[Inquiry] Re: Attribute, Impute, Represent -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 21

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JR = Joe Ransdell
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: AIR-DIS 20.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002592.html
In: AIR-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2566

JR: In response to my remark, in which I said:

JR: Glad you made that point clear, Jon.  Speaking as a purist, though,
    did you have to clutter up the page with the tabular icon, the bracket
    arrays, etc.?  It seems, well, unseemly somehow in an illustration of
    the purity of the pure symbol.

JR: Jon Awbrey says:

JA: I see that your message comes by the red-eye xpress,
    so better judgment tells me to let it pass, since
    we've already discussed the fact that this has
    to do with the sheer existence of signs that
    do not require the admittedly able assist
    of icons and indices to do their assigned
    job as signs, and not with the utilities
    and virtues of the latter, which I dare
    say that I've sufficiently studied and
    applied in numerous connections, both
    pure and applied, as the phrase goes.

JR: It does indeed have to do with the sheer existence of signs --
    namely, symbols and specifically those of a logical sort --
    that do not require the auxiliary functions of icons and
    indices to do what they do as signs, and it surely is not
    impertinent to remark that in a purported demonstration
    that there are symbols of that type you resort to signs
    of a distinctively iconic type in explanation of their
    function or workings.  Your response is that you didn't
    have to use them.

JR: But my point is that one would probably find your demonstration
    more persuasive had you accomplished it without recourse to the
    supposedly unnecessary use of iconic signs.  Since there is some
    reason to think that, in his later work at least, Peirce regarded
    all deduction as involving iconic aspects -- even algebraic-style
    notations exhibit iconic as well as indexical and symbolic aspects,
    and his graphical notation is avowedly as iconic as possible -- and
    there is no evidence that I am aware of that he ever thought of
    symbols of any sort as functional in the absence of iconic and
    indexical representation, one would naturally expect to see you
    demonstrating that such self-sufficient symbols are indeed possible,
    in his view, by not having recourse to those supposedly unnecessary
    auxiliaries yourself in your demonstration that they are unnecessary.

Joe,

No, that is precisely not my point.  We must distinguish what I'm bound,
by nature, necessity, or nurture doesn't really matter all that much,
to use in doing my job of exposition from what a sign, as defined,
necessarily calls on in order to function as a sign.  The fact
that I'm not likely to finish my part in this discussion in
anything shy of manifold paragraphs of multiple sentences,
does not mean than single sentences and single words do
not exist or have their own sort of meaning, no matter
how far it's true that most folks accept some modicum
of holism these days.  And I do not have to sum up
my thesis in a single word in order to prove the
existence and meaningfulness of single words.

OM ...

I occasionaly run into folks who argue this way:
We, that is, our kinds of critters, have to use
our brains to think about logic, numbers, signs,
whatever, and therefore logic, math, semiotics,
what have you, reduces to neuroscience.  QED.
Knowing what I have learned from them, to wit,
that such a notion so simplifies their lives,
that they have such a need for simplicity,
I no longer even bother to launch into
the once-obligatory essays on the
differences between descriptive
and normative sciences.

JR: But my point is that one would probably find your demonstration
    more persuasive had you accomplished it without recourse to the
    supposedly unnecessary use of iconic signs.  Since there is some
    reason to think that, in his later work at least, Peirce regarded
    all deduction as involving iconic aspects -- even algebraic-style
    notations exhibit iconic as well as indexical and symbolic aspects,
    and his graphical notation is avowedly as iconic as possible -- and
    there is no evidence that I am aware of that he ever thought of
    symbols of any sort as functional in the absence of iconic and
    indexical representation, one would naturally expect to see you
    demonstrating that such self-sufficient symbols are indeed possible,
    in his view, by not having recourse to those supposedly unnecessary
    auxiliaries yourself in your demonstration that they are unnecessary.

Again, the utilities and virtues of icons and indices are not disputed --
I did not take up the study of existential graphs thirty-five years ago,
go off to spend a spend a couple of decades learning graph theory partly
in order to figure out what Peirce was talking about, and spend a parallel
decade implementing a graph-theoretical logic tool on the computer because
I thought these things were ugly and useless.  But practical necessity for
a human interpreter is not locical necessity for a sign, as a theoretical
construct.  You may have heard of this "unpsychological theory of logic"
that some old geezer was wont to go on about.

JR: You might have responded, as you sometimes do, with reference
    to Peirce's early view that logic was restricted to symbolistic.
    This topic has yet to be addressed here and it certainly should be,
    but since you do not appeal to it here it would be best to take it up
    in a separate message.  Your response here seems to be rather to the
    effect that it might be very difficult to pull that off and that
    you can hardly be faulted for relying on such auxiliaries at this
    relatively early stage in the understanding of these difficult
    issues.  Or at least that is what you seem to me to be saying:

No, it's just that I'm not all that concerned with how anybody, even Peirce,
draws these somewhat arbiter-relative and time-wise very shifty disciplnary
boundaries.  It may have to do with how one person constitutes a discipline,
where she puts items on the store shelf, but it doesn't invariably have all
that much to do with the nature of the things themselves, what's in the tin.

Have to break here, will get to the rest later ...

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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