[Inquiry] Questions Involving Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 1

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GR = Gary Richmond
JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Cf: Passages 25.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2005-April/002546.html
Cf: AIR-COM 1.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002565.html

Kirsti,

A collective, somewhat hazy bird's eye response
to some messages from earlier in the week, before
they get buried by the relentless passages of time.

KM: In response to Jon's response 25.04.05 (below)
    to Gary's taking up CP 4.447, Jon wrote:

JA: I have never said anything about the probabilities
    of what happens in a population of semiotic cases.
    The question has to do with the logical necessity
    of symbols, as symbols, involving icons and indices.
    There is none, as one can tell from the definitions.

KM: Jon got me convinced on his point, at least provisionally.
    The rationale for agreeing not so much arising from the
    lengthy past discussion, but from using the category
    system as a methodological device or rule, as I have
    learned to use it in my own work.  To put it as
    simple as possible, this is how I think:

KM: Symbols as symbols  involve firstness (in thirdness), as well
    as secondness (in thirdness), that is:  symbols involve qualities
    (firstness), and habits or disposition, or other effective general
    rule of interpretation (secondness).  The qualities involved in the
    symbol, then, are of three qualitative varieties, one of them imputed
    qualities.

I cannot speak for the utility of using the three -nesses in this way,
as it tends to gloss over all of the most critical details, but I can
say this much:  It's not a question of whether qualities and what are
variously called "differences 'in actu'", "reactions", or just plain
2-adic relations are involved somehow or another in 3-adic relations,
in particular, sign relations.  In order for icons and indices to be
involved in a 3-adic transaction, there have to be specific relations
among the objects, the signs, their respective qualities, and their
"connections in fact", which latter may be formulated in terms of
ordered pairs of objects and signs.  These requisite conditions
for the necessary involvement of icons and indices are simply
not compelled by any of the logically adequate definitions of
sign relations that Peirce gives, and indeed, inference to
the contrary would be inconsistent with the critical fact
that genuine 3-adic relations are irreducibly 3-adic.

KM: Anyway, all participants alike use Peirce's definitions
    to substantiate there views.  And it just does not seem
    to be so that one could tell from the definitions, as
    Jon claims, whether there is a logical necessity of
    symbols as symbols involving icons and indices.
    Or else the discussion would have been a short
    and simple one, leading to an agreement.

The differences of opinion here have many sources.
Some of the divergences are, of course, political.
In some countries, the word "constitution", means
a written constitution, in other nations it refers
to a cumulative conglomerate of community sentiment,
common law, devolved custon, and established precedent,
which however much of it may in fact be written, cannot
be said to be localized in a "compact" system of ideas.
According to individual taste in constitutions, then,
some will tend to view Peirce's corpus on the model
of the "written" or the "unwritten" constitution.

In accord with these differences, there will be different
perspectives on what constitutes an "adequate" definition.
And this will be correlated with a diversity of opinions
on what constitutes the all-important differences among
"examples", "definitions", and "descriptions".

Aside from that, there are apparently differences of opinion
as to what it takes to establish anything so fundamental as
a categorical proposition of the form "All A are B".

Consequently, one is not likely to obtain agreement, even
at the level of the most fundamental notions of reasoning,
so what chance is there of finding agreement about vastly
more complicated issues?

Have to break here ...

Jon Awbrey

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