Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Sungchul Ji]

Gary R, lists,


You wrote:

"Following a suggestion made by Ben Udell many years ago when I was writing
a paper which, in part,
meant to distinguish between these sign types and classes, I sometimes
refer to sign 'types' as 'parameters'
as being closer to Peirce's meaning.

This is also why I reject Sung's 'quark model' of semiotics, because the 9
classes are *not* analogous to (121115-1)
elementary particles in being 'thing-like' and quasi-individual, but,
again, are the *mere *parameters of the
10 possible signs which *might *be embodied, that is, the 10 classes."

I agree that .  No one on this list would conflate "signs" and
"particles" in this manner, since that would be akin to conflating
*semiotics* and *physics*. But what I did say was that these 9 types are
"analogous to quarks in being subject to a hypothetical force  or obeying
the principle of gauge invariance". Both these concepts, "force" and "gauge
invariance", can be applied *analogically *and *qualitatively *outside
physics*,  *for example, to Romeo and Juliet, although they are not protons
and electrons.

All the best.

Sung





On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Gary Richmond 
wrote:

> List,
>
> Although I don't see the point or relevance of Sung's (2) and (3), in my
> opinion a great deal of semiotic confusion *has* been generated by
> confusing and conflating (1) sign types with sign classes. No doubt Peirce
> himself contributed to this confusion, although in *some *cases and *in
> context* it seems quite logical (and Peirce offers legitimate reasons) to
> refer to one of the classes by less than its full triadic name, for
> example, 'Qualisign' to refer to the 1st of the 10 classes, the* rhematic
> iconic qualisign. *But, again, even this sort of abbreviation has wreaked
> a kind of semiotic havoc. (Btw, this is not the only way Peirce contributes
> to this confusion.)
>
> Following a suggestion made by Ben Udell many years ago when I was writing
> a paper which, in part, meant to distinguish between these sign types and
> classes, I sometimes refer to sign 'types' as 'parameters' as being closer
> to Peirce's meaning.
>
> This is also why I reject Sung's 'quark model' of semiotics, because the 9
> classes are *not* analogous to elementary particles in being 'thing-like'
> and quasi-individual, but, again, are the *mere *parameters of the 10
> possible signs which *might *be embodied, that is, the 10 classes.
>
> There remain a number of scholars who still treat the table of 9 as if
> they represented embodied sign classes. They simply do not.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
> [image: Gary Richmond]
>
> *Gary Richmond*
> *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
> *Communication Studies*
> *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
> *C 745*
> *718 482-5690 <718%20482-5690>*
>
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 3:39 PM, Sungchul Ji  wrote:
>
>> Clark, Jeff, Gary F, lists,
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>> " . . . On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the
>> sign types defined in NDTR,   (120815-1)
>> including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a possible
>> ambiguity in the concepts of
>> genuine and degenerate; . . . "
>>
>> (*1*)  Shouldn't we distinguish between "sign types" and "sign
>> classes"?  Peirce defines
>>
>> (A) 9 sign types (analogous to quarks in particle physics)
>>
>> 1. qualisign,
>> 2. sinsign,
>> 3. legisign,
>> 4. icon,
>> 5. index,
>> 6. symbol,
>> 7. rheme,
>> 8. dicisign, and
>> 9. arguement) , and
>>
>>
>> (B) 10 sign classes (analogous to baryons composed of 3 quarks)
>>
>> 1. rhematic iconic qualisign,
>> 2. rhematic iconic sinsign,
>> 3. rhematic iconic legisign,
>> 4. rhematic indexical sinsign,
>> 5. rhematic indexical legisign,
>> 6. rhematic symbolic legisign,
>> 7  decent indexical sinsign,
>> 8. decent indexical legisign,
>> 9. decent symbolic legisign
>> 10. argument symbolic legisign.
>>
>>
>> Not distinguishing between the 9 types of signs and the 10 classes of
>> signs may be akin to physicists not distinguishing between quarks (u, d, c,
>> s, t and b quarks) and baryons (protons and neutrons).
>>
>> (*2*)  According to the quark model of the Peircean sign discussed in
>> earlier posts, the 9 types of signs (referred to as the "elementary signs")
>> cannot exist without being parts of the 10 classes of signs (referred to as
>> the "composite signs"), just as quarks cannot exist outside of baryons.
>>
>> (*3*) What holds quarks together within a baryon (e.g., u, u and d
>> quarks in a proton, or  u, d and d quarks in a neutron) is the "strong
>> force", so perhaps there exists a 'force' that holds three elementary signs
>> together within a composite sign, and such a postulated 'force' in
>> semiotics may be referred to as the "*semantic force*" or "*semiotic
>> force*", in analogy to the "strong force".
>>
>> All the best.
>>
>> Sung
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Clark Goble 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[gnox]

Franklin,

 

Yes, this excerpt from Peirce’s “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism” 
demonstrates that according to the purpose of the analysis, a percept can be 
considered either as an object or a sign. (And of course signs can be objects 
of other signs, otherwise we could say nothing about semiosis!) Your example 
does show that maybe it’s not that “hard to say how any phenomenon could be the 
object of a percept” — although I could argue that smoke is not a percept but a 
perceptual judgment. But personally I’m going to leave for later (or for 
others) the consideration of perception in terms of triadic relations. At least 
until I have a better handle on NDTR and its classification of signs, and how 
that relates to the phenomenological categories. 

 

Gary f.

 

From: Franklin Ransom [mailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 9-Dec-15 18:00



 

Gary F, Jeff, Jon S,

 

Given Gary's comments in this last post, I think it would be worthwhile to 
quote the passage that is pertinent to some of what Jeff has been discussing, 
and which I discussed with Jeff in our previous discussion. From Vol. 4 of the 
Collected Papers:


539. The Immediate Object of all knowledge and all thought is, in the last 
analysis, the Percept. This doctrine in no wise conflicts with Pragmaticism, 
which holds that the Immediate Interpretant of all thought proper is Conduct. 
Nothing is more indispensable to a sound epistemology than a crystal-clear 
discrimination between the Object and the Interpretant of knowledge; very much 
as nothing is more indispensable to sound notions of geography than a 
crystal-clear discrimination between north latitude and south latitude; and the 
one discrimination is not more rudimentary than the other. That we are 
conscious of our Percepts is a theory that seems to me to be beyond dispute; 
but it is not a fact of Immediate Perception. A fact of Immediate Perception is 
not a Percept, nor any part of a Percept; a Percept is a Seme, while a fact of 
Immediate Perception or rather the Perceptual Judgment of which such fact is 
the Immediate Interpretant, is a Pheme that is the direct Dynamical 
Interpretant of the Percept, and of which the Percept is the Dynamical Object, 
and is with some considerable difficulty (as the history of psychology shows), 
distinguished from the Immediate Object, though the distinction is highly 
significant.†1 But not to interrupt our train of thought, let us go on to note 
that while the Immediate Object of a Percept is excessively vague, yet natural 
thought makes up for that lack (as it almost amounts to), as follows. A late 
Dynamical Interpretant of the whole complex of Percepts is the Seme of a 
Perceptual Universe that is represented in instinctive thought as determining 
the original Immediate Object of every Percept.†2 Of course, I must be 
understood as talking not psychology, but the logic of mental operations. 
Subsequent Interpretants furnish new Semes of Universes resulting from various 
adjunctions to the Perceptual Universe. They are, however, all of them, 
Interpretants of Percepts.

 

Notice that the percept, in one case, is identified by Peirce as a Seme and 
that does in fact make it a sign. Of course, it is also discussed as immediate 
object, and dynamical object, so one needs to be careful as to how one 
interprets this passage when trying to figure out what is going on with the 
percept, and how it is understood differently depending upon what its role is 
in the triadic relation. In any case, it would appear that the percept, 
according to Peirce, can be a sign and classified as a seme (a.k.a., rheme), 
and can have its own immediate object, and have interpretants.

 

For my part, I would suppose that there can be phenomena which we directly 
experience (directly perceive), which can nevertheless serves as signs of other 
perceptual phenomena. I directly perceive smoke. The smoke, while perceived in 
itself, can also be a sign of fire, which can also be directly perceived. 
Perhaps I have failed to understand what Gary meant when he said that "it's 
hard to say how any phenomenon could be the object of a percept"?

 

-- Franklin

 


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RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[gnox]

Jeff,

 

One comment inserted below, after your first paragraph. My response to your 
post as a whole is that most of it — and especially your attempt to situate 
Peirce in the history of Western philosophy — is “above my pay grade,” as Jon 
S. put it. To the extent that I follow your methodological argument, it doesn’t 
seem all that different from my approach; but your last sentence leaves me far 
behind, when you speak of trying “to explain things we haven't yet been able to 
explain in the speculative grammar with much success up to this point.” 

 

I can only ask: Who is “we”, and which of us is in a position to judge the 
“success” or non-success of “our” explanations? I think it often happens that 
one person’s explanation is another’s obfuscation, and vice versa. I don’t see 
that one scholar can make such a judgment on behalf of others. I simply think 
that the way to better understand text by a writer like Peirce is to pay close 
attention to it in its immediate context, allowing one’s acquaintance with the 
more mediate context to function implicitly in the background. What emerges 
from the inquiry may or may not be of use to anyone else, but in any case, 
anyone’s judgment of its “success” is superfluous to the inquiry.

 

Gary f.

 

-Original Message-
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] 
Sent: 9-Dec-15 16:46
To: 'Peirce-L' 



Hi Gary F., List,

 

G.F:  Perhaps, but I think it’s better to take each essay in its own terms 
first before trying to map them onto each other. 

 

J.D.  I appreciate the approach of taking each essay on its own terms 
first--especially when it comes to helping those who are relatively new to 
Peirce learn how to work carefully with the texts themselves--rather than to 
run off to their own ideas thought about in their own terms.  If that is your 
goal, then it might make sense to pick an early published essay such as 
"Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" as the piece that will 
be used for such pedagogical purposes.  NDTR is a pretty tough essay to be 
reading in such a manner.

 

GF: No, I have no such pedagogical purpose. What I’m trying to do in this 
thread is to conduct an inquiry into the matter given in the subject line, 
starting with a close reading of Peirce’s main essay on that subject. I’m 
assuming some knowledge of Peirce’s other texts, but I do not believe that such 
knowledge is acquired by taking them in chronological order (nor do I think 
that Peirce’s early works are necessarily easier reading than his later ones). 
For me, the intellectual biography of Peirce, the narrative of how his thinking 
developed over time, is of secondary interest. My primary focus is on how 
Peirce’s analysis in this one seminal essay would apply to my collateral 
experience of signs and their triadic relations with their objects and 
interpretants. And part of my collateral experience is that the hermeneutic 
circle always applies to such an inquiry. (In Turning Signs, see

http://gnusystems.ca/TS/cls.htm#3thought .)

 

JD: For those of us who have read through this and related pieces a number of 
times, and who have read spent more hours fretting over the details of what 
Peirce says than we might care to admit, I do think there are good reasons to 
put some of the key pieces together in other essays--even if it is only a few 
at a time.  Let me offer an example:  when it comes to reading NDTR, I think it 
helps to frame the discussion in terms of the methods that were laid out in the 
run up to "On a New List of the Categories," and then to follow Peirce's lead 
in the way he develops those ideas in that early set of essays in the Cognition 
series.

 

First and foremost, we need to draw on Peirce's account of reasoning, which has 
three basic levels to the discussion:  self-controlled arguments, propositions, 
and terms.  Unlike many philosophers, such as Kant and Russell, who say that we 
should start with the question of what is necessary to assert that a 
proposition is true, Peirce is asking us to focus first and foremost on the 
level of valid arguments.  The question of what is necessary for the different 
forms of argument to be valid controls the kinds of explanations that can be 
given about the nature of propositions--and the same point holds when it comes 
to terms as parts of propositions.  There are many advantages to this more 
holistic method that Peirce is using for the sake of developing a philosophical 
logic.

 

So, in asking, "What are the basic kinds of signs when we consider them in 
their mode of apprehension?," we should arrive at the conclusion by seeing what 
role signs having the character of qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns have in 
the various kinds of propositions that function as premisses or conclusions in 
abductive, inductive or deductive forms of argument.  Initially, we don't even 
need a theory of valid inference in order to work in such a 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[John Collier]

Clark, List,



Just a couple of points to take up something that Clark says within the more 
general context of logic and formal mathematics, and, in this case, its 
relation to physics, but still very Peircean I think. See below.



John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier



From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]

Sent: Friday, 11 December 2015 19:41

To: Peirce-L

Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering



I tend to see “in the long run” as more a regulatory concept rather than 
something actual. For a long time I did worry about how the “in the long run” 
worked and raised concerns similar to yours. The question of whether it really 
functions the way Peirce needs it to function if it’s not potentially actual in 
some sense is still a big issue I think gets neglected too much. So don’t think 
I’m brushing that aside. I do share some of your concerns there. I’ve just come 
to think that for Peirce the fundamental issue is the meaning of truth which 
then brings in the issues I raised as regulatory concepts.



[JDC] Agreed. There are a number of counter-examples to convergence that are 
worrisome, such as counter-induction, sets that show arbitrarily long patterns 
for finite stages that aren’t reflected in the overall statistics of the whole 
set, and so on.


All that said, I’m not sure infinity works quite the way you suggest simply 
because Peirce is not dealing with a normal potentially countable infinity. 
That is his continuity ends up dealing with higher order infinities - even if 
he does differ from the typical cardinal/ordinal sets we deal with in 
mathematics. Now I’ll confess it’s been more than 10 years since I last studied 
Peirce on these particular issues or where he differs from Cantor and company. 
So my memories are a tad fuzzy. Forgive me for errors. I think however that if 
there’s a potential countable infinity of the sort [\aleph_0]  that Peirce’s in 
the long run in his semiotics allows this to be dealt with by semiotics running 
in higher orders like [\aleph_1]  or so on. I’m curious as to what others thing 
here.



My logic professor, George Boolos, dreamed up a being he called Zeus (so-called 
as to not pre-empt contemporary religious concerns) that got better at 
processes if it repeats them. The idea is that in calculating an infinite 
series, Zeus could do each step twice as fast as the previous one, and be able 
to complete a series in finite time. Obviously, neither we nor any other finite 
system could be a Zeus demon, but it does give a way to interpret infinite 
convergence. I see this as a case of going from [\aleph_0]   to [\aleph_1] . 
The relevant set becomes the cross-product. I came up with a somewhat similar 
demon I called the Hermes demon, which can make every increasingly accurate 
measurements in the same way. It can achieve [\aleph_1]  accuracy in 
measurement. Combine the two, and you have a Laplacean demon, making some sense 
of an otherwise somewhat mysterious idea. We could carry this to higher levels 
by calculating over all functions possible on an [\aleph_1]  sized set, and so 
on, if necessary. Is this outside of the range of semiotics because it uses 
infinite methods and assumes creatures that could not exist (Peircean sense)? I 
think not, since it is an extension of ideas in the finite realm to the 
continuous in a fairly straight-forward way that is already pretty well 
understood.



The second issue is whether we really need this. The concern ends up being more 
or less a common critique of convergence theories. That is you might test out 
to Tx but that the pattern completely shifts at Tx+1. I think Peirce’s 
conception works simply because in the long run is regulative as I mentioned 
but also because what is doing the testing is an infinite community rather than 
a finite one. That is the way Peirce attempts to get out of this is via his 
Hegelian/neoPlatonic like conception of the universe as an argument working 
itself out. So when we talk about truth it’s this universe that counts. That is 
we can maintain Peirce’s notion without having to deal with a practical knowing 
community.



I think we need it. Testing the infinite community of functions seems to me to 
require at least two levels past [\aleph_0] , with the set of possible 
functions, as I mentioned above. The order, in this case, becomes irrelevant, 
because all orderings are included if the demon is carefully rendered. As 
someone who doesn’t find the Hegelian/neo-Platonic outlook very perspicuous 
(though for a time I thought it solved all outstanding metaphysical problems). 
In any case, from my current perspective to understand even the problem 
requires going to higher order infinities, let alone to understand how we might 
deal with actual cases. I am pretty sure that the Axiom of Choice, or one of 
many equivalent forms (well-ordering, basically) is required for bringing the 
abstract Laplacean demon I outlined down to earth. 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hello Gary F., List,

You ask:  Who is “we”, and which of us is in a position to judge the “success” 
or non-success of “our” explanations? 

My answer to your rather pointed question was expressed at the end of the 
earlier post:  the "we" consists in the community of Peirce himself together 
with those who are trying to "follow in his footsteps" as we analyze our own 
observations and then examine the arguments being offered see whether or not 
"we" agree that the inferences that Peirce thinks are good or bad are, in our 
humble opinion, really so.  As readers of the texts, we have to make decisions 
about how much of the suppressed parts of the argument should be made more 
explicit.  In many cases, the suppressed parts of the arguments have been 
suppressed by Peirce because they have been explicitly articulated in other 
places.  Peirce says that his earlier classification of fundamental kinds of 
signs and sign relations is incomplete in a number of different respects, and 
he is working to remedy some of those shortcomings in NDTR.  As such, I think 
it helps to have a clear idea of what he thought was incomplete in those 
earlier accounts.

In the hopes of returning to the questions that we were looking at about the 
opening moves in NDTR, I think it is really helpful to read the essay in light 
of what Peirce thought he accomplished in "On a New List of Categories."  Even 
if we don't trace the development of the account of signs from there up to the 
NDTR (which is one of the things T.L. Short does in the early chapters of his 
monograph on Peirce's Semiotics) my hunch is that we'll have a heck of a time 
trying to understand Peirce's more cryptic remarks without having such works to 
draw on for the sake of reference.

So, I was focusing on his cryptic remark that there are are three kinds of 
triadic relations he wants to examine:  1) Triadic relations of comparison, 2) 
Triadic relations of performance, and 3) Triadic relations of thought.  My 
suggestion was that we focus on the first of these three and ask:  does the 
distinction between qualisign, sinsign and legisign help us to explain what is 
necessary to make reasonable comparisons?  In particular, does the account of 
the qualisign serve a role in Peirce's explanation of the requirements for 
making comparisons between qualities of feeling?  Peirce has taken Mill to task 
for offering an inadequate account of how we can compare qualities of feeling 
based on relations of similarity and dissimilarity.  I believe that here, in 
NDTR, he is providing a key piece of what is needed for an alternate kind of 
explanation.

--Jeff

Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354

From: g...@gnusystems.ca [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 9:04 AM
To: 'Peirce-L'
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Jeff,



One comment inserted below, after your first paragraph. My response to your 
post as a whole is that most of it — and especially your attempt to situate 
Peirce in the history of Western philosophy — is “above my pay grade,” as Jon 
S. put it. To the extent that I follow your methodological argument, it doesn’t 
seem all that different from my approach; but your last sentence leaves me far 
behind, when you speak of trying “to explain things we haven't yet been able to 
explain in the speculative grammar with much success up to this point.”



I can only ask: Who is “we”, and which of us is in a position to judge the 
“success” or non-success of “our” explanations? I think it often happens that 
one person’s explanation is another’s obfuscation, and vice versa. I don’t see 
that one scholar can make such a judgment on behalf of others. I simply think 
that the way to better understand text by a writer like Peirce is to pay close 
attention to it in its immediate context, allowing one’s acquaintance with the 
more mediate context to function implicitly in the background. What emerges 
from the inquiry may or may not be of use to anyone else, but in any case, 
anyone’s judgment of its “success” is superfluous to the inquiry.



Gary f.



-Original Message-
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu]
Sent: 9-Dec-15 16:46
To: 'Peirce-L' 


Hi Gary F., List,



G.F:  Perhaps, but I think it’s better to take each essay in its own terms 
first before trying to map them onto each other.



J.D.  I appreciate the approach of taking each essay on its own terms 
first--especially when it comes to helping those who are relatively new to 
Peirce learn how to work carefully with the texts themselves--rather than to 
run off to their own ideas thought about in their own terms.  If that is your 
goal, then it might make sense to pick an early published essay such as 
"Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" as the piece that will 
be used for 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Clark Goble]

> On Dec 11, 2015, at 9:04 AM,   wrote:
> 
> I can only ask: Who is “we”, and which of us is in a position to judge the 
> “success” or non-success of “our” explanations? I think it often happens that 
> one person’s explanation is another’s obfuscation, and vice versa. I don’t 
> see that one scholar can make such a judgment on behalf of others. I simply 
> think that the way to better understand text by a writer like Peirce is to 
> pay close attention to it in its immediate context, allowing one’s 
> acquaintance with the more mediate context to function implicitly in the 
> background. What emerges from the inquiry may or may not be of use to anyone 
> else, but in any case, anyone’s judgment of its “success” is superfluous to 
> the inquiry.

I’d probably say that if the community of Peirce scholars or better yet the 
community of philosophers decides these explanations are helpful and keep using 
them that is success. You’re quite right that what’s successful for the 
community may be different from individuals trying to understand Peirce though. 
Further I think we all recognize that philosophy most definitely has various 
fads. While Peirce seems to be taken much more seriously at the moment than in 
the past, who knows if that will continue. That’s a function not just of how 
fruitful his ideas are when applied but also the fads and faddish 
presuppositions philosophy is stuck with at any moment.

While I’m not sure I’d want to situate Peirce in the history of philosophy it 
might be useful trying to situate him relative to the big topics in philosophy 
and science. But I doubt any of us are familiar with enough fields or movements 
to be able to do that in any remotely comprehensive way.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Clark Goble]

> On Dec 10, 2015, at 6:15 PM, Matt Faunce  wrote:
> 
> Induction can't work when there are potentially infinite samples to be drawn, 
> and the long-run opens up the pool of potential samples to infinity. Maybe 
> Peirce's phenomenology limits the potential samples at any given time (I 
> still haven't decided what I think about that), but what principle makes the 
> potential samples in the long-run finite? What class of argument could 
> possibly secure this sort of principle? Induction won't work; and deduction 
> is only as good as its major-premise which needs to be established 
> inductively. All that's left is abduction.

I tend to see “in the long run” as more a regulatory concept rather than 
something actual. For a long time I did worry about how the “in the long run” 
worked and raised concerns similar to yours. The question of whether it really 
functions the way Peirce needs it to function if it’s not potentially actual in 
some sense is still a big issue I think gets neglected too much. So don’t think 
I’m brushing that aside. I do share some of your concerns there. I’ve just come 
to think that for Peirce the fundamental issue is the meaning of truth which 
then brings in the issues I raised as regulatory concepts.

All that said, I’m not sure infinity works quite the way you suggest simply 
because Peirce is not dealing with a normal potentially countable infinity. 
That is his continuity ends up dealing with higher order infinities - even if 
he does differ from the typical cardinal/ordinal sets we deal with in 
mathematics. Now I’ll confess it’s been more than 10 years since I last studied 
Peirce on these particular issues or where he differs from Cantor and company. 
So my memories are a tad fuzzy. Forgive me for errors. I think however that if 
there’s a potential countable infinity of the sort  that Peirce’s in the long 
run in his semiotics allows this to be dealt with by semiotics running in 
higher orders like  or so on. I’m curious as to what others thing here. 

The second issue is whether we really need this. The concern ends up being more 
or less a common critique of convergence theories. That is you might test out 
to Tx but that the pattern completely shifts at Tx+1. I think Peirce’s 
conception works simply because in the long run is regulative as I mentioned 
but also because what is doing the testing is an infinite community rather than 
a finite one. That is the way Peirce attempts to get out of this is via his 
Hegelian/neoPlatonic like conception of the universe as an argument working 
itself out. So when we talk about truth it’s this universe that counts. That is 
we can maintain Peirce’s notion without having to deal with a practical knowing 
community.

For any finite community then (i.e. any practical community we worry about) 
we’re always fallible from Peirce’s conception. What I sense you wanting isn’t 
a point of relative stability in our beliefs through continued inquiry. Rather 
I think you’re looking for something more akin to what Putnam takes up against 
Peirce. A kind of warranted assertability ala Dewey’s change from Peirce. If 
we’re looking for that sort of strong warrant then I’d probably agree we may 
not get it. I’m not sure we need that but I can completely understand why many 
might find Peirce ultimately unsatisfactory relative to these finite groups. He 
can offer inquiry but not certainty. (I’m not sure in practice Dewey/Putnam can 
do better mind you)


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Aw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Relations & Their Relatives

[Helmut Raulien]

Jon, List,

Thank you. I am happy, that I now am more or less clear about the difference eg. between relation and relative term, and general and elementary. I find it complicated to apply the mathematical relation concept to realworld situations. There seem to be relations (and relative terms) of the mind, and others of the material-energetic world. Eg. if there is a wall made of bricks, one can tell the relations each brick has towards another brick, and so define the topology of the wall with relations from relative terms like "is above of", "is north of", and so on.  But if Alice loves Bob, then this is a relation in Alices mind (a subset of a product of the set of all aspects in Alices mind with itself). And "Alice and Bob love each other" perhaps is a relation between the relations in Alices mind, and those in Bobs mind. But which are these aspects of the mind? Not very easy, all this, I mean, at least at this intra-subjective level. Maybe it leads astray to some sort of obsolete reductionism, I dont know.


Best,

Helmut


11. Dezember 2015 um 20:00 Uhr
"Jon Awbrey" 
 

Inquiry Blog
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/08/relations-their-relatives-16/
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/10/relations-their-relatives-17/

Peirce List
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17890
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17894
JBD:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17902
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17907
HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17911
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17916
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17955
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17956
HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17958
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17991

Helmut, List,

I put a revision of that last example on my blog, linked above.

I amended one statement to say that “the elementary relation by
itself does not ''completely'' determine the general relation or
general relative term under which it may be considered”, since
we allow for partial determination or “determination in measure”
in this context.

The relationship between tokens and types, under one pair of terms
or another, has been pervasive in science and knowledge-oriented
philosophy since the days of Plato and Aristotle at least, since
we have knowledge of forms and generalities, not haecceities or
individuals in themselves.

There is a communication problem that arises here, because the words
“token” and “type” tend to be used differently outside Peirce studies,
often referring to objects that aren't always signs. So I have found
it less confusing to use more neutral terms, like “instance of a type”
or “element of a set”.

In that sense, we can say that (Cain, Abel) is an instance of the type B,
where B is a particular subset of all ordered pairs of biblical figures.

Regard,

Jon

On 12/9/2015 11:40 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
>
> Helmut, List,
>
> I put a better formatted version of my last email in this blog post:
>
> http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/08/relations-their-relatives-16
>
> I thought it might serve a purpose over the long haul to merge this discussion
> of elementary relations and/or individual relations with an earlier thread on
> relations and their relatives. The immediate task is to get clear about the
> critical relationship between relations as sets and elementary relations as
> elements of those sets. What's at stake is understanding the extensional
> aspect of relations. Beyond its theoretical importance, the extensional
> aspect of relations is the interface where relations make contact with
> empirical phenomena and ground logical theories in observational data.
>
> Well, it's later than I thought, so I'll have to break here.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon
>
> On 12/8/2015 11:42 AM, Helmut Raulien wrote:
>> Jon, list,
>> thank you, Jon.
>> Your example is less complicated than mine was.
>> So the elementary relation does not determine
>> the general relation or general relative term.
>> So, both, elementary and general relation do
>> not have a token-type-connection with each other,
>> I think. So it is confusing to me, that both are
>> called "relation". In mathematics, I think, an
>> actual subset of a cartesian product is a relation.
>> This seems like secondness to me. The term "smaller
>> than" is a relative term, I guess. This seems like
>> firstness or thirdness to me, depending on whether
>> it is the reason for (ground of, quality of) an actual
>> subset, or the interpretation of this actual subset.
>> Best,
>> Helmut

--

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
oeiswiki: 

[PEIRCE-L] Re: Relations & Their Relatives

[Jon Awbrey]

Inquiry Blog
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/08/relations-their-relatives-16/
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/10/relations-their-relatives-17/

Peirce List
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17890
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17894
JBD:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17902
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17907
HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17911
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17916
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17955
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17956
HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17958
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/17991

Helmut, List,

I put a revision of that last example on my blog, linked above.

I amended one statement to say that “the elementary relation by
itself does not ''completely'' determine the general relation or
general relative term under which it may be considered”, since
we allow for partial determination or “determination in measure”
in this context.

The relationship between tokens and types, under one pair of terms
or another, has been pervasive in science and knowledge-oriented
philosophy since the days of Plato and Aristotle at least, since
we have knowledge of forms and generalities, not haecceities or
individuals in themselves.

There is a communication problem that arises here, because the words
“token” and “type” tend to be used differently outside Peirce studies,
often referring to objects that aren't always signs.  So I have found
it less confusing to use more neutral terms, like “instance of a type”
or “element of a set”.

In that sense, we can say that (Cain, Abel) is an instance of the type B,
where B is a particular subset of all ordered pairs of biblical figures.

Regard,

Jon

On 12/9/2015 11:40 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:


Helmut, List,

I put a better formatted version of my last email in this blog post:

http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/12/08/relations-their-relatives-16

I thought it might serve a purpose over the long haul to merge this discussion
of elementary relations and/or individual relations with an earlier thread on
relations and their relatives.  The immediate task is to get clear about the
critical relationship between relations as sets and elementary relations as
elements of those sets.  What's at stake is understanding the extensional
aspect of relations.  Beyond its theoretical importance, the extensional
aspect of relations is the interface where relations make contact with
empirical phenomena and ground logical theories in observational data.

Well, it's later than I thought, so I'll have to break here.

Regards,

Jon

On 12/8/2015 11:42 AM, Helmut Raulien wrote:

Jon, list,
thank you, Jon.
Your example is less complicated than mine was.
So the elementary relation does not determine
the general relation or general relative term.
So, both, elementary and general relation do
not have a token-type-connection with each other,
I think.  So it is confusing to me, that both are
called "relation".  In mathematics, I think, an
actual subset of a cartesian product is a relation.
This seems like secondness to me.  The term "smaller
than" is a relative term, I guess.  This seems like
firstness or thirdness to me, depending on whether
it is the reason for (ground of, quality of) an actual
subset, or the interpretation of this actual subset.
Best,
Helmut


--

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache

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