Re: [PEIRCE-L] Contexts and hypostatic abstraction (was Lowell lectures...
On 12/14/2017 12:03 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote: This link appears to be broken. I apologize. I am so used to typing .pdf, that I forgot that this file is .htm. Correct URL: For more about these issues, see Alonzo Church's talk about "The Ontological Status of Women and Abstract Entities": http://jfsowa.com/ontology/church.htm John - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Contexts and hypostatic abstraction (was Lowell lectures...
Kirsti, My point is that both Peirce and Molière ridiculed the question - answer sequence... Molière ridiculed it, but Peirce was very serious. He discussed that example and others like it in many of his writings. See for example, CP 4.463. As another example,"A pear is ripe." Therefore, The pear possesses ripeness. I assume you agree in that nothing can be explained by a word, especially by a noun... NAMING IS NOT EXPLAINING Peirce and I would agree that both statements are true. But Peirce insisted that naming is a necessary first step toward discovering an explanation. Nominalists, such as Quine, refuse to take that step. That makes it impossible for them to explain the phenomenon. By refusing to name it, they "Block the way of inquiry." To find more references and commentary by Peirce scholars, type three words to Google: Peirce dormitive virtue That produces over 50,000 hits. The first one is to a 26-page article by Cathy Legg, with the title "Extension, intension, and dormitive virtue": https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/2811/Legg%20Dormitive%20virtue.pdf In that article, Cathy discusses the issues with many quotations by Peirce and others. And most of her arguments are against Quine, who refuses to accept nominalized verbs or adjectives. For example, Quine would accept a sentence of the form "X means Y, but he would adamantly refuse to talk about the nominalized form 'meaning'. Google also finds Don Roberts' book about existential graphs. On p. 66, Don cites CP 4.463. Then he continues: according to Peirce, the gist of mathematical reasoning lies in so "turning what one may call adjectival elements of thought into substantive elements of thought" (MS 462, p. 48). For more about these issues, see Alonzo Church's talk about "The Ontological Status of Women and Abstract Entities": http://jfsowa.com/ontology/church.pdf And by the way, I first came across Church's talk on Cathy Legg's web site. I added some references to articles by Goodman & Quine. I also wrote more about Quine, Carnap, and other nominalists in http://jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm John - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
[PEIRCE-L] Contexts and hypostatic abstraction (was Lowell lectures...
John, I'll rephrase my point (which you seem to have missed). We started from your post saying: JFS The distinction between a verb form such as 'asserting' and a noun such as 'assertion' is what Peirce called *hypostatic abstraction*. To illustrate the point, Peirce used a term that Molière invented as a joke in "Le Malade Imaginaire": Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva. Why does opium make one sleep: Because in it is dormitive virtue. My point is that both Peirce and Molière ridiculed the question - answer sequence & the ease and please such sequences get accepted. (I also took a look and noted that the Latin "quare" means both HOW and WHY. But this is just a side remark.) I cannot recall the context where Peirce used this example, but I think you are somewhat mistaken in what CSP meant with the concept: hypostasis. You view seems too narrow. Dominated by nouns too much. Well, it is also possible that CSP wrote down something on hypostasis which just does not make sense. I remember having a lot of trouble with the concept & being somewhat dissatisfied with the sample of his clarifications I had run across by then. I assume you agree in that nothing can be explained by a word, ecpecially by a noun. It is good to remember that Peirce objected grammarians for use of the term "pronouns" and exclaimed that nouns should be called "prodemonstratives". NAMING IS NOT EXPLAINING, this is Kirsti Määttänen's maxim, not as such found in Peirce's wrtitings. Thank you, John for taking up this quote from Molière. - A very, very interesting example. Kirsti kirst...@saunalahti.fi kirjoitti 12.12.2017 12:48: John, Thanks for changing the subject line! I'm well aware of hypostatic abstraction and I have given a lot of thought to its position in the overall philosophy of CSP. Which is the context for both EG's and his logical graphs in a more general sense. In a certain narrow sense hypostatic abstraction may be seen as (just a) distinction between verb forms and noun forms. But the relation between hypothesis and hypostasis is more complicated, as I assume you are well aware. Your example (opium) seems somewhat simplistic and misleading. (Of course it is difficult to express one' ideas in short mails like these!) In any experiment in the strict and narrow sense, a hypothesis in absolutely needed. Further, a hypothesis must initially present a certain kind of question. Only questions which imply a YES or NO answer will do. The next step (next act) is to transform the question into an assertion. Which is then experimentally tested. In order to perform a scientific experiment, there must be statements (verbal ones) on some existent entities taken together with reasons to believe that one/some/all other entitities will be affected in certain ways. (Thus presenting some kind of regular relation(s). ) If it were just stated "Opium – sleep", then it is asserted that there is (a well known substance) opium which is somehow related to (a well known) state of mind called sleep. (The expression is commonly called elliptic). Now, this (elliptic) expression does not state what kind this asserted relation is. (In English the word "sleep" as such does not by itself reveal whether it is used as a noun or a verb. In Finnish, which is verb dominated language , like (old) Latin and Greek were in this respect. ) To my mind Molière (and Peirce) ridiculed just as well the kinds of answers commonly offered and generally accepted to WHY – questions. My claim is that this is a cultural issue, not a scientific one. Peirce made great efforts to transform such (unconscious) habits of thought into philosophically and experimentally relevant and interesting ones. (Unfortunately my studies on Cultural Paradigms and their relation to sciences are published only in Finnish. Still, I can share thoughts based on these investigations of mine. (In the hope that they are not just exploited, but give credit, too) Existential quantifiers, theory of probabilities etc.were a part of this work by CSP. Just as were logical graphs. - JFS: " …Peirce said that the act of replacing the verb to noun leads to a hypothesis (hypostatic abstraction) that there exists something that causes sleep. That hypothesis led chemists to discover morphine as the substance with dormitive virtue. " Is this a summary interpretation? Or did CSP truly write so? - Either there is irony in the statement, or something is wrong. Or are you using the verb "to discover" in the sense of "leaning how to make in a laboratory a synthetic substance with the same kinds of effects that opium, a natural product, was already known to possess" ? "Opium facit dormire", opium makes people (and animals) sleep was a well know fact for ages before CSP. – The "WHY" question, on the other hand, is still not resolved. A chemical formula does not answer the question to the full, because there are
[PEIRCE-L] Contexts and hypostatic abstraction (was Lowell lectures...
Kirsti, I changed the subject line to "Contexts in language and logic" That was the title of the slides I cited, and I'm sorry that I forgot to include the name of the directory, "talks". Following is the correct URL: http://jfsowa.com/talks/contexts.pdf So a little note on the wording in: [JFS] In summary, the range of contexts for writing or using EGs is as open ended as the contexts for using any other kinds of signs. It's best to distinguish the act of drawing an EG from any use or speech act, such as assertion. Shouldn't the last word be "asserting", thus using the verb, not the noun? This may sound trifle, but I do think it is important to make clear whether and when one is talking about an act, or an entity. The distinction between a verb form such as 'asserting' and a noun such as 'assertion' is what Peirce called *hypostatic abstraction*. To illustrate the point, Peirce used a term that Molière invented as a joke in "Le Malade Imaginaire": Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva. Why does opium make one sleep: Because in it is dormitive virtue. Molière considered the term 'dormitive virtue' as a joke because it doesn't explain anything. Nominalists call it a meaningless name. But Peirce said that the act of replacing the verb by the noun leads to a hypothesis (hypostatic abstraction) that there exists something that causes sleep. That hypothesis led chemists to discover morphine as the substance with dormitive virtue. Further research led to a family of related chemicals named opioids. Among those chemicals are natural hormones named endorphins (from the phrase 'endogenous morphine'), which bind to opiate receptors in the brain. The act of turning a verb into a noun led chemists to search for something named by that noun. That research explains why opium has dormitive virtue and why people become addicted to taking opioids. And by the way, the English noun 'entity' is derived from the Latin noun 'entitas', which is derived from the verb form 'ens' (being). In Chinese, the same word form may be used as a noun, a verb, or an adjective. But in IndoEuropean languages, differences in the word form affect the way people think and act about the referent. John - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
