John,
Yes, I gave it a careful reading back when the List took it up:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150116150400/http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13825
I find some remnants of my comments here:
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/10/12/semiotic-theory-of-information-3/
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/10/13/semiotic-theory-of-information-4/
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/08/24/c-s-peirce-%e2%80%a2-syllabus-%e2%80%a2-selection-1/
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/10/04/c-s-peirce-%E2%80%A2-syllabus-%E2%80%A2-selection-2/
I have in mind getting back to the issues raised by that reading someday
but it would take me too far afield from my current focus to do that now.
The short shrift for now is that neither Peirce nor I is talking about
propositions in the sense of dicisigns or dicent symbols at this juncture
but rather the simpler sorts of propositions that fall under the heading of
the Propositional Calculus in current usage, adequately and most felicitously
dealt with of course by means of Peirce's own Alpha Graphs.
The concept of information that comes up in this context is rather distinct.
To my way of thinking the earlier notion of information, however roughly cut,
is superior in its basic principles, it being more realistic compared to the
residual nominalism in the later concept, at least, as interpreted by others.
Regards,
Jon
On 6/28/2017 11:53 AM, John F Sowa wrote:
Jon,
That's an important topic to explore:
JA
we can take up the issue of propositions in more detail
as it arises in the relevant context.
For a good analysis of the issues, I recommend the following book:
Stjernfelt, Frederik (2014) Natural Propositions: The Actuality
of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns, Boston: Docent Press.
I wrote a 5-page article on propositions from a Peircean perspective:
http://www.jfsowa.com/logic/proposit.pdf
That article is based on Peirce's notion of equivalence (CP 5.569):
A sign is only a sign in actu by virtue of its receiving an
interpretation, that is, by virtue of its determining another sign
of the same object. This is as true of mental judgments as it is of
external signs. To say that a proposition is true is to say that
every interpretation of it is true. Two propositions are equivalent
when either might have been an interpretant of the other. This
equivalence, like others, is by an act of abstraction (in the sense
in which forming an abstract noun is abstraction) conceived as identity.
And we speak of believing in a proposition, having in mind an entire
collection of equivalent propositions with their partial interpretants.
Thus, two persons are said to have the same proposition in mind. The
interpretant of a proposition is itself a proposition. Any necessary
inference from a proposition is an interpretant of it.
When we speak of truth and falsity, we refer to the possibility of the
proposition being refuted; and this refutation (roughly speaking) takes
place in but one way. Namely, an interpretant of the proposition would,
if believed, produce the expectation of a certain description of percept
on a certain occasion. The occasion arrives: the percept forced upon
us is different. This constitutes the falsity of every proposition of
which the disappointing prediction was the interpretant. Thus, a false
proposition is a proposition of which some interpretant represents
that, on an occasion which it indicates, a percept will have a certain
character, while the immediate perceptual judgment on that occasion is
that the percept has not that character.
A true proposition is a proposition belief in which would never lead
to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood
otherwise than it was intended.
In the article, I formalize Peirce's notion of equivalence in terms
of *meaning-preserving translations* (MPTs), which specify a class
of equivalent sentences in some language or languages. It's easy to
define MPTs for formal logics, but much harder for natural languages.
John
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