List,
While we're waiting for the Natural Propositions seminar to recommence,
I thought I'd send this on an oddity that I've found. I think I've
mentioned at peirce-l in the past that I couldn't track down a certain
correction that Peirce made to a graph in "Prolegomena" - I don't mean
Peirce's corrections in a subsequent issue of the Monist. In one of the
digressions of my effort to reply to Jeff Downard's recent post, some
key words occurred to me for a Collected Papers search, and I found
Peirce's correction, mostly by luck as it turned out. Here it is. It's
from a letter written by Peirce Oct.-Nov. 1913 and sent by him to F. A.
Woods (scholarly details appear in this post's appendix).
[CP 8 Bibliography: I. General: 1905 (pages 298-299)
With brackets in the original, and Zeman-style renditions by me of
the graphs appearing there,
*Quote*:]
In a letter to F. A. Woods, [Bibliography]M-22, Peirce says that the
material in [CP] 4.569, from "For the sake of illustrating this . .
." up to the statement of the Fourth Permission, is wrong. He says:
"Instead of scribing
as I did, I should have scribed
". . . [This fallacy] cost me the trouble of my nonsensical
'tinctures' and heraldry.
"I am also sceptical as to the universal validity of my '4th
permission.'"
[*End quote*]
I noticed that Zeman himself doesn't include this on his site (at least
where I can find it). I take it that Peirce thinks he's solved the
problem of the "strange rule" (now known as a "rule of passage"), that
"There is something round or blue" is equivalent to "There is something
round or there is something blue."
Now, please, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the second graph seems
to me to boil down to:
There is a suicide *or* non-failure's wife.
and, equivalently, by the "strange rule", to
There is a suicide *or* there is a non-failure's wife.
If I'm interpreting the graph correctly, he hasn't escaped the "strange
rule". Said in longer way, the graph says,
There is /x/ such that
(/x/ commits suicide *or* there is non-failure /y/ to whom /x/ is wife).
and, equivalently,
(There is /x/ such that /x/ commits suicide) *or* (there is /z/ such
that there is non-failure /w/ to whom /z/ is wife).
If I'm right in my reading of the graph, then Peirce seems to have had
an off day or two. 1913 was very late in his life. This would explain
why it seems to have received little attention (but I'm far from
well-read in the existential graphs literature). Does the letter at
least show that Peirce's interest in the tinctures, the modal gamma
graphs, was indeed driven mainly by his concern about the "strange
rule"? I'm not even sure of that. And I don't think that that it would
pertain to his interest in graphs of 'second intentions', i.e.,
second-order graphs, which are also gamma graphs, and are reason enough
to motivate the gamma graph effort.
Any comments?
Appendix below concerns identifying the letter, its period of
composition, and that it was actually sent. - Best, Ben
APPENDIX
The passage is in CP 8 Bibliography: I. General: 1905 (pages 298-298),
and begins: "In a letter to F. A. Woods, [Bibliography]M-22, [....]".
The letter is from 1913 and mentions something in the 1906 "Prolegomena"
but the quote appears under "1905" because the series of three
pragmatism papers began in 1905.
"M-22" means Item 22 under "III. Miscellaneous" in the Bibliography. It
says:
22. Woods, Frederick A. A letter, written during Oct and Nov 1913 in
Widener VB2a. [CP] 8.380-388, except 380n4, are from it. See also
[Bibliography] G-1905-1c for a quotation from this letter.
Did Peirce actually send the letter? End note to 8.380-388's title "To
F.A. Woods, On 'Would Be'":
(Ed.) From a long letter to "My dear Dr. Woods," written over a
period between 14 October 1913 and 19 November 1913, with an added
quotation in 380n4. The letter was sent to Woods, but it is now in
Widener VB2a.
End of appendix.
-----------------------------
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 .
