John S., List.
Thank you for sending the link to "Signs, Processes, and Language Games: Foundations for Ontology." After a first look, I've found it quite helpful and inspiring on a number of fronts. I, too, agree with your suggestions about the five kinds of studies that are important for understanding Peirce's writings and their implications. Having said that, I'd add two more to the list: 1. Analyze the development of his thought by relating his many publications and his many more unpublished manuscripts. 2. Relate his writings to his sources in various fields from the ancient Greeks to the latest developments of his day. 3. Analyze the effects of his work on his contemporaries and successors. 4. Analyze developments in the 20th and 21st centuries that could have been improved if the developers had studied Peirce. 5. Compare Peirce's methods for analyzing the world and how we talk and act in and about it to the methods used by other philosophers, past and present. 6. Put pragmaticist methods resulting philosophical framework to work addressing the philosophical questions--both perennial and those of our day--including, especially, questions that are often ignored by other contemporary movements in philosophy such as in the different strands in the contemporary analytic and continental thought. Where necessary, refine the methods for the sake of making progress on the philosophical problems. 7. Draw on pragmaticist methods and the larger philosophical framework for the sake of better informing and guiding the scientific and cultural (i.e., including the political, legal, moral, religious, artistic, etc.) inquiries of our day--including questions that often are ignored by contemporary movements in science and culture. Where necessary, refine the methods in order to make progress on the scientific and cultural problems. One might think (6) and (7) are not relevant to the tasks involved in "understanding Peirce's writings and their implications," but I believe that we can only understand the methods, ideas and their implications by putting them to work ourselves. In the essay above, I see you engaging, in differing degrees, in all 7 of the tasks--which is a rather ambitious thing to try to do in one essay. Distinguishing between these goals andidentifying which are guiding us in the various posts we make will, I think, help keep our discussions on the Peirce-L on a productive track. Thanks, Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2017 10:02:29 AM To: [email protected]; John F Sowa Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nativity scenes John, list - I agree with all that John has written. Certainly one could do a Peircean semiotic analysis of a nativity scene but, as John noted, it would take 20 pages and frankly, in my view, what would be the point - other than to show that one could do it? A basic socio-historical comparative analysis would, in my view, reveal both the intent and the hoped-for result of the refugee-nativity. That's far more enlightening than a deep semiosic analysis. Where Peirce could be used, and unfortunately, is little appreciated on a list such as this which is more devoted to points 1 and 2 of John's list, is within the biological and societal formative systems. I think that the use of Peirce would be astonishingly productive in this areas. Edwina On Sat 30/12/17 11:45 AM , John F Sowa [email protected] sent: Ben, Helmut, Peter, and Edwina, Ben > I have long been wondering why there is so little discussion > of relating Peirce's concepts and methodologies to concrete > examples, or other 20th and even 21st century thinkers. I strongly with that criticism. To understand Peirce's writings and their implications, five kinds of studies are important: 1. Analyze the development of his thought by relating his many publications and his many more unpublished manuscripts. 2. Relate his writings to his sources in various fields from the ancient Greeks to the latest developments of his day. 3. Analyze the effects of his work on his contemporaries and successors. 4. Analyze developments in the 20th and 21st centuries that could have been improved if the developers had studied Peirce. 5. Compare Peirce's methods for analyzing the world and how we talk and act in and about it to the methods used by other philosophers, past and present. Ben > All [Peter] asked was the relevance of Peirce's semiotics to > a presently existing symbolic representation. Helmut > whether the picture/diorama is insufficient of being analyzed with > Peirce, or Peirce´s theory is insufficient, because it does not > cover this example. Peter > I tend to agree with those who have opined that there is just not > much to be said, from a Peircean point of view, about this analogy. I agree with Peter that a pre-theoretical literary analysis is sufficient to determine the intentions of the people who designed the scene and the implications they wanted to express. Peirce's semiotic could carry the analysis to a deeper level. But that would require a 20-pages of details, not a short email note. Edwina > I ... tend to run from many of the philosophical discussions that > dominate this list. My focus is on biosemiotics and the societal > system as a complex adaptive system - which does function within > the Peircean triad. I agree that examples from biosemiotics, societal systems, and complex adaptive systems would be far more useful than the nativity scene for understanding all five issues above. Re philosophical discussions: My major interest in Peirce was originally stimulated by and continues to be focused on points 3 to 5 above, but I also found that 1 and 2 are important for understanding 3 to 5. For some of those issues, see my article "Peirce's contributions to the 21st century": http://jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st.pdf<parse.php?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fjfsowa.com%2Fpubs%2Fcsp21st.pdf> Re logic: Before I discovered Peirce, I had learned 20th c logic from the so-called "mainstream" of a Frege-Russell-Carnap- Quine-Kripke-Montague perspective. What led me to Peirce were the criticisms of that mainstream by Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and linguists who recognized that there is more to language than Montagovian "formal semantics". I discuss that in http://jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.pdf<parse.php?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fjfsowa.com%2Fpubs%2Fsignproc.pdf> John
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