Jon, I appreciate your comments, even though they disagree with what I believe Peirce intended. But I can see that I need to respond to the questions you raise in the article I'm writing.
JAS> In the RLT example, what is written outside the "lightly drawn oval" does not govern what is written inside the oval, at least not in the same sense. After all, what is written outside the oval is not a proposition at all. It most certainly is a proposition. Outside the oval, there is a line of identity attached to a verb phrase "is much to be wished." That forms a complete sentence "X is something to be wished." The other end of the line is attached to the oval which contains the proposition that is to be wished. To express the complete graph, Peirce introduced the word 'that' to create the complete sentence "That you are a good girl is much to be wished." You could express the same point in the notation of R514. In the margin, you write an EG that states "The proposition stated below is much to be wished," Inside the content circled in red, you write "You are a good girl." As for my description in the slides presented in 2020, I was not lecturing to Peirce scholars. I started with a summary of the EG notation of 1911. Then slide 30 is stated in the terms introduced in slides15, 16, 17... Therefore, my later discussion is stated in those terms. JAS> the sole reason that Peirce expresses for needing to add a Delta part to EGs is "in order to deal with modals," which for him are propositions involving possibility and necessity. Please do not make any assumptions about what Peirce did or did not intend. As you know, Peirce had the most complete collection of MSS on medieval logic in the Boston area -- he had more than the Harvard libraries. Among the authors were logicians call the "Modistae". They had a huge number of modes, including "written in Holy Scriptures". We don't know exactly what Peirce read, but It's quite likely that he had read something by or about them. And we don't know what he thought about them. In any case, such modes may be possible, actual, or necessary. The additional information, such as "written in Holy scriptures" or "is much to be wished" is descriptive, but it's independent of the state of those worlds as possible, actual, or necessary. As more examples, look at the three ways of describing the diagrams in slide 31. To start, let's assume that Pierre is sitting in the actual world. The content of the thought balloons may be actual or possible. His thoughts about them, such as wishing or hoping, add information, but they don't change their status as actual or possible. John ---------------------------------------- From: "Jon Alan Schmidt" <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> John, List: JFS: The word 'paper' is the same word that he used in R514 for a paper with postulates in the margin that govern the graphs inside a red line. Actually, Peirce does not use the word "paper" in the "red pencil" passage of R 514, he uses the word "sheet." However, this is just a quibble--I now recognize that every individual page in the R L376 approach could have a red line drawn just inside its edges, with different postulates in its margin and thus different graphs within its red line. I also heartily agree that the postulates in the margin govern the graphs inside the red line, which is why I continue to disagree with this subsequent statement. JFS: But the notation of RLT in 1898 is logically equivalent--in the sense that any "postulates" or "special understandings" could be specified in either form with exactly the same implications for the "papers" of the phemic sheet. In the RLT example, what is written outside the "lightly drawn oval" does not govern what is written inside the oval, at least not in the same sense. After all, what is written outside the oval is not a proposition at all, so it cannot be a postulate or express a special understanding between the utterer and interpreter. It is merely a rheme, and its blank is filled by the proposition written inside the oval. As far as I know, this is a completely different notation from anything that Peirce presents in his other writings about EGs, and he uses it in RLT only as a step toward explaining the cut for negation. JFS: I strongly recommend three slides--29, 30, and 31. If you don't read all (or even any) of the others, please look at the diagrams and read the text of those three. I already did so, after you provided the link in your earlier post. I agree that the RLT example is consistent with what you say about metalanguage, but it is still not equivalent to the "red pencil" operation in R 514 nor the "many papers" concept in R L376. Moreover, it is misleading to state on slide 30, "A shaded oval negates the nested EG. Without shading, the EG expresses a proposition that is neither asserted nor negated." As you know very well, Peirce did not introduce shading for negation until 1911. Up until then, any oval--except the one-of-a-kind RLT example, where a rheme is attached to it--negates the nested EG. Again, the sole reason that Peirce expresses for needing to add a Delta part to EGs is "in order to deal with modals," which for him are propositions involving possibility and necessity. The synthesis that I am now contemplating would satisfy that one criterion by combining the graphs scribed in R 339:[340r] with the "red pencil" improvement in R 514 and the "many papers" concept in R L376. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 6:12 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: Jon, List, Please note the phrase "a special understanding between utterer and interpreter" in the excerpt below. And note that different "papers" of the phemic sheet may have different special understandings. Although Peirce did not coin the term 'metalanguage', that is the word that has been used for such texts from the 1930s to today. Since the word 'metalanguage' is far more widely used than 'special understandings', Peirce's ethics of terminology would require us to adopt that term for the special understandings that determine the interpretation of any paper of the phemic sheet. The word 'paper' is the same word that he used in R514 for a paper with postulates in the margin that govern the graphs inside a red line. Note that R514 also contains a draft of the EG specifications that he uses in every MS from June 1911 to November 1913. It is quite likely that Peirce would have used the R514 conventions to specify the metalanguage. Since he didn't finish L376, we can only guess what notation he might have chosen for his "papers". The best guess is the notation for "papers" in R514. But the notation of RLT in 1898 is logically equivalent -- in the sense that any "postulates" or "special understandings" could be specified in either form with exactly the same implications for the "papers" of the phemic sheet. In my previous notes, I included many references, each of which includes many more references. For simplicity, I recommend the slides of https://jfsowa.com/talks/eswc.pdf starting at slide 14, which begins with a short review of EG notation and continues with applications of EGs for representing the semantics of natural languages. I strongly recommend three slides -- 29, 30, and 31. If you don't read all (or even any) of the others, please look at the diagrams and read the text of those three. Slide 31 shows how different metalanguage can state whether a diagram is interpreted as actual (a fact in current time), possible (modal), or wished (another kind of modality that may also be called intentional). In slide 31, the diagram is drawn as a kind of cartoon. But it could also have been drawn as an EG on a phemic sheet. In fact, the commentary about the cartoon in slide 31 could also have been stated in three different "papers" of a phemic sheet. That would be a good illustration of what Peirce was saying in L376. In fact, note Peirce's own example of the sentence "Sometimes it snows." That's a good example by somebody who is writing a letter in December. One paper might be actual at one time, other papers might be possible at other times, and some paper might be wished for Christmas. He may have been laying out a large phemic sheet of such papers when he slipped. Nobody knows. But it's possible. John _________________________________ From L376: All thought, which is the process of forming, under self-control, an intellectual habit, requires two functionaries; an utterer and an interpreter, and though these two functionaries may live in one brain, they are nevertheless two. In order to distinguish the actual performance of an assertion, though it be altogether a mental act, from a mere representation or appearance, the difference between a mere idea jotted down on a bit of paper, from an affidavit made before a notary, for which the utterer is substantially responsible, I provide my system with a phemic sheet, which is a surface upon which the utterer and interpreter will, by force of a voluntary and actually contracted habit, recognize that whatever is scribed upon it and is interpretable as an assertion is to be recognized as an assertion, although it may refer to a mere idea as its subject. If "snows" is scribed upon the Phemic Sheet, it asserts that in the universe to which a special understanding between utterer and interpreter has made the special part of the phemic sheet on which it is scribed to relate, it sometime does snow. For they two may conceive that the "phemic sheet" embraces many papers, so that one part of it is before the common attention at one time and another part at another, and that actual conventions between them equivalent to scribed graphs make some of those pieces relate to one subject and part to another.
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