[Inquiry] Re: Questions Involving Pure Symbols -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 12

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JR = Joe Ransdell
JW = Jim Willgoose

JR: Two points in connection with your message below:

JR: First, my response -- just prior to this response --
    to your previous message which you modify slightly
    below should be regarded as applicable to this one
    as well.  And I say this after having read your
    response, in discussion note #11, to my response.

JR: Second, you will not find Stjernfelt's analysis of the passage
    from MS 293 in his paper in the Peirce Transactions congenial
    with your thesis, and it seems to me that there is something
    objectionable in your reference to it as if it were a support
    document for your view, with no explanation whatever of why
    you would say such a thing.

Joe,

I implied no relationship between Stjernfelt's paper,
which I haven't read, and my reading of Peirce on the
question of pure symbols.  Recent discussions have led
me back to the NEM volumes 3 and 4, where I have mainly
been revisiting the passages that I marginally noted on
some previous visits -- the PAP article being one among
these, I simply archived the excerpt for future review.

More immediately, Jim Willgoose made some remarks that began as follows:

JW: I have been following the discussion of pure symbols for awhile
    and thought I may have detected some sources of potential confusion.
    First, a token is sometimes understood as a symbol (especially early on).

But what JW wrote seemed to be a cumulative response to the discussion of
pure symbols, perhaps including my recent citation of a passage (CP 3.385)
from Peirce's paper "Algebra of Logic:  Philosophy of Notation" (1885), in
which he uses the word "token" in a peculiar way.  So I just lumped all of
this stuff together to sort out later.

JR: Since Stjernfelt's paper is not available on-line, or at least
    I have had no success in finding it there, I will have to put
    in some labor in either extracting some material from it for
    quotation or else compose a paraphrase of some of it, which
    will take some time in either case.  It might be worth it,
    though, not for the purpose of refuting your conception
    of the pure symbol, which I do not believe will be found
    acceptable as it stands, but rather because it will help
    to make clear why it is important to understand the symbol
    as regards what it normally does in semeiosis and how it
    does it, which is not illuminated by an understanding of
    icon-free connotation and index-free denotation, supposing
    there really is some sense after all in such a conception
    of the symbol in its "purity".

Apparently Peirce thought that there was some sense in the conception
of a pure symbol, in the sense of symbol not incorporating or involving
icons or indices, since he wrote what he wrote long before I could have
had any influence on him.

Jon Awbrey

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