> On Jun 19, 2016, at 9:45 PM, Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > The reasoning is simple with respect to your post. It is the way CSP forms > some propositions and propositional functions around sentences with copula. > > The role of copula in modern logic is minimal but is critical in certain > arguments. As far as I can recall at the moment, your views do not require > reasoning about copula. If you have examples of the contrary, I would be > delighted to learn of your views. Copula play a critical role in scientific > logic, for example, in formative operators. >
I’m curious as well. I remember discussing the place of the copula in Peirce back when we had the list reading Natural Propositions. I don’t recall Gary having a position at odds with the discussion. (The discussion was tying Kaina Stoicheia to chapter 3.1 of NP) I did a quick look at my saved archives for the list and I think the main issue was the following: In a sentence like “Socrates is wise” the copula is an index that connects the replicas of Socrates and wise and not the actual original objects themselves. This seemed controversial to some. I’d brought up the following quote by Peirce which I think illuminates the issue. For something would have to bring the general sense of that general verb down to the case in hand. An index alone can do this. But how is this index to signify the connection? In the only way in which any index can ever signify anything; by involving an icon. Frederik Sjernfelt then said the following (9/25/14) I discuss it in relation to P's idea of a syntax for Dicisigns in general. Here, his argument is that the tokens of the Subject and Predicate, respectively, must be placed alongside each other - so as to mirror the co-localization of Subject and Predicate in the object (if the Dicisign is true, that is). If not the tokens of two sides of a Dicisign are co-localized, in some sense, they will fail to function as a Dicisign (the painting and its title must not be separated by a long distance in time or space if not otherwise brought together …) There was then some discussion of singular subindices and how that changes with time. Also the late Peirce (1908) shifts the copula from being primarily an index into being a kind of thirdness with an indirect indexical function. The forms A -< B, or A implies B, and A ~-< B, or A does not imply B, embrace both hypothetical and categorical propositions. Thus, to say that all men are mortal is the same as to say that if any man possesses any character whatever then a mortal possesses that character. To say, 'if A, then B ' is obviously the same as to say that from A, B follows, logically or extralogically. By thus identifying the relation expressed by the copula with that of illation, we identify the proposition with the inference, and the term with the proposition. This identification, by means of which all that is found true of term, proposition, or inference is at once known to be true of all three, is a most important engine of reasoning, which we have gained by beginning with a consideration of the genesis of logic. (CP 3.175) To my eyes then while in the sign it’s replicas (icons) that are united via the copula it ties in a parallel manner to something deeper in the object(s) themselves. This is because the copula relates to the real facticity which is a kind of world of experience. Where Peirce goes farther than traditional philosophy is that the dicisign isn’t only tied to formal language but appears in things like the semiotics of a painting. This is a point that I think gets brought up in the Continental tradition with people following Heidegger. Heidegger’s famous (and ironically incorrect historically) analysis of a painting of peasant shoes is the classic example. (Incorrect in that what he postulates about the shoes is wrong) Since I find the discussion of the copula so significant in both phenomenology and logic I’d be interested in your fleshing out your comments a little.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
