[Inquiry] Re: Blocks On The Road Of Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

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BOTROI.  Note 5

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Reification of Categories (cont.)

If I had to make up yet another name for the pragmatic way
of thinking to which Peirce gave some of the most explicit
articulations yet announced, I would say that it has to do
with "testable relational information" (TRI).  It is often
difficult to find a word that will describe the relational
point of view without causing it to be confounded with the
more naive forms of relativism, but there is no obligation
to remain naive about our participatory relationships with
a world that we may come to know, very partially, thereby.

It is clear from reading Peirce's earliest work that he was
forced to gear up the "logic of relatives" (LOR) in order to
tackle the complex structural phenomena that we know today as
"sign relations", and that this task was in turn subcontractual
to the greater task of articulating the "logic of inquiry" (LOI).

The way I see, anyway, this investigation of the logic of inquiry
in terms of testable relational information is the proper context,
and sign relations are the minimum unit of analysis, for grasping
what the Categories, as Peirce desired to use them, are all about.

They are not Aristotle's Categories, and not even Kant's, but if you
wanted to force a fit, you could say that all of Peirce's Categories
fit a bit compressed inside Aristotle's "category of relation" (COR).

Let's see if that'll wake 'em up ...

Jon Awbrey

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