Post : Peirce's 1870 “Logic Of Relatives” • Comment 10.11
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/04/25/peirces-1870-logic-of-relatives-%e2%80%a2-comment-10-11/
Posted : April 25, 2014 at 12:00 am
Author : Jon Awbrey
Peircers,
Let us return to the point where we left off unpacking the contents of CP 3.73. Peirce remarks that
the comma operator can be iterated at will:
<quote>
In point of fact, since a comma may be added in this way to any relative term, it may be added to
one of these very relatives formed by a comma, and thus by the addition of two commas an absolute
term becomes a relative of two correlates.
So:
m,,b,r
interpreted like
goh
means a man that is a rich individual and is a black that is that rich
individual.
But this has no other meaning than:
m,b,r
or a man that is a black that is rich.
Thus we see that, after one comma is added, the addition of another does not change the meaning at
all, so that whatever has one comma after it must be regarded as having an infinite number.
</quote>(Peirce, CP 3.73)
The rest of my commentary on this passage takes too much math formatting to
include here.
As always, see the above link for the fully-formatted version.
There is one meta-comment that I need to make at this point. The last time I went through this
material I felt like I could follow Peirce's reasoning about the iteration of the comma operation,
but this time around I am having trouble doing that, so I may have to revisit this passage again at
a later date.
Regards,
Jon
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