BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list
Just a brief comment. You wrote:
"He never claimed to have worked out all of the ramifications of
his own thought during his lifetime; on the contrary, he said more
than once that he was counting on future generations to continue the
work that he had started, especially in Semeiotic."
My question then, is why do you so instantly rebuff other's postings
and arguments about semiosic processes by declaring that their
comments are 'not made by or found in Peirce'? That is, you don't
discuss the functionality of their arguments; you just close the
discussion by your rebuttal that the very notion wasn't 'made by or
found in Peirce'.
Edwina
On Mon 20/05/19 3:37 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
sent:
John, List:
JFS: But nothing in that argument that depends on the nature of the
creator as benign or malevolent, perfect or imperfect, necessary or
contingent.
I have not claimed otherwise, except to quote Peirce himself as
stating explicitly that God is Ens necessarium ("A Neglected
Argument") and possesses the attribute of Infinite Benignity
(manuscript drafts).
JFS: You quoted Peirce, but you claim that the argument is
unavoidable.
No, I do not. For the third time, what I have said is that my
Semeiotic Argumentation provides what seems to me to be the
unavoidable answer to the question, "If the entire Universe is a
Sign, then what is its Object?"
JFS: The absence of any hint in any of his MSS raises a serious
doubt that Peirce would approve the reasoning that led to that
argument.
As Peirce himself surely would have recognized, this is an argument
from silence, which is not logically valid. He never claimed to have
worked out all of the ramifications of his own thought during his
lifetime; on the contrary, he said more than once that he was
counting on future generations to continue the work that he had
started, especially in Semeiotic.
JFS: Ideally, that would require a translation of each premise and
every step of the reasoning to existential graphs and an application
of the EG rules of inference.
I thought that it was obvious that the form of my Semeiotic
Argumentation is identical to Peirce's simple example of reasoning
with EGs in his letter to Mr. Kehler (NEM 3:168-169; 1911 June 22),
where S = the entire Universe, M = a Sign, and P = determined by an
Object other than itself.
JFS: 1. The claim that the object of every sign must be in a
different universe of discourse than the physical sign of that object
...I'll accept the point that the object of a sign must be different
from the sign itself.
I have never made the first claim, only the second--that the Object
of every Sign is external to, independent of, and unaffected by the
Sign itself, as Peirce himself explicitly stated.
JFS: 2. The claim the Creator (God, Satan, or some demiurge) cannot
be in the same universe as the creation. 3. The claim that Peirce's
three universes (Possibility, Actuality, and Necessity) are
insufficient as a home for the Creator.
The relevant claim is rather that the Creator of the three Universes
of Experience and "every content of them without exception" cannot be
within any or all of those Universes; i.e., God is "not immanent in"
them, as Peirce explicitly stated.
JFS: I forgot to mention that I had uploaded some of Peirce's
definitions to http://jfsowa.com/peirce/defs/ [1] See sign1.jpg and
sign2.jpg .
Thank you for the link; I agree that all of those 1890s definitions
apply only to Sinsigns/Tokens, presumably because Peirce did not
recognize the reality of Qualisigns/Tones and Legisigns/Types until
1903.
JFS: CSP, Century Dictionary for 'universe'--1. The totality of all
existing things; all that is in dynamical connection with general
experience taken collectively--embracing (a} the Creator and
creation; or (b) psychical and material objects, but excluding the
Creator; or (c) material objects only.
When I refer to "the entire Universe" in my Semeiotic Argumentation,
I mean all three Universes of Experience taken together; i.e., what
Peirce himself called "the entire universe--not merely the universe
of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of
existents as a part, the universe which we are all accustomed to
refer to as 'the truth'" (CP 5.448n, EP 2:394; 1906). That means
sense (b) above plus the first Universe of Ideas/Possibles, assuming
that we can take "material objects" to be the constituents of the
second Universe of Actuality/Existents and "psychical objects" to be
the constituents of the third Universe of Signs/Necessitants.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [2] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [3]
On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 10:56 AM John F Sowa wrote:
Jon,
> Anyone is welcome to claim that Satan (or anything else) is that
> Object [of the semeiotic proof], but thereby accepts the burden
> of making a case for it based on the attributes that such an
Object
> must have. I suspect that it would amount to nothing more than
> equating the proper names "Satan" and "God."
That's true. But nothing in that argument that depends on the
nature
of the creator as benign or malevolent, perfect or imperfect,
necessary
or contingent. In the Timaeus, Plato attributes the creation to a
demiurge (craftsman) who seems to be distinct from the supreme God.
To explain the origin of evil, the Gnostics later claimed that the
demiurge was flawed, imperfect, or even malevolent.
The Neoplatonists, following Plotinus, identified the creator with
the omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent God (which they called The
One
-- to Hen). The Neoplatonists had a strong influence on both
Christianity and Islam. ('Al Lah' is Arabic for 'The One'.)
Nothing in the semeiotic argument depends on any of these issues.
> I have consistently referred to my Semeiotic Argumentation...
> What I have said is that Peirce affirmed each of its premisses,
> and I have provided ample evidence from his explicit statements
> to support that claim.
You quoted Peirce, but you claim that the argument is unavoidable.
Peirce was the world expert in logic and semeiotic. He also had
a high regard for Thomas Aquinas, who is generally regarded as one
of the most profound theologians who ever lived. If there was
any "unavoidable" argument that linked those topics, Peirce would
certainly have noticed it.
The absence of any hint in any of his MSS raises a serious doubt
that Peirce would approve the reasoning that led to that argument.
Such a strong claim requires a methodeutic for exact thinking:
"What is needed above all, for metaphysics, is thorough and mature
thinking; and the particular requisite to success in the critic of
arguments is exact and diagrammatic thinking." (CP 3.406)
Ideally, that would require a translation of each premise and every
step of the reasoning to existential graphs and an application of
the EG rules of inference. But the critical step, which is
necessary
for EGs, predicate calculus, or clear thinking in any language, is
the selection of a set of predicates. The next step is to restate
each of Peirce's statements in terms of the names of those
predicates
and no words other than the six basic words of first-order logic:
and, or, not, if-then, some, every. Instead of pronouns, use
letters
(AKA selectives in EGs or variables in predicate calculus).
If you perform this translation, that would make every step of
reasoning so clear that any logician could translate the argument
to his or her favorite version of logic. In fact, you would even
have a publishable paper.
But -- and this is a very big **BUT** -- there are three critical
assumptions, which I have been criticizing in every one of my
notes about this argument:
1. The claim that the object of every sign must be in a different
universe of discourse than the physical sign of that object.
2. The claim the Creator (God, Satan, or some demiurge) cannot
be in the same universe as the creation.
3. The claim that Peirce's three universes (Possibility,
Actuality,
and Necessity) are insufficient as a home for the Creator.
I'll accept the point that the object of a sign must be different
from the sign itself. But every proposition of any kind and every
step of any argument can be stated on a single sheet of assertion.
I doubt that Peirce would accept assumption #1.
For #2, note that Peirce allowed modal statements on the same SA
as ordinary FOL statements. That means that a single universe of
discourse may include a mix of statements from more than one of
his three universes.
For #3, any reasoning must be carried out on a single SA. That
implies a single universe of discourse. Any reasoning that could
not be stated on an SA would violate the foundations of Peirce's
logic. If he had ever considered such a violation, there would be
many hints and comments scattered throughout his thousands of MSS.
> JFS: Look at the eleven senses of the word 'sign' that Peirce
defined
> for the Century Dictionary. Each one defines 'sign' as a physical
> thing. None of them mentions the word 'percept'.
>
> JAS: I would be glad to do so, if you would be so kind as to
quote
> them.
I forgot to mention that I had uploaded some of Peirce's definitions
to http://jfsowa.com/peirce/defs/ [5] See sign1.jpg and sign2.jpg .
For Peirce's definition of 'universe' in the Century Dictionary, see
defs/universal.jpg. The same page includes the definition of
universe.
In that definition, Peirce included all the senses that were in
common
usage in the 19th c. He distinguished three major senses, with God
included in 1a, excluded in 1b and 1c:
CSP, Century Dictionary for 'universe'
> 1. The totality of all existing things; all that is in dynamical
> connection with general experience taken collectively -- embracing
> (a} the Creator and creation; or (b) psychical and material
objects,
> but excluding the Creator; or (c) material objects only.
Then in sense 3, he defines the universe of discourse in logic, and
includes quotations by De Morgan and Venn.
Sense 1 describes common usage with variations that include and
exclude God. Sense 3 describes the universe of discourse in logic,
but it does not mention his own variation with a universe of all
possibilities, a universe of actualities, and a universe of
necessities. Which version applies to the following?
CSP (EP 2:304)
> The entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the Universe qua
fact,
> will be that Universe in its aspect as a sign, the "Truth" of
being.
> The "Truth," the fact that is not abstracted but complete, is the
> ultimate interpretant of every sign.
This does not sound like senses 1 or 2 from the Century Dictionary.
The words 'fact', 'sign', and 'truth' indicate that Peirce is
talking about a universe of discourse that could be described by
the EGs on a Sheet of Assertion.
I admit Peirce wrote those definitions in the 1890s, before he
developed his EGs and his more profound semeiotic. But they
show that he was aware of the issues about God and the universe.
He could not have avoided any "unavoidable" implication.
I also admit that a doubt is not a refutation. But any claim
that the argument follows from his writings requires a detailed
methodeutic to make the ideas clear. It must be stated in terms
that could support diagrammatic reasoning, and it must answer
the three criticisms above.
John
Links:
------
[1] http://jfsowa.com/peirce/defs/
[2] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[3] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[4]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[5] http://jfsowa.com/peirce/defs/
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