Dear Jeff, Gary, lists - Sorry for being absent from the discussion - I fell ill during traveling in Germany but am now back on the horse.
Jeff, it is certainly an interesting and important idea to compare Peirce's mature doctrine of the Dicisign from the years after the turn of the century with his early takes on propositions. I have not done that in my book, focusing instead upon the detail of the doctrine developed especially after the Syllabus (1903) - because it is here Peirce gets the idea to generalize his basic trichotomies to cover all signs (so that, e.g., any sign is a Rheme, a Dicisign, or an Argument). The comparison I make in the book is more addressing competing notions of propositions as in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein than to earlier accounts - but I would like to hear your opinions on how earlier accounts may throw light upon Peirce's conception. Best Frederik Den 24/09/2014 kl. 15.50 skrev Gary Fuhrman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: Jeff, I think what you have in mind here is a more 'advanced' stream of our seminar, i.e. for those who are " trying to work more systematically through his philosophical position." But since we expect that many of those following this seminar are not trying to do that, it's likely that those who aren't Peirce specialists will need a more entry-level approach in order to get the gist (and the importance) of Peirce's take on propositions. For this more basic approach, consideration of "the respective accounts of the proposition offered by Whewell, Mill and Kant", though relevant, might be more distracting than helpful. So although I hope to read what you say on the subject, and the proposed answers to your questions, most of my own limited time and energy will be devoted to that more basic approach, leaving the more advanced stream to you. Come to think of it, maybe we should divide up Chapter 3 between us in that way, rather than me taking the first half and you the second half (as the schedule says). But you and I can discuss that offlist. I suppose Frederik will probably have good answers to the questions at the end of your post, but you may have to wait awhile for them, as he's 'on the road' in Germany this week and may not have time to post. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]<http://nau.edu/>] Sent: 23-Sep-14 6:05 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; 'Peirce List' Subject: [biosemiotics:6973] RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Natural Propositions, Chapter 3.1 Gary F., Jon, Lists, Looking back on my own struggles to find coherence in Peirce's published and unpublished writings, I now think that the early lectures 1865-6 are actually quite a good place to start--at least when one reaches the point of trying to work more systematically through his philosophical position. That, I believe is what Jon was pointing to when he suggested that Peirce's later accounts of the different kinds of sign functions and relations were already present--sometimes in a quite a clear form--in the early lectures. Jon also referred to the 1870 essay on the logic of relatives, and that is more challenging for those of us who do not already find themselves at home in the worlds of logic and math--or do not find themselves at home in the world of Peirce's particular views on logic and math. As we make our way into Peirce's account of the dicisign and the logical character of the proposition, I think these early essays are particularly helpful--in part because they show us there is remarkable continuity in the development of his thought on these logical matters from the very get go--and also because it provides a clear window on what exactly is providing much of the larger context and background we would need to study in order to deepen our understanding of what he is trying to do and what is guiding the development of his thought. Following this lead a bit, I think it will be helpful as we make our way through Chapter 3 of NP to consider the respective accounts of the proposition offered by Whewell, Mill and Kant, and then to consider their views in relationship to the larger historical trends. As we know, Peirce was drawing a number of key insights from his careful examination of the Aristotelian theory of the syllogism. In order to understand these insights, it is good to consider the development of logical accounts of deduction, induction and hypothesis--and the features of the premises and conclusions (i.e., the propositions) that function in such forms of argumentation--from the Port Royal Logic up through the modern period. As we can see from "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties," "Consequences" and "Further Consequences," he's trying to identify the roots of the most basic mistakes that were made in this tradition as a whole. Focusing on the account of the proposition in this tradition, we can see that Peirce is questioning a number of the key assumptions that were made about the kinds of data that might be used to get an account off the ground. He is rejecting data that is drawn from a supposed power of introspection, and he is rejecting data gathered through a supposed power of intuition. So, I'd like to ask, what are the key data that a logical theory should draw on for the purposes of generating and testing hypotheses about real the nature of the dicisign? How might we analyze those data for the sake of clarifying what needs to be explained? How might we correct for errors that might have been made in the collection of those data? --Jeff
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