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

[Jon Awbrey]

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

QUIPS.  Discussion Note 37

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

AB = Auke van Breemen
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: QUIPS-DIS 34.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002721.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

JA: Let me check out some aspects of your reading before proceeding.

AB: Well, to me it does not look like a correspondence, my reading of my
    text and my reading of your check of it.  My comment between the lines.

JA: The Lady Welby correspondence in Wiener's volume is some of my
    first reading in Peirce, but all in all I find no innovations
    but the purely expository there, and the passages that we are
    discussing in CP 8 are noted by the Editors as being revised
    in way that is "unintelligible", which led them to leave the
    text as it was originally given.  All of this would put us
    on extremely shaky ground if we try to say that this was
    Peirce's last, best thoughts on the matter.  In cases
    like this I have to be ruled by what interpretation
    makes the most consistent overall account, when
    taken in the context of a writer's known work.

AB: 1. Sources.  I use the 1977 edition of the correspondence as
       my main source on this.  Would like to have more material.

I have Philip Wiener's 'Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings' and CP 8.
In CP 8.349, at "'Copulants', which neither describe nor denote their
Objects, but merely express the logical relations of these latter to
something otherwise referred to", the Editors add the following note:
"(Ed.) Peirce had revised the manuscript here, but since his revision
is unintelligible, we give the text as it was originally."

AB: 2. Shaky grounds.  As Joe already indicated it is highly tentative work
       of Peirce, his work on speculative grammar at the end of his life.
       No dispute about that amongst any of the Peirce interpreters that
       seriously tried to apply the speculative grammar, I presume.

As a general observation, I can only suggest that if people would put
a bit more effort into reading Peirce's more exacting technical works,
there would be far less need for this death-bed conversion literature,
that depends so heavily on gleaning what can be gleaned from his more
popular essays and pedagogical letters, hoping by chance that he will
finally get around to making some approximate paraphrase of something
that he said more precisely 50 years before, if not indeed, like rank
platonic realism, being taking for granted in the workaday philosophy
of whole communities and disciplines in which he worked all along.

3. You find nothing new in it.  That what one finds in a text depends on
   the goals one persues, I guess.  For, anybody who states for the 1902/3
   classification:  You can point to me any sign you want and I will be able
   to analyse it, because this theory pretents to have universal applicability
   in the domain of analyzing signs, and who has been, as a consequence hereof,
   confronted with hundreds of such examples in the past from diverse domains,
   will find some new directions in the Welby exchange.

If there is anything like "mad rationalism" or "hyper-formalism" (Joe's terms)
in Peirce it is this attempt to generate the classifications a priori and the
concrete data later.  Here Peirce temporarily forgets to do what he does so
well in other places, to walk on the two legs of intensional qualities and
extensional instances.  But it's far too difficult, for Peirce no better
than Hegel, to progress by purely intensional means, and thus, as far
as "universal applicability" goes, he gets no further than a very
tentative assault on elementary sign relations, not even as far
as sign relations with more than one triple.

4. The way you discard the Welby work.  Anybody his taste.  Consistency is great.
   But I prefer also to keep looking at the subject I study, the nagging details
   that refuse to get settled and that ask for some expansion of my understanding.
   Regarding the quality of the thoughts of latter years we have to distinguish
   different aspects.

I don't discard any such work.  But I note its stylistic character.

Have to break here ...

Jon Awbrey

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