[Inquiry] Re: Attribute, Impute, Represent -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 26

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JA = Jon Awbrey
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: AIR-DIS 19.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002590.html
In: AIR-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2566

CSP: | Every word is a symbol.  Every sentence is a symbol.  Every book is a symbol.
     | Every representamen depending upon conventions is a symbol.  Just as a photograph
     | is an index having an icon incorporated into it, that is, excited in the mind by
     | its force, so a symbol may have an icon or an index incorporated into it, that
     | is, the active law that it is may require its interpretation to involve the
     | calling up of an image, or a composite photograph of many images of past
     | experiences, as ordinary common nouns and verbs do;  or it may require
     | its interpretation to refer to the actual surrounding circumstances
     | of the occasion of its embodiment, like such words as 'that', 'this',
     | 'I', 'you', 'which', 'here', 'now', 'yonder', etc.  Or it may be
     | pure symbol, neither 'iconic' nor 'indicative', like the words
     | 'and', 'or', 'of', etc.
     |
     | C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 4.447
     |
     |"Logical Tracts, No. 2" (c. 1903), in 'Collected Papers', CP 4.418-509.
     | http://www.existentialgraphs.com/peirceoneg/existentialgraphs4.418-529.htm

Kirsti,

You raise many issues, both new and old, so it may take me a few
installments to address them all.  First, a few general remarks.

Some of this discussion may have to do with "formal logic" -- which
is actually something of a tautology in Peirce's terms, since it would
amount to "formal formal semiotic", but more likely one means logic that
is formulated or formalized in a particular form of syntax -- but I think
that it's more importantly a matter of just plain logic, most critically:
What are the grounds of validity for a statement of the form "All A are B"?
For example, what does it take to prove that "All symbols have the property
that they involve icons and indices"?

Unless we have definitions of symbols, icons, indices, and involvement
that are sufficient to support necessary reasoning, then it's pretty
much an idle question, unless one has nothing more in mind than the
methods of authority, popular opinion, or empirical probability.

The existence of symbols that do not involve either icons or indices
seems to be fairly clear from the definitions of icons, indices, and
symbols that Peirce gives in various places, along with the general
definition of a sign relation that he gives here:

| A sign is something, 'A', which brings something, 'B',
| its 'interpretant' sign determined or created by it,
| into the same sort of correspondence with something, 'C',
| its 'object', as that in which itself stands to 'C'.
|
| C.S. Peirce, NEM 4, pp. 20-21, cf. p. 54, also available here:
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/l75.htm

This definition has the advantage that the concepts of "correspondence"
and "determination" that it calls on are not themselves more complex
than the concept of sign relation to be defined, and we have pretty
clear information elsewhere in Peirce's work as to what he meant
by them.  As it stands, this definition can perhaps be taken at
two different levels of abstraction:  (1) in the more abstract
reading as a formal or information-theoretic determination,
(2) in the more concrete reading, as a causal or temporal
determination.  However, the relationship between these
two levels is a fairly common theme in similar studies,
and it is consequenly fairly well understood how one
can have both present, converting back and forth as
the need arises.

Now, "seems to be fairly clear" is the sort of clause that
demands further examination, but I have constructed many
concrete examples of 3-adic relations that satisfy this
definition of a sign relation without involving signs
that are interpreted as denoting their objects by
virtue of sharing a property with them, that is,
signs that are associated with interpretants
if and only if the signs in question share
a definite property with their objects.

Still, maybe it's this little phrase "by virtue of"
that remains in need of a pragmatic clarification.

Have to break here ...

Jon Awbrey

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