List,
I've found by Googling sufficiently, that Don D. Roberts discussed the
1913 Peirce-to-Woods passage on existential graphs, starting on page 109
in _The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce
Page 109:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4K30wCAf-gC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=%22as+I+did,+I+should+have+scribed%22
First few words on page 110:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22eight+sentences%2C+and+only+one+of+them+seems+to+me+to+contain+an+error.+That%22
Roberts quotes sentences in the letter to Woods that the CP didn't.
Peirce says he made a "blunder," and goes on to say "Curiously enough it
was not until two years after the publication that I happened to notice
my fallacy." For my part, I kind of doubt that Peirce was thinking it
fallacious as early as 1908. Anyway, then Peirce shows the original
graph and his correction of it, upon which he comments "It would pay any
very accurate thinker, such as you and Royce are, to examine the
fallacy," and adds, as in CP 8, ". . . [This fallacy] cost me the
trouble of my nonsensical 'tinctures' and heraldry."
Don D. Roberts says of this:
Three questions arise: (1) What is the fallacy or 4.569? (2) How
would the substitution of Fig. 14 for Fig. 3 repair the fallacy? (3)
How did the fallacy lead Peirce to his 'nonsensical' tinctures?
(1) I can find no fallacy in the disputed passage. The passage
contains eight sentences, and only one of them seems to me to
contain an error. That one is the fifth sentence, which claims that
Fig. 3
[End quote]
"Fig. 3" is the label added by Roberts to Peirce's rendition of his
supposedly fallacious Prolegomena graph. The second Google search linked
above got me the words "one is the fifth sentence, which claims that
Fig. 3".
Roberts finds no fallacy in the disputed Prolegomena passage, and one
error in the passage, by which Roberts presumably does not mean the
passage in the letter to Woods, of which Roberts quotes six, not eight,
sentences. The passage in Prolegomena beginning in the middle of 4.569
"For the sake of illustrating this...," and continuing to the
paragraph's end contains eight sentences (excluding the Fourth
Permission itself to which it points). The fifth sentence is "That, at
least, is all it will seem to mean if we fail to take account of the
fact, that being all in one Province, it is said that her suicide is
connected with his failure." I myself have felt some confusion over the
paragraph around that point, so I guess Roberts nailed down that
particular problem.
Does anybody know what Roberts went on to say? I suppose I could buy his
book.
Instead of appending the previous posts in this thread, I'll just
include the part quoted from CP 8:
[CP 8 Bibliography: I. General: 1905 (pages 298-299)
With brackets in the original, and Zeman-style renditions by me of the
graphs appearing there,
*Quote* :]
In a letter to F. A. Woods, [Bibliography]M-22, Peirce says that the
material in [CP] 4.569, from "For the sake of illustrating this . . ."
up to the statement of the Fourth Permission, is wrong. He says:
"Instead of scribing
as I did, I should have scribed
". . . [This fallacy] cost me the trouble of my nonsensical
'tinctures' and heraldry.
"I am also sceptical as to the universal validity of my '4th
permission.'"
[*End quote* ]
Best, Ben
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