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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 40

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AB = Auke van Breemen
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: QUIPS-DIS 37.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002727.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

AB: You wrote:

JA: 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.

AB: From someone who states:

JA: 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

AB: I would not expect this reaction.  But besides that,
    given the amount of example analysis of sign processes
    to be found, I cannot see how you justify your remark.
    It is by testing the 1903 scheme that he felt the need
    to proceed, I need not to suppose that Peirce forgets
    something in order to proceed in an a priori way.

Auke,

Well, it was partly tongue-in-cheek, so I wouldn't push it too far
for fear of swallowing my tongue, but you seem to have made a leap
from "exacting technical work" to "classification a priori" that I
would not have had in mind when I said this.  It was precisely the
balance and the back-and-forth interaction between pure intensions
and raw extensions that made Peirce's technical work so productive.
Now, some people get bent out of shape if I enumerate a collection
of k-tuples as the extension of a relative concept, but it remains
a plain fact that Peirce used these sorts of concrete exemplitudes
to analyze such concepts in the most effective and exacting detail.
Nor do I estimate nodding allusions to portraits and weather-vanes,
which are after all but isolated examples of single signs that are
torn from the context of their larger sign relations, as anywhere
near comparable to the extensive samples of sign relations that
are necessary to begin anything approaching a full analysis.

Jon Awbrey

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