[Inquiry] Re: Simple Meanings In Limnal Expressions -- Commentary

[Jon Awbrey]

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SMILE.  Commentary Note 4

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Re: SMILE 4.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-November/003166.html
In: SMILE.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-November/thread.html#3166

The next species of algebraic inquiry that Peirce
enumerates is described in the following fashion:

| Again, given certain data concerning 'x',
| we may ask, what else needs to be known in
| order to compel 'x' to be !v! or to be !f!.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 4.250

We begin with the information that 'x' is an element of !B! = {!f!, !v!},
a relation that is often expressed, especially in Ascii, as "'x' in !B!".
The way that Peirce enuniciates this present turn of inquiry, it has the
sound of an "inverse problem".  That is, 'x' is a little like a function
that has a value in !B!, where our initial concern is to ascertain or to
compute this value, and the question now before us is like the turnabout
of this "forward" question that fixes the functional value, and asks for
the functional antecedents that get mapped to that functional consequent.
But there's a hitch.  What's the functional domain that 'x', reconstrued
as function, is supposed to map to !B!, if this analogy is going to work?

There are, so far as I'm aware, more than one good answer to this question,
differing more in their stylistic material than in their substantial forms.
I'll take up one or two of the more likable, to me, alternatives next time.

Jon Awbrey

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