[Inquiry] Re: Futures Of Logical Graphs

[Jon Awbrey]

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FOLG.  Note 26

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Cybernetics List, Peirce List,

One of the questions that arises at this point, where we have
a very small object domain !O! = {Falsity, Truth} and a very
large sign domain !S! ~=~ {rooted trees}, is the following:

   Why do we have so many ways of saying the same thing?

In other words, what possible utility is there in a language having
so many signs to denote the same object?  Why not just restrict the
language to a canonical collection of signs, each of which denotes
one and only one object, exclusively and uniquely?

Indeed, language reformers from time to time have proposed the design of
languages that have just this property, but I think this is one of those
places where natural evolution has luckily hit on a better plan than the
sorts of intentional design that inexperienced designers typically craft.

The answer to the puzzle of semiotic multiplicity appears to have something
to do with the use of language in interacting with a complex external world.
The objective world throws its multiplicity of problems at us, and the first
duty of language is to provide some expression of their structure, on the fly,
as quickly as possible, in real time, as they come in, no matter how obscurely
our quick and dirty expressions of the problematic situation might otherwise be.

Of course, very little of this can be apparent at the level of primary arithmetic,
but I think it should become a little more obvious as we enter the primary algebra.

Jon Awbrey

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