Jeff, List,
JD: Is there some textual reason to give priority to the analysis of the proposition in the argument for the categories? GF: Well, there is a historical priority, in that Peirce’s “New List of Categories” (1867) was explicitly based on analysis of the proposition. But I’m not sure what you are referring to as “the argument for the categories.” You mean an argument that the analysis that produces the three categories is logically valid? I think Peirce’s argument for that is inductive rather than deductive, i.e. a demonstration that the categories are useful as heuristic tools for analysis and classification of phenomena, especially semiosic phenomena — including, of course, arguments as well as propositions and terms (or whatever we call them). I’m also not sure what to make of the concept of “material relations.” I see the logic of relations as formal and not material, and I don’t think what Peirce had to say about material categories is based on the logic of relations, although there may be some kind of correspondence between the formal and material categories. Gary f. From: Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> Sent: 9-Feb-19 16:08 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] EGs and phaneroscopy Gary F, Jon S, List, Is there some textual reason to give priority to the analysis of the proposition in the argument for the categories? For my part, I take the logical arguments for the categories to be based on the requirements for having valid arguments as well as meaningful propositions and terms. The question that he articulates in "On the Logic of Mathematics, an attempt to develop my categories from within" is: what are the elemental kinds of relations--both formal and material--that are necessary for logic? The question of what is necessary for each of the three main classes of argument to be valid seems to be at least as important--if not more--than the question of what is necessary for a proposition to represent a fact in the effort to provide an internal grounding for the claim that there must be three elemental formal relations: monadic, dyadic and triadic. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354
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