Gary, List, We've been through these issues so many times before that I can't think of anything new to say right off.
Pragmatic Maxim (PORT, Ontology, Peirce, SemioCom Lists : April-June 2002) ☞ http://web.archive.org/web/20070705085032/http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd25.html#04226 ☞ http://web.archive.org/web/20070705085032/http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04226.html ☞ http://web.archive.org/web/20070705085032/http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04227.html Someone, no doubt one of my former and blissfully forgotten selves, used some fraction of the above material for that wikipediot article you cite. It was originally titled "Seven Ways of Looking at a Pragmatic Maxim" in allusion to one of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens. ☞ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174503 There's an abridged version on my blog: ☞ http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/08/07/pragmatic-maxim/ A recent rendition of my extended commentary is here: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_:_Part_5#5.3.2._The_Light_in_the_Clearing Nuff for Now ... Jon On 1/15/2015 10:30 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Jon, Jim, Lists, I thought I'd respond to both of your short, but quite interesting messages in a single post. Jon wrote: Just off-hand I would have to say that the most important criterion in regard to iconicity is "relevant iconicity". The analogy, the icon, and the morphism are of imagination all compact. The analogy will break at some point, the icon and its object will each have features the other does not share, there are morphisms natural and otherwise. In every case we need the wisdom to tell them apart. I agree that distinguishing the icon from *that which it is like*, and not confusing the two should be an important consideration here. I do think, however, that it might prove especially difficult to map natural morphisms, although this is a question best suited to, perhaps, biologists and biosemioticians. Meanwhile, can you comment further on what you mean by "relevant" (as opposed to, I suppose, "irrelevant") iconicity, Jon? The concept, while intriguing, appears rather vague to me. And would you give an example of what might count as "irrelevant" iconicity in logic (or any part of science) which irrelevance might hide itself from less discerning minds? Continuing: JA: As far as the reality of possibilities and would-bees goes, I don't think they add anything to the pragmatic maxim that wasn't already implied by the invocation of conceivabilities. I might tend to agree with you except that Peirce does seem to invoke would-bes (as conditionals) into his revisions of the pragmatic maxim in this 1903 version: Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicative_mood> is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_sentence> having its apodosis in the imperative mood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_mood>. (Peirce, 1903, from the lectures on Pragmatism, CP 5.18 also in *Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard 'Lectures on Pragmatism',* p. 110, and in *Essential Peirce* v. 2, pp. 134-5.) And the* conditional* and *possible* seem even more forcefully stressed in this 1905 version of the maxim, one which does seem to lend some credence to Frederik assertion that the thinking which led to a reconsideration of the diamond example in the light of his increasingly "extreme realism" did, in fact, effect both the maxim and Peirce's pragmatism more generally. After rehearsing the original statement of the PM Peirce writes: I will restate [the original version of the PM] in other words, since ofttimes one can thus eliminate some unsuspected source of perplexity to the reader. This time it shall be in the indicative mood, as follows: The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol. (Peirce, 1905, from "Issues of Pragmaticism" in *The Monist* v. XV, n. 4, pp. 481-499, see p. 481 via Google Books, and via Internet Archive Reprinted in CP 5.438.).[Both these versions are taken from "Seven ways of thinking about the pragmatic maxim" See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim Whatever the case may be as regards the PM, I too could say with Jim: "I have some trouble understanding why the question of "extreme realism" must ride with strong iconicity" Perhaps I'll get clearer on this as I tackle the final segment of Chapter 8 on the PM (should I get to it).
-- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
