John, OK, I think this gets us to the heart of the disagreement. You say that
“Peircean objects are often abstractions that we can only grasp through signs.
This is not the case, I think, with gravity.” I think differently.
Like Peirce, I think that all cognition is through signs — more specifically,
through those copulations of icons and indices which Peirce called Dicisigns,
or “natural propositions” as Frederik Stjernfelt calls them. All facts are
abstractions drawn from a vastly complex and multidimensional reality, and are
ipso facto signs. “Gravity” too is a sign, and an abstraction, but the dynamic
object of a proposition in which that word plays a necessary part is no
abstraction; it’s a real general that we can only grasp through such signs. All
scientific inquiry is semiotic; experiments too are signs, questions put to
nature. I doubt that we can grasp the reality of gravitation, or any other type
of phenomenon, without experiments of some kind.
You may be right about “the usual notion of determining in both logic and
science.” I’m not expert enough in those fields to say, and maybe the
dictionaries I cited are wrong. But it’s clear from the above that your usage
habits also differ from mine with respect to the words “object” and “sign”.
Polyversity strikes again! All I can say is that the usage habits I’ve acquired
under the influence of Peirce make sense to me, and serve my communicative
purposes well enough that I’m not about to abandon them. I suppose you can say
the same of your own usage habits, acquired under other influences. And I can’t
argue with that.
gary f.
} A path is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called
so. [Chuangtse 2] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
From: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sent: 31-Jan-15 10:19 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman; Peirce Discussion Forum (PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu);
'biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee'
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] FW: [biosemiotics:8047] Re: Triadic Relations
My problem, Gary, is that Peircean objects are often abstractions that we can
only grasp through signs. This is not the case, I think, with gravity.
Personally, I have adopted what I call “dynamical realism”, the idea that only
those things are real that are dynamical, or can be explained in dynamical
terms. This is a program, not a definition of what is acceptable. If we can
take what appear to be abstractions and give them a dynamical explanation
(which can then be tested in principle, because we have interactive access only
to dynamical things, and to dynamical things because they can be interacted
with), then I have no problem. But before that is carried out, as it has been
with gravity, I don’t think we can understand what it means for an abstraction
to determine anything. And I don’t think we should talk about what we don’t
understand the meaning of, except maybe to express a wish and a hope. I see
Ben’s reference to evolution in his response to me as one way of cashing out
this hope, which is in many cases not adequately satisfied (a lot of bad
evolutionary psychology out there, which I am taking a long time to try to
avoid in my work on evolutionary moral realism).
I don’t have a problem with talk of objects determining if it is a wish and a
hope in many cases, but in many cases, where we have not yet cashed out
abstractions I think that is all it is, basically a promissory note. I take my
fallibilism very seriously.
I do disagree with you on difference from other logicians. I think that
sufficiency is the usual notion of determining in both logic and science. There
are, of course, all other things being equal assumptions (often called
auxiliary assumptions). It applies to the gravity case, for example. The
meaning is clear in the case of logical (in the broad sense) and causal
consequence. But objects determining seems quite opaque to me until something
like one or the other of these is cashed out. For the time being I intend to
avoid it as too opaque to be particularly useful. I think I have done that
successfully before without finding an equivalent substitute, but rather by
stating the issues involved differently.
John
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