[Inquiry] Re: Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PS.  Discussion Note 13

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JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: PS-DIS 5.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2466
In: PS-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002466.html

JR: I may not understand what is implicit in the question you pose,
    but my initial inclination is to say that what one already can
    be supposed to know about sign and object is never in itself
    sufficient to determine fully what the interpretant must be.

Joe,

That in a nutshell is about all there is to it.
If there are sign relations, sets of triples that
satisfy a definition of sign relations like the one
given in the Carnegie Application, Letter 75, or in
NEM 4, and there is nothing further that constrains
the objects and signs to have common properties or
connected existences that are somehow represented
as such among the interpretants, then there are
sign relations that are purely symbolic in type.

JR: This would always be true for any ampliative inference, and also
    for deductions of the sort Peirce describes as "theorematc", but
    it might seem at first as if it is not true for such cases as, say,
    when you have the two premises of a classical valid syllogism, e.g.,
    to take the most obvious case, the premises of Barbara:  All A is B;
    All B is C;  ergo -- and, it would seem, necessarily -- all A is C.
    Even there, though, I don't see that the proper interpretant of the
    premises would and could only be that A is C.  That still seems to
    me to be a conclusion that could be drawn but not one that must be
    drawn.  Why?  Because the context and situation of utterance, which
    includes the motive for drawing the inference, is not being taken
    into account, which could affect what legitimate conclusion could
    actually be  drawn.    But is this a good answer to the question
    you are posing?  I mean is that the right sort of answer or am
    I misunderstanding what you are saying?

What you say here is true -- there is nothing that would answer
for a uniquely identified conclusion of a set of premisses except
perhaps the consequent that implies every other consequent and that
would be logically equivalent to the conjunction of all the premisses.
For instance, just to take a simple propositional case, A and A => B is
logically equivalent, not to B, the usual modus ponens conclusion, but
to the proposition A & B.  Still, all this is beside the point, since
we are already considering propositions and arguments, which are very
special cases of symbols.  There is no contention that we cannot find
special cases of symbols that have all sorts of compound properties.
The issue is only whether there are symbols that are pure symbols,
in particular, not compounded of iconic and indicial species.

Jon Awbrey

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