JFS: I was just making the point that infants are not born into a paradise.
JFS: They learn to use the words 'no' and 'not' soon after they begin to utter two or three word sentences. That is long before they begin to say if-then sentences.
JFS: But his metaphor is weird and unconvincing.
JFS: Why did he feel the need to justify including negation in his logic?
JFS: What thoughts led him to make negation a primitive in R670? In R670 and L231, he didn't feel any need to justify that choice. He just showed examples that use negations and nested negations.
Gary F, Auke, List,
Before commenting on your notes, I want to emphasize that Peirce's paragraph about paradisaical logic in R699 (1911) is a short version of CP 3.488-489, from his Monist article about entitative graphs (written in 1896, published in 1897). See the copy attached as CP3_488.txt).
GF> are you seriously claiming that an infant’s crying is an instance of logical negation?
No, of course not. I was just making the point that infants are not born into a paradise. They have many negative experiences about which they express negative thoughts. They learn to use the words 'no' and 'not' soon after they begin to utter two or three word sentences. That is long before they begin to say if-then sentences.
GF> Peirce is using a metaphor to make a point about logic. He never approved of basing logical principles on psychology.
I agree with both sentences. But his metaphor is weird and unconvincing. In the 19th century, every university graduate had studied Aristotle's syllogisms. Peirce could just give an example to remind his readers that negation is important.
AvB> For me Pierce here hints at the distiction between a logica utens and a logica docens. It marks the difference between semiosis subject to the normative sciences and semiosis which is not.
That distinction is important. But in both cases (1896 and 1911), he followed the metaphor with a discussion of negation. He didn't mention semiosis or the normative sciences.
And by the way, the fact that Peirce used the same weird metaphor in 1991 that he had published in 1897 is significant. It shows that he must have reviewed his earlier publications about entitative and existential graphs shortly before writing R669.
In any case, I usually find Peirce's examples and metaphors apt and convincing. But I have no idea why Peirce felt the need for that odd metaphor. Every logic since Aristotle had negations. Every logic that Peirce studied since he was 13 had negations. Why did he feel the need to justify including negation in his logic? And if so, why did he resurrect an odd metaphor he had used in a different context 15 years earlier?
Thought for the day: Did Peirce ask himself the same or similar questions during the five days between ending R669 and beginning R670? What thoughts led him to make negation a primitive in R670? In R670 and L231, he didn't feel any need to justify that choice. He just showed examples that use negations and nested negations.
John
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