Dear Jeff, lists
>
> You've asked a series of questions.
>
> 1. Do list members find Frederik's notion of two kinds of iconicity of
> interest and value? If so, what is that value? It isn't clear to me what the
> value is of suggesting that Peirce is working with two notions of
> iconicity--despite Peirce's own efforts to develop a unified conception.
> I'll agree that there are a number of aspects that are involved in Peirce's
> conception of iconicity, and that we can draw on the EGs as a tool for
> clarifying some of the aspects that might be hard to articulate using other
> means. What is more, I accept that Peirce was motivated by the aim of
> developing an optimally iconic graphical logic. Frederik is clear that he
> takes himself to be refining Peirce's conception of the icon because he
> believes there are lingering confusions and vagueness in his conception.
> Having said that, I don't think that the separation between the two notions
> clarifies matters in the way I was hoping it might.
Which clarification did you hope for?
I do not speak about lingering confusions and vagueness. I think there are two
pretty precise, different conceptions. But no-one needs despair, as they need
not contradict one another. Peirce just does not make explicit the difference
between them - which I think it would be a service to Peirce scholarship to do.
One conception is what i call operational. It compares iconic representations
after which inferences may be made from them/ theorems may be proved from them.
Measured on this criterion, Peirce's Beta Graphs are equivalent to his Algebra
of Logic system of predicate logic ("logic of relations") of 1885. Optimality
comes into the question when Peirce compares the two representations and judge
Beta Graphs superior, not because they can prove more theorems, but because of
their higher degree of iconic representation of logic relations.
These are obviously two different conceptions. Operational iconicity seems
basic; optimality is an extra criterion introduced in order to distinguish
competing representations of the same content.
> 2. Also, what does one make of Frederik's notion that the introduction of
> would-bes greatly modifies Peirce's conception of Thirdness and that it
> enriches the pragmatic maxim in now involving real possibilities? I don't
> think that Peirce introduced a new concept of would-be's.
> This seems to imply that he didn't have a conception, and that he later saw
> there was something he had missed. Rather, he had an account of how we might
> interpret conditionals, and he later sees that his logical theory leads him
> to treats some arguments as bad that are really good (and vice versa). As
> such, he is modifying his semiotic theory and then revising his metaphysical
> account of real possibilities in light of revisions that he made in his
> theory of logic. I do agree that the revisions in his logical theory involve
> a developing sense of how we might understand the role of triadic
> relationships in semiotics.
>
It is generally assumed that Peirce only introduced "real possibilities" around
1896-97 - Max Fisch famously charted this as yet another step in the
development of Peirce's realism and even calls it the "most decisive single
step" in that development. "Would-bes" is another term for "real
possibilities". Later P himself made the famous self-criticism of his 1878
conception of pragmatism, now deemed too nominalist, the argument centered on
different interpretations of the hardness-of-the-untested-diamond example.
Best
F
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