Gary, you asked:
What other ways to you have in mind?
I would have to say I think any logical relationship can link an index and
icon. Thus, "myself and my fingerprints" might even be a better example
for the point I'm trying to make. Instead of the implicative relationship
associated with "is," and the prescission needed to a "denote" a
quasi-thing like "red," we have the equivalence of what is denoted by
"myself" as an index and what is indicated by the qualities expressed by
"my fingerprints" as an icon. Both "denote," each in their own way, the
same person.
I don't think what I'm "overlooking here is the existential aspect of
indexicality." I'm just insisting on the existential aspect of the icon
via the analogy between it and what it represents. The two kinds of
"denotation" are no doubt different in several ways, but their combination
is enough to establish logical relationships, on the one hand, and claims
of truth or falsity, on the other, with regard to our experience.
Tom
On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 8:05 AM, Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Tom, my response is interleaved:
>
>
>
> *From:* Tom Gollier [mailto:tgoll...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 14-Oct-14 7:58 PM
>
> I have to say, I just don't get this idea of "real facts" from reading
> Peirce. On the one hand, we have the denotation of the subject, something
> we all seem to agree on. On the other hand, Peirce describes the
> signifying of the predicate, in discussing the icon more generally, as:
>
> "If it [an icon] conveys information, it is only in the sense in
> which the object that it is used to represent may be said to convey
> information." [Kaina Stoicheia]
>
> Thus, if I say "the book is red," the predicate "red" conveys information
> in the sense which the book itself conveys that information. That to me is
> a denotation as well, a pointing into the world of our experience,
>
> *[GF] *An icon cannot point to an object in the sense of singling it out
> from the world of experience; so, in Peirce’s strict use of “experience”
> which applies to the Universe of Secondness or “real *things*”, it does
> not denote anything. “Red” signifies a “quality” or “character” belonging
> to the Universe of Firstness, and a sign can attribute that quality to a
> particular object only by means of an index involving that icon. Redness
> can only be *denoted* by means of hypostatic abstraction, i.e. by
> symbolizing a quality as a quasi-thing. That’s a very different kind of
> “denoting” from the indexical function of directing attention to an
> existing thing.
>
> but regardless the denotation of the book and that that object conveys the
> same information as "red" is enough to say whether the proposition is true
> or false.
>
> *[GF] *Peirce doesn’t say that that object conveys the same information
> as “red”. He says that the information *is* the coupling of the
> icon/predicate “_____ is red” with the index/subject that fills the blank
> by pointing to an existing thing (the book) to which it stands in a real
> (not imaginary) relation.
>
> So, why are we talking about the copula being an index, as if there is
> no other way of combining indices and icons,
>
> *[GF] *What other ways do you have in mind? The index Peirce is referring
> to at this point in Kaina Stoicheia (EP2:310) is the index which connects
> the *replicas* of the subject-symbol and the predicate-symbol in an
> actual utterance. No general sign such as a word can do that; so it has to
> be an index, which is NOT general.
>
> or of "real facts" like they are not just us coupling together two kinds
> of representation? Why are we going beyond the represenation to
> metaphysically posit the objective existence of "real facts," and/or where
> is the support in Peirce for doing that?
>
> *[GF] *Because the reality of Truth — its independence of what anybody
> thinks it to be — is indispensible for a logic of inquiry. This
> indispensibility is primarily logical, not metaphysical, although (as
> Peirce remarks) it’s convenient to express it in metaphysical terms.
>
> In short, I think what you’re overlooking here is the existential aspect
> of indexicality which is involved in Peirce’s usage of the traditional term
> “denote”.
>
> *gary f.*
>
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