Hi Gary,
I very much concur with this sentiment:
On 10/17/2025 9:46 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
the process of reasoning, including the creation of meaning, commences
as abductive inference -- the imaginative leap -- and that Peirce
insists that this leap is a naturally human tendency to 'guess right'
about certain matters: so, from experience to abduction/ hypothesis
formation /retroduction.
Yet, as a member of the 'Knowledge Representation (KR) community' as you
refer, and one first introduced to Peirce by Sowa, it was not Sowa's
tutorials on existential graphs (EGs) or EGs more broadly that peaked my
interest. It was Sowa's presentation of semiosis in a dynamic way that
struck a cord. I first wrote about this connection in 2010 when I was
exploring the idea of concepts and reference in the context of the
semantic Web [1].
I think I understand Peirce's view that an icon is more primitive than
an expression, but I find the syntactic latitude presented by Peirce's
graphs to not be compelling for the contexts I want to express. I
appreciate the formalization of the logic afforded by the graphs, and
the cleaner presentation of relations provided by the graphs (in their
various Alpha to Gamma guises), but they have never really "spoken" to
me. The application of semiosis to natural language is the blackboard I
prefer. I suspect we align on this.
You go on to speculate:
If [Gamma Graphs or related repesent the syntax of abduction] is so,
then Pragmatism perhaps provides both the semantics and pragmatics
(the semeiotic teleology of abduction, so to speak) explaining how
those quite different icons acquire meaning through their bearing on
practical life and inquiry.
The iconicity of Gamma graphs may do just that, but I do not believe
that is the only path. Reasoned argument and natural language can
accomplish the same end, one which is more easily nuanced than
diagrammatic icons. (In other words, Peirce could have thought and
written another 100 years but would still be frustrated at his 'zeta
graphs' to express his intentions.)
Your observations brought to the fore two observations I would make
about the Peircean scholarship community generally. Observation 1): I do
not believe that mastering the EGs is essential to understand Peirce. I
think I understand Peirce's objectives with his graphs, and they have
mostly to do with the frustration of being able to precisely communicate
in any medium or context. An icon is surely prescinded from natural
language and therefore by definition more 'grounded'. But expressiveness
also comes from a larger number of tokens, leading to as many rules and
conventions as natural language affords. Iconic representations seem to
have lower ceilings to convey expressiveness. Observation 2): Semiosis
has undue prominence in the inspection of Peirce's insights. I have oft
stated my preference for grounding Peirce's architectonic in his
universal categories. I also find his insights on cosmology, evolution,
and logic nuances (aside from the categories and the three reasoning
methods) more fertile grounds for finding insights relevant to modern
science and epistemological questions than the semiotic process per se.
Best, Mike
[1] My blog post was on "What is a Reference Concept?
<https://www.mkbergman.com/938/what-is-a-reference-concept/>". My
reference to Sowa was John Sowa, 2000. “Ontology, Metadata, and
Semiotics,” presented at ICCS’2000 in Darmstadt, Germany, on August 14,
2000; see http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/ontometa.htm.
On 10/17/2025 9:46 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Jon, Atila, List,
While over the decades I've taken only a modest interest in Peirce's
Existential Graphs, early on I made a point of studying them since I
quickly realized their relevance and importance for Peirce's logic
and, so, for his entire semeiotic and metaphysics, truly, for all the
branches of Discovery Science (Pure Research Science) beginning with
mathematics. Indeed Peirce suggested that -- in good time -- no rush;
get the semeiotics and metaphysics right first! -- he expected that
some logical and metaphysical 'discoveries' and 'advances' would
influence communities and societies (firstly, scientific communities).
I began my study of EGs as I believe many did (perhaps especially
those involved in the Knowledge Representation (KR) community) with
John Sowa's “Tutorial on Existential Graphs." That was the first of
several 'tutorials' I diligently studied. But truth be told, I was
especially influenced by Joseph Ransdell's and Kenneth Ketner's
broader contexts for understanding the role of EGs within Peirce’s
semeiotic and metaphysics. Joe was something of a mentor to me in my
ongoing Peirce studies, while Ken and I had stimulating discussions on
various aspects of Peirce's work. As for the Gamma Graphs, I got a
brief introduction to them from a series of lectures -- actually two
in as many years -- which Fernando Zalamea gave in NYC a few years
ago. Some of those lectures were logically 'above my pay grade', but I
did come away with one certainty: that Zalamea situatesGamma squarely
within Peirce’s philosophy of continuity. In any event, I must admit
that I was much more interested in those "broader contexts' of Joe and
Ken (and many others) rather than to EGs as such. That is still the
case as the rest of this post might suggest.
As you know, both Peirce’s /Lowell Lectures on Some Topics of Logic/
and his Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism were delivered in 1903.
Recently I've been thinking that these lecture series may represent
two aspects of one and the same project. In the /Lowell Lectures/,
Peirce develops his EGs as a diagrammatic logic, while in the /Harvard
Lectures/ he characterizes pragmatism as “the logic of abduction.” As
I see it, these two lecture series taken together seem to represent an
attempt by Peirce to show that the process of reasoning, including the
creation of meaning, commences as abductive inference -- the
imaginative leap -- and that Peirce insists that this leap is a
naturally human tendency to 'guess right' about certain matters: so,
from experience to abduction/ hypothesis formation /retroduction.
I read that Peirce once described the Gamma Graphs as something like
"the calculus of reasoning about 'would-be’s'." [Note: in the 'real
world', including the existential world, each possibility may-be,
can-be, but only *'would-be'* if the conditions are such as to be
conducive to realizing that possibility (biological evolution follows
this logic).] So Gamma Graphs would then seem to serve as the /formal/
counterpart to the kind of reasoning that guesses/ retroduces/ invents
new ideas as hypotheses. [So, one might hope that Gamma Graphs -- or
some other tool should the Gamma development of EGs prove impossible
-- would eventually be developed to serve as a tool for helping to
bring into being the conditions for the 'meliorization' (as Peirce
puts it) of some aspect of life on earth (including, of course, the
life of the Mind).]
Another way of putting this is that Peirce's describing pragmatism as
“the logic of abduction” suggests that he was extending his
'would-be' logic into the realm of meaning and conduct.This represents
a process of creative thinking*** about the conceivable consequences
of creating the conditions for /possible humane desiderata/ to be
realized (Peirce insisted on adding the 'e' to 'human' in its
adjectival form). So Peirce's pragmatism would seem to offer the same
logic of abduction that the Gamma Graphs would hope to express
diagrammatically.
***parenthetically, critical and creative thinking are subjects I
taught for a number of years at CUNY and The Cooper-Union: in my
opinion, critical and creative thinking truly ought to be required
subjects beginning in grammar school.]
A helpful lesson I learned from Joe Ransdell, an expert in
'iconicity', was that just as EGs function as icons of the thought or
situation it represents in that it reveals the logical relations among
its parts that, similarly, Joe argued that *pragmatic meanings are
also icons*. Further, meaning-icons represent not only possible
effects in experience but they also can serve as guides to rational
and humane conduct. To think abductively is to construct an icon of a
possible world, which is to say that such an icon is a model of how
things 'would-be' if the conditions were such as to be able to bring
about some desirable change.
For some years the scholar, Aldo de Moor and I were interested in how
'more iconic graphs' (such as EGs versus, say, Algebra) might function
in relation to:
syntax
|> pragmatics
semantics
As I currently see it, Gamma Graphs -- or something functioning as
they were intended by Peirce to function -- might represent the
/syntax/ of abduction as they have the promise of showing how icons of
possible relations can be generated and manipulated within a given
logical space. If that is so, then Pragmatism perhaps provides both
the semantics and pragmatics (the semeiotic teleology of abduction, so
to speak) explaining how those quite different icons acquire meaning
through their bearing on practical life and inquiry. I am suggesting
they are both expressions of Peirce’s broader semeiotic vision: that
reasoning, meaning, and conduct all evolve through the continual
creation, interpretation, and testing of /signs of possibility/ by an
open community of interest.
Best,
Gary R
On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 5:23 PM Jon Alan Schmidt
<[email protected]> wrote:
Atila, List:
Following up on my previous post in this thread, Peirce begins his
"slight sketch" of Existential Graphs (EG) in the entry for
"symbolic logic" in Baldwin's /Dictionary of Philosophy and
Psychology/ (1902) by describing what he later distinguishes as
the Alpha part for propositional logic. Rather than thin oval
lines as cuts, "to facilitate the printing," he uses square
brackets, parentheses, and braces to enclose different areas; for
example, he represents "if A then B" as [A(B)].
Upon introducing the line of identity, Peirce does not immediately
shift to the (future) Beta part for first-order predicate logic,
where it denotes an indefinite individual to which general
concepts are attributed by attaching names. Instead, he initially
uses a heavy line connecting A and B to denote a "quasi-instant"
at which both propositions are true. This directly anticipates his
Logic Notebook entry of 1909 Jan 7 (R 339:340r
<https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:15255301$637i>),
where the heavy line represents "circumstances" or "times" when
propositions attached to it are true--a candidate notation for
implementing modal logic. Accordingly, I have suggested in two
recent papers (here
<https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/cognitiofilosofia/article/view/60449/46975>
and here <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/939654>) that this might be
what he had in mind nearly three years later when he expressed the
need "to add a /Delta/ part in order to deal with modals" (R 500,
1911 Dec 6).
Returning to Baldwin's /Dictionary/, Peirce does move on quickly
to what we know today as Beta, although he continues to attach
capital letters to lines of identity instead of names. The only
exception is when he briefly switches to lowercase letters when
assigning specific words to them--/l/ for the relation of loving,
/m/ for man, /w/ for woman, etc. He concludes with the following
remarks.
CSP: For all considerable steps in ratiocination, the reasoner
has to treat qualities, or collections, (they only differ
grammatically), and especially relations, or systems, as
objects of relation about which propositions are asserted and
inferences drawn. It is, therefore, necessary to make a
special study of the logical relatives "____ is a member of
the collection ____," and "____ is in the relation ____ to
____." The key to all that amounts to much in symbolical logic
lies in the symbolization of these relations. But we cannot
enter into this extensive subject in this article. (CP 4.390)
After some further investigation, I now strongly suspect that this
is the "certain fault in the system" and "vexatious inelegance"
that Peirce mentions in his third 1903 Harvard Lecture (PPMRT 186,
EP 2:176)--in the Beta part of EG that implements first-order
predicate logic, heavy lines of identity /only/ denote
individuals, such that there is no way to denote qualities,
collections, relations, or abstractions as /subjects/ of
propositions. The remedy, which he evidently discovered along with
other "new possibilities of perfectionment" upon reexamining EG
"from the point of view of the categories," was to develop the
Gamma part that he subsequently introduced in his 1903 Lowell
Lectures.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> /
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to
REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
[email protected] .
► <a href="mailto:[email protected]";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM
PEIRCE-L</a> . But, if your subscribed email account is not your
default email account, then go to
https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary
Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go [email protected] .
► <a href="mailto:[email protected]";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> .
But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then go to
https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
--
__________________________________________
Michael K. Bergman
319.621.5225
http://mkbergman.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mkbergman
__________________________________________
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] .
► <a href="mailto:[email protected]";>UNSUBSCRIBE FROM PEIRCE-L</a> .
But, if your subscribed email account is not your default email account, then
go to
https://list.iu.edu/sympa/signoff/peirce-l .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
