[Inquiry] Re: Kaina Stoicheia -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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KS.  Discussion Note 2

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BM = Bernard Morand

BM: I think I have been unable to understand clearly
    what is really at stake in the dispute between
    Jon and Joe on the matter of pure symbols,
    despite the large exchange of messages
    on the topic.

Bernard, Peirce List,

Aside from the focal issue, which I will reserve until I can get focussed on it again,
I believe that there are most likely constitutionally different attitudes as to what
constitutes a definition, a theory, and a science.  If logic is a normative science,
or, as Peirce says, "formal semiotics", and if there is to be a part of semiotics
that is a science, then it's very likely to undergo the sort of development that
other sciences have enjoyed.  In other sciences, there is a division of labor
where mathematical models are developed in a speculative fashion, taking off
from and being brought home again to practical application.  In that world,
definitions are equivalent explications of a concept, that is, necessary
and sufficient conditions for falling under a concept.  Definitions of
this sort, once a good portion of the research community accepts them,
have a character of "standing on their own feet".  This means that
they serve as a platform for generating all sorts of never-before
suspected consequences, that can be explored by deductive means,
and also evaluated for empirical adequacy, uberty, and truth.

Measured against that scientific standard, which is well understood in
all of the developed sciences, only a few of the so-called "definitions"
of signs are real definitions, the sorts of formulations that are clear
and explicit enough to draw any necessary conclusions from.  Most of the
rest are more properly called "descriptions", and they fall into the dual
classes of (1) sufficient descriptions, that say things which are true of
special classes of signs, and (2) necessary descriptions, that say things
which are true of all signs, but which are also true of many things that
are not signs.  But only those descriptions which are both necessary and
sufficient count as real definitions.  Of course, a good definition must
also have many other virtues in order to support a consistent, effective,
and empirically adequate scientific theory.

This definition of definition will tend to be dismissed in undeveloped sciences,
and by many brands of philosophies -- and of course there are many domains where
we are still mainly arguing 'toward' definitions rather than mainly 'from' them --
so it's a matter of opinion where we are in semiotics today.  For my part I am
content with a few of Peirce's more genuine definitions of signs, and I have
been busy reasoning on their basis ever since I first came to notice them.

On that basis, my main reason for thinking that there are sign relations
that do not involve icons or indices is simply that I can see no way to
deduce the involvement of icons or indices by necessary reasoning from
Peirce's most genuine and most general definitions of sign relations,
and so far nobody has even suggested a plausible way of doing this.

Jon Awbrey

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