Jerry, list,
Peirce's idea includes the idea that nature tells us things, and that's
something that Frederik is getting at in discussing natural
propositions. For example, an air sock dances, and that tells us that
the air is windy. The idea is that facts and representational relations
are real, out there in the world, not just in our heads and textbooks.
That realist perspective is the same one that people bring much less
controversially to informative dependencies and information; also to
statistical distributions, averages, and probabilities; and to
constraints, variational principles, optima, and feasibles.
Best, Ben
On 10/14/2014 1:15 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
Ben, List:
Thanks for your views on the Latin roots CSP used to generate this term.
Subconsciously, I was associating "dicisign" with the concept of decision.
From the perspective of the roots, then, the decisign is a term
describing a human artifact, that is, a judgment about the
interpretations of the sinsigns. At least, that is how I now
understand the term.
Cheers
jerry
On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:44 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Jerry, list,
Peirce does not use "decisign" with an 'e' in any of the texts in
Collected Papers, Writings, or Contributions to _The Nation_.
He uses 'dicisign' and 'dicent sign', and does so with the same
meaning. The origin in the Latin verb _/dicere/_ ('to say', 'to
tell') is pretty evident to any Latinist. _/Dico, dicere, dixi,
dictus/_ are the principle parts of the verb. From it come French and
Italian _/dire/_, Spanish _/decir/_, Portuguese _/dizer/_, English
'diction', etc.
1. The word 'dicent' is pretty plainly from the Latin _/dicere/_'s
present participle _/dicens, dicentis/_.
2. 'Sign' is a word from Latin _/signum/_, and Peirce is not the kind
readily to combine a Latin root with a root from some other language.
So the 'dici' in 'dicisign' is almost certainly from _/dicere/_.
3. The first and second points converge to the same conclusion.
Best, Ben
On 10/12/2014 11:10 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
Frederik:
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
