[Arisbe] Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

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Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):

HP: What I am trying to discern is what is fundamentally different in
    Peirce's (and your own view) of scientific inquiry from a typical
    physicist's (e.g., Hertz's) view.  Specifically, in the previous
    post, I asked whether Peircean logic is formal.  You sound like
    the sign relation is entirely formal:

JA: A sign relation L is a SET of 3-tuples of the form <o, s, i>,
    where o is an element of the set O, called the "object domain",
    where s is an element of the set S, called the "sign domain", and
    where i is an element of the set I, called the "interpretant domain".
    In other words, a sign relation L is a SUBSET of the cartesian product
    OxSxI, a circumstance that Asciians write as "L c OxSxI".

HP: You also sound like Peirce's "correspondence" is also formal, in which case the
    sign relation would not in itself be an adequate model of scientific inquiry.
    That is, as a formal system, it does not address the problem of observation
    and measurement.

JA: To make a long story short, what Peirce means by "correspondence" in
    this definition is just the whole 3-adic sign relation itself, which
    he occasionally describes as a "triple correspondence".

HP: But then the last sentence sounds like
    this formal system is intended as an
    alternate to a theory of truth often
    used in science:

JA: He does not mean to suggest any sort of pallid 2-adic "imaging" or
    "mirrortying" as implicated in a "correspondence notion of truth".

HP: The Hertz's modelling relation is instructive because
   (1) it clearly separates the formal logical syntax of
       our models (laws) from the empirical observational
       semantics (initial conditions), which is essential
       for physics, and
   (2) it emphasizes the limits of scientific knowledge:
       "We do not know, nor have we any means of knowing,
       whether our conception of things are in conformity
       with [external reality] in any other than this one
       fundamental respect."

HP: So, to restate my main question:
    Does Peircean inquiry strictly separate
    the logical syntax of signs from the
    semantics of observation?

SS: Perhaps I could clarify things a bit by noting that o-s-i involves an elsion concerning i.

I did not understand that last sentence.

SS: The object can be taken to exist "out there".

Yes, it can.

SS: The sign is a construction contributed to by both the object (its counterstructures - Uexküll)
    and -- what?  Some semioticians have supplied for this 'what', a system of interpretance (SI).

In my work I speak of a "system of interpretation" (SOI) -- excuse my French.

SS: This system not only co-constructs the sign, but fully, by (or within) itself,
    constructs the interpretant(s).  In this light, we can assign the formality to
    the SI, AS WELL AS a complex of sensation -> feedback --> perception, which
    make up measurement.

I might, perhaps, prefer to say that the connotative aspect of a SOI
is constituted of signs, interpretant signs, and their relationship.

But "affects and impressions" (the Greek "pathemata"), the "data of the senses" (DOTS),
measurements, perceptions, and intelligible conceptions are all just special types of
signs, all with their own interpretant signs in the minds of ensouled creatures.

SS: So, the SI is responsible for both the formalisms and the measurements.

I believe that Nature, the ever pressent object reality,
has its share of responsibility for our impressions and
perforce must be assigned a part in the cosmic dialogue.

SS: Yet they are separate actvities.

I would not say "separate", not if I was being careful,
neither one being autonomous with respect to the other.
I prefer "moderately or relatively independent" (MORI).

SS: Without the predicament of the SI, with its needs and desires,
    there is no semiosis in this more restricted sense (which is
    approprate to Howard's questions).  Measurement and formal
    manipulations would, then, not be separated in one sense
    because they are linked through the needs of the SI,
    and so interpenetrate in one way or another.

Yes, I think that says it very admirably.

Jon Awbrey

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