Dear Clark, lists, Den 24/09/2014 kl. 22.17 skrev Clark Goble <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> :
On Sep 24, 2014, at 1:16 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: In any event, I'm finding section 4. of "New Elements" of especial interest and want to discuss the passage discussing the copula as an index and the way that in the proposition "Socrates is wise," for example, that ". . .it is not the two signs 'Socrates' and 'wise' that are connected, but the replicas of them used in the sentence" (EP2:110, emphasis added). Peirce’s treatment of the copula as an index is rather important I think in the history of being within philosophy. Again, while I’m often critical of continental philosophy at least this is an issue they recognize. Within the analytic tradition it tends to just be glossed over and ignored beyond a quick appeal to Kant’s “existence is not a predicate.” I’ve only gone through chapter 3 in Frederik’s book and I want to reread that before moving on to 4. So I don’t know if Frederik delves into that issue beyond the brief discussion in chapter 3. I don’t have his book handy to refer to that section, but again this seems important. I do think this is important. I discuss it in relation to P's idea of a syntax for Dicisigns in general. Here, his argument is that the tokens of the Subject and Predicate, respectively, must be placed alongside each other - so as to mirror the co-localization of Subject and Predicate in the object (if the Dicisign is true, that is). If not the tokens of two sides of a Dicisign are co-localized, in some sense, they will fail to function as a Dicisign (the painting and its title must not be separated by a long distance in time or space if not otherwise brought together …) Actually, I think this is pretty deep - in the sense of when we discover something basic, hitherto unnoticed, right before our eyes. I elaborate a bit more on its possible consequences in ch. 4. In continental philosophy this ends up being discussed a lot due to the place Heidegger gives it contra Husserl. A common critique of Heidegger many make is that he confuses a logical or semantic issue as an ontological one. (i.e. apply Frege against Heidegger) In this tact the meaning of the copula is tied to the meaning of the two parts and exists purely as a kind of intent. By making the copula an index (in the robust sense he gives indices) Peirce goes well beyond the Frege inspired approaches. I honestly think Heidegger and Peirce are very similar in their approaches if not the same here. Heidegger famously talks about being not being a being, nor a property of beings, nor a concept etc. It mediates between concepts and beings but is itself not something mediated. While I think it fair to criticize the clarity of Heidegger’s language (although he is working within the Cartesian and Husserlian tradition) I think he really is speaking of the copula (being) as an index. Further it’s a robust index such that it is a sign and not merely a relation between two things. This isn’t to say Heidegger and Peirce are the same. Just that I think the move towards an externalist approach to mind in Heidegger is also made in Peirce. And it’s precisely within the proposition (or more expansively the dicisign) that Peirce makes this move. I suspect both of them are making this move due to influence from Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. (I think this is explicit for Heidegger although I’m not sure) Within the analytic tradition a lot of this is “solved” via judgments. This doesn’t quite work since we then have to ask what makes judgements possible. That is a good point. I think Peirce's analysis attempts to ground the basic logic of Dicisigns in topology (co-localization being basically a topological concept) - I think Husserl went in the same direction when attempting to ground logic on geometry (in Erfahrung und Urtheil) … (Heidegger gets at this in many places although I vaguely recall Peirce arguing along similar lines although I can’t find where) If there is a genuine index in the proposition then of course that explains why judgments are possible. I’d add that, while we aren’t discussing it, I think the iconic component of the dicisign for Peirce also pops up in various places in Heidegger. For instance his discussion of the lógos of the phenomena we have a icon/index pair such that objects show themselves. For Husserl we get an ideal meaning and for Kant we get a representation. While Peirce has a representational aspect, his icons are far more powerful than what Husserl or Kant supply. Especially when tied with the index. Further given the place of the index and his logic of vagueness Peirce is able to explain propositions that gesture towards the unknown. That becomes quite important within the Heideggarian tradition - especially where it’s pushed by Gadamer, Derrida and Ricouer. Now a possible place we have a divide between Heidegger and Peirce is found within your quote from EP 2:311. There the copula joins not the two signs “Socrates” and “wise” but their replicas. For Heidegger the copula shows the objects of both. So, a collapse of sign and referent. This may throw some light upon the following. Hintikka, in his distinction between logic-as-a-universal-language and logic-as-a-calculus, puts the Frege-Russell tradition in the first category. His claim is that when you think there is only one correct language, you become inable to compare that language with reality, you cannot discuss the properties of that language using the same language, and truth becomes ineffable. The prisonhouse of language. Interestingly, Hintikka puts Heidegger and Derrida in the same category. In the second category, however, he puts Peirce, Husserl, Carnap, and himself. In the "logic-as-calculus" tradition, there is no universal language, but a pluralism of representation systems. Surprisingly, this pluralism leads to realism: the same object may be triangulated from different semiotic viewpoints, just like one semiotic formalism may discuss and correct the other. Best F
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