[Inquiry] Utter Indetermination -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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UI.  Discussion Note 1

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JA = Jon Awbrey
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: UI 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003088.html
In: UI.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/thread.html#3088

JA: Among the forms of utter indetermination that undertermine our itterances 
    there is the circumstance that the "Sheet of Assertion" (SA) -- and so it 
    goes with any symbol -- can't determine its own interpretation as true or 
    false except in consequence of its interpreters guessing whether it is to 
    be read as entitative or existential, signifying "false" under the former 
    and "true" under the latter.

KM: But the sheet of assertion is not (yet) a symbol?  Could
    you elaborate what you mean?  You take up only the sheet
    of assertion, but not the relationship between it and the
    Grapheus and the Graphist.  Where is the triad of relations?

Kirsti, CybCom, Peirce List,

Good questions.  I think the answer to the first has to be
that the SA is a symbol, only an utterly indeterminate one.
Recall that I am at the moment trying to use Peirce's work
on logical graphs, which he was actively developing in the
same time period (around about 1904), as a clue to all of
the mysterious things he writes in the last passages of
the "Kaina Stoicheia" essay.  So I am taking the SA to
be the same thing as the "tabula rasa" (TR).

One of the distinctive features of Peirce's work
on logical calculi, including logical graphs, is
that he takes seriously the potential meaning of
the TR, the empty medium that contains, embeds,
or surrounds the more marked symbols of the
formal languages that come into play.

If we take a "whole systems" view of these formal calculi or languages,
we realize that we are dealing with so many states of a dynamic system
that we call by convention a "medium", and the question of interest is
transformed by this point of view into a question of how the states of
any system -- call it the "sign system" !S! -- can convey information
about an "object system" !O! to an "interpretant system" !I!.  Notice,
however, that nothing so far says that all of these systems have to
be distinct from one another, though any of them may be, of course.
I expect that we will find the Grapheus and the Graphist playing
their roles somewhere under the guises of these various systems,
thought I'm not sure yet about the exact casting of each part.

Another distinctive insight that Peirce had into the nature of these calculi --
and here we must remember that many of the founding ideas of logical graphs
go back to his unpublished, untitled essay of 1880 that the editors of the
'Collected Papers' titled "A Boolian Algebra with One Constant" (CP 4.12-20) --
have to do with the property of "duality" or "dual interpretation", and this
is one of the features that gives these calculi an extra bit of indeterminism
prior to their interpretation in either the enitative or the existential veins.
It also has a bearing on the type of iconic representation that's in play here.

Here are some cites from a couple years ago where we discussed the Amphecks:

Cf: DEIP 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-September/000780.html
Cf: DEIP 2.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-September/000781.html
Cf: DEIP 3.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-September/000782.html
In: DEIP.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-September/thread.html#780

Cf: ZOO 13.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-November/000955.html
In: ZOO.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-November/thread.html#934

Jon Awbrey

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