Helmut, list,
I didn't mean that remembering, for example, is a result of an actual
degeneration of inference. I meant that, if one considers it as
inference, it seems a lower form of it, lacking certain properties that
one associates with inference, such that one wouldn't usually think of
it as inference.
I meant "degenerate" in Peirce's sense, which is pretty much that of
"degenerate" in "degenerate conic section"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conic_section.
A conic section is the intersection of a cone with a plane. Circle,
ellipse, parabola, hyperbola are conic sections. They are curves.
When, for a major example, the plane intersects at the cone's apex, the
intersection is a degenerate conic section. A degenerate conic section
is not a curve. A point, a straight line, two crossing straight lines
are degenerate conic sections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conic_section#Degenerate_cases
From the Century Dictionary, here is an excerpt (that I don't
understand well) in the definition of the adjective _/degenerate/_:
*Degenerate form* of an algebraic locus, a locus of any order or
class consisting of an aggregation of lower forms. Thus, two
straight lines form a degenerate conic.
[End quote]
Best, Ben
On 11/8/2015 12:37 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:
Hi!
"degenerate" supposes a devolution, but there is none. Reference to an
interpretant is thirdness, but if the interpretant relation does not
contain thirdness, because it is not an argument, but eg. a rheme:
Then it is not degenerated, because it has not been an argument
before. If the object relation is not a symbol, then it cannot be
anyway, even if it wanted to, at least not within this actual sign.
Hypothesis forming as a result of abduction, or probability increase
as a result of induction are inferences, so might or might not they
lead to deduction in the following signs, or are they all inside each
sign? Peirce said, that all three modes of interpretant are there,
always. So, maybe in any case of mind action, all three kinds of
inference are there too: In the listening to a street cry, the
deduction is: I have heard this cry, and i dont know by whom and why
it has been uttered, so I dont know what it is about". This deduction
exists, even if this chain of thoughts has not been thought, just by
the would-be-possibility of the mind of being able to explain it in
other cases of more premisses. And in case of a motive, of course.
Ockham would have cut all this away with his razor, but he was a
nominalist. So the non-nominalist perhaps would say: The nonexistence
of something is a reality, so something that exists, at least if a
vacuum can be defined: The would-be-vacuum, or
unfilled-capacity-vacuum. The concept of interpretation contains
thirdness, but there are interpretants that dont, so within them there
exists a nonexistance of elements that otherwise might exist. This is
a recursive ontology, but not a concept of degeneration, I think. And
it is weird. But this weirdness has to be suffered, if you dont want
to be a nominalist.
Was this weird? Am I talking nonsense?
Helmut
*Von:* Benjamin Udell"
Jerry, list,
Apropos of your comment on Peirce's idea that all mental action takes
the form of inference:
The latter is stunning from the perspective that inferences
require a conclusion (!) and for me, at least, passing thoughts
float by without apparent motivation and often without a hint of
closure, just a gentle fade.
Back on Sept. 20, 2015, I wrote to peirce-l:
[....] There's a statement in [my blog] it that I've corrected. I
said that, in the pervasive absence of such heuristic merits as
nontriviality, natural simplicity, etc., no mind would bother
with inference. It might be better [to] say more narrowly that no
mind would bother with _/reasoning/_, in the sense of explicit,
consciously weighed inference. I wasn't thinking with Peirce's
exemplary broadness. Inference without those heuristic merits
would amount to remembering (... ∴ /p/, ∴ /p/, ∴ /p/, ∴ ...),
free-associative or at any rate wild supposition, and so on; one
might call them degenerate cases of inference but, in their
seasons, they have their merits, and arguably need to be taken
into account for Peirce's idea that all of a mind's action is a
continuum of inference.
A pretty wild play of the imagination is, it cannot be
doubted, an inevitable and probably even a useful prelude to
science proper.
— Peirce, CP 1.235 (1902). Snifter clink to Gary Fuhrman
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/index.php/2015/09/15/wild-science/
[End quote]
My notion there was that remembering amounts to a kind of
equipollential deduction without nontriviality, and that
free-associative or wild supposition amounts to a kind of abductive
inference without explanatory instinctual naturalness or simplicity.
Best, Ben
On 11/8/2015 9:34 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
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