[Inquiry] Re: Futures Of Logical Graphs -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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FOLG.  Discussion Note 25

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Jim, Peirce List,

I won't try to respond in detail to your last couple of notes,
partly because I was unclear how much you were standing by and
how much you were taking back, but mostly because it's Friday
and I need a beer (or 3) before I try to go on.  So I'll just
exercise my vagophilia (?) and speak from a hazy impression
of what you've been focusing on the last couple of months.

It's natural to try and understand complex things in terms of simpler things --
indeed, it's a heuristic rule to try and do just that.  But heuristic rules
come with their complementary or exceptional heuristic rules, the sensible
choice among which rules will have to be sorted out on the fly by risky
experiment with actual practice, so a more complete rule is like this:
Try to understand complex things in terms of simpler things, but don't
forget that some things are irreducibly complex and have to be taken
on their own terms.

Sign relations in general are some of those exceptional, irreducible things.
So when you pass from talking about "X stands for Y to Z" to trying to find
ultimate explanations in 2-adic relations like "X stands for Y", as if that
were a fact in itself, then you have stepped on the road to ruin as far as
Peirce's way of looking at it goes.

Speaking of road to ruin --
On to the pub !!!

Jon Awbrey

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