Jon, List: Thank You for your analysis of your views of the term “proposition”.
Curious as it is, it prompts the following: In your private usage of common terminology for reasoning, Q. Would you say the same for a “supposition" from the Middle Ages? Q. Would you say the same for a transposition between Subject - Predicate and Predicate - Subject (that is, grammatical homeostasis)? Q. Would you differentiate any reasoning with these terms ) proposition, supposition, transposition) from the use of the notion of “thesis” ( which is, in a Fregean sense, closely related etymologically)? Have fun! Cheers Jerry > On Sep 2, 2025, at 1:03 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote: > > Jerry, Jack, List: > > JAS: Every proposition has at least one subject that cannot be represented > symbolically, but this does not entail that it is structurally incapable of > denoting it--only that it must do so indexically instead. > > JLRC: Oh dear me, I have a symbol that can not be symbolized! Is this a > variant on the Russell paradox? > > No, it is simply the logical principle that every proposition as a symbol > must involve an indexical part to denote at least one of its subjects. As > Peirce explains, "A proposition is a symbol which separately INDICATES its > object, and the representation in the proposition of that object is called > the subject of the proposition. Now to INDICATE is to represent in the manner > in which an index represents. ... Thus the subject of a proposition if not an > index is a precept prescribing the conditions under which an index is to be > had" (EP 2:168, 1903). This is another way of saying that "after all that > words can convey has been thrown into the predicate, there remains a subject > that is indescribable and that can only be pointed at or otherwise indicated, > unless a way, of finding what is referred to, be prescribed" (CP 5.525, c. > 1905). >
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