Jerry, List, Nominalism is a weaker hypothesis than Realism, so if something is consistent with realism, then it is consistent with nominalism. Locked, for example, distinguished between the nominal essence and the real essence. The former tells us what we think something is like, while the latter is what the thing is really like. According to his semiotic theory we only have access to the nominal essence, which is constructed from our experience. The real essence we can never directly know. We can get at it only via other signs, which makes them, by his account, nominal. He also thought that meaning usually followed the nominal essence, which is historically questionable, but the difference between what we take to be the real essence and the nominal essence has to be a nominal distinction. There are no unmediated signs of reality and, for Locke, there is no way to get out of this mediated representation. Peirce thought we could get out of this by abduction, but empiricists don't allow this as part of logic. Nominalism says nothing else about the real essence of things. Realists have to add something in order to make their claims. Empiricists typically claim that we don't need anything more to do science.
So, logically the consistency of realism entails the consistency of nominalism. Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36> ________________________________ From: Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chand...@mac.com> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:51:30 PM To: Eric Charles Cc: Peirce List; Helmut Raulien Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism Eric: On Jan 28, 2017, at 4:23 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de<mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de>> wrote: In my view of sytems theory, a system is more than it´s parts, of course, and what is more, is real and natural. But in my opinion "natural" does not mean "good for us". A sytem that contains other systems, Beyond statistics, I am not aware of your scientific background. Indeed, I am interested in your views as a statistician with regard to part-whole illations. For several years, in the 1990’s, I taught a course (at the NIH) entitled “ Health Risk Analysis” that was an inquiry into the logic of distributions and pragmatic public health assessment of the “realism” of chemical and radiation exposures. The questions raised in these lectures was a factor that contributed to my study of logic and CSP’s writings. In my view, Peirce was first a chemist and logician, and later added to these belief systems various conjectures about other philosophies. Again, in my view, Peirce crafted his logical beliefs to be consistent with the chemical sciences as they stood in his era, an era when the chemical sciences were undergoing rapid development. Now, some “leading principles” behind my questions to you. The meta-physical notion of “nominalism” is simply not consistent with the basic foundational structures of the chemical sciences as it stood in the late 19 th Century. Hence, CSP was faced with the logical tension between the empirical evidence and the structural logic of chemical graph theory with the meta-physical principle of nominalism. The consequences of this logical tension are far-reaching. CSP introduces the ‘leading principles’ to ground the historical developments of CSP’s numerous attempts to update his philosophical premises of “relationism” to be consistent with scientific developments during his era - his efforts to construct a atomic table of elements, chemical bonding, electricity as particles, thermodynamics, handedness of molecules, the nature of thought, etc. These scientific developments led directly to his notions of mathematical “relations" as grammatical objects, and his constructive notion of graph theory. With these facts as background, I would venture to say that, in part, CSP rejected the meta-physical notion of nominalism because of the role that the concept of “name” in chemical calculations. The role of a chemical name, in its primary scientific function, expresses a illation between a collection of properties and an individual object (singular). Two or more chemical names, when combined, generate a new name. Sodium and chlorine combine to form a new name, a new particular, a new individual, a new concept with new attributes.. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to form a new name, a new particular, a new individual, a new concept with new attributes. And so forth for any combination of any number of chemical elements. These facts manifest themselves concretely. Mathematical calculations for all chemicals are based on the concepts of atomic weight, atomic valence, molecular weight, molecular formula, molecular structure, molecular handedness and molecular forms. Physical measurements are used to determine the parameters for these calculations. Although these simple facts are well documented for a huge number of examples, the logical implications are almost universally rejected in the philosophies of man and nature - for example the philosophy of mathematics (set theory and category theory, etc.) and physics. The relationship between the primary role of chemical names as atomic numbers and molecule numbers and the mathematical notion of a statistical variable or a dynamic variable is a secondary role for describing the change in chemical names. (See, for example, the works of Rene Thom on the birth and death of forms.) Today, at least in the scientific world in which I work, it is very rare to meet a nominalist. Nevertheless, it appears to me, that many, if not most, bio-semioticians are nominalists! May I ask how you view the role of nominalism in the philosophy of statistics? More particularly, what would be the role of nominalism in the expression of an associative law? And in the expression a distributive law? Cheers Jerry Research Professor Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study George Mason University
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