I acknowledge little education and reading in philosophy. If I may still
take part in the discussion: I'm with cheerskep in not understanding that
there is an equivalent meaning between the name for a category of X (games,
persons) and the members of the category. I could understand that a
categorical name is accepted as an existent reality but surely the meaning
or the value must differ in some way from members of the category. I could
even accept that Pierce (or someone) doesn't care about any possible
difference between category names and category members.
Geoff C
From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Metaphors and Categories
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:51:55 -0400
Frances has a quickie...
(A) In the realist philosophy of Peirce for an object to be
signed as the "same" is for an object to be "identical" with
another version of the object, rather than being virtual or
similar or peculiar or familiar. In the logic of relativity this
relation would tend to be a teridentical equivalency.
(B) It is possible for a group or a game to be sensed as an
objective fact as is a member of the group or a part of the game,
which is precisely what happens with say the particles of atoms
as they feel an inclined tendency to join together into a closed
molecule. The traits yield habits, and the habits become laws,
and the laws of nature are as objective as are the particles and
atoms and molecules. The parts are in a group to play a game and
close a goal, and there need not be any human mind to note this
actual concrete objectivity.
(C) All signs and to include all words as signs are "clusters" of
signs in that they merge and continue to change or grow, but then
that is evolution for you.
Frances partly wrote...
> (3B) The product of a single football exists as a token
artifact,
> but the game of football exists as an ideal typical class of
> existent token football games, so to sense a specific football
> game is also to sense the general game of football, therefore
the
> token and the type exist, and the token furthermore is an
iconic
> sign that indicates its own tone and type.
Cheerskep partly replied...
I can't agree. My view, I'm afraid, says this thinking is based
on a common
but almost never identified basic mistake. It's rarely identified
because when
you hear it my guess is you'll feel the mistake is mine because
my suggestion
is so bizarre. As Kate might observe, when we examine a specific
football, we
experience a number of specific sense data, all of which we
believe are
occasioned by an object "out there", ouside our minds. (There is
even your "
collective group of percipients" who would corroborate our
"perception".) We could
point at the single object, palp it, smell it.
But there is nothing specific you can point at that is "the
game". Everything
you can point at it is "accounted for" by sense data -- of this
player
running this way, that player running after him with the ball,
collisions -- none of
which is "the game". While we'd all agree there's a football "out
there"
because we can point at the object etc, there is nothing we can
point at, palp,
smell etc that is the game.
Does Peirce have a term for such "cluster" words -- of which
there are many,
many: footall game, game, race, poem, novel, play and on and on.
Or would he
say ALL words are cluster words, even for objects. E.g. Theseus's
boat. For
those not familiar with that, a very old question in philosophy
asked: If over
the course of many years of repairing his boat, Theseus replaced
every single
piece of wood on the craft, is it still the SAME boat? Back in
the 1890s, when
Frege began his musings that are sometimes credited with being
the beginning of
the philosophy of language, he announcd his topic as the problem
of "same".
