I don't find that it's the terms that slow down the use of Peirce in
analysis; I find that it's the concept of a triadic semiosis with that vital
mediation, and the concept of the three modal categories. Both seem very
hard for people to grasp - and so, semiotics is reduced to the simplistic
binarism of Saussurian semiology, which focuses only on individual units,
and searches for their 'hidden', almost Freudian meanings of 'This'..Stands
For..That'.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F Sowa" <s...@bestweb.net>
To: <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 9:23 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from
AI perspective
On 2/8/2017 12:31 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
The three triads of CSP,
qualisign, sinsign, legisign;
icon, index, symbol;
rhema, dicisign, argument,
can be, in my opinion, a “recipe” for realism; that is, the logical
association of antecedent observations (Qualisigns with logical
consequences (legisigns)) What I find exceedingly curious about the
(strange) words of this table is that only the last word, “argument” is
used in logic. The other eight words are merely dictionary words.
Clearly, some similarity with 21 st Century AI exists in these three
19th Century triads.
I have discussed, written about, and lectured on Peirce's semiotic
to various audiences -- mostly in AI and cognitive science. His
terminology is indeed a deterrent for many people.
One wonders why CSP’s three triads have not been adopted.
The words qualisign, sinsign, legisign, rhema, and dicisign have
no chance of being accepted. Even Peirce scholars use them only
when discussing Peirce's writings.
The triad of icon, index, and symbol is the most widely recognized,
cited, and used -- partly because the words are more common. Peirce's
terms 'type' and 'token' are widely used even by people who have no
idea where they came from. And the words 'predicate' and 'proposition'
are common in logic.
For teaching Peirce's semiotic, I therefore recommend that those
five words should be replaced with terms that CSP himself used:
mark, token, type;
icon, index, symbol;
predicate, proposition, argument.
See Figure 2, page 5 of "Signs and reality":
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signs.pdf
For example, consider an index of species.
Is it real?
Or, ideal?
For both a nominalist and a realist, an index is something
observable: a pointing finger, a pronoun in speech or writing,
or a physical occurrence of some kind.
But a species is a type, which is determined by some law
of nature. A realist would say that the law is real.
But a nominalist would say that a law is merely a pattern
of words that summarize some observational data.
In short, both nominalists and realists could use the nine
terms above in practical applications. They would often
reach the same conclusions, but they would disagree about
the existence of referents for the words in the third column.
John
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