Jon, I’m in total agreement with this:
There is a fundamental category error that arises here, of confusing a relation
with one of its tuples.
But not with this:
The best guard against this error is the collateral knowledge of how relations
are understood in mathematics generally, namely, as sets of ordered tuples.
This may be true for mathematicians, but personally, to make sense of a
locution like “sets of ordered tuples”, I have to call upon my collateral
knowledge of the difference between a relation and its relata, or correlates.
These concepts are mathematical, in the broad sense, but that doesn’t mean that
the jargon or the reasoning of professional mathematicians is the best adapted
to understanding the concept.
Besides, the kind of treatment you recommend (as opposed to the treatment
Peirce gives in his “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”) tends to
invite another error, which is the confusion of triadicity with Thirdness. In
Peirce’s terms, a rheme is a sign because it is a correlate of the triadic
relation (with its object and interpretant) which is exemplary of Thirdness,
not because of its valency or the number of “blanks” in it, which could be any
number. Thirdness is an element of the phaneron; triadicity is not. I see a lot
of posts here which appear to confuse the two. (I don’t mean yours.)
Gary f.
} My only drink is meaning from the deep brain, What the birds and the grass
and the stones drink. [Seamus Heaney] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 26-Nov-15 09:30
Peircers,
There is a fundamental category error that arises here, of confusing a relation
with one of its tuples.
The best guard against this error is the collateral knowledge of how relations
are understood in mathematics generally, namely, as sets of ordered tuples.
Regards,
Jon
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
On Nov 25, 2015, at 9:14 PM, <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a
sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while
Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really
not see the difference?
Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference
between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted
Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:
[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation
to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of
the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a
representamen. ]]
Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that a
sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the
object for the interpretant.
You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is either
a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation on your
part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that Peirce
simply does not use the word “sign” that way.
Gary f.
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