[Inquiry] Re: Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PS.  Discussion Note 28

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BU = Ben Udell
JR = Joe Ransdell

BU: (a) A symbol can be a pure symbol in a plain and simple way, e.g.,
    "and," "of," etc. I.e., there's no icon or index (first-intentional
    ones, at least) there, not any worth mentioning anyway.  For practical
    purposes, they're mere symbols.

JR:  "Mere" is perhaps not the best synonym for "pure", Ben.
     Conjunction, for example, is a logical conception of
     extraordinary importance, and signs indicative of
     conjuction like "and" are implicitly undervalued
     in referring to them as "mere".  I don't mean to
     be picky.  My point is that whatever is meant in
     calling them "pure", it must surely be explicated
     one way or another in terms of iconic and indexical
     sign-values even if it involves some complex manuevering
     before you get to those values, and I don't see how that
     is to be managed if, as symbols, there is nothing to go
     but their relationship to other symbols.   Since there
     is supposedly no physical property of them, monadic or
     dyadic, which constitutes their meaningfulness, there
     is nothing that can be done with them other than, say,
     what can be done by picking and choosing among different
     stones or any other objects picked out arbitrarily and
     arranged or manipulated arbitrarily.

Ben, Joe, Peirce List, ...

Continuing to operate on the hypothesis that what Peirce meant
by "pure symbol" is what he said he meant by "pure symbol",
to wit, one that is "neither 'iconic' nor 'indicative'",
we may draw the inference that what he meant by calling
the signs for logical operations pure symbols is that
they are neither iconic nor indicative.  Given that
"Every symbol 'denotes' by 'connoting'" and that
the signs for logical operations are symbols,
we may draw the inference that they denote
by connoting.  So pure symbols are not
senseless in either sense of the word
sense.  They denote without need of
indices and they connote without
need of icons.

With regard to pure symbols, Peirce is not saying
that "as symbols, there is nothing to go but their
relationship to other symbols".  That is Joe who is
saying that.  It is apparently his interpretation of
the term "pure symbol", but it is not Peirce's.  It's
a syntacticist interpretation, like the syncategorematic
explanation of connectives, so maybe those interpretations
are intended as strawpersons, but they aren't what a person
means who says that pure symbols exemplify the property that
all symbols have, of denoting by connoting.  So what do they
denote?  There we have, not meaninglessness, but a diversity
of meanings, all being systematically related to each other.
One of the available options for the non-relative operators,
like "not", "and", "or", and so on, is to have them denote
relations among truth values.

Jon Awbrey

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