Clark,
No community we possibly know about has not ended.
There is no "of course" with the question of communities. On the main,
communities change, radically or not so. - The remnants of any
community, any culture with any traces left behind may start to grow
again.
Kirsti
Clark Goble kirjoitti 17.1.2017 21:09:
On Jan 17, 2017, at 5:00 AM, [email protected] wrote:
CG: Logically that then has a beginning and end to the symbol.
Definitely not so acccording to the logic of CSP. - You are using
some other kind of logic, according to which symbols do not grow -
on the ground of communities, not just by individuals.
Again I tried to clarify the issues and narrow what I was speaking of.
But of course communities end as well. (Beginnings of communities are
a bit more open ended of necessity of course)
The question is really whether one is able to do a more narrow logical
analysis or only this open sense of the symbol in the totality of the
universe. I certainly don’t disagree with what you say regarding the
later. That is the symbol in its universal sense. But in terms of
logical analysis that’s not the only analysis we can do.
You seem to be blocked by (late) modern individualism. Human
individuals do not just (clinically) die, they leave a legacy. At
lest to those near and dear.
Certainly and I tried to make clear that sense is always at work.
However what you may be attempting to say is that we can ONLY speak of
symbols in this universal sense. Which seems problematic. (I may be
misreading you here - I hope you clarify)
On Jan 17, 2017, at 7:38 AM, John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote:
JLRC
yes, similar principles hold for mathematics, although the
“wavelength" is a tad longer and the “amplitudes" are
shallower.
Yes, but mathematicians never assume that any terms have universally
accepted definitions. They never say "set theory" by itself.
Even the qualifications ZF or VNBG in front of "set theory" are
not sufficient. In any publication, mathematicians have to be very
specific about the slightest details of notation and punctuation.
But it seems to me that the fact mathematicians are more careful about
context brings with it limits on the symbol. We have to be able to
explain the role and function of this limiting move.
But we can never assume that the words in one document have
precisely
the same "meaning" as the same words in another document.
Differences
in the instruments used, the human procedures, the methods of
gathering
data, and even the time of day can affect the "microsenses”.
Exactly. Indeed Derrida’s moves that caused so much annoyance and
consternation were playing with exactly this point. He discovered this
feature of symbols being grafted into new contexts after his time
studying Peirce’s (then) unpublished writings. But the fact there is
this unescapable play due to how contexts shift and are ultimately
uncontrollable doesn’t mean we can’t speak of more limited
contexts. That is often our attempts to limit succeed.
CG
My own position is that of course connotations can go wild
and symbols grow in these unwanted ways. That doesn’t mean we
can’t talk of more limited symbolic generals from a logical
perspective.
I agree. But it's a matter of degree. As we can see, science
and engineering do succeed -- eventually. But there have been
many, many communication failures along the way -- and dead
bodies as testimony.
Certainly. What I worry about is that the postmodern error was
focusing on these ‘errors’ to the exclusion of all else. There’s
certainly many ways this errancy is important theoretically. I just
worry that it has to kept balanced with the fact that signs often
succeed. Indeed if anything its shocking how well communication does
work and how often we do appear to arrive at truth.
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
