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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 30

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JA = Jon Awbrey
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: QUIPS-DIS 26.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002692.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

JA: The conglomeration "pure original/"base replica" is of course
    a portmanteau cobbled together by way of collecting the many
    connotations that various folks have loaded onto my original
    question, and since I never saw the relevance of this line
    of interpretation, I'm merely collecting its accoutrements
    without quite gathering what is in their minds, either.

KM: OK, this clears up some mist.

JA: In the immediate number/numeral context I did toss in
    the pun "base" as a way of alluding to the fact that
    numerals are dependent on a base of representation
    that does not affect the numbers themselves.

KM: Definitely not me.  What I was talking about in my response
    was the mode of being of pure symbols, which was the question
    Peirce was talking about in CP 4.447.  Which, in turn, lead into
    the question of the nature of the relation between a habit and an
    instant, and/or a conventional sign and a replica.  Which does not,
    to my mind, come down simply as "pure original"/"base replica"
    distinction.  Too much is left out here, for the alleged sake
    of simplicity, I guess.

JA: Which is precisely my point.

KM: Ok, again.  This clarifies a lot.

JA: Again, I think that there was a fairly clear sense
    of the word "pure" that Peirce was using in the term
    "pure symbol", as he used it in this context.  I have
    since subscribed it as "pure_sym" to distinguish it from
    the host of other senses that have since been nominated as
    candidates for the canonical interpretation.  At last count,
    we had at least these:

    1.  Pure_Sym => unincorporated, uninvoluted

    2.  Pure_Sec => second intentional something or other

    3.  Pure_Syn => syncategorematic symbol

    4.  Pure_Oid => original versus replica

    5.  Pure_Iso => isolated

    6.  Pure_99.44% => pure soap

JA: As an interpretation of what Peirce is saying at CP 4.447,
    I can only speak for the first of this slate of candidates.

KM: Could you dwell a little on 'unincorporated, uninvoluted', esp.
    its relation to the 5th, 'isolated'? -- No doubt these senses
    can be distinguished, but if they are not (re)connected as well,
    how can you say anything without dealing with the 5th slate?

Here I am just sticking to the words "incorporate" and "involve"
that Peirce actually used in this context.  As occupants of the
"English Room" -- or the "<Name Your Favorite Language> Room" --
often discover, we tend just a little bit too automatically
to toss words together in a string without really knowing
with any exactness what we have writ by doing so.  So it
would further matters to supply the missing definitions
of these words.  Since all of the examples that Peirce
gives of symbols that do incorporate or involve icons
and indices are examples of complex symbols that have
icons and indices among their components, providing
as he says "indpendent indications" of subjects and
predicates and so on, I think he is talking about
syntactic forms of incorporation and involvement.

If I had to pick a better word than "pure" for this,
I might have chosen "primitive", in the formal sense
that suggests "basic", "fundamental", "irreducible".
Thus, in geometry, the concepts of points and lines
are primitives, undefined in absolute terms, though
characterized in relation to each other, and further
in terms of the particular geometry that they support,
as specified by the particular set of axioms in force.
A symbol can have a meaning of its own that does not
lean on the meanings of icons and indices, but that's
not the same thing as saying that it has that meaning
for its own sake, and not for the sake of contributing
it to larger meanings.

Will have to quit for today ...

Jon Awbrey

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