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With this principle of contraposition it becomes increasingly clear why Peirce has constructed the EG system in the way he has in this Lowell lecture. (This may be easier to see in the web version of Lowell 2, http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell2.htm, where you can easily scroll back to the earlier "permissions" that mandate the various moves we make here.) We begin to see an important kind of logical transformation - and the reverse transformation - in slow motion, as it were, in a series of graphs which shows a very simple argument as a three-step process. This, as Peirce remarks at the end of this excerpt, is exactly what EGs are supposed to do. It's important to bear in mind that Peirce is not giving a psychological account of reasoning here, and certainly not claiming that each of the three steps in such a transformation is made consciously in the reasoning process. Actually it is the more unconscious elements of the process that he is trying to show diagrammatically. Our reasoning proceeds in a manner analogous to the way we construct sentences: we follow certain grammatical principles, but we are not at all conscious of them: our attention is on the relations involved in the object of the sign. It's only when semiosis itself becomes the object of our attention that we call this kind of sign an "argument" and begin to analyze it into its simplest elements. Existential graphs serve to represent this analysis visually. Gary f. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 12-Nov-17 10:22 To: 'Peirce List' <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 2.11 Continuing from Lowell 2.10, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-455-456-1903-low ell-lecture-ii/display/13650 By combining the two parts of the definition of the scroll we get the highly useful graphical form of the principle of contraposition. Namely, suppose that a replica of the graph x, were it scribed on the sheet of assertion, would be permissively transformable into a replica of the graph, y, and suppose that the scroll were permissively placed on the sheet of assertion. Then, by the predication of the definition concerning the definitum, y, if scribed on the sheet of assertion, would be transformable into z. So x being transformable into y and y in its turn into z, it follows that x would on the sheet of assertion be transformable into z. Hence by the predication of the definitum concerning the definition, it would be permitted to place on the sheet of assertion the scroll That is to say, the permissibility of the transformation on the sheet of assertion of x into y, carries with it the permissibility of the transformation on the bottom of a cut placed on the sheet of assertion, of the reverse transformation of y into x. Here is a principle which involves many permissions. Permission No 5 The Principle of Contraposition. Of whatever transformation is permissible on the sheet of assertion, the reverse transformation is permissible within a single cut. Thus if and so on indefinitely. In short, whatever transformation is permissible on the sheet of assertion is permissible within any even number of cuts while the reverse transformation is permissible within any odd number of cuts. For example, since any graph can be erased on the sheet of assertion any graph can be erased within any even number of cuts while any graph can be inserted within any add number of cuts. Since any graph already scribed on the sheet of assertion can by Permission No 2 be iterated on the sheet of assertion, that can have another replica of it placed on the sheet; it follows that if one replica of a graph is on the sheet of assertion and another replica of the same graph is oddly enclosed, the latter can be erased. Thus, can be transformed into and thence by Permission No 3 into x y, and thence by Permission No 1 into y. Thus what the logic books call the modus ponens gives successively it is cold. The fact that our system breaks this up into three steps goes to show that our main purpose, that of dissecting reasoning into its simplest elements, has been, in some measure, at least, attained. It still remains to treat the blank and the blot in the same manner. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell2.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903 https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-455-456-1903-low ell-lecture-ii
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