[Inquiry] Futures Of Logical Graphs -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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FOLG.  Discussion Note 1

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: FOLG 14.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003133.html
Re: FOLG 15.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003134.html
In: FOLG.     http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/thread.html#3104

Joe, Peirce List,

I have a motley assortment of winterizing tasks this week,
so I'll have to respond to your comments in bits and pieces,
and I may leave some of the issues, especially the ones that
we have already discussed several times before, until I can
think of something new to say about them, that hasn't been
said to death already, or until they come up of their own
again in the natural course of developing this approach
to logical graphs.

JA: Though it may not seem too exciting, logically speaking, there are many good
    reasons for getting comfortable with the system of forms that is represented
    indifferently, topologically speaking, by rooted trees, well-formed strings
    of parentheses, or finite sets of non-intersecting simple closed curves in
    the plane.  One reason is that it provides us with a respectable example
    of a sign domain to cut our semiotic teeth on, being non-trivial in the
    sense that it contains a countable infinity of signs.  Another reason
    is that it allows us to study a simple form of computation that is
    recognizable as a species of semiotic process.

JR: I suspect that you are right, Jon, in suggesting -- as you seem to be doing --
    that your proposal to replace the concern to understand the philosophical
    implications and use in practice of Peirce's graphical logic (Existential
    Graphs) with your "rooted trees, well-formed strings of parentheses, or
    finite sets of non-intersecting simple closed curves in the plane" will
    not prove to be sufficiently "exciting" to have much future unless you
    show some reason for doing so beyond anything you have shown thus far.

I suspected that some of my readers might wish to jump ahead,
to draw philosophical conclusions of a grander sort without
all the bothersome toil of working through these sorts of
concrete practical details, which is just why I entered
the plea for patience that I did.  I think that there
will be time for the philosophical implications when
we have got a few more of the details tacked down.

Jon Awbrey

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