John, I could respond to this point by point, but that would get very tedious very quickly, and I think my main point is clear enough, “although absolute exactitude is not so much as conceivable” (EP2:264). When Peirce says that philosophy “has positive need of popular words in popular senses” (EP2:265), he does not imply that such senses, or “sets” of them, “exist” as discrete entities — and neither does anybody else who uses such language. Anyway, I’d prefer to give the last word — or the last question — to Peirce’s “Ethics of Terminology”:
[[ In order that my use of terms, notations, etc., may be understood, I explain that my conscience imposes upon me the following rules. Were I to make the smallest pretension to dictate the conduct of others in this matter, I should be reproved by the first of these rules. Yet if I were to develope the reasons the force of which I feel myself, I presume they would have weight with others. Those reasons would embrace, in the first place, the consideration that the woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is of the essence of it. Next would come the consideration of the increasing value of precision of thought as it advances. Thirdly, the progress of science cannot go far except by collaboration; or, to speak more accurately, no mind can take one step without the aid of other minds. Fourthly, the health of the scientific communion requires the most absolute mental freedom. Yet the scientific and philosophical worlds are infested with pedants and pedagogues who are continually endeavoring to set up a sort of magistrature over thoughts and other symbols. It thus becomes one of the first duties of one who sees what the situation is, energetically to resist everything like arbitrary dictation in scientific affairs, and above all, as to the use of terms and notations. At the same time, a general agreement concerning the use of terms and of notations—not too rigid, yet prevailing, with most of the co-workers in regard to most of the symbols, to such a degree that there shall be some small number of different systems of expression that have to be mastered—is indispensable. Consequently, since this is not to be brought about by arbitrary dictation, it must be brought about by the power of rational principles over the conduct of men. Now what rational principle is there which will be perfectly determinative as to what terms and notations shall be used, and in what senses, and which at the same time possesses the requisite power to influence all right-feeling and thoughtful men? ] CP 2.219-21, EP2:263 ] Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa [mailto:s...@bestweb.net] Sent: 11-Jan-18 15:20 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Cc: g...@gnusystems.ca Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] "I don't believe in word senses." (was Lowell Lecture 3.11 Gary, I admit that I was annoyed by your note -- because you were dismissing or belittling experts in lexicography and other fields such as NLP. Many people working on NLP have PhDs and research contributions in philosophy, linguistics, logic, and mathematics -- fields in which Peirce was a major contributor. To dismiss them out of hand "blocks the way of inquiry." > I may have misinterpreted Talmy. You also may have misinterpreted > Talmy. We would have to ask him to find out — and even then we > couldn’t be sure. I know Len Talmy. I have cited his work for years. I discussed related issues with him at conferences and workshops, including the 1993 Wittgenstein Symposium on Cognitive Science, where both of us were invited speakers. Re conceptual alternativity: I won't claim that my interpretation is identical to Talmy's, but I believe that his intent was quite different from polyversity. I also believe that the difference can be determined by reading his book and citing appropriate passages. If you doubt that, I'd be happy to send Talmy an email note with a one-page statement by each of us and a request for him to decide. > I invented the word for a specific philosophical purpose. Your using > it for a very different purpose violates Peirce’s ethics of terminology. Re polyversity: I used the definition in your note: > I dealt with polysemy ... by coining the word “polyversity” to include > not only polysemy (the tendency of a word to have various > meanings) but also the tendency of a meaning to be expressible in > various linguistic signs. Re purpose: In his ethics of terminology, Peirce said that one should not coin a new term if there is already a widely used term with the same definition. The original purpose of the (often anonymous) person who coined any term is irrelevant. Any use that is compatible with the definition is appropriate. > “Continuity in meaning is fundamental to the flexibility of natural > languages.” I would go much further, and say that continuity is > fundamental to semiosis itself. The quoted sentence is not a narrowing of Peirce's principle. It's an application of his principle to show how natural languages (NLs) differ from the rigidly defined formal languages (FLs). > Using the idea of continuity to justify such nonsense is like saying > that because there are no discrete points on a line, it is forbidden > to mark a point on any line for any purpose. The word 'nonsense' is a rhetorical ploy for ignoring the details. Formal languages are regimented to have a finite set of meanings (interpretations) in any finite range. You don't need markers. But NLs have infinitely many meanings in any range, no matter how small. You can, of course, mark a finite set of points on a continuous line. But the probability that the meaning of the next NL phrase or sentence you encounter will match any marked point is zero (except for NL statements about a formal system in math or science). > Not being a practitioner in the NLP field, I don’t care what’s > forbidden in that discipline. The people who work in NLP do not forbid anything. They address the task of taking unrestricted NLs and mapping them to notations that are forced to be restricted by the nature of formal logics and the digital computers that process them. The reason why Peirce's semeiotic is so fundamental to NLP is that he understood both sides of the issues. He invented the formal logic that is used in computer science, he was a lexicographer who wrote or edited over 16,000 definitions for the Century Dictionary, he wrote an article about logical machines in 1887, and he recommended electricity instead of mechanical linkages for implementing those machines. > I’m just a philosopher trying to communicate with others about the > nature of verbal communication. And I do care about that. That's a worthy endeavor. In fact, it's the principle focus of NLP. Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of artificial intelligence, included Peirce's article in the 1963 bibliography of AI. Many people working on AI and NLP have a higher regard for Peirce's semeiotic than the typical 20th c analytic philosopher. John
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