Jon, with your amendments below, I think we are generally in accord about those parts of The Bedrock that we’ve discussed; and as you’ve probably seen, your guess as to what I would say about cuts was right on the money. There are still some parts of R 300 that remain puzzling to me, or interesting for other reasons, but I’ll have to leave those for another day. Unless you or someone else clears those things up first.
Gary R, I’ve been pondering your question about the relationship between the “Three Universal Categories” and the “Three Universes of Experience,” but I haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer to it. Maybe one will turn up later … Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 5-Mar-19 19:59 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Bedrock Beneath Pragmaticism Gary F., List: Upon further consideration, I would like to make two related amendments to the latter part of my earlier post. * The Phemic Sheet represents the Universe of Truth, which need not be the Universe of Actuality; it "denote[s] that object ... which the Graphs, from their very first, find to have been settled upon, by a previous understanding between the Graphist and the Interpreter, as that to which all their significations must refer" (R 300:71-72[36-37]). * Accordingly, two- or even three-dimensional EGs can only denote Objects that exist (or not) in that Universe, which consists of everything that is already known to both the Graphist and the Interpreter by virtue of Collateral Experience--what Peirce elsewhere called the commens (EP 2:478; 1906)--regardless of which modal Universe it might inhabit. Thanks, Jon S. On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 11:54 AM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary F., List: I agree that Peirce ultimately gave up on iconizing modality in two-dimensional Gamma EGs, instead settling for the R 514 tutorial that only covers Alpha and Beta. A three-dimensional implementation might be more successful in that regard, consistent with his description of the Universes as "so utterly different that we may well liken them to a set of three mutually perpendicular directions from which any object may be viewed" (R 300:72[37]) and as "different dimensions of the logical Universe" (R 300:80[37]) whose "mutual relations,--imaged by perpendicularities in sets of three,--are relations between different Modalities" (R 300:76[38]). I wonder if he was hinting at this further in the following passage from a different manuscript, which I came across yesterday. CSP: But in one respect at any rate [the system of] Existential Graphs is essentially different from language. Namely, instead of being merely protracted in time, its expressions are diagrams upon a surface, and indeed must be regarded as only a projection upon that surface of a sign extended in three dimensions. Three dimensions are necessary and sufficient for the expression of all assertions; so that, if man's reason was originally limited to the line of speech, (which I do not affirm,) it has now outgrown the limitation. (R 654:6-7; 1910 Aug 19) I now see even more clearly what you meant about our different "approach[es] to Peircean studies" and the danger of "sink[ing] into purely terminological issues," so I will not belabor my points about "Universe" and "Experience" any further. I was not "ignoring Peirce’s careful distinction between the [polyadic] continuity of the two-dimensional sheet and that [linear continuity] of the one-dimensional line," I was commenting on it. I assume that Peirce was quite intentional about specifying that a Line of Identity is heavily drawn, such that it has a very visible width to it, while a Cut is thinly drawn. After all, he wrote that the Phemic Sheet represents "the field of attention," including "those places where, nothing being scribed, no particular attention is paid"; while the Line of Identity, which is "generated by the continuity of the different places of a heavy dot," represents "the continuity in attentive observation of an individual object" (R 300:39-41[39-40]). Again, the Line of Identity for an individual is only continuous because the Phemic Sheet for the Universe of Actuality, which underlies it, is also (and more fundamentally) continuous--except where a Cut creates a discontinuity. I was also not ignoring Peirce's "statement that the three Universes cannot be represented by the icons which make up the Graphs, and can only be represented by differentiation of the surfaces on which those icons are drawn." I was simply noting his other statement that the differences of the three Universes correspond only to differences of the Objects to which the Graphs refer, not the propositions as a whole or their predicates. Two-dimensional EGs can only denote Objects that exist (or not) in the Universe of Actuality. I look forward to reading what you have to say about Cuts, especially given your claim that it "spells trouble for the whole system of EGs." Are you perhaps referring to Peirce's remarks in R 300 about the inadequacy of representing "the concept of Sequence" as "a composite of two Negations"? Regards, Jon S.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
