Dan, Gary, and Jerry, Dan, thanks for your summaries of what the great majority of linguists and lexicographers believe.
Gary, I'm delighted that you agree with Dan. And so do I. I assume that means you agree with his definition:
polylogy and polysemy would by hyponyms of the hypernym polyversity.
In plain English: polyversity includes polyology and polysemy. Jerry
it is obvious the method of pragmatism is delivering on what it promises. So why even bother with guiding principles and logical argumentation?
Short answer: Guiding principles and logical argumentation are the basis for Peirce's pragmat(ic)ism. See below for the URL of "A definition of pragmatic and pragmatism" (CP 5.1 to 5.33). Dan
Most linguists would reject polylogy because there are no two words with the same meaning in practice. If they did use such a word it would be synonomy
Yes. Continuity implies that two words or phrases in natural languages may have a similar meaning. But as Peirce said, "There are three things to which we can never hope to attain by reasoning, namely, absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality." (CP, 1.141) Gary
But it’s evident now that your sense of the word “definition” was different from mine... You were looking for the kind of definition you could use for operations in formal logic.
I was looking for the kind of definition in any good dictionary of English -- for example, the OED or Merriam-Webster's. And as Peirce said, precise reasoning is essential for philosophy:
Now all reasoning that is not utterly vague, all that ought to figure in a philosophical discussion involves, and turns upon, precise necessary reasoning. Such reasoning is included in the sphere of mathematics, as modern mathematicians conceive their science. (CP 5.8) a certain mental sedative to which many men are addicted... plays sad havoc with the philosophical constitution. I refer to the habit of cherishing contempt for the close study of logic. (CP 5.11)
Either Dan's definition or mine is sufficient for such reasoning. Gary
[you claimed] that “The word polyversity implies that there exists a discrete set of meanings,”
No. I said that *formal languages* such as logic have discrete meanings, but natural languages have a continuous range of meanings. The following discussion illustrates the difference. In CP 5.8, Peirce explained what he meant by mathematical reasoning:
The reasoning of mathematicians is now well understood. It consists in forming an image of the conditions of the problem, associated with which are certain general permissions [rules of inference] to modify that image.
For my reasoning, I imagined a ruler marked with either inches or centimeters. The continuous ruler represents the continuous range pf meanings in natural languages. The markings represent the discrete meanings of formal languages. The discrete meanings of a formal logic map to those discrete markings. But the continuous meanings of NLs almost always fall somewhere between them. As a result, polyology (synonymy) is likely for formal logics, but extremely unlikely for natural languages. John ___________________________________________________________________ The URL of a PDF file that includes paragraphs CP 5.1 to 5.33: http://nailcare-kyokai.com/index.php/pdf/download/id=552273 By the way, this is a weird URL. The top-level is for a nail-care company in Japan. I don't know how that relates to Peirce. But Google found it when I quoted a passage from CP 5.8.
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