List,
I am trying to understand Laws of Form. There is a good Youtube tutorial. Nevertheless, one has to first learn the theorems by heart, so it seems. But, in case you are inspired, I recommend another way, that is translating it into Boolean based Entitative Graphs. The first thing to know is, that elements standing side by side are connected with "or" in LOF (as in EntGs), and with "and" in EGs, and that a cross resp. cut means "not". The first problem for me was, I did not understand what is the meaning of an empty cross (empty cut in Entitative Graphs). First I thought it should always mean "nothing". But in combination with the empty sheet (resp. with the space of regard), which means "all", in LOF/EntGr. an empty cross means "All or nothing", that is "All". In EG, an empty cut in combination with the sheet means "All and nothing", that is "nothing". So, in LOF an empty cross means "all", and in EGs it means "nothing". Example, cross resp. cut I symbolize instead with "()": LOF: p () = (), that means: p or all is all. Same with EGs: p () = (), that means: p and nothing is nothing. This way I can derive the first theorems myself, in another way that Spencer-Brown did. He substituted the variable "p" with "either or ()", that is with being either "unmarked" or "marked" for his proofs of the theorems. For me, at the beginning now, it is hard to understand why such a substitution should be justified. I guess I will understand it later, but for the time being I need my own way of understanding/ derivation to mentally agree and not be demotivated.
Gesendet: Samstag, 28. Juni 2025 um 10:53
Von: "Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]>
Betreff: Aw: [PEIRCE-L] degenerate, categories
Supplement: A sign must have a quality, that means, it must be discernible from its environment, otherwise it could never work as a sign. So, what a prescission would leave, is quality, firstness. An object in its first order does not need to have a quality, for example, in "Computer, park the enterprise at XYZ", the object is a place in empty space, not discernible from its environment. It only is an object due to its reaction with the sign, coordinates YXZ. Nevertheless it determines the sign, because it is the place the captain wants to go to, which determines her choice of coordinates.
The question, whether a sign is "degenerate" or not, I guess means whether it is firstness or thirdness. To say it is both would solve the problem, but seems to contradict classical logic, because firstness is not thirdness, so the sign would be thirdness and not thirdness. Here my egg is, that the re-entry from the triad (3ns) into the correlate (1ns) is a circular process wit a certain frequency, maybe an infinitesimal small wavelength. So at any given moment, the sign is either 1ns or 3ns.
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. Juni 2025 um 22:53
Von: "Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]>
Betreff: [PEIRCE-L] degenerate, categories
List,
here a new thread (better is, perhaps), although it corresponds with the ongoing one. I can not cope with the concept of degeneracy. To say, that a secondness or a firstness is degenerate, implies not only, that it somehow has derived from a thirdness before, which I could agree with, but also, that the said thirdness doesn´t exist anymore, but has degenerated. For example, if you take a bean out of a bag of beans, does not mean, that the bag does not still exist, neither, that the concept of the complete bag of beans, including the taken-out bean, ceases to exist. Bad example. Better one, maybe: The rheme "light" does not exterminate e.g. the proposition by Evolution aka God "Let there be light", neither the argument "Let there be light because I want to design creatures with eyes". "Degenerate" is a pejorative term, and what it would it be like, if everybody should try to avoid speaking degeneratedly, making an argument of every word, like: "Please, because I want to sleep, which is necessary for all higher animals´ regeneration, put out the light, that was designed for creatures with eyes in their open-mode." Sounds like a super-nerd. In the Commens-dictionary, the two quotes by Peirce about "degenerate" also are not very catchy to me, just a proposition, that secondness is degenerate, and something about two men with different heights.
The other thing is, why should sign, object, interpretant, resp, the full hexad, not be due to the categories (in case this is meant by not having phaneroscopic reasons). The categories are quality, reaction, mediation. The sign has a quality, the object reacts with it (denotation vs. determination), and the interpretant is a mediation. The immediate object is the object from the sign´s (quality-) perspective, the dynamical object is the object from the object´s (2ns) perspective. The immediate interpretant is the mediation seen from the uttering (the sign´s) perspective, the dynamical interpretant is the mediation seen from the object´s perspective, and the final interpretant is the mediation from the mediating perspective.
In the composition of the triad, any sign is firstness, not just because it "is a first", but because, as prescinded for itself, in this "itself"-prescission it does not have any connection, neither as reaction nor mediation. The object must have a connection, because alone it cannot exist without being denoted (objectized, made an object) by a sign. When being tried to be prescinded to just itself, to something without connection or reaction, it is not an object, because: Object of what? An interpretant always is a mediation, because to interpret means to say, that something is something else.
A legisign, prescinded for itself, is e.g. a line of ink patterns with no, one, or more, spaces in between, on paper. As correlate in the triad it (prescindedly) plays the quality role. But as a class, it is mediation, as it is itself, refers to something that is not connected with it by similarity or cause, so has an intended meaning apart from its nature. A sinsign would have this natural connection by reaction or cause, and a qualisign by its quality or similarity.
Helmut
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