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

[Jon Awbrey]

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QUIPS.  Discussion Note 41

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JW = Jim Willgoose

Re: QUIPS-DIS 39.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/002729.html
In: QUIPS-DIS.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2602

JW: You seem to be very concerned with what you have referred to earlier as
    a "syncat dodge" and something else called "syntax magic".  In an earlier
    post (Logic 101) you referred to "reifying syntax" of a natural language in
    the context of Peirce's unpsychological view of logic.  I agree with that and
    adopt the modern view.  But I now find it very difficult to understand who the
    disputants are in this debate about pure symbols.  I for one am concerned with
    what you call "the mere connective ligaments in the textual issues of syntax",
    but spent the better part of a day ago precising the SEMANTIC function of these
    ligaments.  But then, is the attempt on Peirce's part to represent teridentity
    a case of "syntax magic" on the grounds that it "does away" with the problem
    of mere combination?

JW: You say:

JA: People, namely, most notoriously, nominal thinkers, who would eschew at almost
    any cost committing themselves, ontologically speaking, to the existence and/or
    reality of abstract objects, hypostatic abstractions, and formal constructions
    like "information", among which we find the denotations of basic logical signs,
    are prone to say that these symbols are "syncategorematic terms", that do not
    denote any sort of objects in their own right but merely serve as connective
    ligaments in the textual tissues of syntax.  If that's how some read what
    Peirce is saying about copulants, then I tend to suspect some measure of
    backsliding in their realism about abstract objects.

JW: Neither 4.447 nor 8.349 say anything about syntax.
    Furthermore "bringing together" can be construed
    on the plane of either grammar or logic.  You need,
    at least for me, to distinguish between natural and
    formal grammar on the one hand, and meaning on the
    other.  Otherwise, I could contrue you as suggesting
    that Peirce is guilty of syntax magic!  I also agree
    that "and" can be taken up into Plato's World and
    given a denotation.

Jim,

No, I'm not boxing with shadows here, though some of where I've heard
this particular line before was on another couple of lists, and when
the New_Russell.Age (New Russell Dotage) that the 'Mantic Web seems
doomed to become has woven its tangled web about our brains, we will
need some of these prescriptions that Peirce long time passing Rx'd.

In these contexts, the syncategorematic treatment of logical operators
is one of the ways of denying the irreducibly 3-adic character of most
of them, and also one way of denying the deep formal analogy between
logical operators and so-called "extra-logical" predicates.  All of
these denials spring from familiar catch-basins of nominal thinking.

"Syntax magic" refers to the idea that signs, in and of themselves,
beyond the context of a suitable sign relation, "do" anything at all.
At most they catalyze a reaction in the proper sign relational medium.
Brute indices "command" the attention of none but the properly prepared
species of brutes, some dogs, but no cats, and most definitely no syncats.

In all this, I am merely trying to preserve some of Peirce's best insights,
by which he escaped not just the pet traps of many former generations, but
also the delusive trappings of the century (or two?) that came after him.

Jon Awbrey

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