Edwina, list,
On the sign's object as ultimately the universe of discourse of the
(more explicit) object, I was discussing Peirce's view.
1909 | Letters to William James | EP 2:492
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-letters-william-james-6
A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined
(i.e., specialized, _/bestimmt/_) by something other than itself,
called its Object (or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence
“Cain killled Abel,” in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial
Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines
the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in
every case the Object is accurately the Universe of which the
Special Object is member, or part), while, on the other hand, it so
determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof
I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting
Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object.
[End quote]
For example, a perturbation of Pluto's orbit is a sign about Pluto, but
not only about Pluto.
I would confine the term "realism" to refer to the belief that there are
real generals.
Some generals are particularly feasible for actualization, such as
flying machines and perhaps unicorns (by genetic engineering if not by
natural evolution). In that sense one philosophically could call those
generals "more" real than generals of which instances are hardly
feasible or probable. What stops me from calling such promising generals
flatly real in conventional discussion is the English language. I'm
generally more willing to call even pure-mathematicals real than Peirce
seems to have been. But, if, before flying machines and unicorns come
to be, I say that they are real, indeed even if I cast them as "generic"
objects so as to state that the Flying Machine and the Unicorn are real,
then people will take me to mean that actual instances of them have
already come to be.
Best, Ben
On 2/11/2017 2:08 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Ben, list:
I am missing something..You wrote:
"The object of a sign is ultimately the universe of discourse of said
object."
My view is that the object of a representamen is NOT the 'universe of
discourse'; that sounds, to me, like the Interpretant. I can see that
the Interpretant, within a collective population, is 'the universe of
discourse of said object'. Certainly, that Interpretant can then
become the Object in the triad of O-R-I....
I don't think that a unicorn has to materially exist in order to be
'real'; it can be a mental concept that might, eventually, become
material [as you note, by some evolutionary adaptation]. After all, at
one time, the airplane was a concept and then, became materially 'real'.
I also still think there is a difference between the terms of
'realism' and 'real' and if by 'real' we mean objectively materially
existent - then, this confines the 'real' to the material world, and
leaves out 'realism' which refers to generals..which can never 'exist'
per se.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Benjamin Udell <mailto:baud...@gmail.com>
*To:* peirce-l@list.iupui.edu <mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Saturday, February 11, 2017 1:45 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's
"Mindset" from AI perspective
Mike, list,
I think that you're putting the cart before the unicorn. The idea of
the unreal a.k.a. fictitious in Peirce begins as the idea of the
object of a false proposition, an idea rooted, for Peirce, not in
ontology but in logic and its presuppositions, to which ontology is
posterior. There are true general propositions if and only if there
are real generals. There are false general propositions if and only
if there are fictitious, a.k.a. unreal, generals. If there were no
false general propositions, then science would have little if any
purpose, since it would be unable to err about generals even if it
wanted to. No more proofs by reduction to absurdity. The object of a
sign is ultimately the universe of discourse of said object. If it is
false that there has existed a unicorn, then a universe of discourse
in which there has existed a unicorn is an unreal, fictitious
universe of discourse. For Peirce, logic and reason presuppose that,
for a proposition to be true, it must not depend on what we think of
it, likewise for its object to be real, it must not depend on what we
think of it; for it to be real, it must also be cognizable, such that
sufficient inquiry would find it inevitably, sooner or later. The
presuppositions of fallibilism and cognizabilism are both needed in
order to keep the way of inquiry unbarred.
After that, we can bring all kinds of nuances in, e.g., a universe of
discourse that is at least a coarse-grained version of our actual
world in the vast majority of respects, except in containing a
unicorn. People could argue about whether a unicorn's evolution is
feasible or probable. If it were significantly feasible or probable,
we could say that the unicorn species (as a kind of form) is a really
feasible or probable possibility, and we could dub animals belonging
to the predecessor species that would evolve into unicorns as
"unicorniferous" or suchlike, and regard that as a property as real
as the hardness of a diamond even if nothing ever happens to try to
scratch that diamond. We could regard the capacity for harboring
unicorns as a real property of the Earth. Suppose that a highly
intelligent observer were on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago,
when animals first emerged onto land. That observer might have
predicted that flying animals would evolve some day. It's happened at
least four times, so it seems quite feasible. A square circle, on the
other hand, is _/necessarily/ _ unreal by the definitions of the
terms (if a square were defined not as an equilateral rectangle but
as an equiangular equilateral quadrilateral, then I suppose something
could be both a circle and a kind of degenerate square in some
non-Euclidean space). Even in mathematics it's not always so
cut-and-dried, e.g., the case of zero to the zeroth power, and there
the issue is not simply a touch of the arbitrary in the definition of
an object (still, mathematicians seem to regard 0⁰ as most
"naturally" equal to 1 rather than equal to 0 or undefined). Of
course then there are the mathematical intuitionists. Most
mathematicians aren't intuitionists, but the intuitionists and some
others convinced most mathematicians to prefer constructive proofs.
If we get into that subject, I'm afraid I'll get lost. The more
specialized discussions of what is real in various domains usually
involves some applications of philosophical thinking. I've seen the
theory of limits referred to as "the metaphysics of mathematical
analysis" and the philosopher Berkeley actually did motivate work there.
The idea that the unicorn or its species is real because of a
corresponding factor or style in thought and culture involves the
kind of equivocation about the term "unicorn" that people often
delight in. "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Yes%2C+Virginia%2C+there+is+a+Santa+Claus%22
. The 1947 movie _Miracle on 34th Street _ plays on it too,
particularly in the trial scenes. I used to go along with that kind
of realism about Santa Claus, Cthulhu
https://www.google.com/search?q=Yes%2C+Virginia%2C+there+is+a+Cthulhu
, and others, in a kind of rebellious spirit, but their 'reality'
depends too much on what actual people think of them. They are
dreams, nightmares, make-believes, etc., real in the way that dreams
and nightmares are, thoughts that take place on actual dates, classes
of such thoughts, etc.
Best, Ben
On 2/11/2017 10:44 AM, Mike Bergman wrote
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