Franklin, my responses are inserted below.
gary f. From: Frank Ransom [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 10-Apr-14 4:55 PM Gary, list, I pasted below my post Gary's post from [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:5398] Re: What kind of sign is a "gene"? to show to what I'm responding, separating out this discussion from a discussion of Ch. 5 of Kees's book that we were having that is no longer relevant to Kees's book and from the discussion of Peirce's theory of information in respect to the question "What kind of sign is a 'gene'?", which question is not of particular interest to myself. Gary, you mention that: "In the logic of relations (as opposed to the more traditional syllogistic logic), the predicate of a proposition provides any depth it has, by signifying (iconically or symbolically) the recognizable form which is shared by object and sign, and conveyed to the interpretant by the act of recognition or the event of interpretation. The subject of the proposition denotes (indexically) its object, and thus the indexical relation provides the proposition with its breadth." In the earlier work found in the Harvard lectures of 1865, and later the paper "Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension", we don't find the logic of relations. At least, not that I know of? Would you please offer me some references to Peirce's discussion of the logic of relations with respect to the theory of information? It's not that I doubt you; certainly it sounds right. I'm just embarrassed to admit that I don't have as much familiarity with Peirce's work on the logic of relations, so I would love to find out where I could read him discussing these topics together, if you happen to have any ready-to-mind references. gf: Peirce didn't start working with the logic of relations (or "relatives") until almost 1870. One place where he discusses both information and the logic of relations (along with the various interpretants) is MS 318 of 1907 - see especially EP2:404 ff. on information, and 424 ff. on the logic of relatives. Also, you said "by signifying (iconically or symbolically) the recognizable form which is shared by object and sign". Might you be able to elaborate a little on why you said iconically or symbolically? Is there a difference in the way that a proposition is interpreted, whether the predicate informs the proposition iconically or symbolically? Or if you believe this makes a difference in the depth of the proposition? gf: A verbal predicate is of course a symbolic way of signifying the 'characters' or 'quality' of the object. But when the Object of the proposition is complex, which is usually the case, it may equally well be regarded as several objects, and the rhematic form of the predicate can represent relations between these objects iconically. This is made especially clear by Existential Graphs, where the representation of the proposition is especially iconic (except for the words). Actually I should have said "iconically and symbolically," as that kind of sign is almost always a mixture of the two. The "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" has a lot to say about diagrams, iconicity and propositions too: http://www.gnusystems.ca/ProlegomPrag.htm -- Franklin
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