The numbers can be ignored altogether as far as I am concerned, or one could use, say, the Greek alphabet instead of numbers or just leave the numbers off. All that is important for me is the class names and the understanding that it is presuppositiional from the top down, which could be shown by using down-pointing arrows for connective lines. The use I would have for the figure doesn't require that it have the properties required to transform it in the various ways graph theory requires. For my purposes its use is primarily as a mnemonic for remembering what presupposes what. so that if, in the process of analyzing a bit of discourse, say, one has identified something as being of this class or that one knows ipso facto that a sign of this or that other class is either presupposed by it or presupposes it, directly or indirectly.. I imagine the use of it to be that of being able to figure out what is going on in or going wrong with some actual bit of persuasive argumentation, in a very broad sense of argumentation in which even a work of visual art or a piece of music might be thought of as being constructed argumentatively, supposing one can make good on the prospect of being able to understand artworks\as arguments, coherent or incoherent. The application of this sort of thing to infrahuman life would be via the collapse of genuine into degenerate forms (in the special sense of "degeneracy" Peirce uses), the elimination of levels of reflection, and whatever other modifications are necessary to account for higher developments of life.
This view of its use could conceivably be at odds with Peirce's own aims in devising graphical representations of the classes, which might require that the graphs have the properties you require of them because his aim was to be able to learn some things simply from manipulating the graphs in various ways. But it seems to me that something gets lost there. Perhaps something of great philosophical interest will result from the use of graph theory, but focus on what that might yield could be at the expense of what is lost by conforming to its constraints where there is no need to do so since all one needs is a graphical representation for mnemonic and other intuitional purposes. I am not at present aware of what may in fact have been accomplished philosophically with the use of graph theory, but I can imagine it being of interest for a great many other purposes which, for all I know, may be far more important than the philosophical ones. Moreover, I am not saying that what has been done has no philosophical interest but only that I am not myself aware of any such results from it -- and I lay no claim to being well informed about it, which I am not.. I \am just saying that what interests me does not seem to require anything more than I indicate above. Anyway, one thing that occurs to me when I note that Peirce's trek through the presuppositional order in 2.254 through 2.263 begins with quality and ends with the argument is that it seems comparable to regarding thought in the Kantian way as a process of "unification of the manifold". as in the New List. If I understand Peirce correctly, he thinks of a quality as being a given unity and simplicity which is, however, also regardable, reflectively, as if it were an achieved unity -- the achievement being forgotten once completed -- brought about through a unification process which builds the given quality from a "manifold" of elements of synthesized qualia, themselves regardable as if they are the simplified results of still prior qualitative elements logically synthesized in the same way. Or looking at it the other way around, the completion of the argument yields a new quality -- the argument assumes the appearance of a new quality -- which may or may not play a similar role in a further synthesizing unification of the same sort, and so forth. In other words, there is something comparable in that sequence to the line of development one finds in the New List, though at a finer grained level of resolution, as it were. This is a lame description of what I am trying to draw attention to, intended only suggestively. That passage in CP 2 is not comparable in rigor to what happens in the New List. to be sure, but the progression does have a presuppositional complexity which seems comparable.. . Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean-Marc Orliaguet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:20 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2) Joseph Ransdell wrote: > Jean-Marc says: > > I am surprised that you are claiming that the classes can be traversed > by a unique, "natural", ordered sequence from 1 to 10 while at the same > time you claim to have come up with a structure similar to a lattice, > these are contradictory assertions. > > REPLY: > I made no such claim, I said there is an order and there is, most > assuredly, > an order, and that is not a matter of convention. It is an order of > presupposition -- or, from another perspective, of internal complexity -- > and it can be read from top to bottom in the lattice representation. > Whether or to what extent it can be filled out further is something that > has > to be worked out laboriously by actually thinking the conceptions through, > as distinct from manipulating graphical representations containing the > names > for the classes, If the word for the structure is not "lattice" please > supply the correct one. I am referring to what Merkle calls by that name > in > his representation of Merrel's and Marty's versions of it. The one I came > up with is identical with that one. I'll send it along in a separate > message. The only important difference is that I gave the classes > nicknames > of my own. > > > Joe Ransdell > the numbers on the boxes (1, 2, 3, ...) that you wrote are purely conventional. since when you are calling a class '5' and another one '3' you imply that "5 is bigger than "3", which in a lattice it is not. you have to write 3-3-1, 3-3-2, 3-3-3, 1-2-3... to be correct. Check Marty's work for a correct presentation. /JM --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.9.0/368 - Release Date: 6/16/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
