[Inquiry] Re: Kaina Stoicheia

[Jon Awbrey]

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KS.  Note 12

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| If we erase from an argument every monstration of its special purpose,
| it becomes a proposition;  usually a copulate proposition, composed of
| several members whose mode of conjunction is of the kind expressed by
| "and", which the grammarians call a "copulative conjunction".
|
| If from a propositional symbol we erase one or more of the parts which
| separately denote its objects, the remainder is what is called a 'rhema';
| but I shall take the liberty of calling it a 'term'.
|
| Thus, from the proposition "Every man is mortal", we erase "Every man",
| which is shown to be denotative of an object by the circumstance that if
| it be replaced by an indexical symbol, such as "That" or "Socrates", the
| symbol is reconverted into a proposition, we get the 'rhema' or 'term':
|
|    " ___ is mortal".
|
| Most logicians will say that this is not a term.  The term,
| they will say, is "mortal", while I have left the copula "is"
| standing with it.  Now while it is true that one of Aristotle's
| memoirs dissects a proposition into subject, predicate, and verb,
| yet as long as Greek was the language which logicians had in view,
| no importance was attached to the substantive verb, "is", because
| the Greek permits it to be omitted.  It was not until the time of
| Abelard, when Greek was forgotten, and logicians had Latin in mind,
| that the copula was recognized as a constituent part of the logical
| proposition.
|
| I do not, for my part, regard the usages of language
| as forming a satisfactory basis for logical doctrine.
| Logic, for me, is the study of the essential conditions
| to which signs must conform in order to function as such.
| How the constitution of the human mind may compel men to
| think is not the question;  and the appeal to language
| appears to me to be no better than an unsatisfactory
| method of ascertaining psychological facts that are
| of no relevancy to logic.
|
| But if such appeal is to be made (and logicians generally
| do make it;  in particular their doctrine of the copula
| appears to rest solely upon this), it would seem that
| they ought to survey human languages generally and
| not confine themselves to the small and extremely
| peculiar group of Aryan speech.
|
| Without pretending, myself, to an extensive acquaintance with languages,
| I am confident that the majority of non-Aryan languages do not ordinarily
| employ any substantive verb equivalent to "is".  Some place a demonstrative
| or relative pronoun;  as if one should say:
|
|    " ___ is a man 'that' is translated"
|
| for "A man is translated".  Others have a word, syllable, or letter, to show
| that an assertion is intended.  I have been led to believe that in very few
| languages outside the Aryan group is the common noun a well-developed and
| independent part of speech.  Even in the Shemitic languages, which are
| remarkably similar to the Aryan, common nouns are treated as verbal
| forms and are quite separated from proper names.
|
| The ordinary view of a term, however, supposes it to be a common noun in
| the fullest sense of the term.  It is rather odd that of all the languages
| which I have examined in a search for some support of this ordinary view, so
| outlandish a speech as the Basque is the only one I have found that seems to
| be constructed thoroughly in the manner in which the logicians teach us that
| every rational being must think.*
|
|* While I am on the subject of languages I may take occasion to remark
|  with reference to my treatment of the direct and indirect "objects"
|  of a verb as so many subjects of the proposition, that about nine out
|  of every ten languages regularly emphasize one of the subjects, and
|  make it the principal one, by putting it in a special nominative case,
|  or by some equivalent device.  The ordinary logicians seem to think
|  that this, too, is a necessity of thought, although one of the living
|  Aryan languages of Europe habitually puts that subject in the genetive
|  which the Latin puts in the nominative.  This practice was very likely
|  borrowed from a language similar to the Basque spoken by some progenitors
|  of the Gaels.  Some languages employ what is, in effect, an ablative for
|  this purpose.  It no doubt is a rhetorical enrichment of a language to
|  have a form "B is loved by A" in addition to "A loves B".  The language
|  will be still richer if it has a third form in which A and B are treated
|  as equally the subjects of what is said.  But logically, the three are
|  identical.
|
| C.S. Peirce, ["Kaina Stoicheia"], NEM 4, 244-246
|
| C.S. Peirce, ["Kaina Stoicheia"], MS 517 (1904), pp. 235-263 in:
| Carolyn Eisele (ed.), 'The New Elements of Mathematics by
| Charles S. Peirce, Volume 4, Mathematical Philosophy',
| Mouton, The Hague, 1976.
|
| Cf. "New Elements", pp. 300-324 in 'The Essential Peirce, Volume 2 (1893-1913)',
| Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1998.

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