Jon Alan, you asked:
[[ What I was really asking about is the notion that "every kind of sign begins
with an image (icon), and every sign constructed from other signs is a
diagram." Does this come from Peirce, or is it your own insight? ]]
I wonder if it might come indirectly (with the addition of John’s own insight)
from CP 2.302, c.1895:
[[[ Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs,
particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons
and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature;
the symbol-parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it
is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new
symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo. A symbol, once in being, spreads
among the peoples. In use and in experience, its meaning grows. Such words as
force, law, wealth, marriage, bear for us very different meanings from those
they bore to our barbarous ancestors. The symbol may, with Emerson's sphynx,
say to man,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam. ]]]
This antedates Peirce’s detailed classification of sign types other than the
icon/index/symbol trichotomy, but I think there’s a strong connection between
what he refers to as “symbols” here and what John refers to as “diagrams.” Both
words are being used very broadly, and both grow (or ‘are constructed’) from
icons.
Gary f.
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 27-Mar-17 16:16
John S., List:
JFS: ... icons as the starting point ... diagrams as lawful constructions from
icons ...
I am still getting hung up on this way of putting it. As I understand it,
diagrams are icons, at least predominantly; but rather than its object's
qualities, a diagram embodies the significant relations among its parts.
JFS: All perception and imagination is by individuals. But by collaboration,
we can share our imaginations, build on them, refine them, correct them.
This is where the concreteness of diagrams comes in handy; they can be
transferred from one person's imagination to another's by means of words,
equations, drawings, and other physical manifestations.
JFS: I don't think that he used the term 'internal' and 'external'.
What I was really asking about is the notion that "every kind of sign begins
with an image (icon), and every sign constructed from other signs is a
diagram." Does this come from Peirce, or is it your own insight? In "Some
Consequences of Four Incapacities" (1868), he flatly denied that we have any
images in perception or imagination, although in that work he was referring to
"absolutely determinate representations." I am also not sure that it is
correct to characterize every sign constructed from other signs as a diagram in
Peirce's technical sense.
Damasio: The distinctive feature of brains such as the one we own is their
uncanny ability to create maps... But when brains make maps, they are also
creating images, the main currency of our minds. Ultimately consciousness
allows us to experience maps as images, to manipulate those images, and to
apply reasoning to them.
Given Peirce's early denial that we think in images, and his later careful
distinction of images from diagrams, I doubt that he would have endorsed these
comments as written, at least without knowing their original context. A map or
other mental model is an icon, but it is a diagram rather than an image. I
suppose that if all Damasio means by "image" here is what Peirce meant by
"icon," then perhaps they were on the same page after all.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt>
- twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 2:23 PM, John F Sowa <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
Clark, Jon A.S., and Claudio,
I'm trying to relate Peirce's logic, mathematics, semiotic,
theory of truth, and logic of pragmatism to his insights
into perception, cognition, and purposeful action.
CSP's essential insights: triadic semiotic; icons as the
starting point; symbols growing from icons; laws for relating
and defining anything; diagrams as lawful constructions from
icons; logic of pragmatism for constructing, refining, and
testing diagrams; phaneroscopy for examining imagery from any
source, external (all sensory modalities) or internal (mental
models or a kind of virtual reality); and language for social
interaction and collaboration on all of the above.
Clark
There’s a bit to unpack there - most particularly who the “we” is...
the ideal community of inquirers rather than any particular person...
while the universe is knowable and therefore imaginable it doesn’t
follow that it is imaginable for any finite group of people.
Re 'we': I meant anybody and everybody, individually or in any
kind of collaboration. The human methods of perception, cognition,
and action as individuals are the basis for communication and
collaboration with any groups of individuals in any place or time.
Re imaginable: All perception and imagination is by individuals.
But by collaboration, we can share our imaginations, build on them,
refine them, correct them.
Clark
As you note this is also separate from the nominalist debate
since a nominalist can agree with this.
Yes. As Peirce himself said, he began as a nominalist, but his
continued studies and analyses led him to a kind of extreme realism.
I prefer CSP's later interpretations.
Claudio
Do you mean the LAWS OF NATURE, or just what we think that laws
of nature are?
Either or both. Our methods of reasoning are independent of the
nominalist-realist debate. But the methods of making predictions
and testing them can give us some confidence than we are at least
approximating them -- at least for those areas we have tested.
Claudio
everybody has to check twice... before 'believing'...
Yes. When we communicate and collaborate with others, we need
to recognize that they are just as fallible as we are. Even
worse, they may have confused, misguided, or hostile motives.
Claudio
I would NEVER say that truth is irrelevant!!!
I wasn't accusing you. But there are people who use terms
like 'post truth' or 'alternate facts'. They even claim
"Whatever you repeat often enough becomes the truth."
That way of thinking and talking is extremely dangerous.
Jon
Peirce carefully distinguished between images and diagrams as two
different types of icons (or "hypoicons"). "Those which partake
of simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which
represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts
of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams"
(CP 2.277; c. 1902).
That's exactly what I intended. Thanks for digging up the quotation.
Jon
did Peirce himself ever affirm that every sign begins with an
"external" image, and that every sign constructed from other
signs is an "internal" diagram?
I don't think that he used the term 'internal' and 'external'.
But I wanted to relate what Peirce said to the modern work in
neuroscience. Note the following point by Antonio Damasio:
The distinctive feature of brains such as the one we own is their
uncanny ability to create maps... But when brains make maps,
they are also creating images, the main currency of our minds.
Ultimately consciousness allows us to experience maps as images,
to manipulate those images, and to apply reasoning to them.
I quoted that passage in slide 56 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/ppe.pdf
In those slides, I was trying to relate and extend Peirce's version of
existential graphs to a more general kind of diagrammatic reasoning.
In slide 55, I quoted the psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird who
claimed that Peirce's EGs "anticipate the theory of mental models
in many respects, including their iconic and symbolic components,
their eschewal of variables, and their fundamental operations of
insertion and deletion."
JFS
Therefore, the knowable universe is limited to everything we can
imagine, and mathematics can analyze anything we can imagine.
Jon
Does it help to amend the initial statement to form a subjunctive
conditional? "Therefore, the knowable universe is limited to
everything we would be able to imagine, if the right conditions were
to occur." If so, is this formulation still unobjectionable to a
nominalist?
Carnap introduced possible worlds to support modal logic.
He might accept the term 'knowable'.
But Quine objected to the term 'possible world'. I suspect
that he would also object to the term 'knowable universe'.
John
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