subject:"\[PEIRCE\-L\] signs, correlates and triadic relations"

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2017-02-02 Thread kirstima


Jerry,

CSP did use divisions into three, so trichotomies do belong to his 
philosophy. Only in his latest phase he devoted himself to developing 
triadicity as his key concept in his theory of the Categories.


So, trichotomies of signs, such as icon, index, symbol etc. are OK. But 
only for the limited purposes of Secondness. For these he used a 
three-partite graph. (Which does not belong to the set of special marks 
that I can use here).


Note also, that the existential graphs (the only he developed to his 
full satisfaction) presents his logical graphs ONLY from the viewpoint 
of Secondness.


There are intermediate logical steps needed to proceed into true 
triadicity. I have not found a clear presentation of these steps in the 
now available writings of CSP.


I'll leave others to respond for their own comments.

Best,

Kirsti


Jerry LR Chandler kirjoitti 2.2.2017 23:07:

List, Kirsti, Ben:

I am a bit puzzled by these responses, which appear strange to my way
of thinking.

By the standards of some, I am not a “Peircer”.

My aim is bio-medical reserch on specific quantitative issues; the
writings of CSP are studied in order to contribute to my understanding
of the logics of the (bio-medical) sciences. I attempt to place
CSP’s doctrines in context.

Thus, I interpret CSP’s writings and terminology in terms of early
21 st Century biological science / mathematics; while paying do heed
to the status of late 19 th Century status of language usage, science
and mathematics.

First, my post was in reference to the December, 2015 posts of
Franklin and Frederik and the discussion thread at that point. The
meaning of the CSP-coined term “dicisign” was the issue on my
mind. It was brought to my mind by recent progress on the diagrammatic
logic (I thank Frederik for his inspection of this topic and
especially for the introduction to the book by Greaves, The
Philosophical Status of Diagrams, which is an original and intensive
inquiry into CSP’s diagrammatic logic.)

Secondly, it is of critical importance to examine the precedence for
CSP’s usage of terms related to the count of the number “three”.
From the Apple Dictionary:
triad |ˈtrīˌad| noun1 a group or set of three connected people or
things: the triad of medication, diet, and exercise are necessary in
diabetes care.• a chord of three musical notes, consisting of a
given note with the third and fifth above it.• a Welsh form of
literary composition with an arrangement of subjects or statements in
groups of three.2 (also Triad) a secret society originating in China,
typically involved in organized crime.• a member of a
triad.DERIVATIVES triadic |trīˈadik| adjectivetriad ( sense 1)ORIGIN
mid 16th century: from French triade, or via late Latin from Greek
trias, triad-, from treis ‘three.’

Within this context, I was using the term “triad” in the sense of
three terms of CSP, two of his own creation.

In this context, in contrast to the usage by Frederik (as best as I
recall), I was using the three terms to acknowledge the modal sequence
of _inferences_. That is, CSP in his diagram of the eight terms that
infer the ninth term, “argument” includes these three terms as a
linear sequence of inferences. I view the eight terms as necessary (in
CSP’s mindset) to construct an an argument consistent with his
analysis of natural sorts and kinds (sinsigns).

My post merely recommended a book by a philosopher on the topic of
mereology, the study of part - whole illations. CSP is not mentioned
in the book in either the author index or the term index.

If one seeks to translate the In CSP meta-speak, a natural kind
(sinsign) is composed of parts which can be indexed and these parts
can then be composed into sentences (dicisigns) that are then composed
into arguments which are either true, false or indetermine. (For an
alternative (physical) worldview, R. Carnap’s book, The Logical
Structure of the World” (1930s). The sentence, "The union of units
unifies the unity” is an abstract statement about collections of
‘sinsigns” that can be decomposed into “indexes" and unified by
an argument to generate “legisigns."

I hope this clarifies my usage and places the reference to the 2015
posts in context of triadicity in the 21 st Century.

I believe that CSP’s logic goes deep into sublative structures of
natural sorts and kinds. Unfortunately, the depth of CSP’s
scientific logic is seldom recognized.

Cheers

Jerry


On Feb 1, 2017, at 5:02 PM, Benjamin Udell 
wrote:

Kirsti, Jerry, list,

Kirsti is generally correct. I remember years ago at peirce-l when
Orliaguet made the same point (with superfluous sarcasm) to Kirsti.
He quoted a passage by Peirce that required understanding the term
"triad" to refer to the three correlates in triadic action with one
another — sign-object-interpretant — and not to any other
trichotomy (three-way division); otherwise the passage by Peirce
became nonsense. Still it should be noted that on some occasions
Peirce used the term

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2017-02-02 Thread Benjamin Udell

Gary, Kirsti, list,

You wrote, "I've been a little "out of it" post surgery, but did someone
earlier quote that passage? In any event, I can't find it in this thread."

I was referring to a post by Orliaguet from many years ago, but nobody
else quoted it in the thread. I tried a few years ago to find it, and I
just spent an hour trying to find it. I think I've found it now but it
was a response not to Kirsti but to Inna Semetsky. I don't know how I
confused Kirsti with Inna, they're quite different. He also argued with
Kirsti around the same time, so I guess I just got mixed up years later.
(I found that in 2006 I mentioned Orliaguet's post and added that it was
"gratuitously passionate" without saying to whom it was a response
http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/archive?id=222334 ). Here's Orliaguet's post
from 2004:

http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=89853#89853

Re: Off list Re: Peirce a dualist? 2004-03-21 17:29:30 Orliaguet>

I'll quote the pertinent part. In it Orliaguet systematically
interchanges "triad" and "trichotomy" in quotes from Peirce, in order to
show that the terms are not well interchangeable. Note that Orliaguet
adds "[sic]" when he does it. (I don't quite get his quip about special
relativity.)

[===Begin quote Orliaguet===]
OK, but the words mean different things.
how does the following make sense to you? (I replaced 'pair' with
'dichotomy' to agree with special relativity)

"... Signs are divisible by three triads [sic]; first, according as
the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a
general law; ..."
" ... According to the third triad [sic], a Sign may be termed a
Rheme, a Dicisign or Dicent Sign (that is, a proposition or
quasi-proposition), or an Argument."

"Trichotomic relations [sic] are in three ways divisible by triads
[sic], according as the First, the Second, or the Third Correlate,
respectively, is a mere possibility, an actual existent, or a law.

"According to the second triad [sic], a Sign may be termed an Icon,
an Index, or a Symbol."

"Every physical force reacts between a dichotomy [sic] of particles,
either of which may serve as an index of the other. On the other
hand, we shall find that every intellectual operation involves a
trichotomy [sic] of symbols."

"But a trichotomy [sic] always involves three dichotomies [sic] and
three monads; and a dichotomy [sic] involves two monads."
[===End quote===]

The only case where Orliaguet's change seems to make more sense than
Orliaguet intended is "On the other hand, we shall find that every
intellectual operation involves a trichotomy [sic] of symbols." Peirce
actually wrote "triad of symbols". I would expect "trichotomy" there
(term, proposition, argument, or rheme, dicisign, argument). The Peirce
quote is from CP 2.300. CP 2.297-302 are from Chapter 2 of "The Art of
Reasoning" circa 1895. Finding Peirce's further discussion of symbols in
"The Art of Reasoning" in CP would take some work, if it's there at all.

You wrote, "I agree with Kirsti that the trio "sinsign, index and
dicisign" is NOT a trichotomy /because/ it does not involve a
categorially triadic relation."

Kirsti said that they _are_ a trichotomy:

[Quote Kirsti]
I feel a need to point out that "sinsign, index and dicisign"
presents a trichotomy of signs. Not a triad, but a t[h]ree-part
division, a classification, if you wish.

All triads and triadicity involve mediation. Triadicity also
involves meaning, not just signs.
[End quote]

I hadn't noticed that Kirsti said "sinsign, index and dicisign". You're
right, it's not a trichotomy in the strong Peircean sense, but it's not
quite a non-Peircean trichotomy either. It contains (in terms of the
three-trichotomy system, and borrowing the italicized terms from Liszka):
1. the second division from the _/presentative/_ trichotomy (sign's
relation to itself),
2. the second division from the _/representative/_ trichotomy (sign to
object), and
3. the second division from the _/interpretative/_ trichotomy (sign to
interpretant).

(Borrowing from Liszka in "A Synopsis of A General Introduction to the
Semeiotic of Charles S. Peirce")

http://web.archive.org/web/20030216133540/http://hosting.uaa.alaska.edu/afjjl/LinkedDocuments/LiszkaSynopsisPeirce.htm

Of course that points to the idea that sign-object-interpretant is
itself a First-Second-Third threefold, and some, such as Edwina and Jon
A., disagree.

You wrote "However it may appear in /that/ passage, I do not believe
that this holds for semeiotic "generally" (see, for example,"A Guess at
the Riddle," CP 1.369-372)."

Yes, sometimes, as in "A Guess at the Riddle," Peirce uses the term
"triad" to refer to a trichotomy that is not a triad of the three
correlates of semiotic action. I was just saying that it's clearer to
reserve "triad" for the semiotic triad, the correlates united in triadic
action, and

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2017-02-01 Thread Benjamin Udell


Kirsti, Jerry, list,

Kirsti is generally correct. I remember years ago at peirce-l when 
Orliaguet made the same point (with superfluous sarcasm) to Kirsti. He 
quoted a passage by Peirce that required understanding the term "triad" 
to refer to the three correlates in triadic action with one another — 
sign-object-interpretant — and not to any other trichotomy (three-way 
division); otherwise the passage by Peirce became nonsense. Still it 
should be noted that on some occasions Peirce used the term "triad" to 
refer to a merely classificatory trichotomy. But I think that, in 
Peircean contexts, Kirsti's point is not only supported in Peirce but 
also promotes much more clarity than does treating "triad" and 
"trichotomy" as interchangeable. Over the years commenters at peirce-l 
have tended to adhere to the distinction and FWIW I always stick to it.


Best, Ben

On 1/31/2017 5:22 PM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:

Hi,

I feel a need to point out that "sinsign, index and dicisign" presents 
a trichotomy of signs. Not a triad, but a tree-part division, a 
classification, if you wish.


All triads and triadicity involve mediation. Triadicity also involves 
meaning, not just signs.


Kirsti



Jerry LR Chandler kirjoitti 26.1.2017 21:07:

List, Franklin, Frederik:

The OUP book,

THE STRUCTURE OF OBJECTS

by Kathrin Koslicki (2008)

addresses some of the philosophy that appears to be difficult to
understand.

More particularly, it illuminates the triad, sinsign, index and
dicisign in relation to parts of the whole, the illation between the
identity, the individual and the particular that also considers the
chemical perspective.
Unfortunately, the intertwining of the meaning of this triad with
diagrammatic logic as described by Mark Greaves in “The
Philosophical Status of Diagrams” is beyond the scope of the logic
presented.

Cheers

Jerry


On Dec 12, 2015, at 4:10 PM, Franklin Ransom
 wrote:

Jerry, list,

Well, I'm glad that someone agrees with me, as far as the statement
went.

Jerry, I think that you raise some good questions. Though, I must
admit I'm not entirely sure what a couple of your terms mean, such
as 'coupling' and 'grammar'. As for 'unit', I'll guess you mean
something like what the original meaning of 'atom' meant, as
something basic and indivisible from which other, more complex
things can be built up out of.

I've decided to answer the questions in the order reverse to the
order in which they were presented.


Do you consider this part - whole coupling to be "mereological in
character"?


I'm not sure what that means, but since it's a part-whole relation,
and mereology is a study concerned with such relations, it would
seem almost tautological that it is "mereological in character". But
there are different and competing theories in mereology, and I don't
want to be taken as supporting any one of them specifically.


Is smoke a unit? Is a precept a unit?


I take it you meant "percept", not precept. I would say it depends
on the context; in one context, we could take percepts as our basic
elements, or units, while in another context of analysis we might
try to break it down more, as presumably someone in experimental
psychology might try to break down sense impressions to the physical
operations of the body and the thing experienced. Similarly with
smoke, if we just wanted to talk about the matter in terms of
commonly understood objects and signs, then it could be considered a
unit; but obviously, the chemist could try to break it down more
into the specific analysis of gases, and down to the atoms, of which
the smoke is composed, and so on further to particles and such.


If "whole work of understanding." implies a coupling of external
events with internal processes, then what is the nature of the
grammar the generates the coupling of the parts of the whole?


This is where the meaning of 'coupling' worries me, but I'll suppose
it's something like correspondence. Also not sure what grammar is
supposed to be in this context. By "whole work of understanding", I
meant the introduction of a concept, whether in perceptual judgment
or in an abduction, for explaining the phenomenon (percept); which
concept, when analyzed into possible further interactions with the
object of the percept, and then put to experimental test in
practical conduct, proves helpful for interacting with the object of
the percept. So the whole process of semiosis, up to the following
out of a scientific inquiry into the object, may be required to
grasp the (whole) object. Put in terms of correspondence, I suppose
that the fact that the object responds to our interactions in the
way we predict is what reveals that there is a correspondence
between our concept of the object and the object as it is in itself.

I'm not sure how to relate that to "the nature of the grammar the
generates the coupling of the parts of the whole". Part and whole
here were originally about the object as immediate and

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2017-01-26 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, Franklin, Frederik:

The OUP book,

The Structure of Objects

by Kathrin Koslicki (2008)

addresses some of the philosophy that appears to be difficult to understand.  

More particularly, it illuminates the triad, sinsign, index and dicisign in 
relation to parts of the whole, the illation between the identity, the 
individual and the particular that also considers the chemical perspective.
Unfortunately, the intertwining of the meaning of this triad with diagrammatic 
logic as described by Mark Greaves in “The Philosophical Status of Diagrams” is 
beyond the scope of the logic presented.

Cheers

Jerry



> On Dec 12, 2015, at 4:10 PM, Franklin Ransom  
> wrote:
> 
> Jerry, list,
> 
> Well, I'm glad that someone agrees with me, as far as the statement went.
> 
> Jerry, I think that you raise some good questions. Though, I must admit I'm 
> not entirely sure what a couple of your terms mean, such as 'coupling' and 
> 'grammar'. As for 'unit', I'll guess you mean something like what the 
> original meaning of 'atom' meant, as something basic and indivisible from 
> which other, more complex things can be built up out of.
> 
> I've decided to answer the questions in the order reverse to the order in 
> which they were presented.
> 
> Do you consider this part - whole coupling to be "mereological in character"?
> 
> I'm not sure what that means, but since it's a part-whole relation, and 
> mereology is a study concerned with such relations, it would seem almost 
> tautological that it is "mereological in character". But there are different 
> and competing theories in mereology, and I don't want to be taken as 
> supporting any one of them specifically.
> 
> Is smoke a unit?  Is a precept a unit?
> 
> I take it you meant "percept", not precept. I would say it depends on the 
> context; in one context, we could take percepts as our basic elements, or 
> units, while in another context of analysis we might try to break it down 
> more, as presumably someone in experimental psychology might try to break 
> down sense impressions to the physical operations of the body and the thing 
> experienced. Similarly with smoke, if we just wanted to talk about the matter 
> in terms of commonly understood objects and signs, then it could be 
> considered a unit; but obviously, the chemist could try to break it down more 
> into the specific analysis of gases, and down to the atoms, of which the 
> smoke is composed, and so on further to particles and such.
> 
> If "whole work of understanding." implies a coupling of external events with 
> internal processes, then what is the nature of the grammar the generates the 
> coupling of the parts of the whole?
> 
> This is where the meaning of 'coupling' worries me, but I'll suppose it's 
> something like correspondence. Also not sure what grammar is supposed to be 
> in this context. By "whole work of understanding", I meant the introduction 
> of a concept, whether in perceptual judgment or in an abduction, for 
> explaining the phenomenon (percept); which concept, when analyzed into 
> possible further interactions with the object of the percept, and then put to 
> experimental test in practical conduct, proves helpful for interacting with 
> the object of the percept. So the whole process of semiosis, up to the 
> following out of a scientific inquiry into the object, may be required to 
> grasp the (whole) object. Put in terms of correspondence, I suppose that the 
> fact that the object responds to our interactions in the way we predict is 
> what reveals that there is a correspondence between our concept of the object 
> and the object as it is in itself.
> 
> I'm not sure how to relate that to "the nature of the grammar the generates 
> the coupling of the parts of the whole". Part and whole here were originally 
> about the object as immediate and the object as dynamical, but relating what 
> is going on between external events and internal processes (i.e., 
> perception?), is a different kind of relating. Perhaps (and this is simply a 
> suggestion), we might think of there being the real object, which has a part 
> of it involved in perception, and there being the mind, which has a part of 
> it involved in perception, and these two (the real object and the mind) are 
> themselves parts of a semiosis, and so the 'grammar' that would ultimately be 
> appropriate would be that offered by semiotic.
> 
> What is the nature of the coupling between the smoke and the "whole" of the 
> experience?
> 
> Hmm, that's a good question. Partly it depends upon what is meant by 
> experience, and whether one subscribes to the doctrine of immediate 
> perception. If one includes perception and conception, and what is perceived 
> and conceived, then smoke would be a part of the experience; and with respect 
> to perception, it would be a part of smoke, but with respect to conception it 
> would be the whole of the smoke. But, it is good to

Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2016-01-10 Thread Franklin Ransom

Jerry, list,

Jerry, you wrote:

The terms "coupling" and "grammar" are used in the senses of CSP.  Coupling
> referring to CSP's paper on the logic of Copula.  Grammar in the typical
> sense that that one may find in the classical text by Otto Jesperson, *The
> Philosophy of Grammar *or in CSP's writings*.*

Ah, coupling in the sense of the copula. That is very helpful, thank you.

As for grammar, it is clear that you mean speculative grammar then, though
this has not always been clear to me in your posts using the term. Of
course speculative grammar is not the same thing as syntax, since a
division between syntax and semantics does not fit neatly in Peirce's
speculative grammar. This is largely because of the idea of the sign as a
triadic relation, which is not simply a syntactical structure to which a
semantics can be applied, but rather the very structure of meaning. The
reason I have been confused is that it has sometimes seemed to me that you
meant syntax rather than speculative grammar.

"Unit" being a term of one-ness, such as the 7 basic units of physics
> (mass, distance, time, temperature, light, electricity and "mole". Or
> integers as numbers. Equally applicable to the basic units of chemistry (92
> different logical structures with names) and biology (cells, etc).  Take
> you pick for meaningfulness of the term for you and for your personal
> philosophy.

Sounds good. I don't see this as necessarily in disagreement with what I
said, so I am content to leave it at that.

But, you wrote:
> Going beyond the part of the real that we perceive, and grasping it as a
> whole, requires the whole work of understanding.
> This is what motivated my questions:
> In what sense are your using "whole-ness" where the suffix -ness infers
> changing an adjective into a noun -in the grammatical sense of the
> wholeness of the smoke or the sense of the wholeness of interpretation?

Well, I did not use the term "whole-ness", so I suppose you meant that when
I use the term "whole", in one case it at least really means "whole-ness".
For one, I don't see the whole of the smoke as something grammatical, but
ontological. The whole of interpretation, on the other hand, will be
semiotic(al?), which will include the grammatical. I think this answers
your question, though it suggests that the idea of the whole is different
in kind in the case of smoke from what it is in the case of interpretation.
I am not prepared at this time to articulate the differences in these kinds
of wholes, because I have an intellectual project I am going to be devoting
myself to for a few months.

Is it correct to read this paragraph that for the term "smoke", one can
> assign an arbitrary number of different percepts?  And hence, the each
> different percept would lead to a different perceptual judgment?  In other
> words, in this specific case, the premises implicit to the scenario can
> lead to an arbitrary number of arguments that are consistent with symbols
> and legisigns?

Much hinges on the sense of 'arbitrary' here. If by arbitrary, you mean in
the sense of judgement as in arbitration, there is some truth to that. If
by arbitrary you mean willy-nilly or at random, then no. Consider that
there are different experiences we have of smoke. Suppose one had an
experience of smoke three days ago when sitting by a fireplace. Now suppose
one has an experience of smoke right now from someone smoking a cigarette
nearby. These are two different experiences, with different percepts,
resulting in different perceptual judgments. But the term 'smoke' is still
applied to both. If we wanted to treat of specific experiences of smoke
such that we could classify different kinds of smoke, there would be a need
for arbitrating which percepts of smoke had to with which specific kinds of
smoke. This would help in identifying different chemical components, which
later could help us to identify new experiences of smoke as being of one
kind or another, and so understand what the smoke is composed of when it is
experienced, and thus of how the smoke is related to other percepts and
what might be expected in future percepts in the vicinity of the smoke.

I'm not altogether sure I understood what the question was driving at
though, so I can only hope this helps clarify my way of thinking about it.

What do you wish to express when you think of "correspondence" in this
> context of yoking?

Well, I thought that I had just made that clear. Allow me to quote myself
from the passage to which you responded with this question, which I think
answers the question: "Put in terms of correspondence, I suppose that the
fact that the object responds to our interactions in the way we predict is
what reveals that there is a correspondence between our concept of the
object and the object as it is in itself." Correspondence, then, is just
the fact that the object responds in the way we predict it will, when we
interact with it. If it does not, then our idea of the object

Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of the units unifies the unity

2016-01-04 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

(This post was found in my email "Draft Box”. This response was drafted on Dec. 
13 th, 2015.

Franklin, Matt, List:

Some short responses to your concerns and further questions are raised.
On Dec 12, 2015, at 4:10 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:

> Jerry, list,
> 
> Well, I'm glad that someone agrees with me, as far as the statement went.
> 
> Jerry, I think that you raise some good questions. Though, I must admit I'm 
> not entirely sure what a couple of your terms mean, such as 'coupling' and 
> 'grammar'. As for 'unit', I'll guess you mean something like what the 
> original meaning of 'atom' meant, as something basic and indivisible from 
> which other, more complex things can be built up out of.

The terms "coupling" and "grammar" are used in the senses of CSP.  Coupling 
referring to CSP's paper on the logic of Copula.  Grammar in the typical sense 
that that one may find in the classical text by Otto Jesperson, The Philosophy 
of Grammar or in CSP's writings.
"Unit" being a term of one-ness, such as the 7 basic units of physics (mass, 
distance, time, temperature, light, electricity and "mole". Or integers as 
numbers. Equally applicable to the basic units of chemistry (92 different 
logical structures with names) and biology (cells, etc).  Take you pick for 
meaningfulness of the term for you and for your personal philosophy.
> 
> I've decided to answer the questions in the order reverse to the order in 
> which they were presented.
> 
> Do you consider this part - whole coupling to be "mereological in character"?
> 
> I'm not sure what that means, but since it's a part-whole relation, and 
> mereology is a study concerned with such relations, it would seem almost 
> tautological that it is "mereological in character". But there are different 
> and competing theories in mereology, and I don't want to be taken as 
> supporting any one of them specifically.

But, you wrote:
Going beyond the part of the real that we perceive, and grasping it as a whole, 
requires the whole work of understanding.

This is what motivated my questions:
In what sense are your using "whole-ness" where the suffix -ness infers 
changing an adjective into a noun -in the grammatical sense of the 
wholeness of the smoke or the sense of the wholeness of interpretation?

> 
> Is smoke a unit?  Is a precept a unit?
> 
> I take it you meant "percept", not precept. I would say it depends on the 
> context; in one context, we could take percepts as our basic elements, or 
> units, while in another context of analysis we might try to break it down 
> more, as presumably someone in experimental psychology might try to break 
> down sense impressions to the physical operations of the body and the thing 
> experienced. Similarly with smoke, if we just wanted to talk about the matter 
> in terms of commonly understood objects and signs, then it could be 
> considered a unit; but obviously, the chemist could try to break it down more 
> into the specific analysis of gases, and down to the atoms, of which the 
> smoke is composed, and so on further to particles and such.

Is it correct to read this paragraph that for the term "smoke", one can assign 
an arbitrary number of different percepts?  And hence, the each different 
percept would lead to a different perceptual judgment?  In other words, in this 
specific case, the premises implicit to the scenario can lead to an arbitrary 
number of arguments that are consistent with symbols and legisigns? 
> 
> If "whole work of understanding." implies a coupling of external events with 
> internal processes, then what is the nature of the grammar the generates the 
> coupling of the parts of the whole?
> 
> This is where the meaning of 'coupling' worries me, but I'll suppose it's 
> something like correspondence. Also not sure what grammar is supposed to be 
> in this context. By "whole work of understanding", I meant the introduction 
> of a concept, whether in perceptual judgment or in an abduction, for 
> explaining the phenomenon (percept); which concept, when analyzed into 
> possible further interactions with the object of the percept, and then put to 
> experimental test in practical conduct, proves helpful for interacting with 
> the object of the percept. So the whole process of semiosis, up to the 
> following out of a scientific inquiry into the object, may be required to 
> grasp the (whole) object. Put in terms of correspondence, I suppose that the 
> fact that the object responds to our interactions in the way we predict is 
> what reveals that there is a correspondence between our concept of the object 
> and the object as it is in itself.

The word "coupling" comes from the Gk / L. roots. It requires a minimum of a 
pair to be yoked together. (But not an ordered pair as in category theory or 
set theory.)
What do you wish to express when you think of "correspondence" in this context 
of yoking?
> 
> I'm not sure how to relate that to "the nature of the grammar the generates 
>

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

2015-12-20 Thread Franklin Ransom

Edwina,

I don't see this discussion as beneficial for either of us, and think it's
time to let it go. I appreciate your clearly very spirited attempt to
correct my misunderstanding and ignorance, and I'm sorry that we can't
understand one another on this issue.

-- Franklin

-

On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 5:56 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> Franklin -  briefly, I don't see language as 'just grammar' and therefore,
> disagree with your description of me:
>
> I suppose that you have somehow gotten stuck on the idea that the
> development of a language must be a development of its grammar.
>
> I don't see that the development of the knowledge base of a society
> requires a 'development of the grammar' of its language! [From what to
> what] Just as I don't see that the words/terms must be in place BEFORE
> the thought - as you seem to believe. I believe the opposite - the thought
> is expressed by a slew of new words or, using old words, by giving them new
> meanings.
>
> I see a language as a grammar and words - and the words can change their
> meaning, and also, new words can be created. But - I don't equate the
> cognitive nature of a group with their language. You seem to do this.
>
> Of course a word, since it is purely a symbol, only means what the human
> mind has defined it to mean. But - does man think only in words? Of course
> not - as Peirce noted, man uses both words and other external symbols (eg,
> graphs, diagrammes, mathematics) to articulate his thoughts.
>
> No, I don't pit Firstness versus Thirdness and I didn't say that it
> 'erases' Thirdness. Remember, that Thirdness is about generalities and it
> can, as such, permit multiple versions and meanings of the same symbol. Nor
> did I say that the human mind is independent of language - and wonder how
> you came up with both these conclusions about my views. BUT, MIND, as a
> natural axiom of the universe, IS independent of language - As I pointed
> out - it appears in the work of bees, of crystals. The human mind, with
> very little innate knowledge, is not independent of symbolic communication
> - which, in one format, language, operates within a grammatical structure
> expressed in 'bits' or words.
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Franklin Ransom <pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com>
> *To:* Peirce-L <PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu>
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 20, 2015 4:40 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>
> Edwina,
>
> My point is that ANY peoples, - since they have the capacity for thought -
>> and thus, ANY language, can achieve such a result - and it doesn't require
>> any 'development of the language'.
>
>
> It certainly does require that the language has developed the terms that
> allow more complex thoughts to be articulated.
>
> I suppose that you have somehow gotten stuck on the idea that the
> development of a language must be a development of its grammar. As I had
> been saying to Sungchul originally, language is a term than can be taken in
> a wider sense, and it depends in what sense that term is meant. Clearly,
> you want to identify language and grammar as the same thing. I believe that
> the vocabulary of a language is also part of what that language is, and the
> development of a language's available vocabulary is a development of that
> language. Shakespeare, for example, is commonly understood to have
> transformed the English language and made it much more expressive in terms
> of its vocabulary. Whether one should include the culture and history that
> goes with a language as being part of the language, is also a matter for
> consideration. I'm not trying to say that one should think of language in
> that way, only that this is one way to think about the meaning of the term;
> and one needs to get clear about what is meant by the term 'language' when
> discussing language. I said that at the outset, and I would have
> appreciated it if you read the original discussion and understood that
> before accusing me of erroneous views based on your own presumption as to
> what language is and what must be meant by its development. I attempted to
> clarify that by a language being capable of articulating scientific
> terminology, I did not mean that it required a change in its general
> grammar to do so, but that there is a community of thought, expressed in
> that language, that has developed in that language to express scientific
> concepts and understanding. Not every human language has come to develop in
> this way with respect to every science there is as of today, and there will
> no doubt be sciences in the future that language today, even the one we
> cur

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

2015-12-20 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Franklin - you seem to be taking this debate personally.  Where did I refer to 
your opinions as 'misunderstanding and ignorance'? Do you really feel that if 
someone disagrees with your views, that it therefore suggests that you both 
misunderstand and are ignorant??!!

As for 'spirited' - a series of interactions in a debate is just that; it 
doesn't imply any ulterior WILL- to -reform the other in the debate.

Best wishes,
Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Franklin Ransom 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 6:11 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


  Edwina,


  I don't see this discussion as beneficial for either of us, and think it's 
time to let it go. I appreciate your clearly very spirited attempt to correct 
my misunderstanding and ignorance, and I'm sorry that we can't understand one 
another on this issue.


  -- Franklin


  -


  On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 5:56 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

Franklin -  briefly, I don't see language as 'just grammar' and therefore, 
disagree with your description of me:

I suppose that you have somehow gotten stuck on the idea that the 
development of a language must be a development of its grammar.

I don't see that the development of the knowledge base of a society 
requires a 'development of the grammar' of its language! [From what to 
what] Just as I don't see that the words/terms must be in place BEFORE the 
thought - as you seem to believe. I believe the opposite - the thought is 
expressed by a slew of new words or, using old words, by giving them new 
meanings.

I see a language as a grammar and words - and the words can change their 
meaning, and also, new words can be created. But - I don't equate the cognitive 
nature of a group with their language. You seem to do this.

Of course a word, since it is purely a symbol, only means what the human 
mind has defined it to mean. But - does man think only in words? Of course not 
- as Peirce noted, man uses both words and other external symbols (eg, graphs, 
diagrammes, mathematics) to articulate his thoughts. 

No, I don't pit Firstness versus Thirdness and I didn't say that it 
'erases' Thirdness. Remember, that Thirdness is about generalities and it can, 
as such, permit multiple versions and meanings of the same symbol. Nor did I 
say that the human mind is independent of language - and wonder how you came up 
with both these conclusions about my views. BUT, MIND, as a natural axiom of 
the universe, IS independent of language - As I pointed out - it appears in the 
work of bees, of crystals. The human mind, with very little innate knowledge, 
is not independent of symbolic communication - which, in one format, language, 
operates within a grammatical structure expressed in 'bits' or words.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Franklin Ransom 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 4:40 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


  Edwina, 


My point is that ANY peoples, - since they have the capacity for 
thought - and thus, ANY language, can achieve such a result - and it doesn't 
require any 'development of the language'.


  It certainly does require that the language has developed the terms that 
allow more complex thoughts to be articulated.


  I suppose that you have somehow gotten stuck on the idea that the 
development of a language must be a development of its grammar. As I had been 
saying to Sungchul originally, language is a term than can be taken in a wider 
sense, and it depends in what sense that term is meant. Clearly, you want to 
identify language and grammar as the same thing. I believe that the vocabulary 
of a language is also part of what that language is, and the development of a 
language's available vocabulary is a development of that language. Shakespeare, 
for example, is commonly understood to have transformed the English language 
and made it much more expressive in terms of its vocabulary. Whether one should 
include the culture and history that goes with a language as being part of the 
language, is also a matter for consideration. I'm not trying to say that one 
should think of language in that way, only that this is one way to think about 
the meaning of the term; and one needs to get clear about what is meant by the 
term 'language' when discussing language. I said that at the outset, and I 
would have appreciated it if you read the original discussion and understood 
that before accusing me of erroneous views based on your own presumption as to 
what language is and what must be meant by its development. I attempted to 
clarify that by a language being capable of articulating scientific 
terminology, I did not mean that it required a change in its general grammar to 
do so, but that there is a community of thought, exp

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

2015-12-20 Thread Franklin Ransom

20, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> Franklin - thanks for your reply. Please see my comments below:
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Franklin Ransom <pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com>
> *To:* Peirce-L <PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu>
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 20, 2015 2:53 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>
> Edwina,
>
> I will quote myself from the response I gave to Matt Faunce right before
> replying to you.
>
> "Matt, list,
>
> Can you give your source for this?
>
>
> 1) I cannot. I confess that my statement was not well-thought out. I did
> not mean to imply anything about the possibility of developing scientific
> terminology in any given human language. What I meant "about the
> development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific
> terminology" is thinking about the case of where we find ourselves today,
> in the state in which scientific terminology has actually developed to the
> point it has. Obviously not every human language in history has developed
> to the point of having the terminology that the sciences today command. For
> example, the use of Latin words for developing terms identifying species in
> biology, and the whole host of such terms that have been developed. Or the
> development of mathematical language to the point where physical theories
> like the general and special theories of relativity can be articulated.
>
> EDWINA: I don't think that 'language' develops as a language and then
> possibly at some time, this development enables it to 'develop scientific
> terminology'. Indeed, I don't know what you mean by 'development of a
> language'. You seem to be suggesting that there is something in the grammar
> that must develop!?
> I think that the* terms* used to 'name scientific issues' can be created
> in any language. I don't see what has to develop in a language to render it
> then and only then, capable of 'articulating scientific terminology'.
>
> 2) I take it for granted though that it is widely acknowledged that human
> languages do differ with respect to the rules of construction and the
> things that can be said. If there has not been a vocabulary established in
> a given language for discussing projective geometry, people speaking only
> that language won't be able to say things about it without going through
> the work of developing a system of terminology in order to say things about
> it, or by translating from another language.
>
> EDWINA: Of course a language can develop a new system of terminology! The
> English and other modern-use languages have all developed such a capacity
> for 'discussing projective geometry'. Any language can and does develop new
> terms. All the time. That's the nature of thought, and thus, of language -
> its openness to new terms.
>
> 3) My essential point though was just to point out that trying to look to
> human language as a model for representing reasoning, or the subject matter
> of logic, is an ill-considered and ill-advised venture, precisely because
> there is so much difference between human languages. It's not as though a
> universal human language has been discovered by linguists, so I raised
> concerns about Sungchul's reliance on 'human language' as his model for
> representing reasoning. If one is to accept Sunchul's approach, we would
> have to admit that there are different kinds of reasoning, one for each
> human language, and logic would cease to be a general science of reasoning,
> and would become indistinguishable from linguistics."
>
> EDWINA: I agree with you that language should not be used as a model for
> representing reasoning or logic, since - although language IS logically
> ordered - this doesn't mean that its logical order is *also* a model for
> logical reasoning. Peirce repeats that 'reasoning is of a triadic
> constitution' (6.321) - and this doesn't fit in with the constitution of a
> language. As he also says, logic is 'independent of the structure of the
> language in which it may happen to be expressed" 3.430.And I also reject,
> as do you, that there are 'different kinds of reasoning, one for each human
> language'. But the very FACT that 'the world is chiefly governed by thought
> [1.349] means that it includes ALL three modal categories. Not just
> Thirdness, habit, a 'frozen language'.
>
> 4) If you think this statement does not clarify my position well enough,
> please let me know what specifically you feel continues to be an important
> issue. If it helps, by saying that human languages differ with respect to
> the things that can be said, I don't mean to imply that the language can't
> develop, say, a mathematical science

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

2015-12-20 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Franklin - thanks for your reply. Please see my comments below:
  - Original Message - 
  From: Franklin Ransom 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 2:53 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

  Edwina,

  I will quote myself from the response I gave to Matt Faunce right before 
replying to you.

  "Matt, list,

Can you give your source for this?

  1) I cannot. I confess that my statement was not well-thought out. I did not 
mean to imply anything about the possibility of developing scientific 
terminology in any given human language. What I meant "about the development of 
a language to the point where it can articulate scientific terminology" is 
thinking about the case of where we find ourselves today, in the state in which 
scientific terminology has actually developed to the point it has. Obviously 
not every human language in history has developed to the point of having the 
terminology that the sciences today command. For example, the use of Latin 
words for developing terms identifying species in biology, and the whole host 
of such terms that have been developed. Or the development of mathematical 
language to the point where physical theories like the general and special 
theories of relativity can be articulated.

  EDWINA: I don't think that 'language' develops as a language and then 
possibly at some time, this development enables it to 'develop scientific 
terminology'. Indeed, I don't know what you mean by 'development of a 
language'. You seem to be suggesting that there is something in the grammar 
that must develop!? 
  I think that the terms used to 'name scientific issues' can be created in any 
language. I don't see what has to develop in a language to render it then and 
only then, capable of 'articulating scientific terminology'.

  2) I take it for granted though that it is widely acknowledged that human 
languages do differ with respect to the rules of construction and the things 
that can be said. If there has not been a vocabulary established in a given 
language for discussing projective geometry, people speaking only that language 
won't be able to say things about it without going through the work of 
developing a system of terminology in order to say things about it, or by 
translating from another language.

  EDWINA: Of course a language can develop a new system of terminology! The 
English and other modern-use languages have all developed such a capacity for 
'discussing projective geometry'. Any language can and does develop new terms. 
All the time. That's the nature of thought, and thus, of language - its 
openness to new terms. 

  3) My essential point though was just to point out that trying to look to 
human language as a model for representing reasoning, or the subject matter of 
logic, is an ill-considered and ill-advised venture, precisely because there is 
so much difference between human languages. It's not as though a universal 
human language has been discovered by linguists, so I raised concerns about 
Sungchul's reliance on 'human language' as his model for representing 
reasoning. If one is to accept Sunchul's approach, we would have to admit that 
there are different kinds of reasoning, one for each human language, and logic 
would cease to be a general science of reasoning, and would become 
indistinguishable from linguistics."

  EDWINA: I agree with you that language should not be used as a model for 
representing reasoning or logic, since - although language IS logically ordered 
- this doesn't mean that its logical order is also a model for logical 
reasoning. Peirce repeats that 'reasoning is of a triadic constitution' (6.321) 
- and this doesn't fit in with the constitution of a language. As he also says, 
logic is 'independent of the structure of the language in which it may happen 
to be expressed" 3.430.And I also reject, as do you, that there are 'different 
kinds of reasoning, one for each human language'. But the very FACT that 'the 
world is chiefly governed by thought [1.349] means that it includes ALL three 
modal categories. Not just Thirdness, habit, a 'frozen language'. 

  4) If you think this statement does not clarify my position well enough, 
please let me know what specifically you feel continues to be an important 
issue. If it helps, by saying that human languages differ with respect to the 
things that can be said, I don't mean to imply that the language can't develop, 
say, a mathematical science that will permit it to talk about, say, principles 
of geometry. But if the work has not been done to develop that terminology, 
then the average member of that linguistic community will find it very 
challenging to think and express those principles, and will have to commit to 
developing the language in a determinate to talk about those sorts of ideas.
  EDWINA: I think that you have indeed explained your position - and I've 
outline

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

2015-12-20 Thread Franklin Ransom

articulate
> scientific terminology'  seems to me the same conclusion in this post.
>
> I note again, that you refer to the 'rules of construction' and suggest
> that in certain languages, these rules prevent scientific expression. How?
>
> My view is that ALL peoples have the SAME cognitive abilities, the same
> logical capabilities - and they can adapt their languages to express ANY
> thought. That includes new terms (we didn't refer to telephones 1,000 years
> ago). Therefore - a language, such as, eg, that of the Dobe !Kung, can
> readily either adapt and use the same word (telephone) or come up with
> their own term. BUT - *cognitively and logically, since we all are the
> same species* - then, we can all think the same way. Language - either in
> its grammar or its words - does not confine or define us.
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Franklin Ransom <pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com>
> *To:* Peirce-L <PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu>
> *Sent:* Sunday, December 20, 2015 2:48 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>
> Edwina, list,
>
> I never meant to imply that language determines thought in toto. So far as
> all thought is in signs, and a language represents a system of signs, and
> signs determine other signs, then it must be admitted that language
> determines signs and, since all thought is in signs, this means that
> language determines (some) thoughts. That doesn't mean that every thought
> anyone ever has is determined by a given language. It does mean that to a
> significant extent, our thoughts are determined by the language in which we
> express many of our thoughts, because those thoughts are to a great extent
> interpretants of that language.
>
> I find it absurd that my position has been represented as 'sociolinguistic
> relativism or determinism'. If you read what I said in attempting to
> respond to Sunchul's query regarding language, I discussed the different
> ways in which one could mean language, which included the consideration of
> logic as the language of thought, as well as considering that language,
> taken in a very broad sense, could include all the kinds of signs there
> are. Moreover, I never agreed that human language is an appropriate way to
> think of reasoning; in fact, I emphatically denied it, and was giving good
> reason for why logic, which does engage in the analysis of thought, could
> never be reduced to a study of human language.
>
> -- Franklin
>
> ---
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Franklin Ransom is using a discredited analysis of language, referred to
>> as sociolinguistic relativism or determinism, where language defines the
>> knowledge base; i.e., language determines thought. Followers of this linear
>> causality are such as Whorf-Sapir, and Basil Bernstein. It doesn't stand up
>> to empirical analysis.  But it enjoyed its own limelight within the works
>> of various people who saw language or culture as determinant of thought,
>> and even, there were some who suggested that some languages should be
>> eradicated (eg native) because the language was defined as 'primitive'
>> and prevented the users from thinking 'in a modern or scientific way'.
>>
>> Instead, the human brain creates language and thus, can express anything
>> by coming up with new terms and expressions.
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>> - Original Message -
>> *From:* Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com>
>> *To:* Peirce-L <PEIRCE-L@LIST.IUPUI.EDU>
>> *Sent:* Monday, December 14, 2015 11:48 AM
>> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>>
>>
>> On Dec 14, 2015, at 3:08 AM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
>>
>> Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the
>> things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the
>> development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific
>> terminology is not a development shared by every human language.
>>
>> Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from
>> two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for
>> the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward
>> Vajda writes
>>
>> " Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."
>>
>> "Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology
>> speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken

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

2015-12-19 Thread Franklin Ransom

Edwina, list,

I never meant to imply that language determines thought in toto. So far as
all thought is in signs, and a language represents a system of signs, and
signs determine other signs, then it must be admitted that language
determines signs and, since all thought is in signs, this means that
language determines (some) thoughts. That doesn't mean that every thought
anyone ever has is determined by a given language. It does mean that to a
significant extent, our thoughts are determined by the language in which we
express many of our thoughts, because those thoughts are to a great extent
interpretants of that language.

I find it absurd that my position has been represented as 'sociolinguistic
relativism or determinism'. If you read what I said in attempting to
respond to Sunchul's query regarding language, I discussed the different
ways in which one could mean language, which included the consideration of
logic as the language of thought, as well as considering that language,
taken in a very broad sense, could include all the kinds of signs there
are. Moreover, I never agreed that human language is an appropriate way to
think of reasoning; in fact, I emphatically denied it, and was giving good
reason for why logic, which does engage in the analysis of thought, could
never be reduced to a study of human language.

-- Franklin

---

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
wrote:

> Franklin Ransom is using a discredited analysis of language, referred to
> as sociolinguistic relativism or determinism, where language defines the
> knowledge base; i.e., language determines thought. Followers of this linear
> causality are such as Whorf-Sapir, and Basil Bernstein. It doesn't stand up
> to empirical analysis.  But it enjoyed its own limelight within the works
> of various people who saw language or culture as determinant of thought,
> and even, there were some who suggested that some languages should be
> eradicated (eg native) because the language was defined as 'primitive'
> and prevented the users from thinking 'in a modern or scientific way'.
>
> Instead, the human brain creates language and thus, can express anything
> by coming up with new terms and expressions.
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com>
> *To:* Peirce-L <PEIRCE-L@LIST.IUPUI.EDU>
> *Sent:* Monday, December 14, 2015 11:48 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>
>
> On Dec 14, 2015, at 3:08 AM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
>
> Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the
> things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the
> development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific
> terminology is not a development shared by every human language.
>
> Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from
> two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for
> the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward Vajda
> writes
>
> " Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."
>
> "Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology
> speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly
> industrialized society.  *There are no primitive languages*.  Virtually
> no linguist today would disagree with this statement."
>
>
> I don’t know about that quote in particular. However a decade or so back
> Michael Tomasello had a fascinating book on the evolution of language in *The
> Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. *While he doesn’t speak of it in
> Peircean terms he creates a model where it appears a certain kind of
> thirdness in terms of interpretation of signs develops. Once that evolves
> then he sees language’s capabilities as being largely there and develops
> fast. It’s been a while since I read it but I think he keeps the
> traditional dating of the evolution of language to around 80,000 - 100,000
> years. The evolution after that is really developing the language and
> culture once you have the capability.
>
> I know he has a newer text based upon some lectures he gave called *The
> Origins of Human Communication* although I’ve not read that one.
>
> --
>
>
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
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Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-18 Thread Helmut Raulien

Clark, list,

you wrote: " If you have the form but not the matter then it’s degenerate.". Thank you: This way eventually, after a long time, I think I understand why it is called degenerate. Maybe it is like this: "matter" may be understood for "reason", like in the question "Whats the matter?", in which someone is asking for the reason for somebody elses behaviour. The reason (matter) has generated the behaviour (form). In the same way, the reason for two parallel lines might have been an elliptical function, but with the focal points very far apart. At this border case of the function, that has generated the lines (the form), one cannot see or reverse-engineer the elliptical function (the matter). The reason has gotten lost (also in the other border case of the ellipse, in which the two focal points are very close, then the form is a circle). In a sign, the reason for sending the sign has been to transport a meaning. If someone does not see the meaning, but only the sign-vehicle, then for him the meaning, the reason for the sign, the matter of the sign, has gotten lost. If an alien visiting the earth first meets some penguins and dolphins, he/she/it probably does not see, that their fins have evolved from wings and legs, because the wing- and leg- aspects of the fins are degenerate, i.e. the generation of wings and legs is not present in the fins anymore.

Best,

Helmut

17. Dezember 2015 um 18:42 Uhr
"Clark Goble"

On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:32 PM, John Collier wrote:

In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their form alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated with them, making our understanding of something that is internal.

If I recall (don’t have time to look it up) but in at least a few places Peirce treats degeneracy as a form/matter distinction. If you have the form but not the matter then it’s degenerate. That is while he’s making the geometric analogy his distinctions are just the classic medieval distinctions among types of relations (especially as found in Scotus)

- - - - - -

A quick quote from my Peirce-L note. This is a post from 7/15/03 by Jean-Marc Orliaguet.

Peirce distinguished between the logical / formal categories and "metaphysical" (ontological?) categories, i.e. the categories of pure forms and categories of the "matter of phenomena". Considered as a form, a dyad is a dyad no matter if it is created by the mind by connecting two qualities or if it is the material dyad of a real fact. But ontologically, a dyad of pure imagination is not a material dyad, it is simply a dyad composed of two monads. Two qualities do not make matter. Peirce uses the terms genuine / degenerate categories to distinguish between them. A degenerate category has the same form but not the same "matter" as a genuine category.

example with secondness:

* genuine secondness : o_o

(no mind intervention, pure secondness, no mediation. Here you see the difference between Peirce and Hegel as well as between Peirce and some peirce-l extreme idealists )

* degenerate secondness : o.o

using here : '' to represent the intervention of a mind (through a mediating third, a scaffolding, which is "forgotten", erased)

Peirce: CP 1.452 452. The metaphysical categories of quality, fact, and law, being categories of the matter of phenomena, do not precisely correspond with the logical categories of the monad, the dyad, and the polyad or higher set, since these are categories of the forms of experience. The dyads of monads, being dyads, belong to the category of the dyad. But since they are composed of monads as their sole matter, they belong materially to the category of quality, or the monad in its material mode of being. It cannot be regarded as a fact that scarlet is red. It is a truth; but it is only an essential truth. It is that in being which corresponds in thought to Kant's analytical judgment. It is a dyadism latent in monads.

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

2015-12-18 Thread Helmut Raulien

Supplement: So, degeneracy is not a de-evolution or reverse (de-) generation, but an incomplete or wrong comprehension of how something has been generated (and so the reason why it has), based on the fact, that the generation process is not easily observable, not observable at all, or not observable due to a lack of observation-competence by the observer. All in all it is a matter of reason and meaning not conveyed. This way one can say, that the immediate (internal) object is degenerate (because no sign can be able to represent each and every aspect of a dynamical object outside of the sign). This goes along with your internal-external-distinction. And also the two modes of the interpretant, which are not the final one, are. Now the question for me remains: What about the sign classes? In case this consideration is correct so far, can it be transferred to sign classes in a way, that one can say: firstness of secondness or secondness of thirdness is degenerate, that would be eg. a rhematic indexical legisign (eg. by Peirce: Demonstrative pronoun)? Demonstrative pronouns are eg "this", "that", "these", "those". Is there a loss of meaning or reason too? I have the impression that it is so, but cannot fix the thougt now.

Best,

Helmut

Clark, list,

Best,

Helmut

17. Dezember 2015 um 18:42 Uhr
"Clark Goble"

On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:32 PM, John Collier wrote:

- - - - - -

A quick quote from my Peirce-L note. This is a post from 7/15/03 by Jean-Marc Orliaguet.

example with secondness:

* genuine secondness : o_o

(no mind intervention, pure secondness, no mediation. Here you see the difference between Peirce and Hegel as well as between Peirce and some peirce-l extreme idealists )

* degenerate secondness : o.o

using here : '' to represent the intervention of a mind (through a mediating third, a scaffolding, which is "forgotten", erased)

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

2015-12-18 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 18, 2015, at 1:26 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> "If you have the form but not the matter then it’s degenerate.". Thank you: 
> This way eventually, after a long time,  I think I understand why it is 
> called degenerate.

Yeah, it’s a terminology I kind of struggle with a lot too. I kept confusing it 
with the idea of simply one term missing but that’s not really right. While I 
don’t think the form/matter covers everything, it at least gets the mind 
oriented to the direction Peirce was thinking.

I really liked that post from Jean-Marc back in the day here. First I think he 
correctly notes we have to distinguish between logical categories and 
metaphysical categories. (I’d add in phenomenological categories) I think 
conflating all those leads to confusion when reading Peirce in particular. (As 
I think we’ve seen with the extended discussion this month) Honestly reading a 
quick primer on medieval theories of relations helped me the most as I’m 
convinced those are the main influence on Peirce even if he’s also coming from 
the physics/chemistry of his day as well.

The part of Jean-Marc’s post I especially liked was how degenerate secondness 
has mediation but that often this mediation is forgotten, erased or effaced. 
This has some big parallels to certain strains of semiotics/phenomenology in 
Continental philosophy as well as gets at the common critiques of that position 
from a Peircean perspective. (Which I think misses what’s going on due to the 
issue of degeneracy)  

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

2015-12-17 Thread Edwina Taborsky

I agree with John's outline of the difference between genuine and degenerate 
modes.

The genuine is, as he points out, a 'generality', i.e., a 'pure'  or 'absolute' 
form, while the degenerate has slipped in a different mode, a deviation from 
that pure mode.

So, genuine Thirdness is pure reason. But Thirdness with a bit of Secondness 
mixed in, is 'degenerate' in that it has added some external kinetic active 
force to that pure reason. Thirdness with Firstness mixed in is degenerate in 
that it has added some internal feeling to that pure reason.

As Peirce said in the section quoted by Clark  - 1.365, the degenerate Second 
has added a bit of the organizational mode of Firstness to its action - so it 
is no longer just a pure external force of one thing on another, but has an 
additional internal force of pure unrelated energy. Mix the two - and you get 
an organizational mode quite different and providing more variety.

I don't think one needs to even bring in any geometric or chemical examples 
unless one wants to show how these categories are prevalent everywhere.

Edwina


  - Original Message - 
  From: John Collier 
  To: Jerry LR Chandler ; Peirce-L 
  Cc: Clark Goble ; Jeffrey Brian Downard 
  Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2015 12:32 AM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


  Jerry,

   

  I think you are making this seem more mysterious than it is. My understanding 
is that degeneracy means that there is a restriction from the general case 
(generate) to a less than general case. This is how Robert Rosen, e.g., uses 
the notion, and I don’t see any good reason to think that Peirce is using it 
any differently. Basically, something is degenerate if it obscures generic 
differences in the way it can be produced. If we treat the degenerate as 
general, then we will be likely to make bad inferential extensions to general 
cases by overlooking crucial differences in the general cases.

   

  In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the 
distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their form 
alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated with 
them, making our understanding of something that is internal. The alternative 
is to regard them in terms of their true causes, which are external or 
extrinsic, and may be multiple for the same (indistinguishable internally) 
cases.

   

  A couple of examples are 1) spectral lines that can be produced by more than 
one transition that nonetheless indicate the same energy levels, and 2) isomers 
of compounds when they are regarded just in terms of stoichiometric relations, 
ignoring their chirality.

   

  John Collier

  Professor Emeritus, UKZN

  http://web.ncf.ca/collier

   

  From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
  Sent: Thursday, 17 December 2015 01:52
  To: Peirce-L
  Cc: Clark Goble; Jeffrey Brian Downard
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

   

  Clark, Jeffrey, List:

   

  Allow me to expand on the nature of my ignorance of the meaning of degeneracy.

   

  Clearly, CSP's usage of this term with respect to mathematical objects, that 
is conic sections, is crisp and meaningful within the Pythagorean-Cartesian 
perspective of relations.  Jeff's reference is crisp and, of course, well known 
within the scientific community. 

   

  In this case, the generacy, which must be antecedent to the degeneracy, is 
also clear.  The two lines cross or they do not cross.  If they cross, then a 
new object is generated, a cone and it mirror image.  And this diagram plays a 
critical role in the physics of the Minkowski's "space-time" debacle. 

   

  My feeling is that this notion of "degeneracy" is difficult, if not 
intractable, when applied to ordinary linguistic terms which do not imply a 
"crossing" or parallelism.  

  Another example is, of course, chemical atoms or molecules.  

   

  I feel a different notion for generating functions is necessary both 
chemistry and biology..

   

  However, from:

  On Dec 16, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Clark Goble wrote:





  But the relations of
  reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the
  mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate
  seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external
  seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one
  thing upon another. (CP 1.365 (1890))

   

  one get's a better notion of the concept I was missing.

   

  Here, CSP brings the concepts of internal and external, also known as 
intrinsic and extrinsic properties in physical-chemical textbooks. 

   

  As I understand this quote, CSP is contrasting the relations of reason 
(logic?) with the relation that everything has with itself, namely, it 
identity.  In other words, the "intrinsic proper

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

2015-12-17 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:32 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the 
> distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their 
> form alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated 
> with them, making our understanding of something that is internal. 

If I recall (don’t have time to look it up) but in at least a few places Peirce 
treats degeneracy as a form/matter distinction. If you have the form but not 
the matter then it’s degenerate. That is while he’s making the geometric 
analogy his distinctions are just the classic medieval distinctions among types 
of relations (especially as found in Scotus)

- - - - - - 

A quick quote from my Peirce-L note. This is a post from 7/15/03 by Jean-Marc 
Orliaguet.

Peirce distinguished between the logical / formal categories and "metaphysical" 
(ontological?) categories, i.e. the categories of pure forms and categories of 
the "matter of phenomena". Considered as a form, a dyad is a dyad no matter if 
it is created by the mind by connecting two qualities or if it is the material 
dyad of a real fact. But ontologically, a dyad of pure imagination is not a 
material dyad, it is simply a dyad composed of two monads. Two qualities do not 
make matter.  Peirce uses the terms genuine / degenerate categories to 
distinguish between them. A degenerate category has the same form but not the 
same "matter" as a genuine category.

example with secondness:

* genuine secondness :   o_o

(no mind intervention, pure secondness, no mediation. Here you see the 
difference between Peirce and Hegel as well as between Peirce  and some 
peirce-l extreme idealists )

* degenerate secondness : o.o

using here : '' to represent the intervention of a mind (through a 
mediating third, a scaffolding, which is "forgotten", erased)

Peirce: CP 1.452 452. The metaphysical categories of quality, fact, and 
law, being categories of the matter of phenomena, do not precisely correspond 
with the logical categories of the monad, the dyad, and the polyad or higher 
set, since these are categories of the forms of experience. The dyads of 
monads, being dyads, belong to the category of the dyad. But since they are 
composed of monads as their sole matter, they belong materially to the category 
of quality, or the monad in its material mode of being. It cannot be regarded 
as a fact that scarlet is red. It is a truth; but it is only an essential 
truth. It is that in being which corresponds in thought to Kant's analytical 
judgment. It is a dyadism latent in monads.

JM

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

2015-12-17 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

John, List:

Thanks for the further information, John, in the private email, posted below.

I now understand your position more fully.

My understanding is now clarified.  
The meaning of the term "degeneracy" is ambiguous, even though the mathematical 
usage is crisp. 
It's meaning depends on the initial perspective/intent of the author when 
removed from the mathematical context.

Thanks, John.

Cheers

Jerry




On Dec 17, 2015, at 5:32 AM, John Collier wrote:

> Jerry,
>  
> I here give more justification of what I said.
>  
> John Collier
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>  
> From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, 17 December 2015 13:10
> To: John Collier
> Cc: Peirce-L; Clark Goble; Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>  
> John:
>  
> If you find your arguments below to be compelling, then the issue is no 
> longer a issue for you.
>  
> These arguments are not compelling to me.  See comment in text.
>  
>  
> On Dec 16, 2015, at 11:32 PM, John Collier wrote:
> 
> 
> Jerry,
>  
> I think you are making this seem more mysterious than it is.
>  
> Mysterious?  Strange choice of words.
>  
> [John Collier] What is strange? You seem to me to be making something fairly 
> straight forward. I see this as mystericism. It is always possible, but 
> seldom productive.
>  
> My understanding is that degeneracy means that there is a restriction from 
> the general case (generate) to a less than general case. This is how Robert 
> Rosen, e.g., uses the notion, and I don’t see any good reason to think that 
> Peirce is using it any differently.
>  
> Huh?  I do not understand why the usage of another author a century later is 
> relevant to another's usage a century earlier.
>  
> [John Collier] Both are getting their usage from usages in mathematics and 
> physics. I thought it might help you.
>  
> Basically, something is degenerate if it obscures generic differences in the 
> way it can be produced.
>  
> Huh?  CSP's usage start with the generative operation of crossing two lines. 
>  
> [John Collier] And you are stuck there, it seems, and haven’t got any 
> further. You need to pay more attention to what he says about the relations 
> between the various types of curves.
>  
> If we treat the degenerate as general, then we will be likely to make bad 
> inferential extensions to general cases by overlooking crucial differences in 
> the general cases.
>  
> In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the 
> distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their 
> form alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated 
> with them, making our understanding of something that is internal. The 
> alternative is to regard them in terms of their true causes, which are 
> external or extrinsic, and may be multiple for the same (indistinguishable 
> internally) cases.
>  
> A couple of examples are 1) spectral lines that can be produced by more than 
> one transition that nonetheless indicate the same energy levels, and 2) 
> isomers of compounds when they are regarded just in terms of stoichiometric 
> relations, ignoring their chirality.
>  
> Both examples are of interest as generative logical operations, not 
> degenerative operations. 
> In the case of genesis of isomers, I see no reason to separate out optical 
> isomers as a special case. 
> Every form of isomerization in the notation of chemisty is of a different 
> sort or kind with respect to a given molecular formula. 
>  
> [John Collier] Again, you are making things more difficult than they need be. 
> Degeneracy is relative, after all.
>  
> John, the following question comes to mind:
>  
> As you are probably aware, bacteria (such as E, coli) can generate their 
> internal carbon structures from many, many different carbon sources. 
> Furthermore, they have a "pecking order" for selecting one exterion carbon 
> source before another for internal constructions.  For example, one isomer of 
> hexose before a different isomers..
>  
>  Is this generacy or degeneracy?
> [John Collier] More generate than if they just used, say, stoichocemic values.
>  
> A second question is similar.  If a biological specie emerges as a 
> consequence of loss of functionality, would you consider this generacy or 
> degeneracy?
>  
> [John Collier] Deeneracy.


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

2015-12-17 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

John:

If you find your arguments below to be compelling, then the issue is no longer 
a issue for you.

These arguments are not compelling to me.  See comment in text.


On Dec 16, 2015, at 11:32 PM, John Collier wrote:

> Jerry,
>  
> I think you are making this seem more mysterious than it is.

Mysterious?  Strange choice of words.

> My understanding is that degeneracy means that there is a restriction from 
> the general case (generate) to a less than general case. This is how Robert 
> Rosen, e.g., uses the notion, and I don’t see any good reason to think that 
> Peirce is using it any differently.

Huh?  I do not understand why the usage of another author a century later is 
relevant to another's usage a century earlier.

> Basically, something is degenerate if it obscures generic differences in the 
> way it can be produced.

Huh?  CSP's usage start with the generative operation of crossing two lines. 
> If we treat the degenerate as general, then we will be likely to make bad 
> inferential extensions to general cases by overlooking crucial differences in 
> the general cases.
>  
> In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the 
> distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their 
> form alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated 
> with them, making our understanding of something that is internal. The 
> alternative is to regard them in terms of their true causes, which are 
> external or extrinsic, and may be multiple for the same (indistinguishable 
> internally) cases.
>  
> A couple of examples are 1) spectral lines that can be produced by more than 
> one transition that nonetheless indicate the same energy levels, and 2) 
> isomers of compounds when they are regarded just in terms of stoichiometric 
> relations, ignoring their chirality.
>  
Both examples are of interest as generative logical operations, not 
degenerative operations. 
In the case of genesis of isomers, I see no reason to separate out optical 
isomers as a special case. 
Every form of isomerization in the notation of chemisty is of a different sort 
or kind with respect to a given molecular formula. 

John, the following question comes to mind:

As you are probably aware, bacteria (such as E, coli) can generate their 
internal carbon structures from many, many different carbon sources. 
Furthermore, they have a "pecking order" for selecting one exterion carbon 
source before another for internal constructions.  For example, one isomer of 
hexose before a different isomers..

 Is this generacy or degeneracy?

A second question is similar.  If a biological specie emerges as a consequence 
of loss of functionality, would you consider this generacy or degeneracy?

Cheers

Jerry  


> John Collier
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>  
> From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, 17 December 2015 01:52
> To: Peirce-L
> Cc: Clark Goble; Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations
>  
> Clark, Jeffrey, List:
>  
> Allow me to expand on the nature of my ignorance of the meaning of degeneracy.
>  
> Clearly, CSP's usage of this term with respect to mathematical objects, that 
> is conic sections, is crisp and meaningful within the Pythagorean-Cartesian 
> perspective of relations.  Jeff's reference is crisp and, of course, well 
> known within the scientific community. 
>  
> In this case, the generacy, which must be antecedent to the degeneracy, is 
> also clear.  The two lines cross or they do not cross.  If they cross, then a 
> new object is generated, a cone and it mirror image.  And this diagram plays 
> a critical role in the physics of the Minkowski's "space-time" debacle. 
>  
> My feeling is that this notion of "degeneracy" is difficult, if not 
> intractable, when applied to ordinary linguistic terms which do not imply a 
> "crossing" or parallelism.  
> Another example is, of course, chemical atoms or molecules.  
>  
> I feel a different notion for generating functions is necessary both 
> chemistry and biology..
>  
> However, from:
> On Dec 16, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
> 
> 
> But the relations of
> reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the
> mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate
> seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external
> seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one
> thing upon another. (CP 1.365 (1890))
>  
> one get's a better notion of the concept I was missing.
>  
> Here, CSP brings the concepts of internal and external, also kno

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

2015-12-16 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

Clark, Jeffrey, List:

Allow me to expand on the nature of my ignorance of the meaning of degeneracy.

Clearly, CSP's usage of this term with respect to mathematical objects, that is 
conic sections, is crisp and meaningful within the Pythagorean-Cartesian 
perspective of relations.  Jeff's reference is crisp and, of course, well known 
within the scientific community. 

In this case, the generacy, which must be antecedent to the degeneracy, is also 
clear.  The two lines cross or they do not cross.  If they cross, then a new 
object is generated, a cone and it mirror image.  And this diagram plays a 
critical role in the physics of the Minkowski's "space-time" debacle. 

My feeling is that this notion of "degeneracy" is difficult, if not 
intractable, when applied to ordinary linguistic terms which do not imply a 
"crossing" or parallelism.  
Another example is, of course, chemical atoms or molecules.  

I feel a different notion for generating functions is necessary both chemistry 
and biology..

However, from:
On Dec 16, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

> But the relations of
> reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the
> mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate
> seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external
> seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one
> thing upon another. (CP 1.365 (1890))

one get's a better notion of the concept I was missing.

Here, CSP brings the concepts of internal and external, also known as intrinsic 
and extrinsic properties in physical-chemical textbooks. 

As I understand this quote, CSP is contrasting the relations of reason (logic?) 
with the relation that everything has with itself, namely, it identity.  In 
other words, the "intrinsic properties" in physical - chemical terms.

A curious conjecture emerges from CSP's views.  
Thus, one could conjecture that the relations of reason and external properties 
are percepts of thermodynamics.  Further, that the self-relations of identity 
are the antecepts of quantum mechanics. 

Amusing to think about.  Any other conjectures of interest?

A bit of light has been cast on whatever CSP may have intended. 

Cheers

Jerry

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

2015-12-16 Thread Jeffrey Brian Downard

List,

Here is a simple illustration with explanations of degenerate forms of conic 
curves:  http://www.open.edu/openlearnworks/mod/page/view.php?id=43857

There are two interesting features of this analogy.  The first is that there 
are continuous transformations between the various curves and their degenerate 
forms (point, line, pair of lines).  As such, the degenerate forms are limiting 
cases between the kinds of curves.  Another interesting feature is that, 
considered topologically, the surfaces characterized by taking such curves as 
the horizon in a perspective system that is taken to be a part of a larger 
projective surface are different kinds of surfaces.

--Jeff

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

From: Clark Goble [cl...@lextek.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 3:01 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

On Dec 16, 2015, at 1:48 PM, Helmut Raulien 
<h.raul...@gmx.de<mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de>> wrote:

Degenerateness, I think, is a relation too. So, something may be (regarded for) 
degenerate, if you look at it as a mode. Because degeneracy is a trait of 
modes. But if you look at the same thing regarding it for a sign (a triadic 
sign), then degeneracy is not something you can assign to it. And anything can 
be interpreted for a triadic sign. It is the point of view that makes it. 
Anyway, I think, that "degenerate" is merely a Peircean technical term, and has 
nothing to do with the opposite of  "to generate". Subsumption or 
classification has to do with generation and inheritance: This is a 
one-way-affair, in which there is only generation, but never a degeneration. In 
compositional hierarchy you may say, that something complex is made of less 
complex things, and ok, you may substitute "less complex" with "degenerate", 
but that also has nothing to do with the opposite of  "to generate". All in 
all, I merely wanted to say, that I do not like the term "degenerate", because 
it leads to nothing but astray.

I may be completely off here but doesn’t the use of degeneracy as a term arise 
from geometry for Peirce? So a pair of parallel lines is a degenerate conic (as 
opposed to the curves that are usually generated by a conic section)



Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual exemplification
of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer upon this preliminary
exposition of them. There is, however, one feature of them upon which it is
quite indispensable to dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of
Secondness and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this
in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so called, or they
are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight lines is called a degenerate
conic. So plane cubic curves are either the genuine curves of the third
order, or they are conics paired with straight lines, or they consist of
three straight lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics.
Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate
sort which does not exist as such, but is only so conceived. The medieval
logicians (following a hint of Aristotle) distinguished between real
relations and relations of reason. A real relation subsists in virtue of a
fact which would be totally impossible were either of the related objects
destroyed; while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one
only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of the relates.
Such are all resemblances: for any two objects in nature resemble each
other, and indeed in themselves just as much as any other two; it is only
with reference to our senses and needs that one resemblance counts for more
than another. Rumford and Franklin resembled each other by virtue of being
both Americans; but either would have been just as much an American if the
other had never lived. On the other hand, the fact that Cain killed Abel
cannot be stated as a mere aggregate of two facts, one concerning Cain and
the other concerning Abel. Resemblances are not the only relations of
reason, though they have that character in an eminent degree. Contrasts and
comparisons are of the same sort. Resemblance is an identity of characters;
and this is the same as to say that the mind gathers the resembling ideas
together into one conception. Other relations of reason arise from ideas
being connected by the mind in other ways; they consist in the relation
between two parts of one complex concept, or, as we may say, in the relation
of a complex concept to itself, in respect to two of its parts. This brings
us to consider a sort of degenerate Secondness that does not fulfill the
definition of a relation of reason. Identity is the relation that everything
bears to itself: Lucullus dines with Lucullus. Again,

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

2015-12-16 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 16, 2015, at 1:48 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> Degenerateness, I think, is a relation too. So, something may be (regarded 
> for) degenerate, if you look at it as a mode. Because degeneracy is a trait 
> of modes. But if you look at the same thing regarding it for a sign (a 
> triadic sign), then degeneracy is not something you can assign to it. And 
> anything can be interpreted for a triadic sign. It is the point of view that 
> makes it. Anyway, I think, that "degenerate" is merely a Peircean technical 
> term, and has nothing to do with the opposite of  "to generate". Subsumption 
> or classification has to do with generation and inheritance: This is a 
> one-way-affair, in which there is only generation, but never a degeneration. 
> In compositional hierarchy you may say, that something complex is made of 
> less complex things, and ok, you may substitute "less complex" with 
> "degenerate", but that also has nothing to do with the opposite of  "to 
> generate". All in all, I merely wanted to say, that I do not like the term 
> "degenerate", because it leads to nothing but astray.

I may be completely off here but doesn’t the use of degeneracy as a term arise 
from geometry for Peirce? So a pair of parallel lines is a degenerate conic (as 
opposed to the curves that are usually generated by a conic section)

Thus, the whole book being nothing but a continual exemplification
of the triad of ideas, we need linger no longer upon this preliminary
exposition of them. There is, however, one feature of them upon which it is
quite indispensable to dwell. It is that there are two distinct grades of
Secondness and three grades of Thirdness. There is a close analogy to this
in geometry. Conic sections are either the curves usually so called, or they
are pairs of straight lines. A pair of straight lines is called a degenerate
conic. So plane cubic curves are either the genuine curves of the third
order, or they are conics paired with straight lines, or they consist of
three straight lines; so that there are the two orders of degenerate cubics.
Nearly in this same way, besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate
sort which does not exist as such, but is only so conceived. The medieval
logicians (following a hint of Aristotle) distinguished between real
relations and relations of reason. A real relation subsists in virtue of a
fact which would be totally impossible were either of the related objects
destroyed; while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one
only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of the relates.
Such are all resemblances: for any two objects in nature resemble each
other, and indeed in themselves just as much as any other two; it is only
with reference to our senses and needs that one resemblance counts for more
than another. Rumford and Franklin resembled each other by virtue of being
both Americans; but either would have been just as much an American if the
other had never lived. On the other hand, the fact that Cain killed Abel
cannot be stated as a mere aggregate of two facts, one concerning Cain and
the other concerning Abel. Resemblances are not the only relations of
reason, though they have that character in an eminent degree. Contrasts and
comparisons are of the same sort. Resemblance is an identity of characters;
and this is the same as to say that the mind gathers the resembling ideas
together into one conception. Other relations of reason arise from ideas
being connected by the mind in other ways; they consist in the relation
between two parts of one complex concept, or, as we may say, in the relation
of a complex concept to itself, in respect to two of its parts. This brings
us to consider a sort of degenerate Secondness that does not fulfill the
definition of a relation of reason. Identity is the relation that everything
bears to itself: Lucullus dines with Lucullus. Again, we speak of
allurements and motives in the language of forces, as though a man suffered
compulsion from within. So with the voice of conscience: and we observe our
own feelings by a reflective sense. An echo is my own voice coming back to
answer itself. So also, we speak of the abstract quality of a thing as if it
were some second thing that the first thing possesses. But the relations of
reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the
mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate
seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external
seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one
thing upon another. (CP 1.365 (1890))
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-16 Thread John Collier

Jerry,

I think you are making this seem more mysterious than it is. My understanding 
is that degeneracy means that there is a restriction from the general case 
(generate) to a less than general case. This is how Robert Rosen, e.g., uses 
the notion, and I don't see any good reason to think that Peirce is using it 
any differently. Basically, something is degenerate if it obscures generic 
differences in the way it can be produced. If we treat the degenerate as 
general, then we will be likely to make bad inferential extensions to general 
cases by overlooking crucial differences in the general cases.

In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the 
distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their form 
alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated with 
them, making our understanding of something that is internal. The alternative 
is to regard them in terms of their true causes, which are external or 
extrinsic, and may be multiple for the same (indistinguishable internally) 
cases.

A couple of examples are 1) spectral lines that can be produced by more than 
one transition that nonetheless indicate the same energy levels, and 2) isomers 
of compounds when they are regarded just in terms of stoichiometric relations, 
ignoring their chirality.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]
Sent: Thursday, 17 December 2015 01:52
To: Peirce-L
Cc: Clark Goble; Jeffrey Brian Downard
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Clark, Jeffrey, List:

Allow me to expand on the nature of my ignorance of the meaning of degeneracy.

Clearly, CSP's usage of this term with respect to mathematical objects, that is 
conic sections, is crisp and meaningful within the Pythagorean-Cartesian 
perspective of relations.  Jeff's reference is crisp and, of course, well known 
within the scientific community.

In this case, the generacy, which must be antecedent to the degeneracy, is also 
clear.  The two lines cross or they do not cross.  If they cross, then a new 
object is generated, a cone and it mirror image.  And this diagram plays a 
critical role in the physics of the Minkowski's "space-time" debacle.

My feeling is that this notion of "degeneracy" is difficult, if not 
intractable, when applied to ordinary linguistic terms which do not imply a 
"crossing" or parallelism.
Another example is, of course, chemical atoms or molecules.

I feel a different notion for generating functions is necessary both chemistry 
and biology..

However, from:
On Dec 16, 2015, at 4:01 PM, Clark Goble wrote:


But the relations of
reason and these self-relations are alike in this, that they arise from the
mind setting one part of a notion into relation to another. All degenerate
seconds may be conveniently termed internal, in contrast to external
seconds, which are constituted by external fact, and are true actions of one
thing upon another. (CP 1.365 (1890))

one get's a better notion of the concept I was missing.

Here, CSP brings the concepts of internal and external, also known as intrinsic 
and extrinsic properties in physical-chemical textbooks.

As I understand this quote, CSP is contrasting the relations of reason (logic?) 
with the relation that everything has with itself, namely, it identity.  In 
other words, the "intrinsic properties" in physical - chemical terms.

A curious conjecture emerges from CSP's views.
Thus, one could conjecture that the relations of reason and external properties 
are percepts of thermodynamics.  Further, that the self-relations of identity 
are the antecepts of quantum mechanics.

Amusing to think about.  Any other conjectures of interest?

A bit of light has been cast on whatever CSP may have intended.

Cheers

Jerry







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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity. Co-extensivity of symbol systems

2015-12-15 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, Matt: 

Hmmm...

One must consider the facts of both the history of mathematics and the history 
of writing.

The clay tablets from the 3 rd millennium BC  show two types of symbols and 
calculations.  One sort of symbol for numbers and another sort of symbol for 
objects (nouns.) (The tablets expressed sinsigns and indices).  The number 
system was in base sixty and included both addition and multiplication 
operation.   The sentence structure were primitive, if the markings could be 
called that.  Many believe that the co-emergence of number symbol systems and 
sounded-based symbol systems was essential for social and cultural emergence.  
Governance requires taxes, then as now.

(BTW, the British Museum has an excellent exhibit on this development.)
Material terms eventually morph'ed into cuniform.

Also, the symbol system for chemistry developed because the symbol systems for 
writing and for mathematics were inadequate to express chemical relations.  
Thus, the logic of relations of individual chemical structures based on 
physical measurements required the emergence of the chemical symbol system in 
the 19th century. John Dalton, a British Unitarian (1766 to 1844) was the 
initial architect of this discrete number system.  CSP was motivated to search 
for the formal mathematical logic of the chemical symbol system.

Different symbol systems can have co-extensive meanings for a cluster of 
symbols.

Margolis's philosophical narrative should be fact-checked.

Cheers

Jerry

from:  
http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html
The Sumerians were one of the earliest urban societies to emerge in the world, 
in Southern Mesopotamia more than 5000 years ago. They developed a writing 
system whose wedge-shaped strokes would influence the style of scripts in the 
same geographical area for the next 3000 years. Eventually, all of these 
diverse writing systems, which encompass both logophonetic, consonantal 
alphabetic, and syllabic systems, became known as cuneiform.

It is actually possible to trace the long road of the invention of the Sumerian 
writing system. For 5000 years before the appearance of writing in Mesopotamia, 
there were small clay objects in abstract shapes, called clay tokens, that were 
apparently used for counting agricultural and manufactured goods. As time went 
by, the ancient Mesopotamians realized that they needed a way to keep all the 
clay tokens securely together (to prevent loss, theft, etc), so they started 
putting multiple clay tokens into a large, hollow clay container which they 
then sealed up. However, once sealed, the problem of remembering how many 
tokens were inside the container arose. To solve this problem, the 
Mesopotamians started impressing pictures of the clay tokens on the surface of 
the clay container with a stylus. Also, if there were five clay tokens inside, 
they would impress the picture of the token five times, and so problem of what 
and how many inside the container was solved.

Subsequently, the ancient Mesopotamians stopped using clay tokens altogether, 
and simply impressed the symbol of the clay tokens on wet clay surfaces. In 
addition to symbols derived from clay tokens, they also added other symbols 
that were more pictographic in nature, i.e. they resemble the natural object 
they represent. Moreover, instead of repeating the same picture over and over 
again to represent multiple objects of the same type, they used diferent kinds 
of small marks to "count" the number of objects, thus adding a system for 
enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols. Examples of this 
early system represents some of the earliest texts found in the Sumerian cities 
of Uruk and Jamdat Nasr around 3300 BCE, such as the one below.

On Dec 14, 2015, at 11:02 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

> On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
>> List, 
>> 
>> The argument given in Matt's email below is problematic.  I will raise a 
>> question and make a brief and casual effort to place a Peircian 
>> interpretation on symbolic communication in terms of current scientific 
>> terminology. 
>> 
>> While human language is a very powerful source of human communication, is it 
>> complete with regard to expressibility of information?
>> 
>> I give two examples of what I consider to be the incompleteness of 
>> utterances as the sole source of the meaning of information.
> 
> One idea is that music, science, and mathematics were only able to be born 
> because language enabled them. For this reason Joseph Margolis calls these 
> non-language sign systems lingual. That is, lingual systems are natural 
> extensions of language by encultured people.
> 
> Matt
> 
>> 1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the number of 
>> terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual symbols as units of 
>> the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the equation) for the message to be 
>> communicated.  This is NOT the usual linear process extracting

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity.

2015-12-14 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, 

The argument given in Matt's email below is problematic.  I will raise a 
question and make a brief and casual effort to place a Peircian interpretation 
on symbolic communication in terms of current scientific terminology. 

While human language is a very powerful source of human communication, is it 
complete with regard to expressibility of information?

I give two examples of what I consider to be the incompleteness of utterances 
as the sole source of the meaning of information.

1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the number of 
terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual symbols as units of the 
whole and as the unity (wholeness of the equation) for the message to be 
communicated.  This is NOT the usual linear process extracting meaning of a 
written or spoken sentence.

2. A chemical icon (rheme) is even more difficult to interpret. The message 
emerges from a perception of its components, its arrangement of components and 
often, it role in the chemistry of life such as "DNA".  It can requires a huge 
number of words (the name of each symbol) and ALL of the individual relations 
among them (bonding pattern) but also A QUANTITATIVE EXACT NAME for the 
specific entity.  

These two examples go to the very root of understanding the unity of human 
communication among two academic units - mathematics and chemistry. Musical 
symbols, as units, are less exact as the artist must interpret them, thereby 
adding information during a performance. 

Human communication CAN requires icons (in the traditional sense) with a 
countable number of terms (indices) that are visualizable  and interpretable 
within the logical rules (legisigns) that can be formed from multiple premises 
(rhemata) and multiple possible arrangements (dicisigns) such that arguments 
can be made that are consistent with the individual members of a category 
(sinsigns), their proper attributes (qualisigns), and their common symbols in a 
symbol system designed for that purpose.

 (The preceding sentence strives to integrate the nine rather arbitrary terms 
of CSP into a meaningful thought.)

The two examples above are both examples of the perplexity of artificial symbol 
systems that put exact and extreme requirements on the meaning of 
expressibility and completeness, the consistency of arguments and the logical 
soundness for the meaning of signs and symbols.

Cheers

Jerry 

On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:

> On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
>> Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the 
>> things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the 
>> development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific 
>> terminology is not a development shared by every human language.
>> 
> Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from two 
> different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for the 
> exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward Vajda writes
> 
> " Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."
> 
> "Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology 
> speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly 
> industrialized society.  There are no primitive languages.  Virtually no 
> linguist today would disagree with this statement."
> 
> -- 
> Matt
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity.

2015-12-14 Thread Matt Faunce


On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the 
number of terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual 
symbols as units of the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the 
equation) for the message to be communicated.  This is NOT the usual 
linear process extracting meaning of a written or spoken sentence.


If I've learned one thing from learning a new philosophy, with its new 
assumptions, it's that I, for one, won't get anywhere reading it 
linearly. Since the philosopher has to explain a new sphere of thought 
via a string of words, it takes me at least two readings, but usually a 
lot more, often reading the first chapter of several other books, 
articles on Jstor, various online encyclopedia entries, etc., just to 
make any good sense of the first chapter of the book I first picked up. 
It's like making a sculpture, the first reading gives me a rough view of 
the overall scope and shape. The next few passes fill in many details. 
Another pass for the refinement. Etc. Only after I've grasped the 
overall concept of a new philosophy can I can jump to the right 
conclusions about the meanings (connotations) of the terms and phrases 
as they're strung along.


--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity.

2015-12-14 Thread Matt Faunce


On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

List,

The argument given in Matt's email below is problematic.  I will raise 
a question and make a brief and casual effort to place a Peircian 
interpretation on symbolic communication in terms of current 
scientific terminology.


While human language is a very powerful source of human communication, 
is it complete with regard to expressibility of information?


I give two examples of what I consider to be the incompleteness of 
utterances as the sole source of the meaning of information.


One idea is that music, science, and mathematics were only able to be 
born because language enabled them. For this reason Joseph Margolis 
calls these non-language sign systems /lingual/. That is, lingual 
systems are natural extensions of language by encultured people.


Matt

1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the 
number of terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual 
symbols as units of the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the 
equation) for the message to be communicated.  This is NOT the usual 
linear process extracting meaning of a written or spoken sentence.


2. A chemical icon (rheme) is even more difficult to interpret. The 
message emerges from a perception of its components, its arrangement 
of components and often, it role in the chemistry of life such as 
"DNA".  It can requires a huge number of words (the name of each 
symbol) and ALL of the individual relations among them (bonding 
pattern) but also A QUANTITATIVE EXACT NAME for the specific entity.


These two examples go to the very root of understanding the unity of 
human communication among two academic units - mathematics and 
chemistry. Musical symbols, as units, are less exact as the artist 
must interpret them, thereby adding information during a performance.


Human communication CAN requires icons (in the traditional sense) with 
a countable number of terms (indices) that are visualizable  and 
interpretable within the logical rules (legisigns) that can be formed 
from multiple premises (rhemata) and multiple possible arrangements 
(dicisigns) such that arguments can be made that are consistent with 
the individual members of a category (sinsigns), their proper 
attributes (qualisigns), and their common symbols in a symbol system 
designed for that purpose.


 (The preceding sentence strives to integrate the nine rather 
arbitrary terms of CSP into a meaningful thought.)


The two examples above are both examples of the perplexity of 
artificial symbol systems that put exact and extreme requirements on 
the meaning of expressibility and completeness, the consistency of 
arguments and the logical soundness for the meaning of signs and symbols.


Cheers

Jerry




On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:


On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and 
the things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over 
time; the development of a language to the point where it can 
articulate scientific terminology is not a development shared by 
every human language.


Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite 
from two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to 
search for the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 
'passkey'.) Edward Vajda writes


" Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."

"Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age 
technology speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken 
in the most highly industrialized society. _There are no primitive 
languages_.  Virtually no linguist today would disagree with this 
statement."


--
Matt



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

2015-12-14 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 14, 2015, at 3:08 AM, Matt Faunce  wrote:
> 
> On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
>> Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the 
>> things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the 
>> development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific 
>> terminology is not a development shared by every human language.
>> 
> Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from two 
> different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for the 
> exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward Vajda writes
> 
> " Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."
> 
> "Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology 
> speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly 
> industrialized society.  There are no primitive languages.  Virtually no 
> linguist today would disagree with this statement."

I don’t know about that quote in particular. However a decade or so back 
Michael Tomasello had a fascinating book on the evolution of language in The 
Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. While he doesn’t speak of it in Peircean 
terms he creates a model where it appears a certain kind of thirdness in terms 
of interpretation of signs develops. Once that evolves then he sees language’s 
capabilities as being largely there and develops fast. It’s been a while since 
I read it but I think he keeps the traditional dating of the evolution of 
language to around 80,000 - 100,000 years. The evolution after that is really 
developing the language and culture once you have the capability.

I know he has a newer text based upon some lectures he gave called The Origins 
of Human Communication although I’ve not read that one.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-14 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Franklin Ransom is using a discredited analysis of language, referred to as 
sociolinguistic relativism or determinism, where language defines the knowledge 
base; i.e., language determines thought. Followers of this linear causality are 
such as Whorf-Sapir, and Basil Bernstein. It doesn't stand up to empirical 
analysis.  But it enjoyed its own limelight within the works of various people 
who saw language or culture as determinant of thought, and even, there were 
some who suggested that some languages should be eradicated (eg native) because 
the language was defined as 'primitive' and prevented the users from thinking 
'in a modern or scientific way'. 

Instead, the human brain creates language and thus, can express anything by 
coming up with new terms and expressions. 

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 11:48 AM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations




On Dec 14, 2015, at 3:08 AM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:


On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:

  Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and the 
things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over time; the 
development of a language to the point where it can articulate scientific 
terminology is not a development shared by every human language.


Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from two 
different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for the exact 
statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward Vajda writes

" Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."

"Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology 
speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most highly 
industrialized society.  There are no primitive languages.  Virtually no 
linguist today would disagree with this statement."



  I don’t know about that quote in particular. However a decade or so back 
Michael Tomasello had a fascinating book on the evolution of language in The 
Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. While he doesn’t speak of it in Peircean 
terms he creates a model where it appears a certain kind of thirdness in terms 
of interpretation of signs develops. Once that evolves then he sees language’s 
capabilities as being largely there and develops fast. It’s been a while since 
I read it but I think he keeps the traditional dating of the evolution of 
language to around 80,000 - 100,000 years. The evolution after that is really 
developing the language and culture once you have the capability.


  I know he has a newer text based upon some lectures he gave called The 
Origins of Human Communication although I’ve not read that one.


--



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

2015-12-11 Thread 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] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-10 Thread Sungchul Ji

Hi Gary, lists,

You wrote:

". . . I don't see the point or relevance of Sung's (2) and (3), . "

These items are reproduced below within quotation marks for convenience:

"(*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". "

The phenomenon of 3 quarks being *forced* to exist within a baryon is known
as the *quark confinement *(
http://www.particleadventure.org/quark_confinement.html).  It is my
understanding that these three quarks can have any of the three 'color
charges' labeled red, green, or blue, and only those color charge
combinations of quarks that are white (or color-neutral) are found to exist
as baryons, each having 3 quarks.  For example, there are no 4 quark
combinations that are white.

The 'force' that compels/allows the 3 quarks to assume any combinations of
their color charges so long as the sum of their three color charges is
white (or color-neutral) is called the "*strong force*".  Another way to
describe the "strong force' is in terms of the concept of "*gauge
invariance*" [1]: The strong force is color-charge invariant upon the
*transformation* of the color charges of individual quarks within a
baryon.  I applied the concept of gauge invariance to cell metabolism in
1991, concluding that there may exist a new force in nature that acts in
the living cell called the "*cell force*" [2, pp. 95-118; 3].

So what if a similar situation holds in semiotics.  That is, what if there
exists a "force" (which may be called "*semantic force*" or "*semiotic
force*"; see (*3*) above) that compels the 3 elementary signs to assume
such characters as to make the composite sign of which they are parts
*semiotically
meaningful.*  If this turns out to be the case after further studies, the
concept of "*gauge invariance*" may be said to qualitatively apply to
semiotics as well:

"The *semantic force* keeps a composite sign invariantly meaningful
 (121015-1)
upon gauge transformation of its component signs, just as the strong
force keeps the nuclear structure of atoms invariant upon the gauge
transformation of the isotopic spin of the nucleons [4]."

Physicists have found that the principle of *gauge invariance* applies to
electromagnetism, and electroweak, strong and gravitational forces [1].  If
the argument presented above turns out to be valid, in principle, it may
mean that the same principle of gauge invariance applies to biology and
semiotics, thus supporting the postulate that there exists a fifth force in
nature, the *cell force* [2, 3], and possibly the sixth force as well, here
called the "*semantic or semiotics force*".

All the best.

Sung

References:
   [1] Jackson, J. D. (2001).  Historical roots of gauge invariance.
http://arxiv.org/vc/hep-ph/papers/0012/0012061v4.pdf.  Retrieved on
12/5/2015.
   [2] Ji, S. (1991).  Biocybernetics: A Machine Theory of Biology,*
in* *Molecular
Theories of*
*Cell Life and Death, *S. Ji (ed.), Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick,
pp. 1-237.
   [3]  Ji, S. (2012). *The Cell Force
*:
Microarray Evidence.  In: S. Ji, *Molecular Theory of the Living Cell:
Concepts, **Molecular Mechanisms, and Biomedical Applications*, Springer,
New York, Section 12.13, pp. 444-448.
   [4] Ji, S. (2012). ibid.  See Appendix L for a related discussion in my
letter to Professor C. N. Yang.

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

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

2015-12-08 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 9:31 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types 
> defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a 
> possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly 
> this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and 
> of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph

I think this gets at exactly the ambiguity that is confusing me in many of 
these discussions of late. It’s also why I ask people to define their terms 
since I think we’re often using Peirce’s terminology or terminology that seems 
obvious but which obscure these subtle ambiguities. While I may be wrong, my 
sense is that it’s precisely upon these subtle issues that our various 
disagreements are located.

All too often I find myself suspicious that we disagree in these more 
fundamental considerations but unsure due to the way the discussions proceed.

I’ve been unable to read the list for about a week and am just catching up. I 
see that the discussion of the above, or at least the terminology of sign, 
continues. I just wanted to point out that in addition to these subtle points 
it seems much of the debate is largely a semantic one over the applicability of 
certain terms. It’s not clear to me yet that we have a substantial difference 
in content.

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

2015-12-08 Thread Sungchul Ji

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  wrote:

>
>
> > On Dec 3, 2015, at 9:31 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> >
> > On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types
> defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a
> possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly
> this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and
> of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph
>
> I think this gets at exactly the ambiguity that is confusing me in many of
> these discussions of late. It’s also why I ask people to define their terms
> since I think we’re often using Peirce’s terminology or terminology that
> seems obvious but which obscure these subtle ambiguities. While I may be
> wrong, my sense is that it’s precisely upon these subtle issues that our
> various disagreements are located.
>
> All too often I find myself suspicious that we disagree in these more
> fundamental considerations but unsure due to the way the discussions
> proceed.
>
> I’ve been unable to read the list for about a week and am just catching
> up. I see that the discussion of the above, or at least the terminology of
> sign, continues. I just wanted to point out that in addition to these
> subtle points it seems much of the debate is largely a semantic one over
> the applicability of certain terms. It’s not clear to me yet that we have a
> substantial difference in content.
>
>
>
>
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
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> .
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701

www.conformon.net

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

2015-12-08 Thread Gary Richmond

Edwina, Gary F, list,

Edwina, you wrote: The ten classes, as triads, are on the other hand -
embodied, while the 9 Relations are not embodied. Instead, they are three
Relations (R-O, R-R, R-I) and function in each of the three categorical
modes). The Sign, the full triad, on the other hand, is embodied, in both
breadth and depth.

I'd suggest that the table of 10 classes does not itself offer embodied
sgins, but that this is yet another analysis within semiotic grammar,
differing from the list of 9 parameters in representing classes of signs
which *may *be embodied in an actual semiosis, each such real semiosis
being so complex (or involving so many complexities) that any attempt to
completely analyze its putative 'elements' would necessarily be incomplete,
not to mention, *de post facto*.

And I think complexity exists even at the level of the analysis of each of
the ten classes, so that to emphasize, as you do, the three Relations (R-O,
R-R, R-I) separately, so to speak, seems to me to deemphasize what I think
is a *quintessential* character of the Sign, as expressed in many of
Peirce's definitions, namely that *the Interpretant stands in the same (not
even 'similar', but "the same triadic relation") to the Object as the
Representamen stands to its Object.* I do not see that your "three
Relations" shows this. See, for example, this oft quoted defintion, no. 13,
in Robert Marty's "76 Definitions of the Sign by C. S. Peirce"
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM which begins:

A sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic
relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its
Object in which it stand itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is
genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that
does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason
the Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the
Object, but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself
does.

I think this additional factor is of the greatest importance, indeed cannot
be over-emphasized. Thus, the 'three relations' are seen to be no
"complexus of dyadic relations" but a single Sign *when embodied*, as you
have always insisted. But note well that in def. 13 above, as in a number
of other places, Peirce writes "A sign, or Representamen," as I see it,
thus equating the 'sign itself' with the entire "genuine" triadic relation,
which in an important sense it is, In other words, the three relations are
one *in semiosis*.

So, at the moment, I am thinking that both you and Gary are partially right
and partially wrong. The triadic 'Sign' should not, in my opinion, be
considered an instance of semiosis itself, but an *abstract *tricategorial
analysis of it.

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*

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 4:46 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> Gary R - thanks for this clarification. I agree; the table of 9 are NOT
> embodiments.
>
> I consider them the terms for the Relations; eg, in the letters to Lady
> Welby, where he writes:
>
> "Now signs may be divided as to their own material nature, as to their
> relations to their objects, and as to their relations to their
> interpretants" (8.333).  And
>
> "In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects, I divide signs
> into Icons, Indices and Symbols" 8.335. [Gary F and I differ strongly on
> certain aspects of this, as he considers the term 'sign' to refer to and
> only to the Representamen, whereas i consider the term to refer to either
> the Represenamen OR the full triad of relations].
>
> And, "in regard to its relation to its signified Interperpretant, a sign
> is either a Rheme, a Dicent or an Argument" 8.337.
>
> These are the two Relations that offer 'breadth' to the semiosic Sign (the
> triad) - ie the R-O and the R-I. The Representamen relates to itself 'As it
> is in itself" (8.224) and this, in my view, offers DEPTH, offering the 
> *generalized
> history *of this Representamen in its other two Relations - that between
> the R and the O, and that between the R and the I.
>
> The ten classes, as triads, are on the other hand - embodied, while the 9
> Relations are not embodied. Instead, they are three Relations (R-O, R-R,
> R-I) and function in each of the three categorical modes). The Sign, the
> full triad, on the other hand, is embodied, in both breadth and depth.
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
&g

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

2015-12-08 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Gary R - yes, that's a very difficult passage.

First, in my view, the triadic Sign (R-O, R-R, R-I) IS an 'instance of 
semiosis'. It can be a molecule, a bird, a song, a word, a cloud, a. Of 
course, no existential instance exists per se, alone and isolate; all are 
semiosically networked with other 'instances' and with other Relations. 

And, the Relations are not dyads, understanding a dyadic interaction as between 
two existential 'things'; The 'nodes' of Object, Representamen, Interpretant 
don't exist as such except within the semiosic interaction.

Now, that passage of Peirce's - 
A sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic 
relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a 
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its 
Object in which it stand itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is 
genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does 
not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason the 
Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the Object, 
but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself does. 

The way I see it, is that the Interpretant must relate to its Object.. It can't 
simply be the 'end production' of a linear communication line. What is the 
nature of this relation?  My view of the Representamen is not that it is a 
'mover-of-data/information' from one site to another, from the Object to the 
Interpretant. It mediates, and this isn't a 'shove-it-along' action; it 
transforms that input data from the Object and 'outputs' it as the 
Interpretant. There is some change between the O and I. This suggests as well 
that this Interpretant is in interaction with its Object in a transformative 
mode...because the Representamen's nature is to mediate, to transform...not to 
simply mechanically 'shove the data along from one site to another site'. 

How much of a transformation is done, depends on the modal category of the 
Representamen. 

This then leads to the question: Does the Interpretant 'transform' the Object? 
If the Representamen mediates between the Object and the Interpretant, then, 
the Interpretant must do so, within the force of the Representamen (laws, 
habits). So, an object (a shrub) is transformed by the Representamen into an 
Interpretant as (a medically useful shrub)..and this information then affects 
how one interacts with that shrub as an Object in the future.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Gary Richmond 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2015 6:55 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


  Edwina, Gary F, list,


  Edwina, you wrote: The ten classes, as triads, are on the other hand - 
embodied, while the 9 Relations are not embodied. Instead, they are three 
Relations (R-O, R-R, R-I) and function in each of the three categorical modes). 
The Sign, the full triad, on the other hand, is embodied, in both breadth and 
depth.


  I'd suggest that the table of 10 classes does not itself offer embodied 
sgins, but that this is yet another analysis within semiotic grammar, differing 
from the list of 9 parameters in representing classes of signs which may be 
embodied in an actual semiosis, each such real semiosis being so complex (or 
involving so many complexities) that any attempt to completely analyze its 
putative 'elements' would necessarily be incomplete, not to mention, de post 
facto. 


  And I think complexity exists even at the level of the analysis of each of 
the ten classes, so that to emphasize, as you do, the three Relations (R-O, 
R-R, R-I) separately, so to speak, seems to me to deemphasize what I think is a 
quintessential character of the Sign, as expressed in many of Peirce's 
definitions, namely that the Interpretant stands in the same (not even 
'similar', but "the same triadic relation") to the Object as the Representamen 
stands to its Object. I do not see that your "three Relations" shows this. See, 
for example, this oft quoted defintion, no. 13, in Robert Marty's "76 
Definitions of the Sign by C. S. Peirce" 
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM which begins:
A sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic 
relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a 
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its 
Object in which it stand itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is 
genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does 
not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason the 
Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the Object, 
but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself does. 

  I think this additional factor is of the greatest importance, indeed cannot 
be ove

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

2015-12-08 Thread Gary Richmond

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  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On Dec 3, 2015, at 9:31 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
>> >
>> > On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types
>> defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a
>> possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly
>> this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and
>> of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph
>>
>> I think this gets at exactly the ambiguity that is confusing me in many
>> of these discussions of late. It’s also why I ask people to define their
>> terms since I think we’re often using Peirce’s terminology or terminology
>> that seems obvious but which obscure these subtle ambiguities. While I may
>> be wrong, my sense is that it’s precisely upon these subtle issues that our
>> various disagreements are located.
>>
>> All too often I find myself suspicious that we disagree in these more
>> fundamental considerations but unsure due to the way the discussions
>> proceed.
>>
>> I’ve been unable to read the list for about a week and am just catching
>> up. I see that the discussion of the above, or at least the terminology of
>> sign, continues. I just wanted to point out that in addition to these
>> subtle points it seems much of the debate is largely a semantic one over
>> the

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

2015-12-08 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Gary R - thanks for this clarification. I agree; the table of 9 are NOT 
embodiments.

I consider them the terms for the Relations; eg, in the letters to Lady Welby, 
where he writes:

"Now signs may be divided as to their own material nature, as to their 
relations to their objects, and as to their relations to their interpretants" 
(8.333).  And

"In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects, I divide signs into 
Icons, Indices and Symbols" 8.335. [Gary F and I differ strongly on certain 
aspects of this, as he considers the term 'sign' to refer to and only to the 
Representamen, whereas i consider the term to refer to either the Represenamen 
OR the full triad of relations].

And, "in regard to its relation to its signified Interperpretant, a sign is 
either a Rheme, a Dicent or an Argument" 8.337.

These are the two Relations that offer 'breadth' to the semiosic Sign (the 
triad) - ie the R-O and the R-I. The Representamen relates to itself 'As it is 
in itself" (8.224) and this, in my view, offers DEPTH, offering the generalized 
history of this Representamen in its other two Relations - that between the R 
and the O, and that between the R and the I.

The ten classes, as triads, are on the other hand - embodied, while the 9 
Relations are not embodied. Instead, they are three Relations (R-O, R-R, R-I) 
and function in each of the three categorical modes). The Sign, the full triad, 
on the other hand, is embodied, in both breadth and depth.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Gary Richmond 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2015 4:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


  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






  Gary Richmond
  Philosophy and Critical Thinking
  Communication Studies
  LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
  C 745
  718 482-5690


  On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 3:39 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> 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 togethe

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, John:

3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."

On Dec 6, 2015, at 6:26 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> Jerry,
> 
> I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of 
> firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking 
> about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You 
> aren’t talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when 
> we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. 
> 
>  
> 
> Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.
> 
>  
> 
> Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views on 
> firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion).
> 
> 
> 
Basically, John, your response is irrelevant to what I am saying.

By way of background, I have had a lifelong interest in metaphysics and the 
relations between the sciences and metaphysics. Obviously, my interest is 
closely related to medicine and the biological sciences where the science of 
physics can contribute by contributing utterly simplistic calculations of the 
relevant but relative units for particular situations (identities.)  The 
physical units, in and of themselves, are given biological meaning only by the 
union of them.

Back to the issue at hand. Metaphysics, as an mode of human thinking and 
communication, must start with words, words with meaning for the author, either 
as utterances or symbolic expressions on a 'sheet of assertion' or another 
media. 

No one individual (such as physicist) can impose, for humanity as a whole, a 
particular meaning on the starting units, or the union of such starting units, 
or, more generally, on part-whole relatives and part-whole relations. 

More directly, a metaphysical proposition may be stated in many different 
languages and symbol systems. Thus, the mereology of metaphysical propositions 
may draw upon terms and symbols as desired by the author of metaphysical 
propositions. Further, a metaphysics without part-whole relations (scaling) and 
identity can hardly be a metaphysics AT ALL as neither emergence or evolution 
could be relatives.

Frankly, I interpret your metaphysics, after reading your posts for more than a 
decade on this and other list serves as well as personal conversations from 
time to time, your metaphysics is merely the science of physics (unless you 
have had a recent epiphany.)

>From my perspective, you capture the essence of being with your defense of the 
>phrase, "It's from bits". 

CSP is clear enough about meaning of a fact or a unit of measure:

3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."

Let's just agree to disagree, John.

Cheers

Jerry 

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RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread John Collier

Jerry, List:



I believe my metaphysics are those of C.S. Peirce.  Peirce's pope-positivism is 
also assumed explicitly in our book, Every Thing Must Go, which does take 
modern physics as a starting point. So perhaps I have made my ideas clear, and 
the resulting argument is pretty straight-forward. Most metaphysical problems, 
especially of the sort you are concerned with, are dissolved on this approach, 
which was certainly Peirce's intention. As I said in  my response to Franklin, 
you can take the negation of some of Peirce's central claims, and get other 
results. I have yet to see a clear statement of either your objections to the 
Peircean position, or what you consider to be an alternative. Starting by 
stating explicitly which parts of Peirce's methodology you reject might help me 
here. I have been using Peircean methodology more and more explicitly since my 
PhD thesis (1984), which uses Peirce's pragmatic maxim (a version of it - he 
had many versions that are presumably equivalent at some level - much like 
Kant's categorical imperative) and his positivist motives.  I have been 
minimizing my metaphysical commitments for some time, though I spent a period 
as a raving Platonist when I was an undergraduate, probably under the influence 
of reading too much B. Russell rather naively.



This is a Peirce list, after all. But I think that it is actually a relevant 
question which of Peirce's basic assumptions (all thought is in signs, 
objectivity requires that differences in meaning are determined by differences 
in expectations of possible experience, there is an identifiable set of 
external object to which some of our signs pick out that are mostly accessible 
through sensory observations - some exceptions involving evaluation of 
outcomes, but still involving observation and possible observations) one can 
coherently give up. Assuming we disagree, and I am not convinced there is any 
meaningful basis for the apparent disagreement, and I don't yet see what it is, 
I proposed some possibilities recently of where we disagree, like rationalism 
of a form that rejects the Pragmatic Maxim, or Peirce's empirical criterion for 
cognitive significance, or both. (Rationalism I take to be, as is traditional, 
that there are synthetic a priori truths, i.e., truths discoverable and 
justifiable by reason that are not the results of definitions and/or 
methodological commitments). Unlike the Logical Positivists, I don't think it 
is possible or wise to try to eliminate metaphysics entirely. Their program 
collapsed in its own terms. But it is best to keep it minimal. I think the 
alternative produces unclear ideas of an especially convoluted (involuted?) 
sort. However that may be, I am still not at all clear what our different 
presuppositions are, let alone what the basis of the difference might be.



My metaphysics is not just physics, but a physics supported but not implied 
position called Structural Realism in the philosophical literature. Actually, I 
have a slightly more restrictive form that Cliff Hooker and I call Dynamical 
Realism. Being more restrictive means that it requires additional argument, the 
arguments being distinctly metaphysical and not physical.  It is the starting 
point for many of my recent papers that have something like "A dynamical 
approach to ..." in the title. My scientific background (I did research in 
government, business and academics) is in planetary science, which is mostly 
the study of inorganic dynamical systems, so it is my touchstone for scientific 
methodology (arguably the notion of complexly organized systems originated in  
a lab in the building that held most of my classes, run by Lorenz - planetary 
dynamics is another source).



John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier



From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]

Sent: Sunday, 06 December 2015 7:13 PM

To: Peirce-L

Cc: John Collier

Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of 
units unify the unity.



List, John:



3.418.  "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to 
a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under 
which it suits our purposes to state the fact."





On Dec 6, 2015, at 6:26 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote:







On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote:



Jerry,

I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of 
firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking 
about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You 
aren't talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like





[John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we 
get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.



Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.



Basically, that is irrel

RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread John Collier

Dear Franklin, List members:

I left out a more fundamental part of the argument that I will lay out now. It 
is basically a very simple argument, though perhaps it is a bit subtle. I left 
it out because the argument is fairly well known to Peirce scholars It appears 
in several places in slightly different forms in Peirce’s writings. I would 
argue that it is very difficult if not impossible to accept many of Peirce’s 
more systematic ideas without accepting this argument I lay out.

Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to 
something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or we 
go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to Peirce). 
Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the objectivity test. 
Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has to be given up. Now 
that there are experiences, including mental experiences, is objective, but 
meaning cannot be referred ultimately to mental experiences alone without 
making it depend on psychology rather than objective conditions. Other than for 
logic, which has its own grounds for objectivity in things that are external, 
the experience ultimately referred to has to be of the senses, roughly (I would 
include emotions, which I see to have a propositional or cognitive component) 
that also must have an external aspect in order to support objective 
differences in meaning. Peirce resolves this by setting aside a class of 
experiences that are of external things. The child, he says, learns to 
recognize that not all things are under his control, but must be at least in 
part caused by external influences, so some experience is composed of signs of 
the external. This is a very early and necessary abduction. Membership in this 
class of supposed externally based experiences (which Peirce often just 
identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further evidence (there are 
illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most extreme case – and 
dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ examples – though 
Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, but Peirce would 
require an additional reason for doubt over the mere possibility – a “defeater” 
in terms of contemporary pragmatist epistemology), but the basic way to check 
membership is whether or not they are at least in part not under our control. 
This needs to be tested, as we can be wrong about it in specific cases, but in 
general (or we violate the defeater requirement).

Physicalism is rather hard to define, and there are a number of definitions 
floating around the philosophy and scientific world. Quine defines the physical 
as that which is accessible through the senses (not what physics tells us is 
physical). This won’t quite do for Peirce (or me) since there are the 
afore-mentioned sensory illusions, etc. What physics tells us is physical is a 
good place to start, but of course physics has been wrong, so this is more of a 
control than a criterion. I think it is safe to say, though, that everything 
that science has been able to study effectively so far has a physical basis. I 
would think that the physical has a number of signs, and that there is a 
consilience that eventually leads to a clearer idea of what is physical. Peirce 
was, in fact, a kind of idealist (the objective kind, for one thing), so there 
is presumably no contradiction  between his views about experience, and the 
physical, and at least one form of idealism. I don’t share Peirce’s idealism, 
but that is neither here nor there; it is not relevant to Peirce’s argument 
that I have reconstructed here. All thought is in signs. Some thoughts (or 
mental experiences, if you want) are of external things. Other than logical, 
mathematical, and the like, being external is to be physical at the least. In 
order to make our ideas clear we need to make reference to this external 
component, on pain of subjectivism, psychologism, and making distinctions in 
thoughts that have no distinction in their objects. So Peirce’s prope-postivism 
also takes us back to the Pragmatic Maxim, that thought is all in signs, and 
his notion of the basis of experience.

Obviously there are some assumptions here, and one could reject any one of them 
(accept subjectivism, or psychologism, or other forms of antirealism, as 
examples), which many philosophers do. But the assumptions are made deeply in 
Peirce’s philosophy. I think he was right about this.

I could give a bunch of references to Peirce’s writings that support my 
interpretation, but this is long enough already and I have to go shopping. I 
hope it is at least close to sufficient to respond to your worry.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Franklin Ransom [mailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, 06 December 2015 2:26 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread Franklin Ransom

John,

You said:

The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference
> in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with
> Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it
> that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist.

I've been trying to figure this one out for myself, but am having some
trouble, in particular with the "idea that the physical is just what we can
experience." Would you be willing to clarify how you mean this? Is physical
opposed to mental, and thus the mental is not something we can experience?
And/or the spiritual? Or would you include mental and/or spiritual as
subdivisions of the physical? My sense of physicalism, aside from your
characterization, is that it's the idea that what is real is whatever
physics discovers or says is real, which is quite different from what you
are suggesting. I hope that you can understand my concern. After all,
clearly an idealist could just as easily say that what is mental is
whatever we can experience, and I think you can understand that idea.
What's the point of calling all of experience one or the other?

-- Franklin

On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier  wrote:

> Jerry,
>
>
>
> I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of
> firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking
> about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You
> aren’t talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like
>
>
>
> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise
> when we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.
>
>
>
> Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical
> perspective.
>
>
>
> Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views
> on firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion).
>
>
>
> Unless you understand  this you are going to be asking questions without
> an answer because the presuppositions are false. It has nothing to do with
> my physcalism (which is not, actually, materialism I have come to believe).
> The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference
> in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with
> Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it
> that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. Basically,
> you err, as I see it, in making a distinction that implies no difference in
> meaning, however much it might seem to. It violates Peirce’s
> prope-positivism, which he uses to deflate a lot of metaphysics.
>
>
>
> Of course you can reject either the Pragmatic Maxim, or the notion of
> experience Peirce uses, or both, in  order to save your distinction. But
> then you aren’t talking about Peirce’s firsts when you say they have
> structure.
>
>
>
> John Collier
>
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, John:

On Dec 6, 2015, at 8:04 AM, John Collier wrote:

> Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to 
> something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or 
> we go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to 
> Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the objectivity 
> test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has to be given 
> up. Now that there are experiences, including mental experiences, is 
> objective, but meaning cannot be referred ultimately to mental experiences 
> alone without making it depend on psychology rather than objective 
> conditions. Other than for logic, which has its own grounds for objectivity 
> in things that are external, the experience ultimately referred to has to be 
> of the senses, roughly (I would include emotions, which I see to have a 
> propositional or cognitive component) that also must have an external aspect 
> in order to support objective differences in meaning. Peirce resolves this by 
> setting aside a class of experiences that are of external things. The child, 
> he says, learns to recognize that not all things are under his control, but 
> must be at least in part caused by external influences, so some experience is 
> composed of signs of the external. This is a very early and necessary 
> abduction. Membership in this class of supposed externally based experiences 
> (which Peirce often just identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further 
> evidence (there are illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most 
> extreme case – and dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ 
> examples – though Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, 
> but Peirce would require an additional reason for doubt over the mere 
> possibility –

Well said!

While several phases are open to refinement, the paragraph captures several of 
CSP's philosophical positions in a rhetorical sense.

The units of thought which ground CSP's trichotomy are readily categorized from 
the assertion: 

 Meaning has to be referenced to something, and that something cannot be 
internal (mental in  one sense), or we go in circles (which is acceptable to 
some philosophers, but not to Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is 
that it fails the objectivity test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or 
his realism has to be given up .

Roughly speaking, the external objectivity test (thing - representation - form) 
was the then nascent science of chemistry.  Like mathematics, chemistry used 
highly abstract symbols to relate invisible objects to one-another, but the 
logical meaning of chemical symbols was obscure in 19 th Century.  

CSP was aware that certain mathematical indices were EXACT physical 
representations of physical measurements and that broad classes of such 
mathematical calculations were consistent  with one-another.
(Today, we refer to the logical terms of molecular weight and molecular 
formula. These are generic terms, that can be applied to any chemical identity.)

One of the big "open questions" that CSP studied throughout his life was the 
question: What is a molecule?
Clearly, each chemical element is a relative of every other chemical element.  
As a collection, the concept of "table of elements" was used to express the 
relatedness of all elements. 
The relatedness of all elements was a fact based on analysis of molecules and 
the difference in the quali-signs of molecules and the fact that certain 
molecules (Water, Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Ammonia) could be 
made from elements.

Thus, CSP sought to develop a logic of relatives that was consistent with his 
knowledge of mathematical calculations of molecular weight and molecular 
formula, the chemical table of elements, and the diagram  as he understood it 
as a molecular formula.

In CSP 3.416, "A relation is a fact about a number of things" is a wide-ranging 
assertion about his beliefs about his objectivity of facts.  It should (must) 
be contrast with the definitions of relations as variables or as sets. 

Sections 3.415-3.424 deserve careful reading in this context of his objectivity.

Section 3.468-3.483 shows directly the role of chemical relatives, taken as 
objective facts of chemical relations, are extended into his logic of relatives 
and his notion of graph theory. 

Can one conclude that CSP referenced the meaning of objectivity, the meaning of 
objects and meaning of logic to the nascent generalizations of the consequences 
of physical measurements expressed in chemical symbols?

The union of these units of thought give a unity to a substantial fraction of 
CSP's claims for realism and the objectivity of the sciences.

 The three trichotomies, which ground his system of signs, offer substantial  
support for a recursive system of objective logic consistent with chemical 
relatives and chemical relations.
The critical

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-06 Thread Franklin Ransom

John,

I don't think I have any significant disagreement with much of what you've
had to say concerning Peirce's commitment to the external element in
experience. I am curious though as to whether you believe you experience
external minds, and if so, whether you would count them as physical? I feel
as though asking this question might be somehow perceived as obnoxious, but
I confess that I have a sincere desire to understand how you think about
it; since what you've had to say seems to imply, so far as I can tell, that
you would probably admit that you experience external minds (like my mind),
but that you also have to admit that you think of the experience of my mind
as of something physical, not mental (i.e., not referring to illusions,
dreams, etc.), since it is something external to you. Have I ascertained
your point of view rightly on this, or am I guilty of warping your meaning
in some unfortunate way?


-- Franklin


On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 9:04 AM, John Collier  wrote:

> Dear Franklin, List members:
>
>
>
> I left out a more fundamental part of the argument that I will lay out
> now. It is basically a very simple argument, though perhaps it is a bit
> subtle. I left it out because the argument is fairly well known to Peirce
> scholars It appears in several places in slightly different forms in
> Peirce’s writings. I would argue that it is very difficult if not
> impossible to accept many of Peirce’s more systematic ideas without
> accepting this argument I lay out.
>
>
>
> Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to
> something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in  one sense), or
> we go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to
> Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the
> objectivity test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has
> to be given up. Now that there are experiences, including mental
> experiences, is objective, but meaning cannot be referred ultimately to
> mental experiences alone without making it depend on psychology rather than
> objective conditions. Other than for logic, which has its own grounds for
> objectivity in things that are external, the experience ultimately referred
> to has to be of the senses, roughly (I would include emotions, which I see
> to have a propositional or cognitive component) that also must have an
> external aspect in order to support objective differences in meaning.
> Peirce resolves this by setting aside a class of experiences that are of
> external things. The child, he says, learns to recognize that not all
> things are under his control, but must be at least in part caused by
> external influences, so some experience is composed of signs of the
> external. This is a very early and necessary abduction. Membership in this
> class of supposed externally based experiences (which Peirce often just
> identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further evidence (there are
> illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most extreme case – and
> dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ examples –
> though Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, but
> Peirce would require an additional reason for doubt over the mere
> possibility – a “defeater” in terms of contemporary pragmatist
> epistemology), but the basic way to check membership is whether or not they
> are at least in part not under our control. This needs to be tested, as we
> can be wrong about it in specific cases, but in general (or we violate the
> defeater requirement).
>
>
>
> Physicalism is rather hard to define, and there are a number of
> definitions floating around the philosophy and scientific world. Quine
> defines the physical as that which is accessible through the senses (not
> what physics tells us is physical). This won’t quite do for Peirce (or me)
> since there are the afore-mentioned sensory illusions, etc. What physics
> tells us is physical is a good place to start, but of course physics has
> been wrong, so this is more of a control than a criterion. I think it is
> safe to say, though, that everything that science has been able to study
> effectively so far has a physical basis. I would think that the physical
> has a number of signs, and that there is a consilience that eventually
> leads to a clearer idea of what is physical. Peirce was, in fact, a kind of
> idealist (the objective kind, for one thing), so there is presumably no
> contradiction  between his views about experience, and the physical, and at
> least one form of idealism. I don’t share Peirce’s idealism, but that is
> neither here nor there; it is not relevant to Peirce’s argument that I have
> reconstructed here. All thought is in signs. Some thoughts (or mental
> experiences, if you want) are of external things. Other than logical,
> mathematical, and the like, being external is to be physical at the least.
> In order to make our ideas

RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-04 Thread John Collier

Jerry,

I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of 
firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking 
about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You 
aren't talking about Peirce, here when  you say things like

[John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we 
get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.

Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.

Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce's views on 
firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion).

Unless you understand  this you are going to be asking questions without an 
answer because the presuppositions are false. It has nothing to do with my 
physcalism (which is not, actually, materialism I have come to believe). The 
physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference in 
meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with Quine's 
idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it that the last 
is also Peirce's view, and he is no materialist. Basically, you err, as I see 
it, in making a distinction that implies no difference in meaning, however much 
it might seem to. It violates Peirce's prope-positivism, which he uses to 
deflate a lot of metaphysics.

Of course you can reject either the Pragmatic Maxim, or the notion of 
experience Peirce uses, or both, in  order to save your distinction. But then 
you aren't talking about Peirce's firsts when you say they have structure.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]
Sent: Friday, 04 December 2015 11:32 PM
To: John Collier
Cc: Peirce-L; Clark Goble
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of 
units unify the unity.

List, John:


On Dec 2, 2015, at 11:39 AM, John Collier wrote:


Jerry, there is some very convoluted reasoning in this, but I will try to 
explain. See interspersed comments.
The message was only questions, with one except.
What reasoning you find convoluted is of your making, not mine.


I'm not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where structures 
are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself without 
relations.

Firstness is a term. I see no reason to infer that it is structureless. Nor, 
featureless.

[John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we 
get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds.

Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.

[John Collier] Following Stjernfelt's treatment of dicents, nouns are indices 
(qualities and predicates in general are basically iconic, though), and hence 
seconds at least. Stjernfelt argues that this is a consequence of grammar, 
construed broadly, or alternatively and equivalently, by their role in dicents. 
Can abstract the noun part to a quality (E.G., Platoness, or horseness), but 
then this removestheir grammatical role and turns them into qualities,

Well...
FS wrote a fine book. He is very knowledgable and articulate.

But, I disagree with the basic premise of his book and many, many of his 
arguments.
Technically, FS gives little attention to the logic concept of extension in 
various forms of diagrams / mereology.  To me, the nature of EXTENSION is the 
critical distinction between CSP's view of logic and other forms  / formal 
logics, such as the logics the physics / mathematics communities use.

CSP, in the three triads, is, in my opinion, laying out nine vaguely related 
terms, and his definitions of the interrelated meanings of these terms. The 
goal, if I may use this term, is a self-consistent style of argumentation that 
is recursive.  In other words, 8 terms are generalized (non-mathematical terms) 
premises for constructing consistent arguments.   The index is the central term 
in the diagram. Qualisigns are one of the origin of indices.  The construction 
of the logic of the rhema is critically based on logical premises intimately 
connected to the indices.  It plays a necessary role in the system of premises. 
 That is, any number of forms of indices can be inserted as representamen of 
the sin-sign into rhema  The proposed self-consistency of the sentences 
(propositions) arise from adherences to the appropriate legisigns.

Yet, the open structure of these premises is so stated that the set of 
legisigns can be extended as new inquiry generates new sinsigns with new 
qualisigns and new indices. As CSP notes in 3.420-1.

In modern propositional logic, one would probably use conditional premises 
augmented with hybrid and sortal logics to express the meaning of these nine 
terms in a way that would be consistent with mathematical logic and semantics 
such that recursive calculations  would be consistent, complete and decidable.

As I have previously noted

Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-04 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, John: 

On Dec 2, 2015, at 11:39 AM, John Collier wrote:

> Jerry, there is some very convoluted reasoning in this, but I will try to 
> explain. See interspersed comments.
> 
The message was only questions, with one except.
What reasoning you find convoluted is of your making, not mine.

> 
> I'm not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
> structures are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in 
> itself without relations.

Firstness is a term. I see no reason to infer that it is structureless. Nor, 
featureless.

> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when 
> we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. 

Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective.

> [John Collier] Following Stjernfelt's treatment of dicents, nouns are indices 
> (qualities and predicates in general are basically iconic, though), and hence 
> seconds at least. Stjernfelt argues that this is a consequence of grammar, 
> construed broadly, or alternatively and equivalently, by their role in 
> dicents. Can abstract the noun part to a quality (E.G., Platoness, or 
> horseness), but then this removestheir grammatical role and turns them into 
> qualities,

Well...
FS wrote a fine book. He is very knowledgable and articulate.

But, I disagree with the basic premise of his book and many, many of his 
arguments.
Technically, FS gives little attention to the logic concept of extension in 
various forms of diagrams / mereology.  To me, the nature of EXTENSION is the 
critical distinction between CSP's view of logic and other forms  / formal 
logics, such as the logics the physics / mathematics communities use.

CSP, in the three triads, is, in my opinion, laying out nine vaguely related 
terms, and his definitions of the interrelated meanings of these terms. The 
goal, if I may use this term, is a self-consistent style of argumentation that 
is recursive.  In other words, 8 terms are generalized (non-mathematical terms) 
premises for constructing consistent arguments.   The index is the central term 
in the diagram. Qualisigns are one of the origin of indices.  The construction 
of the logic of the rhema is critically based on logical premises intimately 
connected to the indices.  It plays a necessary role in the system of premises. 
 That is, any number of forms of indices can be inserted as representamen of 
the sin-sign into rhema  The proposed self-consistency of the sentences 
(propositions) arise from adherences to the appropriate legisigns. 

Yet, the open structure of these premises is so stated that the set of 
legisigns can be extended as new inquiry generates new sinsigns with new 
qualisigns and new indices. As CSP notes in 3.420-1.  

In modern propositional logic, one would probably use conditional premises 
augmented with hybrid and sortal logics to express the meaning of these nine 
terms in a way that would be consistent with mathematical logic and semantics 
such that recursive calculations  would be consistent, complete and decidable.

As I have previously noted here, I have used these semantics for pragmatic 
purposes. Rather clumsy, to say the least!

[JLRC]  If a molecule is a noun, is it a "firstness"? does it inherently have a 
structure?  Is modal logic necessary to describe the relationship between atoms 
and molecules? Is the inherence of "thing in itself" necessary for this 
relation?
> 
> [John Collier] No, see my last interjection.

Is a molecule divisible?   Or, is it a context dependent question?

> [John Collier] No, for the reasons above, if I understand what you mean here 
> by your use of 'metaphysical' which is a very broad term.

I phrased this question is such a way as to be consistent in multiple symbol 
systems.  If I understand your physical perspective, then I can easy understand 
why you answer in this way. 

Cheers

Jerry

> John Collier
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
> 
> From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, 02 December 2015 6:57 PM
> To: Peirce-L
> Cc: Clark Goble
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union 
> of units unify the unity.
> 
> List, Clark:
> 
> On Dec 2, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Clark Goble wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
> structures are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in 
> itself without relations.
> 
> 
> From my perspective, this argument, ignores the nature of nature - that is, 
> of part whole relationships, known as mereology in logic and philosophy and 
> as "scaling" in physics.
> 
> [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when 
> we get to what Peirce calls existenc

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-03 Thread Sungchul Ji

Publicaitons > Book Chapters.
   [4] Burgin, M. (2010).  Theory of Information: Fundamentality,
Diversity,and Unification.  World Scientific, New Jersey.  Pp. 129-134.



On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 9:28 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> Sung, your comment doesn't make any sense. Because Peirce's three
> categories don't correlate to the three worlds of Burgin and Popper [both
> of whom are excellent scholars] , doesn't mean that Peircean theory doesn't
> have anything to do with modern natural sciences or with information
> science
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 8:35 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
> triadic relations
>
> Edwina, Clark, John, lists
>
> You  wrote:
>
> "Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
> and neither, (120215-1)
> in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories."
>
> If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E.
> Taborsky) would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as
> represented by Popper and Penrose) or with information science (as
> represented by Burgin), which is hard to believe.
>
> All the best.
>
> Sung
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to
>> 'distribute the Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness
>> over the three worlds of Burgin".
>>
>> Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
>> and neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.
>> It takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the
>> essential identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic
>> interactive operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such
>> psychological nominals as 'subjective, objective and general' - and these
>> are not valid outlines of the three categories.
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>> - Original Message -
>> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
>> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
>> *Subject:* [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
>> triadic relations
>>
>> Hi Clark, lists,
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>> "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where
>> structures (120215-1)
>> are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself
>> without relations."
>>
>> (*1*)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until
>> recently), assumes that *there is only one way to distribute the
>> Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three
>> worlds of Burgin, denoted as S (World of Structures), P (Physical
>> world),and M (Mental world). * Let me designate such a view as the *1-to-1
>> view, *according to which only one of the 6 possibilities shown in *Table
>> 1* is true and the rest are not.  The alternative view would be that
>> more than one of the 6 possibilities listed in Table 1 can be true,
>> depending on context. I will refer to this view as the "*1-to-many*"
>> view.
>>
>>
>> *Table 1*.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the
>> worlds and Peircean categories.
>>
>> Possibilities
>>
>> *Firstness*
>>
>> *Secondness*
>>
>> *Thirdness*
>>
>>  Context or Field of Studies
>>
>> *1*
>>
>> S*
>>
>> P
>>
>> M
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *2*
>>
>> S
>>
>> M
>>
>> P
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *3*
>>
>> P
>>
>> S
>>
>> M
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *4*
>>
>> P
>>
>> M
>>
>> S
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *5*
>>
>> M
>>
>> S
>>
>> P
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *6*
>>
>> M
>>
>> P
>>
>> S
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *S = World of structures
>>   P = Physical world
>>   M = Mental world
>>
>> (*2*)  It may be necessary to invoke at least two kinds of "structures"
>> -- (i) "mental structures", i.e, those structures in the world whose
>> existence depends

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-03 Thread Sungchul Ji

 with "*free
> parameters*" as recently proposed by Burgin [1] which may be denoted as
> I( _, _, _, . . . _), or more briefly as I( _ ), where the symbol "_, _, _,
> . . ., _" indicates placeholders.
>
> (*5*)  Finally, the field of physics and biology may benefit from
> recognizing two kinds of PDEs -- (i) token-PDEs, each with a set of fixed
> parameters, e.g., Planckian radiation equation, Eq. (120315-o), and (ii)
>  type-PDE with a set of "free parameters", i.e., Eq. (1201315-k).
>
> All the best.
>
> Sung
>
>
> References:
>[1]  Ji, S. (2015a) Planckian distributions in molecular machines,
> living cells, and brains:
> The wave-particle duality in biomedical sciences, *Proceedings of the
> International Conference on *
> *Biology and Biomedical Engineering.*  Vienna, March 15-17, 2015.  Pp.
> 115-137.
>[2]  Ji, S. (2015b) Planckian information (IP): A new measure of order
> in atoms, enzymes, cells,
> brains, human societies, and the cosmos. In: *Unified Field Mechanics:
> Natural Science *
> *beyond the Veil of Spacetime* (R. Amoroso, P. Rowlands, and L. Kauffman,
> eds.)
> World Scientific, New Jersey, pp. 579-589.
>[3] Ji, S. (2012a) Isomorphism between Blackbody Radiation and Enzymic
> Catalysis, in: *Molecular *
> *Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms, and
> Biomedical *
> * Applications*, New York: Springer, 2012, pp. 343-368. PDF at
> http://www.conformon.net
> undr Publicaitons > Book Chapters.
>[4] Burgin, M. (2010).  Theory of Information: Fundamentality,
> Diversity,and Unification.  World Scientific, New Jersey.  Pp. 129-134.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 9:28 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Sung, your comment doesn't make any sense. Because Peirce's three
>> categories don't correlate to the three worlds of Burgin and Popper [both
>> of whom are excellent scholars] , doesn't mean that Peircean theory doesn't
>> have anything to do with modern natural sciences or with information
>> science
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>> - Original Message -
>> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
>> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 8:35 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
>> triadic relations
>>
>> Edwina, Clark, John, lists
>>
>> You  wrote:
>>
>> "Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds
>> - and neither, (120215-1)
>> in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories."
>>
>> If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E.
>> Taborsky) would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as
>> represented by Popper and Penrose) or with information science (as
>> represented by Burgin), which is hard to believe.
>>
>> All the best.
>>
>> Sung
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to
>>> 'distribute the Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness
>>> over the three worlds of Burgin".
>>>
>>> Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
>>> and neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.
>>> It takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the
>>> essential identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic
>>> interactive operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such
>>> psychological nominals as 'subjective, objective and general' - and these
>>> are not valid outlines of the three categories.
>>>
>>> Edwina
>>>
>>> - Original Message -
>>> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
>>> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
>>> *Subject:* [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
>>> triadic relations
>>>
>>> Hi Clark, lists,
>>>
>>> You wrote:
>>>
>>> "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where
>>> structures (120215-1)
>>> are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself
>>> without relations."
>>>
>>> (*1*)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until
>>> r

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

2015-12-02 Thread Clark Goble

> On Dec 1, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Sungchul Ji  wrote:
> 
> (1)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce. 
> We seem to disagree on how to assign these categories to the three worlds of 
> Burgin and the three roses of Scotus.

I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where structures 
are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself without 
relations.

You seem to be using firstness due to invariant and thus structures. But I 
don’t see how that works. Being invariant is not the same as being unrelated.
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-02 Thread John Collier

Jerry, there is some very convoluted reasoning in this, but I will try to 
explain. See interspersed comments.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 02 December 2015 6:57 PM
To: Peirce-L
Cc: Clark Goble
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of 
units unify the unity.

List, Clark:

On Dec 2, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Clark Goble wrote:

I'm not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where structures 
are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself without 
relations.

>From my perspective, this argument, ignores the nature of nature - that is, of 
>part whole relationships, known as mereology in logic and philosophy and as 
>"scaling" in physics.

[John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we 
get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. 

A noun is what?  a part of a sentence? an object? a singularity? a relative? a 
grammatical structure?

[John Collier] Following Stjernfelt's treatment of dicents, nouns are indices 
(qualities and predicates in general are basically iconic, though), and hence 
seconds at least. Stjernfelt argues that this is a consequence of grammar, 
construed broadly, or alternatively and equivalently, by their role in dicents. 
Can abstract the noun part to a quality (E.G., Platoness, or horseness), but 
then this removestheir grammatical role and turns them into qualities,

If an atom is a noun, does it inherently have a structure? When was the concept 
of the structure of an atom introduced into science?  philosophy?

[John Collier] If an atom is a noun then it is a second, and there is no reason 
why it can't have a structure. Atomness, though, is iconic, and cannot signify 
a structure in itself.

If a molecule is a noun, is it a "firstness"? does it inherently have a 
structure?  Is modal logic necessary to describe the relationship between atoms 
and molecules? Is the inherence of "thing in itself" necessary for this 
relation?

[John Collier] No, see my last interjection.

In short, does a concept of "firstness", as a "thing in itself" inherently 
require a metaphysical view of all nouns?

[John Collier] No, for the reasons above, if I understand what you mean here by 
your use of 'metaphysical' which is a very broad term.

If a unit is a firstness, then:

The union of units unifies the unity.    

Is this logically  True?  or False?   
What is your reasoning for your conclusion?

[John Collier] Clark will have to address this. I find it very obscure.

Best,
John

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity.

2015-12-02 Thread Jerry LR Chandler

List, Clark:

On Dec 2, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Clark Goble wrote:

> I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
> structures are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in 
> itself without relations.
> 

>From my perspective, this argument, ignores the nature of nature - that is, of 
>part whole relationships, known as mereology in logic and philosophy and as 
>"scaling" in physics.

A noun is what?  a part of a sentence? an object? a singularity? a relative? a 
grammatical structure?

If an atom is a noun, does it inherently have a structure? When was the concept 
of the structure of an atom introduced into science?  philosophy?

If a molecule is a noun, is it a "firstness"? does it inherently have a 
structure?  Is modal logic necessary to describe the relationship between atoms 
and molecules? Is the inherence of "thing in itself" necessary for this 
relation?

In short, does a concept of "firstness", as a "thing in itself" inherently 
require a metaphysical view of all nouns?

If a unit is a firstness, then:

The union of units unifies the unity.

Is this logically  True?  or False?   
What is your reasoning for your conclusion?

Cheers

Jerry

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

2015-12-02 Thread John Collier

Sung,

I assume no such thing. Where did you get this idea from?  You are unreasonably 
adept at setting up straw men to try to justify yourself. You did it recently 
with Edwina as well. This is not only bad reasoning, but it is rather rude as 
well.

Your claims overall make no sense, since there is little relation between 
Popper’s “worlds” and the Peircean categories, especially in trying to relate 
them to fields of studies, which the Popperian worlds bridge completely, as do 
the Peircean categories.

As I have said, your first mistake is that you are applying the notion of 
structure to firsts, which is a violation of both the common sense and 
technical notions of ‘structure’.

You are stumbling around in your own conceptual fog, and it isn’t nice to watch.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: sji.confor...@gmail.com [mailto:sji.confor...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of 
Sungchul Ji
Sent: Thursday, 03 December 2015 12:30 AM
To: PEIRCE-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Hi Clark, lists,

You wrote:

"I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
structures (120215-1)
are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself without 
relations."

(1)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until recently), 
assumes that there is only one way to distribute the Peircean categories of 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three worlds of Burgin, denoted as 
S (World of Structures), P (Physical world),and M (Mental world).  Let me 
designate such a view as the 1-to-1 view, according to which only one of the 6 
possibilities shown in Table 1 is true and the rest are not.  The alternative 
view would be that more than one of the 6 possibilities listed in Table 1 can 
be true, depending on context. I will refer to this view as the "1-to-many" 
view.


Table 1.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the worlds and 
Peircean categories.

Possibilities

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

 Context or Field of Studies

1

S*

P

M

?

2

S

M

P

?

3

P

S

M

?

4

P

M

S

?

5

M

S

P

?

6

M

P

S

?


*S = World of structures
  P = Physical world
  M = Mental world

(2)  It may be necessary to invoke at least two kinds of "structures" -- (i) 
"mental structures", i.e, those structures in the world whose existence depends 
on the human mind (through discovery, creativity, and production), and (ii) 
"real structures" that can exist independent of human mind.  The S in 
Possibility 1 and 2 above are of the first kind (i.e., real structures) and the 
S  in Possibilities 4 and 6 are of the second kind (i.e., mental structures).

(3)  Even with my very limited reading of Peirce, I can recognize that Table 1 
is consistent with the basic tenet of the Peircean semiotics that all signs 
(including S, P and M in Table 1) have in each the three basic aspects of 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, although each of the 6 possibilites shown 
in Table 1 PRESCINDS different aspect of each sign.  For example, Possibility 1 
rescinds the Firstness aspect of S, the Secondness aspect of P, and the 
Thirdness aspect of M.  In contrast, Possibility 6 prescinds the Firstness 
aspect of M, the Secondness aspect of P and the Thirdness aspect of S, etc.


If (2) and (3) are right, the 1-to-many view described in (1) would be 
validated.


All the best.

Sung



On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Clark Goble 
<cl...@lextek.com<mailto:cl...@lextek.com>> wrote:

On Dec 1, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Sungchul Ji 
<s...@rci.rutgers.edu<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>> wrote:

(1)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce.
We seem to disagree on how to assign these categories to the three worlds of 
Burgin and the three roses of Scotus.

I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where structures 
are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself without 
relations.

You seem to be using firstness due to invariant and thus structures. But I 
don’t see how that works. Being invariant is not the same as being unrelated.


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--
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701

www.conformon.net<http://www.confor

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-02 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Sung, your comment doesn't make any sense. Because Peirce's three categories 
don't correlate to the three worlds of Burgin and Popper [both of whom are 
excellent scholars] , doesn't mean that Peircean theory doesn't have anything 
to do with modern natural sciences or with information science

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Sungchul Ji 
  To: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 8:35 PM
  Subject: Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and 
triadic relations

  Edwina, Clark, John, lists

  You  wrote:

  "Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds - and 
neither, (120215-1)
  in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories." 

  If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E. Taborsky) 
would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as represented by Popper 
and Penrose) or with information science (as represented by Burgin), which is 
hard to believe.

  All the best.

  Sung

  On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to 'distribute 
the Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three 
worlds of Burgin".

Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds - 
and neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.  It 
takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the essential 
identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic interactive 
operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such psychological nominals as 
'subjective, objective and general' - and these are not valid outlines of the 
three categories. 

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Sungchul Ji 
  To: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
  Subject: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and 
triadic relations

  Hi Clark, lists, 

  You wrote:

  "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
structures (120215-1)
  are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself 
without relations."

  (1)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until 
recently), assumes that there is only one way to distribute the Peircean 
categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three worlds of 
Burgin, denoted as S (World of Structures), P (Physical world),and M (Mental 
world).  Let me designate such a view as the 1-to-1 view, according to which 
only one of the 6 possibilities shown in Table 1 is true and the rest are not.  
The alternative view would be that more than one of the 6 possibilities listed 
in Table 1 can be true, depending on context. I will refer to this view as the 
"1-to-many" view.  

Table 1.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the 
worlds and Peircean categories.

Possibilities
   Firstness
   Secondness
   Thirdness
Context or Field of Studies

1
   S*
   P
   M
   ?

2
   S
   M
   P
   ?

3
   P
   S
   M
   ?

4
   P
   M
   S
   ?

5
   M
   S
   P
   ?

6
   M
   P
   S
   ?

  *S = World of structures
P = Physical world
M = Mental world

  (2)  It may be necessary to invoke at least two kinds of "structures" -- 
(i) "mental structures", i.e, those structures in the world whose existence 
depends on the human mind (through discovery, creativity, and production), and 
(ii) "real structures" that can exist independent of human mind.  The S in 
Possibility 1 and 2 above are of the first kind (i.e., real structures) and the 
S  in Possibilities 4 and 6 are of the second kind (i.e., mental structures).  

  (3)  Even with my very limited reading of Peirce, I can recognize that 
Table 1 is consistent with the basic tenet of the Peircean semiotics that all 
signs (including S, P and M in Table 1) have in each the three basic aspects of 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, although each of the 6 possibilites shown 
in Table 1 PRESCINDS different aspect of each sign.  For example, Possibility 1 
rescinds the Firstness aspect of S, the Secondness aspect of P, and the 
Thirdness aspect of M.  In contrast, Possibility 6 prescinds the Firstness 
aspect of M, the Secondness aspect of P and the Thirdness aspect of S, etc.

  If (2) and (3) are right, the 1-t

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-02 Thread Edwina Taborsky

I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to 'distribute the 
Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three 
worlds of Burgin".

Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds - and 
neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.  It 
takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the essential 
identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic interactive 
operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such psychological nominals as 
'subjective, objective and general' - and these are not valid outlines of the 
three categories. 

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: Sungchul Ji 
  To: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
  Subject: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic 
relations


  Hi Clark, lists,


  You wrote:


  "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
structures (120215-1)
  are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself 
without relations."


  (1)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until 
recently), assumes that there is only one way to distribute the Peircean 
categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three worlds of 
Burgin, denoted as S (World of Structures), P (Physical world),and M (Mental 
world).  Let me designate such a view as the 1-to-1 view, according to which 
only one of the 6 possibilities shown in Table 1 is true and the rest are not.  
The alternative view would be that more than one of the 6 possibilities listed 
in Table 1 can be true, depending on context. I will refer to this view as the 
"1-to-many" view.  




Table 1.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the 
worlds and Peircean categories.
   
Possibilities
   Firstness
   Secondness
   Thirdness
Context or Field of Studies
   
1
   S*
   P
   M
   ?
   
2
   S
   M
   P
   ?
   
3
   P
   S
   M
   ?
   
4
   P
   M
   S
   ?
   
5
   M
   S
   P
   ?
   
6
   M
   P
   S
   ?
   



  *S = World of structures
P = Physical world
M = Mental world



  (2)  It may be necessary to invoke at least two kinds of "structures" -- (i) 
"mental structures", i.e, those structures in the world whose existence depends 
on the human mind (through discovery, creativity, and production), and (ii) 
"real structures" that can exist independent of human mind.  The S in 
Possibility 1 and 2 above are of the first kind (i.e., real structures) and the 
S  in Possibilities 4 and 6 are of the second kind (i.e., mental structures).  


  (3)  Even with my very limited reading of Peirce, I can recognize that Table 
1 is consistent with the basic tenet of the Peircean semiotics that all signs 
(including S, P and M in Table 1) have in each the three basic aspects of 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, although each of the 6 possibilites shown 
in Table 1 PRESCINDS different aspect of each sign.  For example, Possibility 1 
rescinds the Firstness aspect of S, the Secondness aspect of P, and the 
Thirdness aspect of M.  In contrast, Possibility 6 prescinds the Firstness 
aspect of M, the Secondness aspect of P and the Thirdness aspect of S, etc.




  If (2) and (3) are right, the 1-to-many view described in (1) would be 
validated.



  All the best.



  Sung 






  On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:



  On Dec 1, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:


  (1)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce. 
  We seem to disagree on how to assign these categories to the three worlds 
of Burgin and the three roses of Scotus.


I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where 
structures are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in 
itself without relations.


You seem to be using firstness due to invariant and thus structures. But I 
don’t see how that works. Being invariant is not the same as being unrelated.


-
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 
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  -- 

  Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

  Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
  Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
  Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
  Rutgers University

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-02 Thread Sungchul Ji

Edwina, Clark, John, lists

You  wrote:

"Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
and neither, (120215-1)
in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories."

If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E.
Taborsky) would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as
represented by Popper and Penrose) or with information science (as
represented by Burgin), which is hard to believe.

All the best.

Sung

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to
> 'distribute the Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness
> over the three worlds of Burgin".
>
> Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
> and neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.
> It takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the
> essential identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic
> interactive operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such
> psychological nominals as 'subjective, objective and general' - and these
> are not valid outlines of the three categories.
>
> Edwina
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
> *Subject:* [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
> triadic relations
>
> Hi Clark, lists,
>
> You wrote:
>
> "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where
> structures (120215-1)
> are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself
> without relations."
>
> (*1*)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until
> recently), assumes that *there is only one way to distribute the Peircean
> categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three worlds of
> Burgin, denoted as S (World of Structures), P (Physical world),and M
> (Mental world). * Let me designate such a view as the *1-to-1 view, *according
> to which only one of the 6 possibilities shown in *Table 1* is true and
> the rest are not.  The alternative view would be that more than one of the
> 6 possibilities listed in Table 1 can be true, depending on context. I will
> refer to this view as the "*1-to-many*" view.
>
>
> *Table 1*.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the
> worlds and Peircean categories.
>
> Possibilities
>
> *Firstness*
>
> *Secondness*
>
> *Thirdness*
>
>  Context or Field of Studies
>
> *1*
>
> S*
>
> P
>
> M
>
> ?
>
> *2*
>
> S
>
> M
>
> P
>
> ?
>
> *3*
>
> P
>
> S
>
> M
>
> ?
>
> *4*
>
> P
>
> M
>
> S
>
> ?
>
> *5*
>
> M
>
> S
>
> P
>
> ?
>
> *6*
>
> M
>
> P
>
> S
>
> ?
>
> *S = World of structures
>   P = Physical world
>   M = Mental world
>
> (*2*)  It may be necessary to invoke at least two kinds of "structures"
> -- (i) "mental structures", i.e, those structures in the world whose
> existence depends on the human mind (through discovery, creativity, and
> production), and (ii) "real structures" that can exist independent of human
> mind.  The S in Possibility 1 and 2 above are of the first kind (i.e., real
> structures) and the S  in Possibilities 4 and 6 are of the second kind
> (i.e., mental structures).
>
> (*3*)  Even with my very limited reading of Peirce, I can recognize that
> Table 1 is consistent with the basic tenet of the Peircean semiotics that
> all signs (including S, P and M in Table 1) have in each the three basic
> aspects of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, although each of the 6
> possibilites shown in Table 1 PRESCINDS different aspect of each sign.  For
> example, Possibility 1 rescinds the Firstness aspect of S, the Secondness
> aspect of P, and the Thirdness aspect of M.  In contrast, Possibility
> 6 prescinds the Firstness aspect of M, the Secondness aspect of P and the
> Thirdness aspect of S, etc.
>
>
> If (*2*) and (*3*) are right, the *1-to-many view* described in (*1*)
> would be validated.
>
>
> All the best.
>
> Sung
>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Dec 1, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>>
>> (*1*)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce.
>> We seem to disagree

Re: [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-12-02 Thread Gary Richmond

Sung, List,

"Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
and neither, (120215-1)
in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories."

If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E.
Taborsky) would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as
represented by Popper and Penrose) or with information science (as
represented by Burgin), which is hard to believe.


Sung, I think you need to study logic a bit more deeply, including logical
fallacies. To say that because Burgin's and Popper's three worlds have
little if anything to do with the Peircean categories (and I agree with
Edwina, although you'll note my slight modification to "little if
anything"), is not to say that they lack any value in and of themselves
(which possible value I won't comment on now).

There is one, perhaps two fallacies involved in your response to Edwina,
and I think it's up to you to up your logical studies to identify them.
Perhaps that will help prevent you from committing them in the future.

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*

On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:

> Edwina, Clark, John, lists
>
> You  wrote:
>
> "Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
> and neither, (120215-1)
> in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories."
>
> If Statement (120215-1) is right, then Peirce (as represneted by E.
> Taborsky) would have nothing to do with modern natural sciences (as
> represented by Popper and Penrose) or with information science (as
> represented by Burgin), which is hard to believe.
>
> All the best.
>
> Sung
>
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> I guess I must be 'nobody', since I don't see any way at all to
>> 'distribute the Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness
>> over the three worlds of Burgin".
>>
>> Burgin's three worlds seem remarkably similar to Popper's three worlds -
>> and neither, in my view, have anything to do with the Peircean categories.
>> It takes a huge stretch to make such a claim, and if one does so, the
>> essential identity of the Peircean categories and their full semiosic
>> interactive operation, is totally lost and one is reduced to such
>> psychological nominals as 'subjective, objective and general' - and these
>> are not valid outlines of the three categories.
>>
>> Edwina
>>
>> - Original Message -----
>> *From:* Sungchul Ji <s...@rci.rutgers.edu>
>> *To:* PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 02, 2015 5:29 PM
>> *Subject:* [biosemiotics:8992] Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and
>> triadic relations
>>
>> Hi Clark, lists,
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>> "I’m not quite sure why you are applying firstness to structure where
>> structures (120215-1)
>> are inherently relations and firstness is inherently a thing in itself
>> without relations."
>>
>> (*1*)  It seems that everybody, including you, John (and myself until
>> recently), assumes that *there is only one way to distribute the
>> Peircean categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness over the three
>> worlds of Burgin, denoted as S (World of Structures), P (Physical
>> world),and M (Mental world). * Let me designate such a view as the *1-to-1
>> view, *according to which only one of the 6 possibilities shown in *Table
>> 1* is true and the rest are not.  The alternative view would be that
>> more than one of the 6 possibilities listed in Table 1 can be true,
>> depending on context. I will refer to this view as the "*1-to-many*"
>> view.
>>
>>
>> *Table 1*.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the
>> worlds and Peircean categories.
>>
>> Possibilities
>>
>> *Firstness*
>>
>> *Secondness*
>>
>> *Thirdness*
>>
>>  Context or Field of Studies
>>
>> *1*
>>
>> S*
>>
>> P
>>
>> M
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *2*
>>
>> S
>>
>> M
>>
>> P
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *3*
>>
>> P
>>
>> S
>>
>> M
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *4*
>>
>> P
>>
>> M
>>
>> S
>>
>> ?
>>
>> *5*
>>
>

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

2015-12-01 Thread Sungchul Ji

Hi Clark,

". . . * Firstness* is the world of raw experience, ideas or possibility,
*secondness* the world  (120115-1)
of reactions, brute force & actuality and *thirdness* the world of signs,
connections and power
(not necessarily mental unless one is careful what one means by that)."


(*1*)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce.
We seem to disagree on how to assign these categories to the three worlds
of Burgin and the three roses of Scotus.

(*2*)  In principle, there are 6 (and only 6) ways of assigning the three
objects (whether words or roses) to the Peircean categories as shown in *Table
1.  *Although I adopted Possibility 1 in *Figure 1* of my PEIRCE-L post of
11/302015, I cannot rule out some of the other possibilities listed in *Table
1*.


*Table 1*.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the worlds
and Peircean categories.

Possibilities

*Firstness*

*Secondness*

*Thirdness*

 Context or Field of Studies

1

S*

P

M

?

2

S

M

P

?

3

P

S

M

?

4

P

M

S

?

5

M

S

P

?

6

M

P

S

?

*S = World of structures
  P = Physical world
  M = Mental world

(*3*)  The non-determinism indicated in* Table 1* is frustrating if we
assume, whether correctly or not, that there should be only one unambiguous
assignment possible if our theories are right. Such an assumption may be
valid and future studies may indeed reveal an unambiguous categorial
assignment.  Alternatively, the non-determinism of *Table 1* may be real
and reflects a deep structure of reality as discussed below.

(*4*)  The non-determinism of *Table 1* reminded me of a similar
non-determinism in gauge field theories in physics.  Simply put


". . .  a *gauge theory* is a type of field theory
 in which the
Lagrangian  is
  (120115-2)
invariant  under a
continuous
group  of local
transformations"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_theory).


Replacing "Lagrangian" with "Peircean categories" and identify the 6
possibilities of *Table 1* with "local transformations"  in (1201156-2)
logically leads to

"A gauge theory may be said to apply to semiotics *qualitatively*, if the
Peircean ITR(120115-3)
(Irreducible Triadic Relation) remains invariant upon transforming the
nature of the
objects occupying the three positions in the *commutative triangle*, *Figure
1*"


   *  f*
*g*
  *Firstness* > *Secondness* --->
*Thirdness*
(Real Rose)   (Rose)
 (Mental Rose)
 [World of Structures]   [Physical World]  [Mental
World]
 |
   ^
 |
   |
 |___|
*h*

*Figure 1.  *The Peircean ITR as the conserved property of semiotics (or
sign physics (?))
 f = actualization; g = pattern formation; h = information
flow.

(*5*)  The validity of Statement (120115-3) seems partly supported by the
approximate symmetry that can be detected between particle physics and
semiotics as analyzed in *Table 1.*


*Table 1.*   “Generalized’  Gauge  Field theory (?)

Discipline

*Particle Physics*

*Semiotics* (Sign Physics ?)

Objects studied

nucleons (protons, neutrons)

Ideas (1ns, 2ns, & 3ns)*

Properties

angular momentum

Ordinality**

Conserved property

Isotopic spin, I

Cardinality or ITR***

Gauage Field Force

Strong force

'Mind force' (?)

*1ns = Firstness; 2ns = Secondness; 3ns = Thirdness.
**1ns is prerequisite for 2ns which is prerequisite for 3nd.
***ITR = Irreducible Triadic Relation, stating that the elements cannot be
reduced to two or one.

Again, if the content of *Table 1* turns out to be true in principle, one
'astounding' result seems to fall out of  the symmetry of *Table 1*  -- the
existence of what may be called the 'Mind Force' in analogy to the "Strong
Force" in atomic nuclei  (see the last row).

(*7*)  The 'Mind Force' postulated in *Table 1* operates not only in the
Mental World but also in the Physical World and the World of Structures
where the Principle of ITR operates.

(*8*)  It may be an exciting challenge to find out how the "mind force"
postulated in Table 1 is related to Peirce's "Mind" that operates
throughout the Universe:


"Thought is no necessarily connected with a brain.  It appears in the work
of bees, of crystals and  (120115-4)
throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is
really there, than that the
colors, the shapes, etc. of objects are really there."  (CP 4.551)

I am not comfortable with (120115-4).  I would agree with Peirce if he
confines his "Mind" to

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

2015-12-01 Thread John Collier

Sung,

I repeat, firsts are not structures and structures are not firsts. Firsts don’t 
permit the sort of relational properties required of structures, though there 
is a first corresponding to any structure, properly called an icon, but 
structures are never icons. Structures can exist as seconds, and be real as 
thirds. This is the way the notion of structure is used in logic and in network 
theory (nodes and connections among them, which is logically identical to a 
structure).

This sort of abuse of terminology undermines what you are saying, and in fact 
makes it false. This is a shame.

On the issue of cardinality and ordinality, you have them backwards.  The 
numbers are given in terms of the closure of equinumerosity, the closure being 
at least a second order property, which is just cardinality. Once this is 
established by some method , we can define ordinality in terms of it. This is 
how it has been done since at least Peano, and the contemporary set theoretic 
definition of the counting numbers in terms of the empty set and constructions 
(either Zermelo-Fraenkel or von Neumann) on it follow the same pattern by 
ensuring equinumerosity first through defining a second order property, and 
then proving the ordinality. I addressed this before, but obviously you don’t 
care about getting it right.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: sji.confor...@gmail.com [mailto:sji.confor...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of 
Sungchul Ji
Sent: Wednesday, 02 December 2015 4:16 AM
To: PEIRCE-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Hi Clark,

". . .  Firstness is the world of raw experience, ideas or possibility, 
secondness the world  (120115-1)
of reactions, brute force & actuality and thirdness the world of signs, 
connections and power
(not necessarily mental unless one is careful what one means by that)."


(1)  I agree with you on the definition of these categories of Peirce.
We seem to disagree on how to assign these categories to the three worlds of 
Burgin and the three roses of Scotus.

(2)  In principle, there are 6 (and only 6) ways of assigning the three objects 
(whether words or roses) to the Peircean categories as shown in Table 1.  
Although I adopted Possibility 1 in Figure 1 of my PEIRCE-L post of 11/302015, 
I cannot rule out some of the other possibilities listed in Table 1.


Table 1.  Non-deterministic relation between triadic model of the worlds and 
Peircean categories.

Possibilities

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

 Context or Field of Studies

1

S*

P

M

?

2

S

M

P

?

3

P

S

M

?

4

P

M

S

?

5

M

S

P

?

6

M

P

S

?


*S = World of structures
  P = Physical world
  M = Mental world

(3)  The non-determinism indicated in Table 1 is frustrating if we assume, 
whether correctly or not, that there should be only one unambiguous assignment 
possible if our theories are right. Such an assumption may be valid and future 
studies may indeed reveal an unambiguous categorial assignment.  Alternatively, 
the non-determinism of Table 1 may be real and reflects a deep structure of 
reality as discussed below.

(4)  The non-determinism of Table 1 reminded me of a similar non-determinism in 
gauge field theories in physics.  Simply put

". . .  a gauge theory is a type of field 
theory<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_theory_(physics)> in which the 
Lagrangian<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_(field_theory)> is  
 (120115-2)
invariant<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invariant_(physics)> under a continuous 
group<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_group> of local transformations"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_theory).


Replacing "Lagrangian" with "Peircean categories" and identify the 6 
possibilities of Table 1 with "local transformations"  in (1201156-2) logically 
leads to

"A gauge theory may be said to apply to semiotics qualitatively, if the 
Peircean ITR(120115-3)
(Irreducible Triadic Relation) remains invariant upon transforming the nature 
of the
objects occupying the three positions in the commutative triangle, Figure 1"


 fg
  Firstness > Secondness ---> Thirdness
(Real Rose)   (Rose)  (Mental 
Rose)
 [World of Structures]   [Physical World]  [Mental World]
 |  
  ^
 |  
  |
 |___|
h
Figure 1.  The Peircean ITR as the conserved property of semiotics (or sign 
physics (?))

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

2015-11-30 Thread Jeffrey Brian Downard

Hello Claudio, Clark, List,

The idea that one sign may be dominant is nicely highlighted in Peirce's 
discussion of focusing attention on one thing and letting others fade into the 
background.  This ability to focus one's attention is, on Peirce's account, 
central to the explanation of how we can exert some degree of self control as 
we interpret signs as thoughts.  The index serves the function of directing the 
attention on one or another object (CP 1.369, 2.256, 2.259, 2.350, 2.428,, 
3.434, 4.562, etc.).

--Jeff



Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: Claudio Guerri [claudiogue...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 2:18 PM
To: Stephen C. Rose; Clark Goble
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Stephen, Clark, Edwina, List...
I think that I wrote already about this subject... but there are two authors 
that I like very much that constructed some good 'metaphors' for the 
understanding of the triadic relation.
Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser studied Peirce  in a Seminar by Farnçois 
Recanati in Paris, France, during the 50's...??? if somebody knows a good 
reference, I would be glad to know more about...

Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of view, 
and he learned that besides his "the imaginary" (1ness) and "the symbolic" 
(3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic sign) he had to add 
"the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the impossible", « la grimace du réel 
»... or better (or in a more perverse way): "what never ceases to not join the 
symbolic" (the translation from the Spanish version is mine...) apparently, the 
French (original version) is. « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire »...
I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by Peirce. 
For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA (International Psychoanalytic 
Association)...

Althusser (even if considered a Stalinist by a dear fellow of the Peirce-L) 
wrote about the "Social Practice"... and (following Peirce) he proposed: a 
Theoretical Practice (1ness), an Economical Practice (2ness) and a Political 
Practice (3ness).
He did not give a synthetic or unique word to 'baptize' the Theoretical 
Practice which I consider 'possibilitant' (following Peirce of course), but he 
stated that the Political Practice is always 'decisive' and that the Economical 
Practice is 'determinant only in last instance' (I say, because it is the 'real 
impossible'... and if you don't believe it, follow what will happen with 
Argentina after the 10th of December...). Pitifully, because of his statements, 
he was expelled form the PCF (Parti Communiste Français)...
But Althusser also added a good explanation (for the Peircean definition of 
sign): normally, one aspect of the sign will be 'dominant'.
Did Peirce say something like that? somewhere?

Taking account of what happened to those two scholars... perhaps the 'triadic 
relation' can be a very dangerous subject...!!!???
All the best
Claudio

Stephen C. Rose escribió el 30/11/2015 a las 03:26 p.m.:
Triadic Philosophy as I have evolved it over its lifetime tends to agree in 
with what you have said Clark about the triad. With the following exception 
which I take to be at least somewhat related to Peirce and perhaps to agree 
with something I have seen in Edwina's posts.  The triadic progression is the 
progression of a sign which originates in the spontanaity of firstness and 
proceeds through the obstacles set up in secondness and arrives at the 
expressions and actions made possible by the encounter of 1 and 2.

I understand that the premise of Triadic Philosophy, that Reality is all, is 
hardly consistent with Peirce.


Books <http://buff.ly/15GfdqU> http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: 
<http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl> http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl
Gifts: <http://buff.ly/1wXADj3> http://buff.ly/1wXADj3

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Clark Goble 
<cl...@lextek.com<mailto:cl...@lextek.com>> wrote:

On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji 
<<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>s...@rci.rutgers.edu<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>>
 wrote:


  f  g
  Real Rose  > Rose  ---> Mental Rose
  (Firstness)  (Secondness)  (Thirdness)
 [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
 |  
  ^
 |  
  |
 ||
   h

Peirce’s ontology doesn’t quite follow that. Firstness is the world o

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

2015-11-30 Thread Claudio Guerri


Stephen, Clark, Edwina, List...
I think that I wrote already about this subject... but there are two 
authors that I like very much that constructed some good 'metaphors' for 
the understanding of the /triadic relation/.
Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser studied Peirce  in a Seminar by 
Farnçois Recanati in Paris, France, during the 50's...??? if somebody 
knows a good reference, I would be glad to know more about...


Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of 
view, and he learned that besides his "the imaginary" (1ness) and "the 
symbolic" (3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic 
sign) he had to add "the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the 
impossible", « la grimace du réel »... or better (or in a more perverse 
way): "what never ceases to not join the symbolic" (the translation from 
the Spanish version is mine...) apparently, the French (original 
version) is. « ce qui/ne cesse/de/ne pas/s'écrire »...
I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by 
Peirce. For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA 
(/International Psychoanalytic Association).../


Althusser (even if considered a Stalinist by a dear fellow of the 
Peirce-L) wrote about the "Social Practice"... and (following Peirce) he 
proposed: a /Theoretical Practice/ (1ness), an /Economical Practice/ 
(2ness) and a /Political Practice/ (3ness).
He did not give a synthetic or unique word to 'baptize' the /Theoretical 
Practice/ which I consider 'possibilitant' (following Peirce of course), 
but he stated that the /Political Practice /is always 'decisive' and 
that the Economical Practice is 'determinant only in last instance' (I 
say, because it is the 'real impossible'... and if you don't believe it, 
follow what will happen with Argentina after the 10th of December...). 
Pitifully, because of his statements, he was expelled form the PCF 
(Parti Communiste Français)...
But Althusser also added a good explanation (for the Peircean definition 
of sign): normally, one aspect of the sign will be 'dominant'.

Did Peirce say something like that? somewhere?

Taking account of what happened to those two scholars... perhaps the 
'triadic relation' can be a very dangerous subject...!!!???

All the best
Claudio

Stephen C. Rose escribió el 30/11/2015 a las 03:26 p.m.:
Triadic Philosophy as I have evolved it over its lifetime tends to 
agree in with what you have said Clark about the triad. With the 
following exception which I take to be at least somewhat related to 
Peirce and perhaps to agree with something I have seen in Edwina's 
posts.  The triadic progression is the progression of a sign which 
originates in the spontanaity of firstness and proceeds through the 
obstacles set up in secondness and arrives at the expressions and 
actions made possible by the encounter of 1 and 2.


I understand that the premise of Triadic Philosophy, that Reality is 
all, is hardly consistent with Peirce.



Bookshttp://buff.ly/15GfdqUArt:http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl
Gifts:http://buff.ly/1wXADj3

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Clark Goble > wrote:




On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji > wrote:


*f**g*
*Real Rose* >*Rose* --->*Mental Rose*
(Firstness)  (Secondness)  (Thirdness)
   [World of Structures] [Physical World]
 [Mental World]

   |  ^
 ||
 ||
*h*


Peirce’s ontology doesn’t quite follow that. Firstness is the
world of raw experience, ideas or possibility, secondness the
world of reactions, brute force & actuality and thirdness the
world of signs, connections and power (not necessarily mental
unless one is careful what one means by that). So depending upon
what one means by structure you’d have that in the third universe.

Again though one has to be careful with terminology and Peirce’s
shifts around a bit over time.


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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 6:15 AM,   wrote:
> 
> Probably the most common distinction made by Peirce in this connection is 
> that between real relations and relations of reason

Yes, that section of The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus I linked to 
yesterday goes through that a bit.

> “Relations which are mere comparisons, the members being related only in 
> virtue of characters which each cou1d equally well have were the other 
> annihilated, were called relations of reason by the old logicians, in 
> contrast to real relations. They are the seconds of the internal type.” But 
> that doesn’t help much in sorting out triadic relations.

I’m not sure I’d go that far. I think they are helpful. After all a triadic 
relation involves the token that associates the interpretant to the object. 
Knowing how the interpretant and object are related thus deals with a large 
class of triadic relations although it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about 
the object-token relationship.

It’s Scotus who makes what today we’d call the externalist move and which 
Peirce makes as well. That is instead of distinguishing mental signs he notes 
there’s no division among objects. Scotus quips “rose is not divided into real 
roses and merely conceptual roses for they are two modes of being of the same 
thing.” That’s pretty important for understanding thirdness. (I think it 
relates heavily to Heidegger’s notion of being as well)

I also think Scotus’ notions of third-mode relation gives us a lot of the 
structure of the sign-relation that Peirce emphasizes. (That is the relation to 
the dynamic object is via a guess due to the dependence relation being one 
direction) That section on Scotus and relations I linked to also explains why 
these relationships aren’t merely relations of reason. 

While that book doesn’t get into it I also think Scotus’ work on transitivity 
of signs relates to Peirce as well. A sign of the sign of a is also a sign of 
a. That effectively gives us Peirce’s continuity. But more importantly it gives 
Scotus his argument for externalism. So this entails, according to Scotus’ 
argument, that signs can’t merely be mental. But since for any sign you can 
create a new sign with the same relation between object and interpretant you 
get continuity. Finally I think this explains the sign-token since if you can 
always create a new sign you can always have this intermediate sign. This gives 
you the dynamic object and immediate object but the immediate object can always 
be seen as a sign-token when looking at one of these associated signs.

Now usual caveats apply. It’s been years since I last studied Scotus closely. 
And to be honest most of my reading was relative to Heidegger, not Peirce. But 
I do think he’s an important source for understanding a lot of this. Further I 
think looking at it from a source with a different sort of arguing and 
terminology can be helpful to clarify the terminology around Peirce. Often 
translating our arguments or assertions is a very helpful endeavor for clarity.

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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 11:11 AM, Clark Goble  wrote:
> 
> Interestingly relative to Scotus the middle voice argument usually is made by 
> the proponents of analogy against Scotus. Heidegger sees this voice as key to 
> understanding the pre-socratics (since he’s caught up on Plato being the 
> source of philosophical error as much if not more than Descartes). So his 
> examples of “to arise” (middle voice) and “to give birth to” (active voice) 
> arise both out of medieval but also these early Greek ways of speaking. The 
> key to the middle voice is that things happen without necessarily someone or 
> something making them happen. The actor is just missing. 

Just to expand on that a little since I suspect those not familiar with middle 
voice might be a tad confused. Middle voice didn’t exist in Latin. It did in 
Greek. Usually it relates to a subject being both the actor and receiver of the 
action. So it a double move of passive and active. Ockham thought this was 
necessary for logic, although it’s not quite clear why. It comes up relative to 
Scotus over analogy which in practice is the debate over univocal or 
equivocative terms. For Scouts Being is univocal. Ockham who wants things to be 
more mental than Scouts uses middle voice to get around certain arguments 
because the middle voice enables both active and passive.

Later starting at least with Nietzsche and perhaps earlier idealists (I don’t 
know the history that well) it pops up in German idealism. With Heidegger it’s 
important for his phenomenology because it enables a happening that isn’t 
controlled by either the object or the “subject" (Daesin). So this middle place 
and middle voice is a great way to get at what he’s after. I think his notion 
of poles (strife) ends up being tied to it as well. 

In Peirce the sign-token is this middle ground between active determination 
from the object and a certain passivity in the interpretant. As a sign (as 
opposed to sign-token) it thus is both active and passive in itself. Further 
there’s a certain sense of equivocation since the move back from the 
interpretant or sign-token to the object is only available via a guess.

Peirce gets at the issue of analogy more formally too in his writings on 
metaphor and analogy. While he’s a bit brief in his comments leading to various 
debates over his intentions, it seems like he uses the notion of icon here. A 
metaphor is an icon in what could be multiple ways. An analogy is an icon in 
terms of a single property. I think this gets around some of Ockham’s arguments 
against Scotus but leaves a certain openness to metaphor and analogy which of 
course gives them their power. Unlike say the 20th century Continental 
philosophers though Peirce never focuses in on metaphor as a key for 
understanding signs. However the gap between object and the rest of the sign 
ends up having a similar function. (See for instance his letters to Lady Webly 
on signs in his mature period)

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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 12:03 PM, Clark Goble  wrote:
> 
>> Are you suggesting this as an alternative world view relative to physical 
>> "laws", e.g., the absence of order?
> 
> No, far from it. Rather the argument would be this is what enables laws to 
> develop.

Actually let me clarify that somewhat. For Ockham he wants to use it to push a 
kind of nominalism where the order is just in the mind. I’m just not familiar 
enough with his arguments to say much there.

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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji  wrote:
> 
> 
>   f  g
>   Real Rose  > Rose  ---> Mental Rose
>   (Firstness)  (Secondness)  
> (Thirdness)
>  [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
>  |
> ^
>  |
> |
>  ||
>h

Peirce’s ontology doesn’t quite follow that. Firstness is the world of raw 
experience, ideas or possibility, secondness the world of reactions, brute 
force & actuality and thirdness the world of signs, connections and power (not 
necessarily mental unless one is careful what one means by that). So depending 
upon what one means by structure you’d have that in the third universe.

Again though one has to be careful with terminology and Peirce’s shifts around 
a bit over time.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-11-30 Thread Sungchul Ji

Clark, Gary F, Gary R, lists,


Clark quoted Scotus as saying:

 “ . . .* rose* is not divided into *real roses* and merely
   (113015-1)
*conceptual roses* for they are two modes of being
of the same thing.” (The emphasis is added.)


Three related terms appear here: 'rose', 'real rose' and 'conceptual rose'.

Being a perennial 'trichotomaniac', I applied to this set of three words
the ITR (irreuducible Triadic Relation) as shown in Figure 1. This figure
also depicts the triadic metaphysics of Peirce and the triadic model of the
world discussed by Burgin in [1]:


*  f*
*g*
  *Real Rose*  > *Rose * ---> *Mental
Rose*
  (Firstness)  (Secondness)
 (Thirdness)
 [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
 |
   ^
 |
   |
 ||
   *h*

Figure 1.  The ITR as a potential framework for integrating Scotus, Peirce,
and Burgin [1].
  *f* = materialization; *g* = 'mentalization' (?); *h* =
grounding/proof/correlation, all these processes
  are deemed be the inseparably linked aspects of 'the same
thing'.

Another possibility is to switch the positions of Rose and Real Rose but I
prefer the original arrangement as shown in Figure 1. .


If you have any questions or objections, please let me know.

All the best.

Sung


Reference:
[1] Burgin, M. (2010).  Theory of Information: Fundamentality,
Diversity and Unification.  World Scientific, New Jersey, p. 60.

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Clark Goble  wrote:

>
> On Nov 30, 2015, at 6:15 AM,  
> wrote:
>
> Probably the most common distinction made by Peirce in this connection is
> that between *real relations* and *relations of reason*
>
>
> Yes, that section of *The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus* I linked to
> yesterday goes through that a bit.
>
> “Relations which are mere comparisons, the members being related only in
> virtue of characters which each cou1d equally well have were the other
> annihilated, were called relations of reason by the old logicians, in
> contrast to real relations. They are the seconds of the internal type.” But
> that doesn’t help much in sorting out *triadic* relations.
>
>
> I’m not sure I’d go that far. I think they are helpful. After all a
> triadic relation involves the token that associates the interpretant to the
> object. Knowing how the interpretant and object are related thus deals with
> a large class of triadic relations although it doesn’t necessarily tell us
> much about the object-token relationship.
>
> It’s Scotus who makes what today we’d call the externalist move and which
> Peirce makes as well. That is instead of distinguishing mental signs he
> notes there’s no division among objects. Scotus quips “rose is not divided
> into real roses and merely conceptual roses for they are two modes of being
> of the same thing.” That’s pretty important for understanding thirdness. (I
> think it relates heavily to Heidegger’s notion of being as well)
>
> I also think Scotus’ notions of third-mode relation gives us a lot of the
> structure of the sign-relation that Peirce emphasizes. (That is the
> relation to the dynamic object is via a guess due to the dependence
> relation being one direction) That section on Scotus and relations I linked
> to also explains why these relationships aren’t merely relations of reason.
>
> While that book doesn’t get into it I also think Scotus’ work on
> transitivity of signs relates to Peirce as well. A sign of the sign of *a
> *is also a sign of a. That effectively gives us Peirce’s continuity. But
> more importantly it gives Scotus his argument for externalism. So this
> entails, according to Scotus’ argument, that signs can’t merely be mental.
> But since for any sign you can create a new sign with the same relation
> between object and interpretant you get continuity. Finally I think this
> explains the sign-token since if you can always create a new sign you can
> always have this intermediate sign. This gives you the dynamic object and
> immediate object but the immediate object can always be seen as a
> sign-token when looking at one of these associated signs.
>
> Now usual caveats apply. It’s been years since I last studied Scotus
> closely. And to be honest most of my reading was relative to Heidegger, not
> Peirce. But I do think he’s an important source for understanding a lot of
> this. Further I think looking at it from a source with a different sort of
> arguing and terminology can be helpful to clarify the terminology around
> Peirce. Often translating our arguments or assertions is a very helpful
> endeavor for clarity.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 7:22 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Agreed. As I've said, I don't agree with confining the term 'sign' to refer 
> to and only to one single Relation in the whole triad; that of the 
> Representamen or ground. That transforms this one Relation, the 
> Representamen, from being the vital mediative action in a full process and 
> makes it into almost a Sovereign Will Agent.  Such a privileging and 
> reductionism ignores that a Sign (full triad) functions and can only function 
> not within one Relation but within three Relations, and furthermore - as that 
> full triadic process, the Sign emerges within the semiosic process and takes 
> on an existential material nature. So, that full triad, the Sign, functions 
> and exists as a molecule, a cell, a weathervane, a word, an argument.

Well yes and no. I’m not sure what you mean by sovereign will agent. Almost 
sounds like libertarian free will which I’m not sure Peirce is committed to.  

Going back to Scotus, who I linked to, the key notion is determination. The 
object determines the interpretant via the sign-token. I think it follows from 
Peirce’s semiotics that this entails that the sign-token must determine the 
interpretant. I don’t think “sovereign will” makes sense in this context, which 
tends to be a more internalist nearly Cartesian way of thinking. Nor do I think 
this is really the third person conception of physicalists of the nominalist 
bent. (Which frankly is most of them) The medievals had a middle voice as did 
the Greeks but that way of thinking tends to be rare in modern philosophy. It 
is an important point in Heidegger and many who followed in that vein. 

Interestingly relative to Scotus the middle voice argument usually is made by 
the proponents of analogy against Scotus. Heidegger sees this voice as key to 
understanding the pre-socratics (since he’s caught up on Plato being the source 
of philosophical error as much if not more than Descartes). So his examples of 
“to arise” (middle voice) and “to give birth to” (active voice) arise both out 
of medieval but also these early Greek ways of speaking. The key to the middle 
voice is that things happen without necessarily someone or something making 
them happen. The actor is just missing. 

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I take Peirce to be doing with his 
sign-process. This may just be me inappropriately reading Heidegger’s notion of 
aletheia into Peirce’s signs. But I think the sign-token is this vehicle that 
clears a space for this unveiling of the object. The relationship between 
object and interpretant through the sign-token is this happening in the middle 
voice. More key, is that I think one can see inquiry as being the clearing that 
lets this happen. So there’s a certain quietism in both Peirce and Heidegger 
tied to this middle voice.

To my eyes, this middle voice is why Peirce’s externalism is so important. 
Properly speaking while the object determines the interpretant the sign is 
necessary. Not only is this a middle term in terms of the diagram, but it also 
is a middle voice. 

So to your point about will, I think the middle voice tends to clear that 
problem up.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-11-30 Thread Stephen C. Rose

Triadic Philosophy as I have evolved it over its lifetime tends to agree in
with what you have said Clark about the triad. With the following exception
which I take to be at least somewhat related to Peirce and perhaps to agree
with something I have seen in Edwina's posts.  The triadic progression is
the progression of a sign which originates in the spontanaity of firstness
and proceeds through the obstacles set up in secondness and arrives at the
expressions and actions made possible by the encounter of 1 and 2.

I understand that the premise of Triadic Philosophy, that Reality is all,
is hardly consistent with Peirce.

Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl
Gifts: http://buff.ly/1wXADj3

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Clark Goble  wrote:

>
> On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji  wrote:
>
>
> *  f*
>  *g*
>   *Real Rose*  > *Rose * ---> *Mental
> Rose*
>   (Firstness)  (Secondness)
>  (Thirdness)
>  [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
>  |
>^
>  |
>|
>  ||
>*h*
>
>
> Peirce’s ontology doesn’t quite follow that. Firstness is the world of raw
> experience, ideas or possibility, secondness the world of reactions, brute
> force & actuality and thirdness the world of signs, connections and power
> (not necessarily mental unless one is careful what one means by that). So
> depending upon what one means by structure you’d have that in the third
> universe.
>
> Again though one has to be careful with terminology and Peirce’s shifts
> around a bit over time.
>
>
> -
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> .
>
>
>
>
>
>

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

2015-11-30 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Very nice outline, Clark. I agree with the 'middle voice' where the the subject 
is both the actor and receiver of the action. The interactive relations that 
are thus set up via the mediative Representamen, between Object and 
Interpretant, are basic to the Peircean semiosic triad. 

I think this also relates to Frederik Stjernfelt's analysis of the dicisign, 
which "in its interpretant, is represented as having two parts, one referring 
to the object, and the other -the predicate " p 68 and "the Interpretant 
represents a real existential relation, or genuine Secondness, as subsisting 
between the Dicisign and the Dicisign's real object" (Peirce, CP 2.310). And ' 
"The Dicisign in so far as it is the related of the existential relation which 
is the Secondary Object of the Dicisign*, can evidently not be the entire 
Dicisign [my emphasis. It is at once a part of the Object and a part of the 
Interpretant of the Dicisign" CP 2.311.
* Secondary Object = Immediate Object.

And further..."The part which is represented to represent a part of the 
Dicisign is represented as at once part of the Interpretant and part of the 
Object" 2.311.

And this removes the linearity of actor-acted upon, since instead, we have a 
complex interactive network where such simple unilinear direction can't be 
assumed.

Edwina


  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 1:40 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations




On Nov 30, 2015, at 11:11 AM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:


Interestingly relative to Scotus the middle voice argument usually is made 
by the proponents of analogy against Scotus. Heidegger sees this voice as key 
to understanding the pre-socratics (since he’s caught up on Plato being the 
source of philosophical error as much if not more than Descartes). So his 
examples of “to arise” (middle voice) and “to give birth to” (active voice) 
arise both out of medieval but also these early Greek ways of speaking. The key 
to the middle voice is that things happen without necessarily someone or 
something making them happen. The actor is just missing. 


  Just to expand on that a little since I suspect those not familiar with 
middle voice might be a tad confused. Middle voice didn’t exist in Latin. It 
did in Greek. Usually it relates to a subject being both the actor and receiver 
of the action. So it a double move of passive and active. Ockham thought this 
was necessary for logic, although it’s not quite clear why. It comes up 
relative to Scotus over analogy which in practice is the debate over univocal 
or equivocative terms. For Scouts Being is univocal. Ockham who wants things to 
be more mental than Scouts uses middle voice to get around certain arguments 
because the middle voice enables both active and passive.


  Later starting at least with Nietzsche and perhaps earlier idealists (I don’t 
know the history that well) it pops up in German idealism. With Heidegger it’s 
important for his phenomenology because it enables a happening that isn’t 
controlled by either the object or the “subject" (Daesin). So this middle place 
and middle voice is a great way to get at what he’s after. I think his notion 
of poles (strife) ends up being tied to it as well. 


  In Peirce the sign-token is this middle ground between active determination 
from the object and a certain passivity in the interpretant. As a sign (as 
opposed to sign-token) it thus is both active and passive in itself. Further 
there’s a certain sense of equivocation since the move back from the 
interpretant or sign-token to the object is only available via a guess.


  Peirce gets at the issue of analogy more formally too in his writings on 
metaphor and analogy. While he’s a bit brief in his comments leading to various 
debates over his intentions, it seems like he uses the notion of icon here. A 
metaphor is an icon in what could be multiple ways. An analogy is an icon in 
terms of a single property. I think this gets around some of Ockham’s arguments 
against Scotus but leaves a certain openness to metaphor and analogy which of 
course gives them their power. Unlike say the 20th century Continental 
philosophers though Peirce never focuses in on metaphor as a key for 
understanding signs. However the gap between object and the rest of the sign 
ends up having a similar function. (See for instance his letters to Lady Webly 
on signs in his mature period)





--



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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 11:40 AM, Jerry LR Chandler  
> wrote:
> 
> I am uncertain with regard to the meaning of this sentence.
> The term "middle voice" suggests utterances and hence a relation to grammar 
> and rhetoric and logic. 

Originally yes. However it related to how we ascribe being and thus properties 
to objects in the medieval era. See my last post for more info. 

It’s important around the era of Scotus due to Ockham and others saying it has 
to be part of logic as a way of using the logic and grammar of analogy against 
Scotus’ realism. Latin has no middle voice so translations often simply used 
passive voice. But this isn’t quite right. English has both passive and middle 
voice but the latter is rarely used. Passive is bad because it’s unclear who 
the actor is. Middle is more interesting as the actor/subject of an action are 
the same. That’s why it’s significant philosophically.

Middle voice is important in 20th century Continental phenomenology as it 
allows a happening not fully external and not fully internal. It’s a third way 
between physicalism and more Cartesian like types of internalism. It also 
suggests a stronger interdependence than traditional philosophy had. It also 
gets used as a kind of undecidable point or aporia - what makes possible both 
activity and passivity. 

The criticism of a lot of interpretations of middle voice is to simply see it 
as a third path of “in between” rather than a true active/passive within a 
single subject.

So it’s definitely not a clear cut way to approach things.

Peirce is aware of middle voice and discusses it in various places. (Say 
Chronological Writings 2:91) Noting a logic where there’s both an active and 
passive voice he says, “but now it is also necessary to have a species of 
non-relative terms derived from relatives, which correspond to the middle 
voice.” This discussion is a complex bit of logic and is from his early period. 
(1868) Some take this to imply an early logic of continuity and a new logic of 
being. See Fernando Zalemea’s “Plasticity and Creativity in the Logic Notebook” 
for more on this.

http://lnx.journalofpragmatism.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/6_zalamea.pdf

But while one might see this in his logic of continuity and mature view of 
signs he doesn’t really use the term middle voice in his mature works that I 
could see.

> Are you suggesting this as an alternative world view relative to physical 
> "laws", e.g., the absence of order?

No, far from it. Rather the argument would be this is what enables laws to 
develop.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

2015-11-30 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Clark- perhaps I wasn't clear.

 I certainly didn't mean to imply that I, myself, thought that the 
Representamen functioned as a kind of 'Sovereign Will 'agent. I was instead 
suggesting that Gary F's insistence on considering ONLY the Representamen as 
'the Sign' [rather than the full triad] does just that - It transforms that 
mediative process which is the Representamen, into a kind of Sovereign Power. A 
form of Platonism in that it privileges the 'Mind' as an Agential power over 
the objective reality, or a even a form of nominalism in that it also rejects 
the external object's power.  I reject both versions.

You wrote: "the object determines the interpretant via the sign-token" . I 
agree with this, acknowledging that your term of 'sign-token' means 
'representamen'. 

I see your point about the sign-token [representamen] 'clearing the space' for 
the unveiling of the object, by which I understand that knowledge increases 
(within the continuity of commonality of object held by the Representamen) to 
enable a person to understand the objective reality of the object. 

So, in essence, I think we are in agreement on all points.

Edwina


  - Original Message - 
  From: Clark Goble 
  To: Peirce-L 
  Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 1:11 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations




On Nov 30, 2015, at 7:22 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:


Agreed. As I've said, I don't agree with confining the term 'sign' to refer 
to and only to one single Relation in the whole triad; that of the 
Representamen or ground. That transforms this one Relation, the Representamen, 
from being the vital mediative action in a full process and makes it into 
almost a Sovereign Will Agent.  Such a privileging and reductionism ignores 
that a Sign (full triad) functions and can only function not within one 
Relation but within three Relations, and furthermore - as that full triadic 
process, the Sign emerges within the semiosic process and takes on an 
existential material nature. So, that full triad, the Sign, functions and 
exists as a molecule, a cell, a weathervane, a word, an argument.


  Well yes and no. I’m not sure what you mean by sovereign will agent. Almost 
sounds like libertarian free will which I’m not sure Peirce is committed to.  


  Going back to Scotus, who I linked to, the key notion is determination. The 
object determines the interpretant via the sign-token. I think it follows from 
Peirce’s semiotics that this entails that the sign-token must determine the 
interpretant. I don’t think “sovereign will” makes sense in this context, which 
tends to be a more internalist nearly Cartesian way of thinking. Nor do I think 
this is really the third person conception of physicalists of the nominalist 
bent. (Which frankly is most of them) The medievals had a middle voice as did 
the Greeks but that way of thinking tends to be rare in modern philosophy. It 
is an important point in Heidegger and many who followed in that vein. 


  Interestingly relative to Scotus the middle voice argument usually is made by 
the proponents of analogy against Scotus. Heidegger sees this voice as key to 
understanding the pre-socratics (since he’s caught up on Plato being the source 
of philosophical error as much if not more than Descartes). So his examples of 
“to arise” (middle voice) and “to give birth to” (active voice) arise both out 
of medieval but also these early Greek ways of speaking. The key to the middle 
voice is that things happen without necessarily someone or something making 
them happen. The actor is just missing. 


  Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I take Peirce to be doing with his 
sign-process. This may just be me inappropriately reading Heidegger’s notion of 
aletheia into Peirce’s signs. But I think the sign-token is this vehicle that 
clears a space for this unveiling of the object. The relationship between 
object and interpretant through the sign-token is this happening in the middle 
voice. More key, is that I think one can see inquiry as being the clearing that 
lets this happen. So there’s a certain quietism in both Peirce and Heidegger 
tied to this middle voice.


  To my eyes, this middle voice is why Peirce’s externalism is so important. 
Properly speaking while the object determines the interpretant the sign is 
necessary. Not only is this a middle term in terms of the diagram, but it also 
is a middle voice. 


  So to your point about will, I think the middle voice tends to clear that 
problem up.


--



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

2015-11-30 Thread Clark Goble

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 12:29 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
>  I certainly didn't mean to imply that I, myself, thought that the 
> Representamen functioned as a kind of 'Sovereign Will 'agent. I was instead 
> suggesting that Gary F's insistence on considering ONLY the Representamen as 
> 'the Sign' [rather than the full triad] does just that - It transforms that 
> mediative process which is the Representamen, into a kind of Sovereign Power. 
> A form of Platonism in that it privileges the 'Mind' as an Agential power 
> over the objective reality, or a even a form of nominalism in that it also 
> rejects the external object's power.  I reject both versions.

I didn’t mean to appear to ascribe that belief to you. And I agree that the 
kind of Platonism that sees forms as determining reality is problematic. I 
certainly don’t believe that and I doubt many do. Whether that’s what Plato and 
the original ancient platonists believed that is of course a different matter. 
(I tend to see this type of Plato as a straw man convenient for philosophers to 
react against - although heaven knows it was a form accepted in the Renaissance 
and modern era)

I just bring up middle voice as a way to deal with this where we don’t really 
have activity in a traditional sense. 

> I see your point about the sign-token [representamen] 'clearing the space' 
> for the unveiling of the object, by which I understand that knowledge 
> increases (within the continuity of commonality of object held by the 
> Representamen) to enable a person to understand the objective reality of the 
> object. 

Yes although a logical implication of this isn’t just an increase in knowledge 
but also error. That is in the sign the interpretant need not (and rarely will) 
fully match the object.

> I think this also relates to Frederik Stjernfelt's analysis of the dicisign, 
> which "in its interpretant, is represented as having two parts, one referring 
> to the object, and the other -the predicate " p 68 and "the Interpretant 
> represents a real existential relation, or genuine Secondness, as subsisting 
> between the Dicisign and the Dicisign's real object" (Peirce, CP 2.310). And 
> ' "The Dicisign in so far as it is the related of the existential relation 
> which is the Secondary Object of the Dicisign*, can evidently not be the 
> entire Dicisign [my emphasis. It is at once a part of the Object and a part 
> of the Interpretant of the Dicisign" CP 2.311.
> * Secondary Object = Immediate Object.
>  
> And further..."The part which is represented to represent a part of the 
> Dicisign is represented as at once part of the Interpretant and part of the 
> Object" 2.311.
>  
> And this removes the linearity of actor-acted upon, since instead, we have a 
> complex interactive network where such simple unilinear direction can't be 
> assumed.

Yes, although he doesn’t think the Continental connections are there as much as 
I do. But that analysis (as well as his analysis of the copula) was very 
helpful too me. Unfortunately I’ve not had the time to work out all of this 
yet. (I keep meaning to go back through both his main books again)

I think that what we need to figure out is how the gap with the object enables 
us to guess. I’m still thinking through that. (And have been for years) 
Abduction is how we make the leap and then induction and deduction let us test 
our guess. So there’s a feedback.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

2015-11-30 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 3:19 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> I always have a problem at this point. Isnt it so, that natural laws and 
> natural constants havent change at all since the big bang?

Depends upon what one means by law. In physics laws are often treated as 
descriptive rather than prescriptive even though physics retains the older view 
of fundamental laws. The problem is that lacking a grand unified theory we 
can’t really discuss fundamental laws. The Standard Model which is our best 
explanation is usually deemed very unsatisfactory simply because it seems so 
arbitrary. String theory (and to a lesser extent loop quantum gravity) 
attempted to explain this although it was hampered by explaining too much. Any 
particular less fundamental law was arbitrary and just how chance worked out in 
our universe.

I had this fascinating undergraduate thermodynamic text which, in an appendix 
actually worked out all of thermodynamic laws starting from symmetries in a 
system. Change the symmetries and you change the laws.

Now there’s a old debate in philosophy of science over whether we should use 
the term law in these cases and whether there even are laws. I’m not sure many 
find that particularly helpful anymore. And as a practical matter this has long 
been true in physics. The ideal gas law is of course not really a law, for 
example, since very little is ideal in the form it requires.

Again this isn’t to justify Peirce here. I think Peirce’s cosmology and 
panpsychism is understandably the most controversial aspect of his thought. 
It’s also arguably the most speculative. I think it quite easy to accept his 
semiotic structures without necessarily buying into his cosmology. I find it 
fascinating for various reasons. Arguably it’s no worse than any other work of 
foundational ontology. But all ontology that far removed from experience is 
dubious.

Anyway, relative to “laws” changing due to symmetries I think it’s far less 
mysterious if one simply eliminates the term “law.” Consider say ice and how it 
freezes. There will be certain types of symmetries that determine properties. 
That’s far less mysterious and really is all that’s going on in the early 
universe with quantum type symmetries. I think “law” in the traditional sense 
is just a term that easily leads astray. I simply note that the way Peirce uses 
law is much more conducive to physics even if perhaps it’s not for traditional 
philosophy of science debates. (And I can’t say I’ve followed the debate over 
“law” there much beyond the typical undergraduate philosophy of science readers 
most of us have encountered)

> I once had uttered the idea, that maybe there is a meta-universe, in which 
> there once was an elementary-school-class of young Gods, each pupil given the 
> job to construct a little universe, and now ours is one of them. 
> Unfortunately, I had uttered this not totally seriously-meant idea in a 
> christian forum. I never, before and after, have received verbal attacks with 
> the worst of bad words you can imagine, like thereafter. But I never have 
> cared so little about being insulted like then, I only mention it, because I 
> find it a funny thing to tell.

Yeah certain types of conservative Christians aren’t apt to find that too 
appealing. I’m from a Mormon background so I’m far more used to that sort of 
speculation. 

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

2015-11-30 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 2:33 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> The idea that one sign may be dominant is nicely highlighted in Peirce's 
> discussion of focusing attention on one thing and letting others fade into 
> the background.  This ability to focus one's attention is, on Peirce's 
> account, central to the explanation of how we can exert some degree of self 
> control as we interpret signs as thoughts.  The index serves the function of 
> directing the attention on one or another object (CP 1.369, 2.256, 2.259, 
> 2.350, 2.428,, 3.434, 4.562, etc.).

Which has some echoes of Husserl’s bracketing. (I’m not saying Peirce is 
anything like a Husserlian phenomenologist because I don’t think he is) 
Heidegger’s notion of distance or how phenomena disappears is also interesting. 
Although of course this is a common phenomena we all encounter as objects 
disappear as we use them. My favorite example is using a mouse to control the 
pointer on the screen - at a certain point the mouse disappears as phenomena 
any we just perceive moving the cursor. Until the ball becomes dirty - the part 
of the example that sadly makes no sense to anyone anymore. So they can’t see 
how equipment breakdown makes us perceive the objects that had previously 
disappeared.

I vaguely recall a discussion related to this back when we were doing a close 
reading of Fredrick’s book on natural signs last year.

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

2015-11-30 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 2:18 PM, Claudio Guerri  wrote:
> 
> Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser studied Peirce  in a Seminar by Farnçois 
> Recanati in Paris, France, during the 50's...??? if somebody knows a good 
> reference, I would be glad to know more about...

That’s very interesting. I confess I’m not terribly a big Lacan fan. But I 
admit it might just be due to what I read. I didn’t know he’d studied Peirce as 
his semiotics always seemed far more Saussurean in what I read. I know Derrida 
had come to Harvard to study Peirce and the collection there. (His writings 
simply weren’t as well distributed at the time) I did a quick google and found 
a link to the Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy 

 that mentioned it. From the article on Peirce.

Apart from philosophy, there are three specific areas where Peirce’s influence 
is particularly significant. Firstly his semiotic theory appears as one of the 
major references in modern linguistics, semiotics, and philosophy of language, 
with such prominent scholars as Roman Jakobson and Umberto Eco acknowledging 
their debt to him in most of their works. Secondly his theories of sign and 
abduction are frequent references in congnitive sciences, knowledge engineering 
and information systems. Thirdly Lacan’s discovery of Peirce’s triadic model 
paved the way for a stream of psychoanalysis focused on the triad ‘symbolic, 
imaginary and real’: ‘A man named Charles Sanders Peirce built a logic which, 
due to his focusing on relations, is triadic. I follow exactly the same track’ 
(Lacan, quoted by Balat, 2000:8). 

There are a couple of papers I found on Lacan/Peirce but unfortunately none 
were available on JSTOR.

> Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of view, 
> and he learned that besides his "the imaginary" (1ness) and "the symbolic" 
> (3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic sign) he had to 
> add "the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the impossible", « la grimace du 
> réel »... or better (or in a more perverse way): "what never ceases to not 
> join the symbolic" (the translation from the Spanish version is mine...) 
> apparently, the French (original version) is. « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas 
> s'écrire »...
> I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by 
> Peirce. For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA (International 
> Psychoanalytic Association)...

Interesting again, although I admit to a very strong skepticism of 
psychoanalysis in general. My friends who do like it tend to like it more as a 
source of metaphors and structures than really taking it seriously on its own 
terms.

It is interesting that I’ve heard that Saussure’s semiotics in practice (rather 
than as received) really was more Peircean than most realize. I’ve never been 
able to confirm this though. 

> Taking account of what happened to those two scholars... perhaps the 'triadic 
> relation' can be a very dangerous subject...!!!??? 

It’s quite interesting how dualisms of various sorts have continued to dominate 
so much in the academy. Long after I’d have thought them to be dismissed. I’ve 
not followed as much what’s happened in Continental philosophy after Badiou so 
I can’t speak there. But in analytic philosophy it’s surprisingly still 
dominant even after a lot of the things that grounded it have disappeared.

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

2015-11-30 Thread Helmut Raulien

Clark, lists,

you wrote:

"Yet his broad notion of mind and habits actually fits cosmology quite well."

I always have a problem at this point. Isnt it so, that natural laws and natural constants havent change at all since the big bang? I like tychism, synechism, and agapism very much though, as the idea of love behind everything is very appealing. About natural laws changing, there is a story from Stanislaw Lem: "The New Cosmogony". To rescue this idea of natural laws as being due to some sort of arbitrariness, changeability, or choice, I once had uttered the idea, that maybe there is a meta-universe, in which there once was an elementary-school-class of young Gods, each pupil given the job to construct a little universe, and now ours is one of them. Unfortunately, I had uttered this not totally seriously-meant idea in a christian forum. I never, before and after, have received verbal attacks with the worst of bad words you can imagine, like thereafter. But I never have cared so little about being insulted like then, I only mention it, because I find it a funny thing to tell.

Best,

Helmut

30. November 2015 um 20:09 Uhr
"Clark Goble"

On Nov 30, 2015, at 12:05 PM, Sungchul Ji wrote:

It seems to me that your remark here would be true if all structures are mind (or mentality)-dependent. But I believe that the astrophysical evidence we have suggests that there were structures in the Universe that existed even before we appeared on this planet and will continue to exist long after we are gone following the extinction of the the sun.

Remember that for Peirce it’s all mind. It’s nearly a type of pan-psychism. Not in a strong sense of that term but in the sense that a bee-hive or even crystals have mind-like aspects. So never confuse mind with human mind in Peirce. Often his examples are human mind but he means something much more broadly.

So one way to think about early cosmology when symmetry breaking takes place is mind acquiring habits. Peirce of course lived before anything like contemporary cosmology was known. Yet his broad notion of mind and habits actually fits cosmology quite well.

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

2015-11-30 Thread Claudio Guerri


Thanks for the quotes Jeff
All the best
Claudio

Jeffrey Brian Downard escribió el 30/11/2015 a las 06:33 p.m.:

Hello Claudio, Clark, List,

The idea that one sign may be dominant is nicely highlighted in Peirce's 
discussion of focusing attention on one thing and letting others fade into the 
background.  This ability to focus one's attention is, on Peirce's account, 
central to the explanation of how we can exert some degree of self control as 
we interpret signs as thoughts.  The index serves the function of directing the 
attention on one or another object (CP 1.369, 2.256, 2.259, 2.350, 2.428,, 
3.434, 4.562, etc.).

--Jeff



Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: Claudio Guerri [claudiogue...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 2:18 PM
To: Stephen C. Rose; Clark Goble
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

Stephen, Clark, Edwina, List...
I think that I wrote already about this subject... but there are two authors 
that I like very much that constructed some good 'metaphors' for the 
understanding of the triadic relation.
Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser studied Peirce  in a Seminar by Farnçois 
Recanati in Paris, France, during the 50's...??? if somebody knows a good 
reference, I would be glad to know more about...

Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of view, and he learned that besides his "the 
imaginary" (1ness) and "the symbolic" (3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic sign) he had to 
add "the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the impossible", « la grimace du réel »... or better (or in a more 
perverse way): "what never ceases to not join the symbolic" (the translation from the Spanish version is mine...) 
apparently, the French (original version) is. « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire »...
I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by Peirce. 
For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA (International Psychoanalytic 
Association)...

Althusser (even if considered a Stalinist by a dear fellow of the Peirce-L) wrote about 
the "Social Practice"... and (following Peirce) he proposed: a Theoretical 
Practice (1ness), an Economical Practice (2ness) and a Political Practice (3ness).
He did not give a synthetic or unique word to 'baptize' the Theoretical 
Practice which I consider 'possibilitant' (following Peirce of course), but he 
stated that the Political Practice is always 'decisive' and that the Economical 
Practice is 'determinant only in last instance' (I say, because it is the 'real 
impossible'... and if you don't believe it, follow what will happen with 
Argentina after the 10th of December...). Pitifully, because of his statements, 
he was expelled form the PCF (Parti Communiste Français)...
But Althusser also added a good explanation (for the Peircean definition of 
sign): normally, one aspect of the sign will be 'dominant'.
Did Peirce say something like that? somewhere?

Taking account of what happened to those two scholars... perhaps the 'triadic 
relation' can be a very dangerous subject...!!!???
All the best
Claudio

Stephen C. Rose escribió el 30/11/2015 a las 03:26 p.m.:
Triadic Philosophy as I have evolved it over its lifetime tends to agree in 
with what you have said Clark about the triad. With the following exception 
which I take to be at least somewhat related to Peirce and perhaps to agree 
with something I have seen in Edwina's posts.  The triadic progression is the 
progression of a sign which originates in the spontanaity of firstness and 
proceeds through the obstacles set up in secondness and arrives at the 
expressions and actions made possible by the encounter of 1 and 2.

I understand that the premise of Triadic Philosophy, that Reality is all, is 
hardly consistent with Peirce.


Books <http://buff.ly/15GfdqU> http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: 
<http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl> http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl
Gifts: <http://buff.ly/1wXADj3> http://buff.ly/1wXADj3

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Clark Goble 
<cl...@lextek.com<mailto:cl...@lextek.com>> wrote:

On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji 
<<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>s...@rci.rutgers.edu<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>>
 wrote:


   f  g
   Real Rose  > Rose  ---> Mental Rose
   (Firstness)  (Secondness)  
(Thirdness)
  [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
  | 
   ^
  | 
   |
  ||

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

2015-11-30 Thread John Collier

Clark,



I share your scepticism about psychoanalysis



John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier



From: CLARK GOBLE [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]

Sent: Tuesday, 01 December 2015 4:48 AM

To: Peirce-L

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





On Nov 30, 2015, at 2:18 PM, CLARK GOBLE wrote:



Snip ...



Lacan was interested in the unconscious from a psychoanalytic point of view, 
and he learned that besides his "the imaginary" (1ness) and "the symbolic" 
(3ness, both derived from Ferdinand de Sussure's linguistic sign) he had to add 
"the real" (2ness) that he defined as "the impossible", « la grimace du réel 
»... or better (or in a more perverse way): "what never ceases to not join the 
symbolic" (the translation from the Spanish version is mine...) apparently, the 
French (original version) is. « ce qui ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire »...

I think that it is a good conceptual approach to the Dynamic Object by Peirce. 
For that and else... he was expelled from the IPA (International Psychoanalytic 
Association)...



I think that is not promising for several reasons, not the least because of the 
identity of 2ness with the real rather than the existing, though there is a 
sense of ‘real’ in which it means the actual as opposed to the possible. 
Adopting this sense, the real is independent of symbolism. One might think of 
it as the integration of “brute facts”, but there is (or at least seems to me 
to be) a psychological aspect to symbolism in this that comes out in « ce qui 
ne cesse de ne pas s'écrire », at least in my Quebec French. Perhaps this is a 
good focus for psychoanalytic analysis, but it doesn’t generalize well. 
Application to dynamical objects, on this account, seems to me to be restricted 
to the realm of 2ness, which is also much too restrictive.

Interesting again, although I admit to a very strong skepticism of 
psychoanalysis in general. My friends who do like it tend to like it more as a 
source of metaphors and structures than really taking it seriously on its own 
terms.



But it is exactly the metaphorical aspects that, connected with an emotional 
appreciation, permit a change from one psychological state to another. Despite 
the name, analytical and formal implications, psychoanalysis does not work 
without the emotional component, at least according to a psychiatrist I worked 
with in Calgary to the extent of doing Psychiatric Grand Rounds with at the 
local teaching hospital. I am completely convinced he is right about this. 
Being too rational (on either side) sets up an obstacle to successful change. 
So I think htat the metaphorical aspect is more than incidental, though not 
sufficient itself.



It is interesting that I’ve heard that Saussure’s semiotics in practice (rather 
than as received) really was more Peircean than most realize. I’ve never been 
able to confirm this though.



Interesting indeed. I haven’t studied Saussure directly at all, in English 
translation let alone the French, because of his bad reputation and obvious 
failures of applications of his work that I am familiar with. Perhaps there is 
something worth investigating here by some able graduate student who would be 
interested in clearing the record.



Cheers,

John

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

2015-11-30 Thread John Collier

Quite, Clark. On our naturalistic metaphysics in Every Thing Must Go, which 
takes both Peircean prope-positivism (based on the Pragmatic Maxim) and modern 
physics seriously, basically 2nd-ness is structural, and the law-like aspects 
are thirdness, not mental. The world that exists is nothing more, 
fundamentally, than structure. This view is sometimes called “structural 
realism”. Sung has produced another gross misrepresentation of not only the 
Peircean view, but of the concepts Peirce uses. It is annoying to have ones own 
views ruled out by an error like that (though some of our reviewers have done 
something similar).

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sent: Monday, 30 November 2015 8:10 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations


On Nov 30, 2015, at 10:50 AM, Sungchul Ji 
<s...@rci.rutgers.edu<mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>> wrote:


  f  g
  Real Rose  > Rose  ---> Mental Rose
  (Firstness)  (Secondness)  (Thirdness)
 [World of Structures] [Physical World]  [Mental World]
 |  
  ^
 |  
  |
 ||
   h

Peirce’s ontology doesn’t quite follow that. Firstness is the world of raw 
experience, ideas or possibility, secondness the world of reactions, brute 
force & actuality and thirdness the world of signs, connections and power (not 
necessarily mental unless one is careful what one means by that). So depending 
upon what one means by structure you’d have that in the third universe.

Again though one has to be careful with terminology and Peirce’s shifts around 
a bit over time.

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

2015-11-30 Thread gnox

Clark, thanks for all the digging that I didn’t have time for. I considered 
pasting in here parts of the entry on “relation” from the Century Dictionary 
online, but there’s just too much of it (and neither “elementary relations” nor 
“relations proper” is among the dozens of varieties listed there by Peirce).

 

Probably the most common distinction made by Peirce in this connection is that 
between real relations and relations of reason, for instance on W5:300: 
“Relations which are mere comparisons, the members being related only in virtue 
of characters which each cou1d equally well have were the other annihilated, 
were called relations of reason by the old logicians, in contrast to real 
relations. They are the seconds of the internal type.” But that doesn’t help 
much in sorting out triadic relations.

 

Gary f.

 

 

From: CLARK GOBLE [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] 
Sent: 29-Nov-15 23:03
To: PEIRCE-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations

 

 

On Nov 28, 2015, at 10:34 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>  
wrote:

 

Jon, if you can point out where Peirce's text or mine in this thread is 
conducive to the kind of confusion you are warning us about, I'll see what I 
can do to clarify things. But I don't really have the time for a wild goose 
chase through your old blog posts, which I expect it might well turn out to be, 
since it has happened in such chases too often that when I finally caught up 
with the wild goose, it turned out to be a familiar domestic fowl disguised 
behind an unfamiliar notation; so all I learned from it was a new notation 
which frankly was no improvement on the old one.

 

I did a search for "relations proper” going back to 2003 and there were a few 
posts using it by Jon, but not that many unfortunately. This was my private 
archive and I admittedly have pruned it a bit. So not every post is in it - but 
I think most of the substantial ones are. I confess I’m not quite sure what we 
mean by “relations proper” as distinguished from elementary relations which I 
understand Jon to mean tuples. I assume this refers to the types of relations 
one finds in say Duns Scotus. For those interested the SEP has an entry on 
medieval theories of relations that is helpful.

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relations-medieval/

 

For those of us who just aren’t quite certain how people are using their terms 
it might be useful to refer to something outside the Peirce corpus to clarify 
the meaning. As is so often the case, most of a debate is getting the 
terminology agreed upon so we understand one an other. I’m hoping there’s more 
to this debate than a mere semantic one though.

 

The following post of Jon might be of help. It’s from March 21, 2005.

 

JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: GAR-DIS 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002447.html
In: GAR-DIS.http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2447

JR: I don't know whether or not we can find
   a single view of the conception of form
   in Peirce, but the following passage,
   which dates from late in his career,
   seems especially interesting:  

CSP: | That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the 
Interpretant
| is a Form;  that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a 
power, is
| the fact that something would happen under certain conditions.  This Form 
is
| 'really' embodied in the object, meaning that the conditional relation 
which
| constitutes the Form is 'true' of the Form as it is in the Object.  In the
| Sign it is embodied only in a 'representative' sense, meaning that whether
| by virtue of some real modification of the Sign or otherwise, the Sign
| becomes endowed with the 'power' of communicating it to an interpretant.
| It may be in the interpretant 'directly' as it is in the Object, or it
| may be in the interpretant dynamically as behavior of the interpretant
| (this happens when a military officer uses the sign "Halt!" or "Forward
| march!" and his men simply obey him, perhaps automatically);  or it may
| be in the interpretant only representatively.  (MS 793.2, 1906)

Joe,

I am currently focusing on a particular connection in which Peirce
invokes a consideration of forms, ideas, qualities, and so on, and
I'm about to re-iterate a familiar passage where he uses the word
"logos" in the same role, so I think that the passage you cited
is in the same line.  This seems to be a topic that is broader
than sign relations proper, having to do with the theory of
relations in general, even though it's clear that Peirce
had to develop the theory of relations in order to deal
with the relations involved in signs and inquiry.

If we look to the classical texts where the prepositions 'kata' and 'pros',
used in a certain way, are translated "in respect to" and "in relation to&q

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

2015-11-30 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Agreed. As I've said, I don't agree with confining the term 'sign' to refer to 
and only to one single Relation in the whole triad; that of the Representamen 
or ground. That transforms this one Relation, the Representamen, from being the 
vital mediative action in a full process and makes it into almost a Sovereign 
Will Agent.  Such a privileging and reductionism ignores that a Sign (full 
triad) functions and can only function not within one Relation but within three 
Relations, and furthermore - as that full triadic process, the Sign emerges 
within the semiosic process and takes on an existential material nature. So, 
that full triad, the Sign, functions and exists as a molecule, a cell, a 
weathervane, a word, an argument. 

Edwina


  - Original Message - 
  From: CLARK GOBLE 
  To: PEIRCE-L 
  Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2015 11:17 PM
  Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations




On Nov 26, 2015, at 7:44 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:


Again, Peirce uses the term of 'sign' to refer to both the Representamen 
and the full triadic set of relations. You have to be careful of the context to 
figure out which one he is referring to. 


  This is definitely true and can throw one off. I sometimes try to use the 
term token rather than sign to refer to the sign-term to distinguish it from 
the object and interpretant. Although that has its own difficulties. (It tends 
to bias people toward visual signs)






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

2015-11-29 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 26, 2015, at 7:44 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Again, Peirce uses the term of 'sign' to refer to both the Representamen and 
> the full triadic set of relations. You have to be careful of the context to 
> figure out which one he is referring to. 

This is definitely true and can throw one off. I sometimes try to use the term 
token rather than sign to refer to the sign-term to distinguish it from the 
object and interpretant. Although that has its own difficulties. (It tends to 
bias people toward visual signs)

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

2015-11-29 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 28, 2015, at 10:34 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> Jon, if you can point out where Peirce's text or mine in this thread is 
> conducive to the kind of confusion you are warning us about, I'll see what I 
> can do to clarify things. But I don't really have the time for a wild goose 
> chase through your old blog posts, which I expect it might well turn out to 
> be, since it has happened in such chases too often that when I finally caught 
> up with the wild goose, it turned out to be a familiar domestic fowl 
> disguised behind an unfamiliar notation; so all I learned from it was a new 
> notation which frankly was no improvement on the old one.

I did a search for "relations proper” going back to 2003 and there were a few 
posts using it by Jon, but not that many unfortunately. This was my private 
archive and I admittedly have pruned it a bit. So not every post is in it - but 
I think most of the substantial ones are. I confess I’m not quite sure what we 
mean by “relations proper” as distinguished from elementary relations which I 
understand Jon to mean tuples. I assume this refers to the types of relations 
one finds in say Duns Scotus. For those interested the SEP has an entry on 
medieval theories of relations that is helpful.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relations-medieval/ 

For those of us who just aren’t quite certain how people are using their terms 
it might be useful to refer to something outside the Peirce corpus to clarify 
the meaning. As is so often the case, most of a debate is getting the 
terminology agreed upon so we understand one an other. I’m hoping there’s more 
to this debate than a mere semantic one though.

The following post of Jon might be of help. It’s from March 21, 2005.

JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: GAR-DIS 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002447.html 

In: GAR-DIS.http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2447 

JR: I don't know whether or not we can find
   a single view of the conception of form
   in Peirce, but the following passage,
   which dates from late in his career,
   seems especially interesting:  

CSP: | That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the 
Interpretant
| is a Form;  that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a 
power, is
| the fact that something would happen under certain conditions.  This Form 
is
| 'really' embodied in the object, meaning that the conditional relation 
which
| constitutes the Form is 'true' of the Form as it is in the Object.  In the
| Sign it is embodied only in a 'representative' sense, meaning that whether
| by virtue of some real modification of the Sign or otherwise, the Sign
| becomes endowed with the 'power' of communicating it to an interpretant.
| It may be in the interpretant 'directly' as it is in the Object, or it
| may be in the interpretant dynamically as behavior of the interpretant
| (this happens when a military officer uses the sign "Halt!" or "Forward
| march!" and his men simply obey him, perhaps automatically);  or it may
| be in the interpretant only representatively.  (MS 793.2, 1906)

Joe,

I am currently focusing on a particular connection in which Peirce
invokes a consideration of forms, ideas, qualities, and so on, and
I'm about to re-iterate a familiar passage where he uses the word
"logos" in the same role, so I think that the passage you cited
is in the same line.  This seems to be a topic that is broader
than sign relations proper, having to do with the theory of
relations in general, even though it's clear that Peirce
had to develop the theory of relations in order to deal
with the relations involved in signs and inquiry.

If we look to the classical texts where the prepositions 'kata' and 'pros',
used in a certain way, are translated "in respect to" and "in relation to",
it is evident that reference to a ground or correlate, indeed, reference to
a category in general, functioned as a type of equivocation resolver, without
which the application of logical laws to words would be forever bedevilled by
a host of quibbling objections.

Taking this function as a pragmatic definition, we have a commmon role
that is served by the invocation of all sorts of aspects, capacities,
categories, correlates, grounds, qualifiers, qualities, respects,
and so on.  We can now generalize to the class of things that
serve the same purpose.

My guess is that we'll eventually arrive
at notions of constraint, information,
and their relation.

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

2015-11-29 Thread CLARK GOBLE

> On Nov 29, 2015, at 9:03 PM, CLARK GOBLE  wrote:
> 
> I assume this refers to the types of relations one finds in say Duns Scotus. 
> For those interested the SEP has an entry on medieval theories of relations 
> that is helpful.
> 
> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relations-medieval/ 
> 
> 

In addition this discussion of Scotus on relations seems helpful. While 
obviously not exactly the same as what Peirce does, it does have some 
interesting parallels to some of Peirce’s early work rethinking Kant’s 
categories.

https://books.google.com/books?id=VRV9Tr_A-98C=PA36=PA36#v=onepage=false

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

2015-11-26 Thread gnox

Thanks very much for this, Matt. 

 

I think the quotes you found are about as close as Peirce ever gets to defining 
a “sign” as a “triad” (though even here, he doesn’t exactly do that). And as 
you mentioned in your later message, that usage of “sign” is rare and peculiar 
in Peirce. I guess I shouldn’t have insisted on the terminological point so 
strongly, but as I get older I get more impatient with sloppy terminology (as 
Peirce also did, for instance in his late letters to James).

 

I’ve been studying Peirce’s “Nomenclature and Division of Triadic Relations” 
(from the 1903 Syllabus) very closely of late, and it’s in this essay (which is 
all about triadic relations!) that Peirce defines the sign as a kind of 
representamen, as a correlate of a triadic relation, and NOT as a triad or 
triadic relation itself. Yet Edwina persistently cites that very text, where 
the famous ten sign types are defined, in support of her peculiar usage! That’s 
why I lost my patience. (By the way, I’m not using the word “peculiar” as a 
pejorative here, but rather as Peirce used it in that essay, several times, in 
describing relations between the sign types). It also bothered me that Edwina 
was taking Frances to task for saying that there may be representamens that are 
not signs, when Peirce quite clearly says that himself. The point is that for 
Peirce in 1903, “representamen” is a broader term than “sign”, because a “sign” 
is necessarily a representamen, while a representamen is not necessarily a sign.

 

OK, I’ll let it go now. The bottom line is that understanding Peircean semiotic 
requires reading Peirce’s exact words, not Edwina’s translation of them – and 
reading them as carefully as Peirce wrote them.

 

Gary f.

 

} If one does not expect the unexpected one will not find it out, since it is 
not to be searched out, and is difficult to compass. [Heraclitus] {

 <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

From: Matt Faunce [mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 26-Nov-15 01:38



 

This was bugging me, so I went searching. The first place I saw 'sign' denoting 
a triad was not by Peirce, but by Cornelis de Waal, pg. 79 of Peirce, A Guide 
for the Perplexed, in the first paragraph: "The sign is a genuine triad--one 
that cannot be reduced to a combination of dyads."

In the Collected Papers Peirce's use of a triadic sign is rare, but here are 
two examples:

CP 8.305: "I shall show that a Concept is a Sign and shall define a Sign and 
show its triadic form."

6.344: "Signs, the only things with which a human being can, without 
derogation, consent to have any transaction, being a sign himself, are triadic; 
since a sign denotes a subject, and signifies a form of fact, which latter it 
brings into connexion with the former."

Matt

On 11/26/15 12:49 AM, John Collier wrote:

I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses “sign” in both 
ways. This caused me some problems in the past in applying his ideas to 
biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena until I realized he was using the 
term in more than one way. I think if one is careful about the context it is 
possible to select which usage Peirce makes in each case.

 

John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier

 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>  
[mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
To: 'PEIRCE-L'
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

 

Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a 
sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while 
Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really 
not see the difference? 

 

Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference 
between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted 
Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:

[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation 
to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of 
the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a 
representamen. ]]

Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that a 
sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the 
object for the interpretant.

 

You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is either 
a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation on your 
part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that Peirce 
simply does not use the word “sign” that way. 

 

Gary f.

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 25-Nov-15 13:51

Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you know of 
any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, please info

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

2015-11-26 Thread Sungchul Ji

Matt, Gary F, Edwina, John, lists,

(*1*)  As the following quote from Peirce retrieved from
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM shows, Peirce's
sign is BOTH DYADIC and TRIADIC, depending on which aspect of the sign is
prescinded.

In other words,  Peirce uses the word "sign" in two ways ---

(i) as "anything" which has a "dyadic relation Þ" to B or object, and

(ii) as "anything" which is "in a triadic relation . . . such as to
determine C (i.e., interpretant; my addition) to be in a dyadic relation µ,
to B".

*30 - 1905 - SS. pp. 192-193 - Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) presumably July
1905 .*

"So then anything (generally in a mathematical sense) is a priman (not a
priman element generally) and we might define a sign as follows:

A "sign" is anything, A, which,

(1) in addition to other characters of its own,

(2) stands in a dyadic relation Þ, to a purely active correlate, B,

(3) and is also in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate,
C, this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a dyadic
relation, µ, to B, the relation µ corresponding in a recognized way to the
relation Þ."

(*2*)  In the above quote, Peirce defines three relations:

(i) the dyadic relation between sign and object (i.e., A and B) DESIGNATED
AS Þ,
(ii) the triadic relation between  A and B mediated by C (i.e., A and B
through C) WITHOUT ANY SYMBOLIC DESIGNATION.
(iii) the dyadic relation between interpretant and object (i.e., C and B)
DESIGNATED as µ.

What is missing here is that Peirce did not mention explicitly the dyadic
relation between sign and interpretant that must exist.  This gap becomes
clear when we represent the above definition of sign diagrammatically as
shown in Figure 1 below. To fill up this gap, I took the liberty of using
the letter "g" (from gap) as shown in the diagram:

  Þ g
  B --> A > C
(Object)   (*sign*)  (Interpretant)
  |  ^
  |  |
  |___|
   µ

Figure 1.  A diagrammatic representation of Peirce's triadic *Sign*.
Þ = sign production
g = sign interpretation
µ = sign grounding

(*3*) I recommend, in agreement with Edwina, that we,  as a semiotic
community, adopt the convention of designating with "sign" the DYADIC
relations between sign and object and between sign and interpretant and
designating with "Sign' the TRIADIC relation between "sign" and object
mediated by interpretant.

HAPPY THANKS GIVING !

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 1:37 AM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This was bugging me, so I went searching. The first place I saw 'sign'
> denoting a triad was not by Peirce, but by Cornelis de Waal, pg. 79 of
> Peirce, A Guide for the Perplexed, in the first paragraph: "The sign is a
> genuine triad--one that cannot be reduced to a combination of dyads."
>
> In the Collected Papers Peirce's use of a triadic sign is rare, but here
> are two examples:
>
> CP 8.305: "I shall show that a Concept is a Sign and shall define a Sign
> and show its triadic form."
>
> 6.344: "Signs, the only things with which a human being can, without
> derogation, consent to have any transaction, being a sign himself, are
> triadic; since a sign denotes a subject, and signifies a form of fact,
> which latter it brings into connexion with the former."
>
> Matt
>
> On 11/26/15 12:49 AM, John Collier wrote:
>
> I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses “sign” in
> both ways. This caused me some problems in the past in applying his ideas
> to biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena until I realized he was
> using the term in more than one way. I think if one is careful about the
> context it is possible to select which usage Peirce makes in each case.
>
>
>
> John Collier
>
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
>
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
>
>
>
> *From:* g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca <g...@gnusystems.ca>]
>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
> *To:* 'PEIRCE-L'
> *Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations
>
>
>
> Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But *meaning* is
> not *a sign*. Edwina, you say that a *sign* is a triadic relation, or a
> “triad,” while Peirce says that a sign is “a *correlate* of a triadic
> relation.” Do you really not see the difference?
>
>
>
> Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you do

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

2015-11-26 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Exactly, John. And this is what I've been trying to point out to Gary F, who 
refuses to acknowledge it. Peirce uses the same term of 'sign' to refer to both 
the Representamen, which is the mediate term in the triadic semiosic process, 
AND to the full triad. And you have to be careful about the context to 
understand which meaning he was using. Gary F ignores this.

The Representamen -as-sign, does not and cannot exist 'per se' on its own; it 
exists only within the triad-as-sign. And designating the triad-as-sign is not 
'rare and peculiar'. I'd also note that Peirce's whole work on this aspect is a 
full examination of the triad - which is not nameless in this triadic 
'wholeness', but is as a triad - a 'sign'. Gary F refuses to acknowledge this 
important fact - the triad-as-sign, i.e., the fact that meaning operates within 
a full triadic process. This isn't 'sloppy terminology' but an acknowledgment 
of how the semiosic triad actually functions - with that Representamen as 
mediation between the Object-Interpretant. And the WHOLE triad is termed, by 
Peirce, as a 'sign'. Not simply and only the Representamen as a 'sign'.

As for the comment that:
The point is that for Peirce in 1903, “representamen” is a broader term than 
“sign”, because a “sign” is necessarily a representamen, while a representamen 
is not necessarily a sign.

I don't agree with the above. the 'representamen is a broader term than 'sign'. 
To the contrary, the 'sign' is a broader term than 'representamen'. And I don't 
agree with the latter part of that sentence - because of the fact that the term 
of 'sign' is a broader term than the term of 'representamen'. 

As John Collier said, you have to be careful of the context to see which 
meaning Peirce was using.

Edwina
  - Original Message - 
  From: John Collier 
  To: g...@gnusystems.ca ; 'PEIRCE-L' 
  Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 12:49 AM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations


  I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses “sign” in 
both ways. This caused me some problems in the past in applying his ideas to 
biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena until I realized he was using the 
term in more than one way. I think if one is careful about the context it is 
possible to select which usage Peirce makes in each case.

   

  John Collier

  Professor Emeritus, UKZN

  http://web.ncf.ca/collier

   

  From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca] 
  Sent: Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
  To: 'PEIRCE-L'
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

   

  Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a 
sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while 
Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really 
not see the difference? 

   

  Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference 
between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted 
Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:

  [[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word 
representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the 
interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call 
a sign or a representamen. ]]

  Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that 
a sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the 
object for the interpretant.

   

  You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is 
either a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation 
on your part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that 
Peirce simply does not use the word “sign” that way. 

   

  Gary f.

   

  From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
  Sent: 25-Nov-15 13:51

  Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you know of 
any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, please inform us.

   

  Please see his diagramme, 1.347 (The Categories in Detail) and his insistence 
on this triad (1.345) where 'meaning is obviously a triadic relation' - which 
means, that it is not mechanical (which is dyadic). You can also read his 
discussion of the triad in 'A Guess at the Riddle'. And of course, since his 
semiosis is triadic, then, you can read this perspective all through his work.

   

  You can read his definition of the Representamen, which is the mediate part 
of the triad, in various parts of his work as well: "I confine the word 
representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the 
interpreter of the representation" 1.540.

  Note that this necessarily is a RELATIONAL process and not singular; the 
Representamen does not exist 'per se'.  

   

  " A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, called its 
obje

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

2015-11-26 Thread Edwina Taborsky

1) As Peirce himself notes, "I use these two words, sign and representamen,
differently. By a sign I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an
object in any way, as such conveyors of thought are familiarly known to
usand I define a representamen as being whatever that analysis applies to"
1.540. ..."In particular, all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know
no reason why every representamen should do so". 1.540.

That is, the full triad, the sign, will 'convey notions to human minds', but
not every representamen-as-sign, will do so (i.e., does the representamen in
the triad of cellular interaction convey anything to the human mind'? The
representamen is only a PART of the full triad-as-sign...and it operates in the
physico-chemical and biological realms..and not only in the human conceptual
realm.

2) And as he says, "A Representamen is the subject of a triadic relation to a
second, called its object, for a third, called its Interpretant' 1.541.
The Representamen is only part of the full triad-as-sign.

3) And, "every sign stands for an object independent of itself; but it can only
be a sign of that object in so far as that object is itself of the nature of a
sign or thought"...1.538.

Here, we have that the OBJECT is a sign. Does that mean that the Object is a
Representamen? No, it means that the object is itself existent within a
triad-as-sign. The Representamen can't exist 'per se' on its own but only
within a triad.

4) And, 'In consequence of every sign determining an Interpretant, which is
itself a sign, we have sign overlying sign" 2.94.

Here, we have the INTERPRETANT as a sign. Does that mean it is a Representamen?
No, but it too operates within a triadic set of relations.

Again, Peirce uses the term of 'sign' to refer to both the Representamen and
the full triadic set of relations. You have to be careful of the context to
figure out which one he is referring to. Whether it's 8.305, 6.344...with the
Sign having a triadic form, or the Sign as Representamen.
See also 5.314, where Peirce writes of 'the word or sign which man uses is the
man himself" - and obviously, the 'word' or 'man' are not simply the mediate
term in the triad, the Representamen, but the FULL triad. ...and 'every thought
is a sign...man is a sign' (5.314)

- Original Message -
From: g...@gnusystems.ca
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 7:33 AM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

Thanks very much for this, Matt.

I think the quotes you found are about as close as Peirce ever gets to
defining a “sign” as a “triad” (though even here, he doesn’t exactly do that).
And as you mentioned in your later message, that usage of “sign” is rare and
peculiar in Peirce. I guess I shouldn’t have insisted on the terminological
point so strongly, but as I get older I get more impatient with sloppy
terminology (as Peirce also did, for instance in his late letters to James).

I’ve been studying Peirce’s “Nomenclature and Division of Triadic Relations”
(from the 1903 Syllabus) very closely of late, and it’s in this essay (which is
all about triadic relations!) that Peirce defines the sign as a kind of
representamen, as a correlate of a triadic relation, and NOT as a triad or
triadic relation itself. Yet Edwina persistently cites that very text, where
the famous ten sign types are defined, in support of her peculiar usage! That’s
why I lost my patience. (By the way, I’m not using the word “peculiar” as a
pejorative here, but rather as Peirce used it in that essay, several times, in
describing relations between the sign types). It also bothered me that Edwina
was taking Frances to task for saying that there may be representamens that are
not signs, when Peirce quite clearly says that himself. The point is that for
Peirce in 1903, “representamen” is a broader term than “sign”, because a “sign”
is necessarily a representamen, while a representamen is not necessarily a sign.

OK, I’ll let it go now. The bottom line is that understanding Peircean
semiotic requires reading Peirce’s exact words, not Edwina’s translation of
them – and reading them as carefully as Peirce wrote them.

Gary f.

} If one does not expect the unexpected one will not find it out, since it is
not to be searched out, and is difficult to compass. [Heraclitus] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

From: Matt Faunce [mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com]
Sent: 26-Nov-15 01:38

This was bugging me, so I went searching. The first place I saw 'sign'
denoting a triad was not by Peirce, but by Cornelis de Waal, pg. 79 of Peirce,
A Guide for the Perplexed, in the first paragraph: "The sign is a genuine
triad--one that cannot be reduced to a combination of dyads."

In the Collected Papers Peirce's use of a triadic si

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

2015-11-25 Thread gnox

Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a 
sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while 
Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really 
not see the difference? 

 

Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference 
between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted 
Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:

[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation 
to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of 
the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a 
representamen. ]]

Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that a 
sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the 
object for the interpretant.

 

You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is either 
a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation on your 
part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that Peirce 
simply does not use the word “sign” that way. 

 

Gary f.

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: 25-Nov-15 13:51



Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you know of 
any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, please inform us.

 

Please see his diagramme, 1.347 (The Categories in Detail) and his insistence 
on this triad (1.345) where 'meaning is obviously a triadic relation' - which 
means, that it is not mechanical (which is dyadic). You can also read his 
discussion of the triad in 'A Guess at the Riddle'. And of course, since his 
semiosis is triadic, then, you can read this perspective all through his work.

 

You can read his definition of the Representamen, which is the mediate part of 
the triad, in various parts of his work as well: "I confine the word 
representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the 
interpreter of the representation" 1.540.

Note that this necessarily is a RELATIONAL process and not singular; the 
Representamen does not exist 'per se'.  

 

" A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, called its 
object, for a third, called its Interpretant, this triadic relation being such 
that the Representamen determines its interpretant to stand in the  same 
triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant" 1.541.

 

Note again: This is a RELATIONAL PROCESS in A TRIADIC SEMIOSIS. Again, the 
Representamen does not exist 'per se'.

 

Kindly remember that Peirce often used the term 'sign' to stand for the 
Representamen in itself. Not for the whole triad.  Again, 

 

"A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic 
relation to a Second, called its Object as to be capable of determining a 
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its 
Object in which stands itself to the same Object". 2.274.

 

Again- it's in a  triadic relation. The Representamen does not stand on its 
own. 

 

Thirdness, by the way, is the same as mediation (5.104) which of course implies 
relations..and the Representamen is in a mode of Thirdness in 6 of the ten 
Signs.

 

Edwina

 

 

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca   

To: 'PEIRCE-L'   

Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 9:33 AM

Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Terms, Propositions, Arguments

 

Edwina,

 

Again, you are saying that the Sign is a “triad” and that the Representamen is 
a part of that triad. I’m not sure what Frances is saying, but what Peirce is 
saying in these quotes is that “A Sign is a representamen,” which is “a 
correlate of a triadic relation.” Peirce does not say that a Sign is a “triad” 
or a “triadic relation”: it is a correlate of a triadic relation, and a 
Representamen (though perhaps not the only kind). If you know of any Peirce 
quote saying that a sign is a “triad”, please post it here. Otherwise please 
stop claiming that your peculiar use of the word “Sign” is the same as 
Peirce’s. 

 

Gary f.

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 

Gary F - Again, the Representamen does not exist, as Frances is using it, on 
its own; it's an integral part of the triad. The 2.274 reference is analyzing 
the Sign (the triad) which includes the mediate Representamen without a 'mental 
process'.  …

 

Edwina

- Original Message - 

From: g...@gnusystems.ca   

 

Frances, Edwina, list,

 

Just to straighten out the terminology here …

For Peirce, a “representamen” is a correlate of a triadic relation, and a 
“sign” is a kind of representamen. By this definition, there can be 
representamens that are not signs; but empirically, Peirce has very little to 
say about them. Two passages from the 1903

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

2015-11-25 Thread Edwina Taborsky

Gary F - see my comments. And, again, if you know of any place where Peirce 
rejects the triad - please inform us. 
  - Original Message - 
  From: g...@gnusystems.ca 
  To: 'PEIRCE-L' 
  Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 9:14 PM
  Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

  1) GARY F: Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning 
is not a sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” 
while Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you 
really not see the difference? 

  EDWINA: Meaning is of course a Sign, a triadic semiosic 'form'.

  You are confusing the triadic Sign [Object-Representamen-Interpretant] with 
the single Representamen, which Peirce also often and frequently refers to as 
the 'sign'. I am saying that the Sign (capital S) - that is, the full set of 
three semiosic Relations, is a triad. It consists of three Relations: that 
between the Representamen and the Object; the Representamen in itself; and that 
between the Representamen and the Interpretant. See 8.334-337. See also the 
diagramme of the 'three spokes' 1.347.

  2) GARY F: Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the 
difference between representation and a representamen. It might help if you 
quoted Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:

  [[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word 
representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the 
interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call 
a sign or a representamen. ]]

  Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that 
a sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the 
object for the interpretant.

  EDWINA: I don't see your problem. The 'representation' is the relation of the 
Representamen to the Object.

  3) GARY F: You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a 
sign is either a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated 
recapitulation on your part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference 
from it, that Peirce simply does not use the word “sign” that way. 

  EDWINA: Again, you confuse the single Representamen (which Peirce also often 
called the sign) with the FACT that the Peircean semiosis is triadic, made up 
of three relations: that between the Representamen and the Object; the 
Representamen in itself; and that between the Representamen and the 
Interpretant.  1.541 quite clearly outlines the triadic set of relations, as 
does 2.274.

  The FACT that you confuse the terms 'sign' and 'representamen' is not 
something that I can deal with. The fact is, that the Sign as a semiosic 
process is a triad. NONE of these three: the Object, the Representamen, the 
Interpretant - can stand on their own. They function only within that semiosic 
triad, the Sign.

  As Peirce notes, in his 'chief divisions of signs', and 

  "10th. According to the triadic relation of the Sign to its Dynamical Object 
and to its Normal Interpretant" 8.344. 

  His ten classes of Signs clearly shows a triad. 

  "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for 
something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates 
in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed 
sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The 
sign stands for something, its object" 2.228.

  You can see in the above TRIAD, that Peirce uses the term 'sign' to also 
refer to the 'representamen' and to the 'interpretant'. 

  And as he says, "In consequence of every representamen being thus connected 
with three things, the ground, the object, and the interpretant"2.229. NOTE 
- Peirce refers to the representamen (which he has also referred to as the 
'sign')...as connected with three things. 

  And further, "A Representamen is the First Correlate of a triadic relation, 
the Second Correlate being terms its Object, and the possible Third Correlate 
being termed its Interpretant, ..." 2.241. Note again 'the Representamen (which 
he also often refers  to as the sign') is 'the First Correlate of a triadic 
relation"..

  And, his outline of 2.243, where he outlines "Signs are divisible by three 
trichotomies" {Note, these trichotomies refer to the three categories of 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness]

  "first, according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual 
existent, or is a general law" [Note: this use of the sign refers to the 
Representamen]secondly, according as the relation of the sign to its 
object...; thirdly, according as its Interpretant". 

   I think this shows the triad quite clearly. Again, the Object, Representamen 
and Interpretant do not exist 'per se' on their own. They only exi

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

2015-11-25 Thread Matt Faunce

This was bugging me, so I went searching. The first place I saw 'sign' 
denoting a triad was not by Peirce, but by Cornelis de Waal, pg. 79 of 
Peirce, A Guide for the Perplexed, in the first paragraph: "The sign is 
a genuine triad--one that cannot be reduced to a combination of dyads."


In the Collected Papers Peirce's use of a triadic sign is rare, but here 
are two examples:


CP 8.305: "I shall show that a Concept is a Sign and shall define a Sign 
and show its triadic form."


6.344: "Signs, the only things with which a human being can, without 
derogation, consent to have any transaction, being a sign himself, are 
triadic; since a sign denotes a subject, and signifies a form of fact, 
which latter it brings into connexion with the former."


Matt

On 11/26/15 12:49 AM, John Collier wrote:


I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses 
“sign” in both ways. This caused me some problems in the past in 
applying his ideas to biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena 
until I realized he was using the term in more than one way. I think 
if one is careful about the context it is possible to select which 
usage Peirce makes in each case.


John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier

*From:*g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
*Sent:* Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
*To:* 'PEIRCE-L'
*Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But /meaning/ 
is not /a sign/. Edwina, you say that a */sign/* is a triadic 
relation, or a “triad,” while Peirce says that a sign is “a 
/correlate/ of a triadic relation.” Do you really not see the difference?


Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the 
difference between /representation/ and a /representamen/. It might 
help if you quoted Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:


[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word 
/representation/ to the operation of a sign or its /relation/ to the 
object /for/ the interpreter of the representation. The concrete 
subject that represents I call a /sign/ or a /representamen/. ]]


Once again, Peirce says that /representation/ is a triadic relation – 
and that a sign, or representamen, is the /correlate/ of the relation 
that represents the object for the interpretant.


You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a 
*sign* is either a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of 
repeated recapitulation on your part can conceal that fact, or the 
obvious inference from it, that Peirce simply does not use the word 
“sign” that way.


Gary f.

*From:*Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
*Sent:* 25-Nov-15 13:51

Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you 
know of any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, 
please inform us.


Please see his diagramme, 1.347 (The Categories in Detail) and his 
insistence on this triad (1.345) where 'meaning is obviously a triadic 
relation' - which means, that it is not mechanical (which is dyadic). 
You can also read his discussion of the triad in 'A Guess at the 
Riddle'. And of course, since his semiosis is triadic, then, you can 
read this perspective all through his work.


You can read his definition of the Representamen, which is the_mediate 
part of the triad_, in various parts of his work as well: "I confine 
the word representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to 
the object for the interpreter of the representation" 1.540.


Note that this necessarily is a RELATIONAL process and not singular; 
the Representamen does not exist 'per se'.


" A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, 
called its object, for a third, called its Interpretant, this triadic 
relation being such that the Representamen determines its interpretant 
to stand in the  same triadic relation to the same object for some 
interpretant" 1.541.


Note again: This is a RELATIONAL PROCESS in A TRIADIC SEMIOSIS. Again, 
the Representamen does not exist 'per se'.


Kindly remember that Peirce often used the term 'sign' to stand for 
the Representamen in itself. Not for the whole triad.  Again,


"A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine 
triadic relation to a Second, called its Object as to be capable of 
determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same 
triadic relation to its Object in which stands itself to the same 
Object". 2.274.


Again- it's in a  triadic relation. The Representamen does not stand 
on its own.


Thirdness, by the way, is the same as mediation (5.104) which of 
course implies relations..and the Representamen is in a mode of 
Thirdness in 6 of the ten Signs.


Edwina

- Original Message -

*From:*g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>

*To:*'PEIRCE-L' <mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.ed

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

2015-11-25 Thread John Collier

I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses “sign” in both 
ways. This caused me some problems in the past in applying his ideas to 
biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena until I realized he was using the 
term in more than one way. I think if one is careful about the context it is 
possible to select which usage Peirce makes in each case.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
To: 'PEIRCE-L'
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a 
sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while 
Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really 
not see the difference?

Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference 
between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted 
Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:
[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation 
to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of 
the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a 
representamen. ]]
Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that a 
sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the 
object for the interpretant.

You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is either 
a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation on your 
part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that Peirce 
simply does not use the word “sign” that way.

Gary f.

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 25-Nov-15 13:51
Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you know of 
any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, please inform us.

Please see his diagramme, 1.347 (The Categories in Detail) and his insistence 
on this triad (1.345) where 'meaning is obviously a triadic relation' - which 
means, that it is not mechanical (which is dyadic). You can also read his 
discussion of the triad in 'A Guess at the Riddle'. And of course, since his 
semiosis is triadic, then, you can read this perspective all through his work.

You can read his definition of the Representamen, which is the mediate part of 
the triad, in various parts of his work as well: "I confine the word 
representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the 
interpreter of the representation" 1.540.
Note that this necessarily is a RELATIONAL process and not singular; the 
Representamen does not exist 'per se'.

" A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, called its 
object, for a third, called its Interpretant, this triadic relation being such 
that the Representamen determines its interpretant to stand in the  same 
triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant" 1.541.

Note again: This is a RELATIONAL PROCESS in A TRIADIC SEMIOSIS. Again, the 
Representamen does not exist 'per se'.

Kindly remember that Peirce often used the term 'sign' to stand for the 
Representamen in itself. Not for the whole triad.  Again,

"A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic 
relation to a Second, called its Object as to be capable of determining a 
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its 
Object in which stands itself to the same Object". 2.274.

Again- it's in a  triadic relation. The Representamen does not stand on its own.

Thirdness, by the way, is the same as mediation (5.104) which of course implies 
relations..and the Representamen is in a mode of Thirdness in 6 of the ten 
Signs.

Edwina


- Original Message -
From: g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>
To: 'PEIRCE-L'<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 9:33 AM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Terms, Propositions, Arguments

Edwina,

Again, you are saying that the Sign is a “triad” and that the Representamen is 
a part of that triad. I’m not sure what Frances is saying, but what Peirce is 
saying in these quotes is that “A Sign is a representamen,” which is “a 
correlate of a triadic relation.” Peirce does not say that a Sign is a “triad” 
or a “triadic relation”: it is a correlate of a triadic relation, and a 
Representamen (though perhaps not the only kind). If you know of any Peirce 
quote saying that a sign is a “triad”, please post it here. Otherwise please 
stop claiming that your peculiar use of the word “Sign” is the same as Peirce’s.

Gary f.

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Gary F - Again, the Representamen does not exist, as Frances is using it, on 
its own; it's an integral part of the triad. The 2.274 r

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