Re: [peirce-l] Title Corrected: ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE TO ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS

2012-05-15 Thread Benjamin Udell
n (Peirce 
spoke of feelings in terms of qualities such as redness).


Pastward-oriented volition no more implies pastward time travel of 
effects than pastward-oriented cognition implies retrieving or receiving 
data from the past by some sort of time machine. There isn't cognition 
OF the past in that sense any more than there is volition OF the past. 
Memory is not simply cognition of the past, as if one could simply use 
personal memory to investigate, for example, the solar system's origin; 
instead it is one's cognition of something _/as/_ having been previously 
cognized by one. In parallel to that, one's (volitional) habit and 
adherence are one's willing of something _/as/_ having been previously 
willed by one (also, one may /break with/ the past). What I was getting 
at with the comparison of pushing against the ground was this: If one 
wants to think of volition as to the past as volition OF the past and as 
an effort to transmit effects onto the past, one might think of it in 
this somewhat metaphorical way:  The would-be effect of volition as to 
the past simply instead "rebounds," as it were, onto the one doing the 
willing, likewise as pushing on the ground is one's way of pushing 
oneself along or away from the ground. Only more so, since a person's 
pushing the Earth moves the Earth by some vanishingly small amount, 
whereas one's "pushing" on the past presumably affects the past not at all.


As to spontaneity, constraint, etc., I didn't happen to be discussing 
those questions about the will. Of course we can and do question, test 
for limits, etc., as to the freedom and power of the will, just as we do 
in regard to the unadulteratedness and aptness of competence, the 
unmanipulatedness and goodness of affectivity, and the unfooledness and 
truth of cognition. People can at least sometimes be forced, corrupted, 
manipulated, or deluded, so, are those what really happen ALL the time 
to everybody? Is it simply what nature or reality does to us? Socrates 
would complain that such radical skepticism, taken seriously, makes the 
thinker lazy, excusing and promoting uninquisitiveness. Logically, such 
radical skepticism can't survive its own causticity, and anyway few if 
any behave as though they believed in it. But skeptical puzzles along 
such lines, especially as regards cognition and knowledge, are quite an 
industry in philosophy. Whatever the uses of Cartesian doubt and its 
less totalistic but still radical progeny, I agree with Peirce that it's 
not the most fruitful thing in philosophy.


Best, Ben

On 5/15/2012 6:30 AM, Gary Moore wrote:

*Subject:* [peirce-l] Title Corrected: ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL 
CAUSE TO ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS
[peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL 
ENDEAVORS


Monday, May 14, 2012 2:31 AM

*From: * Benjamin Udell 
*To:* "PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU" 
*Sent:* Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:44 AM
*Subject:* Re: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL 
INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS
Benjamin Udell: I don't find anything on /ens ut primum cognitum/ at 
Arisbe, and I find very little about it in connection with Peirce on 
the Internet.

-
Gary Moore: This /maybe/ is a Deely ‘thing’ although he makes 
associations repetitively in his books between the ‘act’ of 
“Firstness” as being the necessary whole one is within in knowing 
consciousness as fundamental to linguistic knowing and /ens ut primum 
cognitum / which Delly points out comes before the distinction between 
/ens reale/ and /ens rationis/ , loosely between sensation and 
abstraction.

--
Benjamin Udell: Be sure to put quotes around Peirce's name as well as 
around the sought phrase (like so: "Peirce" "ens ut primum cognitum"), 
otherwise Google includes results for "Pierce". Also be sure to type 
it cognitum, not cogitum, a typo that probably results from 
associating cognition with cogitation, but the words are not cognate.

---
Gary Moore: Yes, you are right it is a typo.
_
Benjamin Udell: I've read little Deely or Kant and no McGrath.
---
Gary Moore: McGrath merely provides us an example of putting two terms 
together and assuming everyone knows and uses the combination 
especially /*as if* / it were a single logical form. John Deely has 
written extensively on Peirce – I can provide information or look up 
Wikipedia – and essentially says he has substantially extended 
Peirce’s thinking. I question some of this, but I admit he does 
extensively relate Peirce to both scholasticism, especially John 
Poinsot, and the context modern philosophy in general. However, his 
criteria of   what is proper to consider or just summarily dismiss 
leaves much to be desired. He definitely has a specific program that 
he wants to implement.

-

Re: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS

2012-05-13 Thread Benjamin Udell
/terms/representamen.html> " at 
the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms . Peirce eventually stopped 
using the word "representamen" (except in at least one late manuscript 
in which he seems to be working anew on a distinction between sign and 
representamen). But for Deely and some others, _sign_ refers to the 
whole semiotic triad of the representamen, the object (or the 
significate, or significate object, as Deely calls it), and the 
interpretant.


Best, Ben

On 5/13/2012 5:39 AM, Gary Moore wrote:


Dear Benjamin Udell,

Gary Moore: Although John Harvey’s reply was extremely good and very 
thought provoking, this is the best argued and most informative and 
just downright practically effective letter I have ever received on a 
philosophy thread on the internet in twelve years! I appreciate the 
distinction made in paragraph 2] very much. I did have trouble trying 
to find any sort of definition for precisely the terminological 
combination “prime necessity” which, though it combines two well known 
terms, is not at all self-explicative together as obviously Peirce 
wants them to be together. You are perfectly right in saying Peirce is 
just using it as an example. ¶


[_Addendum_ ] Gary Moore: To explain my interest I need to show an 
ongoing conflict with S. J. McGrath over another such combination term 
with a violent and variegated history: the /analogia entis/ which he 
says is the primary concept of Thomas Aquinas. He says it is 
absolutely necessary to all thinking as such as well as to any 
meaningful theology. He obviously treats it as a form of logical 
argument. But it is not. It is a literary trope. Now, that does not 
diminish its importance because literary explication always goes with 
using language. Literary explication shows that psychology, explicit 
and implicit, governs all our expression. Yet in logic and philosophy 
it is only rarely acknowledged, and then only as a minor concern when 
it fact it is the overwhelming concern of the whole of language. Its 
formation of language comes long before logic and philosophy. Deely 
demonstrates that the /analogia entis/ is NOT/a logical argument/ but 
does show the analysis of the word “God”, which Aquinas definitively 
says we can never really say anything ‘real’ about, acts as I see it 
as a black whole around which theology, philosophy, and psychology 
revolve around and . . . The term /analogia entis/ McGrath is so hot 
and bothered about does not even occur in Aquinas anywhere.


Gary Moore: But your further analysis, as well as the Peirce you quote 
[3], have been vastly rewarding! You quote “Necessity /de omni/ is 
that of a predicate which belongs to its whole subject at all times.” 
I take this to refer to “Firstness”. In turn, I take these to refer to 
John Deely’s use of Aquinas’ /ens ut primum cogitum/ which is 
literally the first ‘thing’ you know and gives you the ability to know 
everything else. This is the key to all of Deely’s thinking. I 
searched for /ens ut primum cogitum / at Arisbe and found absolutely 
nothing which is probably my fault. Is the identification accurate? ¶


[Addendum] Gary Moore: In */A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth 
Laine Ketner and Walker Percy/ * , Percy makes the strange statement 
[page 6] that “To tell the truth, I’ve never seen much use in CSP’s 
“Firstness”, except to make the system more elegant.”]


Gary Moore: At paragraph 8], you say, “ordinary discourse itself can 
evolve and become less vague and more specialized”. This is true. That 
this evolution occurs is undeniable. But this indicates the nature of 
language itself which I am always ‘within’ and yet is the only 
viewpoint I have of it. This is why I disagree with Deely about his 
blanket condemnation of solipsism which, like Kant’s categories for 
the same reason, he is forced to do an about face. */FOUR AGES OF 
UNDERSTANDING/ * , page 588, “ “But this is not sufficient for the 
preclusion of solipsism for the species anthropos , and hence for each 
individual within it; for whatever may be the mechanism of 
representative consciousness, that does not change the basic situation 
admitted on all hands: nothing directly experienced has as such an 
existence also apart from our experiencing of it. This view is the 
hallmark of modernity. But the moderns never succeeded in figuring out 
/why/ they were speculatively driven, over and over again, into a 
solipsistic corner from which, as Bertrand Russell summarized the 
modern dilemma in the historical twilight of its dominance in 
philosophy, there seems no way out. For only the sign in its proper 
being can effect the needed passage. And ideas as /representations/ 
are emphatically not signs, but the mere vehicles and foundations 
through which the action of signs works to achieve, over and above 
individual subjectivity, the interweave of mind and nature that we 
call experience.Ӧ


Gary Moore: And on page 645, Deely grudgingly gives Kant credit f

Re: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS

2012-05-12 Thread Benjamin Udell

Gary M., list,

In the passage that you quote from EP 2: 266, what Peirce says is,

   [] This scholastic terminology has passed into English speech
   more than into any other modern tongue, rendering it the most
   logically exact of any. This has been accomplished at the
   inconvenience that a considerable number of words and phrases have
   come to be used with a laxity quite astounding. Who, for example,
   among the dealers in Quincy Hall who talk of "articles of /prime
   necessity/," would be able to say what that phrase "prime necessity"
   strictly means? He could not have sought out a more technical
   phrase. There are dozens of other loose expressions of the same
   provenance. 

Peirce isn't praising the phrase "prime necessity" by calling it most 
technical. He's just pointing out that people use, without knowing their 
meanings, phrases that are supposed to be reserved for technical senses. 
That much seems clear enough from the context. Less obvious is that 
"prime necessity" was no doubt in Peirce's view a good example because 
he thought pretty much nobody really knew what it meant.


   Still another threefold distinction, due to Aristotle (I Anal.
   post., iv), is between necessity /de omni/ (/tò katà pantós/), /per
   se / (/kath autó/), and /universaliter primum / (/kathólou prôton/).
   The last of these, however, is unintelligible, and we may pass it
   by, merely remarking that the exaggerated application of the term
   has given us a phrase we hear daily in the streets, 'articles of
   prime necessity.' Necessity /de omni/ is that of a predicate which
   belongs to its whole subject at all times. Necessity /per se/ is one
   belonging to the essence of the species, and is subdivided according
   to the senses of /per se/, especially into the first and second
   modes of /per se/. (Peirce, 1902, from his portion of "Necessity" in
   Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, James Mark Baldwin, editor,
   v. 2, p. 145 via Google Books
   

   and via Classics in the History of Psychology
   
   . 

I don't know what Latin word is being translated as "necessity" in that 
paragraph but, given the neuter adjective in /universaliter primum/ 
(literally, "universally first"), if it's a word with the "necess-" 
element in it, then it is /necesse/ (= /necessum/) or /necessarium/ 
("necessary", neuter adjectives) rather than /necessitas/ or 
/necessitudo/ ("necessity", feminine abstract nouns).


Peirce can be terminologically demanding, but fortunately he defined 
many terms and phrases, in the Century Dictionary and in the Dictionary 
of Philosophy and Psychology. As for Peirce's own terminology, he 
defines some of it in those books, but the first place to look is the 
Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms 
 , edited by 
Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, U. of Helsinki, and containing Peirce's 
own definitions, often many per term across the decades.


Gary Fuhrman very helpfully took a list of Peirce entries at the DPP 
that I started in "Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography" in Wikipedia, 
and expanded it to include Peirce entries for letters P-W (which aren't 
at the Classics in the History of Psychology). 
http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm . Where he has not also 
provided the text, he still provides the page number so that one can 
find it via Google Books' edition 
 
or via Internet Archive's edition 
 .


The Century Dictionary is online for free 
; it's bigger and more 
encyclopedic than the OED. I recommend installing the DjVu reader rather 
than settling for jpg images of pages. A list of the entries written or 
supervised/approved by Peirce is at 
http://www.pep.uqam.ca/listsofwords.pep . Peirce's work on the Century 
Dictionary will be in Writings vol. 7, now scheduled for 2013. Online 
software for W 7 is now planned (Peirce Edition Project April 2012 
Update  ).


As regards ordinary discourse as the final cause of all intellectual 
endeavors, I'd say that ordinary discourse itself can evolve and become 
less vague and more specialized. Some ordinary discourse contains 
hundreds of ways to characterize snow; but not ordinary discourse in 
English, and most of us will not accumulate enough experience with snow 
to get what those characterizations are about. Yet for some those 
characterizations are very practical, often needful. Between highly 
developed ideas and ordinary ideas, there will usually be some struggle, 
it's a two-way street.


Best, Ben

On 5/12/2012 

Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Jim,

Sorry, I'm just getting more confused. I've actually seen "a", "b", etc. 
called "constants" as opposed to "variables" such as "x", "y", etc. 
Constant individuals and variable individuals, so to speak, anyway in 
keeping with the way the words "constant" and "variable" seem to be used 
in opposition to each other in math. But if that's not canonical, then 
it's not canonical. Also, I thought "F" was a predicate term, a "dummy 
letter", and at any rate a "(unknown or veiled) constant" as I would 
have called it up till a few minutes ago.  I thought "~" was a functor 
that makes a new predicate "~F" out of the predicate "F". If "~" and the 
other functors are logical constants, then isn't the predication 
relationship between "F" and "x" in "Fx" also a logical constant, though 
it has no separate symbol? Really, I think the case is hopeless. I need 
to read a book on the subject.


I don't see why conceptual analysis would start with the third 
trichotomy of signs (rheme, dicisign, argument) and move to the first 
trichotomy of signs (qualisign, sinsign, legisign). Maybe you mean that 
conceptual analysis would start with Third in the trichotomy of rheme, 
dicisign, argument and move to that trichotomy's First. I.e. move from 
argument back to rheme. But I don't see why the conceptual-analysis 
approach would prefer that direction.


On your P.S., I don't know whether you're making a distinction between 
propositions and sentences.


Thanks but this all seems hopeless! Let's drop this sub-thread for at 
least 24 hours.


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 10:06 PM, Jim Willgoose wrote:


Ben,

I made it too complicated. Sorry. It didn't help that "/-" was brought 
into the discussion.  You had the basic idea earlier with dicent and 
rheme. Fx and Fa have to be kept together. So, the interpretant side 
of the semiotic relation has priority. Conceptual  analysis would move 
from the "third trichotomy" back to the first. Synthesis would move 
from the first to the third. If this is close, the priority principle 
would place emphasis on the whole representation. (By the way, "F" is 
a function and "a" is an individual, ~+--> are the logical constants.)


Jim W

PS If words have meaning only in sentences (context principle), does 
this mean that term, class, and propositional logics are meaningless?


Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 20:30:53 -0400
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Hi, Jim,
Sorry, I'm not following you here. "F" and "a" look like logical 
constants in the analysis. I don't know how you're using "v", and so 
on.  I don't know why there's a question raised about taking the 
judgment as everything that implies it, or as everything that it 
implies. Beyond those things, maybe you're suggesting, that Frege 
didn't take judgments as mere fragments of inferences, because he 
wasn't aware of some confusion that would be clarified by taking 
judgments as mere fragments of inferences? But I'm afraid we're just 
going to have to admit that I'm in over my head.

Best, Ben
On 5/11/2012 7:36 PM, Jim Willgoose wrote:

Ben,

I suppose you could take the judgment as everything which implies
it. (or is implied by it) In this way, you could play around with
the "judgment stroke" and treat meaning as inferential. But, using
a rule of substitution and instantiation, I could show the content
of the following judgment without any logical constants

/- ExFx
Fa x=a
ExFx

But if I say vx, is v "a" or is it another class "G?" Further,
"vx" is a logical product.  The above analysis has no logical
constants.  I guess the point is that once you segment Fx and then
talk of two interpretations; boolean classes or propositions, you
create some confusion which Frege (according to Sluga) traces back
to favoring concepts over judgments with resulting totalities such
as m+n+o+p that are not rich enough, lacking in meaning and
content. But this is in 1882.

Jim W

Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 16:41:32 -0400
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 

Hi, Jim
Thanks, but I'm afraid that a lot of this is over my head. Boolean
quantifier 'v' ? Is that basically the backward E? A 'unity'
class? Is that a class with just one element?  Well, be that as it
may, since I'm floundering here, still I take it that Frege did
not view a judgment as basically fragment of an inference, while
Peirce viewed judgments as parts of inferences; he didn't think
that there was judgment except by inference (no 'intuition' devoid
of determination by inference).

Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 3:08 PM, Jim Willgo

Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Hi, Jim,

Sorry, I'm not following you here. "F" and "a" look like logical 
constants in the analysis. I don't know how you're using "v", and so 
on.  I don't know why there's a question raised about taking the 
judgment as everything that implies it, or as everything that it 
implies. Beyond those things, maybe you're suggesting, that Frege didn't 
take judgments as mere fragments of inferences, because he wasn't aware 
of some confusion that would be clarified by taking judgments as mere 
fragments of inferences? But I'm afraid we're just going to have to 
admit that I'm in over my head.


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 7:36 PM, Jim Willgoose wrote:

Ben,

I suppose you could take the judgment as everything which implies it. 
(or is implied by it) In this way, you could play around with the 
"judgment stroke" and treat meaning as inferential. But, using a rule 
of substitution and instantiation, I could show the content of the 
following judgment without any logical constants


/- ExFx
Fa x=a
ExFx

But if I say vx, is v "a" or is it another class "G?" Further, "vx" is 
a logical product.  The above analysis has no logical constants.  I 
guess the point is that once you segment Fx and then talk of two 
interpretations; boolean classes or propositions, you create some 
confusion which Frege (according to Sluga) traces back to favoring 
concepts over judgments with resulting totalities such as m+n+o+p that 
are not rich enough, lacking in meaning and content. But this is in 1882.


Jim W

Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 16:41:32 -0400
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Hi, Jim
Thanks, but I'm afraid that a lot of this is over my head. Boolean 
quantifier 'v' ? Is that basically the backward E? A 'unity' class? Is 
that a class with just one element?  Well, be that as it may, since 
I'm floundering here, still I take it that Frege did not view a 
judgment as basically fragment of an inference, while Peirce viewed 
judgments as parts of inferences; he didn't think that there was 
judgment except by inference (no 'intuition' devoid of determination 
by inference).


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 3:08 PM, Jim Willgoose wrote:

Hi Ben;

My interest was historical (and philosophical) in the sense of
what did they say about the developing work of symbolic logic in
their time. The period is roughly 1879-1884. The anchor was two
references by Irving (the historian of logic) to Van Heijenhoort
and Sluga as worthy start points.  But the issue of simply
language/calculus(?) need not be the end. This is not a Frege or
Logic forum per se, but I wanted to keep the thread alive
and focused on symbolic logic because I get curious how the (darn)
textbook came about periodically.

The "priority principle," as extracted by Sluga, with Frege
following Kant, takes the judgment as ontologically,
epistemologically, and methodologically primary. Concepts are not.

I will suppose, for now, that the content of a judgment is
obscured in a couple of ways. First, if you treat the concept as
the extension of classes, and then treat the class as a unity
class or use the Boolean quantifier "v" for a part of a class, you
end up with an abstract logic that shows only the logical
relations of the propositional fragment. (especially if the
extensions of classes are truth values)

Frege might say that this obscures the content of the judgment.
Thus, I would say that the propositional fragment is not primary
at all for Frege, and is just a special case.

You are on to something with the rheme and dicisign. But in 1879,
the systems of symbolic logic did not appreciate the propositional
function, the unrestricted nature of the quantifier, and the
confusion that results from a lack of analysis of a judgment and
the poverty of symbolism for expressing the results of the analysis.

Jim W



Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 12:24:33 -0400
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 

Jim, Jon, list,

I'm following this with some interest but I know little of Frege
or the history of logic. Peirce readers should note that this
question of priority regarding concept vs. judgment is, in
Peirce's terms, also a question regarding rheme vs. dicisign and,
more generally, First vs. Second (in the rheme-dicisign-argument
trichotomy).

Is the standard placement of propositional logic as prior to term
logic, predicate calculus, etc., an example of the Fregean
prioritization?

Why didn't Frege regard a judgment as a 'mere' segment of an
inference and thus put inference as prior

Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Sorry, corrections in bold:


Jon,

The way I learned it, (formal) implication is not the /assertion/ but 
the /validity/ of the (material) conditional, so it's a difference 
between 1st-order and 2nd-order logic, a difference that Peirce 
recognized in some form. If the schemata involving "p" and "q" are 
considered to expose all relevant logical structure (as usually in 
propositional logic), then a claim like "p formally implies q" is 
false. On the other hand, a proposition /à la/ "if p then q" (or "p 
materially implies q") is contingent, neither automatically true nor 
automatically false. I agree that you can see it as the same 
relationship on two different levels. That seems the natural way to 
look at it.


Another kind of implication is expressed by rewriting a proposition 
like "Ax(Gx-->Hx)" as "G=>H". In other words "All G is H" gets 
expressed "G implies H". In first-order logic, at least, it actually 
comes down to a material conditional compound of two terms in a 
universal proposition.


If in addition to logical rules one has postulated or generally 
granted other rules, say scientific or mathematical rules, then these 
lead to scientific or mathematical implications, the associated 
conditionals being true by the scientific or mathematical rules, not 
just contingently on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, all these kinds of 
implication do seem like the same thing in various forms.


It's not clear to me how any of this figures into the 
concept-vs.-judgment question. The only connection that I've been able 
to make out in my haze is that when we say something like "p formally 
implies p", we're thinking of the proposition p as if it were a 
concept rather than a judgment; our concern is limited to validity *as 
of an argument* "p ergo p". If we *_/say/_* 'p, ergo p' or, in a 
kindred sense, "p proves p," we're thinking of p as a judgment, and 
our concern includes the soundness as well as validity *of the 
argument "p ergo p"*.


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 2:25 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:


Ben,

Just to give a prototypical example, one of the ways that the 
distinction
between concepts and judgments worked its way through analytic 
philosophy
and into the logic textbooks that I knew in the 60s was in the 
distinction
between a "conditional" ( → or -> ) and an "implication" ( ⇒ or => 
).  The
first was conceived as a function (from a pair of truth values to a 
single
truth value) and the second was conceived as a relation (between two 
truth
values).  The relationship between them was Just So Storied by saying 
that
asserting the conditional or judging it to be true gave you the 
implication.


I think it took me a decade or more to clear my head of the dogmatic 
slumbers
that this sort of doctrine laid on my mind, mostly because the 
investiture of
two distinct symbols for what is really one and the same notion 
viewed in two
different ways so obscured the natural unity of the function and the 
relation.


Cf. http://mywikibiz.com/Logical_implication

Regards,

Jon






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Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Hi, Jim

Thanks, but I'm afraid that a lot of this is over my head. Boolean 
quantifier 'v' ? Is that basically the backward E? A 'unity' class? Is 
that a class with just one element?  Well, be that as it may, since I'm 
floundering here, still I take it that Frege did not view a judgment as 
basically fragment of an inference, while Peirce viewed judgments as 
parts of inferences; he didn't think that there was judgment except by 
inference (no 'intuition' devoid of determination by inference).


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 3:08 PM, Jim Willgoose wrote:


Hi Ben;

My interest was historical (and philosophical) in the sense of what 
did they say about the developing work of symbolic logic in their 
time. The period is roughly 1879-1884. The anchor was two references 
by Irving (the historian of logic) to Van Heijenhoort and Sluga as 
worthy start points.  But the issue of simply language/calculus(?) 
need not be the end. This is not a Frege or Logic forum per se, but I 
wanted to keep the thread alive and focused on symbolic logic 
because I get curious how the (darn) textbook came about periodically.


The "priority principle," as extracted by Sluga, with Frege following 
Kant, takes the judgment as ontologically, epistemologically, and 
methodologically primary. Concepts are not.


I will suppose, for now, that the content of a judgment is obscured in 
a couple of ways. First, if you treat the concept as the extension of 
classes, and then treat the class as a unity class or use the Boolean 
quantifier "v" for a part of a class, you end up with an abstract 
logic that shows only the logical relations of the propositional 
fragment. (especially if the extensions of classes are truth values)


Frege might say that this obscures the content of the judgment. Thus, 
I would say that the propositional fragment is not primary at all for 
Frege, and is just a special case.


You are on to something with the rheme and dicisign. But in 1879, the 
systems of symbolic logic did not appreciate the propositional 
function, the unrestricted nature of the quantifier, and the confusion 
that results from a lack of analysis of a judgment and the poverty of 
symbolism for expressing the results of the analysis.


Jim W



Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 12:24:33 -0400
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Jim, Jon, list,

I'm following this with some interest but I know little of Frege or 
the history of logic. Peirce readers should note that this question of 
priority regarding concept vs. judgment is, in Peirce's terms, also a 
question regarding rheme vs. dicisign and, more generally, First vs. 
Second (in the rheme-dicisign-argument trichotomy).


Is the standard placement of propositional logic as prior to term 
logic, predicate calculus, etc., an example of the Fregean 
prioritization?


Why didn't Frege regard a judgment as a 'mere' segment of an inference 
and thus put inference as prior to judgment?


I suppose that one could restate an inference such as 'p ergo q' as a 
judgment 'p proves q' such that the word 'proves' is stipulated to 
connote soundness (hence 'falsehood proves falsehood' would be false), 
thus rephrasing the inference as a judgment; then one could claim that 
judgment is prior to inference, by having phrased inference as a 
particular kind of judgment. Some how I don't picture Frege going to 
that sort of trouble.


Anyway it would be at the cost of not expressing, but leaving as 
implicit (i.e., use but don't mention), the movement of the reasoner 
from premiss to conclusion, which cost is actually accepted when 
calculations are expressed as equalities ("3+5 = 8") rather than as 
some sort of term inference ('3+5, ergo equivalently, 8').


If either of you can clarify these issues, please do.
Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 11:41 AM, Jim Willgoose wrote:



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Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Jon,

The way I learned it, (formal) implication is not the /assertion/ but 
the /validity/ of the (material) conditional, so it's a difference 
between 1st-order and 2nd-order logic, a difference that Peirce 
recognized in some form. If the schemata involving "p" and "q" are 
considered to expose all relevant logical structure (as usually in 
propositional logic), then a claim like "p formally implies q" is false. 
On the other hand, a proposition /à la/ "if p then q" (or "p materially 
implies q") is contingent, neither automatically true nor automatically 
false. I agree that you can see it as the same relationship on two 
different levels. That seems the natural way to look at it.


Another kind of implication is expressed by rewriting a proposition like 
"Ax(Gx-->Hx)" as "G=>H". In other words "All G is H" gets expressed "G 
implies H". In first-order logic, at least, it actually comes down to a 
material conditional compound of two terms in a universal proposition.


If in addition to logical rules one has postulated or generally granted 
other rules, say scientific or mathematical rules, then these lead to 
scientific or mathematical implications, the associated conditionals 
being true by the scientific or mathematical rules, not just 
contingently on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, all these kinds of 
implication do seem like the same thing in various forms.


It's not clear to me how any of this figures into the 
concept-vs.-judgment question. The only connection that I've been able 
to make out in my haze is that when we say something like "p formally 
implies p", we're thinking of the proposition p as if it were a concept 
rather than a judgment; our concern is limited to validity. If we say 
'p, ergo p' or, in a kindred sense, "p proves p," we're thinking of p as 
a judgment, and our concern includes soundness as well as validity.


Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 2:25 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:


Ben,

Just to give a prototypical example, one of the ways that the distinction
between concepts and judgments worked its way through analytic philosophy
and into the logic textbooks that I knew in the 60s was in the 
distinction
between a "conditional" ( → or -> ) and an "implication" ( ⇒ or => ).  
The
first was conceived as a function (from a pair of truth values to a 
single
truth value) and the second was conceived as a relation (between two 
truth
values).  The relationship between them was Just So Storied by saying 
that
asserting the conditional or judging it to be true gave you the 
implication.


I think it took me a decade or more to clear my head of the dogmatic 
slumbers
that this sort of doctrine laid on my mind, mostly because the 
investiture of
two distinct symbols for what is really one and the same notion viewed 
in two
different ways so obscured the natural unity of the function and the 
relation.


Cf. http://mywikibiz.com/Logical_implication

Regards,

Jon





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Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans

2012-05-11 Thread Benjamin Udell

Jim, Jon, list,

I'm following this with some interest but I know little of Frege or the 
history of logic. Peirce readers should note that this question of 
priority regarding concept vs. judgment is, in Peirce's terms, also a 
question regarding rheme vs. dicisign and, more generally, First vs. 
Second (in the rheme-dicisign-argument trichotomy).


Is the standard placement of propositional logic as prior to term logic, 
predicate calculus, etc., an example of the Fregean prioritization?


Why didn't Frege regard a judgment as a 'mere' segment of an inference 
and thus put inference as prior to judgment?


I suppose that one could restate an inference such as 'p ergo q' as a 
judgment 'p proves q' such that the word 'proves' is stipulated to 
connote soundness (hence 'falsehood proves falsehood' would be false), 
thus rephrasing the inference as a judgment; then one could claim that 
judgment is prior to inference, by having phrased inference as a 
particular kind of judgment. Some how I don't picture Frege going to 
that sort of trouble.


Anyway it would be at the cost of not expressing, but leaving as 
implicit (i.e., use but don't mention), the movement of the reasoner 
from premiss to conclusion, which cost is actually accepted when 
calculations are expressed as equalities ("3+5 = 8") rather than as some 
sort of term inference ('3+5, ergo equivalently, 8').


If either of you can clarify these issues, please do.

Best, Ben

On 5/11/2012 11:41 AM, Jim Willgoose wrote:


John,


I followed up on two paper suggestions by Irving (Sluga and Van 
Heijenoort) in the context of the languge or calculus topic. With 
Sluga, I detect the idea that the Begriffsshrift is a universal 
language because it is /meaningful/ in a way that the Boolean logic is 
not.


Sluga sees his paper as an "extension and adjustment" of Van 
Heijenoort's paper on logic as language or calculus. He places great 
emphasis on the "priority principle."  He quotes from Frege, "I begin 
with judgments and their contents and not with concepts...The 
formation of concepts I let proceed from judgments. (Posthumous 
writings) Sluga says, "This principle of priority, in 
fact, constitutes the true center of his critique of Boolean logic.  
That logic is a mere calculus for him because of its inattention to 
that principle, while his own logic approximates a characteristic 
language because of its reliance on it."

(Sluga, Frege against the Booleans)

The Frege quote above is from around 1879 and the material focus is on 
1884 or earlier; especially "Boole's calculating logic and the 
Begriffsshrift." ( a response to Schroder's criticism) There is a lot 
more to this article, including linking the priority principle to the 
better known "context principle." (words have meaning only in sentences)


What I am doing is reading these two papers concurrently with Mitchell 
and Ladd-Franklin from Studies in Logic. (1883)


Jim W.
ps I like the way you diagram a thread on your site.
> Date: Fri, 11 May 2012 08:16:14 -0400
> From: jawb...@att.net
> Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Frege against the Booleans
> To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
>
> Re: Jim Willgoose
> At: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8141
>
> JA = Jon Awbrey
> JW = Jim Willgoose
>
> JA: Just to be sure we start out with the same thing in mind, are 
you talking about
> the notion of judgment that was represented by the "judgment stroke" 
in Frege's
> “Begriffsschrift” and that supposedly got turned into the turnstile 
symbol ( ⊦ )

> or “assertion symbol” in later systems of notation?
>
> JW: Sluga ties the priority of judgement in Frege to Kant's favoring 
judgements
> over concepts in the Critique of Pure Reason. The article is open 
source.
> I can see a connection with the judgement stroke /- since one 
asserts the

> truth; a trick that is hard to do with only concepts or objects. Sluga
> includes a quote from Frege where he says something to the effect that
> he (Frege) never "segments the signs" of even an incomplete expression
> in any of his work. (ie. "x" is never separated from "F" as in Fx.)
>
> Jim,
>
> With this token and this turnstile then we enter on a recurring issue,
> revolving on the role of assertion, evaluation, or judgment of truth,
> in contradistinction to “mere contemplation”, as some of my teachers
> taught me to bracket it, of a “proposition”, whatever that might be.
>
> If I have not made it clear before, this is one of the points where
> I see the so-called “Fregean Revolution”, more French than American,
> if you catch my drift, begin to take a downward turn. But I cannot
> decide yet whether to assign that to Frege's account, taken in full
> view of his work as a whole, or whether it is due to the particular
> shards that his self-styled disciples tore off and took to extremes.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon
>
> --
>
> academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
> my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
> inquiry list: http://std

Re: [peirce-l] Beginning to answer On Information Technology

2012-04-08 Thread Benjamin Udell
Ernesto,

There are extensive links to online materials on EGs at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_graph#References. Also, Ahti-Veikko J. 
Pietarinen has just posted some new material including "Ten Myths about 
Existential Graphs" at his webpages at http://www.helsinki.fi/~pietarin/. Once 
there, click in the lefthand sidebar on "TALKS."

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: ernesto cultura 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2012 10:50 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Beginning to answer On Information Technology

Dear Jon, and list,

as I said to you and list I was keeping these answers of yours for future 
reading and consideration as I was very busy some weeks ago.

The links seem to be very insteresting.

I found a Professor in Germany who studies Existential Graphs and IT:

the link is 

http://www.dr-dau.net/eg_readings.shtml

I dont know him and I dint make any contact with him until now!

In fact it is the result of a mere and simple search on google.

I'm very busy and bored with some tasks in my doctorate program (where I am a 
student).
Boring questions that relates Brazilian art and Brazilian (always imature) 
policy.

I'm feeling distant from this marvellous path where Peirce's theory can be 
found.

Still keeping myself close to all of you,

Ernesto.

> Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:04:36 -0500
> From: jawb...@att.net
> To: pachito_profes...@hotmail.com
> CC: peirce-l@listserv.iupui.edu; ari...@stderr.org; inqu...@stderr.org
> Subject: Re: On Information Technology

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[peirce-l] Technical support

2012-04-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

The previous tech support person for peirce-l, Ali Zimmerman, has left her 
position. From now on, for subscription problems, please contact me and Gary, 
and if we cannot resolve the problem, we will contact the new tech person who 
is currently settling into place. A few of you have notified us of problems, 
and we hope that they can be resolved with the new tech person's help during 
the coming work week. Thank you for your patience.

Ben Udell and Gary Richmond

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Re: [peirce-l] Arisbe to IUPUI and may temporarily appear gone

2012-04-03 Thread Benjamin Udell
Arisbe is also available at http://cspeirce.iupui.edu if anybody has a critical 
need during the transition. 

Best regards, 
Ben Udell and Gary Richmond

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 7:26 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Arisbe to IUPUI and may temporarily appear gone


List,

Arisbe has now been transferred to IUPUI server (but the url remains and will 
remain http://www.cspeirce.com/) . Now, it takes a while for the changed server 
location to propagate through the Internet, so it Arisbe may seem to be down 
when you try to access it. But don't worry, everybody will be able to access it 
soon enough!

Thanks to Nathan Houser, David Pfeifer, Bill Stuckey, and people behind the 
scenes for making this possible.

Best regards,
Ben Udell, for myself and Gary Richmond

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[peirce-l] Arisbe to IUPUI and may temporarily appear gone

2012-04-03 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

Arisbe has now been transferred to IUPUI server (but the url remains and will 
remain http://www.cspeirce.com/) . Now, it takes a while for the changed server 
location to propagate through the Internet, so it Arisbe may seem to be down 
when you try to access it. But don't worry, everybody will be able to access it 
soon enough!

Thanks to Nathan Houser, David Pfeifer, Bill Stuckey, and people behind the 
scenes for making this possible.

Best regards,
Ben Udell, for myself and Gary Richmond

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Re: [peirce-l] The Pragmatic Cosmos

2012-03-29 Thread Benjamin Udell
I said this wrong. Changed below between pairs of asterisks. Sorry! - Best, Ben

- Original Message - 

Jason, list,

That's interesting. What aspects of synechism do they reject?
  a.. Continuity of space and time? Lorentz symmetries seem to make such 
continuity pretty credible. 
  b.. Idea of espousing continuity of space and time for philosophical reasons 
instead of physics reasons? 
  c.. Real infinitesimals? 
  d.. Continuity of semiosis and of inference process? **Idea that incapacities 
such as that of a cognition devoid of determination by inference help** prove 
the reality of the continuous and therefore of the general? (Some Consequences 
of Four Incapacities)
Or if discussions of synechism don't get into such detail, still what do they 
say is wrong with synechism?

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Khadimir
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] The Pragmatic Cosmos


Steven,


This seems to be a plausible judgment of contemporary scene, if a sparse one.  
If I continue with this, then might I ask exactly what constitutes being a 
scientific dualist on your view?  I would agree that many contemporary 
positions are prima facie crypto-dualist, if that is what you mean, a 
hypothesis that would be verified or not in individual cases (thinkers).  
However, when I claim that of a view and indicate why, they always reject the 
view, and about the only widespread commonality that I've seen is a rejection 
of scholastic realism (realism about universals) and of continuity (synechism). 


Best,
   Jason




On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

  Dear Cathy,

  "Non-Peirceans," if you will forgive the over simplification, are in two 
camps:

 1. the religious dualist,
 2. the scientific dualist.

  Often they are in both.

  One does not know how to ground what Peirce calls "Thirdness" (more 
generally, "the mind") in their conception of "God," the other does not know 
how to ground Thirdness in their conception of Physics. In-other-words, there 
are two dogmas working against the Peircean.

  It produces precisely the problem that Stanley Fish alludes to, and that I 
respond to (see my comment at the bottom of the page), here:

 Citing Chapter and Verse: Which Scripture Is the Right One?
 
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/citing-chapter-and-verse-which-scripture-is-the-right-one/?comments#permid=72

  This is a reference to an article that Stephen Rose gave a few days ago.

  Peirce's objection to the "Russelization" of logic is relevant here, because 
the eradication of "psychologism" placed "the mind" (esp. "Thirdness") beyond 
the reach of 20th Century science and logic.

  It has become clear to me that Charles Peirce, and his father Benjamin, did 
indeed conceive of the mind, and in particular what Charles called "Thirdness," 
as grounded in both a conception of "God" and a conception of Physics. Now I 
rush to add that, despite the language of the time, this "God" conception is 
not the usual one but one that is really "non-theistic" in the modern sense, in 
that it is without personification and clearly not the god of popular western 
conception.

  This, in my view, is the proper way to interpret the apparent contradiction 
in this matter when it is naively read into Benjamin Peirce's "Ideality in the 
physical sciences" and in the writings of Charles Peirce. Their view is more 
like that of Taoism than Judeao-Christianity (although it maintains the passion 
of the later).

  So, in presenting Peirce's view in relation to contemporary arguments it is 
important, I think, to highlight these points and challenge the dogma. If you 
do, then Peircean concerns and questions may become more clear to the audience 
unfamiliar with them.

  With respect,
  Steven


  --
 Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
 Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
 http://iase.info



  On Mar 29, 2012, at 2:08 AM, Catherine Legg wrote:

  > Gary R wrote:
  > *
  >>> For my own part, I tend--as perhaps Jon does as well--to see 
esthetic/ethics/logic as semeiotic as being in genuine tricategorial relation 
so that they *inform* each other in interesting ways. Trichotomic vector 
theory, then, does not demand that one necessarily always follow the order: 1ns 
(esthetic), then 2ns (ethics), then 3ns (logic). One may also look at the three 
involutionally (logic involves ethics which, in turn, involves esthetic) or, 
even, according to the vector of representation (logic shows esthetic to be in 
that particular relation to ethics which Peirce holds them to be in). But only 
a very few scholars have taken up tricategorial vector relations. Indeed, R. J. 
Parmentier and I are the only folk I know of who have published work on 
possible paths of movement (vectors) through a genuine trichotomic relation 
which does *not* follow the Hegelian order: 1ns then

Re: [peirce-l] C.S. Peirce • A Guess at the Riddle

2012-03-22 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, Terry, list,

I've seen it suggested in a thread somewhere on the Web that the reason that 
the position-velocity-acceleration trichotomy is a good one is that that there 
are universal laws of acceleration and velocity (and position?) but not of the 
third or higher derivatives. (The third derivative of position is informally 
known as jerk, also, jolt, surge, and lurch.) I don't know why there shouldn't 
be a universal law of jerk, becoming very salient when two strongly gravitating 
masses drift toward each other. But I'm no physicist. In fact, a two-ton truck 
does put on a few pounds as it moves from mountain top to sea level. The weight 
difference wouldn't make it fall faster, but I think that the difference in the 
strength of the gravitational field would. Otherwise one should be falling 
earthward at 32ft per sec. per sec. no matter how far from Earth one is. Also 
toward everything else in the universe. Then they'd all cancel each other out 
and there'd be no gravitation. I'd better stop before I drift too far out into 
space myself.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Jon Awbrey" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:56 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] C.S. Peirce • A Guess at the Riddle


TB = Terry Bristol

TB: I like it up to this statement that I find obscure.

CSP: Now an acceleration, instead of being like a velocity a relation between 
two successive positions,
  is a relation between three;  so that the new doctrine has consisted in 
the suitable introduction
  of the conception of Threeness.  On this idea, the whole of modern 
physics is built.

TB: I very much look forward to your comments on the overall passage.

Terry,

This just says that we estimate the velocity of a particle moving through a 
space by taking
two points on its trajectory and dividing the distance traveled between them by 
the time it
takes to do so.  To get the instantaneous velocity at a point on the trajectory 
we take the
limit of this quotient as pairs of points are chosen ever closer to the point 
of interest.

We estimate acceleration by taking three points, taking the velocity between 
the first two,
taking the velocity between the last two, then taking the rate of change in the 
velocities
as an estimate of the acceleration.  We get the instantaneous acceleration by 
choosing the
three points ever closer and taking the limit.

By the way ...

This is probably a good time to mention an objection that is bound to arise in 
regard to Peirce's
use of the series of quantities, Position, Velocity, Acceleration, to 
illustrate his 3 categories.
There is nothing about that series, which can of course be extended 
indefinitely, to suggest that
the categories of monadic, dyadic, and triadic relations are universal, 
necessary, and sufficient.
Not so far as I can see, not right off, at least.  So making that case for 
Peirce's Triple Threat
will probably have to be mounted at a different level of abstraction.

Regards,

Jon

-- 

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/
word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/

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[peirce-l] Links to more Peirce MS images - GEP

2012-03-21 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

I've added links at http://www.cspeirce.com/digitized.htm to pages leading to 
Peirce manuscript images Los manuscritos de C. S. Peirce   
http://www.unav.es/gep/MSCSPeirce.html at Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos.  I've 
translated the Spanish annotations into English. 

This currently includes 
MSS: 
(year 1866) 732, 
(year 1873) 380 & 381, 
(years 1893-1914)
717, 1395, 865, 867, 732, 569, 599, 600, 1246, 7, 449, 776, 280, 1334, 339C, 
339D, 792, 793, 283, 322, 200, 618, 634, 640, 654, 664, 670, 675, 676, 
(undated) 499, 801, 840, 866, 868, and 
Letters 67, 98, 181, 261, 387, 390.

I hadn't realized how much Jaime Nubiola and his colleagues had posted there. 
Way to go, G.E.P.! There are also some transcriptions and Spanish translations 
of the manuscripts. I know that there's still more to dig up at G.E.P.

Best, Ben

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[peirce-l] Reply versus Reply All

2012-03-20 Thread Benjamin Udell
Steven, list,

The need to click on "Reply All" in order to reply _on list_ to a message is 
not unique to peirce-l.  It avoids a recurrent problem.  Under peirce-l's old 
system, people sometimes accidentally sent to peirce-l personal messages 
unintended for peirce-l, and in some cases it led to considerable embarassment. 
 We will, however, seek to add text about using "Reply All" to the message 
appended by the server to the bottom of each peirce-l message.

Best regards,
Ben Udell and Gary Richmond

- Original Message - 
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] The family of Benjamin Peirce


First: someone needs to fix the "reply-to" on the list so that replies are 
directed to it and not the author.

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Re: [peirce-l] Meeting Peirceans in New York, blogs

2012-03-19 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

I've added links to Tom's and Jason's blogs at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/individs.htm

Cathy, thanks for the kind words. I know Gary R. has done some hard work but 
your words make me wonder whether I've worked harder than I've realized, since 
I've thought of myself as doing quite a bit of coasting along! Believe me, 
there's more that I could be doing at Arisbe (I've been going slow, hoping for 
better ideas in certain cases about how to format for automated screen 
readers). Anyway, behind the scenes Nathan Houser has been doing a lot. What 
amazes me is the thought of all those scholars gathering from around the world 
to hear some papers and talk to a few people at S.A.A.P.  Really, very many 
people are working hard.

I found Peirce manuscript images posted at the Harvard Houghton site today and 
I've linked to them at http://www.cspeirce.com/digitized.htm
  a.. MS 820 [Fermatian Inference]. P.1 only of 6. 
  b.. MS 1276 Lecture III (presumably the Lowell series 1892-3). P. 119 only of 
(the incomplete) pp. 101-128. 
  c.. MS 1279 Lecture VIII c. 1892 (Lowell 1892-3). P.29 only of pp. 1-35. 
  d.. MS 1287 August 1 notebook, Table of constellations. Facing pages 30 verso 
- 31 recto. Robin said this notebook has 29 pages (and that the other notebook 
in MS 1287 has 21 pages). From [The History of Science from Copernicus to 
Newton (1543-1686)], 1902. 
  e.. MS 1582 Printed announcement of three lectures, with MS note. Entirety, 
one page.
Some time this week I expect to add a number of links to Peirce MS images 
elsewhere on the Internet.

Best, Ben

Cathy wrote,
  For my part, I just want to say I enjoyed the SAAP session on Richard Robin 
very much, and it was particularly lovely to meet in person for the very first 
time those legendary behind-the-scenes supporters of Arisbe and the Peirce-L: 
Gary Richmond and Ben Udell! Guys, I never realised before quite how much you 
were doing to keep alive the Peirce online community, particularly since Joe's 
passing. Thank you. I know the work you do comes from a genuine passion for 
Peirce's ideas. 

  2 more members of this list who I happen to know have philosophical blogs are 
Jason Hills and Tom Gollier. I wonder whether they might be persuaded to share 
the URLs with everyone...:-)

  Cheers, Cathy

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Re: [peirce-l] Inquiry and Analogy in Aristotle and Peirce

2012-03-18 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, list,

Let's toss Michael Shapiro's blog a link while we're at it.

Language Lore http://www.languagelore.net/. Shapiro persistently brings a 
pragmatist's perspective to linguistics.

I actually ventured into the S.A.A.P. session in honor of Richard Robin on 
Thursday and met some of the people whom I slightly know from online. Contrary 
to the reputations of philosophers in general as "mean," they were a bunch of 
what Gary Richmond called "sweethearts." One person self-identified as a 
linguist and made an interesting statement (but I wasn't taking notes). I 
wondered whether it was Michael Shapiro. Later I realized that I had omitted 
Shapiro's five-volume _Peirce Seminar Series_ from the Arisbe page of journals 
and book series. I've added it now http://www.cspeirce.com/journals.htm 

Some blogs and home pages are listed at http://www.cspeirce.com/individs.htm

The blogs are those of some peirce-l members and, I've notice, aren't always 
focused on Peirce, but, well, they're blogs, we're not all focused on Peirce 
all the time.

If anybody has a more-or-less Peirce-related blog or a home page that s/he 
would like to see added, please let me know.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Jon Awbrey" 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 1:40 PM 
Subject: [peirce-l] Inquiry and Analogy in Aristotle and Peirce 

Peircers,

A recent blog post by Michael Shapiro on “The Pragmatistic Force of Analogy in 
Language Structure”
reminded me of some work I started on “Inquiry and Analogy in Aristotle and 
Peirce”, parts of which
may be of service in our discussions of the “Categorical Aspects of Abduction, 
Deduction, Induction”.

Here is the link --

• 
http://mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey/Papers/Functional_Logic_:_Inquiry_and_Analogy

Regards,

Jon

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Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-17 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jason, list, 

That's a good question. In the relevant paragraph (CP 7.536, of which I quoted 
only the last part), Peirce begins by saying: "It remains to be shown that this 
element is the third Kainopythagorean category. All flow of time involves 
learning; and all learning involves the flow of time." The element that he was 
discussing was a "continuity" which he had just called a "direct experience" 
(CP 7.535). (This is also another 'score' for Gary Richmond in his April 8, 
2011 post http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/6995 to 
peirce-l, in which he said "It seems to me that for Peirce being present means 
being present to the flow, which flow implies all three modalities: past, 
present, and future")

I'm kind of reluctant to go out on a limb right now, having misinterpreted 
Peirce's Oct. 12, 1904 letter to Lady Welby and spent a number of posts 
cleaning up after myself. My guess is that, in virtue of their triadic parts in 
the flow of learning, inference, and representation and interpretation, all 
three times are Thirds, with Secondness, Firstness, and Thirdness strong but 
not overwhelmingly so in past, present, and future, respectively. In other 
words, learning-past as Secundan Third, learning-present as Priman Third, and 
learning-future as Tertian Third. But I have no strong opinion at this point!

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Khadimir 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 12:29 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question

Would it not be fair to say that the conscious experience of the immediate 
present must always be at least a second?  That is the view I hold.

Jason H.

On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

  Claudio, Eduardo, Diane, Gary R., list, 

  I've found more of Peirce on the present-past-future trichotomy. This time, 
from Chapter 1 of the _Minute Logic_ (1902) manuscript, in CP 2.84 (on the past 
as Second), 2.85 (on the present as First), and 2.86 (on the future as Third). 
From CP 2.85:

Let us now consider what could appear as being in the present instant were 
it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is more 
occult than the absolute present. There plainly could be no action; and without 
the possibility of action, to talk of binarity would be to utter words without 
meaning. There might be a sort of consciousness, or feeling, with no self; and 
this feeling might have its tone. Notwithstanding what William James has said, 
I do not think there could be any continuity like space, which, though it may 
perhaps appear in an instant in an educated mind, I cannot think could do so if 
it had no time at all; and without continuity parts of the feeling could not be 
synthetized; and therefore there would be no recognizable parts. There could 
not even be a degree of vividness of the feeling; for this [the degree of 
vividness] is the comparative amount of disturbance of general consciousness by 
a feeling. At any rate, such shall be our hypothesis, and whether it is 
psychologically true or not is of no consequence. The world would be reduced to 
a quality of unanalyzed feeling. Here would be an utter absence of binarity. I 
cannot call it unity; for even unity supposes plurality. I may call its form 
Firstness, Orience, or Originality. It would be something _which is what it is 
without reference to anything else_ within it or without it, regardless of all 
force and of all reason. Now the world is full of this element of 
irresponsible, free, Originality. Why should the middle part of the spectrum 
look green rather than violet? There is no conceivable reason for it nor 
compulsion in it. [...]
  Note that there he discusses "what could appear as being in the present 
instant were it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for 
nothing is more occult than the absolute present." 

  Elsewhere, at the end of CP 7.536 in an undated manuscript, he says "The 
consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves 
them both.":

Thus, every reasoning involves another reasoning, which in its turn 
involves another, and so on _ad infinitum_. Every reasoning connects something 
that has just been learned with knowledge already acquired so that we thereby 
learn what has been unknown. It is thus that the present is so welded to what 
is just past as to render what is just coming about inevitable. The 
consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves 
them both. Reasoning is a new experience which involves something old and 
something hitherto unknown. The past as above remarked is the _ego_. My recent 
past is my uppermost _ego_; my distant past is my more generalized _ego_. The 
past of the community is _our ego_. In attributing a flow of time to unknown 
events we impute a quasi-_ego_ to the u

Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-17 Thread Benjamin Udell
Re: [peirce-l] a questionClaudio, Eduardo, Diane, Gary R., list, 

I've found more of Peirce on the present-past-future trichotomy. This time, 
from Chapter 1 of the _Minute Logic_ (1902) manuscript, in CP 2.84 (on the past 
as Second), 2.85 (on the present as First), and 2.86 (on the future as Third). 
From CP 2.85:

  Let us now consider what could appear as being in the present instant were it 
utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is more 
occult than the absolute present. There plainly could be no action; and without 
the possibility of action, to talk of binarity would be to utter words without 
meaning. There might be a sort of consciousness, or feeling, with no self; and 
this feeling might have its tone. Notwithstanding what William James has said, 
I do not think there could be any continuity like space, which, though it may 
perhaps appear in an instant in an educated mind, I cannot think could do so if 
it had no time at all; and without continuity parts of the feeling could not be 
synthetized; and therefore there would be no recognizable parts. There could 
not even be a degree of vividness of the feeling; for this [the degree of 
vividness] is the comparative amount of disturbance of general consciousness by 
a feeling. At any rate, such shall be our hypothesis, and whether it is 
psychologically true or not is of no consequence. The world would be reduced to 
a quality of unanalyzed feeling. Here would be an utter absence of binarity. I 
cannot call it unity; for even unity supposes plurality. I may call its form 
Firstness, Orience, or Originality. It would be something _which is what it is 
without reference to anything else_ within it or without it, regardless of all 
force and of all reason. Now the world is full of this element of 
irresponsible, free, Originality. Why should the middle part of the spectrum 
look green rather than violet? There is no conceivable reason for it nor 
compulsion in it. [...]
Note that there he discusses "what could appear as being in the present instant 
were it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is 
more occult than the absolute present." 

Elsewhere, at the end of CP 7.536 in an undated manuscript, he says "The 
consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves 
them both.":

  Thus, every reasoning involves another reasoning, which in its turn involves 
another, and so on _ad infinitum_. Every reasoning connects something that has 
just been learned with knowledge already acquired so that we thereby learn what 
has been unknown. It is thus that the present is so welded to what is just past 
as to render what is just coming about inevitable. The consciousness of the 
present, as the boundary between past and future, involves them both. Reasoning 
is a new experience which involves something old and something hitherto 
unknown. The past as above remarked is the _ego_. My recent past is my 
uppermost _ego_; my distant past is my more generalized _ego_. The past of the 
community is _our ego_. In attributing a flow of time to unknown events we 
impute a quasi-_ego_ to the universe. The present is the immediate 
representation we are just learning that brings the future, or non-ego, to be 
assimilated into the _ego_. It is thus seen that learning, or representation, 
is the third Kainopythagorean category.

So that _consciousness of_ the present seems to match that which Gary Richmond 
said at peirce-l on April 8, 2011 about the present "moment" as distinguished 
from the present "instant," the present moment as a "triadic moment" 
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/6995

I also find that, in Peirce's letter of Oct. 12, 1904 to Lady Welby, if I had 
looked at what he had written in the same (long) paragraph (CP 8.330) before 
the excerpt that I sent, I would have seen Peirce discusses Firstness of the 
quiet and Firstness of a shrill piercing whistle, and does so in a way that 
supports the idea of the present as a First. For it is the breaking of the 
quiet by the shrill whistle that he says involves Secondness, and that is the 
breaking of one moment by another, though each moment, taken apart, simply has 
its quality, its Firstness.

Bet, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:10 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question 

Claudio, Eduardo, Diane, list, 

Let's note that, especially for Diane, that Jon has pointed us to passage where 
Peirce DOES associate the present with Firstness, in "The Reality of Thirdness" 
from the 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. I missed it because I narrowed my 
search too much. Peirce: "The immediate present, could we seize it, would have 
no character but its Firstness." Peirce also in that passage (CP 1.343-349) 
associates Secondness with 

Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Hi Claudio,

If you're subscribed at peirce-l only with your Yahoo email address, then the 
peirce-l server won't recognize any other email address from you. Are you 
subscribed to peirce-l with only your Yahoo email or with both your Yahoo email 
and gmail addresses?

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Claudio Guerri 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU ; Benjamin Udell ; Gary Richmond 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:26 PM 
Subject: Fwd: Re: [peirce-l] a question

Apparently this mail has not reached the List 
because I have used Gmail? 
CL

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Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Re: [peirce-l] a questionClaudio, Eduardo, Diane, list, 

Let's note that, especially for Diane, that Jon has pointed us to passage where 
Peirce DOES associate the present with Firstness, in "The Reality of Thirdness" 
from the 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. I missed it because I narrowed my 
search too much. Peirce: "The immediate present, could we seize it, would have 
no character but its Firstness." Peirce also in that passage (CP 1.343-349) 
associates Secondness with the past and Thirdness with the future. 
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/03/16/c-s-peirce-%E2%80%A2-the-reality-of-thirdness/.
 It looks like I misinterpreted the quote (from Peirce's letter to Lady Welby) 
that I sent a day or two ago, unless Peirce changed his mind. Somehow I 
remember reading somebody's claim (I think in a discussion about the light 
cone) of an association by Peirce of Secondness with both present and past, but 
it's too long ago, I forget. So now we can say:

  Firstness Possibility, the may-be. The vague Quality. Present. 
  Secondness Actuality. The determinate/singular Fact Past. 
  Thirdness (Conditional) necessity/destiny, the would-be. The general. 
Law. Future. 

Yes, I was a little surprised by Claudio's "logical time" comment too.

  Time is for Peirce a 'logical time', so there is no real duration... 
  Past, Present and Future are just logical considered in a synchronic triadic 
analysis 
Maybe Peirce did so in logic, but I'd have thought that he did otherwise in 
metaphysics. The quote that I offered from Peirce's letter to Lady Welby does 
not seem a synchronic analysis of time without real duration.

I agree with you, Claudio, that your "design - construction - habitability" 
trichotomy seems to work with better with the trichotomy of possibility/quality 
- actuality/reaction - necessity/habit  than with the trichotomy of present - 
past - future. Well, Peirce seems not to have focused on the trichotomy of 
present - past - future too often. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Eduardo Forastieri 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question

Claudio, Ben, List:

It is rewarding that Ben's table is approximate to what you, Steve, Jon and 
myself  have been suggesting on its perimeter.  

I would appreciate if you could elaborate more on why and how Peirce narrows 
his conception of time to a synchronistic triadic analysis (granted, however, 
that a trichotomy is an extensive abstraction of time and space relations). 

Is Secondness -viewed as a tenseless  "logical time" and as independent of 
constative or performative indexicality-  consistent with Peirce's approach to 
synechism, fallibilism or the pragmatic maxim?

Aren't they related, both in actuality and real possibility? 
If semiosis is regardless of time but still bound by trychotomic implicatures, 
then it would defeat itself as undecidable and incomplete.

I have nor Peirce text at hand, yet I find it difficult to conceive Peircean 
time as abstract iconic diagrams of Firstness represented in abstract Thirdness 
symbolisms, unless they were to be bound somehow by indexicality in a 
trichotomy's implicature.

Best, 
Eduardo Forastieri-Braschi 

On 3/16/12 3:48 PM, "Benjamin Udell" wrote:

Forwarded from Claudio Guerri, who clearly meant to send this to the list. To 
respond (to a peirce-l post) with a post TO peirce-l, click on "Reply All," not 
on "Reply." - Best, Ben

- Original Message - 

Ben, Diane, List,

Time is for Peirce a 'logical time', so there is no real duration... 
Past, Present and Future are just logical considered in a synchronic triadic 
analysis 

There is an other difficult (and very serious) aspect in Firstness... 
Ben (and lots of other scholars) gives a perfect explanation from a 
philosophical point of view, if we consider ONLY Peirce's writings in it self, 
for the purpose of a logic/semiotic reasoning, for an abstract sign. 
But what happens if we consider a 'real sign' like a jar of mayonnaise if we 
have to make a market research or something more complex as the sign 
Architecture: 

  Firstness Design the vague quality 
  Secondness Construction the determinate/singular fact 
  Thirdness Habitability the general law 

 (thanks Ben for the nice table)
Is Design really something 'vague'? 
Yes, it is 'really vague' in respect of the sign-Architecture, since it is only 
the possibility, but is is a very complex and consistent aspect in itself... it 
is a Theoretical Practice (Althusser) in respect to Architecture and its 
content consist in 3 years (in the US) or 6 years studies (in Argentina) in all 
Schools or Faculties of Architecture... though, I would propose to consider 
'possibility' as a very m

Re: [peirce-l] The Reality of Thirdness

2012-03-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, list,

The 1903 Lowell lectures on "Some Topics of Logic bearing on Questions now 
Vexed".are a different series than the 1903 Harvard lectures on Pragmatism. 
Here's what I once put together. I hope to heck I got the CP pages right for 
the Lowell Lectures. I include a link to the Robin Catalog for that. The Topics 
of Logic lectures (and, I assume, the Syllabus) will be republished in 
_Writings_ v. 22 on which much work has been done and is expected to resume 
after completion of v. 11 
(http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/News%20from%20PEP1.pdf#page=6 (PDF)).

Peirce, C. S., Lectures on Pragmatism, Cambridge, MA, March 26 – May 17, 1903. 

  a.. Published in part, Collected Papers, CP 5.14–212. 
  b.. Published in full with editor's introduction and commentary, Patricia Ann 
Turisi, ed., _Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 
Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism"_ (PPM or HL), State University of New York 
Press, Albany, NY, 1997, SUNY catalog page. A study edition of Charles Sanders 
Peirce's lecture manuscripts which had been previously published in abridged 
form. Includes drafts and sections deleted by Peirce. 
  c.. Reprinted, pp. 133–241, Peirce Edition Project (eds.), _The Essential 
Peirce_, Volume 2 (1893–1913). I don't know whether this includes the drafts 
and deletions by Peirce that Turisi's edition included.
Topics of Logic (the 1903 Lowell lectures and syllabus)

  a.. The Syllabus of the 1903 Lowell lectures 
a.. Peirce, C. S. (1903), manuscript materials associated with the 
Syllabus, CP 1.180-202, 2.219-226, 2.274-277, 2.283-284, 2.292-294, 2.309-331, 
CP 3.571-608, CP 4.394-417. 
b.. Peirce, C. S. (1903), "A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic" (Syllabus 
articles selected by the editors), EP 2:258-330 
c.. Peirce, C. S. (1903), _A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic_, Alfred 
Mudge & Son, Boston, 23-page pamphlet printed for the lecture audience: p. 1, 
title & publication, p. 2, Peirce's 104-word preface; pp. 4–9 are headed "An 
Outline Classification of the Sciences"; pp. 10–14 are headed "The Ethics of 
Terminology"; and pp. 15–23 are headed "Existential Graphs".
  b.. Peirce, C. S. (1903 Nov. 23 – Dec. 17), Lowell lectures on "Some Topics 
of Logic bearing on Questions now Vexed". 
a.. CP 1.15-26, 1.324, 1.343-349, 1.521-544, 1.591-615, 4.510-529, 
5.590-604, 6.88-97, 7.110-130, 7.182n7, 8.176. At Robin Catalog entry for 
Logic, scroll down to "LOWELL LECTURES 1903" 
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/robin/robin_fm/logic.htm 
b.. Lecture I, "What Makes a Reasoning Sound?", _The Essential Peirce_ 
Volume 2, pp. 242-257.
  c.. Forthcoming: Writings of Charles S. Peirce Volume 22: The 1903 Lowell 
Lectures. Progress has been made made and is to resume after completion of 
Volume 11: See http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/News%20from%20PEP1.pdf#page=6 (PDF)
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Jon Awbrey" 
To: 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 5:15 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] The Reality of Thirdness


Peircers,

I am thinking it would be worth our whiles to examine
that excerpt on "The Reality of Thirdness" in greater
detail, so I posted a better-formatted copy of it to
my blog at this address:

• 
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/03/16/c-s-peirce-%E2%80%A2-the-reality-of-thirdness/

I will try to get back to this over the weekend, but maybe not till Monday.

By the way, I don't think I have these lectures in any better form than
the fragments given in the Collected Papers. Does anyone know about the
relation between these "Lowell Lectures of 1903" and what was published
as the "Harvard Lectures of 1903" in EP2 and also the Turrisi volume?

Regards,

Jon

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[peirce-l] Notice of brief Arisbe downtimes to occur on March 17th

2012-03-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

Arisbe's host has informed us to expect brief downtimes at the Arisbe site on 
Saturday, March 17th. See below. - Best, Ben

  In response to Microsoft's latest security patch releases; we will be 
patching Windows servers on Saturday, March 17th.  The standard patching will 
be performed between 3:00AM and 8:00AM EST (GMT -4).  During this time your 
site or server will experience a brief period of downtime while the server is 
rebooted.

  Additionally, as part of our on-going efforts to increase network capacity 
and support new technologies, we will be installing new edge layer network 
equipment and making minor routing changes during the patching window on 
Saturday, March 17th.  There will be brief periods of network downtime of less 
than 15 minutes while connections are migrated and routes updated.

  Additional staff will be available both onsite and remotely to test 
connectivity and monitor the progress of the maintenance. No impact is expected 
beyond the maintenance window.

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Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded from Claudio Guerri, who clearly meant to send this to the list. To 
respond (to a peirce-l post) with a post TO peirce-l, click on "Reply All," not 
on "Reply." - Best, Ben

- Original Message - 

Ben, Diane, List,

Time is for Peirce a 'logical time', so there is no real duration... 
Past, Present and Future are just logical considered in a synchronic triadic 
analysis 

There is an other difficult (and very serious) aspect in Firstness... 
Ben (and lots of other scholars) gives a perfect explanation from a 
philosophical point of view, if we consider ONLY Peirce's writings in it self, 
for the purpose of a logic/semiotic reasoning, for an abstract sign. 
But what happens if we consider a 'real sign' like a jar of mayonnaise if we 
have to make a market research or something more complex as the sign 
Architecture: 

  Firstness Design the vague quality 
  Secondness Construction the determinate/singular fact 
  Thirdness Habitability the general law 

 (thanks Ben for the nice table)
Is Design really something 'vague'? 
Yes, it is 'really vague' in respect of the sign-Architecture, since it is only 
the possibility, but is is a very complex and consistent aspect in itself... it 
is a Theoretical Practice (Althusser) in respect to Architecture and its 
content consist in 3 years (in the US) or 6 years studies (in Argentina) in all 
Schools or Faculties of Architecture... though, I would propose to consider 
'possibility' as a very much better option to explain Firstness...

Best 
Claudio

Benjamin Udell said the following on 14/03/2012 04:55 p.m.: 

  Diane, list

  Peirce generally associated the categories with modalities more readily than 
with times:

Firstness possibility, the may-be the vague quality. 
Secondness actuality the determinate/singular fact 
Thirdness (conditional) necessity/destiny, the would-be the general law 

  Look up "Firstness" etc. at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, whichs 
consists of his own definitions. 
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html

  Peirce regarded Secondness as action and reaction. In a letter dated Oct. 4, 
1904, to Lady Welby (Collected Papers v. 8 paragraph 330), he discusses 
secondness, thirdness, and times.

Generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon 
another, -- brute action. I say brute, because so far as the idea of any law or 
reason comes in, Thirdness comes in. When a stone falls to the ground, the law 
of gravitation does not act to make it fall. The law of gravitation is the 
judge upon the bench who may pronounce the law till doomsday, but unless the 
strong arm of the law, the brutal sheriff, gives effect to the law, it amounts 
to nothing. True, the judge can create a sheriff if need be; but he must have 
one. The stone's actually falling is purely the affair of the stone and the 
earth at the time. This is a case of reaction. So is existence which is the 
mode of being of that which reacts with other things. But there is also action 
without reaction. _Such is the action of the previous upon the subsequent._ It 
is a difficult question whether the idea of this one-sided determination is a 
pure idea of secondness or whether it involves thirdness. At present, the 
former view seems to me correct. []
  Insofar as action-and-reaction is a thing of the present, Peirce seems to 
regard the present as well as the past as a Second. Then Peirce talks about 
Kant's ideas and how maybe temporal causation is an action upon ideas, not upon 
existents. Then Peirce says:

[] But since our idea of the past is precisely the idea of that which 
is absolutely determinate, fixed, fait accompli, and dead, as against the 
future which is living, plastic, and determinable, it appears to me that the 
idea of one-sided action, in so far as it concerns the being of the 
determinate, is a pure idea of Secondness; and I think that great errors of 
metaphysics are due to looking at the future as something that will have been 
past. I cannot admit that the idea of the future can be so translated into the 
Secundal ideas of the past. To say that a given kind of event never will happen 
is to deny that there is any date at which its happening will be past; but it 
is not equivalent to any affirmation about a past relative to any assignable 
date. When we pass from the idea of an event to saying that it never will 
happen, or will happen in endless repetition, or introduce in any way the idea 
of endless repetition, I will say the idea is _mellonized_ ({mellön}}, about to 
be, do, or suffer). When I conceive a fact as acting but not capable of being 
acted upon, I will say that it is _parelelythose_ ({parelélythös}, past) and 
the mode of being which consists in such action I will call _parelelythosine_ 
(-ine = {einai}, being); I regard the former as an

Re: [peirce-l] a question

2012-03-14 Thread Benjamin Udell
Diane, list

Peirce generally associated the categories with modalities more readily than 
with times:

  Firstness possibility, the may-be the vague quality. 
  Secondness actuality the determinate/singular fact 
  Thirdness (conditional) necessity/destiny, the would-be the general law 


Look up "Firstness" etc. at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, whichs 
consists of his own definitions. 
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html

Peirce regarded Secondness as action and reaction. In a letter dated Oct. 4, 
1904, to Lady Welby (Collected Papers v. 8 paragraph 330), he discusses 
secondness, thirdness, and times.
  Generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon 
another, -- brute action. I say brute, because so far as the idea of any law or 
reason comes in, Thirdness comes in. When a stone falls to the ground, the law 
of gravitation does not act to make it fall. The law of gravitation is the 
judge upon the bench who may pronounce the law till doomsday, but unless the 
strong arm of the law, the brutal sheriff, gives effect to the law, it amounts 
to nothing. True, the judge can create a sheriff if need be; but he must have 
one. The stone's actually falling is purely the affair of the stone and the 
earth at the time. This is a case of reaction. So is existence which is the 
mode of being of that which reacts with other things. But there is also action 
without reaction. _Such is the action of the previous upon the subsequent._ It 
is a difficult question whether the idea of this one-sided determination is a 
pure idea of secondness or whether it involves thirdness. At present, the 
former view seems to me correct. []
Insofar as action-and-reaction is a thing of the present, Peirce seems to 
regard the present as well as the past as a Second. Then Peirce talks about 
Kant's ideas and how maybe temporal causation is an action upon ideas, not upon 
existents. Then Peirce says:
  [] But since our idea of the past is precisely the idea of that which is 
absolutely determinate, fixed, fait accompli, and dead, as against the future 
which is living, plastic, and determinable, it appears to me that the idea of 
one-sided action, in so far as it concerns the being of the determinate, is a 
pure idea of Secondness; and I think that great errors of metaphysics are due 
to looking at the future as something that will have been past. I cannot admit 
that the idea of the future can be so translated into the Secundal ideas of the 
past. To say that a given kind of event never will happen is to deny that there 
is any date at which its happening will be past; but it is not equivalent to 
any affirmation about a past relative to any assignable date. When we pass from 
the idea of an event to saying that it never will happen, or will happen in 
endless repetition, or introduce in any way the idea of endless repetition, I 
will say the idea is _mellonized_ ({mellön}}, about to be, do, or suffer). When 
I conceive a fact as acting but not capable of being acted upon, I will say 
that it is _parelelythose_ ({parelélythös}, past) and the mode of being which 
consists in such action I will call _parelelythosine_ (-ine = {einai}, being); 
I regard the former as an idea of Thirdness, the latter as an idea of 
Secondness.
Peirce sometimes spoke of the present as a single instant of zero duration; 
could that kind of present be a first? In its extreme singularity, it would be 
a Second in Peirce's terms. We've talked in the past at peirce-l about how the 
"bare present," as a tiny, indeterminate, phenomenological moment, might be a 
First.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Diane Stephens 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:56 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] a question


In the book Semiotics I by Donald Thomas, he includes a chart which shows 
concepts associated with firsts, seconds and thirds.  For example, a first is 
quality, a second is fact and a third is law.  I understand all but second as 
past as in: 

First - present 
Second - past 
Third - future 

I would appreciate some help.

Thanks.

-- 
Diane Stephens
Swearingen Chair of Education
Wardlaw 255
College of Education
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
803-777-0502
Fax 803-777-3193

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Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-13 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving, all,

In my previous post I said that I would include the "full" Peirce quotes, but 
for the first Peirce quote I included only the portion included in the Commens 
Dictionary. For the full quote (CP 4.233), go here: 
http://books.google.com/books?id=3JJgOkGmnjEC&pg=RA1-PA193&lpg=RA1-PA193&dq=%22Mathematics+is+the+study+of+what+is+true+of+hypothetical+states+of+things%22

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

Irving, Gary, Malgosia, list,

Irving, I'm sorry that I gave you the impression that I think that a lemma is 
something helpful but unproven inserted into a proof. I mean a theorem placed 
in among the premisses to help prove the thesis. Its proof may be offered then 
and there, or it may be a theorem from (and already proven in) another branch 
of mathematics, to which the reader is referred. At any rate it is as Peirce 
puts it "a demonstrable proposition about something outside the subject of 
inquiry." 


The idea that theorematic reasoning often involves a lemma comes not from me 
but from Peirce. Theorematic reasoning, in Peirce's view, involves 
experimentation on a diagram, which may consist in a geometrical form, an array 
of algebraic expressions, a form such as "All __ is __," etc.  I don't recall 
his saying anything to suggest that theorematic reasoning is particularly 
mechanical.  I summarized Peirce's views in a paragraph in my first post on 
these questions, and I'll reproduce it, this time with the full quotes from 
Peirce. He discusses lemmas in the third quote.
Peirce held that the most important division of kinds of deductive reasoning is 
that between corollarial and theorematic. He argued that, while finally all 
deduction depends in one way or another on mental experimentation on schemata 
or diagrams,[1] still in corollarial deduction "it is only necessary to imagine 
any case in which the premisses are true in order to perceive immediately that 
the conclusion holds in that case," whereas theorematic deduction "is deduction 
in which it is necessary to experiment in the imagination upon the image of the 
premiss in order from the result of such experiment to make corollarial 
deductions to the truth of the conclusion."[2]  He held that corollarial 
deduction matches Aristotle's conception of direct demonstration, which 
Aristotle regarded as the only thoroughly satisfactory demonstration, while 
theorematic deduction (A) is the kind more prized by mathematicians, (B) is 
peculiar to mathematics,[1] and (C) involves in its course the introduction of 
a lemma or at least a definition uncontemplated in the thesis (the proposition 
that is to be proved); in remarkable cases that definition is of an abstraction 
that "ought to be supported by a proper postulate.".[3]


1 a b Peirce, C. S., from section dated 1902 by editors in the "Minute Logic" 
manuscript, Collected Papers v. 4, paragraph 233, quoted in part in 
"Corollarial Reasoning" in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, 
2003-present, Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola, editors, University of Helsinki.: 

  How it can be that, although the reasoning is based upon the study of an 
individual schema, it is nevertheless necessary, that is, applicable, to all 
possible cases, is one of the questions we shall have to consider. Just now, I 
wish to point out that after the schema has been constructed according to the 
precept virtually contained in the thesis, the assertion of the theorem is not 
evidently true, even for the individual schema; nor will any amount of hard 
thinking of the philosophers' corollarial kind ever render it evident. Thinking 
in general terms is not enough. It is necessary that something should be DONE. 
In geometry, subsidiary lines are drawn. In algebra permissible transformations 
are made. Thereupon, the faculty of observation is called into play. Some 
relation between the parts of the schema is remarked. But would this relation 
subsist in every possible case? Mere corollarial reasoning will sometimes 
assure us of this. But, generally speaking, it may be necessary to draw 
distinct schemata to represent alternative possibilities. Theorematic reasoning 
invariably depends upon experimentation with individual schemata. We shall find 
that, in the last analysis, the same thing is true of the corollarial 
reasoning, too; even the Aristotelian "demonstration why." Only in this case, 
the very words serve as schemata. Accordingly, we may say that corollarial, or 
"philosophical" reasoning is reasoning with words; while theorematic, or 
mathematical reasoning proper, is reasoning with specially constructed 
schemata. (' Minute Logic', CP 4.233, c. 1902)

2. 

Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-13 Thread Benjamin Udell
 distinction was bound up, not with the truth 
of the premises, but rather with the method in which theorems are arrived at. 
If I now understand what most of the responses have attempted to convey, the 
theorematic has to do with the mechanical processing of proofs, where a simple 
inspection of the argument (or proof) allows us to determine which inference 
rules to apply (and when and where) and whether doing so suffices to 
demonstrate that the theorem indeed follows from the premises; whereas the 
corollarial has to do with intuiting how, or even if, one might get from the 
premises to the desired conclusion. In that case, I would suggest that another 
way to express the theorematic/corollarial distinction is that they concern the 
two stages of creating mathematics; that the mathematician begins by examining 
the already established mathematics and asks what new mathematics might be

Ben Udell also introduces the issue of the presence of a lemma in a proof as 
part of the distinction between theorematic and corollarial. His assumption 
seems to be that a lemma is inserted into a proof to help carry it forward, but 
is itself not proven. But, as Malgosia has already noted, the lemma could 
itself have been obtained either theorematically or corollarially. In fact, 
most of us think of a lemma as a minor theorem, proven along the way and 
subsequently used in the proof of the theorem that we're after.

I do not think that any of this obviates the main point of the initial answer 
that I gave to Ben's question, that neither my theoretical/computational 
distinction nor Pratt's "creator" and "consumer" distinction have anything to 
do with Peirce's theorematic/corollarial distinction.

In closing, I would like to present two sets of exchanges; one very recent 
(actually today, on FOM, with due apologies to the protagonists, if I am 
violating any copyrights) between probability theorist William Taylor 
(indicated by '>') and set theorist Martin Dowd (indicated by '>>'), as follows:

>> More seriously, any freshman philosopher encounters the fact that there are 
>> fundamental differences between physical reality and mathematical reality.

> Quite so.  And one of these is noted by Hilbert (or maybe Hardy, > anyone 
> help?) >-

> "The chief difference between scientists and mathematicians is that 
> mathematicians have a much more direct connection to reality."

>> This does not entitle philosophers to characterize mathematical reality as 
>> fictional.

> Quite so; but philosophers tend to have a powerful sense of entitlement.

the other, in Gauss's famous letter November 1, 1844 to astronomer Heinrich 
Schumacher regarding Kant's philosophy of mathematics, that: 
"you see the same sort of [mathematical incompetence] in the contemporary 
philosophers Don't they make your hair stand on end with their definitions? 
...Even with Kant himself it is often not much better; in my opinion his 
distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions is one of those things 
that either run out in a triviality or are false."

- Message from bud...@nyc.rr.com -
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:47:10 -0400
From: Benjamin Udell 
Reply-To: Benjamin Udell 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of 
Moore's Peirce edition
  To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU


> Malgosia, Irving, Gary, list,
>
> I should add that this whole line of discussion began because I put
> the cart in front of the horse. The adjectives bothered me.
> "Theoretical math" vs. "computational math" - the latter sounds like
> of math about computation. And "creative math" vs. what -
> "consumptive math"? "consumptorial math"?  Then I thought of
> theorematic vs. corollarial, thought it was an interesting idea and
> gave it a try. The comparison is interesting and there is some
> likeness between the distinctions.  However I now think that trying
> to align it to Irving's and Pratt's distinctions just stretches it
> too far.  And it's occurred to me that I'd be happy with the
> adjective "computative" - hence, theoretical math versus computative
> math.
>
> However, I don't think that we've thoroughly replaced the terms
> "pure" and "applied" as affirmed of math areas until we find some way
> to justly distinguish between so-called 'pure' maths as opposed to
> so-called 'applied' yet often (if not absolutely always)
> mathematically nontrivial areas such as maths of optimization (linear
> and nonlinear programming), probability theory, the maths of
> information (with laws of information corresponding to
> group-theoretical principles), etc.
>
> Best, Ben
>

Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-12 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jason, all,

If I had bothered to search on "computational mathematics" I would have found 
that the potential ambiguity that worried me is already actual, as you clearly 
show.  Do you think that the phrase "computative mathematics" is too close to 
the phrase "computational mathematics" for comfort?  I hope not, but please say 
so if it is.

Problem is, the "applied" in "applied mathematics" is used in various ways 
that, as Dieudonné of the Bourbaki group pointed out in his Britannica article 
(15th edition I think), jumbles trivial and nontrivial areas of math together, 
and has all too many, umm, applications. One area of pure math X may be 
_applied_ in another area of math Y, whih is to say that Y is the guiding 
research interest. If on the other hand Y is applied in X, then that's to say 
that X is the guiding research interest. And both X and Y remain areas of 
'pure' math. Then there are areas of so-called 'applied' but often nontrivial 
math like probability theory. Then there are applications in statistics and in 
the special sciences. Then there applications in practical/productive 
sciences/arts. And of course, sometimes theoretical or 'pure' math is developed 
specifically for a particular application. (All in all, we won't be able to get 
rid of the term "applied," but in some cases we may be find an alternate term 
with the same denotation in the given context).

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Khadimir 
To: Benjamin Udell 
Cc: PEIRCE-L@listserv.iupui.edu 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

This latest post caught my attention.

Since my first degree was a B.S. in "computational mathematics," I thought that 
I would weigh-in.  

One can make the distinctions as follows, beginning with pure vs. applied 
mathematics.  I will give a negative definition, since I am not so skilled with 
the Peircean terminology used so far; applied mathematics is the use of 
mathematics as a formal, ideal system to specific problems of existence.  For 
instance, consider the use of statistical confidence intervals to solve 
problems in manufactoring relating to the rate of production of defective vs. 
non-defective goods.  Pure mathematics is not bound by existent conditions, but 
"pure" becomes "applied" when used in that context.  Hence, I am treated 
applied mathematics as an informal, existential constraint that alters the 
purpose and use of pure mathematics.

Computational mathematics is for the most part a subset of applied mathematics, 
which focuses on how to adapt computational formulas so that they may be run or 
run more efficiently on a given computation system, e.g., a binary computer.  
Computational mathematics, then, is primarily focused on formulas and 
computation of said formulas, which is to be more specific about the limits 
that make it an applied mathematic.

I offer this as a different viewpoint, one coming from where the distinction 
has practical effects.

Jason H.

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:

  Malgosia, Irving, Gary, list,

  I should add that this whole line of discussion began because I put the cart 
in front of the horse. The adjectives bothered me. "Theoretical math" vs. 
"computational math" - the latter sounds like of math about computation. And 
"creative math" vs. what - "consumptive math"? "consumptorial math"?  Then I 
thought of theorematic vs. corollarial, thought it was an interesting idea and 
gave it a try. The comparison is interesting and there is some likeness between 
the distinctions.  However I now think that trying to align it to Irving's and 
Pratt's distinctions just stretches it too far.  And it's occurred to me that 
I'd be happy with the adjective "computative" - hence, theoretical math versus 
computative math.

  However, I don't think that we've thoroughly replaced the terms "pure" and 
"applied" as affirmed of math areas until we find some way to justly 
distinguish between so-called 'pure' maths as opposed to so-called 'applied' 
yet often (if not absolutely always) mathematically nontrivial areas such as 
maths of optimization (linear and nonlinear programming), probability theory, 
the maths of information (with laws of information corresponding to 
group-theoretical principles), etc.

  Best, Ben


  - Original Message - 
  From: Benjamin Udell 
  To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 

  Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 1:14 PM 
  Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's 
Peirce edition

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Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-12 Thread Benjamin Udell
Malgosia, Irving, Gary, list,

I should add that this whole line of discussion began because I put the cart in 
front of the horse. The adjectives bothered me. "Theoretical math" vs. 
"computational math" - the latter sounds like of math about computation. And 
"creative math" vs. what - "consumptive math"? "consumptorial math"?  Then I 
thought of theorematic vs. corollarial, thought it was an interesting idea and 
gave it a try. The comparison is interesting and there is some likeness between 
the distinctions.  However I now think that trying to align it to Irving's and 
Pratt's distinctions just stretches it too far.  And it's occurred to me that 
I'd be happy with the adjective "computative" - hence, theoretical math versus 
computative math.

However, I don't think that we've thoroughly replaced the terms "pure" and 
"applied" as affirmed of math areas until we find some way to justly 
distinguish between so-called 'pure' maths as opposed to so-called 'applied' 
yet often (if not absolutely always) mathematically nontrivial areas such as 
maths of optimization (linear and nonlinear programming), probability theory, 
the maths of information (with laws of information corresponding to 
group-theoretical principles), etc.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 1:14 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

Malgosia, list,

Responses interleaved.

- Original Message - 
From: malgosia askanas 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 12:31 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

>>[BU] Yes, the theorematic-vs.-corollarial distinction does not appear in the 
>>Peirce quote to depend on whether the premisses - _up until some lemma_ - 
>>already warrant presumption.
>>BUT, but, but, the theorematic deduction does involve the introdution of that 
>>lemma, and the lemma needs to be proven (in terms of some postulate system), 
>>or at least include a definition (in remarkable cases supported by a "proper 
>>postulate") in order to stand as a premiss, and that is what Irving is 
>>referring to.

>[MA] OK, but how does this connect to the corollarial/theorematic distinction? 
> On the basis purely of the quote from Peirce that Irving was discussing, the 
>theorem, again, could follow from the lemma either corollarially (by virtue 
>purely of "logical form") or theorematically (requiring additional work with 
>the actual mathematical objects of which the theorem speaks).  

[BU] So far, so good.

>[MA] And the lemma, too, could have been obtained either corollarially (a 
>rather needless lemma, in that case) 

[BU] Only if it comes from another area of math, otherwise it is corollarially 
drawn from what's already on the table and isn't a lemma.

>[MA] or theorematically.   Doesn't this particular distinction, in either 
>case, refer to the nature of the _deduction_ that is required in order to pass 
>from the premisses to the conclusion, rather than referring to the warrant (or 
>lack of it) of presuming the premisses?  

[BU] It's both, to the extent that the nature of that deduction depends on 
whether the premisses require a lemma, a lemma that either gets something from 
elsewhere (i.e., the lemma must refer to where its content is established 
elsewhere), or needs to be proven on the spot. But - in some cases there's no 
lemma but merely a definition that is uncontemplated in the thesis, and is not 
demanded by the premisses or postulates but is still consistent with them, and 
so Irving and I, as it seems to me now, are wrong to say that it's _always_ a 
matter of whether some premiss requires special proof. Not always, then, but 
merely often. In some cases said definition needs to be supported by a new 
postulate, so there the proof-need revives but is solved by recognizing the 
need and "conceding" a new postulate to its account.

>[MA] If the premisses are presumed without warrant, that - it seems to me - 
>does not make the deduction more corollarial or more theorematic; it just 
>makes it uncompleted, and perhaps uncompletable.

[BU] That sounds right.

Best, Ben

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Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-12 Thread Benjamin Udell
Malgosia, list,

Responses interleaved.

- Original Message - 
From: malgosia askanas 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 12:31 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

>>[BU] Yes, the theorematic-vs.-corollarial distinction does not appear in the 
>>Peirce quote to depend on whether the premisses - _up until some lemma_ - 
>>already warrant presumption.
>>BUT, but, but, the theorematic deduction does involve the introdution of that 
>>lemma, and the lemma needs to be proven (in terms of some postulate system), 
>>or at least include a definition (in remarkable cases supported by a "proper 
>>postulate") in order to stand as a premiss, and that is what Irving is 
>>referring to.

>[MA] OK, but how does this connect to the corollarial/theorematic distinction? 
> On the basis purely of the quote from Peirce that Irving was discussing, the 
>theorem, again, could follow from the lemma either corollarially (by virtue 
>purely of "logical form") or theorematically (requiring additional work with 
>the actual mathematical objects of which the theorem speaks).  

[BU] So far, so good.

>[MA] And the lemma, too, could have been obtained either corollarially (a 
>rather needless lemma, in that case) 

[BU] Only if it comes from another area of math, otherwise it is corollarially 
drawn from what's already on the table and isn't a lemma.

>[MA] or theorematically.   Doesn't this particular distinction, in either 
>case, refer to the nature of the _deduction_ that is required in order to pass 
>from the premisses to the conclusion, rather than referring to the warrant (or 
>lack of it) of presuming the premisses?  

[BU] It's both, to the extent that the nature of that deduction depends on 
whether the premisses require a lemma, a lemma that either gets something from 
elsewhere (i.e., the lemma must refer to where its content is established 
elsewhere), or needs to be proven on the spot. But - in some cases there's no 
lemma but merely a definition that is uncontemplated in the thesis, and is not 
demanded by the premisses or postulates but is still consistent with them, and 
so Irving and I, as it seems to me now, are wrong to say that it's _always_ a 
matter of whether some premiss requires special proof. Not always, then, but 
merely often. In some cases said definition needs to be supported by a new 
postulate, so there the proof-need revives but is solved by recognizing the 
need and "conceding" a new postulate to its account.

>[MA] If the premisses are presumed without warrant, that - it seems to me - 
>does not make the deduction more corollarial or more theorematic; it just 
>makes it uncompleted, and perhaps uncompletable.

[BU] That sounds right.

Best, Ben

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Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-12 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving, Gary, Malgosia, list,

Yes, the theorematic-vs.-corollarial distinction does not appear in the Peirce 
quote to depend on whether the premisses - _up until some lemma_ - already 
warrant presumption. 

BUT, but, but, the theorematic deduction does involve the introdution of that 
lemma, and the lemma needs to be proven (in terms of some postulate system), or 
at least include a definition (in remarkable cases supported by a "proper 
postulate") in order to stand as a premiss, and that is what Irving is 
referring to. 

The confusion seems to be that, though Peirce says that deduction doesn't care 
whether the premisses are true (though it obviously cares that they be at least 
formally consistent), evidently it does matter whether they warrant presumption 
- are they supported by postulates already in place?, do they need another 
postulate?, etc.  This concern with the postulate system seems something native 
to 'pure' math, 

The rest of Irving's response seems to show that his 
theoretical-vs.-computational distinction and Pratt's creator-vs.-consumer 
distinction are made in terms of whether mathematical discovery and originality 
are involved, and are also, so to speak, at another level of scale. In other 
words, one could have merely computational-purposed and unoriginal definitions 
uncontemplated in a thesis. Moreover the computational math is not always out 
to prove a thesis, but to find a solution.

Another problem with calling computational/consumptorial math merely 
"corollarial" - Peirce said "Corollarial deduction is where it is only 
necessary to imagine any case in which the premisses are true in order to 
perceive immediately that the conclusion holds in that case." That's certainly 
untrue of a whole lot of computational deductions! - long calculations whose 
answers are anything but immediately evident. This may just be matter of 
allowing that a corollarial deduction, even if not involving an immediately 
evident conclusion, should at least be analyzable into steps each of which 
makes the next step immediately evident. The price is an alteration of Peirce's 
definition, and a less steep price would be instead to call such a deduction 
"multi-corollarial." or some such.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Richmond" 
To: 
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce 
edition

I *strongly* agree with your analysis, Malgosia.

Best,

Gary

On 3/11/12, malgosia askanas  wrote:
> Irving wrote, quoting Peirce MS L75:35-39:

>>"Deduction is only of value in tracing out the consequences of
>>hypotheses, which it regards as pure, or unfounded, hypotheses.
>>Deduction is divisible into sub-classes in various ways, of which the
>>most important is into corollarial and theorematic. Corollarial
>>deduction is where it is only necessary to imagine any case in which
>>the premisses are true in order to perceive immediately that the
>>conclusion holds in that case. Ordinary syllogisms and some deductions
>>in the logic of relatives belong to this class. Theorematic deduction
>>is deduction in which it is necessary to experiment in the imagination
>>upon the image of the premiss in order from the result of such
>>experiment to make corollarial deductions to the truth of the
>>conclusion. The subdivisions of theorematic deduction are of very high
>>theoretical importance. But I cannot go into them in this statement."

>>[...] Peirce's characterization of theorematic and corrolarial
>>deduction would seem, on the basis of this quote, to have to do with
>>whether the presumption that the premises of a deductive argument or
>>proof are true versus whether they require to be established to be
>>true [...]

> I would disagree with this reading of the Peirce passage.  It seems
> to me that the distinction he is making is, rather, between (1) the case
> where the conclusion can be seen to follow from the premisses
> by virtue of the "logical form" alone, as in "A function which is continuous
> on a closed interval is continuous on any subinterval of that interval"
> (whose truth is obvious without requiring us to imagine any continuous
> function or any interval), and (2) the case where the deduction of the
> conclusions from the premisses requires turning one's imagination
> upon, and experimenting with, the actual mathematical objects
> of which the theorem speaks, as in "A function which is continuous
> on a closed interval is bounded on that interval".

> -malgosia-- 

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Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

2012-03-12 Thread Benjamin Udell
herefore can only be denoted by Indices."

A year earlier, in 1866, Peirce wrote "On A Method Of Searching For The 
Categories" in which he lists the categories as "Quality, Relation, 
Representation." So it seems clear that in this period he already had "his 
categories" and is referring to them here.

See p. 520 and p. 524 of the first volume of the chronological edition 
"Writings of CSP."

On "they cannot be decomposed," in CP 1.299 Peirce writes:

"We find then a priori that there are three categories of undecomposable 
elements to be expected in the phaneron: those which are simply positive 
totals, those which involve dependence but not combination, those which involve 
combination."

"Predicaments" are predicates of predicates for Peirce, Aristotle's 
"Categories."

With respect, 
Steven

-- 
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith 
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info 

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction


Dear Steven,

In your previous post, you said,

  >Although the dialogic makes these passages a little difficult to read, it 
seems very clear to me that Peirce, in CP 4.549, is explicitly not referring to 
his own categories as predicated predicates, or assertions on assertions. 

  >I think the question of "what is a category" is clearly addressed earlier, 
in CP 4.544, Peirce says:

  >"... of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to denote 
Categories and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large, very 
promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and 
therefore can only be denoted by Indices."
Now you say, 

  >After some consideration I think this is an incorrect interpretation Ben.

  >Peirce is indeed referring to "his own" categories (it is difficult to read 
the dialogic and to see how he is not) and he answers the question concerning 
"predicates of predicates' in the text of the Prolegomena to which I referred 
earlier.

  >The categories stand alone in his view, independent and identifiable, i.e., 
they are indices, we can point to them and they cannot be decomposed. 

Peirce doesn't say in "Prolegomena" (CP 4.530-572) that categories _are_ 
indices, instead he says that, for categories are denotable only by indices, 
and the reason that he gives is not indecomposibility, but instead their being 
"enormously large, very promiscuous, and known but in small part" such that 
they "cannot be satisfactorily defined.".  But the supposed indecomposibility 
of Prolegomena-categories was the only specific positive reason you give for 
thinking that by "Category" in "Prolegomena" he means the same that he means by 
"Category" pretty much everywhere else. Meanwhile you've left untouched the 
positive reasons for thinking that it is not the same Category as everywhere 
else:

1. He says: "I will now say a few words about what you have called Categories 
but for which I prefer the designation Predicaments and which you have 
explained as predicates of predicates." Peirce usually calls his own categories 
"Categories," not "Predicaments," and usually uses "Predicaments" as an 
alternate term for Aristotle's categories (substance, quantity, relation, 
quality, position (attitude), state, time (when), place, action, passion 
(undergoing).

2. He calls "Modes of Being" three things whose terms, as the CP editors note, 
he often enough uses as terms for his own categories - "Actuality, Possibility, 
and Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny)" - that is, Secondness, Firstness, and 
Thirdness, respectively.

3. He says that "the divisions so obtained" - i.e., 1st-intentional, 
2nd-intentional, 3rd-intentional - "must not be confounded with the different 
Modes of Being: Actuality, Possibility, Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny). On 
the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates" - i.e., the 
Prolegomena-categories - "is different in the different Modes of Being." And on 
those successions, he says, and remember the year is 1906, his "thoughts are 
not yet harvested." Seems unlikely indeed that the Prolegomena-categories are 
the same Categories that he has been discussing since 1867.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith" 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Cc: Benjamin Udell 
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:20 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction 

Dear Ben,

After some consideration I think this is an incorrect interpretation Ben. 

Peirce is indeed referring t

Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

2012-03-11 Thread Benjamin Udell
Dear Steven,

In your previous post, you said,

  >Although the dialogic makes these passages a little difficult to read, it 
seems very clear to me that Peirce, in CP 4.549, is explicitly not referring to 
his own categories as predicated predicates, or assertions on assertions. 

  >I think the question of "what is a category" is clearly addressed earlier, 
in CP 4.544, Peirce says:

  >"... of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to denote 
Categories and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large, very 
promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and 
therefore can only be denoted by Indices."
Now you say, 

  >After some consideration I think this is an incorrect interpretation Ben.

  >Peirce is indeed referring to "his own" categories (it is difficult to read 
the dialogic and to see how he is not) and he answers the question concerning 
"predicates of predicates' in the text of the Prolegomena to which I referred 
earlier.

  >The categories stand alone in his view, independent and identifiable, i.e., 
they are indices, we can point to them and they cannot be decomposed. 

Peirce doesn't say in "Prolegomena" (CP 4.530-572) that categories _are_ 
indices, instead he says that, for categories are denotable only by indices, 
and the reason that he gives is not indecomposibility, but instead their being 
"enormously large, very promiscuous, and known but in small part" such that 
they "cannot be satisfactorily defined.".  But the supposed indecomposibility 
of Prolegomena-categories was the only specific positive reason you give for 
thinking that by "Category" in "Prolegomena" he means the same that he means by 
"Category" pretty much everywhere else. Meanwhile you've left untouched the 
positive reasons for thinking that it is not the same Category as everywhere 
else:

1. He says: "I will now say a few words about what you have called Categories 
but for which I prefer the designation Predicaments and which you have 
explained as predicates of predicates." Peirce usually calls his own categories 
"Categories," not "Predicaments," and usually uses "Predicaments" as an 
alternate term for Aristotle's categories (substance, quantity, relation, 
quality, position (attitude), state, time (when), place, action, passion 
(undergoing).

2. He calls "Modes of Being" three things whose terms, as the CP editors note, 
he often enough uses as terms for his own categories - "Actuality, Possibility, 
and Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny)" - that is, Secondness, Firstness, and 
Thirdness, respectively.

3. He says that "the divisions so obtained" - i.e., 1st-intentional, 
2nd-intentional, 3rd-intentional - "must not be confounded with the different 
Modes of Being: Actuality, Possibility, Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny). On 
the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates" - i.e., the 
Prolegomena-categories - "is different in the different Modes of Being." And on 
those successions, he says, and remember the year is 1906, his "thoughts are 
not yet harvested." Seems unlikely indeed that the Prolegomena-categories are 
the same Categories that he has been discussing since 1867.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith" 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Cc: Benjamin Udell 
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 5:20 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction 

Dear Ben,

After some consideration I think this is an incorrect interpretation Ben. 

Peirce is indeed referring to "his own" categories (it is difficult to read the 
dialogic and to see how he is not) and he answers the question concerning 
"predicates of predicates' in the text of the Prolegomena to which I referred 
earlier. The categories stand alone in his view, independent and identifiable, 
i.e., they are indices, we can point to them and they cannot be decomposed. 

In my terms, Peirce argues that they are necessary distinctions. The world 
forces them upon us, we do not force them upon the world.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith 
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering 
http://iase.info

On Mar 9, 2012, at 2:44 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

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Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

2012-03-09 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary F., Jon, Gary R. list,

I agree, Gary F., all your points are good. Also I did a search on 
"predicament" in the CP and usually it turned out to be when he discussed 
Aristotle's "Categories, or Predicaments." I don't think that he means his own 
categories by "Category" in the "Prolegomena." And the "Modes of Being" in 
"Prolegomena" correspond to what he says of his own categories elsewhere:

Firstness, quality, possibility, chance, "some," vagueness, etc.
Secondness, reaction, actuality, brute fact, "this," determinateness, etc.
Thirdness,  representation, necessity/destiny, habit, rule, "all," generality, 
etc.

Still, Jon, I have to agree with you that it's hard to see why Peirce would 
refuse to see his categories as predicates of predicates - not predicates as 
merely grammatical entities but as _accidentia_, just as Peirce tended to 
regard subject and _substantia_ as nearly the same thing. Peirce even calls his 
categories "accidents" (not coincidences but descriptive attributes), see 
Section 11 in both "A New List of Categories" (1867) and corresponding section 
in his rewrite "The Categories" (1893) (both papers interleaved at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/ms403/categories.htm).

Peirce also has his own Universes correlated to Firstness, Secondness, 
Thirdness - the Universes of (1) Ideas, (2) Brute facts, (3) Habits. So the 
idea of Universes and Categories being not so very different is not what makes 
it hard to believe that the Prolegomena's "Categories" are not his own 
Categories, though the Prolegomena's idea that one needs indices to distinguish 
Categories (Predicaments) does make it seem unlikely that the Prolegomena's 
Categories are Peirce's own Categories.

Your point about looking for arity or valence because of the mathematical 
underpinnings of the categories is well taken.

Regarding the Prolegomena's Modes of Being and their lack of perspicuous arity, 
Peirce's use of the word "Destiny" in place of "Necessity" suggests that he is 
not thinking quite about the classical three modalities, or even the simplest 
Booleanized version (with a hypothetical necessity a la the hypothetical 
universal) but instead where the hypothetical or conditional necessity or 
destiny is not simply A(G->H) but something a little more complicated.

So one might get closer, if not all the way, to arity or valence by thinking of 
it a la the classical concept/judgment/reasoning trichotomy, as
Possibility  - Blue   (term, rheme)
Actuality   - Socrates was a man. (proposition, dicisign)
Destiny   - If you do X, then Y will result. (argument, more or less).

I also agree with Gary R. about all those "Objective Logic" posts. Sending on 
one day post after post with nothing but quotes is a bit much. Can't you just 
send a bunch of quotes together like Joe used to do, then in a next post 
proceed to a discussion?

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Gary Fuhrman
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 10:40 AM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction
Ben, Jon and list, 

I'm a little confused as to what the question is here. It seems clear to me 
that in the Prolegomena of 1906, which is the source of the passage in 
question, Peirce does NOT use the term "Categories" in reference to what he 
elsewhere calls categories, or "elements" of the phaneron, or even sometimes 
"universes" -- i.e. the triad of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness. 

The "Prolegomena" is all about diagrams, specifically Existential Graphs, and 
the purpose of these diagrams is to facilitate the analysis of propositions. 
The first use of the term in the Prolegomena, namely CP 4.544-5:

[[[ As for Indices, their utility especially shines where other Signs fail 
But of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to denote Categories 
and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large, very 
promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined, and 
therefore can only be denoted by Indices. Such, to give but a single instance, 
is the collection of all things in the Physical Universe 

Oh, I overhear what you are saying, O Reader: that a Universe and a Category 
are not at all the same thing; a Universe being a receptacle or class of 
Subjects, and a Category being a mode of Predication, or class of Predicates. I 
never said they were the same thing; but whether you describe the two correctly 
is a question for careful study. ]]]

Peirce then proceeds to take up the question of Universes, returning to 
Categories much later, in the passage Jon quoted; and he begins by saying that 
he prefers the term "Predicaments" for classes of predicates, no doubt because 
this avoids confusing them "with the different Modes of Being" which are 
elsewhere called "categories. And indeed he never mentions "Categories" again 
in this very long article; nor does he make any explicit reference in the whole 
article to Firstne

Re: [peirce-l] Proemial: On The Origin Of Experience

2012-03-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Dear Steven,

That's what I increasingly thought after re-reading your thread-commencing post 
again after sending my post about it. You did not think the things that you at 
times had seemed to me to think. It was really about stylistics and word 
choice. 

In one case I noted that you had not literally said that which you somehow 
seemed to me to say, - instead you had indeed said the thing that made more 
sense - you had not said, as I somehow had thought, that a certain _discovery_ 
would impact the human species and the universe, instead you spoke of the 
discovery of _something_ that would impact the human species and the universe, 
and that thing was something on the order of "nature's plan."  How did I go 
astray?  "Impacting" us sounds like something that a _discovery_ would do, not 
something that _nature's plan_ would do.  Nature's plan does something deeper 
than that, it plans or plots us.  I suppose that one could speak of "something 
with radical significance for the human species and the universe."  Well, maybe 
I'm too sleepy to make suggestions right now.  Now, you have a right to expect 
a reader to attend to what you actually say and not just to vague impressions 
of what you say.  But when one writes a book blurb, it's best to write it in 
extra-hard-to-misconstrue ways, as if the reader may be a bit groggy, like I am 
right now!

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Cc: Benjamin Udell 
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 8:40 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Proemial: On The Origin Of Experience

Dear Ben,

I appreciate your very useful response.

I said "the entire species" and "that the universe could not proceed," not "the 
entire universe." So I would not expect the impact to fill the eternal moment, 
only localized parts. Similarly, I would hesitate to suggest that the entire 
mass/energy complex of the world could eventually be structured to become a 
single organism. It seems implausible 'though it is perhaps worth some 
consideration equally as a theme for a Science Fiction novel or as a potential 
solution to the dark-energy problem (I do, after all, propose a "weak" universe 
effect that may, I suppose, accumulate at very large scales to increase 
"thinning" edge-wise expansion).

Your points, however, are well taken. If it continues in its current form I 
should define more clearly what I mean by "proceed." For example: 

... the universe itself could not proceed, could not further evolve beyond the 
stage that we represent ...

Thanks.

With respect, 
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith 
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering 
http://iase.info

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Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

2012-03-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, list,

The passage by Peirce that you quoted below has nagged at me for some time.  On 
your mywikibiz page to which you linked, as regards that passage, you said "The 
first thing to extract from this passage is the fact that Peirce's Categories, 
or 'Predicaments', are predicates of predicates"

In the editors' footnote to CP 4.549, the editors say that what there Peirce 
calls the Modes of Being are "Usually called categories by Peirce. See vol. 1, 
bk. III". Maybe they're wrong, but what here he calls the "Mods of Being" - 
"Actuality, Possibility, and Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny)" do at least 
comprise one of his formulations of his categories, even if not the definitive 
formulation.

Peirce says "[...] what you have called Categories, but for which I prefer the 
designation Predicaments, and which you have explained as predicates of 
predicates.."  Peirce everywhere else prefers the name Categories for his own 
categories and who is the "you" who would have been speaking of Peirce's own 
categories? 

Peirce says, 

  [...] the divisions so obtained must not be  confounded with the different 
Modes of Being:  Actuality, Possibility, Destiny (or Freedom from Destiny). On 
the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates is different in the 
different Modes of Being.

Where else does he say that the successions of his categories are "different in 
the different Modes of Being"?  Where in his other writings does he call his 
own categories "predicates of predicates"? It's hard not to think that by 
"Predicates of Predicates" he does not mean his own categories, and instead 
that, at most, 1st-intentional, 2nd-intentional, and 3rd-intentional entities, 
on which he says that his "thoughts are not yet harvested," will end up being 
treated by him as Firsts, Seconds, Thirds - instances or applications of his 
categories. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Jon Awbrey 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 3:30 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Categorical Aspects of Abduction, Deduction, Induction

Peircers,

Here is a passage that I think is critical for
understanding what Peirce meant by a category.

| I will now say a few words about what you have
| called Categories, but for which I prefer the
| designation Predicaments, and which you have
| explained as predicates of predicates.
|
| That wonderful operation of hypostatic abstraction by which
| we seem to create ''entia rationis'' that are, nevertheless,
| sometimes real, furnishes us the means of turning predicates
| from being signs that we think or think ''through'', into being
| subjects thought of.  We thus think of the thought-sign itself,
| making it the object of another thought-sign.
|
| Thereupon, we can repeat the operation of hypostatic abstraction,
| and from these second intentions derive third intentions.  Does this
| series proceed endlessly?  I think not.  What then are the characters
| of its different members?
|
| My thoughts on this subject are not yet harvested.  I will only say that
| the subject concerns Logic, but that the divisions so obtained must not be
| confounded with the different Modes of Being:  Actuality, Possibility, Destiny
| (or Freedom from Destiny).
|
| On the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates is different
| in the different Modes of Being.  Meantime, it will be proper that in our
| system of diagrammatization we should provide for the division, whenever
| needed, of each of our three Universes of modes of reality into ''Realms''
| for the different Predicaments.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 4.549, “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism”,
| The Monist 16, 492–546 (1906), CP 4.530–572.

The way that Peirce explains his concept of a category in this passage is also
helpful in building a bridge, or seeing the underlying continuities that exist,
between the categories of Aristotle and Kant and the mathematical concept of
a category that we find in play in more recent times. I began an exploration
of this connection in a page of rough notes that I collected a while back.

• http://mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey/Notes/Precursors

Regards,

Jon

-- 

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey 
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ 
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey 
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey 
word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ 
word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/

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Re: [peirce-l] Mathematical terminology, was, review of Moore's Peirce edition

2012-03-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving,

Do you think that your "theoretical - computational" distinction and likewise 
Pratt's "creator - consumer" distinction between kinds of mathematics could be 
expressed in terms of Peirce's "theorematic - corollarial" distinction? That 
identification seems not without issues but still pretty appealing to me, but 
maybe I've missed something. (For readers unfamiliar with Peirce's way of 
distinguishing theormatic from corollarial, see further below where I've copied 
my Wikipedia summary with reference links in the footnotes.)

Peirce at least once said that theorematic deduction is peculiar to 
mathematics, though he didn't say that it was peculiar to pure mathematics. He 
tended to regard probability theory as mathematics applied in philosophy, and I 
don't recall him saying that (at its theoretical level) probability theory 
tends to draw mainly corollarial conclusions. He also allowed of theorematic 
deduction, when needed, in the formation of scientific (idioscopic) 
predictions. Obviously some pretty deep math has been and continues to be 
inspired by problems in special sciences, e.g., in 1990 Ed Witten won a Fields 
Medal from the International Union of Mathematics for math that he developed 
for string theory.

In case like those of Newton, Leibniz, Hamilton, Witten, etc., one can say that 
they were doing theorematic math for computational use in special sciences, but 
should we say that mathematical physics in general is a theorematic, or 
mathematically theoretical, area? The question seems still more acute as to 
probability theory and the 'pure'' maths of information. I've seen it said that 
probability theory can be considered a mathematical application of enumerative 
combinatorics and measure theory, and that the laws of information have turned 
out to have corresponding group-theoretic pinciples. It seems hard not to call 
nontrivial areas like probability theory and such information theory 
"theorematic," yet they are traditionally regarded as "applied."  Bourbaki's 
Dieudonné in his math classifications article in (I think) the 15th edition of 
Encyclopedia Britannica complained that the term "applied" mixes trivial and 
nontrivial aras of math together. 

What I'm wondering is whether the pure-applied distinction would tend to 
re-assert itself (in cases like that of measure and enumeration vs. probability 
theory) as "theorematic pure mathematics" and "theorematic applied 
mathematics," or some such. I've noticed, about these mathematically nontrivial 
areas of "applied" mathematics, that they tend to pay special attention to 
total populations, universes of discourse, etc., and to focus on structures of 
alternatives and implications, among cases (or among propositions, or 
whatever), often with regard to the distribution or attribution of characters 
to objects. They seem to be "sister sciences" (to use the old-fashioned phrase) 
- John Collier once said at peirce-l that among probability theory, such 
information theory, and mathematical logic, he found that he could base any two 
of them on the remaining third one. (But Peirce classified mathematics of logic 
as the first of three divisions of pure mathematics.) How, if this subject 
interests you, do you think one might best capture the difference between these 
something-like-applied yet mathematically nontrivial areas, and so-called 
'pure' mathematics?

Best, Ben(summary of Peirce views on corollarial vs. theorematic appears 
below)

  Charles Sanders Peirce held that the most important division of kinds of 
deductive reasoning is that between corollarial and theorematic. He argued 
that, while finally all deduction depends in one way or another on mental 
experimentation on schemata or diagrams,[1] still in corollarial deduction "it 
is only necessary to imagine any case in which the premisses are true in order 
to perceive immediately that the conclusion holds in that case," whereas 
theorematic deduction "is deduction in which it is necessary to experiment in 
the imagination upon the image of the premiss in order from the result of such 
experiment to make corollarial deductions to the truth of the conclusion."[2] 
He held that corollarial deduction matches Aristotle's conception of direct 
demonstration, which Aristotle regarded as the only thoroughly satisfactory 
demonstration, while theorematic deduction (A) is the kind more prized by 
mathematicians, (B) is peculiar to mathematics,[1] and (C) involves in its 
course the introduction of a lemma or at least a definition uncontemplated in 
the thesis (the proposition that is to be proved); in remarkable cases that 
definition is of an abstraction that "ought to be supported by a proper 
postulate.".[3]


1.. 1 a b Peirce, C. S., from section dated 1902 by editors in the "Minute 
Logic" manuscript, Collected Papers v. 4, paragraph 233, quoted in part in 
"Corollarial Reasoning" in the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, 
2003-present, Mats Bergman and S

Re: [peirce-l] Proemial: On The Origin Of Experience

2012-03-06 Thread Benjamin Udell
Steven, 

In regard to your post that started this thread, first two suggestions about 
word choice:

"it is the logicians that concerned themselves" 
- change to - 
"it is the logicians who concerned themselves"

"it is a surprise to many that use logic everyday in their education" 
- change to - 
"it is a surprise to many who use logic every day in their education" 

I'm sympathetic to the "cosmic view" that you take about the role of living 
intelligence. Back in 2005 in one of my, umm, wilder and woolier posts, I said, 
"Amid life, a sink of unforgotten things grows sophisticated & we call it 
intelligence. This minor 'basin' learns how to arrange for itself to be a 
basis, a recognition, determined semeiotically by deep & powerful things. It 
takes over from biological evolution & plays architect & re-designer with its 
world of source, mediative stream, intervening living open system, & itself. It 
has, perhaps, barely begun & is fallible." I'm not sure about calling this 
conditional destiny "nature's plan" like you do, but it does seem to point to 
the actualization of some essential matrix of possibilities in nature.

But...I do get a sense of grandiosity from how you wrote it up in the post 
commencing this thread, Your remark "It amuses me, in any case.", in its 
context, 

  The speculation above, that we can discover something so profound that it 
will not only have a broad impact upon the entire species but that the universe 
itself cannot proceed without it, will give philosophers something to talk 
about for generations. It amuses me, in any case. []
sounds a bit, just a bit, like Miles Gloriosus in _A Funny Thing Happened on 
the Way to the Forum_. Well, also the word choice "proceed" where maybe you 
should say something like "advance to higher levels" which I admit sounds corny 
but the point is "proceed" is very easily taken to mean "continue to work or 
exist" and I think that you mean something more than that. Even "evolve" is not 
strong enough a word in speaking of the universe without more ccntext since 
"evolve" can connote any sort of more-or-less gradual process. To suggest that 
the universe cannot continue to exist without the actualization of the profound 
things that you hypothesize would be grandiose, and would also not be what (I 
think) you mean. 

Also, it sounds like you're saying that we humans, here on Earth, could make a 
discovery so profound that that discovery would impact the whole universe - the 
observed portion alone contains billions of galaxies, quadrillions of stars, 
etc., spread across billions of light years. If current physics holds, you're 
talking about a program that would take so many billions of years that much of 
the currently observed universe will have expanded out of our heirs' reach 
before the program makes serious spatial progress. At this point such a project 
is highly conjectural and you make it sound grandiosely like a practical 
concern rather than, say, a perspective attained by projecting a practical 
concern to some theoretical limit. All of this may be a matter of the 
stylistics and word choices that you make, I'm not sure that you really think 
those things. I know you want to say, "hey, folks, this is really important," a 
position that I've often been in, but I think you're straining somehow, as I've 
done sometimes.
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith" 
To:  
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:58 PM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Proemial: On The Origin Of Experience

Dear Cathy,

Let us ignore for a moment the contents of the book, which presents for a 
general audience a theory dealing with the foundations of logic and 
apprehension, considered by many audiences on first sight to be a tired 
subject. 

Today's audience will require some motivation to read the book in the face of 
an education and professional dogma that considers that work in logic is 
complete. In the face also of late twentieth century presentations of logic in 
the media, whose ambassador is Star Trek's Spock, where logic is ridiculed as 
an art, the domain of aliens, lacking the passion of the human endeavor. 

Is it not the case that life created by an evolved intelligent species and 
placed into environments in which it would not otherwise appear suggests that 
such species may play a role in the bigger picture, that in fact, it may be 
necessary for the universe to evolve and realize its potential? How many times 
in the unfolding of life in the universe will such an opportunity appear? If we 
are presented with it how can we, how dare we, ignore it?

To suggest such a thing seems no more outrageous than Copernicus proposing that 
our planet is not the center of things or Newton suggesting that the 
observations made before him suggest a universal previously unconsidered. Of 
course, I am well aware of the reluctance to make such associations, they 
appear arrogant and immodest. But must we not be immodest to challenge r

[peirce-l] Fw: Peirce Society: Program and Business Meeting Agenda

2012-03-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded. 

- Original Message - 
From: "Robert Lane" 
To: The Charles S. Peirce Society 
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 4:58 PM 
Subject: Peirce Society: Program and Business Meeting Agenda 

Dear Members and Friends of the Charles S. Peirce Society,

Below is the program for our upcoming meeting, as well as the agenda for the 
subsequent business meeting. The program and agenda are also available at the 
Peirce Society's website:  
http://www.peircesociety.org/agenda-2012-04-05.html

I hope to see you in Seattle!

Best regards,
Robert Lane
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society

***

Meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society 
7-9:00 p.m., Thursday April 5, 2012 
Westin Seattle 
Seattle, Washington, USA

Program

Chair: Robert Lane (University of West Georgia)

Presidential Address: Risto Hilpinen (University of Miami), "Types,  Tokens, 
and Words"

Jean-Marie Chevalier (Collège de France), "Peirce's Critique of the First 
Critique: A Leibnizian False Start" (Winner of the 2011-12 Peirce Society Essay 
Contest)

Business Meeting Agenda

1. Approval of minutes of the 2011 meeting (Risto Hilpinen)
http://www.peircesociety.org/minutes/minutes-2011-04-21.html

2. Report from the Executive Committee (Risto Hilpinen)

3. Report from the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

4. Financial statement (Robert Lane)

5. Report from the Peirce Edition Project

6. Report from the Nominating Committee and election of new officers  (Rosa 
Mayorga)

7. New business

8. Adjournment (Risto Hilpinen)

-- 

Robert Lane, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy 

Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society

Department of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118

[telephone and email] 
http://www.westga.edu/~rlane

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Re: [peirce-l] A Question about Metaphysics and Logic

2012-03-04 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jason, 

"Universal" is an ambiguous word sometimes used to translate Aristotle's 
_katholos_ even when Aristotle means merely that which in everyday English is 
called "general," something true of more than one object.

Some philosophers say "universals" and "particulars" where Peirce (with his 
better English) said "generals" and "singulars" or "individuals."

In logic, a "universal" proposition has the form "All G is H", and a 
"particular" proposition has the form "Some G is H" and is not singular but 
merely vague as to which singular or singulars are being referred to.

"Universal" in its etymological sense means that which is true of everything, 
or at least of everything in a given class. Such a universal is maximally 
general in some sense. So Peirce's arguments that there are real generals and 
not only singulars also support the reality of universals. 

I'm willing to distinguish universals such as numbers from among other kinds of 
generals, but I haven't found philosophers interested in doing that. I'd also 
allow a universal that is singular (but usually polyadic) and non-general, 
e.g., a total population cdefgab etc. of a universe of discourse. So, as far as 
I know, in something like a response to your question, I'm not aware of 
philosophers dealing with universals differently than with generals, although 
I'd sure like to know of philosophers who do so. 

The word "universal" also has some other senses. See "universal" in the Century 
Dictionary. The entry looks like it could well have been written by Peirce.

Djvu version 
http://triggs.djvu.org/century-dictionary.com/08/index08.djvu?djvuopts&page=415
JPG version 
http://triggs.djvu.org/century-dictionary.com/djvu2jpgframes.php?volno=08&page=415
Google version http://books.google.com/books?id=MPdOYAAJ&pg=PA6623

See entry below. - Best, Ben
universal (u-ni-ver'sa??l), a. and n. [< F. universel = Sp. Pg. universal = It. 
universale, < L. universalis, of or belonging to all or to the 'whole, < 
universus,all together, whole, entire, collective, general: see universe. Hence 
colloq. abbr. vernal, varsal.] I. a. 1. Pertaining to the universe in its 
entirety, or to the human race collectively.

   Sole monarch of the universal earth. 

Shak., K. and J., ilL 2. 94.

   All partial evil, universal good. 

Pope, Essay on Man, i. 292.

2. Pertaining to all things or to all mankind distributively. This is the 
original and most proper signification.

  Those men which have no written law of God to shew what Is good or evil carry 
written in their hearts the universal law of mankind, the Law of Reason, 
whereby they judge, as by a rule which God hath given unto all men for that 
purpose. Hooker, Eccles. Polity, L 16.

   Nothing can be to us Catholic or universal in Religion but what the 
Scripture teaches.

Milton, Eikonoklastes, xiii.

   Which had the universal sanction of their own and all former ages. Story, 
Speech, Salem, Sept. 18,1828.

3. Belonging to or predicated of all the members of a class considered without 
exception: as, a universal rule. This meaning arose In logic, where it is 
called the complex sense of universal, and has been common in Latin since the 
second century.

Hearing applause and universal shout.

Shak., M. of V..11L 2. 144.

We say that every argument which tells in favour of the universal suffrage 
of the males tells equally in favour of female suffrage. Macaulay, West. Rev. 
Def. of Mill. 

4. In logic, capable of being predicated of many individuals or single cases; 
general. This, called the simple sense of universal, in which the word is 
precisely equivalent to general, is quite opposed to its etymology, and 
perpetuates a confusion of thought due to Aristotle, whose ??? it 
translates. (See II., 1 (b).) In Latin it is nearly as old, perhaps older, than 
def. 3.- Universal agent, in law, on agent with unqualified power to act, in 
place of his principal, in all things which the latter can delegate, as 
distinguished from a general agent, who has unrestricted power in respect to a 
particular kind of business or at a particular place.-Universal arithmetic, 
algebra.-Universal chuck, a form of chuck having a face-plate with dogs which 
can move radially and simultaneously, to hold objects of different sizes.- 
Universal church, in theol., the church of God throughout the world.-Universal 
cognition. See cognition. -Universal compass, a compass with extension legs 
adapted for striking circles of either large or small size.- Universal 
conception, a general concept.-Universal conversion. See conversion, 
2.-Universal coupling, a coupling so made that the parts united may meet at 
various angles, as a gimbal Joint-Universal deluge. See deluge, 1.-Universal 
dial. See dial.-Universal ferment. See ferment.-Universal Friends, an American 
sect of the eighteenth century, followers of Jemima Wilkinson, who professed to 
have prophetic and miraculous powers.-Universal galvanometer, a galvanometer 
capable 

Re: [peirce-l] A new dissertation on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce

2012-02-26 Thread Benjamin Udell
James, list,

Theology, Catholic or otherwise, is hardly my forte, and I find on first look 
into infallibilism (i.e., Wikipedia) that Catholic infallibilism is itself 
largely a theoretical idea, like you say, and the list of supposedly infallible 
statements is a matter of debate, but the Immaculate Conception and the 
Assumption of Mary seem widely agreed upon as examples. Papal infallibilism 
became official only in the 19th Century and could grow. Peirce would seem 
likely to take the long view even if he did not already on principle prefer to 
stick to his fallibilist (and therefore tychist and synechist) principles; his 
allowance for practical infallibility along the line of something like that 
which is called "moral certainty" seems as far as he could go.

I was barely acquainted with van Fraassen - a paper of his is among those 
linked at Arisbe. So this mornng I've been reading that paper 
http://www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/abstract/docs-publd/FalseHopesEpist.pdf "The 
False Hopes of Traditional Epistemology" Philosophy and Phenomenological 
Research Vol. LX, No. 2, March 2000.  Peirceans will find something to argue 
with in his views of scientific method, induction, and abduction (he seems not 
to glimpse a cenoscopic level logically between math and special sciences).  
Also, FWIW in my semi-Peircean view, application of the distinction between 
_ordo essendi_ and _ordo cognoscendi_ would invert, along at least one axis, 
van Fraassen's epistemological landscape and abduction's place in it. On the 
other hand his view that values (and virtues) matter in the formation of 
scientific understanding and his anti-foundationalism suggest congeniality with 
Peirce. He has an engaging style and one feels that one can hear him talking, 
then one wants to start talking too! More by van Fraassen is at 
http://www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/abstract/index.html , and there I found his 
synopsis http://www.princeton.edu/~fraassen/abstract/SynopsisES.htm of his book 
The Empirical Stance. There he sketches his argument that "empiricists need not 
embrace a secular orientation" and says that he attempts to provide a more 
positive content for other orientations.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: James Albrecht
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 8:58 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] A new dissertation on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce


Worth taking a look at Bas Van Fraasen's "The Empirical Stance" related to the 
progress of inference and the secular/religious outlook.  (Wikipedia says van 
fraasen is a catholic convert, which puts an interesting light on the work.)

Also seems worth pointing out that catholic "infallibilism" is a purely 
theoretical construct even in the context of catholic theology: no one can tell 
you with precision what the exact set of infallible teachings are, such that 
the practical reality of the idea has subsisted entirely in a historical 
conformation of the individual to a teaching tradition. 

On Friday, February 24, 2012, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> Stephen, Gary, Jon, Ken, list,
>
> I don't know whether it supports Stephen Rose's point or not, but Peirce once 
> said that he would embrace Roman Catholicism if it espoused _practical_ 
> infallibility instead of _theoretical_ infallibility. See "C. S. Peirce an G. 
> M. Searle: The Hoax of Infallibilism" by Jaime Nubiola, Cognitio IX/1 (2008), 
> 73-84, at http://www.unav.es/users/PeirceSearle.html .
>
> In at least one other writing (I forget which), Peirce said that fallibilism 
> is about propositions about _experience_, or something much like that. I 
> don't know whether that involves a variation in Peirce's viewpoint or merely 
> of perspective and terminology.
>
> More information on the dissertation:
>
> "Walker Percy and the Magic of Naming: The Semeiotic Fabric of Life" by Karey 
> L. Perkins
> Dissertation information including abstract: 
> http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/76/
> Even shorter link than Jon's* to the PDF: 
> http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=english_diss
>
> *Competitiveness in link-shortening benefits the polis as a whole.
>
> Best, Ben
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Gary Richmond"

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Re: [peirce-l] A new dissertation on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce

2012-02-24 Thread Benjamin Udell
Stephen, Gary, Jon, Ken, list,

I don't know whether it supports Stephen Rose's point or not, but Peirce once 
said that he would embrace Roman Catholicism if it espoused _practical_ 
infallibility instead of _theoretical_ infallibility. See "C. S. Peirce and G. 
M. Searle: The Hoax of Infallibilism" by Jaime Nubiola, Cognitio IX/1 (2008), 
73-84, at http://www.unav.es/users/PeirceSearle.html .

In at least one other writing (I forget which), Peirce said that fallibilism is 
about propositions about _experience_, or something much like that. I don't 
know whether that involves a variation in Peirce's viewpoint or merely of 
perspective and terminology.

More information on the dissertation:

"Walker Percy and the Magic of Naming: The Semeiotic Fabric of Life" by Karey 
L. Perkins 
Dissertation information including abstract: 
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/76/ 
Even shorter link than Jon's* to the PDF: 
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=english_diss
 

*Competitiveness in link-shortening benefits the polis as a whole.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Richmond"
To: 
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 11:21 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] A new dissertation on Walker Percy and Charles Peirce


I would tend to agree with you, Stephen. Gary

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> Stephen C. Rose  02/24/12 10:24 PM >>>


"‘Belief.  Truth.  Values.  These are relative things’ ” (LR 113).  Percy, 
however, believes in absolutes."


The above from the dissertation speaks volumes to me.  Percy's Catholicism can 
hardly be perceived as transcendent because it is based on supposition. Peirce 
believed (I think) that such transcendence as he knew was demonstrable, 
provable. The only way transcendence can be understood going forward is as 
something accessible within the immanent frame, in everyday life. I believe the 
new paradigm will come  by taking one word of the above - values - and 
suggesting that there are indeed ontological values and that these are willed. 
Precisely for this reason they can be proved to be the engine of such progress 
as we have in history. I think the words above contain impossibility of Percy's 
position. His Catholicism is a belief which to him may be true. 


The only thing that breaks into the transcendent and absolute are willed 
values. Such as come to life in the experience of those who achieve a measure 
of justice in the world, of love in their lives, of life beyond the binary. 
Percy understood the problem but not the answer. Peirce understood both. 

ShortFormContent at Blogger

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:

> Kenneth,
>
> Thanks, very interesting.
>
> Here's a slightly shorter link, with out the search operation:
>
> http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=english_diss&sei-redir=1
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon
>
>
> Kenneth Ketner wrote:
>
>> digitally available at
>>
>>  
>> http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=english_diss&sei-redir=1#search=%22semeiotic%20religion%22

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[peirce-l] HTML version of Ransdell's interleaving of 1893 and 1867 "Categories"

2012-02-19 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

I was converting from PDF (dated 2006) into HTML Joe's transcription of 
Peirce's "The Categories" from 1893 (MS 403), which Joe interleaved with "On a 
New List of Categories" from 1867.  

When I thought I was done, I thought I should take a look at the MS-Word 
document version that Joe had added. 

It was different! And it was a later version, 2008. Then I noticed that Joe had 
removed the Arisbe link to the old PDF. So I double-surely had to re-do my 
work. There were a number of little textual changes in the transcription - 
nothing major, but I wanted to get it right. If anybody has a correction to 
offer, please do!

Joe's editoral preface was quite different - now he took the opportunity to 
argue for steadiness of Peirce's conception of the index. I took the liberty of 
adding an excerpt from the earlier preface, for the sake of the general reader. 
I hope that it wan't too much of a liberty.

One can link to sections in the html file via the links in the sidebar.

Here's a link to the HTML file and to the Word document:
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm#NLOC-R 

Best, Ben

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Re: [peirce-l] Philosophia Mathematica articles of interest

2012-02-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving, list,

That certainly gets us thinking.  This would, I take it, be a list of articles 
with links even when the articles are not free online.  For the "librarians" to 
be able to edit directly, it would need to be done at a place like Google Sites 
(as a so-called "social media" or "Web 2.0" project), and linked at Arisbe.  
One way or another, the librarians would need to be able to cope with an 
editing program.  I'm thinking of a sortable table, so that a viewer could sort 
by primary author, article title, name of journal (if any), posting or 
publication season/month, article date (if different), a note on how it relates 
to Peirce if the title doesn't make it obvious, and so on.

If the table grew very long, it could make people's computers' fans whir. Then 
we'd need to look at splitting the table up.  Or maybe we should skip the table 
and make sure that users know how to use their browser's "Find" feature 
(apparently very many people don't).

But maybe we'd be spinning our wheels. Here's a link to PhilPapers listing 
Peirce-related papers by publication date. Those _without_ a publication date 
are listed first. The list runs on for many pages and appears to include over a 
thousand articles.

http://philpapers.org/search/advanced.pl?onlineOnly=on&showCategories=on&all=Peirce&filterMode=advanced&newWindow=on&proOnly=on&limit=100&appendMSets=on&advMode=fields&sort=pubYear&format=html&sqc=&start=&jlist=&publishedOnly=&filterByAreas=&hideAbstracts=&freeOnly=&ap_c1=&ap_c2=

At PhilPapers, posting at Arisbe seems to be considered publication . One can 
vary the search parameters of course http://philpapers.org/.

Do you have a more specific idea of a Peirce publications list to suggest?  Not 
being a professional scholar, I don't always have the clearest idea of the most 
desirable kinds of functionality. Sometimes the obvious things aren't so 
obvious to me!  Maybe you just want a page that lists every _new_ paper. Sort 
of like an "Article Notes" version of what PEP used to do with "Book Notes."

To give you an idea of what a sortable table online can be like when it's 
simple, here are sortable tables with incomplete bibliographies for Burks, 
Short, Ransdell, and Hartshorne-on-Peirce. For Tom Short, I did use his 
_Peirce's Theory of Signs_ as a resource, but I looked up every article 
individually, added information, and even made a correction. To sort, you need 
to have javascript enabled (and anybody who doesn't know what I mean about 
enabled Javascript probably has Javascript enabled).
  a.. Ransdell http://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/ransdell-bibliography - 
woefully incomplete 
  b.. Burks http://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/burks-1 - missing at least one 
paper on Peirce 
  c.. Tom Short http://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/t-l-short-bibliography - 
not updated with papers from the last few years 
  d.. Hartshorne on Peirce 
http://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/hartshorne-on-peirce-bibliography
Then there's Arisbe's sortable table of 352 dissertations on Peirce 
http://www.cspeirce.com/rsources/dissabs/diss.htm, but that's a page on the 
Arisbe site itself, not to mention that it is edited directly in the html 
markup via Notepad.

I assume also that you're talking especially about recent articles, though the 
librarians might start working their way back. For copyright reasons, 
_Comprehensive Bibliography_ by Ketner et al. should NOT be used as a source. I 
don't know how to stop every librarian from doing that aside from asking for 
personal assurances. Until we figure that out, we'd probably best keep it 
simple and allow nothing prior to 1986 or whenever the CB breaks off.

As for redundancy with Arisbe's Peirce-Related Papers page 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/aboutcsp.htm, I can hear Joe 
saying, "just don't worry about it." 
For those who (unlike Irving) have not visited Arisbe, at least not in the past 
few years, they might want to look at:
  a.. 26 Peirce-Related Journals & Series present & past - 
http://www.cspeirce.com/journals.htm 
  b.. 45 Centers, Societies, Institutes, Projects present & past - 
http://www.cspeirce.com/projects.htm 
  c.. Harvard et al Digitized Peirce - http://www.cspeirce.com/digitized.htm 
  d.. Papers by C S Peirce - 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm - Joe Ransdell and Jerry 
Dozoretz added numerous transcriptions of Peirce manuscripts
As regards Peirce-related books (I go into this for listers generally, Irving 
almost certainly knows about all these things and more), 
  a.. _Comprehensive Bibliography_ 2nd Edition 1986 by Ketner et al., available 
online to institutions at http://www.nlx.com/collections/96
  and hardcopies either 
a.. used via the usual sources, or 
b.. as per Ken Ketner's peirce-l post a month or two ago, inquire of Scott 
Cunningham http://www.pragmaticism.net/contact.htm
  b.. The Peirce Edition Project's list of 69 books published 1992-2006 
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/news/bo

Re: [peirce-l] Call for papers: Special Issue of the Transactions: Joseph Ransdell and His Legacy

2012-02-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Cathy, list,

It's good to have you back.  Very gratifying Call for Papers!  Not only would 
Joe feel honored, he'd feel the fondness for him in the call's "faithful" use 
of his favorite font at Arisbe, bolded black Trebuchet MS. You can usually tell 
when you're at Arisbe.

I posted the Call for Papers at 
http://csp3.blogspot.com/2012/02/call-for-papers-on-ransdell.html but my 
presumption stopped short of including the Transactions masthead image, so the 
masthead will look more or less odd, depending on what fonts are available on 
the user's computer. Your email address there is shielded from the average 
spambot by a javascript trick.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Catherine Legg
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 12:19 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Call for papers: Special Issue of the Transactions: Joseph 
Ransdell and His Legacy


Dear Peirceans,

Hello again! I don’t know whether this list accepts attachments. In case it 
does not, the material is cut and pasted below, but I imagine it will not come 
out properly on many email readers. If you do not receive a copy of the 
attachment, and would like one, please email me.

All best regards,
Cathy
CALL FOR PAPERS:

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Re: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

2012-02-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, Gary F., list,

Now see what you've done, Gary. You've awakened the punster in Jon!

Anyway I quite agree with Jon's subtext that there's no way that Peirce used 
the word "fermentation" in innocence of the Dionysian implications.

'Fermentation of ideas' as name of the third method doesn't seem to me to imply 
full sociality. I'd call the method that of "intellectual taste" except for the 
same lack of full-social implication. "Intellectual fashion" comes a bit closer 
to the mark. But then again, that phrase was available to Peirce and he didn't 
use it to characterize the third method so far as I know.

In Gary F.'s 1906 quote Peirce, by the word "willful," Peirce places the first 
method (that of tenacity) into a more Secundan aspect than I'd seen before: 
"willful belief, or self-mendacity." Of course the idea of tenacity always had 
a Secondish sense. 

Well, I guess that the first method (that of tenacity) could arise 
  1.. in one's sheer isolation from others and isolation from pertinent 
experience, or 
  2.. in one's imposition on oneself (self-mendacity) despite contact with 
contrary experience and others' opinions, or 
  3.. in one's development of one's own purely personal and idiosyncratic 
intellectual taste, despite some sort of intervisitation with tendencies and 
developments in others and the world around. 
The point above is a kind of isolation, a lack of certain kinds of reference to 
others, be it happenstance, willfilly self-imposed, or finessingly 
self-cultivated. There's something narcissistic about it.

The second method (that of authority), where the point is people more or less 
coercively imposing on one another, then could arise 
  1.. in one's imposition onto others of - or one's submission to - forcible 
isolation from others' genuine opinions and pertinent experience, or 
  2.. in more direct social impositions of opinion despite, or irrespectively 
of, lack of such isolation, or 
  3.. in some sort of force-based cultivation of whole trends of opinion, 
possibly with _agent provocateurs_ and so on.
The third method (that of congruity, the a priori, social fermentation of 
ideas, etc.), where the point is unforced intellectual social fashion, could 
arise 
  1.. in a unforced intellectual social fashion toward detached individual or 
collective navel-gazing? or 
  2.. in an unforced intellectual social fashion toward dialog as kind of 
sport, like wrestling? or 
  3.. in an unforced intellectual social fashion with a second-order tendency 
to feed upon itself at a first-order level - intellectual fashion 
consciousness? 
Well, those are my conjectures and I'm not sure that I'm sticking to them.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Jon Awbrey
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2012 12:20 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !


Peircers,

Gary Fuhrman wrote:

GF: I would agree that Peirce's third method of fixing belief is the most 
difficult to give a suitable name to,
 but I think Peirce's own choice eventually fell on "fermentation of 
ideas", based on this paragraph dated
 c. 1906:

CSP: [[[ My paper of November 1877, setting out from the proposition that the 
agitation of a question ceases
  when satisfaction is attained with the settlement of belief, and then 
only, goes on to consider how the
  conception of truth gradually develops from that principle under the 
action of experience; beginning with
  willful belief, or self-mendacity, the most degraded of all intellectual 
conditions; thence rising to the
  imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society; then to the 
idea of a settlement of opinion
  as the result of a fermentation of ideas; and finally reaching the idea 
of truth as overwhelmingly forced
  upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality. ]] 
CP 5.564 ]

GF: "Fermentation of ideas" is not very elegant -- i prefer simply "dialogue" 
-- but it does imply that the
 third method is fully social, and both more reasonable and more democratic 
than the method of authority;
 the only thing that stops it from being scientific is the lack of appeal 
to direct experience. Indeed
 I think the Ransdell conception of peer review implies that it is a 
prerequisite to a fully developed
 science (note the developmental approach Peirce takes in the paragraph 
above).

"Fermentality" would preserve the rhyme among reasons,
bringing to mind the venerable motto: In Vino Veritas.
Was it Peirce who spoke of the "solera method", or was
it some other sommelier?  We know the truth we find in
wine must be taken with a grain of salt, not to mention
the hair of the dogma that inspired it, later on in sober
reflection, so all those connotations are fitting cautions
vis-a-vis the wrath of grapes.

Among other "y"-words I remember using, there is "sagacity",
which is kin in folk etymology to sapience and good taste,
but allusions to

Re: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

2012-02-04 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon, list,

I hope I don't seem pedantic, but this post is about Peirce's methods of 
inquiry in "The Fixation of Belief." (I know next to nothing about professional 
or academic journals, so I've little to say about them.) 

Jon wrote,
  Charles S. Peirce, who pursued the ways of inquiry more doggedly than any 
thinker I have ever read, sifted the methods of “fixing belief” into four main 
types — Tenacity, Authority, Plausibility (à priori pleasingness), and 
full-fledged Scientific Inquiry. 
There is a certain striking similarity between the focus of the third method 
and valuing of plausibility. Still I think that Peirce would oppose calling the 
third method that of "Plausibility," and I'd agree with him. 
  By plausibility, I mean the degree to which a theory ought to recommend 
itself to our belief independently of any kind of evidence other than our 
instinct urging us to regard it favorably. (Peirce, A Letter to Paul Carus 
1910, Collected Papers v. 8, see paragraph 223).
In "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," 
http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#na0 Peirce discusses plausibility and 
instinctual appeal at some length in Sections III & IV, identifies it with 
Galileo's natural light of reason, and says: 
  it is the simpler hypothesis in the sense of the more facile and natural, 
the one that instinct suggests, that must be preferred
This plausibility is a question of the critique of arguments and of abductive 
inference in particular. 

The third method of inquiry a question of inquiry's methodology (methodeutic), 
and not of assessing whether a given abductive inference is plausible and worth 
drawing prior to or apart from inductive tests and observations. Peirce calls 
the third method the method of congruity or the a priori or the dilettante or 
'what is agreeable to reason.'
  It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste; but taste, 
unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly 
metaphysicians have never come to any fixed agreement, but the pendulum has 
swung backward and forward between a more material and a more spiritual 
philosophy, from the earliest times to the latest." (Peirce, "The Fixation of 
Belief," 1878 http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html).
In a sense it _is_ a matter of taste and fashion — not about clothes, food, 
music, etc. — but instead about that which we now call 'paradigms' of inquiry - 
and the key point is that it involves a preference for the _pleasing_ paradigm, 
the tasteful paradigm, etc. But proper abductive plausibility depends on a 
preference for the pleasing _only to the extent_ that one's pleasure depends on 
the plausibility of an explanation of a phenomenon. The dependence simply 
circles back to the plausibility as the determining variable.

A method of plausibility extended to arguments in general seems a non-starter. 
As extended to inquirial methodology in general, such that it would be a method 
of inquiry on a level with those of tenacity, authority, congruity, and 
science, it might be a method of devil-may-care gambling rather than one of 
taste and fashion in paradigms.

I grant the striking similarity nevertheless. It's interesting to pursue the 
resemblances of the methods. I've tended in the past to think of the first 
three methods as involving mis-embodied Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, 
respectively.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Jon Awbrey" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2012 12:40 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Knowledge Workers of the World, Unite !

Peircers,

A few reflections that I posted on Gowers's Weblog that may be pertinent here --

Re: What’s wrong with electronic journals?
At: http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/whats-wrong-with-electronic-journals/

Having spent a good part of the 1990s writing about what the New Millennium 
would bring to our intellectual endeavours, 
it is only fair that I should have spent the last dozen years wondering why the 
New Millennium is so late in arriving. 
With all due reflection I think it is time to face up to the fact that the 
fault, [Dear Reader], is not in our 
technology, but in ourselves.

Here is one of my last, best attempts to get at the root of the matter:

• http://org.sagepub.com/content/8/2/269.abstract
• http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm

There are indeed Big Picture questions that open up here — the future of 
knowledge and inquiry, the extent to which 
their progress will be catalyzed or inhibited by collaborative versus 
corporate-controlled information technologies, the 
stance of knowledge workers, vigilant or acquiescent, against the ongoing march 
of global corporate feudalism — and 
maybe this is not the place or time to pursue these questions, but in my 
experience discussion, like love and gold, is 
where you find it.  Being questions of this magnitude, they will of course 
arise again. The question is — who will 
settle them, and to whose 

Re: [peirce-l] running CD-ROM on Windows 7

2012-01-26 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jacob, list,

I hope somebody knows. That info will be useful to me too the next time I 
replace my computer. Probably many will like to know the answer to your 
question!

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: jacob longshore
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 12:28 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] running CD-ROM on Windows 7

Dear List,

Does anyone have tips on using Intelex's Collected Papers CD-ROM on Windows 7? 
It won't run by itself. I've tried the compatibility-tweak furnished by 
Microsnort, but that doesn't work either. It would be good to have, since I'm 
not always online to use the cookie. Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Jacob

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[peirce-l] Fw: Peirce Society: Final CFP: 2011-12 Peirce Society Essay Contest

2011-12-29 Thread Benjamin Udell
Duly forwarded.  - Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Robert Lane
To: The Charles S. Peirce Society
Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2011 4:54 PM
Subject: Peirce Society: Final CFP: 2011-12 Peirce Society Essay Contest

FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2011-12 Charles S. Peirce Society Essay Contest

Topic: Any topic on or related to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Awards: $500 cash prize; presentation at the Society's next annual meeting, 
held in conjunction with the Pacific APA (in Seattle, Washington, April 4-7, 
2012); possible publication, subject to editorial revision, in the Transactions 
of the Charles S. Peirce Society.

Submission Deadline: January 16, 2012.

Length: Because the winning essay may be published in the Transactions, the 
length of contest submissions should be about the length of an average journal 
article. The maximum acceptable length is 10,000 words, including notes. The 
presentation of the winning submission at the annual meeting cannot exceed 30 
minutes reading time.

Open to: Graduate students and persons who have held a Ph.D. or its equivalent 
for no more than seven years. Entries from students who have not yet begun 
their graduate training will not be considered. Past winners of the contest are 
ineligible. Joint submissions are allowed provided that all authors satisfy the 
eligibility requirements.

Advice to Essay Contest Entrants:

The winning entry will make a genuine contribution to the literature on Peirce. 
Therefore, entrants should become familiar with the major currents of work on 
Peirce to date and take care to locate their views in relation to published 
material that bears directly on their topic.

Entrants should note that scholarly work on Peirce frequently benefits from the 
explicit consideration of the historical development of his views. Even a 
submission that focuses on a single stage in that development can benefit from 
noting the stage on which it focuses in reference to other phases of Peirce's 
treatment of the topic under consideration. (This advice is not intended to 
reflect a bias toward chronological studies, but merely to express a strong 
preference for a chronologically informed understanding of Peirce's 
philosophy.) We do not require but strongly encourage, where appropriate, 
citation of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. 
Ideally, citation of texts found in both the Collected Papers and the Writings 
should be to both CP and W.

Submissions should be prepared for blind evaluation and must not be under 
consideration for publication elsewhere.

Cover letter or email should include complete contact information, including 
mailing address and phone numbers, and a statement that the entrant meets the 
eligibility requirements of the contest.

Electronic submissions are preferred. Submissions should be sent as email 
attachments (Microsoft Word documents, RTF files, or PDF files only) to Robert 
Lane, secretary-treasurer of the Society:
[email address at http://www.westga.edu/~rlane]

Please include "Peirce Essay Contest Submission" in the subject line of your 
email.

Submissions by traditional mail are also acceptable. Please mail submissions to:

Robert Lane
Philosophy Program
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118
Attn: Peirce Essay Contest

[...]

-- 
Robert Lane, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy

Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society

Department of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118

[telephone number and email address at]
http://www.westga.edu/~rlane

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Re: [peirce-l] The Web Is Making People Stupid (TWIMPS)

2011-12-19 Thread Benjamin Udell
James, Peter, Jon, list,

James wrote,
  I think it was McLuhan who wrote that technologies are amputations (as in 
your examples below). They "cut off" the capacities that they augment.  


  The one that concerns me is the general degradation of interpretive skills in 
a digital environment. That is, when I can efficiently search for discrete 
facts, I tend to consume content as decontextualized facts []
"What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447," Jeff Wise, Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877
The flight data recorder was recovered in 2011. From the article, which covers 
the flight's final minutes: 
  Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated 
flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of 
uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important 
information from the attention of the flight crew.
The intermediation by IA also detoured some younger pilots from development of 
needed special kinds of experience.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: James Albrecht
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 2:06 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] The Web Is Making People Stupid (TWIMPS)


I think it was McLuhan who wrote that technologies are amputations (as in your 
examples below). They "cut off" the capacities that they augment.  


The one that concerns me is the general degradation of interpretive skills in a 
digital environment. That is, when I can efficiently search for discrete facts, 
I tend to consume content as decontextualized facts. Over time, in a world 
where all parts can be accessed directly, denuded of context, do people lose 
the ability to understand the meaning that comes with composition, the specific 
arrangement of parts. (And do they lose the ability to compose anything over 
140 characters?)


And there is a separate but related issue of how "random access" makes 
confirmation bias that much more potent. 


On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Skagestad, Peter wrote:

  Jon, List,

  This observation could belong in either thread, but let me just suggest that 
it is eminently possible to grow smarter and dumber at the same time, albeit in 
different respects. When printed books first arrived, there were complaints 
that they were undermining students' ability to memorize - no doubt true, but 
the student with books would have access to a vastly larger store of knowledge 
than the student who could access only the knowledge in his/her own memory. In 
my own case, my capacity for mental arithmetic quickly deteriorated after I got 
my first electronic calculator, but armed with my calculator I can do faster 
and more complex calculations than I ever could in my head or with pencil and 
paper. And so on. It is entirely possible - in fact, probably the rule - for 
the technologically augmented person to grow smarter at the expense of the 
intellectual abilities of his own unaugmented self.

  A different question is whether the web tends to dumb us down in ways that 
are not compensated for by extending our intellectual reach in one way or 
another. I have no particular insights to offer on this, but am posting simply 
to note that there are two distinct and very different questions here.

  Cheers,
  Peter

  
  From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Jon Awbrey
  Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 10:40 PM
  To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
  Subject: Re: [peirce-l] The Web Is Making People Stupid (TWIMPS)

  o~o~o~o~o~o

  TWIMPS.  Note 2

  o~o~o~o~o~o

  Peircers,

  I thought I was hearing the rumblings of a counterpoint to the
  more positive themes of the AI/IA thread, the slow reading of
  Joseph Ransdell's paper, "The Relevance Of Peircean Semiotic
  To Computational Intelligence Augmentation".

  • http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/ia.htm

  Since those undertones arising from the flip-side of augmentative 
communication
  and intelligence augmentation are long familiar to me, I reprised an old title
  from previous discussions where a number of us puzzled over the phenomenon of
  intellectual devolutions that appeared to be caused, or maybe just catalyzed,
  by the very media of information technology that were aimed to aid thought.

  Now, if you've never had the "luck" to encounter such phenomena yourself,
  then I'm sure you're thinking that I'm just whinging about imaginary ills.
  But if you've ever run up against similar obstacles in your own experience,
  then you'll know why we have to tackle the obstructions before we can get on
  to the opportunities.

  Regards,

  Jon

  o~o~o~o~o~o

  facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
  inquiry list: http://st

Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

2011-12-18 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary, list,

I didn't even notice, till after I sent my post, the reversing "So the social 
principle is rooted intrinsically in logic." (1869) --> "Logic is rooted in the 
social principle." (1878). I'd forgotten about the previous discussions, which 
I just now dug up.

Previous discussions at Lyris archive.

http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/search/results?forum=peirce-l&words=logic+rooted+social+principle+intrinsically&in=3&any=0

http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=240847#240847 Sept 2006
http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=242655#242655 Sept 2006 (part of above 
thread, separated for some reason)
http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=297456#297456 March 2007
http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=1102661#1102661 June 2008

If Texas Tech "eRaider" graphic obscures a post, try refresh, or switching 
javascript on or off, or click on "Click here to view in a new browser window".

One can search more widely 
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Logic+is+rooted+in+the+social+principle%22+%22the+social+principle+is+rooted+intrinsically+in+logic%22

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Richmond" 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

Ben, Jon, Terry,

Something which has always intrigued me about the two occurrences of the almost 
identical phrases being considered here, and which had a brief list discussion 
a couple of years ago, is that in the earlier (1869) version, "He who would not 
sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his 
inferences, collectively" is immediately followed by "So the social principle 
is rooted intrinsically in logic," while in the later (1878), nearly 
identical--except for the "as it seems to me" reservation, "He who would not 
sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, 
illogical in all his inferences, collectively" reverses the wording of that 
concluding thought to "Logic is rooted in the social principle."

At the time of that earlier discussion the consensus of thread participants was 
that this did *not* represent a kind of circular reasoning. But, as I'm working 
on an article centered on the "Logic is rooted in the social principle" idea, 
I'm wondering if anyone has any fresh thoughts about this now that these two 
different ways of stating this notion have been connected to the "He who would 
not sacrifice his own soul" idea, something I don't recall occurring in the 
earlier discussion (which restricted itself to the reversal of the language of 
the concluding thought).

Also, if anyone could easily recover that earlier discussion (Ben?), that too 
would be most helpful. Thanks in advance!

Best,

Gary

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> Benjamin Udell  12/18/11 2:15 PM >>>
Terry, Jon,


Terry, Jon,

Peirce said it at least twice.

Peirce (1869), "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences 
of Four Incapacities", JSP v. II, n. 4, pp. 193-208. Reprinted (CP 5.318–357), 
(W 2:242–272), (EP 1:56–82).

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_23/v2_23.htm, near the end:
  Upon our theory of reality and of logic, it can be shown that no inference of 
any individual can be thoroughly logical without certain determinations of his 
mind which do not concern any one inference immediately; for we have seen that 
that mode of inference which alone can teach us anything, or carry us at all 
beyond what was implied in our premises--in fact, does not give us to know any 
more than we knew before; only, we know that, by faithfully adhering to that 
mode of inference, we shall, on the whole, approximate to the truth. Each of us 
is an insurance company, in short. But, now, suppose that an insurance company, 
among its risks, should take one exceeding in amount the sum of all the others. 
Plainly, it would then have no security whatever. Now, has not every single man 
such a risk? What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul? If a man has a transcendent personal interest infinitely 
outweighing all others, then, upon the theory of validity of inference just 
developed, he is devoid of all security, and can make no valid inference 
whatever. What follows? That logic rigidly requires, before all else, that no 
determinate fact, nothing which can happen to a man's self, should be of more 
consequence to him than everything else. He who would not sacrifice his own 
soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his inferences, collectively. 
So the social principle is rooted intrinsically in logic.

Then, Peirce (1878), "The Doctrine of Chances", Popu

Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

2011-12-18 Thread Benjamin Udell
Terry, Jon,

Peirce said it at least twice.

Peirce (1869), "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences 
of Four Incapacities", JSP v. II, n. 4, pp. 193-208. Reprinted (CP 5.318–357), 
(W 2:242–272), (EP 1:56–82).

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_23/v2_23.htm, near the end:
  Upon our theory of reality and of logic, it can be shown that no inference of 
any individual can be thoroughly logical without certain determinations of his 
mind which do not concern any one inference immediately; for we have seen that 
that mode of inference which alone can teach us anything, or carry us at all 
beyond what was implied in our premises--in fact, does not give us to know any 
more than we knew before; only, we know that, by faithfully adhering to that 
mode of inference, we shall, on the whole, approximate to the truth. Each of us 
is an insurance company, in short. But, now, suppose that an insurance company, 
among its risks, should take one exceeding in amount the sum of all the others. 
Plainly, it would then have no security whatever. Now, has not every single man 
such a risk? What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul? If a man has a transcendent personal interest infinitely 
outweighing all others, then, upon the theory of validity of inference just 
developed, he is devoid of all security, and can make no valid inference 
whatever. What follows? That logic rigidly requires, before all else, that no 
determinate fact, nothing which can happen to a man's self, should be of more 
consequence to him than everything else. He who would not sacrifice his own 
soul to save the whole world, is illogical in all his inferences, collectively. 
So the social principle is rooted intrinsically in logic.

Then, Peirce (1878), "The Doctrine of Chances", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, 
pp. 604–15 (CP 2.645–68, W 3:276–90, EP 1:142–54).

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_12/March_1878/Illustrations_of_the_Logic_of_Science_III
>From Section IV:
  But what, without death, would happen to every man, with death must happen to 
some man. At the same time, death makes the number of our risks, of our 
inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. The very idea of 
probability and of reasoning rests on the assumption that this number is 
indefinitely great. We are thus landed in the same difficulty as before, and I 
can see but one solution of it. It seems to me that we are driven to this, that 
logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They 
must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community. This 
community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings 
with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must 
reach, however vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. He who 
would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to 
me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the 
social principle.
Best, Ben

- Original Message -
From: "Jon Awbrey"
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Help on a Peirce Quote

Terry,

Internet search gave this:

"He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world,
is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively."

http://www.jstor.org/pss/40319896

But I can't read the reference right now.

Jon

facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
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Terry Bristol wrote:

Dear List –

I wonder if anyone can help me locate a Peirce quotation.

The gist of it runs something like this:

'Anyone who wouldn't sacrifice himself for the whole is irrational.'

It has to do with the pragmatist's common theme of 'inclusionality' – that the 
interests of the individual and the interests of the whole are inseparable.

Thank you

yours,

Terry


Terry Bristol, President  
Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy  
3941 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland OR  97214
503-232-2300, cell 503-819-8365

"Science would be ruined if it were to withdraw entirely into narrowly defined 
specialties.  The rare scholars who are wanderers-by-choice are essential to 
the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines."  Benoit Mandelbrot

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

2011-12-16 Thread Benjamin Udell
Peter, list,

Thanks for your response. 

The augmentationist vision itself in its essence does not seem a conceptually 
difficult one. In the 1970s I had some amateur notion of it though I knew 
nothing of practical developments in IA. Without the initial government funding 
and without the early time-sharing?  I'd guess maybe ten years' delay for 
email, word processors, personal computers, etc. That would be my current bet 
if it were possible to bet on such things.  Economic and cultural factors via 
entrepreneurs etc. soon enough would have come into powerful play, just as such 
factors came into play against such things via IBM and its particular agenda 
earlier.  Maybe it's just me, watching too many Jetsons cartoons when I was a 
kid, expecting tsunamis of progress (and in some ways we got The Simpsons 
instead, which I think is the point of the latter's theme song's resemblance to 
the former's). I'd agree that the Internet might have developed quite 
differently, and with less built-in freedom.

You wrote, 
  > PS: I think this is absolutely true, and I just want to add that 
Engelbart's particular vision of IA has largely failed to materialize, due to 
the general unwillingness of corporations to provide training for their 
employees
I think that the common lack of skills in using the augmentations is not due 
mainly to insufficient training programs offered by employers, but instead due 
first of all to the nature of the beast. I've know plenty of people who did 
take employer-offered courses but soon forgot most of it because they didn't 
put it quickly to use, and this is because 
(A) most people get bored easily with such things, as we already know, 
(B) no amount of training is a substitute for habitual exploration when it 
comes to using computer programs, and that is something that should be but 
never is drummed in in every common computer application training course (in 
fact the courses should be structured whenever possible (after an elementary 
level of rote learning of procedures), to engrain practices of exploration and 
of trying things out) and 
(C) workplace pressures urgently favor getting work done as soon as possible, 
"quick and dirty." 
It's the old "busy reader" problem, mutatis mutandis a user, this time one who 
is interested only when too busy to absorb much. The problem is, that one 
doesn't really want to deal with figuring out a more efficient way to do things 
with an application except when one is actually confronted by work to be done, 
but that's also when one doesn't have extra time to find a more efficient way 
using advanced features.  For my part, I didn't like to do the same tedious 
work twice, and I found that the best short cut was the trek through the 
"mountains" (advanced features), and I simply concealed from my superiors that 
it was for such purposes that I was taking a little extra time.  Except in the 
case of one very helpful boss, it was only after I started showing and 
explaining the results, that they started to appreciate its practicality.  But 
I had almost no success in convincing co-workers to use my "great secret," the 
"key" for which they kept asking me - but which was not some magical little set 
of series of key strokes or menu item clicks but instead resisting to some 
extent the boredom, work pressures, and temptations to chat, and practicing 
curiosity, exploration, front-loading (i.e., the "mountain trek"), etc., so 
that one would have an easier time in dealing with the problems that arose 
every day.  I.e., grasping that, unlike a typewriter, a computer was always a 
learning experience, pleasant and otherwise. Well, that was all ten and more 
years ago, maybe some things have changed.

I just googled on "intelligence augmentation" "affectivity" and found little. I 
found more with "intelligence augmentation" "emotion". It looks like a subject 
more of the future than of the past!

Best, Ben

- Original Message -
From: Skagestad, Peter
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO 
COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

Ben,

Thank you for your comments, which I have been chewing on. I wish I had some 
insightful responses, but this is all I come up with.

You wrote:
"I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could have 
very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given the 
potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and I 
agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism."

PS: We are in the realm of speculation here, and I cannot claim to be an 
economic historian, but I do not believe the evolution of either interactive or 
personal computing was market-driven. When you read, for instance, the 
Licklider biography "The Dream Machine" (I forget the author's name), you find 
Licklider knocking his head against the wall trying to pe

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: THE RELEVANCE OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTIC TO COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION

2011-12-14 Thread Benjamin Udell
Peter, list,

This slow read is quiet enough that I might as well send some minor comments 
that might provide a little to chew on, I don't know. But before those, let me 
first of all thank you for leading the slow read and for your heart-warming 
reminiscences of Joe.

The second computer revolution - inevitable after the first? 
Joe quotes you:
  In the sixties computers were huge, expensive machines usable only by an 
initiated elite; the idea of turning these machines into personal 
information-management tools that would be generally affordable and usable 
without special training was advocated only by a fringe of visionaries and was 
regarded as bizarre not only by the general public, but also by the mainstream 
of the electronics industry. The second computer revolution obviously could not 
have taken place without the first one preceding it, but the first computer 
revolution could very easily have taken place without being followed by the 
second one.
I find it very hard to believe that the second computer revolution could have 
very easily failed to take place soon enough after the first one, given the 
potential market, though as you say below, you were mainly concerned (and I 
agree with you) to reject a monocausal technological determinism. I know almost 
nothing about computer programming, but I was a Word and PowerPoint "guru" for 
some years. It's just that I think that some relevantly able people would soon 
enough have recognized the teremendous potential for personal computers. As the 
1990s wore on, companies ended up stocking their cubicles with computers 
although most users never heard of, much less learned to use, more than 1/10 of 
the power of such programs as Word and PowerPoint, and workplace pressures tend 
to lock people into short-sighted views of the value of developing skills on 
word processors, spreadsheets, etc. ("quick and dirty" is the motto). Well, 
"1/10" is just my subjective impression, but whatever the vague fraction, it 
was small but enough to make the companies' investment worthwhile. (And 
probably the added value per added "power" doesn't equal one and involves 
diminishing returns, especially in terms of empowering collaboration beyond 
interaction). Well, all of that, even the point about the continuing though 
shrunken need for special skills, is a quibble. The second revolution was not 
destined but only enabled by previous technology and was brought about by 
people seeing the potential. As you say below:
  I made the point that the emergence of the personal computer was not a given 
consequence of the invention of the microprocessor, but also required a 
particular vision of what computers were for. In so doing I was simply 
rejecting technological determinism, not advancing any monocausal thesis of my 
own.
Interactive or collaborative. 
You wrote,
  PS: I do not totally agree with Joe here. I gladly admit that I never tried 
to identify what was fundamental to the IA tradition, believing that job to 
have been already done by Engelbart. But interactive computing, while essential 
to IA, has been endemic to computing of all kinds during the past forty years. 
I played chess games with the MIT computer as early as 1973; it was 
interactive, it had time sharing, but there was nothing about it that 
specifically related to IA. I would agree that collaborative computing is 
central to IA: more of that later.
Looking over Joe's paper, I'd guess that he wasn't aware of the 
interaction-collaboration distinction, or didn't remember it while writing the 
paper, and that by "interactive" he meant interactive and collaborative alike. 
I'm not all that clear on the distinction myself. I tend to think of it not 
only in terms of people and computers but also in terms of various programs or 
computer systems (with attendent interoperability challenges) interacting 
(requesting and receiving data) and collaborating (asking each other to work on 
solving problems). So I look forward to your discussion of the difference and 
of the distinctive importance of collaborative ends to IA, also comparing to 
Engelbart's idea of what's fundamental to IA.

Exosomatic mind - all cognitive?
Peirce once expounded a trichotomy of feeling, will (sense of resistance), and 
general conception. Presumably all three can be conscious or unconscious, and 
thus seem attributable to mind. How really mental is something that is almost 
exclusively cognitive?

In his paper, Joe wrote,
  Peter Skagestad understands the dictum "All thought is in signs" to mean that 
thought is not primarily a modification of consciousness, since unconscious 
thought is quite possible in Peirce’s view, but rather a matter of behavior -- 
not, however, a matter of a thinker's behavior (which would be a special case) 
but rather of the behavior of the publicly available material media and 
artifacts in which thought resides as a dispositional power. The power is 
signification, which is the power of the sign to 

Re: [peirce-l] Doctrine Of Individuals

2011-12-11 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary F., Jerry,

When I first saw the phrase "special sciences" in Peirce, I was already 
acquainted with it in Neo-Thomistic writing, I think it was Maurice de Wulf 
ascribing the idea to medieval Schoolmen, but maybe also I read it in Gilson. 
In de Wulf's version - if I remember correctly - even mathematics is a 'special 
science'. (Comte and Peirce classed mathematics as the most general and basic 
science).  I've also seen the phrase "particular sciences" in the same sense. 

In de Wulf's view, a science studies a class of objects and "passes over" 
individual differences, and I rebelled at that idea. Darwin certainly wasn't 
passing over individual differences when he dissected pigeons since he needed 
to _find out_ which characteristics were common and which ones were 
idiosyncratic; also one seeks to understand the individual differences as 
reflecting combinations of rules, also of circumstances, etc.  Anyway the idea 
was that the first big step of abstraction was that of abstraction of classes 
from individual things, occurrences, etc.

De Wulf depicted the Scholastic view as being that the next big step of 
abstraction was that of abstraction from bodily change, leaving only quantity, 
studied by mathematicians. 

Next and last big step, the abstraction from quantity, leaving only substance 
in the philosophical sense of "substance", studied by metaphysics a.k.a. First 
Philosophy. (The phrase "First Philosophy" goes back to Aristotle, of course). 
I also seem to remember a Neo-Thomist - I think it was Maritain, though I can't 
swear to it - dividing the scientific subject matters into the supernatural 
(metaphysical), preternatural (mathematical), and natural (physical, material, 
biological, human/social). If such ideas (aside from some of the terminology) 
were common among the medieval Schoolmen, then Peirce was very likely familiar 
with them.

Best, Ben


- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Fuhrman" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Doctrine Of Individuals

Jerry, you wrote,

[[ One should also note the inexact usage of the term "division" when in fact 
the meaning is "separation" (with respect to "logical atoms".) ]]

But i'm afraid it is your usage that is inexact. A logical atom (for Peirce and 
every other logician that i know of) is defined by its Greek root, which means 
exactly "indivisible". The current usage of "atom" in physics and chemistry 
parted company with logic as soon as it was demonstrated that physical "atoms" 
could be divided into component parts -- protons, neutrons, electrons etc.

By the way, you also posted earlier about Peirce's usage of the term "special 
sciences", saying that it is meaningless in contemporary science. Ben already 
replied to that, but i'd like to add a comment or two. I had never heard this 
term before i came across it in Peirce, but his usage is so handy and 
straightforward that i've been using it myself ever since, in reference to any 
non-cenoscopic science, in other words any science that studies a special 
(limited) range of phenomena (and generally uses special apparatus to make its 
observations). Physics, chemistry and psychology are all special sciences in 
this sense. 

But i came across a very different sense while reading Terrence Deacon's 
_Incomplete Nature_ -- thanks to Gary Richmond for pointing to it, and i hope 
we can discuss it next year as Gary suggested, because it makes explicit use of 
some important Peircean ideas. Deacon implies that the usage of "special 
sciences" which he mentions is current within some (unspecified) academic or 
scientific community with which he is familiar. On page 40, for instance, he 
speaks of an "effort to include the special sciences (e.g., psychology, 
sociology, economics) within the natural sciences." I gather that by this 
usage, physics and chemistry are unequivocally "natural sciences", and 
therefore *not* "special", while the three sciences named by Deacon are 
"special" because their status as "natural" sciences is questionable. Elsewhere 
in the book Deacon seems to distance himself from this usage by referring to 
"the so-called special sciences". I recall using the terms "hard" and "soft 
sciences" to make a distinction like that, but have never heard the term 
"special sciences" used that way -- but then i don't move in academic circles. 
I'm wondering whether anyone else on peirce-l has come across this usage of the 
term.

Gary F.

} Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already enough 
names. One must know when to stop. [Tao Te Ching 32  (Feng/English)] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Jerry LR Chandler
Sent: December-10-11 11:32 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Doctrine Of Individuals

Jon, List:

Thanks for posting this set of fragments on individu

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-06 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jim, list,

Yes, I was just reading an article that said that Van Heijenoort said that 
Frege's logic has just one universe of discourse, whereas others allowed 
variations. Frege as "unic-universalist" (my word) rather than merely 
universalist.
  Van Heijenoort lists two further consequences of the lingua-calculus 
distinction and the universality of Fregean logic. Whereas Boole's universal 
class or De Morgan's universe of discourse can be changed at will, Frege's 
quantifiers binding individual variables range over all objects. There is no 
change of universes: 'Frege's universe consists of all that there is, and it is 
fixed' (ibid. ["Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language"], 325). Furthermore, 
Frege's system is closed, nothing can be outside the system. There are no 
metalogical questions and no separate semantics.  - Volker Peckhaus, "Calculus 
Ratiocinator vs. Characteristica Universalis? The Two Traditions in Logic, 
Revisited" (16.5.2003), page 4, 
http://kw.uni-paderborn.de/fileadmin/kw/institute/Philosophie/Personal/Peckhaus/Texte_zum_Download/twotraditions.pdf
I particularly need to read/re-read an article or two by Irving. (Meanwhile my 
days will be increasingly busy through Friday). 

An insistence on limiting logic to a single monolithic universe of discourse 
has long seemed strange to me. Makes me think of Russell's worry (during some 
period) that mathematics deals with numbers larger than the number of particles 
in the (physical) universe. Anyway that insistence weakens the affinity between 
the idea of a total population and the idea of a universe of discourse, though 
I guess one doesn't need to admit various universes of discourse in order to 
admit various total populations. Of course there are other reasons that one 
might like not to be limited to a grand and single universe of discourse. 

Anyway, the Wiki sentence as written is a statement about the supposed opinions 
of van Heijenoort, Hintikka, and Brady. Irving has indicated that it is 
mistaken as to van Heijenoort's view of the dichotomy. So even if we start to 
see how the stated opinion makes partial sense in a way that suggests how to 
salvage it, then there's still the problem of attribution. So I've ratched down 
my personal sense of urgency about it by removing it from the article for the 
time being. I'd like to get it repaired and put it back in since it does broach 
important issues in the development of logic and Peirce's role in it.
  Jean Van Heijenoort (1967),[85] Jaakko Hintikka (1997),[86] and Geraldine 
Brady (2000)[79] divide those who study formal (and natural) languages into two 
camps: the model-theorists / semanticists, and the proof theorists / 
universalists. Hintikka and Brady view Peirce as a pioneer model theorist.

  79. a b Brady, Geraldine (2000), From Peirce to Skolem: A Neglected Chapter 
in the History of Logic, North-Holland/Elsevier Science BV, Amsterdam, 
Netherlands.

  85. ^ van Heijenoort (1967), "Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus" in 
Synthese 17: 324-30.

  86. ^ Hintikka (1997), "The Place of C. S. Peirce in the History of Logical 
Theory" in Brunning and Forster (1997), The Rule of Reason: The Philosophy of 
C. S. Peirce, U. of Toronto.
Best, Ben


  - Original Message - 
  From: Jim Willgoose 
  To: bud...@nyc.rr.com ; peirce-l@listserv.iupui.edu 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 3:47 PM
  Subject: RE: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience 
Appropriate for Semiotic


  Ben,
   
  One quick further thought. If the pretension to a "universal language" is 
so great that one does not consider a comparison of models, then it becomes 
easier to see the pairing of "proof-theoretic/universalist." So, maybe Frege 
would historically be seen this way. (absolute model) On the other hand, if 
Lowenheim finishes something he sees philosophically in Peirce/Schroder, then 
you might get the pairing "model theorist/particularist."
   
  jim W - Original Message - 
  From: Jim Willgoose 
  To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 3:21 PM
  Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience 
Appropriate for Semiotic


  Ben,
   
  Thanks for all the work on Wiki.  Here is a quick distillation of the 
idea. A signature such as { ~, &, NEG, POS} might be adequate for modeling the 
Boolean functions of propositional logic. (In fact, G. Hunter in "Metalogic, 
1970 U. Cal. Press attributes the discovery that {~,&} is the smallest 
signature adequate for modeling the Boolean functions to Peirce).  Now, if 
every tautology is satisfied in the model you are half way to having a logic!  
In so far as it is formal, it can apply to any material propositions. Thus, it 
is "universal" in that sense. But it is hardly universal with repect to Truth 
writ large.
   
  It lacks universality in so far as the full predicate logic generates 
truths that cannot be

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-06 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jim, Irving, John, Peter, list,

Thank you for the added comment, Jim. I've been stealing time to try to rummage 
through online sources but this subject is very abstract for me. I'll just have 
to remove the problematic sentence pending clarification.

Best, Ben 

- Original Message - 
From: Jim Willgoose
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2011 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate 
for Semiotic


Ben, Irving, John, Peter et. al.  
 
I do not grasp the pairing of model theorist/semanticist or proof 
theorist/universalist either. It seems that a "universal grammar" ( a term 
adopted once by Peirce) need not be understood in only one of the following 
ways.  First, it need not be understood as strong enough to represent or 
express any domain of knowledge. But secondly, it need not be understood solely 
as relating to proof. Thus, if a formal grammar is presupposed by both logic 
and methodology, it seems an open choice whether one wants to write a proof in 
it for a limited domain of knowledge, or use a fragment of it to "model" other 
domains of knowledge. Putnam seems to suggest that Peirce was in the vanguard 
of treating model theory as particularist. ( I will look for the paper)  
Experience teaches us what the limitations are. But I will say (following 
Putnam) that model theory as a body of knowledge appears a posteriori. 
 
Jim W.
 



Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 13:52:56 -0500
From: bud...@nyc.rr.com
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate 
for Semiotic
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU


Irving, list,

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-04 Thread Benjamin Udell
rties - such as mass, volume, length, density and 
so forth. When CSP, in his primitive triad, wrote of Things - Representation - 
Form, he did not include the term 'object' as it fails the representational 
quality.
Peirce considered Archimedean mechanics to be philosophical, and that seems to 
have implications for his conception of philosophical objects as to measurable 
properties. But in any case I don't see why you'd have me stopping amid a 
general discussion to note that, rather obviously, mathematical and 
philosophical objects (usually) lack mass, physical velocity, etc. I suspect 
that you've accepted some transference of sense where the word "thing" or 
"object" starts to imply "physical/material thing/object with measurable 
physical properties" as a result of habitual use of the word "thing" or 
"object" in context of physical or material science, so that the use of 
"object" in another sense sounds odd and worth noting to you. Many people 
accept such a transference of sense, which is why I periodically note that, by 
"object," Peirce means anything you can talk or think about and that he doesn't 
usually mean "object" in some narrower sense. 

As regards the difference between "thing" and "object" aside from formality of 
expression (and Heideggerian approaches), you haven't expressed, and I don't 
see, _what_ is the difference between them that you refer to. 

In general, you seem to be getting at an idea that seems like it could well be 
interesting, but it might be a whole lot clearer if you weren't trying to 
confine it to the form of an objection to a pretty unobjectionable rendition of 
Peirce's notion of 'object.'

As regards "Things - Representation - Form," back on October 5th you quoted 
Peirce from W1, p. 256, Harvard Lecture VIII, Forms of Induction and Hypothesis 
- from 1865 which is very early.
  > The first distinction we found it necessary to draw - the first set of of 
conceptions we have to signalize-form a triad

  > Thing  Representation   Form.  

  > ... The thing is that for which a representation might stand prescinded 
from all that would constitute a relation with with any representation. The 
form is the respect in which a representation might stand for a thing, 
prescinded from both thing and representation
It's hard to see why you think that Peirce used "Thing" instead of "Object" 
because it fails the representational quality. He did not explain it in that 
way, and he did say that the thing is "prescinded from all that would 
constitute a relation with any representation," even though the representation 
stands for said thing. As to conjecture, it is possible that he preferred 
"Thing" because he was more Kantian back in 1865, and Kant often said "Ding"; 
also Peirce was discussing the "Thing" as hypothesized and unknowable, whereas 
"Object" suggests something thrown upon the thinker (or whatever person) and 
not so hidden noumenally. Peirce soon enough rejected the idea of the 
unknowable thing-in-itself.

One also sees that Peirce there defines 'Thing', 'Representation', and 'Form' 
pretty much as he later defined (in "On a New List of Categories" 1867) 
'Object', 'Representamen', and 'Ground', respectively. His 'Thing' became his 
'Object'.

Again, I get the sense that you're trying to raise interesting issues that 
shouldn't depend on particular ways of construing or misconstruing Peirce, and 
maybe you should raise them more directly and clearly.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Jerry LR Chandler 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Cc: Benjamin Udell 
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate 
for Semiotic


Gary, Ben, Steven, List: 


With regard to alternative interpretations of Steven's philosophy, a few 
further comments appear to be called for.


Ben, while I admire your faithfulness to Peircean text, I do think that we must 
constantly keep in mine that between 100 and 150 years have past sense CSP 
wrote.  During this time, the sciences and mathematics have created new meaning 
for many.many, many terms that CSP used.  Knowledge of the history of science 
becomes a key element in interpreting CSP views.

  Experience.  One way to get a handle on what Joe is saying about experience 
and the empirical is Peirce's emphasis on mathematics as experimentation on 
diagrams. The result of this in Peircean discussions on peirce-l that I've 
noticed, is an avoidance of the phrase 'empirical science.' Special sciences 
(physical, chemical, biological, human/social) involve reliance on _spe

Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-04 Thread Benjamin Udell
ceding our metaphysical ones 
(if we're not to botch the metaphysical ones for lack of a rigorous logic). 

But, again, this argument applies as well to mathematics at least in the sense 
of CP 2.778 which you also quoted in your message:

CSP: Fallacies in pure mathematics have gone undetected for many centuries. It 
is to ideal states of things alone -- or to real things as ideally conceived, 
always more or less departing from the reality -- that deduction applies.

Best,

Gary R.


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
>>> Benjamin Udell  12/02/11 4:31 PM >>>
Gary F., list,

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-04 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving, list,

Thank you for your response, erudite and to the point as always.

I agree, it's hard even to imagine a mathematician simultaneously abjuring 
abstraction and not abjuring mathematics itself. The main kind of abstraction 
that I've read that mathematicians traditonally abjured in earlier centuries 
was the abstraction not made to solve an already standing problem (e.g., 
imaginaries are needed for some roots of polynomials). In that narrower sense, 
in his Britannica article Dieudonné called "abstractionists" the mathematicians 
who abstract freely and exploratively. 

How did I go so wrong in my previous post? Well, I believed a sentence (quoted 
below) that has long been in the Wikipedia Peirce article. It had references 
that I was in a poor position to check. You're saying in effect that the 
article is wrong about van Heijenoort's opinion. So it may be wrong about the 
two others' opinions as well. Is there an easy way to revise it without adding 
much to its length? Will it be okay if I just get rid of the word 
"semanticists"? Replace it with "particularists" (a word that I just made up)? 
  Jean Van Heijenoort (1967),[85] Jaakko Hintikka (1997),[86] and Geraldine 
Brady (2000)[79] divide those who study formal (and natural) languages into two 
camps: the model-theorists / semanticists, and the proof theorists / 
universalists. Hintikka and Brady view Peirce as a pioneer model theorist.

  79. a b Brady, Geraldine (2000), From Peirce to Skolem: A Neglected Chapter 
in the History of Logic, North-Holland/Elsevier Science BV, Amsterdam, 
Netherlands.

  85. ^ van Heijenoort (1967), "Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus" in 
Synthese 17: 324-30.

  86. ^ Hintikka (1997), "The Place of C. S. Peirce in the History of Logical 
Theory" in Brunning and Forster (1997), The Rule of Reason: The Philosophy of 
C. S. Peirce, U. of Toronto.
If you can help me with that sentence, I'd much appreciate it. 

You wrote,
  > Setting aside, therefore, the issue of abstraction, the more complex issue 
under consideration is that regarding the perceived distinction between model 
theorists and semanticists on the one hand and proof theorists on the other. 
This is an erroneous distinction insofar as the historical and philosophical 
literature, from van Heijenoort forward, distinguishes between two types of 
semantics
  [SEMANTICS, with some added formatting] Model-theoretic (or intensional) 
semantics. 
  (Actually, van Heijenoort's terminology is itself at first somewhat 
misleading, insofar as he initially associated the limited universes of 
discourses of the algebraic logicians with the set-theoretic, and not with the 
course-of-values of Frege and the set theory of Russell; although he then 
immediately corrected himself by associating the Russello-Fregean extensional 
semantics with the set theoretical.) Set-theoretic (or extensional, which would 
also include Frege's course-of-values, or Werthverlauf) semantics 


If I've got it right, you're saying below that the model-theoretic approach 
implies logic-as-calculus but not vice versa. 
  > Having said that, there is, for van Heijenoort and those who came after 
him, a complex of dichotomies that are bound together to distinguish
  [LOGICS, with some added formatting and futzing] Algebraic logic of De 
Morgan, Boole, Peirce, and Schröder  Quantification-theoretic - or more 
properly, despite van Heijenoort - function-theoretic and set-theoretic logic 
of Frege, Peano, and Russell 
  Logicae utentes, which are logic as calculus only, extensional, but with 
restricted universe(s) of discourse, relativism/particularity, and for some, 
model-theoretic (possibly with an intensional, rather than extensional, 
semantic)

  The classical Boole-Schröder calculus. Logica magna, which is logic as 
language preeminently, but also as calculus, extensional semantic, 
absolutism/universality.

  Systems such as Frege's. 
  Van Heijenoort would agree that it was the incorporation of the  
"model-theoretic" or logic as calculus approach of the "Booleans" or algebraic 
logicians, by Löwenheim, Skolem, and Herbrand, [continued next right] ...into 
the pure lingusitic approach of the Fregeans, that gave "modern" mathematical 
logic its character as first-order functional (or predicate) logic and enabled 
them and their successors, Gödel preeminently among them, the possibility of 
tying the model-theoretic conception of satisfiability to the proof-theoretic 
conception of validity, and enabled them to explore the model-theoretic and 
proof-theoretic properties of systems such as Hilbert's and the Principia.  

And Hilbert, somewhere in between, according to van Heijenoort.

The association of logica utens with algebraic logic and "calculus only" was a 
bit surprising to me; I thought that logica utens was logic used in practice 
rather than acquired by theoretical study.  I guess the idea is that their 
algebraic logic was concerned with formalizin

[peirce-l] TITLES OF POSTS

2011-12-03 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

Gary and I have a request to people replying in a slow read: that people please 
do not change the titles of posts replying _in_ the slow read. The single 
automatic "Re:" is good (don't delete it!) but please change nothing else - the 
letter case, the wording, etc., of the post's title. The previous slow read did 
get splintered via post titles.

Our request is for the sake of _most simply and easily_ keeping together the 
posts that belong in the slow-read thread, not only in current archives, but 
also in people's email programs when they sort by email title, and in currently 
unknown future archives. We can't count on every store of thread posts having 
the power to make all the proper thread connections independently of post 
titles. 

Best regards, 
Ben Udell and Gary Richmond

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-12-02 Thread Benjamin Udell
 pure 
mathematician, or another _might_ give local habitation and a name within that 
mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere 
capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves 
their Reality. The second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and 
facts. I am confident that their Being consists in reactions against Brute 
forces, notwithstanding objections redoubtable until they are closely and 
fairly examined. The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists 
in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially 
between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially 
a Sign — not the mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so 
to speak, the Sign's Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as 
intermediary between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living 
consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth, of a plant. Such is a 
living institution — a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social "movement."

- Original Message -
From: Gary Fuhrman
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate 
for Semiotic

Thanks for this, Ben, it gives a little more nuance to what i was trying to 
say. I’m in total agreement concerning words like “object” and “phenomenon” – 
including their necessary vagueness. “Positive” is another one of the words 
Peirce defined for the CD (at great length, in this case), from which i gather 
that a positive science is simply one that makes propositions, i.e. affirms 
something to be true of the real world (which is what it is independently of 
anyone’s beliefs about it). Mathematics doesn't do that, as Peirce says in CP 
3.428 (The Regenerated Logic, 1896) -- another passage that clarifies its 
relation to experience and logic:
[[[ When the mathematician deals with facts, they become for him mere 
“hypotheses”; for with their truth he refuses to concern himself. The whole 
science of mathematics is a science of hypotheses; so that nothing could be 
more completely abstracted from concrete reality. Philosophy is not quite so 
abstract. For though it makes no *special* observations, as every other 
positive science does, yet it does deal with reality. It confines itself, 
however, to the universal phenomena of experience; and these are, generally 
speaking, sufficiently revealed in the ordinary observations of every-day life. 
I would even grant that philosophy, in the strictest sense, confines itself to 
such observations as *must* be open to every intelligence which can learn from 
experience. Here and there, however, metaphysics avails itself of one of the 
grander generalisations of physics, or more often of psychics, not as a 
governing principle, but as a mere datum for a still more sweeping 
generalisation. But logic is much more abstract even than metaphysics. For it 
does not concern itself with any facts not implied in the supposition of an 
unlimited applicability of language. ]]]

Abstraction (in the sense above) obviously has its uses in the process of 
learning from experience, but not to the degree that it can *replace* 
experience. My guess is that this is the same issue that Irving and others have 
been dealing with in this thread with regard to “formalism”, but not being a 
mathematician, i don't always follow their idiom. Anyway all i'm trying to do 
is to emphasize the element of Secondness in “experience”, which i think was 
Joe's main point in this paper, although he chose not to use that term. I 
gather that Steven (and Kirsti?) think the point is something else, but it's 
not so clear to me what that is. Although there can be genuine surprises, and 
thus “experience” of a sort, even in the realm of abstractions (or fictions) -- 
which is also part of Joe's point -- it seems to me that “mathematization” of 
logic would necessarily move it even further from actual experience than it 
already is. To make that move in the name of “rigor” strikes me as a kind of 
obfuscation.

Gary F.

} By their fruits ye shall know them. [Matthew 7:20] {

www.gnusystems.ca/Peirce.htm }{ gnoxic studies: Peirce

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU]
On Behalf Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: November-29-11 3:33 PM

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Re: [peirce-l] SLOW READ: On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic

2011-11-29 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary, Steven,

Steven's discussion of his own view of ethics is a little less clearcut than 
Gary seems to see it as. On one hand Steven says "In my own terms I refer to 
"natural ethics" as the consideration of natural and inevitable behaviors and 
the means by which effective outcomes may be achieved (without judgement or 
notion of "right" or "wrong")." Steven says, 
  In my own terms I refer to "natural ethics" as the consideration of natural 
and inevitable behaviors and the means by which effective outcomes may be 
achieved (without judgement or notion of "right" or "wrong"). My view does not 
concern "the should," "the right" or "the wrong." Rather, if you behave one way 
you will get one outcome, if you behave differently you will get another. My 
aim in the social case is to prefer the "good and productive" (the discussion 
of which I leave for another day). 
Steven is saying that he regards ethics in two ways:
  a.. Natural ethics: Natural and inevitable behaviors and their means. 
  b.. Social ethics The good and productive. (I.e., good and productive 
behaviors). That seems to be simply to regard what is _right_, what _should 
be_, as what is _good and productive_ in behavior.  
I'm not sure what Steven means by natural and inevitable behaviors - do they 
include behaviors of forces and matter? If so, why call it ethics? Or perhaps 
Steven means instinctive behaviors of living things - but in that case the 
'ethics' that evolution imposes on organisms is not one of effectiveness of a a 
given behavior for a given (near-term) end, but of what are forms or modes of 
conduct good and productive for the species.

Mathematization. When Steven says "broad mathematization of semeiotic theory," 
I strongly suspect that he does not mean reduction of semiotics to a deductive 
discipline about purely hypothetical objects. A mechanics is a mathematical 
system. But mechanics does not cease to be an empirical special science. In the 
Century Dictionary, the definition of science, which appears to have been 
written by Peirce, places probability theory as applied mathematics in 
philosophy. It would then be in the study of deduction in 'critical logic' 
a.k.a. 'critique of arguments' a.k.a. 'logic proper'. He is not explicit about 
it in later years, but the section on critical logic is where Peirce discusses 
probability math in his 1902 Carnegie application. It is in critical logic's 
treatment of inductive inference that Peirce deals with statistical principles 
in the Carnegie application. So there may already be a good deal of 
mathematization in various degrees in Peirce's logic = semiotic.

For what it's worth, I'd add that Peirce in later years held that ethics 
precedes logic (semiotic). He also distinguished philosophical ethics (which at 
one point he called 'practics') from ethics in the more usual sense, which he 
regarded as an applied field beyond cenoscopic philosophy.

Experience.  One way to get a handle on what Joe is saying about experience and 
the empirical is Peirce's emphasis on mathematics as experimentation on 
diagrams. The result of this in Peircean discussions on peirce-l that I've 
noticed, is an avoidance of the phrase 'empirical science.' Special sciences 
(physical, chemical, biological, human/social) involve reliance on _special_ 
classes of experience, _special_ experiments, to study _special_ classes of 
positive phenomena. The title of the book _The Mathematical Experience_ is 
entirely congenial to the Peircean outlook. Cenoscopic philosophy, in Peirce's 
view, deals with positive phenomena in general, not by special classes. I once 
found Peirce discussing what he meant by "positive" but unfortunately I didn't 
make a note of it. I don't recall Peirce anywhere saying that mathematics 
studies 'hypothetical phenomena' or something like that. But he does see 
experimentation and experience in mathamatics, in its study - there are all 
kinds of things in mathematics that one cannot make do whatever one wishes.

As regards Peirce's use of the word 'object,' one could call it a fancy word 
for 'thing.'  It's a semi-technical term for 'thing' and indicates that one is 
speaking at least somewhat formally, while the word 'thing' indicates a minimum 
of formality of reference. 'Object' can refer to anything that one can think 
of, anything that one can discuss. It can be a countable object or it can be 
stuff (a term which some philosophers embraced at some time during the 20th 
Century). It can fictive, like Prince Hamlet. It's a very bare conception - 
hard to say how it differs from _ens_. To speak of a 'phenomenal thing' or 
'phenomenal object' doesn't seem to me to prejudge the question of whether the 
given phenomenal object is anything more than a bare appearance. But the word 
'object' does suggest something with a least a little resistance to us, even if 
it turns out to be a mere figment. It is ob-ject, thrown upon or onto something 
such as us. As Jack Spicer wrote o

Re: [peirce-l] Reply to Steven Ericsson-Zenith & Jerry Chandler re Hilbert & Peirce

2011-11-27 Thread Benjamin Udell
CORRECTION (as usual). Sorry! I was unclear:

For Peirce in those terms, matter is a Second, and so chance/spontaneity does 
not correspond more or less to the material cause, though it [I meant *the 
material cause*] seems to have a ghost of role [I meant *in the 
Firstness:Chance part of the trichotomy*] since matter and collections of 
particles so lend themselves to statistical treatment and stochastic processes. 

Corrected also below. - Best Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Reply to Steven Ericsson-Zenith & Jerry Chandler re 
Hilbert & Peirce


Irving, Jerry, Steven, list,

Irving, thanks for your response, more interesting and informative than what I 
have to say! 

Irving wrote,
  Is there some sort of causality, Aristotelian or otherwise, in [application 
of] inference rules? Once again, I am at a loss here to comprehend how this 
issue of causality relates to the nature of axiom systems or to formalism.
I suspect that Jerry has in mind causal reasoning or something like model-based 
reasoning. The latter is an AI subject that I don't know much about, but the 
simplest examples in online texts consist of causal reasoning as opposed to 
diagnostic reasoning, e.g., causally reasoning from stroke to confusion, as 
opposed to diagnostically reasoning from confusion to stroke.  I am not 
convinced that those are just other words for predictive reasoning versus 
explanatory reasoning, but there seems at least some parallelism.  Anyway, if 
one has a mathematical model of a mechanical system, and one "runs it forward," 
then the calculations might seem to reflect a causal process, though such model 
runs are often not practically feasible, and I don't know whether Newtonian 
mechanics, though deterministic, has been proven or disproven to be (in 
principle) always computable; at this point I'm thinking of digital models, 
while the broadest sense of 'model' could be very broad.

One can expand the idea of causal reasoning to the idea of following a 
connection of reaction/resistance (or at least a connection of neighborhood). 
For example, traversal of the GW bridge from Manhattan will lead a person to be 
in New Jersey, or 'cause' a person to come to be in New Jersey. When one is 
thinking in graph-theoretical terms of the problem of the Seven Bridges of 
Königsberg, I'm not sure that one can still call that aspect of the reasoning 
'causal' (and certainly proof of the problem's insolubility is not itself 
'causal' or 'connectional' in a non-meta sense). Any deductive proof can be 
considered as following a 'path' but my guess is that it is indeed somewhat 
'meta', be it soever fruitful, to regard every deductive proof as a 'causal' or 
'connectional' reasoning about where (i.e., to what logical conclusion) the 
proof path leads the reasoner. If it's a meta view, then it would leave intact 
a distinction between causal/connectional reasoning and other kinds. And of 
course hovering in the background is a notion that concrete causal or 
connection-traversing processes are nature's own kind of inference processes, 
which we map with causal reasoning. At this point I tend to get confused (or 
more confused than I was already). Clearly my mind is wandering now, don't take 
this all too seriously. Is every natural process of decision or determination 
an inference process, and is every inference process also a decision process? I 
like to think that they are but in different senses, but I don't have a clear 
idea what senses. 

I'm not completely wandering. I'm thinking in terms of inference and 
Aristotle's four causes. Peirce somewhere said that logic is governed by final 
causality, and in MS 634 (Sept. 1909) quoted by Joe, Peirce says that the end 
does _act_ (i.e., agentially) mentally as a cause. I remember Joe Ransdell and 
John Collier discussing entropy's increase as a final cause, and that's how 
I've come to think of it, but it's a case where the final cause does not 
causally act in the sense of a causal agent (traditionally, 'agent cause' is 
the same as 'efficient cause'). In Peirce's metaphysics, the three operative 
principles are a 1stness-2ndness-3rdness trichotomy of (1st) 
chance/spontaneity, (2nd) mechanical necessity (corresponding more or less to 
efficient causation), and (3rd) creative love (corresponding more or less to 
final causation). [WITH CORRECTIONS IN BRACKETS] For Peirce in those terms, 
matter is a Second, and so chance/spontaneity does not correspond more or less 
to the material cause, though it [I meant *the material cause*] seems to have a 
ghost of role [I meant *in the Firstness:Chance part of the trichotomy*] since 
matter and collection

Re: [peirce-l] Reply to Steven Ericsson-Zenith & Jerry Chandler re Hilbert & Peirce

2011-11-27 Thread Benjamin Udell
Irving, Jerry, Steven, list,

Irving, thanks for your response, more interesting and informative than what I 
have to say! 

Irving wrote,
  Is there some sort of causality, Aristotelian or otherwise, in [application 
of] inference rules? Once again, I am at a loss here to comprehend how this 
issue of causality relates to the nature of axiom systems or to formalism.
I suspect that Jerry has in mind causal reasoning or something like model-based 
reasoning. The latter is an AI subject that I don't know much about, but the 
simplest examples in online texts consist of causal reasoning as opposed to 
diagnostic reasoning, e.g., causally reasoning from stroke to confusion, as 
opposed to diagnostically reasoning from confusion to stroke.  I am not 
convinced that those are just other words for predictive reasoning versus 
explanatory reasoning, but there seems at least some parallelism.  Anyway, if 
one has a mathematical model of a mechanical system, and one "runs it forward," 
then the calculations might seem to reflect a causal process, though such model 
runs are often not practically feasible, and I don't know whether Newtonian 
mechanics, though deterministic, has been proven or disproven to be (in 
principle) always computable; at this point I'm thinking of digital models, 
while the broadest sense of 'model' could be very broad.

One can expand the idea of causal reasoning to the idea of following a 
connection of reaction/resistance (or at least a connection of neighborhood). 
For example, traversal of the GW bridge from Manhattan will lead a person to be 
in New Jersey, or 'cause' a person to come to be in New Jersey. When one is 
thinking in graph-theoretical terms of the problem of the Seven Bridges of 
Königsberg, I'm not sure that one can still call that aspect of the reasoning 
'causal' (and certainly proof of the problem's insolubility is not itself 
'causal' or 'connectional' in a non-meta sense). Any deductive proof can be 
considered as following a 'path' but my guess is that it is indeed somewhat 
'meta', be it soever fruitful, to regard every deductive proof as a 'causal' or 
'connectional' reasoning about where (i.e., to what logical conclusion) the 
proof path leads the reasoner. If it's a meta view, then it would leave intact 
a distinction between causal/connectional reasoning and other kinds. And of 
course hovering in the background is a notion that concrete causal or 
connection-traversing processes are nature's own kind of inference processes, 
which we map with causal reasoning. At this point I tend to get confused (or 
more confused than I was already). Clearly my mind is wandering now, don't take 
this all too seriously. Is every natural process of decision or determination 
an inference process, and is every inference process also a decision process? I 
like to think that they are but in different senses, but I don't have a clear 
idea what senses. 

I'm not completely wandering. I'm thinking in terms of inference and 
Aristotle's four causes. Peirce somewhere said that logic is governed by final 
causality, and in MS 634 (Sept. 1909) quoted by Joe, Peirce says that the end 
does _act_ (i.e., agentially) mentally as a cause. I remember Joe Ransdell and 
John Collier discussing entropy's increase as a final cause, and that's how 
I've come to think of it, but it's a case where the final cause does not 
causally act in the sense of a causal agent (traditionally, 'agent cause' is 
the same as 'efficient cause'). In Peirce's metaphysics, the three operative 
principles are a 1stness-2ndness-3rdness trichotomy of (1st) 
chance/spontaneity, (2nd) mechanical necessity (corresponding more or less to 
efficient causation), and (3rd) creative love (corresponding more or less to 
final causation).  For Peirce in those terms, matter is a Second, and so 
chance/spontaneity does not correspond more or less to the material cause, 
though it seems to have a ghost of role there since matter and collections of 
particles so lend themselves to statistical treatment and stochastic processes. 
Also we won't find the formal cause as an alternative in Peirce except, I 
guess, as an aspect of the final cause or a way of looking at the final cause. 
It's tempting to think of mathematics as governed by formal causality, with 
formal causes turning agential through active imagination submitting to and 
honoring postulates, contractually as it were, as if they had the force of the 
actual.

While my mind is wandering, here's a Peirce quote, and a table of mine 
assembling some of the ideas I've discussed.

http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/object.html
  "[A sign] must be determined to correspond, according to some principle, and 
by some species of causation, with something else, called its _Object_. In a 
word, whether physically, rationally, or otherwise directly or indirectly, its 
Object, as agent, acts upon the sign, as patient." ('The Basis of 
Pragmaticism', MS 283, 1905)
  Traditio

Re: [peirce-l] ³On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic²

2011-11-25 Thread Benjamin Udell
Re: [peirce-l] "On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for 
Semiotic"CORRECTION, sorry. - Best, Ben

- Original Message ----- 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: Neal Bruss ; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] ³On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic²


Neal, list, 

Peirce's views on the classification evolved over time. I don't know of a 
single source with fully elaborated examples of each and every kind of sign. I 
hope other peirce-listers can chime in with some help.

*The 'canonical' 9-fold classification was set forth in MS 540 from 1903, 
published in Collected Peirce v. 2 paragraphs 233-272 and contains a number of 
examples, though not always happily elaborate. This appears as "Nomenclature of 
Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are Determined" in The Essential Peirce v. 2, 
pp. 289-299. The 9-fold consists of three trichotomies of classes of signs. The 
trichotomies are not fully independent; for example, legisigns include all 
symbols, some but not all indices, and [CORRECTION not 'no icons'] some but not 
all icons [END CORRECTION]. This works out so that the 9 classes intersect to 
form 10 (rather than 27) sign classes fully specified at the level of analysis 
constituted by the 9-fold. 

  Peirce's Ten Classes of Sign (from CP 2.254-263 1903) (I put this table into 
Wikipedia)  Sign's own
  phenome-
  nological
  category Relation
  to
  object Relation
  to
  interpretant Specificational redundancies
  in parentheses Some examples 
  (I) Qualisign Icon Rheme (Rhematic Iconic) Qualisign A feeling of "red" 
  (II) Sinsign Icon Rheme (Rhematic) Iconic Sinsign An individual diagram 
  (III) Index Rheme Rhematic Indexical Sinsign A spontaneous cry 
  (IV) Dicisign Dicent (Indexical) Sinsign A weathercock or photograph 
  (V) Legisign Icon Rheme (Rhematic) Iconic Legisign A diagram, apart from 
its factual individuality 
  (VI) Index Rheme Rhematic Indexical Legisign A demonstrative pronoun 
  (VII) Dicisign Dicent Indexical Legisign A street cry (identifying the 
individual by tone, theme) 
  (VIII) Symbol Rheme Rhematic Symbol (-ic Legisign) A common noun 
  (IX) Dicisign Dicent Symbol (-ic Legisign) A proposition (in the 
conventional sense) 
  (X) Argument Argument (-ative Symbolic Legisign) A syllogism 


*Decads (sets of ten) of trichotomies.* Peirce sought to analyze sign classes 
more finely, by adding more trichotomies. The general idea was that each added 
trichtomy would take the total number of sign classes up to the next triangular 
number T.  So the number of classes would be the (n+1)th triangular number 
(i.e., T_(n+1)). One trichotomy, 3 classes. Two trichotomies, 6 classes. Three 
trichotomies, 10 classes, and so on. Peirce made various attempts to divide 
signs into ten trichotomies (leading to 66 classes) but he did not reach a 
satisfactory conclusion and left the work incomplete. I once read a paper 
online, something related to education, which gave good, interesting, 
elaborated examples of the kinds of representation and interpretation embodied 
by some of these trichotomies, but I can't remember the paper's name and I 
vaguely think that the author or one of the authors was Phyllis Chiasson. 

*Instances/replicas.* Additionally, Peirce discussed how sinsigns (tokens) can 
serve as 'instances' or 'replicas' of legisigns (types), and how legisigns 
(including all symbols) need such instances/replicas in order to be actually 
expressed. The general word 'horse' is a symbol, but its individual utterance 
is an indexical sinsign to your experience of a horse. Eventually Peirce also 
wrote of replicas that are not individual things/events. The term 'horse', 
apart from its expression in any particular language, is a symbol (and 
legisign) which has, as replicas, symbols (the words 'horse,' _caballo_, 
_equus_, etc.) that prescribe qualities of appearance (depending on language) 
for their individual replicas, which are individual indices (indexical 
sinsigns) such as individual utterances 'horse', 'caballo', etc. Peirce's sign 
theory's setting is not in a putative deductive formalism, so Quine's 'gavagai' 
questions of translational indeterminacy are not a burning issue in Peircean 
semiotics.

*Images, diagrams, metaphors. Peirce also divided 'hypoicons' (icons apart from 
any attached indices) into images, diagrams, and metaphors. He had a great deal 
to say about diagrams. He held that mathematical thought proceeds 
diagrammatically, and he makes his distinction between corollarial and 
theorematic reasoning in terms of uses of diagrams. A diagram can be 
geometrical, or consist in an array of algebraic expressions or even in a 
common form like &quo

Re: [peirce-l] ³On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic²

2011-11-25 Thread Benjamin Udell
miotic_elements_and_classes_of_signs#Classes_of_signs
 of a Wikipedia article. Lots of footnotes with links. An indispensable 
starting point on many issues is the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, 
edited by Mats Bergman and Sami Paavola of the University of Helsinki. 
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html. Peirce's own 
definitions, often many per term across the decades. Be sure to look up 
'image', 'diagram', 'metaphor' there. Also check out Atkin's "Peirce's Theory 
of Semiotics" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics and Liszka's 
Synopsis of A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles S. Peirce 
http://hosting.uaa.alaska.edu/afjjl/LinkedDocuments/LiszkaSynopsisPeirce.htm

Peirce also divided interpretants into more than one trichotomy, and there have 
been arguments among scholars about which of these trichotomies are really the 
same and which are really different. Albert Atkin covered at least some of this 
issue (along with much else) in "Peirce's Theory of Semiotics" 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics in the Stanford Encyclopedia 
of Philosophy. When I first read it some years ago, I was so shocked by some of 
what I found there about determination among kinds of interpretants that I sent 
an idiotic post to peirce-l claiming that Atkin didn't know what he was talking 
about. But he did know what he was talking about, and I didn't.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Neal Bruss 
To: Benjamin Udell ; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 3:20 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] ³On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic²


Can any of you recommend a source on the fully-elaborated classification of 
signs with good examples for each and every variety?

Neal Bruss


On 11/24/11 2:59 PM, "Benjamin Udell"  wrote:


  Forwarded to peirce-l, partly as a test. Post intended for peirce-l from 
Claudio Guerri.  - Best, Ben
   
   Mensaje original 

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Re: [peirce-l] “On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic”

2011-11-24 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded to peirce-l, partly as a test. Post intended for peirce-l from 
Claudio Guerri.  - Best, Ben

 Mensaje original  
  Asunto:  Re: [peirce-l] “On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for 
Semiotic” 
  Fecha:  Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:35:58 -0300 
  De:  Claudio Guerri 
  A:  PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 

Mi message apparently didn't reached the List
this is a new try...

Claudio Guerri said the following on 22/11/2011 12:57 p.m.:

Jon, List,
I apologize for not having participated in slow reading yet...
I have a very 'heavy' year...
but just by chance I have read Jon's post...

Of course, I agree on the need of collecting data, but since we are in 
Semiotics, and in a Peirce List, I consider more important to organize data in 
an explicit, logic, and relational way.
The double entry, three column, data table is of course a good way of 
presenting it, and there is already a long experience on that devise called: 
the Semiotic Nonagon (I have written already about this subject on this List, I 
have to admit... with very low success). 
But the order of the columns and rows should not be changed from the logical 
sequence of 1ness, 2ness, and 3ness or we will lose the logical relation of the 
parts.
Of course, Peirce was not fond of that idea... or he would have draw that table 
himself, since he worked out the 10 classes 'triangle' and worked on 
existential graphs. The construction of a 9 square grid means a 'flattening' of 
Peirce's very complex philosophical proposal... but also, the possibility of a 
practical use of the very fruitful Peircean semiotic proposal.

I don't know if the SN that follows can be seen, but something SIMILAR was 
already shown by different scholars, beginning by Max Bense in the 60's, but 
with a very wrong idea, that is: to show the 9 aspects of the sign in 'some 
graphical order'... If the purpose is limited to this intention, it is a severe 
distortion of Peirce's philosophical proposal, that should probably been 
represented in an hyper-spatial diagram... but then, very difficult or 
impossible for practical use.

  Sign
 1st trichotomy
 2nd Trichotomy
 3rd Trichotomy
 
  1st Correlate
 Qualisign
 Icon
 Rhema
 
  2nd Correlate
 Sinsign
 Index
 Dicent sign
 
  3rd Correlate
 Legisign
 Symbol
 Argument
 

To avoid the incongruence of the graphic aspects with the logic concepts 
proposed originally by Peirce, Juan Magariños de Morentin proposed to name the 
9 sub-signs in a different way, that is, using FORM, EXISTENCE and VALUE.

  Sign
 Form
 Existence
 Value
 

  Form
 FF

  Form of Form
 EF
  Existence of Form
 VF

  Value of Form
 

  Existence
 FE
  Form of Existence
 EE
  Existence of Existence
 VE
  Value of existence
 

  Value
 FV

  Form of Value
 EV
  Existence of Value
 VV

  Value of Value
 

With some little differences in the understanding of some of the aspects, I 
named (around 2001) the Magariños's "Grid of Peirce" (which is not "by Peirce") 
as the "Semiotic Nonagon", in opposition to the Greimasean "Semiotic Square".
There are several papers in Spanish, English and German showing the practical 
use of this devise, and there are 15 years of applied practice in market 
qualitative research for radio, TV, film and product investigation that of 
course can, mostly, not be shown...
There are also some papers in collaboration with William S. Huff on Treatment 
of Color, Basic Design, etc. (in English).

I apologize for my not so scholarly English...
Regards
Claudio
-- 

Prof. Dr. Arq. Claudio F. Guerri
Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Domicilio particular: Gral. Lemos 270
1427 BUENOS AIRES
Telefax: (011) 4553-7976/4895
Celular: (011) 15-6289-8123
E-mail: claudiogue...@fibertel.com.ar





Jon Awbrey said the following on 22/11/2011 10:38 a.m.: 

  * Comments on the Peirce List slow reading of Joseph Ransdell, 
"On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic", 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/paradigm.htm 

  One of the things we do in empirical science is collect data. 

  Data is often collected in the form of relational data bases. 
  Relational data bases, at their most basic level, are simply 
  finite sets of "relation elements" or "elementary relations", 
  which are finite sequences, "k-tuples", of a given data type. 
  It is usual to visualize such a data base as arranged in the 
  form of a rectangular table with columns and rows, with each 
  row recording one relation element (k-tuple) and each column 
  headed by a name for the type of datum that goes in the j-th 
  place of the k-tuple. 

  If we ask ourselves: What is the paradigm or pattern of data 
  appropriate for semiotic? -- the answe

Re: [peirce-l] “On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic”

2011-11-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Aye, and let's recall Peirce's definition of "normal"

 "...the 'normal' is not the average (or any other kind of mean) of what 
actually occurs, but of what _would_, in the long run, occur under certain 
circumstances." - c. 1909 MS, _Collected Papers_ v. 6, paragraph 327.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Jon Awbrey
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 12:30 AM 
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] “On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic”


Peirce used the word "formal" in a couple of senses, the first of which 
is closer to its general meaning of "concerned with form", and here he 
can mean either the forms of objects or the forms of syntax, whereas 
the tradition following Russell tends to focus on syntax exclusively. 
In that sense of "formal", Peirce's concept of logic as formal semiotic 
would incorporate both the syntactic or proof-theoretic forms of Russell 
and the semantic or model-theoretic forms of Tarski.

But Peirce also used the word "formal" in another, more specialized sense, 
in which it became the practical equivalent of "normative". In that sense, 
his definition of logic as formal semiotic places logic within the sphere 
of the normative sciences, where it normally belongs. 

Jon

CC: Arisbe, Inquiry, Conceptual Graphs, Peirce List

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[peirce-l] Fw: John J. Fitzgerald (1928-2011)

2011-11-03 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded. - Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Robert Lane
To: The Charles S. Peirce Society 
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 12:48 PM
Subject: Fwd: John J. Fitzgerald (1928-2011)

Dear Members of the Charles S. Peirce Society,

I am forwarding a message from André De Tienne containing the sad news of the 
recent passing of Peirce scholar John J. Fitzgerald.

Sincerely,
Bob
-- 
Robert Lane, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy

Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society

Department of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118

[]
http://www.westga.edu/~rlane 

- Forwarded message -
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 12:16:46 -0400
From: André De Tienne 
Reply-To: André De Tienne
Subject: John J. Fitzgerald
To: Robert Lane 

Bob,

I have just found out that John Joseph Fitzgerald, a philosopher who published 
a few articles and a book on Peirce's semiotics, and who was well acquainted 
with Max Fisch, died a few months ago.

He published two papers in the Transactions: "Peirce's Theory of Inquiry" in 
TCSPS  4.3 (1968) and "Ambiguity in Peirce's Theory of Signs" in TCSPS 12.2 
(1976): 127-134. He also published "Peirce's Doctrine of Symbol" in V. 
Colapietro and T. M. Olshewsky (eds.), Peirce's Doctrine of Signs: Theory, 
Applications, and Connections, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 161-172. 
And of course he published long ago a book on Peirce's Theory of Signs as 
Foundation for Pragmatism (The Hague: Mouton, Studies in Philosophy 11, 1966), 
which was an outgrowth of his Ph.D. dissertation (Tulane University, 1961, 
under James K. Feibleman); it exerted a considerable influence on Peirce 
scholarship for a long time and remains relevant, especially for its analysis 
of the connection between Peirce's pragmaticism and his semeiotic.

Fitzgerald taught philosophy at Southeastern Massachusetts University in North 
Dartmouth (now "University of Massachusetts Dartmouth") for many years.

Here's the obituary  
( 
http://www.heraldnews.com/obituaries/x128432808/OBITUARIES-04-25-11#ixzz1ceLhMErm
 ):

John J. Fitzgerald (1928-2011)
John Joseph Fitzgerald, 82 of Bluffton, SC (formerly of Swansea, MA), passed 
away on Thursday, April 14, 2011.  He was born in North Adams, MA on October 
17, 1928, the son of the late John Francis and Frances Kelly Fitzgerald.  He 
earned degrees from Notre Dame University, St Louis University and Tulane 
University. He taught at UMass Dartmouth, retiring to Callawassie Island, SC in 
1994 trading his snow shovel for golf clubs. He was a retired Captain in the US 
Coast Guard Reserve.  He was a member of Saint Gregory the Great Catholic 
Church.  He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Margaret M. Fitzgerald; two 
daughters, Catherine (David) Rioux of Machias, Maine and Joan Fitzgerald 
(Michael Phelps) of Shelburne Falls, MA; four sons, Stephen (Michelle) of 
Swansea, Thomas (Amy) of Westport, Joseph of Somerset, and Michael of Swansea; 
and eight grandchildren. Funeral services were on Tuesday, April 19th at Saint 
Gregory the Great Catholic Church with burial at Beaufort National Cemetery. 
Memorial gifts may be made to the building fund at Saint Gregory the Great 
Catholic Church, 333 Fording Island Rd, Bluffton, SC.

André

*** 
André De Tienne 
Professor of Philosophy 
Director & General Editor, Peirce Edition Project 
Institute for American Thought 
ES 0010, 902 W New York Street 
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5157 

[]
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce 
http://liberalarts.iupui.edu/iat/ 
***

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[peirce-l] Fw: Peirce Society: 2011-12 Essay Contest: 2nd Call for Submissions

2011-11-01 Thread Benjamin Udell
Duly forwarded, from Robert Lane of the Charles S. Peirce Society 
http://www.peircesociety.org/. - Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Robert Lane 
To: The Charles S. Peirce Society 
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 11:43 AM 
Subject: Peirce Society: 2011-12 Essay Contest: 2nd Call for Submissions 

2ND CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS 

2011-12 Charles S. Peirce Society Essay Contest 

Topic: Any topic on or related to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce. 

Awards: $500 cash prize; presentation at the Society's next annual 
meeting, held in conjunction with the Pacific APA (in Seattle, 
Washington, April 4-7, 2012); possible publication, subject to 
editorial revision, in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce 
Society.

Submission Deadline: January 16, 2012.

Length: Because the winning essay may be published in the 
Transactions, the length of contest submissions should be about the 
length of an average journal article. The maximum acceptable length is 
10,000 words, including notes. The presentation of the winning 
submission at the annual meeting cannot exceed 30 minutes reading time. 

Open to: Graduate students and persons who have held a Ph.D. or its 
equivalent for no more than seven years. Entries from students who 
have not yet begun their graduate training will not be considered.  
Past winners of the contest are ineligible. Joint submissions are 
allowed provided that all authors satisfy the eligibility requirements. 

Advice to Essay Contest Entrants: 

The winning entry will make a genuine contribution to the literature 
on Peirce.  
Therefore, entrants should become familiar with the major currents of 
work on Peirce to date and take care to locate their views in relation 
to published material that bears directly on their topic. 

Entrants should note that scholarly work on Peirce frequently benefits 
from the explicit consideration of the historical development of his 
views. Even a submission that focuses on a single stage in that 
development can benefit from noting the stage on which it focuses in 
reference to other phases of Peirce's treatment of the topic under 
consideration. (This advice is not intended to reflect a bias toward 
chronological studies, but merely to express a strong preference for a 
chronologically informed understanding of Peirce's philosophy.)  
We do not require but strongly encourage, where appropriate, citation 
of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition.  
Ideally, citation of texts found in both the Collected Papers and the 
Writings should be to both CP and W. 

Submissions should be prepared for blind evaluation and must not be 
under consideration for publication elsewhere. 

Cover letter or email should include complete contact information, 
including mailing address and phone numbers, and a statement that the 
entrant meets the eligibility requirements of the contest. 

Electronic submissions are preferred. Submissions should be sent as 
email attachments (Microsoft Word documents, RTF files, or PDF files 
only) to Robert Lane, secretary-treasurer of the Society:  
[see contact info at http://www.westga.edu/~rlane]  

Please include "Peirce Essay Contest Submission" in the subject line 
of your email. 

Submissions by traditional mail are also acceptable. Please mail 
submissions to: 

Robert Lane 
Philosophy Program 
University of West Georgia 
Carrollton, GA 30118 
Attn: Peirce Essay Contest 

-- 
Robert Lane, Ph.D. 
ssociate Professor and Director of Philosophy 

Editor, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society 

Department of English and Philosophy 
University of West Georgia 
Carrollton, GA 30118 

http://www.westga.edu/~rlane

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Re: [peirce-l] community of inquiry

2011-11-01 Thread Benjamin Udell
John, Michael, list, 

I'd look harder, but right now I've a nasty cold. I've looked and don't find 
Peirce speaking in so many words of a community of inquiry, inquirers, 
research, researchers, investigation, or investigators.

It's occurred to me that, given that Peirce (in the "Fixation of Belief") 
defines inquiry as any struggle to move from uncertainty to belief, be it by 
tenacity, authority, congruence, or science, it wouldn't be surprising if 
Peirce regarded a 'community of inquiry' as no special kind of community; every 
community would be a community of inquiry among other things. On thee other 
hand, a scientific community would be a special kind of community.
  "I do not call the solitary studies of a single man a science. It is only 
when a group of men, more or less in intercommunication, are aiding and 
stimulating one another by their understanding of a particular group of studies 
as outsiders cannot understand them, that I call their life a science." 

  C. S. Peirce, "The Nature of Science", MS 1334, Adirondack Summer School 
Lectures, 1905. http://www.unav.es/gep/index-en.html
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "John Quay" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] community of inquiry


Thank you very much for sharing these Michael - they are very helpful.

One thought that has been with me lately is that such references do not
merely point to a "community of inquiry," but rather to a "community of
practice" for which inquiry is indispensible, whether this community is
limited to a particular community or expanded to a generalized community
(issue of truth). 

I suppose I am raising as a question Peirce's meaning of the term
"community" as this connects with inquiry and practice - ?

Does anyone else perceive such an issue?

Kind regards

John Quay




On 1/11/11 11:55 PM, "Michael J. DeLaurentis" 
wrote:

> By no means based on an exhaustive search, John, here are three passages
> which spring to mind, though not using the very phrase "community of
> inquiry." (1) "On the Doctrine of Chances..." : passim, including the
> following -- "...three sentiments, namely, interest in an indefinite
> community, recognition of the possibility of this interest being made
> supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance of the intellectual activity,
> as indispensable requirements of logic." (2) "Some Consequences of Four
> Incapacities": "Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows
> that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY [caps in
> original], without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase in
> knowledge."  (3) "Critical Review of Berkeley's Idealism": "And the catholic
> consent which constitutes the truth is by no means to be limited to men in
> this earthly life or to the human race, but extends to the whole communion
> of minds to which we belong"  You may be well aware of these already, in
> which case, my apologies. But these are the passages (in addition to what
> you cite below) I have found frequently cited in connection with "the
> community of inquiry."  Ben Udell is usually quite adept at scouring the
> entire oeuvre and coming up with relevant passages, so I expect, if he has
> the time, he may again come up with an exhaustive sourcing.
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On
> Behalf Of John Quay
> Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2011 5:59 AM
> To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
> Subject: [peirce-l] community of inquiry
> 
> Hi Peirce-listers
> 
> Just wondering if anyone can help me.
> 
> The phrase "community of inquiry" is often attributed to Peirce and yet I
> cannot find any instance of his actually using this phrase. Sources of this
> attribution can be drawn to Matthew Lipman (amongst others), associated with
> his work in Philosophy for Children
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lipman)
> 
> Peirce definitely speaks often of the importance of community and of
> inquiry, but does not tend to use these words in close association.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone knew of a passage (or passages) in Peirce's work
> that would speak clearly to the association between community and inquiry?
> 
> I understand that Peirce draws a close connection between notions of
> community and scientific or pragmatic truth, for example when he states that
> ³the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who
> investigate, is what we mean by the truth²  (Peirce, 1878, p. 299, CP
> 5.407). But is this the main source of the phrase "community of inquiry"?
> 
> Any help appreciated.
> 
> Kind regards

-- 
John Quay, PhD
Lecturer
Melbourne Graduate School of Education
234 Queensberry Street
The University of Melbourne
VIC, 3010, Australia
T: +61 3 8344 8533 / M: 0438 048 955
E: jq...@unimelb.edu.au
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[peirce-l] Please help me with a name-pronunciation guide for Arisbe

2011-10-25 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

I want to add to Arisbe a guide to pronunciation of names that one encounters 
in studying Peirce, and I need your help! 

There are just too many names that I'm unsure how to pronounce, and though 
probably most you know more of the pronunciations than I do, I'd bet that each 
of us is stumped or mistaken from time to time. The guide will of course begin 
with "Peirce" but the rest will be in alphabetical order. I can use more than 
one method to render the pronunciation, but something like the "gonzo" method 
shown below will be the first method, for the sake of people using automated 
screen readers, none of which read the International Phonetic Alphabet so far 
as I know. I'd like ultimately to add the the Century Dictionary method and the 
IPA method and if you think some other method would be good, please tell me.

I long got "Ransdell" wrong because I assumed that it was stressed on the 
second syllable like my name "Udell" (yoo-DELL). But "Ransdell" is pronounced 
"RANZ-dell" and the e is short but not a schwa. With non-English names of 
people who live in an English-speaking country, it's often quite difficult to 
guess how the person (for example, de Waal) now pronounces their name. 
Sometimes even English names undergo a shift in pronunciation in acquiescence 
to others' typical guesses about pronunciation. (I'm told that there is a 
mathematician named "Hartshorne" who pronounces it "HART-shorn" instead of 
"HARTS-horn" (Charles Hartshorne pronounced it in the traditional way: 
"HARTS-horn")).   Anyway, here's a list that I'm starting with, and I 
appreciate any pronunciation help that people here can give. Sources for 
pronunciations will be credited on the page.

DELEDALLE, Gérard (Dell-DAL or De-le-DAL?)
DE WAAL, Cornelis (v or w? rhymes with pol or pal?)
BEIL, Ralph G. (BEEL, BAIL, or BYLE?)
BUCHLER, Justus (BUCK-ler or BYOOK-ler?)
DIPERT, Randall (DY-pert or DIH-pert?)
EISELE, Carolyn (Too many possibilities)
FEIBLEMAN, James Kern (FEE-bil-men or FY-bil-men?)
HALTON, Eugene (HAL-ten or HOL-ten or HAUL-ten?)
GOUDGE, Thomas A. (GOWJ or GOHJ?)
KEYSER, Cassius Jackson (KY-zer or KAY-zer or KEE-zer?)
KLOESEL, Christian J. W. (KLOH-sel or KLEH-sel or KLOH-zel or KLEH-zel or 
something else?)
LISZKA, James JAKÓB (LISH-ka or LIZ-ka?  Ya-KAWB or Ya-KOHB?)
MARQUAND, Allan (MAR-quend or MAR-quand or Mar-KAWNH or something else?)
MISAK, Cheryl J. (is the "i" long or short? the "s" unvoiced or voiced like z? 
The "a" short or schwa?) 
OCHS, Peter (OAKS or OX?)
PARRET, Herman (like "parrot" or pa-RAY?)
PHARIES, David (Rhymes with "marries" or "berries" or something else?)
SAVAN, David (Rhymes with "savant" or "a van" or "haven" or "say van" or 
something else?)
SEIBERT, Charles H. (SEE-bert or SY-bert?)
SORRELL, Kory Spencer (Sor-RELL or SOR-rell or SOR-ul?) 
TURSMAN, Richard Allen (TURSS-men or TURZ-men?)
WIBLE, James R. (WY-bil or WIH-bil?) 
ZEMAN, John Jay (ZEE-min or ZEE-man or ZEH-min or something else?)
ZUCHERO, John (Zoo-CHEHR-oh or Zoo-KEHR-oh?)

Best, Ben

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 3

2011-10-19 Thread Benjamin Udell
ematical problem won't inspire 
sociological work to help solve it or similar problems (unless one means that a 
sociologist helps muster some mathematicians to solve it), and that 'pure' 
maths and sociology are toward opposite ends of a spectrum.  You can see an 
outline of Peirce's later spectrum or classification of research at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences_(Peirce)#Sciences. 
Also http://www.uta.fi/~attove/peirce_syst.PDF (Tommi Vehkavaara's diagrams of 
Peirce's successive views over the years).

A library scientist Birger Hjørland in Denmark wrote on a webpage of his 
(http://www.iva.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%20LIS/articles%20a-z/classification_of_the_sciences.htm):
 "There is not today (2005), to my knowledge, any organized research program 
about the classification of the sciences in any discipline or in any country. 
As Miksa (1998) writes, the interest for this question largely died in the 
beginning of the 20th century." I don't think that that quite applies to 
mathematicians, but all the same it seems that people interested in Peirce and 
mathematicians are currently the main two groups with an abiding interest in a 
classification with some philosophical or logical basis. Anybody, please 
correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks again for your remarks. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Sally Ness
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" 
Segment 3


Ben, list, 


Thanks very much for this second response--I should say that I did not receive 
any Peirce posts for about 10 days, due to a change in the email system I use, 
so I may have missed a post  from you--apologies for any lack of acknowledgment 
 if that was the case.  Anyway, I appreciate your adding to the record on this 
paper in such a detailed and thoughtful way.


It is interesting, as you point out,  that Peirce starts with economics as an 
example  of a social science, and that he makes the connection (which certainly 
does seem to have ethical and practical aspects) to political economy so 
explicit in the 1902 quote.   I hope that the classificational issues you raise 
might be addressed by other listers.   I am not familiar with this manuscript, 
but it reads to me as though Peirce saw economics as having different "parts" 
to it, making it a science that could belong to more than one class of science 
with regard to differing parts of its character.  Certainly, its mathematical 
"part" is larger, and more elaborately developed, than is the case with at 
least the main streams of many of the other social sciences.  


Regarding psychology, your comments led me to realize that the independence 
Peirce wanted to declare for logic in relation to psychological phenomena may 
have had consequences for the way in which other social sciences are understood 
in relation to Perice's logic as well, if psychology is taken as representative 
of all the social sciences in some way.  This is quite a thought, and my first 
response would be, "hold on a minute!"  I wonder if others have reflected on 
this.  In my view, psychology would be the weakest candidate for representing 
the social sciences in general, focused as it has been on subject- matter that 
typically, in the mainstreams of the discipline, has been defined as basically 
individual in character (individual psyches).  It would seem to have a special 
relationship to philosophy and to logic that is not replicated in the other 
social sciences in this regard.  I haven't thought this through enough to say 
more, but I thank you for bringing it to my attention.


Your comment here about mathematical work seems just right:
Now, let's say that often enough sociological factors in mathematical work pale 
to the point that _usual_ sociological factors and explanations offer 
diminishing returns for sociology about mathematics. 


Indeed, mathematics would seem to be so  "pale" as to be a special case.  The 
spectrum of such paleness it might be understood to sit at the far end of might 
be worth fleshing out at some point, although I doubt there would be much hope 
for consensus on that!


Your comment at the end of that paragraph is really what I was trying to 
articulate at a number of points in my posts--thank you for this clarification: 


   So Joe's criticisisms of sociology of science might apply better to actual 
sociology, at least as he knew it, as actually or potentially abused for 
political ends, than to sociology at its ideal best.


Finally, thanks for the reference to Feynman's work.  His perspective does seem 
akin to a cultural anthropological one.  I am not familiar with it, but hope to 
learn more of it.


Thanks again,
Sally




On Oct 15, 2011, at 12:26 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

-

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 3

2011-10-15 Thread Benjamin Udell
Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational CoSally, list,

I can't resist trying to catch up somewhat, even if I'm slower than ketchup. 

I think that Joe would have taken your criticisms in your post below quite 
seriously. You might even have changed his mind, or at least gotten him to 
define "sociology" as he used it in his paper. 

Economics and science.  Any study of people and society should be able to take 
logical determination into account - determination (causation in the broadest 
sense) by signs and evidences and interpretants as cognitive or semiosic 
factors. Economics continually considers the impacts of expectations and 
beliefs on decision-making about means. 

Science (along with mathematics) involves the active arranging for oneself (and 
the community of inquirers) to be determined by the object through signs to 
true interpretant propositions. Science is a deliberately redoubled form of 
logical determination, seeking bases for nontivial interpretant conclusions 
that are bases for further nontrivial interpretant conclusions and, to put it 
another way, seeking to know or learn in or on what lights or grounds one knows 
or learns things. As it happens, economics is a 'social science' that Peirce 
saw as suited to study and aid scientific research itself. Peirce wrote in 
Draft E - MS L75.180-181 in Memoir 28 his 1902 Application to the Carnegie 
Institute:
  [...] I examine the question of the kinds of knowledge of which the diffusion 
is most desirable, always in the interest of the advancement of science. I find 
the normative sciences, including economics, of greatest importance. If our 
people could only learn enough political economy to see that it is a difficult 
science in which it is needful to trust experts, there would be far more money 
to spend on science than the genius of the country could use to the best 
advantage. The analytical part of political economy is directly dependent on 
logical methodeutic. It is a question whether it is not a branch of logic. 
(The passage raises a host of classificational questions. Did Peirce think that 
some of economics is part of ethics? And if the analytical part of economics 
directly depends on logical methodeutic, but is not part of logic, then by 
Peirce's Comtean classificational rule, it must come at some point _after_ 
logic, which means that, though normative, it is either in metaphysics or in 
the special sciences - presumably it would be there as an application of 
philosophical normative science.)

Psychology (and sociology) and science. Peirce also insisted in the Carnegie 
Application (in Memoir 15, in Draft D - MS L75.247-248) that logic (including 
methodeutic) as part of cenosocopic philosophy is independent of psychology as 
a special science. However, that is not to say that all study of science is in 
logic or in methodeutic in particular. There seems no reason in principle that 
a special science, aided by applications from broader or more abstract 
sciences, _cannot_ successfully study actual disciplines of science, 
mathematics, etc., as actually practiced. (I do see an inherent _difficulty_, 
though not an impossibility, in studying minds that may be more brilliant than 
one's own mind, minds studying subject matters that may be "above one's 
paygrade," etc.) Now, let's say that often enough sociological factors in 
mathematical work pale to the point that _usual_ sociological factors and 
explanations offer diminishing returns for sociology about mathematics. The 
result seems much like what Joe says - one is not so much doing sociology (as 
usually understood) any more. The question is: so what? I grant the practical 
and theoretical difficulties, but not the theoretical impossibility. One's work 
becomes more interdisciplinary and might not entirely belong in the sciences of 
discovery at all - it could, in Peirce's (and I assume Joe's) view get into 
"Science of Review" which does depend on special sciences, cenoscopy, and 
mathematics, and endeavors to form a philosophy of them all. So Joe's 
criticisisms of sociology of science might apply better to actual sociology, at 
least as he knew it, as actually or potentially abused for political ends, than 
to sociology at its ideal best.

Unity of subject matter. I'm also not sure that I agree with Joe about an 
importance of the unity of subject matter to a point where it seems (though Joe 
assuredly did not say this) that unities of means and of purpose don't invite 
or require being taken into account from the beginning. _Ulysses_ and sociology 
about Dublin are both about Dublin but have different purposes. Even among the 
sciences, Peirce for his part distinguishes by purposes and method as well as 
by subject matter. But that's a whole other discussion. 

Implicit norms. In regard to your identifying Joe's discussion of implicit 
norms as belonging to a theme in cultural anthropology, it's also hard to 
resist mentioning Feynman's view that sc

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" Segment 1

2011-10-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational CoDear Sally, list,

I've been occupied, and I guess that it's too late for me to catch up with the 
rest of the slow read, anyway I won't be miffed if nobody replies to this. 
Here's a cut-down version of the draft that I was working on for Segment 1. 
It's interleaved with a previous reply from you.

Thank you for all your careful efforts, Sally, they've been a success.

Best, Ben

 Original Message - 
From: Sally Ness 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational Communities" 
Segment 1


>[SN] Dear Ben, List,


>[SN] Thanks for your response.  Sorry about the subscription wall.  If there 
>are others who ran into this problem, I have a .doc copy that I can send 
>off-list (I don't think the list serve will allow me to attach it to a post).


>[SN] Ben, I'm glad to see your comments about JR's commitment to developing 
>new forms of communication that were not elitist--at least in the 
>paper-credential sense as you put it.  Elitism and arrogance are terms that 
>reoccur in JRs paper and in the discourse relating to it.  It would seem to 
>afford the slow read an opportunity to reflect on how JR lived and worked in 
>relation to these ideas as well.  I think your examples of his working against 
>elitism of certain kinds are very well chosen.  Peirce seems obviously to have 
>been a model for JR in this regard.  However, Peirce seems also to have been 
>painfully aware of forms of elitism that permeated his own character, and 
>which left him far from perfect in his own view of himself (I wish I had 
>quotes to back this up, but I'm mainly thinking vaguely back to some 
>biographical material from Joseph Brent's and Kenneth Ketner's works, and 
>various phrasing patterns in Peirce's writing--nothing easy to reference).  
>Peirce wasn't just fighting the elitism "out there." That is part of what 
>imbues Peirce's work with such a moving spirit of humility, in my reading 
>anyway.  I imagine JR was similar in this regard, although I don't really get 
>a strong sense of it in this particular paper.

[BU] Elitism gets involved with arrogance and so on, but they're not the 
selfsame thing. Peirce confessed to and regretted his sometimes contemptuous 
manner (e.g., towards William James, see CP 6.174-182 or here), but his 
contempt didn't mean that he misunderstood the topic (one of Zeno's Paradoxes) 
that occasioned it. Peirce was also something of an elitist (e.g., in "The 
Fixation of Belief," see CP 5.380), but never made a contrite kind of 
confession of it that I'm aware of, and I don't know that he ever saw it as a 
flaw.  To judge of Joe's attitude in his article - was he getting into elitism? 
- it doesn't really depend, for example, on whether he had a peremptory tone 
about Kleinman. One needs collateral information both on Kleinman's topics and 
on what collateral information Joe had about those topics, because those topics 
involved particular circumstances, from 15 or more years ago.

>[SN] I'm not sure I'm following your analogies about the architects and 
>engineers (they represent the scientist/insider, I think), ...

[BU] Yes, I got mixed up. I'd have to revise to say, "somebody playing engineer 
who yet lacks interest in developing something reliable" and suchlike. That 
would be a closer parallel to people criticizing scientific methods from an 
unscientific standpont, in an unscientific spirit, etc.

>[SN] ... but your explanation of where JR sees "the shadows springing up" is 
>very helpful, particularly when you foreground the role of "official" 
>interests.  JR's paper also makes this strong distinction between forms of 
>expertise that are the consequences of technical practice and seemingly free 
>of officialdom and forms of authority that are based in institutional contexts 
>and are utterly disconnected form such practices.  A lot would seem to be 
>hanging on this dissociation.  I'll try to zero in on this in the next segment 
>or the one after.  In any case, I do read JRs paper as being written with the 
>science wars of the 1980s and 90s very much in mind (the original version was 
>presented before the 1996 Sokal hoax, but it was still in the news when the 
>revised versions were written).  I have wondered if JR made a strong link 
>between Kleinman's ideas and those of Foucault.  Foucault seems more in the 
>background here than Derrida to me, but that's not to say both aren't exerting 
>an influence.

[BU] Thanks to your generosity, I've read the Kleinman article in question, 
"Why Science and Scientists are Under Fire" (September 29, 1995). Also, I've 
found another one online cowritten by him that goes over some of the same 
territory, "Democratizing Science, Debating Values" by Abby J. Kinchy and 
Daniel Lee Kleinman, summer 2005, _Dissent_ 
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=213. But Kleinman's earlier 

[peirce-l] Slow read: "Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic"

2011-10-01 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded at Nathan Houser's request. Thank you for your persistence, Nathan! - 
Best, Ben.
===

Message for Peirce-L

The last thing I want to do is intrude on a good ongoing discussion but I guess 
I'd better take a moment to introduce the October slow read of Joe's early 
paper on "Some Leading Ideas of Peirce's Semiotic."  JR originally presented 
this paper in 1976 in Atlanta at the inaugural meeting of the Semiotic Society 
of America and published it in the proceedings.  It was republished with 
revisions in 1977 in Semiotica.  It is worth remembering that in 1976 when Joe 
wrote this paper Peirce's semiotics was not widely known.  (Yesterday I 
composed and posted an earlier version of this introductory message but it 
disappeared in cyberspace.  I recomposed my message and tried sending it again 
twice failing both times.  I'll give up for now and send it to Ben (Gary is on 
vacation) and ask him to post it on the forum and I'll work with the tech 
people at IUPUI to find out why my posts aren't going through.  In the 
meantime, in case the cyber logjam breaks, you may receive three earlier 
versions of this post.  In at least one of them my signature routine reverted 
to my pre-retirement signature with titles I no longer hold - my apologies to 
André De Tienne and David Pfeifer.) 

I should point out that shortly after agreeing to lead the October discussion, 
I lost contact with Peirce-L and only managed to restore my connectivity 
(apparently not entirely yet) in mid-September during the lively discussion of 
JR's "Sciences as Communicational Communities."  I missed all of the previous 
slow read discussions which probably dealt with many of the same issues I'll 
raise for the October read.  Let me know if I ask you to consider topics you've 
already poured over in earlier slow reads and, of course, bring your own 
questions to the forum.

As it happens, I'm just beginning an extended weekend family visit and won't be 
able to take up discussion of "Leading Ideas" until next Tuesday (the 4th).  
But I'll make some introductory remarks now and will try to at least comment on 
any posts that come in before the 4th.

JR began this paper by pointing out that Peirce conceived of semiotics as a 
foundational theory capable of unifying sub-theories dealing with 
communication, meaning, and inference.  This may call for some discussion. He 
then claims that 90% of Peirce's "prodigious philosophical output" is directly 
concerned with semiotic."  This is an odd claim in a way since it does not seem 
to be straightforwardly true. How can we make sense of it?

Issues that may require clarification or revision in light of earlier slow read 
discussions and/or further development in Joe's later writings:

What are the so-called semiotical sciences (what JR also called "special 
semiotic")?

Why does JR equate mind with semiosis?  It seems to me that mind is generally 
regarded as something like a system of signs, or a semiotic system, while 
thought, as dynamic, not static, is equated with semiosis.

JR says that Peirce conceived of truth as "a more generic . . . conception, 
namely the conception of a goal-directed activity which normally moves from a 
state of dissatisfaction to a state of satisfaction."  Isn't this too broad? It 
seems to me that playing a game falls under this conception.  What is the 
"extra ingredient" that makes such goal-directed activity truth seeking?

More generally, what are the key elements, according to JR, of Peirce's "basic 
model" for science/semiosis/cybernetics, namely, "the truth-seeking tendency in 
human life"?  And, perhaps more importantly, is this really a universal 
tendency? 

Is the end-state of every sign-interpretational process really the object of 
that process?  Perhaps, we might ask, does truth merge with reality at the end 
of semiosis?  This seems to be what JR is saying.  Some Peirce scholars 
(Hookway, for example) say that this is not Peirce's mature view. 

A related question/concern is whether, as JR seems to have supposed, our only 
access to real objects is by way of the immediate objects of semiosis.

Other things we may want to consider (although it's mainly up to you to decide 
this) are JR's interesting and rather brilliant way of explaining how the 
concept of a semiotic object might be derived from the concept of an utterer 
(with reference to MS 318 - of which the relevant parts are published in EP2); 
his suggestion that "the need to account for the possibility of error in 
interpretation" is a "generic feature of all semiosis"; and his account of 
Peirce's conception of symbolic signs and their relation to iconic and 
indexical signs.

These are only suggestions to help focus your early reading of JR's "Some 
Leading Ideas."  We'll see where things go.

Remember that the slow read discussions are not intended to dominate the 
Peirce-L forum.  Joe would have been distressed over the thought that the 
normal give and take of

Re: [peirce-l] Arisbe Enhancements

2011-09-15 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jon,

Thank you, you're welcome. I updated the link the day after I read your post, 
and that's longer than I usually take, but I had been out to dinner that night, 
and so on. I'm glad that nobody thinks that I'm destroying Arisbe. I had the 
opportunity the other day to see it on a different kind of screen, and the 
backgrounds of the Projects page items were some kind of flaming orange, not at 
all mild like on my computer. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Jon Awbrey" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 9:20 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Arisbe Enhancements


Ben,

Thanks for all the amazing work on the Old Arisbe Home.
Here's a Web Archive link for the Awbrey & Awbrey paper on Inquiry:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970626071826/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html

The link you have now goes to an "unauthorized copy" that has the defect of 
missing the figures.

Regards and thanks again,

Jon

Benjamin Udell wrote:
> P.S., regarding Arisbe website suggestions, you can make them on-list, but if 
> you want to send an Arisbe suggestion off-list, send it to both me and Gary: 
> 
> richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu 
> gary.richm...@gmail.com 
> bud...@nyc.rr.com 
> 
> Best, Ben

-- 

facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/3fkwvf69kridz/1
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey

-
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L 
listserv.  To remove yourself from this list, send a message to 
lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the 
message.  To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU

Re: [peirce-l] A change in the slow read schedule, and some Arisbe enhancements

2011-09-13 Thread Benjamin Udell
P.S., regarding Arisbe website suggestions, you can make them on-list, but if 
you want to send an Arisbe suggestion off-list, send it to both me and Gary: 

richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu 
gary.richm...@gmail.com 
bud...@nyc.rr.com 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] A change in the slow read schedule, and some Arisbe 
enhancements


Thanks, Gary and Irving.  

For my part I agree that it's best to postpone "On Peirce's Conception of the 
Iconic Sign" so that Fernando can do it.

I'm sorry that I've been out of loops both on-list and off-list! I plan to get 
back into the current slow read. We all have our distractions, but I seem to 
cope with mine less well than, say, Gary copes with his. 

Thanks regarding also Arisbe. I'd appreciate it if people take a look at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/projects.htm and tell me of past or present Peirce 
centers/institutes/projects that are not listed there. If you have a link, even 
one that does not currently work, please send it along. In general, please send 
me Arisbe website suggestions, questions, updates, corrections. I'm usually 
pretty quick to repair a broken link when I learn of one.  

Yes, as I go along I'm adding links for "More by" the given author. Thanks, 
Irving, I've just added your preprint on truth tables.

As to what else I've done:
  a.. Most of html effort:  Late June to July, in a number of pages, reduced 
html markup by using css markup, replaced framesets with statically positioned 
elements, some scrollable.  Haven't yet removed every vestige of 
"old-fashioned" kinds of html markup, for various reasons.  Of course, every 
time I fiddle with something, it's a kind of html/css effort.  Sometimes I go 
back and re-do things to be simpler or more consistent.  Some of my effort is 
to make Arisbe look "alive and kicking" - variations in the appearance, while 
keeping Joe's basics - bolded fonts, certain colors, triangular bullets, often 
linen backgrounds, etc.  I really like the bolded fonts. I don't know what it 
is these days with websites and their tiny grey fonts. 
  b.. Have lately tried to make things easier for those using automated screen 
readers (this matter is known as "accessibility").  Separating myth from fact 
about accessibility is not alway easy. 
  c.. I've added a few pages such as: 
a.. list of (more or less) Peirce-related journals ; 
b.. page of PEP links (not strictly necessary but I liked getting them all 
into one place); 
c.. page of links to Peirce manuscripts, letters, drawings online, 
especially those at Harvard's Houghton Library website.  Harvard's color is 
crimson, so I used some clover, which they're not completely out of yet 
(colloquially speaking); and 
d.. if somebody has an idea for a new page, let me know.
  d.. Made a sortable table of Joe's compilation of data on 351 dissertations 
on Peirce.  Joe had them compiled no later than February 1, 2007.  I suppose 
that very plausibly a further compilation sits on a computer of his in Lubbock. 
  e.. Many current websites don't delete broken links, thank goodness, so now 
links to old Peirce-related websites preserved on the Wayback Machine are in 
the page on Centers, Projects, Institutes, etc. 
  f.. Added language tags for personal names all over the place.  Now, say you 
have a name like "Mihhail Lotman" at U. of Tartu in Estonia.  What language(s) 
do you put? I put "lang=et" (Estonian). 
  g.. Recently linked at the Peirce-Related Papers page:   papers by Tony 
Jappy, Eliseo Fernández, Gary Richmond, Paul Burgess, Irving Anellis, Fernando 
Zalamea, and Jaime Nubiola & Sara Barrena. 
a.. Restored some links to papers by Ian Adam and John Upper that used to 
be there but were removed, I guess because the original links were broken. 
b.. Links to S.E.E.D. articles now repaired.  Special case, some links 
broken not because a linked Website is gone or a paper has been moved, but 
mostly because of slightly inaccurate URLs and because S.E.E.D.'s server seems 
especially sensitive to capitalization in URLs and the S.E.E.D. articles are 
not consistent in their URL caps/non-caps. 
c.. Links atop page to other article collections.  (Connect to the City, 
not just to the House).
  h.. Various little touchups.
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Richmond" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 11:12 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] A change in the slow read schedule, and some Arisbe 
enhancements


List,
It's become necessary to make a change in the slow read schedule. Fernando 
Andacht, who this past January stepped up to open the slow read series with a 
thread centered on his interview with Joe Ransdell, and who was s

Re: [peirce-l] A change in the slow read schedule, and some Arisbe enhancements

2011-09-13 Thread Benjamin Udell
Thanks, Gary and Irving.  

For my part I agree that it's best to postpone "On Peirce's Conception of the 
Iconic Sign" so that Fernando can do it.

I'm sorry that I've been out of loops both on-list and off-list! I plan to get 
back into the current slow read. We all have our distractions, but I seem to 
cope with mine less well than, say, Gary copes with his. 

Thanks regarding also Arisbe. I'd appreciate it if people take a look at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/projects.htm and tell me of past or present Peirce 
centers/institutes/projects that are not listed there. If you have a link, even 
one that does not currently work, please send it along. In general, please send 
me Arisbe website suggestions, questions, updates, corrections. I'm usually 
pretty quick to repair a broken link when I learn of one.  

Yes, as I go along I'm adding links for "More by" the given author. Thanks, 
Irving, I've just added your preprint on truth tables.

As to what else I've done:
  a.. Most of html effort:  Late June to July, in a number of pages, reduced 
html markup by using css markup, replaced framesets with statically positioned 
elements, some scrollable.  Haven't yet removed every vestige of 
"old-fashioned" kinds of html markup, for various reasons.  Of course, every 
time I fiddle with something, it's a kind of html/css effort.  Sometimes I go 
back and re-do things to be simpler or more consistent.  Some of my effort is 
to make Arisbe look "alive and kicking" - variations in the appearance, while 
keeping Joe's basics - bolded fonts, certain colors, triangular bullets, often 
linen backgrounds, etc.  I really like the bolded fonts. I don't know what it 
is these days with websites and their tiny grey fonts. 
  b.. Have lately tried to make things easier for those using automated screen 
readers (this matter is known as "accessibility").  Separating myth from fact 
about accessibility is not alway easy. 
  c.. I've added a few pages such as: 
a.. list of (more or less) Peirce-related journals ; 
b.. page of PEP links (not strictly necessary but I liked getting them all 
into one place); 
c.. page of links to Peirce manuscripts, letters, drawings online, 
especially those at Harvard's Houghton Library website.  Harvard's color is 
crimson, so I used some clover, which they're not completely out of yet 
(colloquially speaking); and 
d.. if somebody has an idea for a new page, let me know.
  d.. Made a sortable table of Joe's compilation of data on 351 dissertations 
on Peirce.  Joe had them compiled no later than February 1, 2007.  I suppose 
that very plausibly a further compilation sits on a computer of his in Lubbock. 
  e.. Many current websites don't delete broken links, thank goodness, so now 
links to old Peirce-related websites preserved on the Wayback Machine are in 
the page on Centers, Projects, Institutes, etc. 
  f.. Added language tags for personal names all over the place.  Now, say you 
have a name like "Mihhail Lotman" at U. of Tartu in Estonia.  What language(s) 
do you put? I put "lang=et" (Estonian). 
  g.. Recently linked at the Peirce-Related Papers page:   papers by Tony 
Jappy, Eliseo Fernández, Gary Richmond, Paul Burgess, Irving Anellis, Fernando 
Zalamea, and Jaime Nubiola & Sara Barrena. 
a.. Restored some links to papers by Ian Adam and John Upper that used to 
be there but were removed, I guess because the original links were broken. 
b.. Links to S.E.E.D. articles now repaired.  Special case, some links 
broken not because a linked Website is gone or a paper has been moved, but 
mostly because of slightly inaccurate URLs and because S.E.E.D.'s server seems 
especially sensitive to capitalization in URLs and the S.E.E.D. articles are 
not consistent in their URL caps/non-caps. 
c.. Links atop page to other article collections.  (Connect to the City, 
not just to the House).
  h.. Various little touchups.
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Richmond" 
To: 
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 11:12 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] A change in the slow read schedule, and some Arisbe 
enhancements


List,
It's become necessary to make a change in the slow read schedule. Fernando 
Andacht, who this past January stepped up to open the slow read series with a 
thread centered on his interview with Joe Ransdell, and who was scheduled to 
emcee Joe's "On Peirce's Conception of the Iconic Sign" this month, will have 
to postpone that second read until the beginning of next year because of 
several new, unexpected, and wholly demanding professional obligations. Since 
the icon is a topic of Fernando's special interest and expertise, I look 
forward to his emceeing that read this coming January.
Meanwhile, Ben Udell has, in my opinion, been doing quite extraordinary work on 
the Arisbe site, so that whenever I visit it (not frequently enough, I'm 
afraid) I think I find a new enhancement. On the other hand, much of Ben's 
greatest efforts there have been 'beneath the 

[peirce-l] Note from Gary Richmond

2011-09-09 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

Sorry I've been out of it for the last week or so. 

Gary Richmond has asked me to send the list a note that, if anyone needs to 
contact him, they should use his gmail account gary.richm...@gmail.com .

Best, Ben


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Re: [peirce-l] Peirce and Hölderlin

2011-09-03 Thread Benjamin Udell
Cassiano, George,

I've done a search through the Collected Papers, the Writings, Contributions to 
'the Nation', and the Comprehensive Bibliography, and found no references to 
Hölderlin, Holderlin, or Hoelderlin. All instances of "Zeichen" were in titles 
of secondary works listed in the Comprehensive Bibliography. I found one 
instance of "Mnemosyne" in Peirce's writing, in "§2. Second Thoughts. Irenica" 
in "Evolutionary Love" 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/evolove/evolove.htm The Monist, vol. 
3, pp. 176-200 (1893), but it wasn't in explicit connection with Hölderlin. 
  CP 6.301. Remembering that all matter is really mind, remembering, too, the 
continuity of mind, let us ask what aspect Lamarckian evolution takes on within 
the domain of consciousness. Direct endeavor can achieve almost nothing. It is 
as easy by taking thought to add a cubit to one's stature as it is to produce 
an idea acceptable to any of the Muses by merely straining for it before it is 
ready to come. We haunt in vain the sacred well and throne of  Mnemosyne; the 
deeper workings of the spirit take place in their own slow way, without our 
connivance. Let but their bugle sound, and we may then make our effort, sure of 
an oblation for the altar of whatsoever divinity its savour gratifies. Besides 
this inward process, there is the operation of the environment, which goes to 
break up habits destined to be broken up and so to render the mind lively. 
Everybody knows that the long continuance of a routine of habit makes us 
lethargic, while a succession of surprises wonderfully brightens the ideas. 
[]
Searching online on +Peirce Hölderlin, I found that Sebeok mentions Hölderlin's 
poem in connection with Peirce in Footnote 2 in Global Semiotics:
  2. The "man-sign analogy" is not, contrary to what many Peirce scholars 
suppose, unique to him. Cf., for instance, this pronouncement by Hölderlin: 
"Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos, Schmerzlos sind wir und haben fast die 
Sprache in der Fremde verloren" (1959, 204).
With some Google translation help, a nearly word-for-word translation seems:
  A sign are we, interpretationless, painless are we and have almost lost the 
language in the foreign [or the foreign land or the unknown].
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: gstic...@mindspring.com 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2011 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Peirce and Hölderlin

I've not found anything in a bit of a cursory search 
George

-Original Message- 
From: Cassiano Terra Rodrigues 
Sent: Aug 31, 2011 1:46 AM 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Subject: [peirce-l] Peirce and H=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=F6lderlin?= 

Hello list:

Does anyone know whether Peirce knew anything by Friedrich Hölderlin? 
I'm thinking specifically about Hölderlins poem called Mnemosyne, where the 
image of man as sign appears. I found this link to the poem: 

http://publish.uwo.ca/~rparke3/documents/mnemosynedrafttrans.pdf

And also this quote from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (I couldn't make sure 
yet whether or not it's from "The Death of Empedocles"/ "Der Tod des 
Empedokles", by Hölderlin): 
"Der Pathos des Sängers ist nicht die betäubende Naturmacht, sondern die 
Mnemosyne, die Besinnung und gewordeneInnerlichkeit, die Erinnerung des 
unmittelbaren Wesens." (sorry, I can't translate that into English and couldn't 
find the translation online, but it's from the Phenomenology of Spirit, 
VII.B.c: The Spiritual Work of Art).  This quote seems to indicate to the same 
general philosophical point as CSP does in his 1868 papers on cognition: the 
impossibility of an imediate knowledge. Anyway, just a point of historical 
curiosity; but the Hölderlin case seems more interesting, to me at least.
All the very best to all,
cass.

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Re: [peirce-l] Lay question about speculative grammar

2011-09-01 Thread Benjamin Udell
Hi, Kevin,

I just realized that I omitted some important angles of the difference between 
speculative grammar and conceptual analysis. Speculative grammar considers and 
classifies not only terms and term-like signs (rhemes) but also propositions 
and proposition-like signs (dicisigns) and arguments. For example, dicisigns 
can be classified as declarative, imperative, etc. It doesn't get into 
critiquing arguments as valid or invalid, etc., but still it gets into 
considering not only concepts but also judgments and reasonings as signs. 
Another angle is that stechiotic is considered to include the classification 
not just of signs, but also objects and interpretants. The 
object-sign-interpretant relation itself probably belongs in stechiotic, - 
certainly does belong there if the "prior material" mentioned in my previous 
post belongs there too.
  1.. Speculative grammar, a.k.a. stechiotic, stoicheology, etc. Conditions for 
meaningfulness. Study of significatory elements and combinations, their 
grammar. 
  2.. Logical critic, a.k.a critic, critical logic, critique of arguments. 
Validity, conditions for true representation. Critique of arguments in their 
various separate modes. 
  3.. Speculative rhetoric, a.k.a methodeutic. Conditions for determining 
interpretations. Methodology of inquiry in its mutually interacting or, better, 
"inter-practicing" modes. Sometimes it's a competitive inter-practice, as 
represented by the "four methods of inquiry" in "The Fixation of Belief."
Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Lay question about speculative grammar


Hi, Kevin,

Thanks for joining and posting. 

Have you read Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds.htm by Joseph 
Ransdell?  It's a good introduction to his speculative grammar. 

Here are some more links in case you missed one.

a.. Marty, Robert (1997), "76 Definitions of the Sign by C. S. Peirce" 
collected and analyzed by Robert Marty, Department of Mathematics, University 
of Perpignan, Perpignan, France, and "12 Further Definitions or Equivalent 
proposed by Alfred Lang", Dept. of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, 
Switzerland. Eprint. 
a.. Atkin, Albert (2006), "Peirce's Theory of Semiotics", Stanford Encyclopedia 
of Philosophy. 

As regards his logic or semiotic in general, and its division into three 
departments, the section "Philosophy: logic, or semiotic" in 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce is not bad, and has 
footnotes with references and links to the relevant material, usually texts by 
Peirce. A lot of it was written by Jon Awbrey, and I've edited it since then 
and added a bunch of things. In that section, the subsections on pragmatism and 
theory of inquiry are on methodeutic.

In Peirce's view, conceptions ARE signs. Now, one may mean various things by 
"concept" or "conception," but one can say that intellectual conceptions are 
symbols. Peirce's speculative grammar a.k.a. stechiotic is not confined to the 
analysis and classification of symbols or intellectual conceptions. It also 
deals with icons and indices, as well as other ways to divide signs. So its 
subject matter is broader than that of conceptual analysis, but it might be 
considered to include a good deal of conceptual analysis.  In Peirce's view 
conceptions and symbols can have icons 'attached' them, - that is, the word and 
idea 'blue' can evoke an apprehension of the quality of blue in one's mind. 
Peirce investigates such relationships. Peirce also considers the functions of 
conceptions and other symbols in semiosis. Symbols grow, in his view, and a 
principle role of a symbol is to combine an index with an icon. The icon is 
attached to the symbol, and the symbol's actual individual instance (itself not 
a symbol but an index), for example an individual utterance of the word 
"horse," is an index to one's experience of the symbol's object, some horse. 
The index directs one to the object and the icon offers characteristics 
attributed to the object. (Another index-icon combo is a photograph, which on 
the whole is an index to the extent that its meaning depends on its being 
factually connected to its object.)

Now, there is a good deal in Peirce's philosophical logic that he seems to have 
treated as 'prior' to the specific departments of stechiotic, critic, and 
methodeutic. This 'prior' material includes the consideration of the 
presuppostions of reason, the nature of belief, doubt, to learn, etc. However, 
later he seemed to include all that in his first department of logic. A brief 
outline of this issue is in "Classification of the

Re: [peirce-l] Lay question about speculative grammar

2011-09-01 Thread Benjamin Udell
Hi, Kevin,

Thanks for joining and posting. 

Have you read Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/eds.htm by Joseph 
Ransdell?  It's a good introduction to his speculative grammar. 

Here are some more links in case you missed one.

a.. Marty, Robert (1997), "76 Definitions of the Sign by C. S. Peirce" 
collected and analyzed by Robert Marty, Department of Mathematics, University 
of Perpignan, Perpignan, France, and "12 Further Definitions or Equivalent 
proposed by Alfred Lang", Dept. of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, 
Switzerland. Eprint. 
a.. Atkin, Albert (2006), "Peirce's Theory of Semiotics", Stanford Encyclopedia 
of Philosophy. 

As regards his logic or semiotic in general, and its division into three 
departments, the section "Philosophy: logic, or semiotic" in 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce is not bad, and has 
footnotes with references and links to the relevant material, usually texts by 
Peirce. A lot of it was written by Jon Awbrey, and I've edited it since then 
and added a bunch of things. In that section, the subsections on pragmatism and 
theory of inquiry are on methodeutic.

In Peirce's view, conceptions ARE signs. Now, one may mean various things by 
"concept" or "conception," but one can say that intellectual conceptions are 
symbols. Peirce's speculative grammar a.k.a. stechiotic is not confined to the 
analysis and classification of symbols or intellectual conceptions. It also 
deals with icons and indices, as well as other ways to divide signs. So its 
subject matter is broader than that of conceptual analysis, but it might be 
considered to include a good deal of conceptual analysis.  In Peirce's view 
conceptions and symbols can have icons 'attached' them, - that is, the word and 
idea 'blue' can evoke an apprehension of the quality of blue in one's mind. 
Peirce investigates such relationships. Peirce also considers the functions of 
conceptions and other symbols in semiosis. Symbols grow, in his view, and a 
principle role of a symbol is to combine an index with an icon. The icon is 
attached to the symbol, and the symbol's actual individual instance (itself not 
a symbol but an index), for example an individual utterance of the word 
"horse," is an index to one's experience of the symbol's object, some horse. 
The index directs one to the object and the icon offers characteristics 
attributed to the object. (Another index-icon combo is a photograph, which on 
the whole is an index to the extent that its meaning depends on its being 
factually connected to its object.)

Now, there is a good deal in Peirce's philosophical logic that he seems to have 
treated as 'prior' to the specific departments of stechiotic, critic, and 
methodeutic. This 'prior' material includes the consideration of the 
presuppostions of reason, the nature of belief, doubt, to learn, etc. However, 
later he seemed to include all that in his first department of logic. A brief 
outline of this issue is in "Classification of the sciences (Peirce): Logic's 
divisions later" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences_(Peirce)#Logic.27s_divisions_later,
 again with footnotes with references and links.

The conception or idea of a horse, or something like the meaning of the word 
"horse," is a symbol which, to the extent that it is can be expressed or evoked 
by a word, has as its _replicas_, as Peirce called them, such words as English 
"horse" and Spanish "caballo."  Those replicas are also symbols, ones which 
prescribe qualities of sound and appearance for their individual instances. 
Peirce thought of words less as the clothing of ideas than as clothed ideas.  
The individual instances of words are also replicas, of the given word and of 
the idea, but are not symbols, in Peirce's classification, where all symbols 
are generals or generalities (a generality as a sign he called a 'legisign' or 
'type'.)  Instead, the individual instance of a symbol (and of any other 
legisign) is an _index_, more specifically an indexical sinsign, to one's 
experience of the legisign's object.  (He called a sign that consists in an 
individual actuality or fact a 'sinsign' or 'token').  I don't have all the 
references handy, but they're in "Semiotic elements and classes of signs" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_elements_and_classes_of_signs, much of 
which I wrote a year or two ago, in the sections on classes of signs. The 
references are in footnotes and usually include links.

Well, that's a whole bunch of stuff.  You or anybody, please send along any 
comments or criticisms.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Kevin H 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011 11:50 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] Lay question about speculative grammar

Hi all:

I'm not a Peirce scholar like many of you, and a few months ago my subscription 
to this list was approved (it took forever).  But I have a keen 

[peirce-l] Jerry Dozoretz

2011-08-21 Thread Benjamin Udell
List,

Jerry Dozoretz passed away earlier this month. Condolences to his beloved wife 
Ann and family. Ann emailed Nathan Houser, Gary Richmond, and me about it today.

Denver Post obituary 
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?n=jerry-dozoretz&pid=153047257
 (August 12-14). 

Jerry had a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Californis, Santa Barbara. 
He was an Instructor and Assisstant Professor of Philosophy from 1970 to 1983. 
An article of his was published in _Peirce Studies_ 1. Starting in 1983 he 
worked in the private sector, eventually going into business for himself. He 
had five children.

Jerry was the chief operating officer of the Peirce Group, which owns the 
Arisbe website and peirce-l, and was working on their relocation from Texas 
Tech to the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI. He was also working on the 
relocation of Joseph Ransdell's papers and library to the IAT.

He was a pleasure to work with.  I'm at a loss for words.  In our last phone 
conversation Jerry told me that he and Joe had been friends since childhood.  
As usual he sounded well and upbeat and 20 years younger than he was. 

Ben Udell

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[peirce-l] Fw: Peirce Society: 2011-12 Essay Contest: Call for Submissions

2011-08-19 Thread Benjamin Udell
Forwarded.

- Original Message - 
From: Robert Lane
To: The Charles S. Peirce Society
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 4:55 PM
Subject: Peirce Society: 2011-12 Essay Contest: Call for Submissions


CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2011-12 Charles S. Peirce Society Essay Contest

Topic: Any topic on or related to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Awards: $500 cash prize; presentation at the Society's next annual  
meeting, held in conjunction with the Pacific APA (in Seattle,  
Washington, April 4-7, 2012); possible publication, subject to  
editorial revision, in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce  
Society.

Submission Deadline: January 16, 2012.

Length: Because the winning essay may be published in the  
Transactions, the length of contest submissions should be about the  
length of an average journal article. The maximum acceptable length is  
10,000 words, including notes. The presentation of the winning  
submission at the annual meeting cannot exceed 30 minutes reading time.

Open to: Graduate students and persons who have held a Ph.D. or its  
equivalent for no more than seven years. Entries from students who  
have not yet begun their graduate training will not be considered.  
Past winners of the contest are ineligible. Joint submissions are  
allowed provided that all authors satisfy the eligibility requirements.

Advice to Essay Contest Entrants:

The winning entry will make a genuine contribution to the literature  
on Peirce. Therefore, entrants should become familiar with the major  
currents of work on Peirce to date and take care to locate their views  
in relation to published material that bears directly on their topic.

Entrants should note that scholarly work on Peirce frequently benefits  
from the explicit consideration of the historical development of his  
views. Even a submission that focuses on a single stage in that  
development can benefit from noting the stage on which it focuses in  
reference to other phases of Peirce's treatment of the topic under  
consideration. (This advice is not intended to reflect a bias toward  
chronological studies, but merely to express a strong preference for a  
chronologically informed understanding of Peirce's philosophy.)
We do not require but strongly encourage, where appropriate, citation  
of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition.  
Ideally, citation of texts found in both the Collected Papers and the  
Writings should be to both CP and W.

Submissions should be prepared for blind evaluation and must not be  
under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Cover letter or email should include complete contact information,  
including mailing address and phone numbers, and a statement that the  
entrant meets the eligibility requirements of the contest.

Electronic submissions are preferred. Submissions should be sent as  
email attachments (Microsoft Word documents, RTF files, or PDF files  
only) to Robert Lane, secretary-treasurer of the Society:  
[email address at http://www.westga.edu/~rlane]

Please include "Peirce Essay Contest Submission" in the subject line  
of your email.

Submissions by traditional mail are also acceptable. Please mail  
submissions to:

Robert Lane
Philosophy Program
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118
Attn: Peirce Essay Contest

-- 
Robert Lane, Ph.D.
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society
Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy
Department of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118

[Phone & email at webpage]
http://www.westga.edu/~rlane

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-10 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary F., Stephen,

After this I promise to try to focus my attention on the slow read discussion 
that Gary Richmond is leading. The first section of Joe's paper had my mind 
running in so many direction that I fell off the track.

* * *

I agree that there's plenty of continuity in the 1893 paper with Peirce's later 
views, the idea of one's living on in others. Still, he says:  "we shall at 
once perceive that we have had all along a lively spiritual consciousness which 
we have been confusing with something different"

Gary is right to note the "we" - in the 1893 article Peirce speaks of what "we" 
shall perceive after carnal death - a plural that's consistent with the idea of 
a collective consiousness. Indeed there he discusses the falsity of absolute 
divisions between onself and others.

A lively spiritual consciousness is still a _lively consciousness_, whether 
it's we together or you and I separately who experience it. And it's a _lively 
consciousness_ that we _perceptually_ distinguish from other forms of 
consiousness _after we die_, according to Peirce. Now it's very hard to take 
"lively consciousness" in a sense much weaker than "waking consciousness." And 
it's one given to quick reflexive perceptions. Anyway, he doesn't predict 
things like that later in 1906. 

As regards immortality, Peirce said in the 1893 article, in the paragraph 
before the one discussed above, "A man is capable of a spiritual consciousness, 
which constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is embodied in the 
universe as a whole. This as an archetypal idea can never fail; and in the 
world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment."

Steven seems to me to be right that the objective-idealist Peirce is referring 
to a necessary universal basis of mind. At the same time, Peirce has it (in 
1893) that a person's spiritual consciousness constitutes him _one_ of the 
eternal verities (at any rate, not _all_ of the eternal verities), an 
archetypal idea that "can never fail" (is immortal) and "in the world to come" 
- that's an afterlife phrase if I ever heard one, a person doesn't use that 
phase except in reference to an afterlife in a whole afterlife world 
(especially when writing for The Open Court pubisher) - "is destined to a 
special spiritual embodiment" - not an _individual_ spiritual embodiment, but 
he also didn't say a _universal_ spiritual embodiment. "Special" is another of 
those words that Peirce tended to use thoughtfully. Spiritual person --> 
eternal verity --> infallible archetypal idea --> special spiritual embodiment 
in the world to come. So he's suggesting an afterlife of collective 
consciousness that is still distinguished somehow into kinds though not 
sundered into individuals. I agree that it's not clear that in 1893 Peirce 
thought that after death the consciousness would remain lively for all eternity.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: "Gary Fuhrman" 
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


I agree with Stephen. In the 1893 piece, Peirce says nothing about the 
immortality *of the soul*, where "soul" would mean the spiritual consciousness 
*of an individual* person. The very idea of a completely *separate* spiritual 
identity is "the metaphysics of wickedness", an illusion which vanishes at 
death, when "we shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively 
spiritual consciousness which we have been confusing with something different" 
-- emphasis on the "we" (not as plurality but as the "continuity of being").

Gary F.

-Original Message-
From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sent: August-10-11 1:46 AM

Not wishing to be contrarian Ben, but it seems to me that in the early passages 
you cite Peirce holds a view not dissimilar from his later view. In the whole 
of his "Science and Immortality" piece of 1887 he is as skeptical as he is 
later. Only on a superficial reading could one conclude otherwise. What he 
alludes to I believe is his belief in a necessary universal basis of mind and 
the "spiritual consciousness" to which he refers is the non-carnal embodied 
state in which the universal is manifest.

With respect,
Steven

On Aug 9, 2011, at 8:10 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

> Gary F., Stephen, Steven,
>  
> In "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (1893, retitled "Immortality and 
> Synechism" by the CP editors), Peirce says.
> CP 7.576. Nor is this, by any means, all. A man is capable of a spiritual 
> consciousness, which constitutes him one of the eternal

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-09 Thread Benjamin Udell
Gary F., Stephen, Steven,

In "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (1893, retitled "Immortality and 
Synechism" by the CP editors), Peirce says.
  CP 7.576. Nor is this, by any means, all. A man is capable of a spiritual 
consciousness, which constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is 
embodied in the universe as a whole. This as an archetypal idea can never fail; 
and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment.

  CP 7.577 [] In the same manner, when the carnal consciousness passes away 
in death, we shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively 
spiritual consciousness which we have been confusing with something different.
But it's clear as all of you point out, that in 1906 (in CP 6.520-21), Peirce 
was much less sure about immortality.

1887 - contributes a chapter 
http://books.google.com/books?id=V9wPYAAJ&pg=PA69 to a symposium on 
"Science and Immortality". Doubtful about immortality. CP 6.548-56.
1893 - "Immortality in the Light of Synechism," immortality & survival after 
carnal death. CP 7.565-78, EP 2:1-3
1906 - "Immortality" (in "Answers to Questions concerning My Belief in God") - 
Not sure about immortality or life after death "content to be in God's hands" 
CP 6.519-21.

Best, Ben


- Original Message - 
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


I can't say that I've seen anything to this effect either. Earlier in the 
passage Gary cites he states his position quite clearly:

CP 6.519. "Do you believe in a future life?" Some kind of a future life there 
can be no doubt of. A man of character leaves an influence living after him. It 
is living: it is personal. In my opinion, it is quite proper to call that a 
future life. Jesus so spoke of it when he said he would always be with us. It 
is in some respects more fit to be made the subject of a promise than any other 
kind of future life. For it is something we all desire; while other kinds 
present nothing alluring that is not excessively vague or else unwholesome and 
antipractical. In the next place its vivacity and endurance are proportional to 
the spirituality of the man. How many instances have we seen of that! Beyond 
that, I simply am content to be in God's hands. If I am in another life it is 
sure to be most interesting; but I cannot imagine how it is going to be me. At 
the same time, I really don't know anything about it.

Given his analysis of the "God" concept elsewhere, I think we can conclude that 
he did not hold a view stronger than the above. He appears to find it very hard 
to let go of the notion of "God" and this is, I think, the influence of his 
father who saw in the notion of "Will" something universal that led him to 
affirm the existence of "God." Reading Benjamin Peirce helps us understand much 
of Charles' thinking in these matters and both derive much influence from the 
European Enlightenment.

With respect,
Steven


On Aug 9, 2011, at 4:08 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:

> Ben, you wrote:
>  
> [[Peirce believed in a spiritual consciousness, a soul-consciousness, 
> confusable with social and carnal kinds of consciousness but becoming clear 
> to one, as Peirce came to believe, in surviving the body's death. ]]
>  
> Can you cite a text where Peirce says this? He does speak of a “spiritual 
> consciousness” but i haven’t seen any place where he speaks of this as the 
> consciousness of an individual soul surviving the body’s death, or expresses 
> belief in that kind of afterlife. He argues rather against it in CP 6.548-52 
> (1887), and again in CP 6.520-21 (c.1906), though he also says that the 
> possibility can’t be ruled out, precisely because it’s virtually impossible 
> to investigate. The “immortality” of which he speaks “in the light of 
> synechism” is of a very different kind, it seems to me, to which the survival 
> of the individual consciousness or ‘soul’ is quite irrelevant.
>  
> Gary F.
>  
> } Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the 
> contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. [Thoreau] {
>  
> www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home
>  
>  
>  
> From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On 
> Behalf Of Benjamin Udell
> Sent: August-08-11 8:15 PM
> 
>  
> Drake,
>  
>  
> For Peirce, truth is immutable so for him in some sense all truths are 
> eternal. Perhaps in "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" he was thinking 
> about something like truths _about_ eternity, the soul, etc.
>  
> Not having been religious since I was a kid, I 

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-08 Thread Benjamin Udell
Drake,

Peirce believed in a spiritual consciousness, a soul-consciousness, confusable 
with social and carnal kinds of consciousness but becoming clear to one, as 
Peirce came to believe, in surviving the body's death. 

For Peirce, truth is immutable so for him in some sense all truths are eternal. 
Perhaps in "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" he was thinking about 
something like truths _about_ eternity, the soul, etc.

Not having been religious since I was a kid, I don't easily put myself into 
that frame of mind.

I don't know whether he thought that that which he called eternal truths 
require or enliven spiritual consciousness. He might have thought that it helps 
to have lively spiritual consciousness in order to apprehend eternal spiritual 
truths in the right spirit, to learn of them and learn from them, and even that 
such truths don't come through well when translated into everyday conversation, 
but I just don't know. I also wonder whether he thought that such truths could 
be equally well simple or complex like a scientific theory; it can be pretty 
hard to guess about such things with Peirce.

As regards Peirce's mathematical and math-logic work, there's a summary of some 
of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Mathematics at the 
Wikipedia article where I supplied links in the footnotes and edited (with some 
help from the professionals here at peirce-l).

Some resources:
  a.. Burks, Arthur W., "Review: Charles S. Peirce, The new elements of 
mathematics", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society v. 84, n. 5 (1978), 
pp. 913-18 (PDF) . 
  b.. Putnam, Hilary (1982), "Peirce the Logician", Historia Mathematica 9, 
290-301. Reprinted, pp. 252-60 in Putnam (1990), Realism with a Human Face, 
Harvard. Excerpt with article's last five pages 
  c.. Hammer, Eric (1995, 2007), "Peirce's Logic" in the Stanford Encyclopedia 
of Philosophy. 
  d.. Houser, Nathan, Roberts, Don D., and Van Evra, James (eds., 1997), 
Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Indiana University Press, 
Bloomington, IN, 1997, IUP catalog page . 
  e.. Kauffman, Louis H. (2001), "The Mathematics of Charles Sanders Peirce", 
Cybernetics and Human Knowing 8, 79-110. PDF file. 
  f.. Keyser, Cassius Jackson (1941), Charles Sanders Peirce as a pioneer 
(Scripta mathematica pamphlets), published 1941 by Yeshiva college. Lecture by 
C. J. Keyser at The Galois Institute of Mathematics, May 18, 1935. Internet 
Archive Eprint 
  g.. Hacking, Ian (1990), "A Universe of Chance", The Taming of Chance, pp. 
200-215, Cambridge U. Pr.
By the way, that's a huge amount of code you have in your post before the body 
section. Most of your post consisted of that code, filesize-wise. Have you 
considered emailing in plain text? :)

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: d_obrien 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 9:50 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

I had heard that Peirce had contributions to make to the study of logic, even 
of mathematics.  Did he really conflate the notion of "an eternal truth" with 
"spirit" in this way?  

If someone speaks to me about eternal truths, I expect them to provide me with 
the sentences that they consider to be "eternally true".  The only 
consciousness involved in this exchange is that of judgement of these same 
sentences and comparison of judgement, and this consciousness  is the same as 
judges not only so-called "eternal truths" but also transient truths, 
analogies, jokes, and any other kind of sentence.  Why should consciousness of 
a so-called "eternal truth" be more "spiritual" than consciousness of a 
so-called "transient truth", or of a ribald joke?

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell

What a confused person I am today. My supposed link to "Immortality in the 
Light of Synechism" - from 1893, not 1887 - was a link to something else, an 
earlier piece - that _was_ from 1887 - when Peirce was less sure about 
immortality. I should know better. Sorry about that!

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 

From: Benjamin Udell

Dear Gene, list,

You're quite right! I forgot about that. Occasionally I forget where I'm not 
quite on the same page with Peirce.

In Peirce's technical sense in "Questions on Reality" (1868) 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm, a general 
individual is in one place at a time, and not confined to one point and date. 
You could think of a rock that way. That's how I think of people, too, with 
what some call "genidentity," identity through time. But Peirce goes farther, 
for example in his "Immortality in the Light 

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
What a confused person I am today. My supposed link to "Immortality in the 
Light of Synechism" - from 1893, not 1887 - was a link to something else, an 
earlier piece - that _was_ from 1887 - when Peirce was less sure about 
immortality. I should know better. Sorry about that!

Best, Ben

- Original Message ----- 
From: Benjamin Udell
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Dear Gene, list,

You're quite right! I forgot about that. Occasionally I forget where I'm not 
quite on the same page with Peirce.

In Peirce's technical sense in "Questions on Reality" (1868) 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm, a general 
individual is in one place at a time, and not confined to one point and date. 
You could think of a rock that way. That's how I think of people, too, with 
what some call "genidentity," identity through time. But Peirce goes farther, 
for example in his "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (1887) 
http://books.google.com/books?id=V9wPYAAJ&pg=PA69 and CP 6.548-56. He held 
there that there is also social consciousness: one's spirit really does live on 
in others; and there is also spiritual consciousness, which we confuse with 
other things, and in which one is constituted as an eternal truth "embodied by 
the universe as a whole": that eternal truth "as an archetypal idea can never 
fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment." 
(quoting a little of myself from Wikipedia).

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Eugene Halton 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2011 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Ben Udell: "Regarding Peirce on singular versus individual, the distinction 
that he made (at least sometimes) was that which is in one place and time (a 
singular), and that which is in only one place at a time (an individual). In 
that sense, we are individuals but not singulars. But the singulars that Peirce 
in later years discusses in regard to perceptual judgments are usually that 
which he earlier called general individuals - you, me, a horse, etc."

Dear Ben, 
You say we are individuals in Peirce's technical sense, in one 
place at a time. But then how can you and I be here, in these signs, when we 
are also there, reading and typing them? What about: "A word may be in several 
places at once, six six, because its essence is spiritual; and I believe that a 
man is no whit inferior to the word in this respect." (Peirce. 7.591, W 1:498, 
1866)
Gene

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 7:09 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Peter, Stefan, Gary R., list,

That's a good point, Peter, about falsification's pertaining to 
general/universal judgments. Even a perceptual judgment that there

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Yikes, I miswrote my last sentence. I meant that I agree that scientific 
falsificationism does not depend on denying practical infallibility of 
perception, i.e., one could imagine scientific falsificationism combined with 
practical-infallibilism about perception. Theoretical infallibilism about 
perception is just harder for me to think about. - Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Benjamin Udell
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:40 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Peter, list,

Mixed quantifiers in CP 5.161 - yes, that's essentially what I said, a mixed 
particular-universal, "ExAy..." 

CP 5.181 - the concrete example is the one with the mixed quantifiers in the 
quoted CP 5.161, the previous lecture. 

Peirce says in 5.181 that he sufficiently argued in his case about deducing 
universal propositions from particular ones in his "last lecture." I took 5.161 
in the previous lecture as his argument and that's why I said that I think that 
he was wrong. The full text of the 2nd cotary proposition is
  (2) The second is that perceptual judgments contain general elements, so that 
universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner in which the logic 
of relations shows that particular propositions usually, not to say invariably, 
allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from them. This I 
sufficiently argued in my last lecture. This evening I shall take the truth of 
it for granted.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs about agreeing that scientific falsificationism 
doesn't depend logically on practically infallible perception and trying to 
keep theoretically infallible perception out of it. But I think I've 
nonetheless come pretty close to agreeing with you.

Best,
Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Skagestad, Peter 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Hmm - the second passage instances statements with mixed quantifiers; as for 
the cotary proposition in CP 5.181, I am not sure what to make of it without 
seeing a concrete example.

Peter
From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:09 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Peter, list,

You make a pretty compelling point.

Let me take the opportunity to note that, when I said, "involves inferring to 
universal propositions from perceptual judgments," I was referring to Peirce's 
view in his second cotary propostion but failed to say so.
  (From CP 5.181) The second is that perceptual judgments contain general 
elements, so that universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner 
in which the logic of relations shows that particular propositions usually, not 
to say invariably, allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from 
them.

Peirce in his previous lecture had said:
  [End of CP 5.155]
A particular proposition asserts the existence of something of a given 
description. A universal proposition merely asserts the non-existence of 
anything of a given description.

  [CP 5.156] 
   Had I, therefore, asserted that a perceptual judgment could be a 
universal proposition, I should have fallen into rank absurdity. For reaction 
is existence and the perceptual judgment is the cognitive product of a reaction.
But as from the particular proposition that "there is some women whom 
any Catholic you can find will adore" we can with certainty infer the universal 
proposition that" any Catholic you can find will adore some woman or other," so 
if a perceptual judgment involves any general elements, as it certainly does, 
the presumption is that a universal proposition can be necessarily deduced from 
it.
Maybe Peirce was wrong - for my part I think that he was wrong - since the 
particular proposition "there is some woman whom any Catholic you can find will 
adore" has a universal component "any Catholic.", it's an "ExAy..." etc. kind 
of thing. I prefer to think of it as a kind of mixed particular-universal 
proposition. That goes beyond merely having a general element, such as in 
"There is a horse," where "horse" is a general term, and the perception 
involves a general apprehension.

Anyway I agree that the conclusions of special sciences are essentially 
hypothetical, abductive, conjectural in some sense, though backed by much 
evidence and by reasonings of other kinds. It seems to me that even one's 
judgment of the _applicability_ of particular lines of deduction and induction 
to this or that particular act

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Peter, list,

Mixed quantifiers in CP 5.161 - yes, that's essentially what I said, a mixed 
particular-universal, "ExAy..." 

CP 5.181 - the concrete example is the one with the mixed quantifiers in the 
quoted CP 5.161, the previous lecture. 

Peirce says in 5.181 that he sufficiently argued in his case about deducing 
universal propositions from particular ones in his "last lecture." I took 5.161 
in the previous lecture as his argument and that's why I said that I think that 
he was wrong. The full text of the 2nd cotary proposition is
  (2) The second is that perceptual judgments contain general elements, so that 
universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner in which the logic 
of relations shows that particular propositions usually, not to say invariably, 
allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from them. This I 
sufficiently argued in my last lecture. This evening I shall take the truth of 
it for granted.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs about agreeing that scientific falsificationism 
doesn't depend logically on practically infallible perception and trying to 
keep theoretically infallible perception out of it. But I think I've 
nonetheless come pretty close to agreeing with you.

Best,
Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Skagestad, Peter 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Hmm - the second passage instances statements with mixed quantifiers; as for 
the cotary proposition in CP 5.181, I am not sure what to make of it without 
seeing a concrete example.

Peter
From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 5:09 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Peter, list,

You make a pretty compelling point.

Let me take the opportunity to note that, when I said, "involves inferring to 
universal propositions from perceptual judgments," I was referring to Peirce's 
view in his second cotary propostion but failed to say so.
  (From CP 5.181) The second is that perceptual judgments contain general 
elements, so that universal propositions are deducible from them in the manner 
in which the logic of relations shows that particular propositions usually, not 
to say invariably, allow universal propositions to be necessarily inferred from 
them.

Peirce in his previous lecture had said:
  [End of CP 5.155]
A particular proposition asserts the existence of something of a given 
description. A universal proposition merely asserts the non-existence of 
anything of a given description.

  [CP 5.156] 
   Had I, therefore, asserted that a perceptual judgment could be a 
universal proposition, I should have fallen into rank absurdity. For reaction 
is existence and the perceptual judgment is the cognitive product of a reaction.
But as from the particular proposition that "there is some women whom 
any Catholic you can find will adore" we can with certainty infer the universal 
proposition that" any Catholic you can find will adore some woman or other," so 
if a perceptual judgment involves any general elements, as it certainly does, 
the presumption is that a universal proposition can be necessarily deduced from 
it.
Maybe Peirce was wrong - for my part I think that he was wrong - since the 
particular proposition "there is some woman whom any Catholic you can find will 
adore" has a universal component "any Catholic.", it's an "ExAy..." etc. kind 
of thing. I prefer to think of it as a kind of mixed particular-universal 
proposition. That goes beyond merely having a general element, such as in 
"There is a horse," where "horse" is a general term, and the perception 
involves a general apprehension.

Anyway I agree that the conclusions of special sciences are essentially 
hypothetical, abductive, conjectural in some sense, though backed by much 
evidence and by reasonings of other kinds. It seems to me that even one's 
judgment of the _applicability_ of particular lines of deduction and induction 
to this or that particular actual idioscopic case or series of cases has a 
hypothetical element. Abductiveness of conclusions goes beyond the fact that 
special sciences use abductive inference - all researchers including 
mathematicians use abductive inference. Now, if one holds that pure maths and 
their 'deep' applications (probability theory, math of information, etc.) 
characteristically draw deductive conclusions, and that the special sciences 
characteristically draw abductive conclusions, then two questions arise: (1) 
whether there are fields that characteristically draw inductive conclusions 
(st

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Dear Gene, list,

You're quite right! I forgot about that. Occasionally I forget where I'm not 
quite on the same page with Peirce.

In Peirce's technical sense in "Questions on Reality" (1868) 
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm, a general 
individual is in one place at a time, and not confined to one point and date. 
You could think of a rock that way. That's how I think of people, too, with 
what some call "genidentity," identity through time. But Peirce goes farther, 
for example in his "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (1887) 
http://books.google.com/books?id=V9wPYAAJ&pg=PA69 and CP 6.548-56. He held 
there that there is also social consciousness: one's spirit really does live on 
in others; and there is also spiritual consciousness, which we confuse with 
other things, and in which one is constituted as an eternal truth "embodied by 
the universe as a whole": that eternal truth "as an archetypal idea can never 
fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual embodiment." 
(quoting a little of myself from Wikipedia).

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Eugene Halton 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2011 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Ben Udell: "Regarding Peirce on singular versus individual, the distinction 
that he made (at least sometimes) was that which is in one place and time (a 
singular), and that which is in only one place at a time (an individual). In 
that sense, we are individuals but not singulars. But the singulars that Peirce 
in later years discusses in regard to perceptual judgments are usually that 
which he earlier called general individuals - you, me, a horse, etc."

Dear Ben, 
You say we are individuals in Peirce's technical sense, in one 
place at a time. But then how can you and I be here, in these signs, when we 
are also there, reading and typing them? What about: "A word may be in several 
places at once, six six, because its essence is spiritual; and I believe that a 
man is no whit inferior to the word in this respect." (Peirce. 7.591, W 1:498, 
1866)
    Gene

From: C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Benjamin Udell
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 7:09 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Peter, Stefan, Gary R., list,

That's a good point, Peter, about falsification's pertaining to 
general/universal judgments. Even a perceptual judgment that there

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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
I have, so far, failed to falsify it, 
although it may falsified by my observation of the next raven. So we could 
still have falsificationism without fallibilism about perceptual judgements.

What about the other way around? Suppose there were a "logic of confirmation," 
whereby scientific hypotheses are rendered increasingly probable as we observe 
more confirming instances. Whether this would work or not seems to me 
independent of whether our observations are fallible or infallible. But 
fallibilism about perceptual judgements does of course imply the fallibility of 
science - it rules out any conclusive proof of scientific hypotheses.

I hope this makes sense.

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 7:08 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Peter, Stefan, Gary R., list,

That's a good point, Peter, about falsification's pertaining to 
general/universal judgments. Even a perceptual judgment that there are no 
animals (besides oneself!) in this room is, in Peirce's view, general only in 
its predicate - we can utter it "All x..." etc. but one perceptually judges of 
this, that, yon, etc. conjunctively, that this, that, and yon,etc., are 
such-and-such. A fallibilism about one's perceptually compelled judgments will 
itself be theoretical in some sense. Hence maybe one could say that scientific 
falsificationism is 'prefigured' or foreshadowed in fallibilism about 
perceptual judgments, but only given that such fallibilism is already somewhat 
theoretically oriented. 

The _fallibility_ of perceptual judgments does seem bound up with scientific 
falsificationism insofar as science depends on perceptual judgments, and 
involves inferring to universal propositions from perceptual judgments. But 
could one have a theoretical falsificationism, in particular a scientific 
falsificationism, without a theoretical falsificationism about perceptual 
judgments? It seems possible at first glance but seems kind of dicy when one 
tries to imagine how it would work. I'm left uncertain. 

Regarding Peirce on singular versus individual, the distinction that he made 
(at least sometimes) was that which is in one place and time (a singular), and 
that which is in only one place at a time (an individual). In that sense, we 
are individuals but not singulars. A singular in that sense is a single point 
in space and time. Even a mathematical point, when considered as being in 
motion or stationary in a timelike dimension, does not represent such 
singularness - it makes a temporoid line. However, later he often used 
"singular" in the sense that he had given to "individual." In "Questions on 
Reality" http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm 
Winter-Spring 1868 (Three Drafts) MS 148 (Robin 931, 396): Writings 2.162-187, 
perhaps the section that Stefan was trying recall:
  With reference to individuals, I shall only remark that there are certain 
general terms whose objects can only be in one place at one time, and these are 
called individuals. They are generals that is, not singulars, because these 
latter [the singulars -B.U.] occupy neither time nor space, but can only be at 
one point and can only be at one date. The subject of individuality, in this 
sense, therefore, belongs to the theory of space rather than to the theory of 
logic. []

  [] But here it is necessary to distinguish between an individual in the 
sense of that which has no generality [the singular -B.U.] and which here 
appears as a mere ideal boundary of cognition, and an individual in the far 
wider sense of that which can be only in one place at one time. It will be 
convenient to call the former a singular and the latter only an individual. 
So, at that time he held that there are two kinds of individuals,

- singular individuals, called singulars, occupy neither space nor time and can 
only be at one point and can be only at one date.
- general individuals, called individuals, can be only in one place at one time 
(one place at a time).

Peirce goes on to say in that text that "In short, those things which we call 
singulars exist, but the character of singularity which we attribute to them is 
self-contradictory."

But the singulars that Peirce in later years discusses in regard to perceptual 
judgments are usually that which he earlier called general individuals - you, 
me, a horse, etc.

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Stefan Berwing 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Peter, List,

this distinction is relevant as long singulars and individuals are the same. 
But when the i

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-07 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jerry, list, 

I don't know, I may have misunderstood you, and I don't know whether this is 
merely about whether one distinguishes, as you seem not to distinguish, 
"individual" from "unique" and/or whether one uses, as Peirce used, the word 
"real" in a different sense than the words "actual" and "existent." For example 
I don't understand why you say that "a valence is not a universal" (or, in 
Peircean terminology, a general). _This_ hydrogen atom's _individual_ valence=1 
instantiates the general valence=1 universal to hydrogen atoms. 

A _unique_ valence, or a given molecule's _unique_ composition and structure, 
are a different though related issue. In Peircean semiotics there is a big 
difference between (A) individuality and indexicality and (B) qualities, 
iconicity, and characters such as composition and structure, be a given 
composition and structure soever unique. I don't know but suspect that this 
difference is recognized in biosemiotics insofar as it seems that biosemiotics 
has been much influenced by Peirce. In logic, it's usual to hold that if x and 
y share all their predicates, then x=y, they're the same object. Yet there's 
something more to being a subject than having a unique set of predicates. In 
experience there are elements of the actual and individual, and also of 
quality, character, etc. One may hold that some essential characters, if 
unique, such as unique genetic makeup, define the individual who possesses 
them. But that doesn't change the difference between a characteristic and an 
actual individual in experience, and the differences of their roles in 
semiosis, for example the indexical versus the iconic. Anyway, for his part 
Peirce identified individuality with actual existence, not with essence or 
characters. This seems to dovetail with Gene's point that Peirce didn't really 
regard people as individuals, but as generals embodied carnally but not only 
carnally.

Regarding "real" and "actual" -

Peirce in his 1906 "Answers to Questions concerning my Belief in God", CP 
6.495, reprinted in part as "The Concept of God" in Philosophical Writings of 
Peirce, J. Buchler, ed., 1940, pp. 375-8: 
  I will also take the liberty of substituting "reality" for "existence." This 
is perhaps overscrupulosity; but I myself always use _exist_ in its strict 
philosophical sense of "react with the other like things in the environment." 
Of course, in that sense, it would be fetichism to say that God "exists." The 
word "reality," on the contrary, is used in ordinary parlance in its correct 
philosophical sense. [] I define the _real_ as that which holds its 
characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any 
man or men may have _thought_ them to be, or ever will have _thought_ them to 
be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as 
forcible _means_ are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain 
absolutely untouched.
To hold that generals or even qualities are real does not require holding that 
they are actual in the sense that one might have locked the number 5, as such, 
in a closet, or hitched a ride on blueness, as such, orbiting a house in New 
Orleans.

You joked, "...when I speak the word 'horse' a horse does not come out of my 
mouth" - but likewise when I speak the name of any individual person, place, or 
thing, still that individual does not come out of my mouth unless for example 
in the act I name that particular vocal breeze. 

Personal names are mere words except those that can indexically help to lead 
one to their objects. General names are mere words except those that can by 
symbolizing help one to apprehend real generals, norms, habits, propensities 
that the general names denote. If you believe that you can arrive at true 
nontrivial universal propositions (e.g., all have the same valence=1) about 
quinquavigintillions of hydrogen atoms almost none of which any of us will ever 
be able to observe or single out, then I'd say that you're banking on some 
generals' being discoverable and independent of any actual person's or group's 
opinion - i.e., some generals' being real, in Peirce's sense. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message -
From: Jerry LR Chandler 
To: Benjamin Udell ; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU 
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 9:47 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Ben: 


Your message is too cryptic for me to understand exactly what it is that your 
presupposing, asserting and and concluding.

Are you referring to biosemiotics? DNA? diagrammatic logic? categories? 
identity? the distinction between predicate logic and antecedent / 

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
Jerry,

That can all be the case without contradicting anything that Peirce said. 
Peirce never, so far as I know, denied that there could be a unique character 
to something or denied that it could matter - but it's just not what he was 
mainly discussing when he used words like "singular" and individual." He meant 
the stubborn _this_, not the _uniquely such_, even when many an actual 
individual is unique in important or essential characters. 

Best, Ben

- Original Message - 
From: Jerry LR Chandler 
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Cc: Benjamin Udell 
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"


Ben, List: 


You write:


 "I mean singular existentially; and chemistry in general is not just about 
_this_ or _that_ molecule."


I respond simply:


Your DNA is about "YOUR" DNA molecule and the encoding of YOUR life.  It is an 
Identity, it is singular.
It is also about your individuality.  This is the very heart and sole of 
molecular biology, biosemiotics, and Jesper's semethic. 


This modern conceptualization of the logic of chemistry and the unique genetic 
molecules of every individual was not inductively constructed until several 
decades after CSP died.


Cheers


Jerry 








On Aug 5, 2011, at 8:06 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:


  Jerry, list,

  Peirce's diagrams are of two kinds in terms of logical quantity: (1) general 
icons (iconic legisigns), which are general diagrams or diagrammatic generals, 
instantiated by (2) individual icons (iconic sinsigns) which are individual 
diagrams, or diagrammatic individuals. Peirce would call general many of the 
things which you call singular - including molecules in general and their 
adjacent parts in general. When he calls something singular he means, for 
example, just _this_ actual individual hydrogen molecule and no other actual 
individual hydrogen molecule, a molecule kept perhaps it in a certain place 
where people could come view at least its container, a molecule singular like 
you, me, or the Parthenon - I don't mean singular or unique in quality, I mean 
singular existentially; and chemistry in general is not just about _this_ or 
_that_ molecule.

  For my part I've said in the past that I regard the idioscopic a.k.a. special 
sciences as taking for their subject matter actual individuals in a way that 
more abstract fields do not; the observable universe, for example, is an actual 
individual; but what we want to learn about such subject matter is not just its 
individualities but its kinds, its totalities and parameters, and its laws, 
such as could not be learned purely from more general or mathematical 
considerations, and such that we would come to have good reason for confidence 
in our opinions as to those kinds, totalities, and laws, as pertaining to 
indefinitely many actual individuals that we would not have the actual 
opportunity to single out or observe.

  The idea of a real general is simply the idea of a general that is 
independent of particular persons' or groups' opinions yet is discoverable such 
that investigators would come to agree about it if they were to push 
investigation about it far enough. So we suppose that intelligent life 
elsewhere in the galaxy might announce its presence by broadcasting the first 
score or so prime numbers, because we figure that prime numbers are _real_ or, 
as many prefer to say, _objective_. Peirce also allows of generals that are not 
real but are instead figments, e.g., the objects of false universal 
propositions.

  Best, Ben

  - Original Message -
  From: Jerry LR Chandler
  To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
  Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 7:13 PM
  Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the 
Semiosis Process"


  Gary, Gary, Peter, Stefan, List:


  Thank you all for the productive discussion. It was valuable to me. 
  I would only add a footnote or two, based on the Stoic notion of logic as 
antecedent and consequence as well as the material causality implicit within 
the mathematics of the chemical / biosemiotic sciences.




  I believe  that the sense of Popper's assertion about the singular and the 
universal is widely abused in the philosophy of science, particularly in the 
evaluation of biosemiotics and the role of identity of the individual.


  If one asserts a universal and a single counterexample is true, then this 
asserted universal is not a true. Simple enough.


  But, 'universals' are of the mind. I consider "Universals" as nominialistic.  
CSP was a realist.  I consider "universals" to be metaphysical objects, not 
real objects. I recall from an ancient source a phrase about the meaning of an 
utterance - when I speak the word 'horse' a horse does not come out of my 
mouth.  :-) 


  The role of universa

Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
esis of 
ratio of small whole numbers.  It is the deepest source of biological identity 
/ individuality in that it emerges from the encoding of genetic symbols, the 
semiotics of DNA and molecular biology.  


There are several conundrums buried in this text - I have just sketched the 
surfaces that are easily translated into expressions that may carry some 
meaning for this group (I hope that my comments are not too technical, but fear 
the worst!). I have intentionally not addressed the problems of the community 
as the source of our symbolic expressions, such as this series of email 
exchanges. For example, a modern community uses multiple sign systems to 
communicate - alphabets, mathematics, music, dance, chemistry, etc, each with a 
particular diagrammatic logic. Does falsification in one symbol system infer 
falsification in another symbol system?  In short, what is the role of category 
theory in semiotics or in Jesper Hoffmeyer's 'semethic'? This line of thought 
moves us into the multiple roles of logics in human communication - a topic 
dear to Tori Alexander's writings.


At least to me, closure on the concept of falsification remains remote - 
obscured by the different usages of signs and the different "sign" languages 
used by different disciplines. 


Cheers


Jerry




Jerry LR Chandler
Research Professor
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study




On Aug 5, 2011, at 5:08 PM, Stefan Berwing wrote:


Peter, List,

this distinction is relevant as long singulars and individuals are the same. 
But when the individual is a universal in time and the singular is the content 
of a perceptual judgement, then this distinction is not possible in that form. 
(Peirce writes about singular/individual somewhere in the first part of W2).


Best
Stefan


There is still a distinction, though. Perceptual judgements are hypotheses and 
hence testable, but they are not universal statements, which are the subjects 
of falsificationism. But I may be splitting hairs here...

Peter

From: C S Peirce discussion list [PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] on behalf of 
Gary Richmond [richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 3:41 PM
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

Ben, list,

I knew it (consensus) was too good to be true! But I think you make at least 
two important points here, Ben, and I'll be interested in others' responses 
(presently, I would tend to agree with you that fallibilism re: our perceptual 
judgments prefigures falsification and that fallibilism can be--I'd say, 
is--more basic than falsification).

Best,

Gary

>>> Benjamin Udell  8/5/2011 2:53 PM >>>
List, Steven, Peter,

It may be a little more complicated. Peirce in his "cotary" propositions said 
that perceptual judgments amount to compelling abductions, which is very close 
to saying, compelling explanatory hypotheses. So fallibilism about one's 
perceptual judgments (at least in retrospect if not at the time of the 
compulsive judgment) already prefigures falsificationism.

But it should be added that the fact that B _entails_ C does not mean that B is 
in fact a premiss or postulate for C. "A is A" is an axiom, but it entails very 
little. Rather, everything entails "A is A." Thus we often say "presupposes" in 
the sense of "entails." Thus fallibililism can be more basic than scientific 
falsificationism, yet the latter arguably entails the former, i.e., scientifice 
falsificationism entails/presupposes fallibilism.

Jaime Nubiola treated of another angle on Peirce's fallibilism in "C. S. Peirce 
and G. M. Searle: The Hoax of Infallibilism." 
http://www.unav.es/users/PeirceSearle.html Peirce at times wrote of allowing of 
practical certainty as opposed to theoretical certainty.

Note to list: remember to delete the automatic text added by the server to 
posts' ends, when replying to a post.

Best, Ben


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Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis Process"

2011-08-05 Thread Benjamin Udell
e with you that fallibilism re: our perceptual 
judgments prefigures falsification and that fallibilism can be--I'd say, 
is--more basic than falsification).

Best,

Gary

>>> Benjamin Udell 8/5/2011 2:53 PM >>>

List, Steven, Peter,

It may be a little more complicated. Peirce in his "cotary" propositions said 
that perceptual judgments amount to compelling abductions, which is very close 
to saying, compelling explanatory hypotheses. So fallibilism about one's 
perceptual judgments (at least in retrospect if not at the time of the 
compulsive judgment) already prefigures falsificationism.

But it should be added that the fact that B _entails_ C does not mean that B is 
in fact a premiss or postulate for C. "A is A" is an axiom, but it entails very 
little. Rather, everything entails "A is A." Thus we often say "presupposes" in 
the sense of "entails." Thus fallibililism can be more basic than scientific 
falsificationism, yet the latter arguably entails the former, i.e., scientifice 
falsificationism entails/presupposes fallibilism.

Jaime Nubiola treated of another angle on Peirce's fallibilism in "C. S. Peirce 
and G. M. Searle: The Hoax of Infallibilism." 
http://www.unav.es/users/PeirceSearle.html Peirce at times wrote of allowing of 
practical certainty as opposed to theoretical certainty.

Note to list: remember to delete the automatic text added by the server to 
posts' ends, when replying to a post.

Best, Ben

- Original Message -
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU>>
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the Semiosis 
Process"

I agree with Peter.

Steven

On Aug 5, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Skagestad, Peter wrote:

> Gary,

> I agree that falsifiability entails the fallibility of scientific knowledge. 
> But the fallibilty of perceptual judgements, which is affirmed by both Peirce 
> and Popper, appears to me to be an independent conclusion, not entailed by 
> the falsifiability of hypotheses.

> Peter


> From: Gary Richmond Sent: Friday, August 05, 2011 12:56 PM
> To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU<mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU>; 
> Skagestad, Peter
> Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read: "Teleology and the Autonomy of the 
> Semiosis Process"

> Peter, Gary F.

> Peter, thanks for this helpful clarification that a falsification is not ever 
> conclusive.

> I would agree with you that "Popper was a fallibilist as well as a 
> falsificationist," and that that distinction certainly needs to be made. The 
> point I wanted to make in passing, but which I clearly didn't express very 
> well  in my post addressed to Tori and the list ( suggesting that a lot more 
> could be said about it--and has been, even recently on this list!) is exactly 
> that both were fallibilists (and Tom Short, apparently, as well).  See, for 
> example, Susan Haack and Konstantin Kalenda, "Two Fallibilists in Search of 
> the Truth" http://www.jstor.org/pss/4106816 , the two fallibilists being 
> exactly Peirce and Popper.

> Btw, I too have found the "swamp/bog" metaphor in both their works eeiry 
> given that Popper wasn't aware of Peirce's work.

> Anyhow, just a question for now: Would you agree that it is correct to say 
> that falsifiability entails fallibilism as this writer remarks? What of his 
> other claims? (In the light of your comments, at the moment I would tend to 
> agree with him).
> See:  
> http://science.jrank.org/pages/9302/Falsifiability-Popper-s-Emphasis-on-Falsifiability.html
> "Moreover, falsifiability, as the ongoing risk of falsification in our world, 
> is a permanent status for Popper. No amount of successful testing can 
> establish a hypothesis as absolutely true or even probable: it forever 
> remains conjectural. That all scientific theories remain falsifiable entails 
> fallibilism, the view that our best epistemic efforts remain open to future 
> revision. There can be no certain foundations to knowledge."

> Best,

> Gary R.
>
>>>> "Skagestad, Peter" 8/5/2011 12:12 PM >>>

> Gary,

> This is not exactly Popper's view, although this is how Popper has often been 
> interpreted, e.g. by Ayer, in Language, Truth, and Logic. Popper's 
> falsificationism is based on a purely logical asymmetry between falsification 
> and verification in that a single counterexample will refute a universal 
> statement, whereas no number of confirming instances will prove it. Thus no 
> number of observed black ravens will prove the statement "All ravens are 
> black," whereas a single

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