Gary F - yet another ad hominem (in stark contrast to Edwina.....etc)? That,
as an 'informal fallacy' is not an argument either against or in favour of
what you define as Peirce's 'tentative approach' - a description of Peirce
with which I don't agree.
I think Peirce is quite clear in his outline of the ten classes and their
complex sets of Relations. After all, why have such explicit terms for nine
very different Relations, with such specific outlines of exactly what each
one does within the whole semiosic process - unless one also acknowledges
that such diversity is a major strength of Peircean semiosis. It
acknowledges the fact that life is a complex adapative system and shows how
semiosis is a basic function within that CAS - precisely because the
Peircean triad, with its three internal Relations - has the capacity for
diverse interactions, diverse sets of habits/knowledge and diverse resultant
interpretations.
I think a two-dimensional graph has not only temporal but spatial problems.
It can't show, for example, the non-local nature of Thirdness. And
temporally, as I've mentioned many times before, I fully endorse the
analytic outline of Koichiro Matsuno with regard to time. I think it
explains very well, Peirce's 'present time, perfect time and progressive
time' (as in Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness).
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Fuhrman" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; "'Peirce-L'" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 9:50 AM
Subject: [biosemiotics:7777] Re: Peirce categories
Howard,
Thanks to Jon A. for taking up your question from the mathematical side
(much more effectively than i could). If i were to point to a Peirce text
that deals directly with your question, it would be EP2:169-77 (1903), but
it's only helpful if you follow the argument step by step, diagrams and
all.
CP 1.345-7 is much more concise but less mathematical and "leaves the
matter
to your own reflection", so is unlikely to inform you if your focus is on
graph theory. Its argument is in terms of Peirce's existential graphs, not
mathematical graph theory.
But since we're looking into this in a broader logical/semiotic context, i
think we need to approach it from the "Phenomenological" side as well, as
Peirce does in his Syllabus section on Triadic Relations (EP2:289-299,
which
defines the famous ten classes of signs). This approach (in stark contrast
to Edwina's) is very tentative both conceptually and terminologically, as
you can see from the first two pages of it, introducing "the most
important
class of triadic relations, those of signs, or representamens, to their
objects and interpretants." I would recommend at least one careful reading
of those pages before resorting to second-hand versions of Peirce's views
on
triadic relations.
The one comment i'll make is that any *explicit* two-dimensional diagram
of
an *actual* triadic relation has to omit the element of time which is
essential any such actual relation, and trust the interpreter to read that
element back into it (by decoding symbols). This is why Peirce emphasized
that one needs a *connected sequence* of graph-instances in order to
represent *iconically* the process of reasoning or of semiosis, which
obviously takes time because it involves change. That's why he referred to
his existential graphs as "moving pictures of thought."
gary f.
-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Pattee [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 16-Dec-14 8:58 PM
At 02:07 PM 12/16/2014, Gary Fuhrman wrote:
The reason that "people keep saying you [Edwina] support dyads" is
that your three "relations" have only two "members" each, to use
Peirce's term. A triadic relation has three members, not two; and a
complexus of three dyadic (two-member) relations is not, according to
Peirce, "a triadic relation."
All these claims are unclear to me. Why are these two descriptions
inconsistent? Is there a graph theory representation of a triadic relation
that does not have a dyadic subgraph?
Howard
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