Jon, I’m in total agreement with this: There is a fundamental category error that arises here, of confusing a relation with one of its tuples.
But not with this: The best guard against this error is the collateral knowledge of how relations are understood in mathematics generally, namely, as sets of ordered tuples. This may be true for mathematicians, but personally, to make sense of a locution like “sets of ordered tuples”, I have to call upon my collateral knowledge of the difference between a relation and its relata, or correlates. These concepts are mathematical, in the broad sense, but that doesn’t mean that the jargon or the reasoning of professional mathematicians is the best adapted to understanding the concept. Besides, the kind of treatment you recommend (as opposed to the treatment Peirce gives in his “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”) tends to invite another error, which is the confusion of triadicity with Thirdness. In Peirce’s terms, a rheme is a sign because it is a correlate of the triadic relation (with its object and interpretant) which is exemplary of Thirdness, not because of its valency or the number of “blanks” in it, which could be any number. Thirdness is an element of the phaneron; triadicity is not. I see a lot of posts here which appear to confuse the two. (I don’t mean yours.) Gary f. } My only drink is meaning from the deep brain, What the birds and the grass and the stones drink. [Seamus Heaney] { <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawb...@att.net] Sent: 26-Nov-15 09:30 Peircers, There is a fundamental category error that arises here, of confusing a relation with one of its tuples. The best guard against this error is the collateral knowledge of how relations are understood in mathematics generally, namely, as sets of ordered tuples. Regards, Jon http://inquiryintoinquiry.com On Nov 25, 2015, at 9:14 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> > <g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> > wrote: Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But meaning is not a sign. Edwina, you say that a sign is a triadic relation, or a “triad,” while Peirce says that a sign is “a correlate of a triadic relation.” Do you really not see the difference? Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the difference between representation and a representamen. It might help if you quoted Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it: [[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or a representamen. ]] Once again, Peirce says that representation is a triadic relation – and that a sign, or representamen, is the correlate of the relation that represents the object for the interpretant. You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a sign is either a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of repeated recapitulation on your part can conceal that fact, or the obvious inference from it, that Peirce simply does not use the word “sign” that way. Gary f.
----------------------------- 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 .