Franklin, my responses inserted below.
Gary f. From: Franklin Ransom [mailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com] Sent: 13-Nov-15 15:02 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu 1 <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Terms, Propositions, Arguments Gary F, list, Seeing as how discussion has gotten far away from "Vol.2 of CP, on Induction," I feel it is best to change the subject, and thus the thread, of the discussion. Hopefully the subject is sufficiently vague. I have re-read KS through. With respect to Peirce's use of the word "sign" instead of "proposition" in the paragraph at issue, I still think that Peirce was deliberately including all signs, and not simply propositions. GF: In the paragraph at issue, Peirce is clearly defining two kinds of signs as parts of other signs: “If a sign, B, only signifies characters that are elements (or the whole) of the meaning of another sign, A, then B is said to be a predicate (or essential part) of A. If a sign, A, only denotes real objects that are a part or the whole of the objects denoted by another sign, B, then A is said to be a subject (or substantial part) of B.” Do you not agree that these are definitions of predicate and subject? Peirce then proceeds to define depth and breadth in terms of predicates and subjects: “The totality of the predicates of a sign, and also the totality of the characters it signifies, are indifferently each called its logical depth. … The totality of the subjects, and also, indifferently, the totality of the real objects of a sign is called the logical breadth.” Now, when you say that “Peirce was deliberately including all signs, and not simply propositions”, are you claiming that all signs have depth and breadth? According to Peirce’s definition here, a sign can have depth only if it has predicates and signifies characters. Do all signs do that? Likewise, in order to have breadth, a sign must have subjects and real objects. Do all signs have those? If not, how can you claim that the referent of the term “a sign” in those definitions can be any sign at all? Peirce’s definitions specify that a sign that has depth and breadth (and thus can convey information) must have predicate(s) and subject(s). Does that apply to all kinds of sign? But I have a thought about what is going on in the text that may explain the way in which he is discussing signs, though I suppose it might be somewhat unorthodox. Consider that we have just been discussing cases where Peirce remarks that propositions and arguments may be regarded as terms, and alternatively that terms and propositions may be regarded as arguments. Perhaps in KS, what we have is Peirce suggesting that terms and arguments may be regarded as propositions. In the case of arguments, Peirce makes the point explicit: "That a sign cannot be an argument without being a proposition is shown by attempting to form such an argument" (EP2, p.308). In the case of terms, this requires a little argumentation. It is clear that terms have logical quantity. In particular, natural classes like "man" have informed logical quantity; or more simply, information. Although it is true that Peirce says "[b]ut 'man' is never used alone, and would have no meaning by itself" (ibid, p.309-310), it is also true that in ULCE, the information of a term is determined by the totality of synthetic propositions in which the term participates as either predicate or subject; its informed depth and breadth is due to the cases in which the term is not used alone, but with respect to other terms in propositions. In the case of being used as predicate, it increases in informed breadth; in the case of subject, it increases in informed depth. Note that when the term appears as a subject, the predicate of the proposition is predicated of the term, and that when the term appears as a predicate, it has the subject of the proposition as its subject. Now if we consider the term as a proposition, this would simply amount to supposing its logical depth given as predicate and its logical breadth given as subject in a proposition. So we could say of man, "All men are such-and-such-and-such", and by this we would denote all real objects that are men and all the characters that man signifies. This is not a very practical thing to do, but it is theoretically possible. It also satisfies what Peirce says in the passage when he defines predicate and subject with respect to, not simply propositions, but signs in general. That's the interpretation I'm suggesting, namely that terms can be regarded as propositions. There are also some other points that are relevant to the claim that Peirce means signs, and not simply propositions. Although Peirce does admit that it is the proposition which is the main subject of the scholium as a whole, the term "proposition" appears a couple of times before the paragraph in question. Moreover, Peirce also goes on to explain rhemas and arguments as well after the passage in question, and then comes to focus on the idea of the symbol, which applies to all three. And, as I have suggested, Peirce is showing how terms and arguments may be regarded as propositions, So while his discussion of signs is focused around the idea of proposition, what he says of propositions has consequences for our understanding of signs in general, and so for terms and arguments. Although "[w]hat we call a 'fact' is something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself," it is also true that "[t]he purpose of every sign is to express 'fact,' and by being joined to other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such...would be the very Universe" (ibid, p.304). So here we see that fact is focused on the idea of the proposition, but it has consequences for how we should understand what all signs are up to, what the purpose of every interpretant is, regardless of whether it is the interpretant of a proposition or of another type of sign. GF: I think you’re overlooking Peirce’s statement that signs fulfill that purpose by being joined to other signs. Also what he says in the Syllabus and elsewhere about how complex signs involve simpler signs, which offers a much less convoluted explanation of how all signs play their parts in approaching the ideal of the Absolute Truth. In the “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations” (1903) Peirce defines a “sign” as “a representamen of which some interpretant is a cognition of a mind.” Then in 1909 he writes that: “The mode of being of the composition of thought, which is always of the nature of the attribution of a predicate to a subject, is the living intelligence which is the creator of all intelligible reality, as well as of the knowledge of such reality. It is the entelechy, or perfection of being” (CP 6.341, 1909). What kind of sign joins a predicate to a subject? Do we really want to say that all signs do that, or that “terms” do that? Then, at the end of the text when Peirce revisits the idea of judgment, we find him saying the following: "The man is a symbol. Different men, so far as they can have any ideas in common, are the same symbol. Judgment is the determination of the man-symbol to have whatever interpretant the judged proposition has." (ibid, p.324) Now I would suppose that the judgment is a certain kind of proposition, but the man-symbol is not likely to be regarded as being a proposition, nor an argument. It is a term, but we see in this respect that it is like a proposition, because just as the judgment is a determination of the man-symbol to have whatever interpretant the judgment has, in turn "[a]ssertion is the determination of the man-symbol to determining the interpreter, so far as he is interpreter, in the same way" (ibid). That is, the man-symbol now acts like a proposition in communicating the interpretant of the judged proposition to the interpreter, though the man-symbol is not properly a proposition but a term; but despite normally being considered a term, in this case it expresses a fact, which is properly what a proposition does. --Franklin
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