[Inquiry] Re: Logic Of The Sciences -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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LOTS.  Discussion Note 2

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BM = Bernard Morand

Re: LOTS 4.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002417.html
In: LOTS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2413

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| Chapter 1.  Definition of Logic
|
| It is requisite first to define logic;  and to indicate not merely
| its genus and difference, but also the genus and difference of its
| 'proximum genus' up to the 'genus summum'.
|
| What is the 'genus summum'?  'Being', an ambiguous word --
| in one of its senses is the name for it.  But we wish,
| not its name, but its character.
|
| We wish to find the character of the 'summum genus'.  That is, to make the widest
| possible induction.  To find the character of a class by induction we must take
| instances of that class.  Now therefore we must take instances in general.  Now,
| instances taken by us, are 1st in virtue of being taken by us feelings, and 2nd
| in virtue of being instances they are representations (that is, are considered
| as representations).  The first character belongs to them by virtue of the
| limitation of our selection.  Taking, therefore, the other character alone
| we by induction attribute this to the class of which they are instances.
| Hence we infer that 'all is representation'.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, 325-326
|
| C.S. Peirce, "Logic of the Sciences", MS 113 (1865), pp. 322-336 in:
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition, Vol. 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

BM: YAAQ: Yet Another Amazing Quote, Jon!

BM: I am often surprised by the profound actuality of some of Peirce's
    thoughts with respect to our concerns in software engineering.  This
    one is to be counted among them.  There are several ways of handling
    the class-instances relationship in object-oriented programming, going
    from class languages to frame languages together with a large variety of
    Creoles.  But what Peirce is reaching there, within a distance of more
    than a century is prototype languages.  Contrary to the mainstream in
    Software Engineering, the instantiation operation is seen as involving
    generalization and representation.  I invented some decades ago, long
    before my study of Peirce, the concept of "individu-type" with just
    these two ideas in mind (in fact it was not very successful).  I think
    that there is some similar construct in Sowa conceptual graphs called
    concept-type or is it "plural" mark, I don't remember exactly.  In any
    case, thanks to CSP for making the instantiation problem a matter of 
    representation (mediation) and not a matter of copy (dual relation).

I understand this in terms of the relationship between sampling and semiotics,
a link that goes back to the Greek etymology and the reasoning of Hippocrates,
that is, the idea of a representative sample -- representative cybernetics !?
At any rate, I think it's significant that the somewhat too unqualified claim
that "all is representation" arises here in the frame of a limiting induction,
and not some kind of transcendental deduction, which latter form of reasoning
always tends to make me more suspicious than convinced of its imputed results.

I guess I'm less surprised than I used to be at Peirce's constant anticipation
of contemporary programming insights, since the operationalization of ideas is
a large part of what the pragmatic maxim is all about.  -- "Words that do" --

Jon Awbrey

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