[Inquiry] Re: Utter Indetermination -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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UI.  Discussion Note 2

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JA = Jon Awbrey
KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: UI-DIS 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003092.html
In: UI-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/thread.html#3092

Kirsti, Peirce List,

My comments interspersed below.

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?

JA: Good questions.  I think the answer to the first has to be
    that the SA is a symbol, only an utterly indeterminate one.

KM: Well, as Peirce wrote, symbols GROW, so perhaps one should call SA
    a seed of a symbol.  Or, rather, a flower bed awaiting for the seeds
    of a symbol.

Sure, but it's still a symbol in its own right, or at least it's clear
from reading the relevant passages of the "Kaina Stocheia"/"New Elements"
that Peirce regarded these generic brands of inchoate states, for instance,
the SA or the TR, to be symbols on a par with any others.

Here again are the links to the longer and shorter excerpts from the
finale of the KS/NE essay.  This is an important work, and it would
not hurt us one bit to read the whole thing over very carefully.

http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-August/002926.html
http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003091.html

KM: And yes, an utterly (although not totally) indeterminate one.
    But it is no only a question of determination-indermination,
    but of vagueness as well.

Peirce is sometimes precise in his technical distinction between
general and vague, and sometimes not -- as a general rule I think
that we can regard "indeterminate" as the most general concept of
the three, reading "general" as meaning "extensively undtermined"
and "vague" as meaning "intensively undetermined".

KM: SA being utterly vague (taken as a symbol) means
    that it is premature to bring up "true/false",
    which must be an irrelevant question for
    the time being.

That would depend on what time the time being is.

Jon Awbrey

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