Lists,
I'd like to introduce here a couple of comments on Chapter 2 of NP
(specifically, on the beginning of 2.5), but I'd also like to note that much
of the valuable conversation on these issues has been taking place under
other subject lines, and this post is meant to reflect on that previous
conversation as well.
Here are the first three sentences (also the first 3 paragraphs!) of NP 2.5:
NP (p.44): Both Peirce's and Hussel's antipsychologicist semiotics are based
on the observation that even if simple, singular signs exist, most
interesting signs, beyond a certain degree of complexity, are tokens of
types, and many of these, in turn, refer to general objects (Peirce) or
ideal objects (Husserl).
A very important rule here is the Frege-Peircean idea that the semiotic
access to generality is made possible by general signs being unsaturated and
schematic: the predicate function "_ is blue", for instance, is general 1)
because referring possibly to all things blue, 2) because of the generality
of the predicate blue, having a schematic granularity allowing for a
continuum of different particular blue shades.[i]
This generality is what makes it possible for the sign to be used with
identical-general-meaning, at the same time as the individual users are free
to adorn their use with a richness of individual mental imagery and
associations (like Ingardenian filling-in during literary reading) without
this imagery in any way constituting meaning-sameness of meaning in language
being granted by successful intersubjective communication, reference, and
action.
GF: The first sentence above explains the subtitle of this section, which is
"The Indispensability of the Generality of Signs". But it is not only the
signs employed by science which must have generality, but also the objects
of those signs. Science can say nothing about a unique phenomenon occurring
only at a single point in spacetime, unless it can recognize the event as
belonging to a type of occurrence (in which case it is not unique!).
At this point the old debate between nominalism and realism rears its head.
Peirce frames his usage of the word "thought" this way: "one must not take a
nominalistic view of Thought as if it were something that a man had in his
consciousness. Consciousness may mean any one of the three categories. But
if it is to mean Thought it is more without us than within. It is we that
are in it, rather than it in any of us" (letter to James, Nov. 1902).
Clearly NP follows Peirce in taking a realistic view of "thought"; and from
that point of view, Howard's claim "that logical and mathematical operations
can be observed existing as activites of human brains and brains of lower
animals" is quite unfounded. What scientists can empirically observe (to a
very limited extent!) is the activity going on in brains. They can then
hypothesize about how brains manage to carry out "logical and mathematical
operations", but that is not direct observation of anything "existing", it's
an interpretation based on the assumption that the brain activity is
correlated with a process which we believe to be occurring; and that belief
is not based on the observation of brain activity but on inference from what
the 'owner' of that brain is doing or saying. Realists say that the type of
operation (i.e. the "Thought") is just as real as the empirically observed
brain events. Not all scientists say that, but they all act as if they
believed it - otherwise no type of thought process would be intelligible, or
could be an object of scientific study.
The second sentence/pargraph quoted from NP above adds to this realism the
crucial point that "semiotic access to generality is made possible by
general signs being unsaturated and schematic". The term "unsaturated" here
can be taken as a metaphor from chemistry, related to Peirce's concept of
logical "valency", referring to the 'blank(s)' in a predicate which have not
yet been filled by subject(s), where the number of blanks is an aspect of
the schema or form of the predicate. This is a crucial point in Chapter 3,
which we'll be starting in another week, so I'll just observe here that in
NP it links the "indispensability of generality" with Peirce's doctrine of
the Dicisign.
The third sentence/pargraph quoted above implicitly relates these issues to
Peircean pragmaticism, by observing that "sameness of meaning in language"
is "granted by successful intersubjective communication, reference, and
action." As I hope to have showed above, this is just as true for
psychologists as it is for logicians. Science is a communal practice - and
that's why it can't be done by individual brains studying singular phenomena
- not unless we assume general types of phenomena to be as real as their
existing tokens, rather than imaginary or "social constructions".
gary f.
} The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the
easiest person to fool. [Richard P. Feynman] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{
gnoxics
From: Frederik Stjernfelt [mailto:stj...@hum.ku.dk]
Sent: 14-Sep-14 7:29 AM
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Peirce List
Subject: [biosemiotics:6806] Re: Natural Propositions
Dear Howard, lists -
But then neither is the opposite .
Best
F
Den 14/09/2014 kl. 03.51 skrev Howard Pattee <hpat...@roadrunner.com>
:
At 04:35 PM 9/13/2014, Frederik wrote:
Dear Stan, lists -
Good. I tend to side with Peirce here - though I would change the wording
slightly: logic exising "outside" of human thought, meaning logic existing
independently of human thought (which is why it may be implemented, to some
degree, outside of human thought) .
HP: Scientists would say that logical and mathematical operations can be
observed existing as activites of human brains and brains of lower animals.
Whether they exist independently in inanimate nature appears to be merely an
irrefutable opinion, based simply on how you choose to define nature
andlogic. That is why for millennia there has been continual undecidable
controversy over the foundation of logic and mathematics.
Siding with Peirce or taking a vote of opinions is not persuasive.
Howard
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