[Inquiry] Re: Futures Of Logical Graphs

[Jon Awbrey]

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FOLG.  Note 14

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Cybernetics List, Peirce List,

The duality of interpretation for logical graphs tells us
that the empty medium, the tabula rasa, what Peirce called
the "sheet of assertion" is a genuine symbol, not a species
of icon or index, nor, as it has no parts, can it have icons
or indices among them.  What goes for the medium must go for
all the signs that it mediates.  Thus we have the case that
Peirce in one place called "pure symbols", naming a sample
of fundamental logical operators specifically among them.

| Every word is a symbol.  Every sentence is a symbol.
| Every book is a symbol.  Every representamen depending
| upon conventions is a symbol.  Just as a photograph is an
| index having an icon incorporated into it, that is, excited
| in the mind by its force, so a symbol may have an icon or an
| index incorporated into it, that is, the active law that it is
| may require its interpretation to involve the calling up of
| an image, or a composite photograph of many images of past
| experiences, as ordinary common nouns and verbs do;  or
| it may require its interpretation to refer to the actual
| surrounding circumstances of the occasion of its embodiment,
| like such words as 'that', 'this', 'I', 'you', 'which', 'here',
| 'now', 'yonder', etc.  Or it may be pure symbol, neither 'iconic'
| nor 'indicative', like the words 'and', 'or', 'of', etc.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 4.447
|
|"Logical Tracts, No. 2" (c. 1903), in 'Collected Papers', CP 4.418-509.
| http://www.existentialgraphs.com/peirceoneg/existentialgraphs4.418-529.htm

Some will recall the many animadversions
that we had on this topic, starting here:

PS.  Pure Symbols
00.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2465
00.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2517

PS.  Pure Symbols -- Discussion
00.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2466
00.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2514
00.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-May/thread.html#2654

And some will find an ethical principle in this freedom of interpretation.
The act of interpretation bears within it an inalienable degree of freedom.
In consequence of this truth, as far as the activity of interpretation goes,
freedom and responsibility are the very same thing.  We cannot blame objects
for what we say or what we think.  We cannot blame symbols for what we do.
We cannot escape our response ability.  We cannot escape our freedom.

You will find it among the cacti and the cottonwood trees ...

Jon Awbrey

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