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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 32

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Re: QUIPS-DIS 30.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002713.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

KM: Thanks for an interesting response.
    Don't have much time now, still I'll
    try to jot down a few thoughts ... 

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: Now I think I get your point, connecting this
    to what you say below of 'pure' and 'base'. 

<...>

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? 

JA: 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. 

KM: Agreed. 

JA: So it would further matters to supply
    the missing definitions of these words. 

KM: Well, no doubt it would further matters, but only with certain
    limited aims.  What I have in mind here is the distinction between
    so called nominal and real definitions. -- Also, it's not clear to
    me HOW the definitions you provide can be derived from what Peirce
    did writ in CP 4.447. -- Note:  My interest in getting to know this
    arises from the courses in argumentation and critical text analysis
    I've given over the years for students planning their dissertations
    etc., not just, or even primarily, challenging your views.

Kirsti,

For my part, I prefer not to dignify
"definitions in name only" with the
name of definitions.

There are several types of contextual analysis that one can bring to bear
on the question of what an author means by words that he or she may have
thought had meanings too obvious to need defining in the place that they
are used.  There is local context, global context within the work of one
author, and the cultural/disciplinary context that extends across sorts
of questions that were on the minds of many writers in a particular era.
An era can extend over decades, centuries, or millennia depending on the
question in question.  Readers of Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Boole, and
De Morgan will find many distinctive phrases and questions echoed by
Peirce, with his own special twists, of course.  No man is an island,
etc.  Putting all this together, it is often possible to place the
ubiversal question that a writer is addressing in his own space.

JA: 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 "independent indications" of subjects and 
    predicates and so on, I think he is talking about 
    syntactic forms of incorporation and involvement. 

KM: Agreed.  Still, what Peirce does in giving examples
    of pure symbols, is to isolate them, i.e. slate 5.,
    right?

I think that it was Gary Richmond who used the word "isolated"
to interpret the word "pure", or to interpret what he thought
I meant by it, and I do not know, but got the sense that he
meant it in a "noble gas" sort of way.  Either that or the
"if there was but one hand, clapping or otherwise, in the
whole universe, could you tell if it was left or right?"
sort of way.  That was not at all what I had in mind,
nor thought that Peirce had in mind.

JA: 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. 

KM: This I find interesting, though probably in a very different way
    than you do.  -- I'll come back to this later, in connection with
    some parts in earlier discussion. 

JA: 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. 

KM: Agreed.  Not that it would be clear to me
    yet what kind of a meaning it could be.

All in due time ...

Jon Awbrey

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