Re: Gary Fuhrman
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14236
Gary, List,
Just by way of putting the skinny in the lead, I am going to experiment with
using the term "dicent proposition" to refer to the specifically Peircean brand
of proposition treated in this chapter and book and I will continue to use the
word "proposition" as a generic term to cover the wide variety of meanings it
has in numerous other contexts, disciplines, and literatures.
The skinny is ended, my tl;dr reasons for drawing this line in the semantics
will follow in a subsequent post.
Regards,
Jon
Gary Fuhrman wrote:
It’s time to dive into Chapter 3 of Natural Propositions, and since it’s the
longest and weightiest chapter in the book, I thought it best to name each
thread by section number, to facilitate a stepwise approach to the Dicisign.
In this first message, I’ll try to outline some of the basic ideas behind the
Peircean concept of the proposition.
Traditionally, the proposition has usually been regarded as a basic unit of
logic, just as the sentence is a basic unit of language; and often the
structure of the logical unit has been identified or confused with that of
the linguistic unit, on the assumption that a proposition is necessarily
verbal. But in Peirce's view, a verbal sentence (spoken or printed) can only
represent a proposition. Each utterance which represents that proposition is
a replica of it; and if you say something about something in two different
languages, the two individual utterances say the same thing, because each of
them is a replica of the same proposition.
A proposition, then, is not a linguistic phenomenon but a semiotic one: it is
a kind of sign. It's the way that kind of sign functions that makes it a
proposition. So what does a proposition do, and what kind of general form or
structure enables it to do that sort of thing? This is the kind of question
to which Peirce's doctrine of the Dicisign proposes a non-traditional answer.
Chapter 3 of NP explains how Peirce redefines the proposition as a kind of
Dicisign, and shows how this semiotic logic differs from traditional
propositional logic. The Dicisign is a more general concept than the
proposition, but the concept is most easily developed by starting with the
logical structure of the proposition, because that is the most well-known and
easily verbalized kind of Dicisign.
In his Harvard Lectures of 1903, Peirce was using traditional terms when he
said (EP 2:204):
[[ A representamen is either a rhema, a proposition, or an argument. An
argument is a representamen which separately shows what interpretant it is
intended to determine. A proposition is a representamen which is not an
argument, but which separately indicates what object it is intended to
represent. A rhema is a simple representation without such separate parts. ]]
However, this definition of “proposition” is crucially different from the
received notion of same, as we will see more clearly in NP Chapter 3. So
later in that year, when Peirce was developing his Speculative Grammar,
Peirce invented a new triad of names for that traditional trichotomy, which
names the three kinds of possible relation between representamen and
interpretant: Sumisign, Dicisign, and Suadisign (EP2:275). In his own
subsequent work, though, Dicisign (or Dicent sign) was the only one of the
three new names that ‘stuck’. His diagram of the famous ten classes (EP2:296)
reverts to “rheme” and “argument” for the other two. Peirce also referred to
the Dicisign as a “quasi-proposition,” and sometimes even omitted the “quasi”
— which is natural, because the proposition is the paradigmatic (though not
the only!) kind of Dicisign.
The very next work in EP2, “New Elements”, does not use the term “Dicisign”
at all, but much of what it says about propositions illuminates the
functioning of Dicisigns as “natural propositions”. For instance, EP2:307:
[[ It is remarkable that while neither a pure icon nor a pure index can
assert anything, an index which forces something to be an icon, as a
weathercock does, or which forces us to regard it as an icon, as the legend
under a portrait does, does make an assertion, and forms a proposition. This
suggests the true definition of a proposition, which is a question in much
dispute at this moment. A proposition is a sign which separately, or
independently, indicates its object. ]]
This, you will notice, repeats the definition of “proposition” which we find
in Harvard Lecture V (above), but in a new context which also furnishes
important clues to the deep structure of the Dicisign. The easiest way to
approach this, i think, is to begin with the two essential parts of the
Peircean proposition, namely the Subject and Predicate. For this purpose i
would suggest reading the first paragraph of “Kaina Stoicheia” part III
(EP2:303, or http://www.gnusystems.ca/KainaStoicheia.htm#1) along with NP
3.1. If there are any questions about Peirce’s usage of Subject and
Predicate, it would be best to raise them now, because these will be crucial
terms in Chapter 3. Same with questions to Frederik about 3.1, as I’ll be
moving on to 3.2 shortly.
gary f.
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