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

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 28

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JA = Jon Awbrey
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: AIR-DIS 27.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002638.html
In: AIR-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2637

Correcting a link from last time:

LOR-COM.  Logic Of Relatives -- Commentary
LOR-COM.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-November/thread.html#1755

KM: Anyway, here is what I thought: 

KM: You take "double of --" as an example of pure symbol.  But in doing so,
    you transform the pure symbol "of" to an icon.  Just as well as if you
    transform pure "of" to a rhema "-- of --".  Or, to be more exact, you
    bring in iconicity to the (formerly pure) symbol (or rather:  a replica
    of it).  --  The issue Joe pointed out earlier about your multiplication
    table and iconicity.

Actually, I did not get as far as deriving a denotation for "of" itself,
due to some intervening issues that had to be addressed before we could
proceed, but only got as far as abstracting a meaning for "double of".
If I have any strength left, I may pick that up again at a later time.

I cannot figure out what you mean by saying that
I transformed the pure symbol "of" into an icon.
Could you elaborate on this?  If you are saying
something about replicas in the platonic sense,
then we already put aside the issue of vehicles
at the beginning of this discussion, and I have
never accepted this particular spin as a valid
interpretation of the rather clear and quite
simple point that Peirce is making here.

KM: Just looking at CP 4.447 (which is somewhat of a sidetract,
    or a loop, in the presentation) the clues offered there to
    the special nature of pure symbols, what I figured out was:

KM: In CP 4.447 Peirce is contrasting the modes
    of being of an icon, an index, and a symbol
    in relation to experience.  Thus: 

CSP: | An icon has such a being as belongs to past experience.
     | It exists only as an image in the mind.  An index has the
     | being of present experience.  The being of a symbol consists
     | in the real fact that something surely will be experienced if
     | certain conditions be satisfied.  Namely, it will influence the
     | thought and conduct of its interpreter.  Every word is a symbol. ---
     | [a representamen] may be a pure symbol, neither iconic nor
     | indicative, like the words 'and', 'or', 'of', etc.

KM: Now, Peirce has pointed out just before the above passage, that
    you must not take a replica of a symbol (a word) for the symbol.
    And that a word is not a thing, although a replica is.

This is all beside the point.  The relationship between generals and
particulars cross-cuts every discussion.  We are always dealing with
a general "thing" that encompassess a manifold of particular "things",
and we never reach anything that might be called a logical individual,
as some folks are imagining these instantiating replicas to be, in any
proper sense of the word.

KM: Well, then, the mode of being of a symbol is esse in futuro, the being of
    a habit, disposition or other effective general rule.  But a replica of a
    symbol, a word, e.g." OF", which I just wrote, and the replica of it which
    you (and anyone) reading it, must necessarily do so in some present instant,
    and then, in a split of a second, a connection will be effected to past --
    the replica as an icon resembling in all essentials past experiences of
    replicas of the word - and to future experience, the (anticipative) rule
    that you will take all future replicas of the word as embodiments of the
    very same word.

You are already speaking of your replicas in general terms.
Otherwise you can make no connection between the "thing" that
you say you just wrote -- whatever it might have been already
now replaced by a manifold of other "things" by the time you
can read "it" again on screen, much less be able to read "it"
again from a filed away file the next day, or the next day,
or maybe once or thrice upon a time in the far future, say,
in a galaxy far, far away -- and any of the many replicas
of replicas, invoking unfathomably distinct states of who
knows what diversity of computer systems, and needles to
say cognitive systems, that may appear to anybody else
as being somehow related to the "thing" what you say
you just wrote.

So I think that we should recognize that this whole mess
of replicas was just a barrel of red herrings introduced
to distract from what is the most obvious interpretation
of what Peirce is saying in this passage.

To be continued ...

Jon Awbrey

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