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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 38

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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

Auke,

I continue from where I left off ...

AB: On the one hand we have the transition of the conceptual structure according
    to some still to be explicated lines, but over all involve a stripping of
    meaning from the sign-relational aspects of S-O and also of S-I;  with
    regard to rheme, prop, argument going into seme, pheme, doleme there
    is some singling out going on. 

AB: On the other we have the provisional tagging
    of the monadic aspects of the sign.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying here.

AB: You discard both in one stroke.  In my opinion the first issue still has
    to be settled, but I think that will be possible.  Regarding the second
    much will depend on the first.  But if the first move is sound, the
    second issue demands a case by case discussion, not an overall
    dismissal.  That does justice to the provisional character
    of the work.

Nor here.

Just by way of refreshing our memories:
In order for a sign to work as an icon,
there has to be a property that it has
in common with its object, and this
property has to be the reason why,
the virtue whereby, it receives
the interpretant that it does.
Now, if the 3-tomy that you
are talking about at present
does not concern this, then
it's all beside the point.

The "mode of presentation of immediate appearances" (MOPOIA)
does not touch this question.  My screened mail folder is
positively rife with MOPOIA, just to pick a random example:

| I am Madam Mariam Mobutu, widow of late
| president Mobutu Sese-Seko of Zaire, now
| known as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The immediate object, or "the object as the sign represents it",
is very often a non-existent object, since what the cumulative
sign that represents it represents about it will frequently
turn out to be inconsistent, if not deliberate deception.

But symbols of logical operations can be given real denotations
in the form of particular formal or mathemtical objects.  These
may be understood as hypostatic abstractions, but they are none
the less solid for all that.  Symbols of logical operations can
be used to construct propositions that are fictitious, but that
is not their sin, whether by original or acquired imputation.

JA: The analysis of continuants repeats a form of recursive
    or fermatian development that Peirce uses over and over
    again from the very beginning of his inquiry into signs.
    Indeed, the form of it is not limited to sign relations,
    but can be used in the analysis of relations in general.
    It is one of the ways of getting at what is irreducible
    in a given type of complex structure.

AB: It seems that you are discussing characteristics of the content
    of the subject. I only was thinking about it from a speculative
    grammatical point of view.  I got the impression that Joe and you
    were discussing the color of a tree, without checking which tree it
    is you are discussing, the one in your garden or the one in Joe's.
    Given the subject nothing to wonder about, Peirce seems to have been
    confronted with the same issue, given his resort to the immediate object
    as a way to sort things out that are closely connected to the symbolical
    relation type.  I think that on this score my quote was pretty convincing.

AB: Of course this does not prevent Peirce from
    having mixed things up in his solution.
    But the distinction may remain valid.

I guess it turns on what one means by "logical relation".
Does one mean the arrangement of words in some expression?
Does one mean the formal object that's called a "relation"?
Since I know that Peirce's main approach uses the objective
idea, I have no problem choosing here, and I would consider
the other option to be a residual bit of nominal thinking.

Time for lunch!

Jon Awbrey

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