gate) would work, with a simple diagram. Kenneth Ketner wrote a paper on a logic machine which Marquand built with an account of Peirce's role in that, but I seem to have mislaid my copy of it. Ken is temporarily off of the list, pursuing the possibility of getting the Peirce-inspired quantum computer actualized, but he probably still has an offprint he can send you or a photocopy of it. But apart from that you can check the reference to the Writings volume. [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 2:30 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Peirce invented the "electric switching computer?" Dear List,There is a very nice and copyright free bio of Peirce from NOAA that I have copied into Panopedia for reference here: http://www.panopedia.org/index.php/Charles_Sanders_Peirce#NOAA_Giants_of_ScienceThe article is unattributed and makes the following claim, that Peirce was: " ... first to conceive the design and theory of an electric switching computer"Now, I am not familiar with this claim - can anyone justify it with references? Better still, can anyone identify the author?With respect,Steven---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/271 - Release Date: 2/28/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/271 - Release Date: 2/28/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Are there authorities on authority?
TO: Larry Sanger Larry: Before explaining to you what I find questionable in the way you are presently conceiving the task of developing the DU, I want to say first that I am looking forward to reading with care your dissertation on epistemic circularity and the problem of meta-justification which I discovered last night. I browsed through it quickly but read enough of to see that it is of interest not only to me but well worth recommending to people on PEIRCE-L generally because of the skill with which you handle the issues there and because the view you defend as your own, which is akin to Thomas Reid's common-sensism, is also akin to Peirce's critical common-sensism, which was so called by him to suggest that it is Scottish common-sensism as modified by Kantian considerations. The URL for it is: http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/larrysanger/diss/preamble.html It is, of course, much concerned with the problematics of the question I posed to you in my earlier message about whether or not there are authorities on authority (or experts on expertise, as you might prefer to put it). In stating my critical points, I will ask you to put up with the kind of bluntness that helps in stating things as briefly as possible -- though the message as a whole is hardly brief! -- with the understanding that there is no implicit intention of being in any way disrespectful in stating it in that way. I will of course be willing to elaborate further on any points which you or anyone else finds questionable. That said, let me start by remarking that after discovering that the problem of authority is something which you have had a special interest in yourself, I was puzzled at first as to why I did not see in what you seem to be doing or planning to do in the development of DU any obvious signs of your understanding of the difficulties that are implicit in making knowledge claims of this sort. But then it occurred to me that the reason for this probably does not lie in your not being willing to apply what you know from your philosophical understanding of the problem at the theoretical level but rather in an understanding of the way academic life works which is, in my opinion, too far from the reality of it to provide you with a basis for a viable plan. You say: ==quote Larry Sanger Ultimately, and "pragmatically" speaking, I imagine it will come down to academic respectability, or consistency with the scientific method and other very widely-endorsed epistemic methods (which vary from field to field). Basically, if the Digital Universe aims to cast its net as widely as possible, and to include the bulk of academe, the most it can hope to do is to represent the state of the art in each field. It cannot, in addition, hope to be selective about persons or fields or institutions (etc.) in a way that is identifiably contrary to the already-existing standards of credibility in various fields. It can at best hope to be fair to all strands of expert opinion in any given field. ===end quote== The phrase "state of the art" may have misled you. There are many fields (and philosophy is surely one of them) in which there is nothing that even roughly corresponds to the phrase "state of the art". (The "state of the art" articles that appear from time to time in the journals are nothing more than summary accounts of positions taken, distinctions drawn, and arguments given in recent years on some topic of interest as that is understood within one of the many traditions of philosophy -- the so-called "analytic" tradition -- which are currently flourishing.) "Current opinion in the reigning orthodoxy in a field " would be the more accurate description once you get outside the hard sciences, and even there, where much is settled, you tread on dangerous ground in thinking that you, as an interested outsider, eager as you may be to do justice to the situation in the field, can get into position to make a wise decision about who is represent that to the world -- or to have that decided for you by delegated authority from you -- without spending far more time and energy than you could possibly commit to it. Moreover, It seems to me that you might as well have said that your intention is to favor the reigning orthodoxy and do what you can to reinforce it by publicizing it as being what it is not. But do you really want to do that? The fact is, Larry, that you cannot reasonably hope "to be fair to all strands of expert opinion in any given field" -- the idea of achieving such fairness or even roughly approximating to it is just implausible as a practical proposition, and you are merely contradicting what you are saying about favoring the reigning orthodoxy, in any case, and to no good purpose. What you will be bound to do, in lieu of what you aim at doing, is only to add to the misinformation already available, and be doing so,
[peirce-l] Fw: 2nd CFP: Models and Simulations (Paris, 12-13 June 2006)
Looks like the sort of conference a Peircean might be specially interested in; Forwarded to the list by Joseph Ransdell - Original Message - From: Stephan Hartmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 1:20 PM Subject: 2nd CFP: Models and Simulations (Paris, 12-13 June 2006) ** MODELS AND SIMULATIONS Two-day conference in Paris, 12-13 June 2006 http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/events/Conferences/Simulations/http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/events/Conferences/Simulations/ ** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Robert Batterman (Western Ontario) and Paul Humphreys (University of Virginia) ORGANIZERS: Roman Frigg (LSE), Stephan Hartmann (LSE), and Cyrille Imbert (IHPST/Paris I) PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Robert Batterman (Western Ontario), Jacques Dubucs (IHPST/CNRS), Roman Frigg (LSE), Stephan Hartmann (LSE), Paul Humphreys (University of Virginia), Cyrille Imbert (IHPST/Paris I), and Eric Winsberg (University of South Florida) PUBLICATION: Revised versions of selected papers will be published in a special issue of Synthese. The deadline for submission of the final version of the paper is 1 September 2006. The conference is generously supported by the CNRS and IHPST, Paris. The conference language is English. OUTLINE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS Computer simulations play a crucial role in many sciences, but they have not yet received the attention they deserve from philosophers of science. This conference attempts to systematically explore methodological issues in connection with computer simulations and the implications of these for traditional questions in the philosophy of science. Special emphasis is put on the relation between models and simulations as well as on the role of computers in the practice of science. The papers presented at the conference will address, among others, the following questions: 1. What difference does the essentially dynamic nature of simulations make to modeling, particularly in their representational abilities? 2. Is there a difference between simulations that have an explicit model or theory behind them and those that do not? 3. When there is no model, what form does the representational connection between the simulation and the world take? 4. Can any sense be made of claims that the world itself is carrying out computations and simulating itself? 5. What role does intentionality play in simulations or such apparently automatic representational processes as genetic algorithms? 6. Are there principles that one can use to decide whether a simulation is to be interpreted realistically or only instrumentally? 7. At what level (e.g. the machine code, the algorithmic, the scientific language) does a simulation represent a system? 8. It is well-known hat models enter into different relationships such as isomorphism, embedding, or being a submodel of. Are there analogous relations between simulations? 9. What would qualify as an equivalence relation between simulations? 10. What is the relation between simulations used as an experimental tool and real experiments? 11. How does the methodology of simulations compare with experimentation? 12. How, if at all, do models and simulations explain? 13. What are the implications of the growing use of simulations in science for our understanding of science? 14. What are the implications of the repeated use of the same models and simulations within different fields of science? 15. How reliable are the results of simulations, and how is the reliability of a simulation determined? 16. What role does mathematics play in simulations? 17. Is there a difference between the use of simulations across different fields such as physics, biology, and the social sciences? 18. Is there a difference between the use of simulations in fundamental science and in applied science? SUBMISSION OF PAPERS Please send extended abstracts of 1000 words to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] by 15 March 2006. Decisions will be made by 1 April. A few travel bursaries for graduate students are available; if you wish to be considered please submit a short (tentative) travel budget and a CV together with your paper. There will also be a Best Graduate Paper Award of 500 EUROS. For details, visit the conference website. Deadline for submissions: 15 March 2006 Although the conference has a philosophical orientation, contributions by historians and sociologists of science are welcome too. We particularly encourage working scientists to submit papers. -- - Stephan Hartmann http://www.stephanhartmann.org - -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/271 - Release Date: 2/28/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing
[peirce-l] Re: Are there authorities on authority?
not clear to me is how such assessment is to be made which does not involve capitulation to an authoritarianism of the sort which both of you presumably want to avoid. Putting it as simply as possible, the problem is that whenever someone, A, affirms that someone, B (who might be A, in the special case), is a legitimate or real authority (or expert, if you like) on the matter in question, the question immediately arises as to the authoritative character of A as someone purporting to legitimate B as authoritative. (The same problem arises in the case of legitimating a document or a knowledge claim.) For example -- and I address this to Larry in particular, for the moment -- you say somewhere, I believe, that "the purpose of the Digital Universe (DU) is to aggregate and organize the world's reliable free information in one place", and it seems that the way in which this is to be done in the DU is by selecting only experts or authoritative persons to be stewards in charge of providing expert or authoritative informational resources for this or that particular subject-matter or field of interest. This no doubt means something like selecting only "recognized" authorities. But there are many areas of concern where one would be hard-pressed to identify anybody with such a status, and for matters where there is indeed some such person or persons so recognized, the supposed "authorities" will sometimes not in fact be worthy of such recognition, whether because they are frauds or are simply incompetents, who happened to be successful in persuading others that they are something which they are not. On the basis of what authority do those in the DU who select the supposed authorities make that selection? Is there a class of persons -- those in positions of authority in DU -- who are authorities on authority? If not -- and I anticipate that you would not want to claim that there are -- then why should anyone sceptical of the reliability of the information available on the web regard the situation as likely to be improved by such screening for authorities as your project seems to be promising to provide? There may be a similar question to be raised in connection with Steven's Memeio project. I am not sure of that at the moment. But this seems to be a question that ought to be raised to you, Larry, and I hope you will understand that I am not raising it in a merely negative and carping spirit but rather because I foresee it as being the major conceptual problem which your enterprise -- which I regard as admirable in intent -- has to come to grips with effectively if it is to be successful. I raise it to you before raising it to Steven simply because I do find him addressing the question of what authority is in an explicit and straightforward way in a couple of places on one of his websites -- though I am not sure that he answers the question as I pose it -- but I can't find anyplace where the corresponding question about expertise or authority is addressed on the DU website. Joe Ransdell Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.0/269 - Release Date: 2/24/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.0/269 - Release Date: 2/24/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Panopedia
Steven says: Transparency is a pragmatic. Or, exactly as Joe suggests that Peirce implies (is there a reference to this Joe?): identifying the author is a logical necessity. REPLY: Here's some quotes to that effect: CP 2.315 (c. 1902) For an act of assertion supposes that, a proposition being formulated, a person performs an act which renders him liable to the penalties of the social law (or, at any rate, those of the moral law) in case it should not be true, unless he has a definite and sufficient excuse; and an act of assent is an act of the mind by which one endeavors to impress the meanings of the proposition upon his disposition, so that it shall govern his conduct, including thought under conduct, this habit being ready to be broken in case reasons should appear for breaking it. CP 5.30 (1903) Now it is a fairly easy problem to analyze the nature of assertion. To find an easily dissected example, we shall naturally take a case where the assertive element is magnified -- a very formal assertion, such as an affidavit. Here a man goes before a notary or magistrate and takes such action that if what he says is not true, evil consequences will be visited upon him, and this he does with a view to thus causing other men to be affected just as they would be if the proposition sworn to had presented itself to them as a perceptual fact. MS 70 (1905) Declarative sentence: a sentence which, if seriously pronounced, makes an assertion; that is, is intended to serve as evidence of its utterer's belief, to compel (so far as a sentence may) the belief of those to whom it is addressed, and to assume for the utterer whatever responsibility may attach to the particular form of the declaration, at least, his reputation for veracity or accuracy. New Elements, in EP2, pp. 312f MS 517 (1904) As an aid in dissecting the constitution of affirmation [assertion] I shall employ a certain logical magnifying-glass that I have often found efficient in such business. Imagine, then, that I write a proposition on a piece of paper, perhaps a number of times, simply as a calligraphic exercise. It is not likely to prove dangerous amusement. But suppose I afterward carry the paper before a notary public and make affidavit to its contents. This may prove to be a horse of another color. The reason is that the affidavit may be used to determine an assent to the proposition it contains in the minds of judge and jury--an effect that the paper would not have had if I had not sworn to it. For certain penalties here and hereafter are attached to swearing to a false proposition; and consequently the fact that I have sworn to it will be taken as a negative index that it is not false. . . . An affirmation is an act of an utterer of a proposition to an interpreter, and consists, in the first place, in the deliberate exercise, in uttering the proposition, of a force tending to determine a belief in it in the mind of the interpreter. Perhaps that is a sufficient definition of it; but it involves also a voluntary self-subjection to penalties in the event of the interpreter's mind (and still more the general mind of society) subsequently becoming decidedly determined to the belief at once in the falsity of the proposition and in the additional proposition that the utterer believed the proposition to be false at the time he uttered it. Joe Ransdell Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.12/265 - Release Date: 2/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben, you say: I don't pose a tetradic reduction thesis applicable to all relations. I just say that there's a fourth semiotic term that isn't any of the classic three. A sign stands for an object to an interpretant on the basis of a recognition. I think that an increasingly good reason to suppose that recognition can't be reduced to interpretant, sign, and object, is that nobody has done so in any kind of straightforward way. REPLY: Has anybody tried? BEN: Basically, signs interpretants lack experience conveyable to the mind. How will you reduce experience of them respecting the object, reduce such experience into things that lack experience conveyable to the mind? Where did the experience vanish to? You can analyze, but not reduce, experience into such by shifting phenomenological gears, semiotic frame of reference, etc. REPLY: I don't see anything reductive in assuming that the analysis of cognition, including recognition, can be done in terms of a signs, objects, and interpretants as elements of or in cognitive processes, andif this involves shifting phenomenological gears and semiotic frames of reference then so be it.. Your suggestion that recognition should be acknowledged to be a distinctive fourth factor seems to accomplish nothing other than to make it impossible to analyze recognition at all since the conception of it is already given, as a sort of logical primitive, prior to its use as an analytic element. But the truth is, Ben, that I just don't understand your argument. I just can/t follow it, and I can't really answer you effectively for that reason. I guess I will have to leave that to Gary for the time being and hope that I will in time come to understand what you are getting at. I always take what you say seriously, at the very least. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Excerpt from Nahan Houser on Peirce and the Century Dictionary
appeared in print for reviews to follow. One lone voice of dissent was heard-the voice of Simon Newcomb. In a letter to the editor of the Nation, published on 13 June 1889, Newcomb complained of certain Century definitions that were insufficient, inaccurate, and confused to a degree which is really remarkable. The examples he gave were for Almagest, albedo, eccentric anomaly, absorption lines, law of action and reaction, apochromatic, alidade, and achromatic lens, five of which, it turned out, were Peirce's. Peirce replied in the 27 June issue of the Nation, admitting that his definition of anomaly, perhaps the first I wrote in astronomy, was flawed, but defending the rest. Newcomb confessed to great surprise when he found out it was Peirce he had taken to task, but privately, in a letter to William D. Whitney, Editor in Chief for the Century, he wrote: I may say to you confidentially that several years ago I should have regarded Peirce as the ablest man in the country for such work but I fear he has since deteriorated to an extent which is truly lamentable. A few days earlier, Whitney had written to his brother that he did not understand why Newcomb felt called upon to strain the truth and misjudge things in order to find fault with the dictionary. It seems, he went on, as if he must have some private grudge to satisfy. But Newcomb's criticism quickly faded out against the countervailing tide of acclaim. Overall Peirce was quite satisfied with the results of his work, even though he would often remark, as he did to Paul Carus on 25 September 1890, God forbid I should _approve_ of above 1/10 of what I insert. End excerpt from Nathan Houser's biographical Introducion to Vol. 6 of The Writings of Charles S. Peirce, posted by Joseph Ransdell. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: Existent vs Real
I have no problem with this, Thomas, as showing the need for the distinction of the existent vs. the real, but then I wasn't really putting the need for it in question but only intending to indicate that I don't always understand how to apply it effectively. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Thomas Riese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:52 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Existent vs Real Joe, I propose, to fix our ideas, that we try our hands at the following: (from Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism; 1906) [CP 4.546] Let us begin with the question of Universes. It is rather a question of an advisable point of view than of the truth of a doctrine. A logical universe is, no doubt, a collection of logical subjects, but not necessarily of meta-physical Subjects, or substances; for it may be composed of characters, of elementary facts, etc. See my definition in Baldwin's Dictionary. Let us first try whether we may not assume that there is but one kind of Subjects which are either existing things or else quite fictitious. Let it be asserted that there is some married woman who will commit suicide in case her husband fails in business. Surely that is a very different proposition from the assertion that some married woman will commit suicide if all married men fail in business. Yet if nothing is real but existing things, then, since in the former proposition nothing whatever is said as to what the lady will or will not do if her husband does not fail in business, and since of a given married couple this can only be false if the fact is contrary to the assertion, it follows it can only be false if the husband does fail in business and if the wife then fails to commit suicide. But the proposition only says that there is some married couple of which the wife is of that temper. Consequently, there are only two ways in which the proposition can be false, namely, first, by there not being any married couple, and secondly, by every married man failing in business while no married woman commits suicide. Consequently, all that is required to make the proposition true is that there should either be some married man who does not fail in business, or else some married woman who commits suicide. That is, the proposition amounts merely to asserting that there is a married woman who will commit suicide if every married man fails in business. The equivalence of these two propositions is the absurd result of admitting no reality but existence. If, however, we suppose that to say that a woman will suicide if her husband fails, means that every possible course of events would either be one in which the husband would not fail or one in which the wife would commit suicide, then, to make that false it will not be requisite for the husband actually to fail, but it will suffice that there are possible circumstances under which he would fail, while yet his wife would not commit suicide. Now you will observe that there is a great difference between the two following propositions: First, There is some one married woman who under all possible conditions would commit suicide or else her husband would not have failed. Second, Under all possible circumstances there is some married woman or other who would commit suicide, or else her husband would not nave failed. The former of these is what is really meant by saying that there is some married woman who would commit suicide if her husband were to fail, while the latter is what the denial of any possible circumstances except those that really take place logically leads to [our] interpreting (or virtually interpreting), the Proposition as asserting. [CP 4.547] In other places, I have given many other reasons for my firm belief that there are real possibilities. I also think, however, that, in addition to actuality and possibility, a third mode of reality must be recognized in that which, as the gipsy fortune-tellers express it, is sure to come true, or, as we may say is destined,(n1) although I do not mean to assert that this is affirmation rather than the negation of this Mode of Reality. I do not see by what confusion of thought anybody can persuade himself that he does not believe that tomorrow is destined to come. The point is that it is today really true that tomorrow the sun will rise; or that, even if it does not, the clocks or something, will go on. For if it be not real it can only be fiction: a Proposition is either True or False. But we are too apt to confound destiny with the impossibility of the opposite. I see no impossibility in the sudden stoppage of everything. In order to show the difference, I remind you that impossibility is that which, for example, describes the mode of falsity of the idea that there should be a collection of objects so multitudinous that there would not be characters enough in the universe of characters to distinguish all those things from one another. Is
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben: I will have to leave it to Gary R. and Jim to respond to whatever it is you are doing here. I just don't follow what is going on, what the problem is to which what you say is an answer or clarification or whatever.. (That is not a way of dismissing what you say, but just a personal confession of bewilderment.) Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 5:30 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? Jim, list, A few corrections, then a discussion which may be of interest to, ahem, not only Sir Piat, but also Sir Ransdell Sir Richmond. Interpretants iconicity are dealt with, eventually. I beg a little patience on this one, good Sir Knights, unsheathe thy swords not too quickly. (Note to self: ask them later what, if any, effect this near-flattery had on them.) Correction: I left reality accidentally off this trikon, now I've put it where I originally meant to: 1. Term (seme, etc.) - (univocality?) -- (case in the sense of question, issue, matter, _res_?) --- possibility. | 3. Argument -- validity -- law --- (conditional) necessity, reality. 2. Proposition - truth -- fact --- actuality. Correction the second, I said: ...we did not find resemblance embodied except in compromise form with indexicality, in material kinships I think that Peirce would take the embodiment of mathematical diagrams as the embodiment of icons and as not needing to be in something like the compromise form with embodied indexicality which I was discussing as material kinship. I forgot that at that moment because I generally think of the mathematical diagram not as an icon of its object but instead as an instance of a sign defined by that support which it would supply to recognition (of its experimentational decision-process legitimacy), across any all disparities of appearance (and of time, place, modality, universe-of-discourse, etc.) between said sign its object. \ 1. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, neither opens nor closes questions (i.e. it keeps information the same), then the ground is a reaction or resistance, a concrete factual connection with its object. Then the sign itself is an index. (I strongly suspect that this info-preservative kind of abstraction can indeed be called an abstraction; but, if not, then not.) 2. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, only opens questions (only removes information), then the ground is, to that extent, a quality, a semblance, a sample aspect apparent as sustained and carried on by the sign so long as the sign is true to itself in this. (To gain such a sign brings an increase of information, of course, but I am focusing on the info relationship between the ground and that from which it is abstracted.) Then the sign itself is an icon. 3. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, only closes questions (only adds information), i.e., reduces away or sums over all factors seen as extraneous to the abstraction's purpose, then the ground is, to that extent, a meaning or implication, a gist, an effect that it will, by habitual tendency, have on the interpretant, of making the interpretant resemble the gist, in meaningfully _appearing_ as -- without iconically resembling -- the object. (This is clarified further down.) 4. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, both opens closes questions (removes some information adds some information), then the ground is, to the extent, a validity, soundness, legitimacy (in that respect in which the sign counts _experientially_ as the object itself without necessarily being confused with the object at all), a support which the sign would most naturally and directly supply to its recognition, a support via its reacting legitimately in some respect as -- without indexically pointing to -- the object itself, and the reaction or resistance being _with the recognizant._ Then the sign itself is that which I call a proxy. Its ground's abstraction involves a closing and settling of questions (adding of information) as to what object-related information is relevant, (e.g., There are five initially selected objects in question, it doesn't matter whether we miscounted them or whether they're really oranges, etc.) and an opening of questions (removal of information) (e.g., how would the five behave and interact and collaborate with us, the mathematical observer-experimenter, sheerly in virtue of their fiveness, supplying us with answers to _fresh and unforeseen_ questions in accordance with _the rules_ of fiveness? I.e., in the concrete world, the question, for instance, of 5^3=? is taken as closed in the sense that the world will behave as determined by the answer -- but in the
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Br ier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosop hy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why inform
Thanks for bringing Soren Brier's summary statement to our attention, Gary.I put a link to it up at Arisbe. (Soren was on the PEIRCE-Llist for quite awhile some years back.) Does anyone know anything about what he calls "the critical realist" movement? With whom does that originate? Joe Ransdell -- Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 4:56 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: "Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough!" ] Excerpt perhaps summarizing a 15 page abstract in English of Briers Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough!http://www.cbs.dk/content/download/36989/554713/file/doctoralsummary.pdf The Cybersemiotic paradigm combines a non-mechanistic universal evolutionary semiotic approach to epistemology, ontology, and signification with a systemic and cybernetic approach to self-organization, drawing on Luhmanns theories of social communication. This combines a semiotics of nature with pragmatic linguistics in a second-order approach, reflecting the role of the observer as the producer of meaningful contexts that makes processes and differences information. Bateson claimed that information is a difference that makes a difference, whereas Maturana and Verela clarified that structurally coupled autopoiesis is necessary for any cognition to take place. Like Peirce I will claim that an interpretant, and therefore a sign process, must be established to create signification, which differs from objective information because of its meaning content. A short version of how integration between the different approaches can be made could be the following: Individuals [sic] interpreters see differences in their world that make a difference to them as information. Thus the world is the world of Heidegger (1962) in which the observer is thrown among things ready at hand, through which a breakdown of the original unconscious unity become [sic] present at hand. This situation is possible only by assigning signs to differences and interpreting them against a general non-reducible context. Living autopoietic systems do this by producing signs as parts of life forms. Signs can thus be said to obtain meanings through sign games. In the human social spheres forms of life give rise to language games. This part of social autopoiesis is what Luhmann calls social communication, employing what Peirce calls genuine triadic signs. Thus cognition and communication are self-organizing phenomena on all three levels: biological, psychological, and sociological/cultural. They produce meaningful information by brining forth an Umwelt, which in Cybersemiotics is called a signification sphere, connected to specific life practices such as mating, hunting, tending the young, defending etc. These characteristics distinguish cognition and communication in living systems from the simulations of these processes by computers. The forces and regularities of nature influence and constrain our perceptions and spark evolution. This process can be explained scientifically to some degree, but probably never in any absolute or classical scientific conception of the word, as Laplace thought. In my opinion, meaning cannot be defined independently from an observer and a world. Meaning is only created when a difference makes such a difference to the living system that it must make signs, join a group of communicating observers, and produce a meaningful world. ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
