Gary F, list,
I confess that I am finding myself somewhat confused about this passage
from KS. If he meant specifically propositions, why not call them
propositions and not signs? Then again, he doesn't call them terms either,
so that doesn't help my view either. I'm wondering if there is something
deliberately vague here about what predicates ("essential parts") and
subjects ("substantial parts") apply to.
In the quote from 1893, it's clear that the logical breadth and depth of
propositions is not the same as that of terms from ULCE. But in KS, the way
depth and breadth are presented as relating to characters and real objects
is exactly how they are presented in ULCE when applied to terms. If Peirce
still held to the view that the depth and breadth of propositions had to do
with "the total of fact which it asserts of the state of things to which it
is applied" and "the aggregate of possible states of things in which it is
true", respectively, that is certainly very different from what is being
explained in KS. Did he change his views here?
Then there's an earlier part in KS, p.304 of EP 2, to consider: "But, in
the third place, every sign is intended to determine a sign of the same
object with the same signification or *meaning*. Any sign, B, which a sign,
A, is fitted so to determine, without violation of its, A's, purpose, that
is, in accordance with the "Truth," even though it, B, denotes but a part
of the objects of the sign, A, and signifies but a part of its, A's,
characters, I call an *interpretant* of A. What we call a "fact" is
something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an
element of the very universe itself. The purpose of every sign is to
express "fact," and by being joined with other signs, to approach as nearly
as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the *perfect
Truth*, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may use this
language) would be the very Universe."
Note that *every* sign determines another sign (the interpretant) of the
same object with the same signfication, and the interpretant does in fact
have breadth and depth, and in the same sense that terms in UCLE and signs
in KS have breadth and depth, as denoting objects and signifying
characters. Since any sign, to be a sign, will have an interpretant, it
seems clear that whether it is a term, proposition, argument, or any sign
whatsoever, it must have breadth and depth (if it had no breadth, there
would be no object, and if it had no depth, it would signify nothing about
the object). But not only does every sign have breadth and depth, every
sign has them in the sense of denoting objects and signifying characters.
How to understand this? Do predicates and subjects simply apply to
propositions only, or do they apply generally to all signs?
Franklin
On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 1:48 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> Franklin,
>
>
>
> I’m not sure what Peirce meant by saying in 1893 that every proposition
> and every argument can be regarded as a term, or what advantage a logician
> would gain by regarding them that way. But to me it sounds like a precursor
> of his (much later) observation that one can analyze a proposition by
> “throwing everything” into the predicate *or* by throwing everything into
> the subject. Maybe his comment in the Regenerated Logic also works in both
> directions.
>
>
>
> In the Kaina Stoicheia passage, when Peirce says that the “totality of
> the predicates of a sign” is “called its logical *depth*,” and that the
> “totality of the subjects … of a sign is called the logical *breadth,*”
> the sign he is referring to has to be a proposition, because only
> propositions include subjects and predicates. Each subject and each
> predicate can be called a “term,” but it’s the breadth and depth of the
> whole sign, the proposition, that Peirce is defining here, not the breadth
> or depth of the terms (which is what he defined in ULCE). And, as you say,
> propositions and arguments also have information (which for Peirce is the
> logical product of breadth and depth).
>
>
>
> Gary f.
>
>
>
> } The birth and death of the leaves are the rapid whirls of the eddy whose
> wider circles move slowly among the stars. [Tagore] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
>
>
> *From:* Franklin Ransom [mailto:[email protected]]
> *Sent:* 8-Nov-15 12:32
> *To:* [email protected] 1 <[email protected]>
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Vol. 2 of Collected Papers, on Induction
>
>
>
> Gary F, list,
>
>
>
> Gary, thank you, thank you so much for finding that quote about the
> information of propositions and arguments! I spent so many hours, and not
> just yesterday, trying to find that quote again. I'll have to keep it
> somewhere I'll be sure to find it. Btw, it's 407, not 406, at least in the
> Intelex version on Past Masters.
>
>
>
> Now, you said:
>
>
>
> One place where Peirce uses the terms *breadth* and *depth* in reference
> to the proposition (rather than the term) is “Kaina Stoicheia” (1904),
> EP2:305:e
>
>
>
> I'm confused. I had just read that passage again yesterday, and then again
> when you quoted it. But I don't see reference to the breadth and depth in
> reference to the proposition. Rather, it is still to terms, understood with
> respect to the roles they play in propositions and how such roles determine
> the information a given term signifies. This is just what we find in ULCE;
> there is nothing new in Kaina Stoicheia. Perhaps I have misunderstood
> something?
>
>
>
> Returning to the quote from the note to CP2:407, I wonder what he meant
> that "[i]n fact, every proposition and every argument can be regarded as a
> term." I recall Stjernfelt said in NP, p.79, that "both Rhemes and
> Dicisigns may be seen as potential or truncated Arguments rather than
> autonomous figures:", and he goes on to quote Peirce:
>
>
>
> I have maintained since 1867 that there is but one primary and fundamental
> logical relation, that of illation, expressed by *ergo*. A proposition,
> for me, is but an argumentation divested of the assertoriness of its
> premiss and conclusion. This makes every proposition a conditional
> proposition at bottom. In like manner a "term," or class-name, is for me
> nothing but a proposition with its indices or subjects left blank, or
> indefinite. ("The Regenerated Logic, 1896, 3.440)
>
>
>
> However, this goes in the direction of arguments, not in the direction of
> terms. How can every proposition and every argument be regarded as a term?
> If he had said this before explaining how the concept of information
> applies to propositions and arguments, I would have thought that he simply
> meant they can be regarded as terms insofar as they too have information.
> But since he concludes with that statement, my guess is that he meant
> something more by it. But what? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it, and
> he just meant to say exactly that, that like terms, propositions and
> arguments also have information.
>
>
>
> Franklin
>
>
>
>
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