[Inquiry] Re: Grounds And Respects -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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GAR.  Discussion Note 4

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JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: GAR-DIS 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002447.html
In: GAR-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2447

JR: I don't know whether or not we can find
    a single view of the conception of form
    in Peirce, but the following passage,
    which dates from late in his career,
    seems especially interesting:  
 
CSP: | That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant
     | is a Form;  that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a power, is
     | the fact that something would happen under certain conditions.  This Form is
     | 'really' embodied in the object, meaning that the conditional relation which
     | constitutes the Form is 'true' of the Form as it is in the Object.  In the
     | Sign it is embodied only in a 'representative' sense, meaning that whether
     | by virtue of some real modification of the Sign or otherwise, the Sign
     | becomes endowed with the 'power' of communicating it to an interpretant.
     | It may be in the interpretant 'directly' as it is in the Object, or it
     | may be in the interpretant dynamically as behavior of the interpretant
     | (this happens when a military officer uses the sign "Halt!" or "Forward
     | march!" and his men simply obey him, perhaps automatically);  or it may
     | be in the interpretant only representatively.  (MS 793.2, 1906)

Joe,

I am currently focusing on a particular connection in which Peirce
invokes a consideration of forms, ideas, qualities, and so on, and
I'm about to re-iterate a familiar passage where he uses the word
"logos" in the same role, so I think that the passage you cited
is in the same line.  This seems to be a topic that is broader
than sign relations proper, having to do with the theory of
relations in general, even though it's clear that Peirce
had to develop the theory of relations in order to deal
with the relations involved in signs and inquiry.

If we look to the classical texts where the prepositions 'kata' and 'pros',
used in a certain way, are translated "in respect to" and "in relation to",
it is evident that reference to a ground or correlate, indeed, reference to
a category in general, functioned as a type of equivocation resolver, without
which the application of logical laws to words would be forever bedevilled by
a host of quibbling objections.

Taking this function as a pragmatic definition, we have a commmon role
that is served by the invocation of all sorts of aspects, capacities,
categories, correlates, grounds, qualifiers, qualities, respects,
and so on.  We can now generalize to the class of things that
serve the same purpose.

My guess is that we'll eventually arrive
at notions of constraint, information,
and their relation.

Jon Awbrey

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