John, List: JFS: I endorse Edwina's caveats. Her examples are among the "puffy clouds" that create ambiguities in any reasoning stated in ordinary language.
Do you likewise endorse all of Edwina's attributions of positions to Peirce that he did not explicitly state? If not, why have you not said so? In what sense are her own (or anyone else's) posts any less pervaded by "puffy clouds" than you claim mine to be? Do you automatically dismiss the claims of anyone who does not first demonstrate their mastery of EGs to your satisfaction, or do you reserve that treatment only for those with whom you happen to disagree? JFS: When it comes to logic, I treat Jon as a student. He's not happy when I say that, so I haven't said that recently. Instead, I stated the most appropriate analogy for his style of reasoning: "puffy clouds of words". If that's considered insulting, I'll just give him a "gentleman's C". What would be your response if I stated, "When it comes to Peirce's Semeiotic and Metaphysics, I treat John Sowa as a student" and then offered you a "gentleman's C" for your performance so far? Let me be clear--I would never *actually *be so disrespectful, in this or any other context. I cannot now and never will be able to match your credentials, but my impression is that the List is supposed to be a forum where *anyone *can share thoughts related to Peirce, and ideally receive *constructive *feedback. In other words, we are all *equals *here, so there is no basis for *anyone *to make an appeal to their own authority; instead, if someone thinks that I (or anyone else) is saying something incorrect or unsupported in Peirce's writings, then the proper response is to *make a better argument*. I have been told off-List that I tend to come across as very forceful and sure of myself. What I am usually doing is trying out a hypothesis, making the strongest case for it that I can, seeing what (if any) objections arise, and then figuring out whether and how I can address them. When no one on-List manages to *persuade *me that I am on the wrong track, it in no way entails that I am *unwilling *to change my mind; in fact, when I *do *realize that I have made a mistake, I will usually *admit *it and be *grateful *for the correction--for example, when I recently experimented with Propositional Graphs, but ultimately abandoned them in favor of sticking with EGs. As I have said before, *I am here to learn*, not to make dogmatic pronouncements that I expect everyone else to accept without critical evaluation. JFS: It's not acceptable to attribute any position to Peirce that he did not explicitly state ... In general, I agree, although I think that we are not doing anything untoward when we draw *reasonable *inferences from those explicit statements, even if Peirce never wrote down that exact arrangement of words himself. If we were *strictly precluded* from doing this, then there would not be a vast secondary literature derived from what he *did *write down; and what on earth would we ever discuss on the List? Besides, did he ever *explicitly state* that the presentation of EGs in his 22 June 1911 letter to Mr. Kehler (NEM 3:168-169; 1911 June 22) was "his final preferred version," as you have repeatedly claimed? You once reported <https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2019-04/msg00107.html> that he did so in his 6 Dec 1911 letter to Risteen, but the actual text itself contains no such assertion, as I pointed out <https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2019-04/msg00111.html> at the time. For that matter, did Peirce *ever* describe *anything* that he wrote as "his final preferred version"? JFS: ... for example, the assumption that anything could or even must exist outside his three universes. But that is *not *an example of what you deem unacceptable. First, the claim is not that anything *exists *outside the three Universes--according to Peirce, nothing *exists* outside the *second *Universe of Actuality/Existents--but that there is a *Reality *outside the three Universes. Second, and more to the point, Peirce *did *explicitly describe God as "in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434; 1908) and "a Being *not *immanent in the Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but the Sole Creator of every content of them without exception" (R 843:15; 1908). JFS: For the first homework assignment, the students were supposed to translate 10 English sentences to first-order logic. None of the sentences had any syntactic or semantic ambiguities. There were about 30 students in the class, but only one student got all 10 sentences correct. I freely admit that I am probably not adept enough with any of the *notations* for first-order logic (including EGs) to translate English sentences of significant complexity, but if you send me those ten, I am willing to take a stab at it. JFS: I doubt that Jon could correctly translate the relevant quotations from Peirce to EGs or any other version of symbolic logic. That depends on how much simplification is permitted. As I already noted, my Semeiotic Argumentation is a first figure (Barbara) syllogism, *identical* to Peirce's simple example of reasoning with EGs in that same letter to Mr. Kehler with S = the entire Universe, M = a Sign, and P = determined by an Object other than itself. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 1:27 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: > Edwina and Gary R, > > I endorse Edwina's caveats. Her examples are among the "puffy clouds" > that create ambiguities in any reasoning stated in ordinary language. > After half a century of using and inventing symbolic logics, Peirce > could keep the distinctions clear in his own mind, but any excerpt > from his writings could easily be ambiguous when taken out of context. > > That's why formal logic is essential to clarify any reasoning that > relates quotations from different MSS. > > GR > > I truly doubt that Jon needs your "help," while insulting and > > hubristic comments such as saying that if he refuses to accept your > > "help" that he has "nothing but a puffy cloud of words" is, in my > > opinion, below any serious scholar's dignity. > > When it comes to logic, I treat Jon as a student. He's not happy > when I say that, so I haven't said that recently. Instead, I stated > the most appropriate analogy for his style of reasoning: "puffy > clouds of words". If that's considered insulting, I'll just give > him a "gentleman's C". > > Ambiguities are the primary reason why words, by themselves, can > be misleading. Even in Peirce's technical vocabulary, there are > ambiguities in the words 'subject' (grammatical or logical) and > 'universe' (the universe of discourse on the sheet of assertion > or one of the three modalities -- possible, actual, necessary). > > The sheet of assertion, as a piece of paper, is in the universe > of actuality. But the universe of discourse represented by the > EGs on that paper is an abstraction in the universe of possibilities. > No matter where God may be, any statement about God that is written > on that paper exists in actuality, and its universe of discourse > is in the universe of possibility. > > Those distinctions provide enough universe-like combinations to > support any talk about God or anything else. Another realm for > God is both semeiotically unnecessary and anti=Peircean. > > I admit that Jon has done good work in studying Peirce and relating > passages from various MSS. But when he draws inferences that go > beyond anything Peirce said, there is usually a good reason why > Peirce did not make those inferences. It's important to ask why. > > It's not acceptable to attribute any position to Peirce that > he did not explicitly state -- for example, the assumption that > anything could or even must exist outside his three universes. > > Since Gary questioned my qualifications to grade Jon's claims, > I'll summarize a few points. I spent 30 years in R & D at IBM, > where I used math & logic for projects in AI, computational > linguistics, and parsers and inference engines. I published > papers and books and taught courses at IBM and elsewhere. > > In 1987, for example, I taught a graduate course at Stanford in the > Computer Science Dept., which also had many students in linguistics. > The only prerequisite was "knowledge of first-order logic and natural > language syntax". For the course description and student evaluations: > http://jfsowa.com/pubs/su309a.pdf . Note that my rating was higher > than the average for the CS department in nearly all categories. > > For the first homework assignment, the students were supposed to > translate 10 English sentences to first-order logic. None of the > sentences had any syntactic or semantic ambiguities. There were > about 30 students in the class, but only one student got all 10 > sentences correct. He was a post-doc, who had just finished his > PhD in linguistics and was just auditing the course. > > For more recent work, see the 73-page article on "Reasoning with > diagrams and images", which was published in 2018 in the Journal > of Applied Logics, vol. 5:5, pp. 987-1059 of > http://www.collegepublications.co.uk/downloads/ifcolog00025.pdf > > Re helping Jon to translate Peirce's statements to EGs: I meant > that offer in all sincerity. I doubt that Jon could correctly > translate the relevant quotations from Peirce to EGs or any other > version of symbolic logic. Note that Stanford graduate students > in computer science or linguistics couldn't do that. > > In any case, I would be pleasantly surprised if Jon could translate > the relevant quotations by Peirce to EGs. If he can't do that, I > would automatically dismiss any of his claims about any arguments > that take more than one step. > > John >
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