John, list, I have to agree with Francesco and Auke. I’m guessing that you don’t want to include semiotics with logic, as Peirce did in the Syllabus classification of 1903 (without using the word “semiotic”), because it doesn’t seem normative enough. Peirce recognized the problem here and had already wrestled with it in his Carnegie application in 1902 (Draft D - MS L75.235-237):
[[ I define logic very broadly as the study of the formal laws of signs, or formal semiotic. I define a sign as something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. In this definition I make no more reference to anything like the human mind than I do when I define a line as the place within which a particle lies during a lapse of time. At the same time, a sign, by virtue of this definition, has some sort of meaning. That is implied in correspondence. Now meaning is mind in the logical sense. But many will object that the only signs we can study are signs interpreted in human thought. I reply that by the definition thoughts are themselves signs, and that if it happens to be a fact that all other signs are ultimately interpreted in thought-signs, then that fact is irrelevant to logic. The proof that it is irrelevant is that all the principles of logic are deducible from my definition without taking any account of the alleged fact, much more clearly than if any attempt is made to introduce this allegation as a premiss. Therefore, unless this allegation be regarded as itself a truth of logic, which it is not, since it is not of a formal nature, it is perfectly irrelevant to logic. I also define very carefully what I mean by a “formal” law. I say nothing in the definition about normative principles, because not all the principles of logic are normative. Indeed, it is only the connection of logic with esthetics through ethics which causes it to be a normative science at all. ]] (This by the way is the only place I’ve found where Peirce uses the term “formal semiotic.”) I think Peirce’s 1903 solution to the problem was to trichotomize logic as Speculative Grammar, Critic and Methodeutic. Speculative Grammar, being First in this trichotomy, is minimally normative (normativity being a form of Secondness), but still connected with logic in the broad sense. “Thus there are, in my view of the subject, three branches of logic: Speculative Grammar, Critic, and Methodeutic” — as Peirce said at the end of Lowell Lecture 1, and in the Syllabus (CP 1.191, EP2:259). Gary f. From: Francesco Bellucci <[email protected]> Sent: 10-Sep-18 01:08 To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] How should semeiotic be classified among the sciences? Dear John, List, as I see it, semiotics is logic in the broad sense (comprising spec. gr., critical logic, and methodeutic), and its place in the classification of the sciences is the place of logic. The fact in Peirce's schemes of classification of the sciences there never appears semiotics, is an indication that it is simply identical with logic (and, I tend to think, especially with the first branch of logic, spec. gr.) That a thinker can spend so much time and ink talking about signs, their functioning and their varieties, and yet fail to find a place for the science of signs in his classification of the sciences seems to be unbelivable. Therefore, I take seriously his claim that "logic is semiotics" and use "semiotics" as equivalent to "logic" (in the broad sense). If this identification is made, every problem about semiotics' collocation in the scheme disappears Best Francesco On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 1:17 AM, John F Sowa <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: In his 1903 classification of the sciences (CP 1.180-202) Peirce classified formal logic under mathematics, but he also classified logic as a normative science. Question: Where is semeiotic? As a formal theory, it would be classified with formal logic under mathematics. But semeiotic is also an applied science when it is used in perception, action, communication... When I drew a diagram to illustrate Peirce's classification, I did not include semeiotic because he had not mentioned it. But since it is a science, it belongs somewhere in that diagram. Where? I believe that it belongs directly under phenomenology, since every perception involves signs. See the attached CSPsemiotic.jpg. Does anyone have any comments? John
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