Dear Peircers -
Indeed a deep question.
In Peirce, it is connected to his complicated theory of what constitutes the
unity of propositions ("Dicisigns" - . I addressed this in "Natural
propositions" (2014)).
To Peirce, this question is independent of the issue of the components of
propositions (subjects and predicate) taken individually and seems to have two
aspects, one being the basic, relational structure underlying predicates, the
other being a (most often disguised) self-reference of propositions connected
to 1) their truth-claims and 2) the issue of the "immediate object" as the
sign's claimed connection to its object.
Best,
Frederik
Fra: John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>>
Svar til: John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>>
Dato: onsdag den 20. januar 2016 06.40
Til: Robert Eckert <recke...@mail.naz.edu<mailto:recke...@mail.naz.edu>>,
"peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>"
<peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>>
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Thirdness, coupling and merging
Interesting questions, Robert. They certainly deserve further investigation.
One difference I see is that Chomsky’s merge is a syntactic operation, whereas,
If I understand him correctly, Peircean coupling has a semantic aspect as well.
Chomsky consistently separates syntax and semantics, but he perhaps has a more
narrow view of semantics than Peirce did. This latter issue is especially worth
exploring, I think.
I believe that Chomsky’s merge (and many if not all of his earlier syntactic
operations) is nonreducible to component parts (especially linguistic
behaviours), and in this respect seems to be a Peircean third. Likewise for
Peircean coupling. So in this respect they are species of a common genus. But I
don’t think this directly implies they are of the same species of this genus
for the reasons I gave before.
I have considerably more I could say, but I will leave it at that for now. I
was exposed to Chomsky (as a professor of mine) and to Peirce (by independent
study) more or less at the same time as an undergraduate, and I am probably
more inclined than many to see connections between the two. This has only been
reinforced by my subsequent studies, though the differences have also become
more apparent.
John Collier
Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate
University of KwaZulu-Natal
http://web.ncf.ca/collier
From: Robert Eckert [mailto:recke...@mail.naz.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 20 January 2016 1:49 AM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Thirdness, coupling and merging
Dear list,
Is it possible that Peirce's thirdness, Percy's coupling and Chomsky's merging
are the same?
Could this bringing together, symbolization, merging, of two other things,
explain our language ability?
If so, this basic exemplification in diagrammatic form defines humans.
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