Re: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 07:43:20 -0700

Frederik, List,
The book's leitmotif of not limiting dicisigns to human language sounds right, and I look forward to finding out how you develop this part of your treatment as I continue reading the book. However, as your compatriot Louis Hjelmslev also insisted (successfully, in my opinion), human language is "the passkey semiotic," by which he meant that all other semiotic systems can be expressed in human language but not vice versa. Also, as in your earlier book "Diagrammatology," your conceptualization of language and linguistics seems not to take into account the work of linguists who have a neo-structuralist conception of their field that utilizes Peirce's semeiotic and this brings to bear his insight that explanation is tantamount to the "rationalized explication of variety [including historical change]."

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederik Stjernfelt
Sent: Sep 1, 2014 8:58 AM
To: "[email protected]"
Cc: Gary Fuhrman , Gary Richmond , Benjamin Udell
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions

Why "Natural Propositions"?
 
The book "Natural Propositions" grew out of my investigation of Peirce's general notion of diagrams and diagrammatical reasoning in "Diagrammatology" (2007). If it is indeed the case that all deduction takes place by means of transformation of diagrams, implicitly or explicitly, it follows that a single diagram, before transformation, must depict a proposition, namely that stating the premiss of the argument. (Likewise, the post-transformation diagram will depict another proposition, that of the conclusion).
 
This observation made me take som interest in Peirce's notion of "proposition" -- or, as he renames it in the generalization of triads which he undertook in shaping his final semiotics from 1902-3 onwards -- "Dicisign". During a stay as visiting scholar in Berlin 2010 I began working on this and realized that Peirce's notion of proposition deviates considerably from the simultaneous conceptions of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and others. Peirce's semiotic and purely functional definition of proposition does not presuppose any specific formalism (like human language or special, formalized languages), neither does it presuppose accompaniment of conscious, intentional acts. Peirce simply said that a Dicisign is a sign which is involved twice with one and the same object: 1) it refers to the object (P's generalization of the Subject part of a proposition; 2) it describes that object (P's generalization of the Predicate).
 
This made me realize the revolutionary potential of such a definition: it is not confined to human beings and it is not confined to language. So this gives us the possibility of a semiotics which in a fluid way encompasses biological communication as well as non-linguistic human semiotics involving pictures, gestures, diagrams, etc. on a par with language.
 
One aspect of this definition -- the absence of conscious states of mind etc. in the definition -- seems to me deeply related to Peirce's antipsychologism, which made it natural to open the book with a chapter on that. Also, I think psychologism has emerged as a new threat after certain developments in cognitive science and the related turn to philosophy of mind in analytical philosophy.
 
In the chapters (4-7) following the large Dicisign chapter, I try to develop some possible consequences of the two extensions of propositions made possible by the Dicisign concept.
 
The latter part of the book is connected to the Dicisign argument in a more remote way, addressing further issues connected to diagrammatical reasoning: the issue of operational vs. optimal iconicity, the early Ms. 725 diagram experiments pertaining to natural kinds, the distinction between corollarial and theorematic reasoning.
 
The final chapter expresses an ongoing interest I have in the history of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which is a booming field these years (Margaret Jacob, Jonathan Israel, Martin Mulsow et al.) -- I think there is reason to place Peirce in this ancestral tree rather than e.g. the poststructuralist one to which he has sometimes been connected.
 
I am happy that the Peirce and Biosemiotics lists have agreed to discuss my book and I look forward to all sorts of questions, comments, developments etc.
 
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