John, List:

JFS:  I like the word peg, since it's iconic, and it doesn't conflict with
any term in Peirce's writings, modern logic, linguistics, or mathematics.


So do I; and I also like the words Graph, Spot, and Line for similar
reasons.  As we have discussed before, Peirce consistently employed these
in accordance with his ethics of terminology.

CSP:  By a *graph *(a word overworked of late years), I, for my part,
following my friends Clifford and Sylvester, the introducers of the term,
understand in general a diagram composed principally of spots and of lines
connecting certain of the spots. (CP 4.535; 1906)


He elsewhere cited Kempe, as well, but made a major adjustment when
developing Entitative Graphs and then Existential Graphs.

CSP:  I show that Kempe’s method could never satisfactorily represent a
proposition in the logic of relatives. The reason is that Kempe attempts to
make the spots of his diagrams represent the objects and the lines
connecting them the relations. I show that the only way is to make the
spots represent relations and the lines the correlates. This is the
illuminating, and altogether original, and far from obvious key to the
problem. (letter to F. C. Russell; 1896 July 16)


I just came across this passage yesterday, and needless to say, it confirms
my eventual decision to give up on straightforwardly interpreting Spots as
subjects and Lines as predicates.  It even conforms to how we routinely use
diagrams in structural engineering--Lines represent members, Spots (nodes)
represent connections.  However, I still maintain that the *meaning
*of any *discrete
*predicate (Spot) can be analyzed into a *hypostatically abstracted*
subject (word) and a *continuous *predicate (Peg); more to come on that in
the other thread.

JFS:  Since I'm trying to convert modern logicians to Peirce's notation, I
have to juggle both sets of terms.  I prefer to think in terms of the
symbols and minimize the number of words used to describe them.


Understood; as I have repeatedly acknowledged, that approach makes sense
for your purposes.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 10:39 PM John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 5/2/2019 11:15 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
> > He did not talk about predicates, either.  That eliminates yet another
> > word.  In fact, he simply stated, "Every word makes an assertion," and
> > "By a '/graph/' I mean /the way/ in which a given assertion is scribed"
> > (NEM 3:162-163).  On the other hand, I find it noteworthy that he /did
> > /talk about subjects--"Indivisible graphs usually carry '/pegs/' which
> > are places on their periphery appropriated to denote, each of them, one
> > of the subjects of the graph" (NEM 3:164).
>
> That's fine.   Modern terminology uses the word 'argument'
> instead of 'subject', but both words are overused for
> different purposes.
>
> I like the word peg, since it's iconic, and it doesn't
> conflict with any term in Peirce's writings, modern logic,
> linguistics, or mathematics.
>
> In modern (20th - 21st c) terminology, the word 'predicate'
> is usually used as the name of a relation.  The relation is
> the abstract entity, and the predicate is a name for it.
>
> Since I'm trying to convert modern logicians to Peirce's
> notation, I have to juggle both sets of terms.  I prefer
> to think in terms of the symbols and minimize the number
> of words used to describe them.
>
> John
>
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