Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metalanguage (was Delta Existential Graphs
John, List: JFS: This is my last note on this thread until 2/29 or later. Understood, and at this point, I doubt that there is much more for either of us to say without further repeating ourselves anyway. JFS: Metalanguage is the only feature required to define modality. Peirce never said anything about needing a Delta part of EGs to *define* modality, he said only that he needed it to *deal with* modals, i.e., modal propositions. Accordingly, I am primarily interested in developing a version of EGs for *reasoning about* modality--possibility and necessity, or analogous concepts like permission and obligation--by implementing the now-standard formal systems of modal logic. JFS: That sentence "The quantified subject of a hypothetical proposition is a possibility, or possible case, or possible state of things" (CP 2.347, c. 1895) does not imply that the postulates in the margin of a sheet are inside a negation. It simply means that the postulates are true of a possible world described in the nested statements on that sheet. And there is no negation of the nested statements. A hypothetical proposition is a *conditional *proposition (e.g., see CP 3.374, 1885), which is represented in all parts of EGs by nested cuts until Peirce introduces shading in June 1911. The postulates in the margin are not "inside a negation," they are inside the outer close--the red line of R 514 (1909) is the inner cut, and the physical edges of the page constitute the outer cut. Hence, the postulates are not asserted to be false, but they are also not asserted to be true--they are "merely asserted to be possible." The nested statements are also not asserted to be true or false in the *actual *state of things; instead, what is asserted is that *if *the postulates in the margin are true, *then *the nested statements are also true. In other words, the postulates in the margin and the nested statements *together *describe a possible state of things--the postulates are its law-propositions, and the nested statements are its fact-propositions. JFS: The text in the margin is metalanguage asserted about the nested text. ... With his [Peirce's] notation of R514, he can state any kind of modality with an appropriate choice of postulates in the margin of the sheet. That is *not *how postulates work. As an obvious example, Euclid's five postulates are not metalanguage asserted *about *the theorems that follow from them, they are pure possibilities (antecedent) from which those theorems are derived as deductively necessary conclusions (consequent). In accordance with R 514 but adopting Peirce's 1911 notation, we can write the five postulates in the *shaded *margin of a sheet and the theorems inside its *unshaded *area, thus asserting the conditional proposition that *if *the postulates are true, *then *the theorems are also true. The postulates and theorems *together *describe the possible world of Euclidean geometry, with the postulates as its law-propositions and the theorems as its fact-propositions. JFS: I thank you for raising all those objections. Likewise, I thank you for the exchange. As I acknowledge in the other thread, it is what prompted me to develop an interesting extension of my candidate for Delta EGs. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 3:58 PM John F Sowa wrote: > Jon, > > I am preparing slides for a Zoom talk on 2/28. (I'll send the abstract > and link tomorrow.) This is my last note on this thread until 2/29 or > later. > > JAS> Even in the printed book, the line attached to the first oval on page > 151 is *thinly *drawn, exactly like the oval itself, while the lines of > identity on pages 153ff... > > That's too bad for an elegant notation. But it reinforces the point that > Peirce was using the same methods for representing metalanguage in 1898 as > in 1911. Metalanguage is the only feature required to define modality. > Please read my brief summary about the IKRIS project in > https://jfsowa.com/ikl . You don't have to believe anything I wrote. > There are many, many references on that page to IKRIS reports written by > other authors (almost all of whom have a PhD in logic, computer science, or > some other branch of science or philosophy). > > JAS> I suspect that you were reading back into his text what you had > already decided for yourself when you changed your mind regarding Carnap > vs. Quine, namely, that modal logic is "just metalanguage about logic." > Peirce never states nor implies this--not in R L376, and as far as I know, > not anywhere else. > > It's not something I decided for myself. It's something I learned from > professional logicians from 1973 onwards. Please read the references. > That fact is not a debatable issue. As for Peirce not realizing some of > the issues, he can't be blamed for not discovering methods
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Delta Existential Graphs (was The Proper Way in Logic)
Jon, List > On Feb 23, 2024, at 5:22 PM, John F Sowa wrote: > > > JLRC> First, the question of modern modal symbolic logic is remote from > probability theory and even remoter from the Peircian notion of “qualisign, > sinsign, legisign” > > That is true of Peirce's modal logic of 1903, which was the mainstream of > modal logic for most of the 20th C and which is still taught in introductory > courses. But Peirce became very interested in probability theory, as shown > in his writings in the Logic Notebook. The that-operator from 1898 and the > "papers" of June and December 1911 can support the kind of metalanguage that > is widely used today for computational and theoretical methods for either or > both possibilities and probabilities. > I respectably disagree with breadth and depth of this justification of the meanings to be associated with the sign-generating terms, qualisign, sin-sign and legisign. These three terms all refer to the metaphysics of Being paper of 1868, don’t they? The concept of a sign is intrinsically singular, yet any real object in the world offers many many necessary and possible signs. Thus, the need for a concept of “sin-sign” as a singular entity. Corresponding to this need is an exact name for the object under inquiry, that is, a legisign. The quali-sign determines the attributes of the sin-sign and the name for the legisign, does it not? My point is that these three terms point to the metaphysical nature of the “Being" of the subject of a sentence that specifies an existent object. These terms are necessarily deterministic in form and character in order to specify the identity of the object. Please note that this interpretation of the semiology of the CSP’s semantics also addresses the distinction between the copulative grammar of sentences from the pseudo-first order logic of modern probability theories, discrete or continuous. The fact that the “computational and theoretical methods” used today are based on probability theories lacks relevancy to the situational logic developed by CSP. The terms of the trichotomy were defined by CSP to ascribe meaning to the metaphysical “being” of objects with precision, not to merely describe a convenient possibility for engineering purposes. Cheers Jerry _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metalanguage (was Delta Existential Graphs
Jon, I am preparing slides for a Zoom talk on 2/28. (I'll send the abstract and link tomorrow.) This is my last note on this thread until 2/29 or later. JAS> Even in the printed book, the line attached to the first oval on page 151 is thinly drawn, exactly like the oval itself, while the lines of identity on pages 153ff... That's too bad for an elegant notation. But it reinforces the point that Peirce was using the same methods for representing metalanguage in 1898 as in 1911. Metalanguage is the only feature required to define modality. Please read my brief summary about the IKRIS project in https://jfsowa.com/ikl . You don't have to believe anything I wrote. There are many, many references on that page to IKRIS reports written by other authors (almost all of whom have a PhD in logic, computer science, or some other branch of science or philosophy). JAS> I suspect that you were reading back into his text what you had already decided for yourself when you changed your mind regarding Carnap vs. Quine, namely, that modal logic is "just metalanguage about logic." Peirce never states nor implies this--not in R L376, and as far as I know, not anywhere else. It's not something I decided for myself. It's something I learned from professional logicians from 1973 onwards. Please read the references. That fact is not a debatable issue. As for Peirce not realizing some of the issues, he can't be blamed for not discovering methods that logicians adopted 60 years after he died. JAS> he anticipates the future formalization of modal logic when he states, "The quantified subject of a hypothetical proposition is a possibility, or possible case, or possible state of things" (CP 2.347, c. 1895). Even more specifically, he anticipates C. I. Lewis's development and advocacy of strict implication in... [see below] The axioms Lewis states for modal logic are true for an open-ended variety of modalities, including every version Peirce described in his tinctured graphs of 1906. The fact that Peirce was thinking of such things in 1906 shows that he had reasons for moving beyond the modal version of 1903 (which he never used after 1903). That sentence "The quantified subject of a hypothetical proposition is a possibility, or possible case, or possible state of things" (CP 2.347, c. 1895)." does not imply that the postulates in the margin of a sheet are inside a negation. It simply means that the postulates are true of a possible world described in the nested statements on that sheet. And there is no negation of the nested statements. The text in the margin is metalanguage asserted about the nested text. (Please excuse my use of a term that Peirce had not invented, but he frequently used metalanguage when he talked about quotations by other people. We are also using metalanguage when we are talking about writings by Peirce, by ourselves, or by each other. And there are no implicit negations. The only negations are explicit.) And note that he never rejected the KINDS of modalities he described with the tinctures of 1906. What he rejected is the complexity of the specifications in that article. With his notation of R514, he can state any kind of modality with an appropriate choice of postulates in the margin of the sheet. In fact, he could put postulates in the margin to say that the possible world of "You are a good girl" is much to be wished. He could even go back to the medieval Modistae and put postulates in the margin that specify a world described in Holy Scriptures. Whether he might consider that world possible, actual, necessary or impossible is independent of the fact that it was described in Holy Scriptures. The postulates in the margin of a paper may specify anything in any scientific theory or anything described in Alice in Wonderland. The postulates on any paper are not inside a negation because they are asserted to be true only of the nested propositions in the part of the phemic sheet on that same paper. Other parts of the phemic sheet on other papers may have very different propositions in the margin. I thank you for raising all those objections. With the answers I have stated (or minor variations thereof) plus the material in the many references about metalanguage and modal logics from 1973 onward, I now have everything I need for a solid article about what Peirce had written about his Delta graphs and how they are related to the modal logics of the 21st C. For any material I have not mentioned, please read the references. As I keep saying, you don't have to believe me. Just read the references. If you have questions about how those references are related to what Peirce wrote, I'll answer them. John From: "Jon Alan Schmidt" John, List: JFS: I admit that I was looking at the printed book, Reasoning and the logic of things. In that book, the transcription shows a clearly drawn
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metalanguage (was Delta Existential Graphs
John, List: JFS: I admit that I was looking at the printed book, Reasoning and the logic of things. In that book, the transcription shows a clearly drawn line that connects the oval to the word 'is'. Even in the printed book, the line attached to the first oval on page 151 is *thinly *drawn, exactly like the oval itself, while the lines of identity on pages 153ff are unambiguously *heavy*; and again, there is no line attached to the second oval on page 151. Here are those images. [image: image.png] [image: image.png] [image: image.png] JFS: But the two sentences enclosed in ovals are equivalent to what Peirce proposed in R514: Draw a line around the proposition(s) about which the text outside the oval is making assertions. According to R 514, the text in the margin is *not* making assertions about the propositions inside the red line, it consists of "postulates" that are "merely asserted to be possible," i.e., the hypothetical antecedent from which those propositions would follow necessarily as the consequent. This is a *completely different* notation from the unique EGs on RLT 151, where the proposition written inside the oval fills the blank in the rheme written outside the oval. JFS: When I studied Peirce's L376 in detail, it was obvious that he was thinking along the same lines. I suspect that you were reading back into his text what you had already decided for yourself when you changed your mind regarding Carnap vs. Quine, namely, that modal logic is "just metalanguage about logic." Peirce never states nor implies this--not in R L376, and as far as I know, not anywhere else. On the contrary, he anticipates the future *formalization *of modal logic when he states, "The quantified subject of a hypothetical proposition is a *possibility*, or *possible case*, or *possible state of things*" (CP 2.347, c. 1895). Even more specifically, he anticipates C. I. Lewis's development and advocacy of strict implication in the following passage. CSP: The consequence *de inesse* [material implication], "if *A* is true, then *B* is true," is expressed by letting *i* denote the actual state of things, *Ai* mean that in the actual state of things *A* is true, and *Bi* mean that in the actual state of things *B* is true, and then saying "If *Ai* is true then *Bi* is true," or, what is the same thing, "Either *Ai* is not true or *Bi* is true." But an *ordinary* Philonian conditional [strict implication] is expressed by saying, "In *any* possible state of things, *i*, either *Ai* is not true, or *Bi* is true." (CP 3.444, 1896) Peirce *might *have changed his mind about this (like you did) sometime over the next 15 years, but only an exact quotation to that effect from his later writings could warrant such a claim. Can you provide one? JFS: And his description of the phemic sheet as a collection of papers was in line with the specification of papers in R514. What "specification of papers in R 514"? Peirce says nothing in that text about multiple sheets. If you are simply affirming that the "red pencil" operation of R 514 could be applied to each of the "many pages" of R L376, then we agree about that. However, I now advocate *shading *the margin instead of marking its boundary with a red line, consistent with Peirce's other writings about EGs in 1911 that you have often emphasized. Again, it is a more iconic way of conveying that the margin is a *different surface* from the interior--it "represents a universe of possibility" (CP 4.579, 1906), while "the main part of the sheet represents existence or actuality" (CP 4.577). In my updated candidate for Delta EGs as outlined last night, there is a separate sheet for each possible state of things (PST), with its law-graphs in the shaded margin and its fact-graphs in the unshaded interior. After all, Goble refers to laws for a possible world as "*the fundamental postulates of that world*" ( https://projecteuclid.org/journalArticle/Download?urlId=10.1305%2Fndjfl%2F1093890890, p. 153), and the fact-graphs on a PST sheet represent what *would *be fact-propositions *if *that PST were actualized. By the way, a few paragraphs before the "red pencil" discussion in R 514--the fragmented 1909 manuscript itself, not the misfiled June 1911 letter to J. H. Kehler with its EG tutorial (R L231)--Peirce states, "So much, to explain in the second mode of clearness the three Modalities. The May be, The Actually is, The Would be." In other words, he explicitly reaffirms his definition of modality as possibility/actuality/necessity, although we do not have the preceding pages that presumably provide more details. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 10:05 PM John F Sowa wrote: > Jon, > > I admit that I was looking at the printed book, *Reasoning and the logic > of things*. In that book, the transcription shows a
Re:[PEIRCE-L]
Michael, I have always seen Peirce positing 'objective idealism" as essentially a *metaphysical* doctrine as he contrasts it with two other 'doctrines' in "The Architecture of Theories" and, in fact, refers to "objective idealism" *as* a 'theory' in his definition. The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to scientific logic as to common sense; since it requires us to suppose that a certain kind of mechanism will feel, which would be a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason, – an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and reasonable. Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known as Ockham’s razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a par, it seems to render both primordial. The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. As such, your notion that "the participial form gives the correct notion of *process* involved in reaching the state of idealism"* implies that 'objectified idealism' is, rather, a processural state to be reached. * *However, reflecting further on Peirce's definition in light of your participial version**, I can see how you might have come to that processual notion because of one word in Peirce's definition, namely, 'becoming'.* CSP: The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits *becoming *physical laws. (emphasis added) But 'becoming' is simply a necessary component of the theory, and especially in the context in which Peirce frames it in "The Architecture of Theories," contrasting it with two other doctrines (viz. neutralism and materialism). . . (A) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I would name *neutralism*; or, (B) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law alone as primordial, which is *materialism*; or, (C) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial, which is *idealism*. . . . I still would hold that 'objective idealism' is essentially a metaphysical doctrine. Best, Gary On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 3:04 AM Michael Shapiro wrote: > Gary, > > I think that using the participial form gives the correct notion of > *process* involved in reaching the state of idealism. > > M. > > -Original Message- > From: Gary Richmond > Sent: Feb 25, 2024 12:17 AM > To: Michael Shapiro > Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] > > > Michael, > > What do you think of Ivo Ibri's notion that "Synechism is, in fact, a > synthesis of Peirce’s idealism and realism, in the way that it is possible > to conceive a reality constituted by general relations and possibilities > under only one substance, viz., eidos or ideality" ? > https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-09625-9_17 > > I ask this as I'm still unclear as to what your distinction is between > 'objective idealism' and 'objectified idealism'. Peirce's notion -- as > controversial as it has been -- seems to me clear enough: > > > The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, > that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (Peirce, > CP 6.25). > > > "Objective idealism" seems to me to be a metaphysical idea, while > "objectified idealism" suggests (perhaps) a logical notion. In any case, > and again, I'm not certain as to what you mean by "objectified idealism." > > Best, > > Gary > > On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 3:35 AM Michael Shapiro > wrote: > >> John Sowa et al., >> >> >> >> In case y'all would like to read something of what I've had to say more >> recently (as in my last book, *The Logic of Language*, 2022), attached >> herewith is an article. >> >> M. >> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ >> ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at >> https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at >> https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all >> the links! >> ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON >> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to >> peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . >> ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to >> l...@list.iupui.edu with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the >> message and nothing in the body. More at >> https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . >> ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; >> and co-managed by him and Ben Udell. > > > _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE,
