Gary F, John S, List,
Here are a few quick observations about the points Gary F is making about the passage from the 1909 letter to James: 1. The last class of dyadic relation that Peirce considers in "The Logic of Mathematics;..." is that of the productive or poietical dyad (CP 1.468) . In this type of dyadic relation, the existence of the patient is dependent on the agent; e.g., mother produces son. As such, this type of relation involves a kind of creation of one thing by another. Do you think that this dyadic kind of productive relation is involved--in some way--in process in virtue of which something is created in the mind of the interpreter? More generally, do you think that genuinely triadic forms of creation involve such dyadic kinds of production of one thing by another? My hunch is that the answer is "yes" in both cases. If you disagree, I'd be interested in hearing the reasons why. 2. It is one thing to say that we should not think of “determination” as a dyadic action of sign upon interpretant (or upon mind) at all, and saying that we should not think of the process as solely a matter of such dyadic action. Are you advocating one of these options? Given all of the different classes of dyadic relations that Peirce considers, I tend to think that the latter way of putting the matter is closer to what Peirce is suggesting. 3. Gary F suggests that we should not think of the determination of sign by object as a fait accompli or event preceding the determination of interpretant by sign. What he goes on to say about events in a sequence would seem to apply to anything that takes places over the course of time. On Peirce's account, the change of things over the course of time is itself a process that involves a general law--where that law has a monadic, dyadic and a triadic clause. As such, any conception of an event as a discrete and separate part of time is an incomplete view on the matter--and this applies to processes that involve the interpretation of signs in minds as well as those that don't appear to have that character. 4. Providing a clearer definition of the relation "A determines B after..." is one of the tasks that Peirce says (in MS 612) that we need to take up in order to have a clearer understanding of determination. I wonder why this relation of determination of one being determined after another seemed to him to be so important. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: g...@gnusystems.ca <g...@gnusystems.ca> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 6:44 AM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Laws of Nature as Signs List, I think John's remarks here are right on target as usual, but also came across a Peirce quote today which struck me as relevant to this and other recent threads having to do with “determination” and Thirdness. It’s from a 1909 letter to James: [[ The Sign creates something in the Mind of the Interpreter, which something, in that it has been so created by the sign, has been, in a mediate and relative way, also created by the Object of the Sign, although the Object is essentially other than the Sign. And this creature of the sign is called the Interpretant. It is created by the Sign; but not by the Sign quâ member of whichever of the Universes it belongs to; but it has been created by the Sign in its capacity of bearing the determination by the Object.]] This passage is unusual in using the verb “create” as pretty much synonymous with “determine.” It’s incorporated into the final chapter of my book Turning Signs, which is largely about the role of signs (and especially symbols) in both creation and determination; the context is at http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/crn.htm#symbio. But what popped out at me today is Peirce’s observation that the interpretant is not determined by a qualisign, sinsign or legisign as such. In other words, we should not think of “determination” as a dyadic action of sign upon interpretant (or upon mind). Neither should we think of the determination of sign by object as a fait accompli or event preceding the determination of interpretant by sign. The sign-action is irreducibly triadic because the determination of and by the sign are just two aspects of a single process, not successive steps in the process; not events separated in time, but objects hypostatically abstracted from its flow. This is just a new version of an old story, but sometimes it feels right to turn the wheel again … Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa [mailto:s...@bestweb.net] Sent: 23-Apr-17 21:34 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Laws of Nature as Signs Helmut, Jeffrey, Jon A, Clark, list, HR > Not every triadic relation is categorically thirdness. But which are? That's a good question. Some basic principles: 1. For each of Peirce's categories, there is a characteristic question: Firstness: What is it? What kind of mark? Secondness: How does it relate or react to something? Thirdness: Why does it relate or react to something? Answer: (1) quality; (2) relation or reaction; (3) mediation. 2. Peirce used the term 'triad', not 'triadic relation'. You can represent a verb, such as 'give' as either a triadic relation or as a nominalized node attached to three dyadic relations. See the attached give.gif, which shows two ways of mapping the sentence "Sue gives a child a book" to a graph -- a conceptual graph, which may be mapped to an existential graphs or to an algebraic formula. 3. As give.gif illustrates, a triad in a graph cannot be eliminated by using dyadic relations. But a graph with a tetrad, pentad, ... can always be mapped to and from a graph that has no nodes with more than 3 links. 4. A non-degenerate triad always involves something law-like, intentional, or mental. That implies some mind or quasi-mind that does the interpretation. Nominalists don't like that way of talking. 5. Strict nominalists, such as Carnap, deny that abstract entities exist -- that includes all forms of Thirdness: laws, intentions, goals, purposes, or habits. That is why Carnap insisted that all laws of science are nothing more than summaries of observations. HR > Is it reasonable to say that a relation has an intension and an > extension, the intension is firstness, and the extension secondness > (of the relation, which is secondness)? As Church pointed out, the intension is a rule of correspondence that determines the extension. That rule is a law-like entity, which is a kind of Thirdness. Note, by the way, that multiple, independently defined rules may specify the same extension. Two functions or relations may differ in intension , but be identical in extension. JBD > why [do] nominalists such as J.S. Mill and Nelson Goodman strongly > prefer extensional systems--and have significant reservations about > using intensional systems in philosophy All definitions by intension imply some law-like rule. That's why Carnap insisted that laws of science are "summaries of observations". He would never say "law of nature" -- because (a) the phrase implies that there exists something called nature, and (b) it also implies that nature has something called laws. JA > an extensional definition of a 2-place relation ... can be generalized > to k-place relations and then beyond the finite arity case... But > there is nothing remotely nominal going on here, as the definition > invokes sets of tuples. Sets and tuples are the very sorts of > abstract objects nominal thinkers would eschew Church used sets to define extensions because he had no reason to avoid sets. But Lesniewski and other nominalists replaced set theory with mereology. If you have a set of N elements, you have N+1 entities, which consist of the N elements plus an abstract set. But with mereology, a collection of N elements does not imply the existence of anything more than the N elements. Therefore, a mereologist could say that the elements of an N-tuple are parts of a whole called an N-tuple. They would not consider the whole as something distinct from the sum of its parts. JA > I have never found going on about Firstness Secondness Thirdness all > that useful in any practical situation. If you think at those terms as a count of links in a graph, they don't explain much. It's better to look at the three kinds of questions summarized at the top of this note. JA >> until you venture to say exactly *which* monadic, dyadic, or triadic >> predicate you have in mind, you haven't really said that much at all. CG > Glad I’m not alone in thinking that. I agree that we need to look at specific cases. For examples of the kinds of Thirdness that nominalists deliberately ignore, see Section 2 (pp. 3 to 8) of http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.pdf . The title of that section is "A Static, Lifeless, Purposeless World". Some excerpts: p. 4: Einstein criticized Russell's "Angst vor der Metaphysik" and said “Mach was a good experimental physicist but a miserable philosopher”; he made “a catalog not a system.” p. 5: When introducing Russell for his William James Lectures at Harvard, Whitehead said “This is my friend Bertrand Russell. Bertie thinks that I am muddleheaded, but then I think that he is simpleminded” (Lucas 1989:111). That remark is consistent with a statement attributed to Russell: “I’d rather be narrow minded than vague and wooly” (Kuntz 1984:50). p. 5: While reviewing Quine’s Word and Object, [Rescher] was struck by the absence of any discussion of events, processes, actions, and change. After reviewing the literature, Rescher (1962) realized that Quine’s static views were endemic in the tradition: “The ontological doctrine whose too readily granted credentials I propose to revoke consists of several connected tenets, the first fundamental, the rest derivative..." pp. 7-8: In his _Logische Aufbau_, Carnap noted that the "construction" (Aufbau) of the sign relation from physical objects “is more difficult than any of the other relations which we have hitherto undertaken.” The remainder of signproc.pdf has more examples that show how Peirce's categories could support a broader foundation. John
----------------------------- 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 .
