[Inquiry] Re: Futures Of Logical Graphs -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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FOLG.  Discussion Note 6

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JA = Jon Awbrey
JR = Joe Ransdell

Re: FOLG-DIS 5.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/003139.html
In: FOLG-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-October/thread.html#3135

Joe, Peirce List,

JR: Third, you cite as a premiss in your argumentation that "what
    goes for the medium must go for all the signs that it mediates".
    Is that supposed to be a self-evident truth?  I would say that it
    is not at all obvious, and that accepting a dictum like that as
    a premiss is like "buying a pig in a poke", i.e. buying something
    without knowing what in the world you might be buying.  Most unwise.

No doubt there are many ways to misinterpret this humble heuristic, but
in the setting where it was deployed it merely served to call attention
to the fact that the initial interpretation, Entitative or Existential,
of the simplest formal constant, the unmarked space, reflects a bit of
freedom in the logical interpretation of every other expression that
is marked therein or thereon.

JR: In short, the entire enterprise of abstraction which you are constructing and
    proposing, being as remote from matters of obvious philosophical interest or
    importance as it is, suffers from the weakness of any attempt to explain the
    obscure in terms of the more obscure:  if explanation does indeed involve
    replacing the more obscure with what is more clear, as you seem yourself
    to assume, then it would seem to be unrealistic of you to expect much
    of a following for your way of explaining or explicating Peirce, and
    instead of strengthening your case for your conception of the pure
    symbol you are weakening it by this sort of maneuver.

Measures of abstraction, clarity, importance, interest, obscurity,
obviousness, remoteness, etc. are of course relative to the state
of information and the desire of the interpreter to be informed.
Not everyone takes the stance that "philosophical interest" and
attention to concrete practical detail are mutually incompatible,
or that one must somehow "replace" the other, especially when it
comes down, as it eventually must, to the "use in practice" part
of "the concern to understand the philosophical implications and
use in practice of Peirce's graphical logic".

Jon Awbrey

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