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

[Jon Awbrey]

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LOTS.  Discussion Note 7

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Re: LOTS 9.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002425.html
In: LOTS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2413

Regarding the document before us, the editors of the 'Chronological Edition'
tell us:  "This manuscript contains a number of different sections, some of
which are incomplete, and several scattered and fragmentary pages;  numerous
others are missing.  As it is not possible to establish a firm order for what
is contained in the manuscript, what we have printed is in fact an array of
miscellaneous fragments.  ...  It is possible that some of the pages or
sections were written earlier than the date indicated [Fall-Winter 1865],
perhaps as early as the spring of 1865."  (Ed. Note, CE 1, 554-555).

One of the interesting features of this text is that Peirce appears
to be taking the methods of Aristotelian-Linnaean taxonomy about as
far as anyone could imagine taking them, up to the point of trying
to classify sign relations in general.  I believe such a project,
even if it may be conceivable in principle, is ultimately doomed
to unfeasibility in practice, at least, in the hands and minds
of more ordinary mortals than Peirce.  In the process of making
this assault on Mt. Semiosis, however, Peirce does for a moment
breach the bounds between intensional and extensional ways of
thinking, most acutely in this passage:

| To understand representation as a mark,
| we must consider the different orders of
| marks.  By a mark of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd order
| is meant one which indicates a state of things
| which essentially supposes one thing, two things,
| or three things.  (CE 1, 324-325).

The essential supposition of a number of things
in order to support the order of mark in view
forges the link from intension to extension.

Jon Awbrey

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