[Inquiry] Re: Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PS.  Discussion Note 11

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JR = Joe Ransdell
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: PS-DIS 8.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002477.html
In: PS-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2466

JR: And doesn't the Existential Graph system contain icons
    of very abstract logical symbols, such as containment,
    exclusion, inclusion, etc.?  That is, doesn't Peirce
    himself regard the graphical figures as iconic of
    those relations, that being why he prefers it
    to other notations that are not so iconic?

JA: The question under consideration is whether there are such things
    as pure symbols, involving in their function as symbols, per se,
    no iconic or indicial properties.

JR: That is the topic I am addressing

JA:  The questions of whether there may be, in addition,
     icons of these symbols, and whether these putative
     "icons of symbols" may have virtues that one might
     prefer for this or that conceivable purpose under
     heaven -- these are of course interesting topics,
     but not the main question at issue here.

JR: I am not talking about icons of symbols but icons
    as implicit in the functioning of symbols as symbols.

I almost supplied "iconic interpretants of symbols" but that didn't seem to
translate what you meant either, so I stuck with an abbreviated version of
your own phrase, "icons of very abstract logical symbols".

I think that I can provisionally accept your clarification,
"icons as implicit in the functioning of symbols as symbols",
so long as "implicit" is not given such a wide scope as to say
that any shared qualities that anyone might notice between the
objects and the signs would count as "implicitly" iconic signs.
It has to be an iconic sign relation that is implied in the set
of triples that qualifies as a given sign relation, simpliciter.
Metaphorically speaking, there would have to be the sense that
the representer is necessarily representing an iconic relation
between objects and signs simply as a part of participating in
a sign relation of symbolic type.  It seems to me like the most
assured way of doing this, by necessary reasoning alone, is to
work from a definition and not by way of special pleadings from
special cases of sign relations.  Of course, the proper sort of
special case will always suffice to refute a general proposition.

JR: The pragmatic maxim pertains to symbols as symbols and applies to
    their use in formal contexts as much as anywhere else since it is
    about what makes a symbol a symbol, i.e. gives it its distinctive
    type of sign value:  formalists are not specially licensed to work
    with a type of sign not included in Peirce's semiotic.

???

Jon Awbrey

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