Thread:
SJ:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14620
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14621
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14622
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14633
GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14638
Gary, List,
Sung expressed his question as follows:
> Jon, I don't understand the significance
> of the statement that "A proposition is
> a sign which separately, or independently,
> indicates its object." Is there a sign
> that does not independently indicate its
> object? Can you give me an example or
> two of such a sign? Thanks, Sung
"Significance" could have many meanings, but the rest of his query tells us that
he is considering the possibility that the condition "independently indicates
its object" might be trivial, in the sense that it might be true of any sign,
and so he is asking for counterexamples to that condition.
For my part I can neither assure him that the definition is cogent or provide
him with the required examples until I know myself (1) what the definiens means
and (2) whether it is true of all propositions.
Question 1 and Question 2 are the critical questions of our present inquiry and
they are hardly answered, directly or otherwise, by simply reciting the text in
question.
Regards,
Jon
Gary Fuhrman wrote:
Jon, I was simply offering a direct answer to Sung's question, which was
about the significance of Peirce's definition of a proposition as "a sign
which separately, or independently, indicates its object." I'm afraid the
relevance of your sermon here escapes me.
gary f.
-----Original Message----- From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:[email protected]] Sent:
9-Oct-14 11:41 PM
Gary, List,
I read Peirce as critically as I read anyone else, perhaps more so. I don't
take anything he says on faith, I have never had to. I have learned to trust
that if I read him carefully enough I will learn something worthwhile from
the effort, though there have been times when it took me a decade or two
before I reached a provisional understanding of what he was saying.
But a critical reading involves a comparison among several accounts of the
same or comparable subject matters to determine whether any of them might be
more to the purpose at hand.
Those of us who read Peirce for his perspicuity into the phenomena and
problems of a shared world have a larger task than simply chasing hermeneutic
circles through the scriptural concordances of his terminological musements.
We have to decide whether what he asserts about what he dubs a "proposition",
by that or any other word, has anything significant to do with is commonly
called a "proposition". Of course it is always possible, and we always hope,
that better mousetraps for truth can be devised by one so perspicacious as
Peirce, but there is nothing automatic about the grant.
Regards,
Jon
Gary Fuhrman wrote:
Jon, Sung,
I think a much clearer answer to Sung’s question is given in Natural
Propositions, p. 54:
A proposition is a sign which separately, or independently, indicates its
object.” (EPII, 307)
This definition implicitly posits propositions against predicates without
any reference indicated, the so-called “Rhemes” (cf. the Dicisign “The sky
is blue” vs the unsaturated Rheme or propositional function “___ is blue”).
And it sets Dicisigns apart from simple indices which do nothing but
exactly indicate their object (the pointing gesture, the proper name, the
pronoun, etc.), thus not performing their indicating separately from other
aspects of their functioning. Moreover, it is this definition which implies
that Dicisigns comprehend more than full-blown general, symbolic
propositions and also involve quasi-propositions like Dicent Sinsigns and
Dicent Legisigns – they qualify for the basic reason that they, too,
separately indicate their object. Photographs, for instance, may function
as Dicent Sinsigns, just like statements of identity, location or naming
may function as Dicent Legisigns. Such quasi-propositions, like the
pointing of a weathercock, even give the core of the definition: "It is,
thus, clear that the vital spark of every proposition, the peculiar
propositional element of the proposition, is an indexical proposition, an
index involving an icon." ("Kaina Stoicheia", 1904, EPII, 310, italics
added).
gary f.
-----Original Message----- From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:[email protected]] Sent:
9-Oct-14 12:11 AM
Sung,
This is Peirce's definition of a proposition 'qua' dicisign. The crux of
the definition is not mere indication of the object but "separate or
independent"
indication of the object. The "dicey" part of "dicisign" means that the
object under investigation is indited by two distinct lines of evidence
given in the testimony of the proposition, so even if the object were
immune from prosecution by one line of evidence it could still be indited
by the other, as it were.
But I confess that I still have much to question here, and I think we have
to treat the matter of the dicisign as an ongoing investigation.
One question that worries me especially, given all the time I've spent
working on computational implementations of propositional calculus, and
most of that in the medium of calculi related to the "alpha level" of
Peirce's logical graphs, is whether the dicisign doctrine applies to these
"zeroth order" propositions, or whether it has its designs on the level of
predicate calculus exclusively.
Regards,
Jon
Sungchul Ji wrote:
Jon, I don't understand the significance of the statement that 'A
proposition is a sign which separately, or independently, indicates its
object.' Is there a sign that does not independently indicate its object?
Can you give me an example or two of such a sign? Thanks. Sung
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