Jon AS, List
This thread began with my note of August 2nd,
which I include below in the file 2aug20.txt. All the points in that note
are based on the citations included in it. But I changed the subject line
of this note to emphasize Peirce's fundamental insight of 2 June 1911
shortly after 7:40 pm.
That was when Peirce finished writing two of
his three "Illative Permissions" in R669. He then wrote a short
paragraph with a few lines at the top of a new page. And he stopped.
He did not write the third permission (about double negations), he
left most of the sheet blank, and he never resumed R669. Three
questions: Why did he stop when he had enough paper to write the third
permission? Why did he begin a completely new version of EGs in R670
with different notation and terminology? And what did he do in the time
between June 2 and June 7?
My guess: He reviewed his earlier
writings on EGs, especially the ones from 1903 and 1906. The content of
R670 and L231 shows what he rejected. His comments in L378 and L376 show
that he considered the presentation in 1906 "as bad as it could
be". But his comments in R670 show that he considered some
combination of shading with tinctured areas as possible. That would be an
option for Delta graphs, as I mentioned in an earlier note.
JAS>
understanding the entire system of EGs requires familiarity with all
his different writings about them.
Familiarity does not imply
agreement. The writings prior to June 1911 have some useful insights
mixed with some obsolete material. It's necessary to evaluate them in
terms of L231.
JFS> There is no need to derive negation from
anything else.
JAS> Peirce repeatedly says otherwise, as I have
repeatedly demonstrated..
All those quotations are prior to June
1911. They're irrelevant and obsolete.
JAS> In R 669 (May 1911),
he notes--just three weeks before composing RL 231--that necessary
reasoning is possible without the concept of falsity
No, for several
reasons: (1) That is not an exact quotation, since Peirce knew that
affirmation and negation are fundamental to every version of logic from
Aristotle onward. (2) Peirce had forgotten his 1884 point that all
reasoning can be done with just insertions and deletions (W 5:107). And
Peirce's discovery of 2 June 1911 makes the earlier quotations
irrelevant.
JAS> This (R 466:18-19, 1903) comes from one of
Peirce's notebooks for the Lowell Lectures, which in RL 376 (December
1911) he calls "the better exposition" of EGs than
"Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" (1906). The three
primitives are thus consequence (scroll), coexistence (blank), and
identity (line)
Although Peirce said that the version of 1903 was
better than the version of 1906, it still has obsolete passages, such as
the comments about the scroll.
In R670, he writes "There are
but three peculiar signs that the Syntax of Existential Graphs absolutely
requires." The first is the line of identity. The, the second is
the spot, which may be a medad or it may have one or more pegs. "The
third is one that shall deny a Graph instance, or scribed
assertion." With that explanation and further confirmation in L231,
every previous comment about scrolls is obsolete and irrelevant.
At
this point, I rest my case. I stand by the attached 2aug20.txt and the
additional comments above. Any relevant evidence to the contrary would
have to come from documents later than June 1911.
John
To: ahti-veikko.pietari...@ttu.ee, francesco.belluc...@unibo.it,
jonalanschm...@gmail.com> ``
cc: "De Waal, Cornelis" , Martin Irvine
Dear Ahti, Francesco, and Jon,
I have long maintained that Peirce's best and final version of the
syntax, semantics (endoporeutic), rules of inference, and terminology
for EGs is in L231 and NEM 3.162-169. But Jon quoted some comments by
Ahti that seem to contradict that claim. Instead of debating them on
Peirce-L, I'd like to discuss the issues with this smaller group.
First, I'll summarize my reasons for claiming that the copy in
http://jfsowa.com/peirce/eg1911.pdf should be considered the most
definitive:
1. By 1911, Peirce had abandoned hope of publishing a final version, but
he knew that Lady Welby and her correspondents circulated letters among
a group of well-respected philosophers and logicians. He considered the
letter L231 to be as significant as a formal publication.
2. EG1911 is the clearest, shortest, and most elegant summary of Alpha +
Beta. The shaded areas can be generalized to 3-D regions or to 4-D for
stereoscopic moving images. Aspects of Gamma or Delta graphs could be
added without changing the Alpha + Beta foundation. And eg1911 has a
short, but complete selection of technical terms that could be adapted
to a wide range of notations in any number of dimensions.
3. In L231, Peirce replaced the term 'illative transformation' with the
term 'permission'. Perhaps he realized that the words 'illative' and
'illation' had become archaic. More
