[Inquiry] Re: Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PS.  Discussion Note 14

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: PS-DIS 13.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002483.html
In: PS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2466

In part:

JA: 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.

JR replies:

JR: You keep formulating the issue in such a way as to avoid what
    I take to be at issue.  The question, as I conceive it, is not
    about "compounded" vs. "uncompounded" symbols or about special
    cases of symbols.  It is about what symbols are, functionally:
    how they do what they do regardless of who is using them for
    whatever purpose.  Is it possible for them to do what they
    do without involving something functioning indexically and
    something functioning iconically?  I supplied many passages
    from Peirce, early and late, in which he appears to be saying
    that they involve both.  I understand this to be an application
    of the New List principle that 3rdness cannot be prescinded from
    secondness and firstness.  If that principle is being abandoned
    in the case of pure symbols, which is what he seems at first to
    be saying in CP 4.447, then why is he talking about the line
    of identity in 4.448 as he does?

Joe,

The question at the head of this thread was:

| Are there pure symbols?
|
| Do there exist, in the formal sense of existence at least,
| purely symbolic sign relations, in particular, those that
| involve, qua sign relations, no ideas of icons or indices?

The point in condition is whether a certain type of sign relation exists.
It is beside the point to point to the existence of sign relations of the
contrary type, and to assert that sign relations of the contrary type are
especially nice, complete, perfect, interesting, or whatever, as you keep
doing, since the existence or importance of these types of sign relations
is not in contention.  Only a proof that all possible sign relations are
of the contrary type would prove the non-existence of purely symbolic
sign relations.

This is an existential question, in some sense of the word "existence" that
we all recognize and use all the time, if not exactly its most brutal sense.
We have adequate definitions of sign relations, and we've more or less gone
on faith so far that they are more or less consistent with each other, with
due regard for their varying degrees of informality and partiality, most of
which factors are very well-marked according to their intended audience and
context of use.  We also have what untutored witnesses would testify to as
clear statements and implications from Peirce that pure symbols exist, and
though these hints are helpful, not even they are not decisive.

Yes, your part of the contention is harder --
I could get by by constructing the right
sort of example, whereas you would have
to prove a universal from the bare
definition of a sign relation --
but that is just the nature
of the issue.

Jon Awbrey

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