[Inquiry] Re: Peirce's Logic Of Information -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PLOI.  Discussion Note 3

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Re: PLOI 15.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-December/003287.html
In: PLOI.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-December/thread.html#3273

Bernard Scott wrote:

| I am skimming your stuff amidst a busy schedule.  Just a quick query.
| My understanding is that Peirce's pragmatic theory of meaning says
| that (though would have to check the source), "The meaning of a
| proposition is all the consequences that come from holding it
| to be true."  This looks to be somewhat different in intent
| from your syntactic, semantic exegesis.  Would value your
| thoughts.

Bernard,

That sounds like the "verificationist" or "consequentialist" readings of
Peirce's "pragmatic maxim", which has in substance quite a bit more to it,
though I'm sure this is one of those issues that you could get a variety of
opinions about.  Just off-hand, I would say that Peirce's maxim, my favorite
version of which is addressed to an interpreter, second person style, is a bit
of advice on how that person can go about clarifying the meaning that a concept
or symbol has for that particular interpreter.  It is therefore what folks today
might call a "situated" heuristic.

Here is that version:

| Pragmaticism was originally enounced in the form of a maxim, as follows:  
| Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you 
| conceive the objects of your conception to have.  Then, your conception
| of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 5.438, (1878/1905)

And here is a variorum of different versions,
plus a few bits of supplementary information:

Pragmatic Maxim -- Variations on a Theme
http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-February/001179.html

So, at least the way I read it, the pragmatic maxim does not say
anything about 'the' meaning of a concept or symbol, in any sort
of absolute or universal way, but only tells how to clear up the
sense that a given interpreter has of it.  Weaker readings of the
maxim will lead us to the notion of "operational definitions" of
concepts, which can be quite useful as far as they go, although
they remain limited to their specific practical circumstances.

If you look at the logical structure of the pragmatic maxim, and
especially at the kinds of structures that arise from applying it,
you might observe that it is a form of "representation principle",
very analogous to, but a great generalization of the kind of thing
that we do when we form concrete representations of abstract groups
and other algebraic structures.  Indeed, there are things that are
still used today that are called "Peirce representations", which
seem in this case to go back to old Ben.  These are also related
to what are called "term models" in logic and model theory.

So I guess the general theme here is the clarification of fuzzy concepts.
That has a funny sort of relationship to information theory, but it will
take me a while to draw it out of this logical setting, as it's one of
those things that I'm still trying to get clear on.

I hope you're not sorry you asked ...

Jon Awbrey

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