Re: [PEIRCE-L] [ontolog-forum] Re: FYI:Human brain singularity hypothesis

[Daniel L Everett]

Completely agree about this John. Just in case anyone is interested MIT’s Dept of Brain and Cognitive Sciences is sponsoring a conference about my work that touches on these and many related issues of interest inlinguistics and cog sci. Everett Festschrfit 2023tedlab.mit.eduDanOn May 14, 2023, at 15:08, John F Sowa  wrote:Dan,I agree that the continuity issue is nothing new -- that was my reply to the second note by Alex.  But the most important issue is a recent article by Dehaene and his colleagues about their research with cognitive modalities other than language.  That was the topic of my first note to Alex.   In my note below, I'm forwarding my first note plus a diagram of the arcuate fasciculus, which was missing in my second note.Dehaene's article shows the importance of multiple methods of thinking and reasoning other than linguistic.  This makes the term ''language of thought" misleading."  That is important for interpreting Peirce's writings about reasoning in diagrams and even "stereoscopic moving images."Although Dehaene did not mention the arcuate fasciculus, I believe that it is important for explaining the difference between their results with baboons vs humans.  The human fasciculus has many more links to a wide range of areas in the brain for those different ways of thinking.  The chimpanzee fasciculus has fewer connections, but still quite a few more connections than the monkeys.  (See the attached arcuate.png)That may explain why chimpanzees can learn a fair but incomplete version of human sign language, but they can't go farther.  Dehaene and his colleagues also analyzed infant abilities.  There might also be some relevance to your studies of the Piraha language and the kinds of experiences in their environment.John From: "John F Sowa" Sent: 5/13/23 6:27 PMTo: Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Re: FYI:Human brain singularity hypothesisAlex,Thanks for those references.  I have read other articles by Dehaene, and he does good work.  But the hypothesis of a singularity may be too strong.  A more likely assumption is a continuum with baboons having a weak ability, the great apes having a stronger ability, and humans having the strongest.  The article I copied below discusses different areas of the brain that are specialized for different ways of thinking.  That is a well-known fact.  Other  primates, including the baboons they studied, also have specialized areas of their brains.  But the differences may not be a sharp singularity.  It's likely to be a continuum.  They should continue their study with at least one intermediate point, such as chimps or bonobos.  See the attached diagram, which shows the connections between Wernicke's and Broca's areas (the two major areas for language understanding and speech generation in humans).  It also shows the corresponding areas in macaques and chimpanzees.Note that the arcuate fasciculus, which connects those two areas in humans, has many more connections to other areas in humans, fewer in chimpanzees, and very few in macaques.  That suggests a continuum rather than a singularity.John--Volume 26, Issue 9, September 2022, Pages 751-766Trends in Cognitive SciencesOpinionSymbols and mental programs:  a hypothesis about human singularityStanislas Dehaene, Fosca Al Roumi, Yair Lakretz, Samuel Planton, Mathias Sablé-MeyerAbstract:   Natural language is often seen as the single factor that explains the cognitive singularity of the human species.  Instead, we propose that humans possess multiple internal languages of thought, akin to computer languages, which encode and compress structures in various domains (mathematics, music, shape…).  These languages rely on cortical circuits distinct from classical language areas.  Each is characterized by:  (i) the discretization of a domain using a small set of symbols, and (ii) their recursive composition into mental programs that encode nested repetitions with variations.  In various tasks of elementary shape or sequence perception, minimum description length in the proposed languages captures human behavior and brain activity, whereas non-human primate data are captured by simpler nonsymbolic models.  Our research argues in favor of discrete symbolic models of human thought.Section snippets A universal human predilection for symbolic structures The Lascaux cave, south of France, is famous for its spectacular depictions of aurochs, horses, and deer, from over 18 000 years ago.  A lesser-known fact, however, is that prehistoric humans also left many nonfigurative signs (see Glossary) such as rectangles, series of dots, etc.  (Figure 1).Abstract geometrical patterns are omnipresent in human productions throughout the globe and predate figurative art by hundreds of thousands of years.  For instance, early Homo sapiens left a network of...A geometric language for spatial sequences All neuropsychologists are familiar with the Corsi block tapping task, which evaluates spatial working memory.  

Re: [PEIRCE-L] nonlinear semiotics

[Daniel L Everett]

Yes this is a well-known issue. Thus in principle there can be no first human, except as a theoretical decision. I discuss this briefly in How Language Began and my lengthy discussions of hominin evolution. DanOn May 14, 2023, at 13:18, John F Sowa  wrote:Dan, Gary F, et al.,There was a discussion jn Ontolog Forum about some issues on related topics.Alex Shkotin had cited some important articles about aspects of human cognition, and I added further comments.John From: "John F Sowa" Sent: 5/14/23 12:57 PMTo: Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]  Human brain singularity hypothesisAlex,That dissertation about cognition and geometric shapes is important. *and* it is consistent with continuity.Furthermore, the seemingly discrete species are a result of a continuous process of breeding.   Just look at dogs and wolves.  The immense variety of dogs resulted from selective breeding of grey wolves.  They are all classified as a single species, with a huge number of variations.  But every variety can interbreed with the wolves to produce fertile offspring that constitute another variant of the same species.The modern thinking about why all humans today belong to the same species is that all the earlier variants in Africa went in two directions:  (1) merged together in a single species, or (2) died out because they couldn't interbreed with the majority.Early humans, such as the Neanderthals and others who migrated out of Africa were variants of the African mixture at earlier dates, but they were still able to interbreed.  When they later met modern humans who migrated within the past 100,000 years, they were still able to interbreed.  All the humans who left Africa have a small percentage of genes from the Neandertals and others who had migrated earlier.Other examples, such as horses and donkeys diverged much earlier.  They can still interbreed, but the resulting mules can no longer breed with each other.Evolution is fundamentally continuous by tiny variations caused by mistakes (mutations) in gene replication.  Harmful mutations are weeded out, and the neutral or beneficial mutations are preserved.  When there are so many mutations that the individuals cannot interbreed with the old version, biologists classify them as a new species.Summary:  Breeding is a continuous process of mixing genes from male-female pairs.  Some mixtures are more survivable than others. Biologists are the people who decide when the mixing process has produced a new species.   But some variants that biologists have called new species can still interbreed with the majority.Result:   The seemingly discrete species are the end result of a continuous process that has been cut off at various points by reasons (distance, disasters, food supply, predators... ) that stopped the interbreeding.John___ From: "Alex Shkotin" " style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;">John,My focus is not on the brains of different kinds but on languages they discovered. If I have time to dig.For example the dissertation "Human Cognition of Geometric Shapes, A Window into the Mental Representation of Abstract Concepts" has 286 pages.The task is to extract language of Geometry from there.hasCASL has 84 pages for language definition [2]. And it's too much also.Where is the syntax?  Which should be from 1 (FOL) to 10 pages (N. Wirth's diagrams for Pascal [P. Grogono]).And about the continuum. It's easier for me to look at each species as a separate product, perhaps with some modifications. And there is no continuum of species. Rather, each species is an invention based on the previous ones ;-)Alex[1] https://s-m.ac/documents/phd_thesis_mathias_sable-meyer.pdf[2] https://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/agbkb/forschung/formal_methods/CoFI/HasCASL/hascasl_summary.pdf___вс, 14 мая 2023 г. в 01:28, John F Sowa :Alex,Thanks for those references.  I have read other articles by Dehaene, and he does good work.  But the hypothesis of a singularity may be too strong.  A more likely assumption is a continuum with baboons having a weak ability, the great apes having a stronger ability, and humans having the strongest.  The article I copied below discusses different areas of the brain that are specialized for different ways of thinking.  That is a well-known fact.  Other  primates, including the baboons they studied, also have specialized areas of their brains.  But the differences may not be a sharp singularity.  It's likely to be a continuum.  They should continue their study with at least one intermediate point, such as chimps or bonobos.  See the attached diagram, which shows the connections between Wernicke's and Broca's areas (the two major areas for language understanding and speech generation in humans).  It also shows the corresponding areas in macaques and chimpanzees.Note that the arcuate fasciculus, which connects those two areas in 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peircean Linguistics

[Daniel L Everett]


Congrats Michael. 

> On Apr 22, 2023, at 09:42, Shapiro, Michael  wrote:
> 
> In case anyone wants to ascertain the way in which CSP has influenced 
> contemporary linguistics, here is a complete list of my publications that 
> reflect a Peircean approach:
> 
> "Semeiotic Neostructuralism"
> Publications of Michael Shapiro in Peircean Linguistics (to 2022)
>  
> a. books/monographs (authored and/or edited volumes)
> 1. Aspects of Russian Morphology: A Semiotic Investigation. Pp. 62. 
> Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica, 1969.
>   2. Asymmetry: An Inquiry into the Linguistic Structure of Poetry. 
> North-Holland Linguistic  Series, 26. Pp. xiv, 231. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 
> 1976.
>   3. Hierarchy and the Structure of Tropes [coauthor, Marianne Shapiro]. 
> Studies in Semiotics, 8. Pp. v, 37. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1976.
> 4. Structure and Content: Essays in Applied Semiotics [coauthor, Marianne 
> Shapiro]. Monographs, Working Papers and Prepublications of the Toronto 
> Semiotic Circle, 1979/No. 2. Pp. 69. Toronto: Victoria University, 1979.
> 5. The Sense of Grammar: Language as Semeiotic. Advances in Semiotics. Pp. 
> xiv, 236. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
> 6. Figuration in Verbal Art [coauthor, Marianne Shapiro]. Pp. xv, 286. 
> Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988.
> 7. The Sense of Change: Language as History. Advances in Semiotics. Pp. xiv, 
> 146.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
> 8. Editor, The Peirce Seminar Papers: An Annual of Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 1. 
> Pp. 141. Providence: Berg Publishers, 1993.
> 9. Editor, The Peirce Seminar Papers: An Annual of Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 2. 
> Pp. 259. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1994.
> 10. Editor, The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 3. 
> Pp. viii, 123. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.
> 11. The Sense of Form in Literature and Language [coauthor, Marianne 
> Shapiro]. Semaphores and Signs. Pp. viii, 215. New York: St. Martin's Press, 
> 1998.
> 12. Editor, The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 4. 
> Pp. xii, 637. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999.
> 13. Editor, The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 5. 
> Pp. vi, 224. NewYork: Berghahn Books, 2002.
> 14. The Sense of Form in Literature and Language [coauthor, Marianne 
> Shapiro]. 2nd, expanded ed. Pp. xxi, 373.  Scotts Valley, Calif.: 
> CreateSpace, 2009.
> 15. The Speaking Self: Language Lore and English Usage. Pp. xix, 303. Scotts 
> Valley, Calif.: CreateSpace, 2012.
> 16. The Speaking Self: Language Lore and English Usage. Second Edition. Pp. 
> xxviii, 517. New York: Springer, 2017.
> 17. On Language and Value in American Speech: With a Semeiotic Appendix. Pp. 
> 139. Riga (Latvia): Lambert Academic Publishing, 2019.
> 18. The Logic of Language: A Semiotic Study of Speech. Pp. xlviii, 308. New 
> York and Berlin:  Springer Nature, 2022.
>  
>  
> b. chapters in books
> 1 “Markedness and Distinctive Feature Hierarchies,” Proceedings of the 
> Eleventh International Congress of Linguists, II, ed. L. Heilmann, 775-781. 
> Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974.
> 2. “Markedness as a Criterion of Phonemicity,” Phonologica 1972, ed. W. U. 
> Dressler and   
>   F. Mareš, 49-54. Munich: Fink, 1975.
> 3. “On the Coherence of Derivational Relations,” Proceedings of the Twelfth 
> International Congress of Linguists, ed. W. U. Dressler et al., 459-462. 
> Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 1978.
> 4. “The Structure of Meaning in Semiotic Perspective,” Papers from the Fourth
>International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. E. C. Traugott 
> et al., 53-59.
>Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1980. 
> 5.”Peirce's Interpretant from the Perspective of Linguistic Theory,” 
> Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce Bicentennial International Congress (Graduate 
> Studies, Texas Tech University, 23), ed. K. L. Ketner et al., 313-318. 
> Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1981.
> 6. “Semiosis and (Poetic) Value,” Axia: Davis Symposium on Literary 
> Evaluation (Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 94), ed. K. Menges and D. 
> Rancour- Laferriere, 51-60. Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, 1981.
> 7. “Dois paralogismos da poética,” O discurso da poesia [The Discourse of 
> Poetry], 69-94. Coimbra: Livraria Almedian, 1982 [Portuguese translation of 
> #c. 6]
> 8. “Remarks on the Nature of the Autotelic Sign,” Georgetown University 
> Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics 1982, ed. H. Byrnes, 101-111. 
> Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1982.
> 9. “The Evaluative Component in a Theory of Poetic Language,” Russian Poetics 
> (UCLA Slavic Studies, 4), ed. T. Eekman and D. S. Worth, 353-369. Columbus, 
> Ohio: Slavica, 1983.
> 10. “The Meaning of Meter,” Russian Verse Theory (UCLA Slavic Studies, 18), 
> ed. B. Scherr and D. S. Worth, 331-349. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1989.
> 11. “On a Universal Criterion of Rule Coherence,” Contemporary 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Chat GPT and Peirce

[Daniel L Everett]

i have read all of shapiro’s work. my forthcoming book on peirce and the phil of linguistics goes into a lot of detail on this stuff and takes a difgerent perspective. My Princeton UP bio of peirce (2025) will go into this as well but not in quite as much detail. DanOn Apr 21, 2023, at 16:34, Gary Richmond  wrote:Dan, Helmut, List,I am not a linguist, but a friend and colleague of mine, Michael Shapiro, is. He  refers to his as a "semiotic neostructuralist approach" to linguistics. Heis likely one of the very few linguists whose realism is informed by Peirce's.  You might like to take a look at the critique of Chomsky and his school in the second section of his paper, "Markedness, Causation, and Linguistic Change: A Semiotic Perspective," 2. 'Nominalism and realism in linguistics'. Here are two excerpts from the conclusion of that section of Michael's paper:Chomsky has a rather mechanistic view of language, for all that he
understands that the freedom to compose sentences that are original,
unpredictable, and yet intelligible is different from the unoriginal, predictable
products of strictly mechanical action. His view is mechanistic nonetheless
because he simply posits underlying structures by which sentences are to be
generated.[ . . .][I]f we focus simply on the linguist's
study, as diversely conceived by Chomsky and the semiotic neostructuralist,
then there is this difference: for the one, the teleology of language is excluded
from linguistic explanation, while for the other it is the very stuff of
explanation. For the one, linguistic phenomena conform to a describable
structure of highly abstract laws, while for the other linguistic phenomena
exhibit an intelligible if less abstract, more complicated structure. For the one,
the system is a given, and any changes in it are accidental, while for the other
development is essential to language-development is more the reality than is
any one system of rules- and that development is also intelligible and not
merely given. That is the conflict. The reason the semiotic neostructuralist approach is, if it is successful, superior is that it can be used to explain the very evolution of
the brain-mechanism or linguistic capacities and universals that Chomsky can
at best describe. That is, given creatures somewhat sociable, exchanging signs
as their way of life, then the survival value of their communicating more
elaborate and precise diagrams would explain the retention of those fortuitous
variations, say, in brain structure that promote exactly such powers of
expressible diagrammatization. That is, the principle of this evolution will be
itself linguistic, and continuous with the principles of postbiotic, strictly
linguistic evolution. The thought here is not unlike that which refuses to
postulate linguistic intentions separate from the capacity to exercise those
intentions. Just as there could be- no desire to speak without an ability to speak,
so also there could be no evolution of linguistic capacities- even, or
especially, at the physiological level-except among those who, already
speaking to one another, will more likely survive as a species if they speak
more effectively. Thus, instead of a neurophysiological explanation of
language, we have a linguistic explanation of the higher cortex (and probably
not just the speech centers either, since so many of our capacities for sensation
and action would be bootless without our capacities for speech).http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/shapiro/shapiro-mclc.pdf I read this paper several years ago when I asked Michael to explain the important notion of 'markedness' in linguistics for a NYC philosophy club we are both members of, and he pointed to this paper. But I haven't sufficient knowledge of linguistics nor Chat GPT to enter this discussion. So, this is offered as material that those who have such knowledge might find of interest, especially from a Peircean perspective. http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/shapiro/shapiro-mclc.pdfTo all: this paper and many Peirce and Peirce-related papers may be found at Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.eduBest,Gary R         On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 5:18 AM Dan Everett  wrote:Helmut,There are only two claims here, one by Chomsky and one by Peirce.Although both use the term ‘instinct’  and ‘innate,’ these mean quite different things for both of them (there is a tendency to interpret Peirce’s (Hume’s, Locke’s, etc) use of “instinct” (and many other terms) anachronistically). In any case, Chomsky claims that language is not learned, in fact that it cannot be learned. It is “acquired” via innate structure that emerges via triggering via the environment. Peirce claims that all knowledge, ontogenetic or phylogenetic (but that is often/usually misinterpreted as well) is gained via inference over signs.What ChatGPT has done (and the Piantadosi article is crucial to seeing this clearly, so I assume you have read it) is 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] A question for pragmatists

[Daniel L Everett]

Thanks Jon. The Cog Math paper looks great. (Will see if my computer will get the first link better than my iphone). DanOn Apr 21, 2023, at 11:53, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:Dan, List:Sorry, the first link seems to be working fine for me, but the second one is indeed broken. Please try https://rd.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-44982-7_25-1 instead.Thanks,JonOn Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 10:36 AM Daniel L Everett <danleveret...@gmail.com> wrote:Perhaps it is my iphone but I did not have any luck with those links Jon. DanOn Apr 21, 2023, at 09:49, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote:Martin, List:Indeed, I have argued in publications about structural engineering (https://www.structuremag.org/?p=10373) and cognitive mathematics (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44982-7_25-1) that the logic of inquiry as explicated by Peirce can be adapted to outline the logic of ingenuity that engineers use rigorously and everyone uses informally for practical deliberation--imagining possibilities, assessing alternatives, and choosing one of them to actualize.Could you please elaborate on your last statement below? I am not sure exactly what you mean by "originalism" and "endism" in this context.Thanks,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christianwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidtOn Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 8:34 PM Martin W. Kettelhut <mkettel...@msn.com> wrote:
Thank you, Jon. You nailed the essence of the inquiry in leadership I’m conducting.Which leads me to say, more generally that whether we’re looking at life as consumers or voters, family- or community members, and we want to go about it pragmatically, then we want to about it as inquirers, i.e. employing the scientific method, and for Peirce: To inquire into the true nature of reality, you’ve got to have genuine (charitable) interest in the results others get running the same experiments you do. If your findings are unique, then they cannot be considered generally true. A business, too, is an experiment of sorts, and as business people we must ask, “What is the impact my work makes on the community?" We must also have faith that our discoveries will be corroborated by others. This means that, e.g. in disputes, it’s more productive to focus on seeking to understand, rather than being quarrelsome. And it is in the nature of pragmatist inquiry to hope that our findings will continue to be (dis)confirmed ad infinitum, i.e. that they are real. So we need to watch our tendency to both originalism and endism.With respect,
Martin
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] A question for pragmatists

[Daniel L Everett]

Perhaps it is my iphone but I did not have any luck with those links Jon. DanOn Apr 21, 2023, at 09:49, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:Martin, List:Indeed, I have argued in publications about structural engineering (https://www.structuremag.org/?p=10373) and cognitive mathematics (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44982-7_25-1) that the logic of inquiry as explicated by Peirce can be adapted to outline the logic of ingenuity that engineers use rigorously and everyone uses informally for practical deliberation--imagining possibilities, assessing alternatives, and choosing one of them to actualize.Could you please elaborate on your last statement below? I am not sure exactly what you mean by "originalism" and "endism" in this context.Thanks,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christianwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidtOn Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 8:34 PM Martin W. Kettelhut  wrote:
Thank you, Jon. You nailed the essence of the inquiry in leadership I’m conducting.Which leads me to say, more generally that whether we’re looking at life as consumers or voters, family- or community members, and we want to go about it pragmatically, then we want to about it as inquirers, i.e. employing the scientific method, and for Peirce: To inquire into the true nature of reality, you’ve got to have genuine (charitable) interest in the results others get running the same experiments you do. If your findings are unique, then they cannot be considered generally true. A business, too, is an experiment of sorts, and as business people we must ask, “What is the impact my work makes on the community?" We must also have faith that our discoveries will be corroborated by others. This means that, e.g. in disputes, it’s more productive to focus on seeking to understand, rather than being quarrelsome. And it is in the nature of pragmatist inquiry to hope that our findings will continue to be (dis)confirmed ad infinitum, i.e. that they are real. So we need to watch our tendency to both originalism and endism.With respect,
Martin
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Daniel L Everett]

John

In my new ms submitted to OUP (Charles Peirce and the Philosophy of 
Linguistics) and in several recent talks I argue for the superiority of 
Peircean inferentialism over Fregean compositionality, titling one chapter 
Frege’s Error. This goes against many decades of work in linguistics (and one 
of the foundations of Fodor’s philosophy of linguistics as well). 

This is a discussion long overdue. 

Dan

> On Apr 17, 2023, at 13:11, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> 
> Folks,
> 
> All these issues that are being discussed are important.  But I believe that 
> we should also consider the following questions::
> 
> 1. How did Peirce's positions on these issues develop at various points in 
> his career?
> 
> 2. How did they relate to what he learned from his own research and from what 
> he was reading, especially from new discoveries and new publications during 
> those years?
> 
> 3. What changes would he have made in response to new discoveries and 
> developments during the century from 1914 to the present?
> 
> 4. And most importantly, what are the current issues where he not only 
> anticipated current research, but his ideas are now at the forefront of 
> current research?  And how would or should current research be modified or 
> redirected by his results?
> 
> The first two issues are important for understanding Peirce.s writings.  But 
> the fourth is essential for  telling the world that Peirce's writings are 
> critical for understanding the latest developments in all the sciences (which 
> include philosophy and engineering in his 1903 classification).  The third 
> issue is important as a stepping stone to the fourth.
> 
> I have attended several APA conferences and presented talks at a couple of 
> Peirce sessions.  But I found it frustrating that Frege and Russell were 
> frequently cited at many talks at many others, and I never heard anybody cite 
>  Peirce at any sessions other than the ones that were specifically designated 
> as sessions on Peirce.
> 
> I can't say that nobody ever cited Peirce at other sessions, because in 
> several of them, I pointed out that Peirce had anticipated something that the 
> speaker had said.  And those comments were well received by the speakers 
> themselves.
> 
> I believe that a very important task for all of us is to tell the world how 
> and why Peirce is still at the forefront of 21st century developments.  And 
> it's important to say that at venues that are not specifically dedicated to 
> Peirce.
> 
> John
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Daniel L Everett]

meiotic and metaphysics facilitates gaining a better understanding of semiosis and objective idealism, leading to the plausible hypothesis of the reality of God.I would hope that it goes without saying that one does not have to have attended today's 10 minute thesis to jump into the conversation.Best,Gary RichmondOn Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 10:09 PM Mary Libertin <mary.liber...@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks for the presentations today.  They were well-coordinated; the connections among them were and are rich and intriguing. I look forward to further discussion. Thanks for providing slides, Jon. Mary Libertin Sent from my iPhoneOn Apr 15, 2023, at 8:44 PM, Daniel L Everett <danleveret...@gmail.com> wrote:Yes, thanks very much. Very helpful. Dan EverettOn Apr 15, 2023, at 19:56, Margaretha Hendrickx <mahe3...@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks for your presentation.  It was very helpful (for me).On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 5:35 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote:List:Gary R., Gary F., and I are grateful to those of you who attended today's "10-Minute Thesis Initiative" session offered by the Charles S. Peirce Society. It was nice to see a few familiar names from this group in the participant list, and we are hoping that others will join us here going forward. With that in mind, I have now posted a PDF of the slides from my presentation online (https://philpapers.org/archive/SCHTBO-55.pdf) and would like to invite further discussion. The following is a brief summary of what I covered.Peirce’s mature topical conception of continuity mathematically defines it in accordance with Gary Richmond’s categorial vector of representation, from 3ns through 1ns to 2ns. Such continuity is discovered in phaneroscopy by observing and attending to the flow of time, the nature of the phaneron itself, and experience as its compulsive aspect, especially perception. Applying such continuity in semeiotic and metaphysics facilitates gaining a better understanding of semiosis and objective idealism, leading to the plausible hypothesis of the reality of God.Thanks,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christianwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Double Cut Rule as Iteration/Deiteration

[Daniel L Everett]

The forthcoming volume is mentioned on the site. Also here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Logic-of-the-Future-Volume-31-Pragmatism-and-Correspondence-by-Charles-S-Peirce-author-Ahti-Veikko-Pietarinen-editor/9783110649451DanOn Mar 29, 2023, at 06:16, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:Jon, thanks for the correction. So it’s three volumes in 5 books. I didn’t see any mention of the forthcoming third volume on the DeGruyter site. Love, garyComing from the ancestral lands of the AnishinaabegFrom: peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu  On Behalf Of Jon Alan SchmidtSent: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 9:12 PMTo: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Double Cut Rule as Iteration/Deiteration Gary F., List: Unless you are finding something that I cannot, only the first two volumes are currently available, although the second is in two parts (1903 Lowell Lectures and Logical Tracts). The third will also be in two parts (Pragmaticism and Correspondence), and is apparently not coming out until October 2024. In other words, the three volumes are actually being published as five books, three of which can now be purchased. Thanks, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christianwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 6:11 PM  wrote:For those who may not know, The Logic of the Future is a 3-volume set published by DeGruyter, in which Ahti Pietarinen set himself the task of publishing everything Peirce wrote related to Existential Graphs and their applications. I may be attacked (as Jon was) for “advertising” Logic of the Future, but according to the publisher’s website all three volumes are now available, and there’s even a paperback version which is much cheaper than the hardcover, PDF or Kindle versions. These paperbacks are print-on-demand, according to DeGruyter, and I was surprised to discover that Amazon.ca even has some copies in stock! Whether that’s true in the U.S. or other countries, I don’t know. One thing though: entering “Logic of the Future” into the search field did not find the listings for the books, but I had better luck with “peirce pietarinen”. Gary f.Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body.  More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html .► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP;  moderated by Gary Richmond;  and co-managed by him and Ben Udell._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Double Cut Rule as Iteration/Deiteration

[Daniel L Everett]

Thanks Jon. Great stuff. Looking forward to v 3. DanOn Mar 27, 2023, at 22:03, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:List:When explaining his system of Existential Graphs (EG), Peirce typically identifies five standard transformation rules--erasure, insertion, iteration, deiteration, and double cut. Sometimes he groups the first four into two pairs, erasure/insertion and iteration/deiteration. At the end of R 669 (1911), he calls these "illative permissions" and claims that they "will suffice to enable any valid deduction to be performed," while the double cut rule "ought to be reckoned as a permission, but it is not an illative permission, i.e. a permission authorizing a species of inference." Instead, he suggests that "since a scroll [double cut] both of whose closes are empty asserts nothing, it is to be imagined that there is an abundant store of empty scrolls on a part of the sheet that is out of sight, whence one of them can be brought into view whenever desired." Any graph already scribed on the sheet may then be iterated into the inner close of that empty double cut, followed by erasure of the original instance.What about the reverse operation of removing a double cut with an empty outer close? Peirce offers a clever theoretical justification for this about five years earlier, in a manuscript that will be published in its entirety for the first time in volume 3 of Logic of the Future (R S-30[Copy T], 1906). Whereas "a Scroll is not a Graph and its removal is neither the Insertion nor the Deletion of any Graph," the blank is a graph--a continuous graph, "the essential property of which is that any portion of an Instance of such a Graph is itself an Instance of the same Graph." Since the blank is always present on the unenclosed sheet, it may be deiterated from any empty outer close of a double cut, effectively collapsing it. The inner close is now no more enclosed than the double cut itself, thus allowing the graph in the inner close to be iterated to the area just outside the double cut and then deiterated along with the blank that remains in the inner close, which likewise collapses.This approach is even more perspicuous when shading of oddly enclosed areas replaces cuts/scrolls, as Peirce ultimately advocates--any empty ring-shaped area, shaded or unshaded, is an instance of the blank that may be iterated or deiterated at will. In short, the only "undeduced permissions" in EG are "under defined conditions either to delete an indecomposable Graph or to insert an indecomposable Graph in a defined place," namely, erasing in unshaded areas, inserting in shaded areas, and deiterating from or iterating to equally or more enclosed areas. Moreover, "the Graphs of Coëxistence (the Blank) and of Identity are 'indecomposable,' i.e. partless, in the sense of the maxim, although they and their Instances can be separated into parts of any multitude we like, whenever we like, and with such boundaries as we choose to impose." Hence, in Beta EG, a line of identity that crosses an otherwise empty ring-shaped area may be iterated or deiterated along with the blank.Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christianwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] [ontolog-forum] Hierarchy, a la Peirce

[Daniel L. Everett]

I was pleased to see, Mike, your discussion of Herb Simon’s “Architecture of 
Complexity” article. That vital work is often overlooked, certainly it is 
overlooked by Chomsky who argues that hierarchy in language derives from 
repeated applications of the operation Merge and has little/nothing to do with 
hierarchy found elsewhere in nature. 

I have cited Simon’s paper here a great deal since the early 2000s and discuss 
its relevance for linguistics and cognition in several of my recent books. 

I enjoyed your paper, as I am enjoying and learning from this discussion.

All best,

Dan Everett

> On Mar 4, 2021, at 11:23 PM, Mike Bergman  wrote:
> 
> Hi Bruce,
> 
> I am glad this is a line of discourse you want to pursue (and have pursued 
> since at least 1994 as your link indicates). I'm happy to engage on any 
> questions or topics; there are many other Peirce afficiandos on these lists 
> that also have helpful insights. For now, I only comment on one of your 
> points below:
> 
> On 3/4/2021 9:31 AM, bruceschu...@cox.net  wrote:
>> Wow.  I love this.  I've been writing on this subject forever -- saying more 
>> or less the same things and citing the same authors -- e.g.,  Herbert Simon. 
>>  I'm going to print your article, Mike, and take a close look at it.  Back 
>> in the early days, I bought every book there was on Hierarchy.  You make 
>> basic points in your opening that I’d say pave the way towards a very 
>> powerful general theory of epistemology.
>>  
>> The basic themes you outline in this article are at the essence of my notion 
>> of “Closed Loop Interval Ontology” – which is hierarchical exactly as you 
>> describe, with the addition that the framework is defined as a closed loop 
>> interconnecting these “levels” into a single closed mathematical structure.
>>  
>> My early stuff on this subject is here: http://originresearch.com 
>> 
>>  
>> The trick here seems to be – that this thesis is so powerful, it becomes 
>> combinatorically explosive – heading towards the fabled “theory of 
>> everything” – maybe in explicit epistemological detail.
>>  
>> Interesting that you say that “natural hierarchies are real” – which opens 
>> the way to some additional complexity or levels of inclusion.  Maybe there 
>> is a “hierarchical relationship” across levels of reality, such that the 
>> kind of practical-real-world “reality” defined by Barry Smith can be mapped 
>> directly into an absolutely abstract model which I would say is a “science 
>> of the artificial”, as Herbert Simon might have described it.  “Does 
>> absolute abstraction exist in nature”?
> My own view is that Peirce's universal categories of Firstness, Secondness, 
> and Thirdness provide this level of "absolute abstraction [that] exists in 
> nature". I don't know if you realize that some of your earlier references to 
> Ogden and Richards were actually a 
> paraphrase of Peirce's insights. My own research focus has been on trying to 
> understand the 'mindset' of Peirce's universal categories, expressed in 
> perhaps a 100 different ways in his writings, that sets a frame of reference 
> for tackling knowledge representation (epistemological) questions at 
> virtually any level. Ogden and Richards picked up on one with respect to 
> meaning, but there are other examples galore across Peirce's writings.
> 
> What Peirce really offers, IMO, is a way to break away from either-or 
> Cartesian mindsets that always pit issues as win-lose propositions, and 
> ignore the "fact" that one can both be a realist and an idealist. By 
> accepting the reality of absolute chance we are also removing false 
> dichotomies between determinism and evolution. As with wave-particle duality 
> or quantum v classic physics, Cartesian thinking is a cultural and 
> intellectual posture that leaves us stymied and frustrated. I much prefer the 
> trichotomous view of actuality bracketed by chance and continuity, the 
> essence of Peirce's universal categories.
> 
> BTW, there is no reason why this viewpoint can not inform the structure and 
> basis of a top-level (upper) ontology. (One that I humbly feels offers an 
> integrative framework for ANY knowledge graph or ontology.) That is exactly 
> the approach we have taken with our KBpedia  knowledge 
> structure, and its top-level KBpedia Knowledge Ontology 
>  (KKO).
> 
> Best, Mike
> 
>>  
>> Fascinating article and project, Mike.  A lot to talk about.
>>  
>> Thanks!
>>  
>> - Bruce
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> Hierarchies — real or artificial — abound to help us organize our world. A 
>> hierarchy places items into a general order, where more ‘general’ is also 
>> more ‘abstract’. The etymology of the word hierarchy is grounded in notions 
>> of religious and social rank. This article, after a broad historical review, 
>> focuses on 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Semantic Externalism

[Daniel L. Everett]

Yes, I have raised Peirce’s inkstand example with several extended mind 
advocates. Very cool example,

Thanks for the additional reference. 

Although Putnam’s externalism is relevant and somewhat related to the extended 
mind idea, it is the idea that the meanings of words are not in our heads that 
is particularly interesting from a semiotic perspective.

All best,

Dan

> On Feb 27, 2021, at 11:40 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Dear Dan, All ...
> 
> We all know Peirce's parable of the inkstand
> • https://www.jstor.org/stable/40320779?seq=1
> so I don't have to do more than mention that,
> but here's a related tidbit my extended mind
> recently reminded me of ...
> 
> ❝The well-known capacity that thoughts have — as doctors have discovered —
> for dissolving and dispersing those hard lumps of deep, ingrowing, morbidly
> entangled conflict that arise out of gloomy regions of the self probably
> rests on nothing other than their social and worldly nature, which links
> the individual being with other people and things;  but unfortunately what
> gives them their power of healing seems to be the same as what diminishes
> the quality of personal experience in them.❞
> 
>  Robert Musil • The Man Without Qualities
> https://oeis.org/wiki/Differential_Logic_and_Dynamic_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_4#Digression_:_Reflection_on_Use_and_Mention
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon
> 
> On 2/23/2021 2:45 PM, Daniel L. Everett wrote:
>> As you will be aware, there is a veritable industry on semantic externalism 
>> as a result of Putnam’s Twin Earth
>> thought experiment. But it also fits my own experiences in field research. 
>> For example, although every speaker I have
>> ever encountered in an Amazonian language knows the names of all flora and 
>> fauna in their environment, my own
>> vocabulary with respect to flora in particular is limited. Most trees I know 
>> simply by the name “tree.”
>> Amazonian friends therefore think that English is an extremely impoverished 
>> language. But, I tell them, I can find
>> out what each tree is called not only in popular vernacular or with 
>> botanical precision by consulting an expert. Much
>> of my semantics is stored externally (semantic externalism is compatible 
>> with Clark’s “extended mind” hypothesis as
>> well).
>> This is an interesting fact about human cognition, culture, and semantics 
>> that is not found in other species, what
>> one might refer to as enthymemetical semiotics in each individual.
>> Though I have done my own searches, I was wondering if anyone on this list 
>> is aware of research on Peircean
>> semeiotics and semantic externalism.
>> Dan
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Semantic Externalism

[Daniel L. Everett]

Hi, Jerry.

I don’t understand your reference. I am not seeing a clear connection to Peirce 
and Semantic Externalism.

If we are citing major periodicals, here are two stories about me in Harper’s 
and the New Yorker.

Dan

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2?source=search_google_dsa_paid=Cj0KCQiA7NKBBhDBARIsAHbXCB7VKD_DcTzTKLhV2YECcGqnxcqIFN5q_QqgBY7eR3968_HSLECG08IaAuOKEALw_wcB
 
<https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/the-interpreter-2?source=search_google_dsa_paid=Cj0KCQiA7NKBBhDBARIsAHbXCB7VKD_DcTzTKLhV2YECcGqnxcqIFN5q_QqgBY7eR3968_HSLECG08IaAuOKEALw_wcB>

https://harpers.org/archive/2016/08/the-origins-of-speech/ 
<https://harpers.org/archive/2016/08/the-origins-of-speech/>



> On Feb 23, 2021, at 7:34 PM, Jerry Rhee  wrote:
> 
> Dear Dan, list,
> 
>  Who is Mats Bergman and Collateral Experience..
> 
> Next, I will take ’Signs and Limits’ for $400, please, Alex..
> 
> Hth,
> Jerry R
> 
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/what-was-this-article-about-again/551603/
>  
> <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/what-was-this-article-about-again/551603/>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 1:46 PM Daniel L. Everett  <mailto:danleveret...@icloud.com>> wrote:
> As you will be aware, there is a veritable industry on semantic externalism 
> as a result of Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment. But it also fits my 
> own experiences in field research. For example, although every speaker I have 
> ever encountered in an Amazonian language knows the names of all flora and 
> fauna in their environment, my own vocabulary with respect to flora in 
> particular is limited. Most trees I know simply by the name “tree.”
> 
> Amazonian friends therefore think that English is an extremely impoverished 
> language. But, I tell them, I can find out what each tree is called not only 
> in popular vernacular or with botanical precision by consulting an expert. 
> Much of my semantics is stored externally (semantic externalism is compatible 
> with Clark’s “extended mind” hypothesis as well). 
> 
> This is an interesting fact about human cognition, culture, and semantics 
> that is not found in other species, what one might refer to as enthymemetical 
> semiotics in each individual.
> 
> Though I have done my own searches, I was wondering if anyone on this list is 
> aware of research on Peircean semeiotics and semantic externalism.
> 
> Dan
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[PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Semantic Externalism

[Daniel L. Everett]

As you will be aware, there is a veritable industry on semantic externalism as 
a result of Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment. But it also fits my own 
experiences in field research. For example, although every speaker I have ever 
encountered in an Amazonian language knows the names of all flora and fauna in 
their environment, my own vocabulary with respect to flora in particular is 
limited. Most trees I know simply by the name “tree.”

Amazonian friends therefore think that English is an extremely impoverished 
language. But, I tell them, I can find out what each tree is called not only in 
popular vernacular or with botanical precision by consulting an expert. Much of 
my semantics is stored externally (semantic externalism is compatible with 
Clark’s “extended mind” hypothesis as well). 

This is an interesting fact about human cognition, culture, and semantics that 
is not found in other species, what one might refer to as enthymemetical 
semiotics in each individual.

Though I have done my own searches, I was wondering if anyone on this list is 
aware of research on Peircean semeiotics and semantic externalism.

Dan_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Double Negation

[Daniel L. Everett]

The most comprehensive work perhaps ever done on negation is by Yale’s Larry 
Horn. 
https://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/site/1575863367.shtml
 


The book is so comprehensive that Larry’s friends refer to him as Dr. No. 

Larry is aware of Peirce’s work and cites it. It is well worth reading for 
anyone interested in negation as an empirical phenomenon.

Dan

> On Feb 12, 2021, at 4:40 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> In my article on Logical Graphs,
> 
>  https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_Graphs
> 
> I give the following discussion of Double Negation,
> 
>  https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_Graphs#C1._Double_negation
> 
> Spencer Brown called this “Consequence 1” (C₁).  It's also
> known as the “Double Negation Theorem” (DNT) or “Reflection”.
> 
> Here's a picture of the theorem —
> 
> Figure 1.  Double Negation Theorem (see also attached image)
> 
>  https://oeis.org/w/images/2/27/Double_Negation_3.0.png
> 
> Next time I'll give a proof adapted from the one Spencer Brown
> gave in his “Laws of Form” and credited to two of his students,
> John Dawes and D.A. Utting.
> 
> For anyone who wants to read ahead, the axioms (or “initials”)
> used in the proof can be found in the following section of the
> Logical Graphs article.
> 
>  https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_Graphs#Axioms
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Existential Graphs in 1911

[Daniel L. Everett]

I agree strongly with John Sowa in his last message. 

In my book, Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious, I 
discuss points related to these at length. Our bodies are constantly 
registering experiences in ways that we may not be aware of, “apperceptionally” 
in William James’s terms. Anything that anyone says overtly must be evaluated 
in light of our tacit knowledge. 

This applies to Peirce. When he uses a term, we can only understand it in terms 
of his culture, context, previous writings, and overall philosophy. 

Back in the days when I was religious and was concerned greatly about biblical 
exegesis, context was debated even then. Many of the wacko doctrines of some 
denominations are based on the belief that words can be studied apart from the 
“dark matter” of one’s mind (culture in this sense is dark matter overlap), as 
that forms values, knowledge structures, and social roles. 

Peirce must be understood in this larger sense, not merely by taking what some 
theologians call “proof texts”, verses out of context from a larger body.

I take no stand on what role illative had to Peirce after 1911. But the answer 
can only come from understanding his objectives overall, his context - what was 
he reading, who was he writing, what was he writing, etc.

I am always impressed by the knowledge, however, of technical details of 
Peirce’s work shown on this list. But we should not forget that for Peirce this 
was all a means to an end of understanding. He abandoned anything he came to 
consider a detriment to that understanding. That quest was to me what he meant 
by the “melody of thought” (such a brilliant phase). I am speaking on dark 
matter and music at a music understanding conference in Switzerland this summer 
(I hope) and that phrase will be in the paper. 

Dan



> On Jan 30, 2021, at 10:46 PM, John F. Sowa  wrote:
> 
> 
> Robert,
> 
> Thanks for finding that quotation:
> 
> > Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our 
> > sensations” (CP 5.395)
> 
> Now that you mention it, I recall reading that some time ago.  It must have 
> been lurking somewhere in my mind, but well beneath the conscious level.
> 
> In any case, it's very appropriate.  The connection to sensations emphasizes 
> the relation to Bill's term "embodied experience".
> 
> It is also related to my point that the total context is more important than 
> particular words. That doesn't mean that words are irrelevant, but they can 
> be highly misleading when taken out of context.
> 
> John
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Nominalism vs. Realism

[Daniel L. Everett]

Thanks, Jon.

Any comments would be welcome. I do like Katz’s work.

The title of the book I am doing for OUP (I had to put off the bio of Peirce 
until libraries open back up) is Peircean Linguistics: A Chapter in the History 
of Realist Thought. Hence my more than passing interest in linguistic realism.

Dan

> On Jan 23, 2021, at 1:02 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Dan,
> 
> That brings me a twinge of pleasant nostalgia, but there a few fresh things
> I could say about it all from my current perspective when I next get a chance.
> Very generally speaking, however, so much of current philosophical thought,
> in or out of the Peirce realm, is so deeply entrenched in nominalism that
> I started a few years back using the term Dunning–Kruger Nominalism (DKN)
> to describe it.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon
> 
>> On 1/23/2021 10:21 AM, Daniel L. Everett wrote:
>> This is by a philosopher of language who is not normally associated with 
>> Peirce, J Katz, a highly influential figure in the early history of 
>> Chomskyan linguistics. But this older paper of his, which I was reminded of 
>> recently by a co-author of Katz’s with whom I was discussing some of my 
>> ideas on Peirce’s ideas in linguistics, is potentially of interest to 
>> readers of this list. So I send it along.
>> Dan Everett
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] multiple-valued logic

[Daniel L. Everett]

Dear Jacob,

I am very sorry to hear this. Along with John, I send my condolences.

I spoke with your father in a couple of very long phone calls about 2 years 
ago, when I was beginning my research on Peirce. He was extremely helpful, 
generous, and kind. 

All my best to your family,

Dan Everett


> On Jan 15, 2021, at 5:06 PM, Charles Pyle  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello Everyone,
>  
> I’m writing on behalf of my father Charles Pyle.  He passed away on 1/12 due 
> to COVID.  We have seen that he was fairly active in this list and wanted to 
> let everyone know – my sincere apologies for the group email to the entire 
> list and letting you know in this manner.  We are having a small ceremony on 
> Sunday at 2pm which we will livestream.  We have received notes and memories 
> from all over the world which we will be reading and sharing along with our 
> memories at the “sharemony”, so if anyone has thoughts, memories or anything, 
> it has been a real blessing to receive and we would love to have more.  If 
> anyone wants the private link to the livestream, please message off list and 
> I will provide the link.  Link to his obituary:
> https://www.walkerfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Charles-Robert-Pyle?obId=19639780#/obituaryInfo
>  
> Thank you all and again, my apologies for coopting this conversation. 
>  
> Sincerely,
> Jacob Pyle
>  
> From: Charles Pyle 
> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 9:09 PM
> To: tabor...@primus.ca; Jerry LR Chandler 
> Cc: Peirce List 
> Subject: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] multiple-valued logic
>  
> Edwina, list:
>  
> I don’t have access to my Peirce data right now, but I do disagree with the 
> claim that Peirce does not allow for something prior to semiosis. I happened 
> on the following quote from Peirce in some notes, but it doesn’t identify the 
> source. It seems to me that Peirce is talking here about something prior to 
> semiosis.
>  
> ---begin quote
> The idea of the absolutely First must be entirely separated from all 
> conception of or reference to anything else; for what involves a second is 
> itself a second to that second. The First must therefore be present and 
> immediate, so as not to be second to a representation. It must be fresh and 
> new, for if old it is second to its former state. It must be initiative, 
> original, spontaneous, and free; otherwise it is second to a determining 
> cause. It is also something vivid and conscious; so only it avoids being the 
> object of some sensation. It precedes all synthesis and all differentiation; 
> it has no unity and no parts. It cannot be articulately thought: assert it, 
> and it has already lost its characteristic innocence; for assertion always 
> implies a denial of something else. Stop to think of it, and it has flown! 
> What the world was to Adam on the day he opened his eyes to it, before he had 
> drawn any distinctions, or had become conscious of his own existence – that 
> is first, present, immediate, fresh, new, initiative, original, spontaneous, 
> free, vivid, conscious, and evanescent. Only, remember that every description 
> of it must be false to it.
> ---end quote
>  
> Here too, I wonder what Peirce could mean here by direct experience, 
> collateral experience, and self-experience, if not something prior to 
> semiosis.
> ---begin quote
> 1908 [c.] | Letters to Lady Welby | MS [R] L463:14:  "A Sign may bring before 
> the Mind, a new hypothesis, or a sentiment, a quality, a respect, a degree, a 
> thing, an event, a law, etc.  But it never can convey anything to a person 
> who has not had a direct experience or at least original self-experience of 
> the same object, collateral experience."
> ---end quote
>  
> Same here. As I read this and similar statements, he envisions a mode of 
> knowing that is outside of the system of signs.
> ---begin quote
> I do not mean by "collateral observation" acquaintance with the system of 
> signs. What is so gathered is not COLLATERAL. It is on the contrary the 
> prerequisite for getting any idea signified by the Sign. (CP 8.179, EP 2:494, 
> 1909)
> ---end quote
>  
> And finally, as I recall in defining existential graphs Peirce held that the 
> sheet of assertion represents truth, the context within which assertions are 
> inscribed.
>  
> Regards,
> Charles Pyle
>  
>  
> From: Edwina Taborsky  
> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 8:11 PM
> To: Jerry LR Chandler ; Charles Pyle 
> 
> Cc: Peirce List 
> Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] multiple-valued logic
>  
> Charles, list:
> 
> I don't see how you can assert that, " there is a truth that is prior to 
> semiosis, in my opinion, also is consistent with Peirce’s thinking. "
> 
> My understanding of Peirce is that there is nothing outside of semiosis! 'the 
> entire universe - not merely the universe of existents, the universe which we 
> are all accustomed to refer to as 'the truth' - that all this universe is 
> perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs' 5.449f.  
> [That is - there is no 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce was a fallibilist, not a foundationalist.

[Daniel L. Everett]

These are very important points that John makes. Although Peirce was extremely 
careful with his definitions, their entire purpose was to be put to use in 
science. The only way to effectively discuss their meanings is to take 
particular empirical problems and show how one interpretation might work better 
than another to solve or explain a particular phenomenon/range of phenomena. 
Arguing over definitions without a set of empirical problems to tease apart the 
alternatives is just a form of essentialism and not something that would have 
interested Peirce imo.

It is fascinating as a linguist who has seen linguistic theory develop over the 
years to see how hard Peirce worked to milk every possible empirical prediction 
out of his terms, leading to their enrichment over time. In the first lecture 
on Pragmatism in 1903, what irritated William James so much was that Peirce 
would not simply lay out his theory and define his terms, but he had to 
demonstrate how the terms worked out in practice, e.g. his examples of 
insurance calculations whose math far exceeded James’s limited abilities. 

Agreeing with John, Peircean terminology is neither the Bible nor the 
Smithsonian. It is a set of suggestions (emerging from a brilliant theory to be 
sure) on how to get work done. 

It has been very exciting recently to work with archaeologists in showing how a 
Peircean understanding of lower Paleolithic tools provides strong evidence that 
Homo erectus had language. This has been missed by many over the years because 
Peircean semeiotics tended to be omitted from discussion. The theory is a 
beautiful tool. 


Dan

> On Apr 23, 2020, at 1:02 PM, John F. Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I just wanted to add a few comments about Peirce's positions on related 
> issues, but I don't want to get into a quotation war.
> 
> First point, he said that science "walks on a bog," not "bedrock."
>  
> "Indeed, out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the 
> reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my 
> philosophy has always seemed to me to grow . . . . [CP 1.14, fragment, c. 
> 1897]
> 
> "there is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and 
> that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be[CP 
> 5.84, Lecture 3, Lectures on Pragmatism (1903)]
> 
> "Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far 
> as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful 
> scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments 
> than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain 
> which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be 
> ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately 
> connected.  [CP 5.265, "Some Consequences ..." c. 1868]
> 
> "The method of modern science is social in respect to the solidarity of its 
> efforts. The scientific world is like a colony of insects, in that the 
> individual strives to produce that which he himself cannot hope to enjoy. One 
> generation collects premises in order that a distant generation may discover 
> what they mean."  Peirce (1902)
> 
> Note the emphasis on the social nature of science.  Peirce was always writing 
> for the future.  He hoped that future generations would build on and extend  
> his work, not preserve it as a collection of fossils in a museum.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Categories at work within the signs

[Daniel L. Everett]

As a Christian missionary for 30 years and a Christian pastor for about the 
same amount of time, one who is now a happy atheist, I consider Peirce’s 
religious views (“controversial” or not) to be essential to understanding him 
as a person, scientist, and philosopher.  While I may very well disagree with 
his ideas about God, just as I may about those of any philosopher, atheist, 
Muslim, Christian, Jew, or animist, no student of Peirce should ignore them.

I am interested in all of Peirce’s work on the one hand, because of its 
historical significance in the shaping of the American mind. And I am 
particularly interested in the interaction of his ideas with Cognitive Science, 
modern Philosophy, Semeiotics, and Linguistics for both historical reasons and 
their contemporary relevance. And I do not think that those are any less 
controversial than his thoughts about God. :)

Dan



> On Apr 17, 2020, at 11:17 PM, John F. Sowa  wrote:
> 
> 
> Jon,
> 
> I have no desire to rehash our earlier debates about the following issue:
> 
> JAS> Accordingly, what I *have *suggested previously is that semeiotic is 
> sufficiently robust to prompt the plausible hypothesis of God as the real and 
> independent object that determines the entire universe as a sign. I know that 
> you disagree with this, but we have
> debated it sufficiently in the past and need not rehash those arguments.
> 
> I admit that some readers may consider that analysis as "plausible".   But 
> others would strongly disagree.  It's safe to conclude that the point is 
> controversial.
> 
> People like Dan, Michael, Edwina, and many other subscribers to Peirce-L find 
> the noncontroversial aspects of Peirce's semeiotic to be valuable for their 
> work. I usually agree with them.
> 
> There is nothing wrong with discussing the controversial applications to 
> theology.  But it's important to say that one can use Peirce's theories 
> without accepting those hypotheses.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Categories at work within the signs

[Daniel L. Everett]

Indeed. Peirce was very much opposed to many earlier philosophers because they 
had been theologically trained and reasoned from theology rather than logic.

Dan

> On Apr 17, 2020, at 10:50 AM, John F. Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Auke and Jon AS,
> 
> I strongly agree with Auke's analysis.  I would also like to comment on the 
> following point:
> 
> AvB> God or the  conception of god do not deliver valid arguments in 
> semiotics. My interest is systematical not biographical.
> 
> A biographical analysis can be useful for clarifying what Peirce meant in his 
> voluminous writings.  That is an important task for Peirce scholars.   Many 
> theologians have considered Peirce's semeiotic useful for analyzing 
> theological arguments.  But nobody, not even Peirce, has suggested that 
> theology or any theological hypothesis is sufficiently robust to be used as a 
> foundation for developing semeiotic.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Logic of Language: A Semiotic Introduction to the Study of Speech

[Daniel L. Everett]

Thanks for the links, John.

Dan

> On Apr 16, 2020, at 10:26 AM, John F. Sowa  wrote:
> 
> 
> Michael,
> 
> I very strongly agree with the intro to your forthcoming book.  In 2015, I 
> presented the following slides about natural logic:  
> http://jfsowa.com/talks/natlog.pdf
> 
> Since then, I've published a couple of articles on these topics, and I 
> updated and revised some of the points.  I'll say more about that in another 
> note.  But these slides present an overview of the issues I've been 
> addressing.   The following slides, which I developed into a formal article, 
> address related issues:  http://jfsowa.com/talks/ppe.pdf .
> 
> John
> 
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Logic of Language: A Semiotic Introduction to the Study of Speech

[Daniel L. Everett]

Thanks, Michael. After I complete my bio of Peirce for Princeton (end of 2021 I 
hope), I am writing a book for Oxford UP on “Peircean Linguistics: A Chapter in 
the History of Realist Thought.” You work will continue to be a tremendous help.

Dan

> On Apr 16, 2020, at 8:17 AM, Michael Shapiro  wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear List,
> 
> I posted something a couple of days ago which I fear didn't go through, so 
> I'm repeating it here.
> 
> For those of you who are interested in linguistics and semiotics, I'm 
> attaching the New Introduction to the book I'm working on, which will 
> amalgamate my two earlier Sense books published by Indiana UP in 1983 and 
> 1991. Your comments would be most welcome.
> 
> Best,
> M.
> 
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time

[Daniel L. Everett]

Many thanks, Edwina. Will do.

Dan

> On Mar 6, 2020, at 2:57 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> 
> Helmut, Dan, list
> 
> 
> Koichiro Matsuno, a bioengineer, and Peircean scholar,  has written 
> extensively on the notion of time, which he refers to as present, perfect and 
> progressive [comparable to 1ns,2nd, 3ns]…
> 
> I suggest you google his name, and on for example,  Researchgate.net, you'll 
> find articles dealing with time in physico-chemical and biological semiosis.
> 
> For example.
> 
> 1]How does Time Flow in Living Systems:
> 
> 2]Temporality Naturalized [ where "The Schrodinger equation for quantum 
> mechanics, which is approachable in third-person description, takes for 
> granted tenseless time that does not distinguish between different tenses 
> such as past, present and future….
> 
> 3] Time from Semiosis: E-series Time for Living systems. " We develop a 
> semiotic scheme of time, in which time precipates from the repeated 
> succession of punctuating the progressive tense by the perfect tense. The 
> underling principle is communication among local participants. Time can thus 
> be seen as a meaning-making, semiotic system in which different time codes 
> are delineated
>  
> 
> 4] The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information
> 
> 5] Google: Koichiro Matsuno- AltExploit. 'Abstract Expressions of Time's 
> Modalities
> 
> He is a phenomenal scientist and scholar.
> 
> Edwina
> 
> On Fri 06/03/20 2:31 PM , "Daniel L. Everett" danleveret...@icloud.com sent:
> 
> All very intriguing. It is fascinating in light of this to think of the many 
> ways that languages choose to divide/classify time.
> 
> English, for example, has no morphological future tense (thus one must say 
> “will go”), though it has morphological past (went) and present tenses (go). 
> Other languages have as many as five distinct past tenses, one present and 
> one future (there are many variations, but so far as I know languages will 
> have more past tenses than future tenses if they have multiples). Other 
> languages choose not to mark time at all morphologically (e.g. on the verb) 
> and also have very few words for precise times (e.g. yesterday, today, 
> tomorrow). 
> 
> There are many attempts/theories of how natural language encodes 
> time/temporal relations. Peirce’s concept of time has been underexploited (to 
> put it mildly) in linguistics and clearly the connection of time theory to 
> natural language tense theories could be quite a fecund area of exploration.
> 
> Admitting the orthogonal nature of these remarks to the mainline of 
> discussion,
> 
> Dan
> 
>> On Mar 6, 2020, at 2:20 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Jon, List,
>>  
>> I think, the question is, whether time is a continuum, like an ether, in 
>> which all events and entities sort of swim, or is a produce of the 
>> permanence of systems, with its universality provided by the systems´ 
>> coupling.
>>  
>> The permanence of a system, I think, is provided by the re-entry of 
>> thirdness into firstness, like in a semiosis (a semiotic system) the 
>> interpretant becomes the new representamen. Or like in consciousness: 
>> Peirce´s Primisense- Altersense- Medisense model, where the Medisense, the 
>> thinking, re-enters the Primisense, the first iconic perception: We have a 
>> picture of our thoughts.
>>  
>> I guess it would be hard to assume, that this re-.entry and permanence as 
>> such produce time, because a re-entry and a permanence are only then 
>> possible, if a time already exists. But maybe it is a bilateral dependency: 
>> Time and systems only exist together. In the beginning of the universe 
>> (assuming there was a big bang), the "new" born universe was the only 
>> system, and "before" the big bang there was no time. I put "new" and 
>> "before" in quotation marks, because without a preceding time, these words 
>> cannot really be applied.
>>  
>> Best,
>> Helmut
>>  06. März 2020 um 18:32 Uhr
>>  "Jon Alan Schmidt" 
>> wrote:
>> Jeff, List:
>>  
>> JD:  At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in 
>> "mathematical, phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries 
>> concerning time. Do you have any suggestions about how we might tease out 
>> the different threads? Each seems to involve somewhat different methods.
>>  
>> I agree that each involves different methods, and I have made several 
>> attempts (so far unsuccessful) to start writing a paper (or two) with the 
>> 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time

[Daniel L. Everett]

All very intriguing. It is fascinating in light of this to think of the many 
ways that languages choose to divide/classify time.

English, for example, has no morphological future tense (thus one must say 
“will go”), though it has morphological past (went) and present tenses (go). 
Other languages have as many as five distinct past tenses, one present and one 
future (there are many variations, but so far as I know languages will have 
more past tenses than future tenses if they have multiples). Other languages 
choose not to mark time at all morphologically (e.g. on the verb) and also have 
very few words for precise times (e.g. yesterday, today, tomorrow). 

There are many attempts/theories of how natural language encodes time/temporal 
relations. Peirce’s concept of time has been underexploited (to put it mildly) 
in linguistics and clearly the connection of time theory to natural language 
tense theories could be quite a fecund area of exploration.

Admitting the orthogonal nature of these remarks to the mainline of discussion,

Dan

> On Mar 6, 2020, at 2:20 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> 
> Jon, List,
>  
> I think, the question is, whether time is a continuum, like an ether, in 
> which all events and entities sort of swim, or is a produce of the permanence 
> of systems, with its universality provided by the systems´ coupling.
>  
> The permanence of a system, I think, is provided by the re-entry of thirdness 
> into firstness, like in a semiosis (a semiotic system) the interpretant 
> becomes the new representamen. Or like in consciousness: Peirce´s Primisense- 
> Altersense- Medisense model, where the Medisense, the thinking, re-enters the 
> Primisense, the first iconic perception: We have a picture of our thoughts.
>  
> I guess it would be hard to assume, that this re-.entry and permanence as 
> such produce time, because a re-entry and a permanence are only then 
> possible, if a time already exists. But maybe it is a bilateral dependency: 
> Time and systems only exist together. In the beginning of the universe 
> (assuming there was a big bang), the "new" born universe was the only system, 
> and "before" the big bang there was no time. I put "new" and "before" in 
> quotation marks, because without a preceding time, these words cannot really 
> be applied.
>  
> Best,
> Helmut
>  06. März 2020 um 18:32 Uhr
>  "Jon Alan Schmidt" 
> wrote:
> Jeff, List:
>  
> JD:  At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in 
> "mathematical, phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries 
> concerning time. Do you have any suggestions about how we might tease out the 
> different threads? Each seems to involve somewhat different methods.
>  
> I agree that each involves different methods, and I have made several 
> attempts (so far unsuccessful) to start writing a paper (or two) with the 
> goal of teasing out those different threads.  Peirce himself seems to think 
> that we can "harmonize" them (his word) by recognizing the continuity of 
> time; in fact, our direct perception of the continuous flow of time in 
> phenomenology is what prompts our retroductive hypothesis of a true continuum 
> in mathematics, which we then explicate deductively and evaluate inductively 
> in other sciences.
>  
> CSP:  One opinion which has been put forward and which seems, at any rate, to 
> be tenable and to harmonize with the modern logico-mathematical conceptions, 
> is that our image of the flow of events receives, in a strictly continuous 
> time, strictly continual accessions on the side of the future, while fading 
> in a gradual manner on the side of the past, and that thus the absolutely 
> immediate present is gradually transformed by an immediately given change 
> into a continuum of the reality of which we are thus assured. The argument is 
> that in this way, and apparently in this way only, our having the idea of a 
> true continuum can be accounted for. (CP 8.123n; c. 1902)
>  
> Logic then provides a plausible explanation for the so-called "arrow of 
> time."  Peirce initially wrote the following in one of his notebooks.
>  
> CSP:  1.  A time is a determination of actuality independent of the identity 
> of individuals, and related to other times as stated below. According to the 
> present proposition we may speak of the state of different things at the same 
> time as well as of the states of the same thing at different times and, of 
> course, of different things at different times and of the same thing at the 
> same time.
> 2.  At different times a proposition concerning the same things may be true 
> and false; just as a predicate may at any one time be true and false of 
> different things. Time is therefore a determination of existents. (NEM 2:611; 
> c. 1904-5)
>  
> A few years later, he offered a correction on the opposite page, which is 
> otherwise blank.
>  
> CSP:  I can hardly now see how time can be called a determination of 
> actuality. It is certainly a 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time

[Daniel L. Everett]

Jeff,

Having reviewed Logic and Spiritualism I am once again reminded that I wish I 
had discovered Peirce much earlier in my career. My Dark Matter of the Mind is 
to my mind compatible with Peirce. If I were to reframe parts of it, I would 
have brought Peirce’s concept of “habit” into the mix. As I wrote that book, I 
was primarily thinking of William James and Michael Polanyi (and Aristotle) as 
representing earlier positions similar to my own

Peirce’s/Reid’s commonsensism is a position I find appealing. With one big 
caveat. Neither of them was a student of culture. I believe that Peirce’s work 
is compatible with the findings of modern cross-cultural research (psychology, 
anthropology, linguistics, etc), but that one needs to recognize that 
common-sense, while found in all cultures, is not identical in all cultures. 
Like Peirce, I am a Darwinian, so I would not say a priori what could not be 
innate. But I do believe that the evidence shows that concepts are not innate 
(of course many, many disagree), but that often when Peirce referred to 
phylogenetic habits, some of these can be reframed as “apperceptional/cultural 
habits” that begin in the womb, rather than in the genes.

I am working on a chapter for a current book project on Peirce as the founder 
of the best theory of cognitive sciences available. And certainly Logic and 
Spiritualism is a building block of what I see as Peircean Cognitive Science. 

Back to the problem of knowledge I had mentioned earlier, though, if all 
thought is semiosis then to account for knowledge that is anti-Whorfian (which 
in fact is crucial for scientific progress), then we can have objects and 
interpretations that lead us to fill the empty space of the sign/representamen. 
Thus when Murray Gell-Mann borrowed the term “quark” from Joyce, to name a 
particle he had the particle (the object) and its behavior and fit in his 
theory (interpretation) so plugged in a representamen. Much science seems to 
work in this anti-Whorfian manner.  

Taken at face value Whorf would have been a good Peircean - if we lack a sign 
we lack the thought that goes with it. But that is an oversimplification of 
Peirce’s position I believe. 

As I try to point out in my How Language Began and on-going work with 
archaeologist Larry Barham (U of Liverpool), what distinguishes the genus Homo 
from other animals is the ability to create symbols freely, subject to cultural 
constraints. Science, culture and Peirce himself (a creator of many symbols) 
illustrates this. 

Thus Descartes, Plato, Chomsky and others (as I point out in Dark Matter of the 
Mind) miss out on the real bases for cognitive science. As Marc Champagne makes 
clear in his excellent monograph, modern cognitive science borrowed from 
Peirce, but stopped short (thus Jerry Fodor borrowed type and token, but 
crucially not tone, thus leaving his theory of the mind doa - my view). 

I look forward to corrections.

Dan

> On Mar 5, 2020, at 12:04 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dan, List,
> 
> 
> 
> Given the approach to exploring our capacities for understanding one another 
> that you adopt in Dark Matter of the Mind, you will likely find the following 
> discussion of time to be of special interest:
> 
> 
> 
> "Logic and Spiritualism", CP 6.557-6.587
> 
> 
> 
> If you want to talk through the points Peirce makes in this piece about the 
> character of unconscious inference and our experience of time, I'd be willing 
> to take it up with you.
> 
> 
> 
> --Jeff
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jeffrey Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> Northern Arizona University
> (o) 928 523-8354
> 
> 
> From: Dan Everett 
> Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 8:00 AM
> To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time
>  
> This is a fascinating topic and discussion. The syntax, semantics, 
> pragmatics, and anthropology of temporal reference in natural languages is a 
> very hot topic these days. I am, modulo coronavirus travel restrictions, due 
> to participate in a workshop on time at Cambridge University next month. One 
> of the phiosophers whose work on the language of time is most influential is 
> Reichenbach. 30 years ago I published a paper on a “neoReichenbachian” theory 
> of linguistic time (tense, etc) in the journal, Pragmatics and Cognition. 
> Link to two versions: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005062 , 
> https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/pc.1.1.07eve ).
> However, I am now in the process of revisiting this research from a Peircean 
> perspective. I am particularly interested in what one might call (as I have) 
> an “Anti-Whorfian” effect, namely, clear evidence for knowledge of things 
> which are not found directly (as in terms or even propositions) in the 
> language of the knowledge holders - e.g. temporal knowledge without time 
> words. Other examples are plentiful. For example, some people have no color 
> words but can 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time

[Daniel L. Everett]

Many thanks, Jeff. 

Dan

> On Mar 5, 2020, at 12:04 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dan, List,
> 
> 
> 
> Given the approach to exploring our capacities for understanding one another 
> that you adopt in Dark Matter of the Mind, you will likely find the following 
> discussion of time to be of special interest:
> 
> 
> 
> "Logic and Spiritualism", CP 6.557-6.587
> 
> 
> 
> If you want to talk through the points Peirce makes in this piece about the 
> character of unconscious inference and our experience of time, I'd be willing 
> to take it up with you.
> 
> 
> 
> --Jeff
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Jeffrey Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> Northern Arizona University
> (o) 928 523-8354
> 
> 
> From: Dan Everett 
> Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 8:00 AM
> To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time
>  
> This is a fascinating topic and discussion. The syntax, semantics, 
> pragmatics, and anthropology of temporal reference in natural languages is a 
> very hot topic these days. I am, modulo coronavirus travel restrictions, due 
> to participate in a workshop on time at Cambridge University next month. One 
> of the phiosophers whose work on the language of time is most influential is 
> Reichenbach. 30 years ago I published a paper on a “neoReichenbachian” theory 
> of linguistic time (tense, etc) in the journal, Pragmatics and Cognition. 
> Link to two versions: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005062 , 
> https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/pc.1.1.07eve ).
> However, I am now in the process of revisiting this research from a Peircean 
> perspective. I am particularly interested in what one might call (as I have) 
> an “Anti-Whorfian” effect, namely, clear evidence for knowledge of things 
> which are not found directly (as in terms or even propositions) in the 
> language of the knowledge holders - e.g. temporal knowledge without time 
> words. Other examples are plentiful. For example, some people have no color 
> words but can easily distinguish colors if asked to perform certain tasks. 
> And some have no numerals in their language but can do some simple numerical 
> tasks (another paper of mine: 
> https://langcog.stanford.edu/papers/FEFG-cognition.pdf)
> 
> Thus in Peircean theory we have on the one hand the theory of what time is 
> with the recognition that different languages will choose to slice up time in 
> different ways. On the other hand, we have societies which appear to have no 
> signs for a particular category but who nevertheless can undertake some 
> actions that reveal tacit knowledge of tasks without linguistic signs (a 
> book-lengh study here: 
> https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Mind-Articulated-Unconscious/dp/022607076X)
> 
> So I am not only grateful for what has been said in these few extremely 
> useful posts, but any further discussions or pointers would be most welcome.
> 
> Dan Everett
> 
> 
>> On Mar 5, 2020, at 1:37 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello Jon, List,
>> 
>> At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in "mathematical, 
>> phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries concerning time. Do 
>> you have any suggestions about how we might tease out the different threads? 
>> Each seems to involve somewhat different methods.
>> 
>> --Jeff
>> 
>> 
>> Jeffrey Downard
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of Philosophy
>> Northern Arizona University
>> (o) 928 523-8354
>> 
>> 
>> From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
>> Sent: Monday, March 2, 2020 3:56 PM
>> To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
>> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of Time
>>  
>> List:
>> 
>> Gary Richmond, Gary Fuhrman, and I have had various lengthy off-List 
>> exchanges over the last few months about Peirce's ideas pertaining to time.  
>> After a lot of reading and thinking about the mathematical, 
>> phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical aspects of that topic, I 
>> decided to post the following and see if it prompts any further discussion.
>> 
>> In a 1908 paper that established the parameters for many of the debates that 
>> have occurred within the philosophy of time since its publication, John 
>> Ellis McTaggart argues for "The Unreality of Time."  His basic claim is that 
>> time cannot be real because it is contradictory to predicate past, present, 
>> and future of the same moment or event; and he alleges that the obvious 
>> rejoinder--that a moment or event is past, present, and future only at 
>> different times--is viciously circular.  McTaggart's implicit assumption is 
>> that time is a series of discrete positions, which are what he calls 
>> moments, and an event is the discrete content of a particular moment.  In 
>> other words, he treats any single moment or event as an existential subject, 
>> which is why it is precluded from having incompatible determinations.
>> 
>> Of course, by contrast Peirce held that time is real and continuous.  
>> Positions 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Symbols and Syntax (was Genuinely triadic relations, laws and symbols)

[Daniel L Everett]

Actually “incomplete” is a better description than incorrect. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 22, 2019, at 13:15, Dan Everett  wrote:
> 
> Jon,
> 
> No, we are talking about the same thing: a relationship that he considered 
> logical, but in fact not. This has nothing to do with the English verb per 
> se, but with the logical structure of any act of giving that includes three 
> surface arguments. The point is that Peirce got the *logic* of giving wrong - 
>  for any language.
> 
> Dan
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
>> On Apr 22, 2019, at 12:59 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dan, Jeff, List:
>> 
>> DE:  I am saying simply that in some cases of lexical analysis modern 
>> mathematical logic has tools at its disposal that enable analyses 
>> empirically superior to the the common picture of the valency of some verbs.
>> 
>> Again, we are talking about two different things.  When Peirce repeatedly 
>> characterized giving as irreducibly triadic, he was not referring to the 
>> English verb, but rather a specific logical relation--which is more 
>> fundamental than, and thus independent of, its expression in any particular 
>> language or other Sign System.  In an Existential Graph, no matter what 
>> symbol we use to label the Spot for that relation, it will always have 
>> exactly three Pegs.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
>> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
>> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>> 
>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 3:11 AM Dan Everett  wrote:
>>> Jeff,
>>> 
>>> Let's not read too much into what I said. I am not claiming that triadic 
>>> relations are reduceable (at least not in all cases) to dyadic relations. 
>>> Not at all in fact. Nor am I urging the thesis that Quine, Church, Turing, 
>>> etc. are superior in any way to Peirce. 
>>> 
>>> I am saying simply that in some cases of lexical analysis modern 
>>> mathematical logic has tools at its disposal that enable analyses 
>>> empirically superior to the the common picture of the valency of some 
>>> verbs,. Having said that, it may simply be that Peirce's comments on 'give' 
>>> hold at the level of transitivity, though perhaps not at the level of 
>>> valency. I am still thinking about that possibilty. 
>>> 
>>> Peirce may have made mistakes in many places. This should not bother 
>>> anyone, though, so long as the mistakes are not at a level that threaten 
>>> his overall program. I certainly do not believe that any improvements in 
>>> modern logic and math threaten Peirce's program.
>>> 
>>> Church invented the lambda calculus, identical in power to a universal 
>>> Turing machine.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus) That is a 
>>> significant discovery/invention/advance. But this in no way means that 
>>> Church or Turing or Quine were superior to Peirce or that their systems 
>>> should be taken over his. It means nothing more than that these tools of 
>>> modern logic, in conjunction with modern linguistics research, offer 
>>> insights into *some* areas of language that Peirce could not have achieved 
>>> (and did not). But nothing that they did invalidates his triadic system, 
>>> his theory of semiotics, etc. 
>>> 
>>> Some verbs operate differently than Peirce thought, at least at the level 
>>> of semantic decomposition, even though their syntactic behavior may conform 
>>> well to his predictions. Not a threat to him. But perhaps a tool for better 
>>> understanding him in modern terms.
>>> 
>>> The issues are nuanced. But I believe that sorting through them ultimately 
>>> makes Peirce more relevant than ever to our understanding of language, 
>>> logic, etc.
>>> 
>>> Dan
 On Apr 21, 2019, at 9:28 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard 
  wrote:
 
 Dan, List,
 
 I, for one, don't share your view that Peirce missed the boat on this one. 
 In making the assertion, are you claiming that modern mathematical logic 
 demonstrates that relations that might appear to be genuinely triadic--- 
 such as giving, or mediating or thinking--can be entirely reduced to 
 dyadic relations using logical resources that do not, themselves, employ 
 those very relations? Or, are you saying that this has been shown in 
 modern philosophical logic? 
 
 In both areas of inquiry, I do not think the matter is--by any 
 means--somehow now settled. Here, at the beginning of the 21st century, 
 there are plenty of reasons to doubt the assertions of Quine, Church, 
 Turing, et al, on this matter.
 
 Yours,
 
 Jeff
 
 Jeffrey Downard
 Associate Professor
 Department of Philosophy
 Northern Arizona University
 (o) 928 523-8354
>> 
>> -
>> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON 
>> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Genuinely triadic relations, laws and symbols

[Daniel L Everett]

A back of the envelope calculation is that CSP wrote app 25 million words. I 
assume 10 pages at 25 lines to a page 10 words to a line. 

But in that neighborhood. Some published papers were much denser some 
handwritten pages much less. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 17, 2019, at 16:47, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> John, Edwina, Jeff, List,
> 
> John wrote:
> 
> JS: Peirce frequently said that he thinks in diagrams and that he has
> considerable difficulty in translating his thoughts into words.
> 
> I'm not sure how frequently he said it, but Peirce certainly did say it, and 
> no doubt he thought essentially in diagrams. There are several on this list, 
> including me, who have commented that they too tend to think in diagrams, and 
> this may not be as rare an occurrence as I once thought it was. On the other 
> hand, it is possible that few have thought so completely, deeply and well in 
> diagrams as did CSP, and his creation and development of Existential Graphs 
> can surely be offered into 'evidence' as 'Exhibit 1'.  
> 
> On the other hand, Peirce certainly wrote a tremendous amount of words! (I'm 
> sure there is someone on the list who can quickly calculate approximately how 
> many just in the sources available to us in print.)
> 
> JS: When Peirce or anybody else is doing diagrammatic reasoning, some
> words may be helpful as explanations.  But as soon as we are clear
> about what the features of the diagram refer to, the words become
> irrelevant.  If the words create confusion, replace them with better
> words.  But when the diagram becomes clear, ignore the words.
> 
> We are immersed in language and other signs (we are in the thoughts, not the 
> thoughts in us), and while more iconic diagrams than sentences can help 
> facilitate, streamline and, especially, clarify our thinking (and Stjernfelt 
> and others see EGs as "optimally iconic"), we are pretty much stuck with 
> language for much of our thinking, and especially the expressing of it to 
> others, and most especially when a diagram is not handy or has not yet been 
> constructed. I do not see how words can ever "become irrelevant" even for 
> those who "think in diagrams" and employ them in the explication of certain 
> concepts and complexes of concepts.
> 
> And "if words create confusion"--as no doubt they do--how are we to "replace 
> them with better words"? Who is to decide what constitutes "better words"?
> 
> Continuing:
> 
> JS: General principle:  Agreeing to disagree never solves anything.
> A better solution is to emphasize the diagrams and delete,
> replace, or ignore any words that create disagreement.
> 
> Sometimes the disagreement is so profound that "agreeing to disagree" may be, 
> if not a solution, at least a decent way of delaying further consideration of 
> the issue until each participant in the discussion has reflected on the 
> substance of the disagreement, a very pragmatic thing to do, I'd suggest.
> 
> One may then come to see, say, that the other's view is, indeed, more correct 
> or, perhaps, that 'my view' is eventually seen by me as being in need of 
> correction or even complete replacement. For a person with an open mind, that 
> is always a wonderful revelation! And, naturally, having ones own view 
> confirmed by thoughtful others is nearly as good :-)
> 
> But sometimes a person will just dig in his heels and insist on the 
> correctness of his view (and his words) and is simply not willing to 
> "replace" or "ignore" any of his own words, unwilling "to emphasize the 
> diagram" even, etc. So, while "agreeing to disagree never solves anything," 
> sometimes, at least for a time, it is better to do that than to quarrel, 
> especially if a useful diagram is not readily available.
> 
> John quoted Peirce: 
> 
> CSP: > Every triadic relationship involves three dyadic relationships
> > and three monadic characters; just as every dyadic action involves
> > two monadic characters. A monadic character involves nothing dyadic
> > or triadic; nor does a dyadic action involve anything triadic. But
> > a triad always involves three dyads and three monads; and a dyad
> > involves two monads.  (CP 6.331)
> 
> Then commented:
> 
> Note the word 'involve'.  It's an extremely vague word that could
> be made more precise by using other words.  But more precise words
> are likely to cause endless disagreement, confusion, and debate.
> 
> One has, I think, to consider the context. In "The Mathematics of Logic." for 
> example, Peirce analyses the triadic relation offered in the snippet you 
> quote above according to the "order of involution" (CP 1.484). There is 
> nothing "extremely vague" about the use of "involve" there. From the 
> standpoint of monadic/ dyadic/ triadic categoriality, 3ns involves 2ns and 
> 1ns and 2ns involves 1ns only (and the several "relationships" and 
> "characters" implied). But here we do have a diagram.
> 
> And, yes, in some other contexts "involve" can be "an extremely 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce Monument

[Daniel L Everett]

Gary

Thanks. I believe you are right about this. I consulted John Sowa also and did 
my own searches. 

But if anyone on the list has a precise reference that would be great. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 14, 2019, at 08:45, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> Cecile, Dan, list,
> 
> Cecile asked about the symbol Dan photographed on the Peirce monument at his 
> grave site in Milford: Do you know what the diagram refers to? Does it appear 
> somewhere in Peirce's papers? Do you know where? With a Y to symbolize the 
> sign? And A for the object as if it was first in the semiosis?
> 
> Dan had asked me the same question off-list. I believe it's simply the 
> 'turnstile'--an icon of any triadic relation, the A, B, C applicable to not 
> only the sign, but to any trichotomic relation, phenomenological of 
> semeiotic. 
> 
> I believe it does appear in Peirce's papers (I've seen it before, for sure) 
> but I have not yet been able to locate the exact source in a quick search. 
> I'm sure some list member will be able to answer your question more 
> specifically and soon. If not, I'll make inquiries at the Peirce 
> mini-conference in Milford this week.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   Virus-free. www.avg.com
> 
>> On Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 6:49 AM Cécile Menieu-Cosculluela 
>>  wrote:
>> Thanks a lot! That's interesting. Do you know what the diagram refers to? 
>> Does it appear somewhere in Peirce's papers? Do you know where? With a Y to 
>> symbolize the sign? And A for the object as if it was first in the semiosis?
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Cécile
>> 
>> - Mail original -
>> De: "Daniel L Everett" 
>> À: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
>> Envoyé: Jeudi 11 Avril 2019 19:39:14
>> Objet: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce Monument
>> 
>> Folks
>> 
>> Thought you might want to see the new Peirce monument at the Milford 
>> Cemetery. Just visiting in Milford today and tomorrow. 
>> 
>> Dan
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [image/jpeg:IMG_2516.jpg]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [image/jpeg:IMG_2517.jpg]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [image/jpeg:IMG_2518.jpg]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> [Fichier texte:message-footer.txt]
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy and logic

[Daniel L Everett]

Thanks John. 

I quite like Bruce’s book. Those are good quotes. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 7, 2019, at 23:16, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Gary F, Jeff BD, Dan,
> 
> GF
>>> could it be you’re thinking of Peirce’s “Logic of Quantity,”
>>> 1893 (CP 4.85-92)
>> Kant declares that the question of his great work is “How are
>> synthetical judgments a priori possible?” By a priori he means
>> universal; by synthetical, experiential (i.e., relating to
>> experience, not necessarily derived wholly from experience).
>> The true question for him should have been, “How are universal
>> propositions relating to experience to be justified?”
> 
> That's not the quotation I was thinking of, but it's related.
> In any case, the quotations at the end of this note are clearer.
> 
> JBD
>> Richard Smyth has two monographs that deal squarely with these sorts
>> of questions...  One of the salient points that Smyth makes is that
>> Kant's distinctions between what is a priori and a posteriori, on the
>> one hand, and the what is analytic and what is synthetic apply first
>> and foremost to the classification of different sorts of cognitions...
> 
> That point is relevant to the a priori issues.  But I was looking for
> quotations about the distinction between innate ideas (acquired by
> evolution) and ideas derived from an individual's experience.  Since
> you mentioned Smyth's book, that reminded me of a book that I bought
> at a conference a couple of years ago:  Wilson, Aaron Bruce (2016)
> Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and Its Originality, Lexington Books.
> 
> In Chapter 5, Wilson discusses Thomas Reid's critical common sense
> and quoted related passages by Peirce.  I copied some of the passages
> Wilson quoted from CP.  See the end of this note.
> 
> DE
>> A significant difference between Peirce’s a priori and Kant’s is
>> that Kant’s is necessarily not derived from experience.
> 
> Yes.  And as Peirce says below (CP 5.504), "Now every animal must
> have habits.  Consequently, it must have innate habits."
> 
> Peirce had also studied some Arabic and Ancient Egyptian, and he
> was acquainted with Chinese and Basque.  He did not want to limit
> his logic and semeiotic to Indo-European (or has he called it,
> Aryan).  Unlike the Chomskyan linguists, I think Peirce would
> have been delighted to learn something about Pirahã.
> 
> John
> ___
> 
> it seems to me there is the most positive historic proof that innate
> truths are particularly uncertain and mixed up with error, and
> therefore a fortiori not without exception.  This historical proof is,
> of course, not infallible; but it is very strong.  Therefore, I ask
> how do you know that a priori truth is certain, exceptionless, and
> exact?  You cannot know it by reasoning. For that would be subject
> to uncertainty and inexactitude. Then, it must amount to this that
> you know it a priori; that is, you take a priori judgments at their
> own valuation, without criticism or credentials.  That is barring
> the gate of inquiry.  (CP 1.144, c 1897)
> 
> Now every animal must have habits. Consequently, it must have innate
> habits. In so far as it has cognitive powers, it must have _in posse_
> innate cognitive habits, which is all that anybody but John Locke
> ever meant by innate ideas.  To say that I hold this for true is
> implied in my confession of the doctrine of Common-Sense -- not quite
> that of the old Scotch School, but a critical philosophy of common-
> sense.  It is impossible rightly to apprehend the pragmaticist's
> position without fully understanding that nowhere would he be less
> at home than in the ranks of individualists, whether metaphysical
> (and so denying scholastic realism), or epistemological (and so
> denying innate ideas).  (CP 5.504, 1905)
> 
> Now those vague beliefs that appear to be indubitable have the same
> sort of basis as scientific results have. That is to say, they rest
> on experience -- on the total everyday experience of many generations
> of multitudinous populations.  Such experience is worthless for
> distinctively scientific purposes, because it does not make the minute
> distinctions with which science is chiefly concerned; nor does it relate
> to the recondite subjects of science, although all science, without
> being aware of it, virtually supposes the truth of the vague results
> of uncontrolled thought upon such experiences, cannot help doing so,
> and would have to shut up shop if she should manage to escape
> accepting them.  (CP 5.522, 1905)
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy and logic

[Daniel L Everett]

Hi Eugene

Thanks for this. I know the quote well. Reid’s common-sensism certainly was 
nativist. And here Peirce does seem to echo that. 

However I do not believe that he means by “innate” here the same that is 
implied by modern usage of that word. 

I am working on a discussion of how the word “innate” is used by Reid, Peirce, 
Hume, Locke (who in fact did believe in innate capacities), and others. And how 
they are often interpreted anachronistically. 

Certainly Peirce believed in inborn capacities (most everyone does). But not, I 
believe, in innate content (eg Fodor), a distinction I discuss at length in 
Dark Matter. 


Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 7, 2019, at 19:57, Eugene Halton  wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Dan,
>  You say, "I discuss Kant’s work in my book, Dark Matter of the Mind, 
> where I argue that there is no innate knowledge. 'Duty' 'respect' even things 
> like colors are largely cultural constructs, in a way that I believe fits in 
> quite well with Peirce’s phaneroscopy. I am not aware of any statement in 
> Peirce’s architectonic where innate, a priori knowledge plays a crucial 
> causal role for building his philosophy."
> 
> Peirce's critical common-sensism marks a sharp contrast to your claim that 
> innate ideas play no crucial causal role in Peirce's philosophy. Consider his 
> statement from "Consequences of Common-Sensism" in the Collected Papers:
> 
> “Now every animal must have habits. Consequently, it must have innate habits. 
> In so far as it has has cognitive powers, it must have in posse innate 
> cognitive habits, which is all that anybody but John Locke ever meant by 
> innate ideas. To say that I hold this for true is implied in my confession of 
> the doctrine of Common-Sense—not quite of the old Scotch School, but a 
> critical philosophy of common-sense. It is impossible rightly to apprehend 
> the pragmatist’s position without fully understanding that nowhere would he 
> be less at home than in the ranks of individualists, whether metaphysical 
> (and so denying scholastic realism) or epistemological (and so denying innate 
> ideas).”  Peirce, 5.504
> Gene Halton
> 
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 3:49 PM Dan Everett  wrote:
>> John,
>> 
>> I agree with you on this. A significant difference between Peirce’s a priori 
>> and Kant’s is that Kant’s is necessarily not derived from experience. Peirce 
>> did, as you say, allow that some things might be prior to experience, but 
>> one gets the feeling that he would be quite happy if it could be shown that 
>> they were not, apart from logical constraints. One strong difference between 
>> Peirce’s use of the term “universal grammar” and Chomsky’s later use of the 
>> same phrase (going back to the Modistae, as readers of this list know) is 
>> that for Peirce universal/speculative grammar is neither nature nor nurture. 
>> I think that he would have been pleased with any demonstration that showed 
>> the same for non-logically required categories. 
>> 
>> I discuss Kant’s work in my book, Dark Matter of the Mind, where I argue 
>> that there is no innate knowledge. 
>> 
>> “Duty” “respect” even things like colors are largely cultural constructs, in 
>> a way that I believe fits in quite well with Peirce’s phaneroscopy.
>> 
>> I am not aware of any statement in Peirce’s architectonic where innate, a 
>> priori knowledge plays a crucial causal role for building his philosophy. 
>> 
>> Like Hume’s use of “instinct” Peirce’s use of that term (or phylogentic 
>> habits) does not necessarily support nativism as widely conceived in 
>> contemporary literature. 
>> 
>> - Dan
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> > On Apr 7, 2019, at 3:29 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
>> > 
>> >> On 4/7/2019 1:59 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
>> >> As an example of an /a priori/ element in moral cognition, consider the 
>> >> role of the /feeling/ of respect in deliberation about the what is 
>> >> required as a matter of duty. As an example of an a priori element in 
>> >> aesthetic judgment, consider the condition of seeking harmony in the 
>> >> experience of the beautiful. As an example of an /a priori/ element in 
>> >> mathematical cognition, consider the role of the intuition of the whole 
>> >> of ideal space in geometrical reasoning.
>> >> In each case, I tend to think that Peirce agrees with Kant that these are 
>> >> /a priori/ and not merely /a posteriori/ elements in our practical, 
>> >> aesthetic and mathematical cognition.
>> > 
>> > That's an interesting argument.  But I recall something Peirce said
>> > about that issue (but it would require quite a bit of search to find
>> > exactly where).
>> > 
>> > He said that Kant's Critik drV was his basic training in philosophy
>> > (when he was 16).  But he diverged from Kant about what is a priori.
>> > Peirce admitted that there are probably some innate tendencies and
>> > preferences that determine value judgments.  But experience (i.e.,
>> > informal phaneroscopy) is essential to develop the 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatics and Peirce

[Daniel L Everett]

Jon

I simply mean to underscore method. 

Not who might be correct on the terminology. 

I always learn from these discussions. 

Thanks

Dan


Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 1, 2019, at 21:44, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Dan, List:
> 
> Where has anyone on the List engaged in "ad hominem arguments (based on a 
> person's worth or unworth in a given subject)"?
> 
> Our terminological disputes typically pertain to Peirce's usage, so the 
> "experiment" by which they can be resolved is careful examination of the 
> "data," which consists of the relevant texts in his writings.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
> 
>> On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 7:42 PM Dan Everett  wrote:
>> I agree with Edwina on ad hominem arguments (based on a person’s worth or 
>> unworth in a given subject). But as I have said before here, one must be 
>> able to distinguish interpretations based on their practical results. All 
>> terms have to be interpreted in light of the pragmatic maxim. Straying away 
>> from that moves into Popperian concerns about essentialism, which is usually 
>> pointless. 
>> 
>> A terminological dispute that cannot be resolved via an experiment or via 
>> some other form of data  is of lesser importance. 
>> 
>> Dan
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The danger of destroying Peirce's semeiotic (was Ambiguities...

[Daniel L Everett]

Thanks Gary. 

I have also just signed a contract with Princeton University Press to write a 
large intellectual biography of Peirce, with the working title “American 
Aristotle: The Life and Mind of C.S. Peirce”, which I hope to complete in 2022. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 29, 2019, at 14:28, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> Dan, List,
> 
> It's nice to have you drop in to peirce-l as you occasionally have in recent 
> years and, of course, I'm especially delighted that you find some of the 
> discussions here useful and illuminating. Your current work sounds most 
> interesting, so please let us know when these and, of course, any 
> Peirce-related papers are available. 
> 
> The Wikipedia entry on you https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everett
> also mentions that you are working on a book, "Peircean Linguistics: A 
> Chapter in the History of Empiricist Thought." I'm reasonably certain that I 
> am hardly the only person in this forum who will be quite interested in 
> reading it when it's available.
> 
> You wrote: 
> DE: Peirce used the term Universal Grammar in 1865 and his version of UG 
> (like Chomsky’s nearly a century later) had recursion. The difference is that 
> Peirce’s recursion was semantic (interpretants of interpretants)  whereas 
> Chomsky’s is syntactic. Peirce’s recursion works better for understanding a 
> number of modern languages, as well as language evolution. . .
> 
> That is most intriguing given your views, as I very vaguely understand them, 
> on universal grammar (such as your opposing Chomsky's asserting the 
> universality of recursion). I haven't much read up on linguistics in recent 
> years with one exception: A friend, colleague, and occasional contributor to 
> the list, Michael Shapiro, also a Peircean linguist, has found Chomsky's 
> version of UG problematic, and we've occasionally discussed it, I've read 
> some of his papers, heard him lecture, etc. on his views. It would, 
> obviously, be great to get a discussion going here on Peircean linguistics, 
> your very different view of UG from Chomsky's, comparing notes with Michael, 
> etc. 
> 
> Whether or not that is feasible for you at present, you might take a look at 
> some of Michael's papers posted on the Arisbe site. See: 
> http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ABOUTCSP.HTM#Shapiro.Michael
> 
> Of course, we'd be delighted to post or link to any Peirce-related papers 
> you've written at Arisbe.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gary (writing as list moderator and co-manager of Arisbe with Ben Udell)
> 
> 
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 9:15 AM Dan Everett  wrote:
>> This has been a useful discussion (not that it should end of course). 
>> 
>> Larry Barham (University of Liverpool, Department of Archaeology) and I have 
>> finished a long paper (just submitted) on the evidence that lower 
>> Paleolithic tools manufactured by Homo Erectus were simultaneously icons, 
>> indexes, and symbols. We then argue that if that is correct they had 
>> language (since syntax is itself a combination of icon, index, and symbol + 
>> a varied range of computational properties). 
>> 
>> Peirce used the term Universal Grammar in 1865 and his version of UG (like 
>> Chomsky’s nearly a century later) had recursion. The difference is that 
>> Peirce’s recursion was semantic (interpretants of interpretants)  whereas 
>> Chomsky’s is syntactic. Peirce’s recursion works better for understanding a 
>> number of modern languages, as well as language evolution (I and a co-author 
>> point this out in a review article to appear in Language). 
>> 
>> Understanding the various nuances of his work is therefore vital to grasping 
>> its contemporary significance (as readers here know) - in some ways 
>> especially for understanding language and its evolution -  and I am grateful 
>> to this list for continuing to host such illuminating discussions.
>> 
>> Dan
>> 
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

Edwina

This isn’t a matter of suggestions. There is a massive, technical literature on 
the evolution of writing systems. And yes like ALL inventions Seqouia’s emerged 
from a cultural context. His syllabary is in fact demonstrably superior in ease 
of acquistion to either Chinese logographic or English alfabetic systems. aand 
simce he had no exposure (nor did AngloAmericans) to syllabic systems, his 
invention is unparalled. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 14, 2018, at 08:46, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Dan, list
> 
> I suggest that Sequoia's development of a syllabary in the 19th c, for 
> Cherokee - was quite different from the other written language and mnemonic 
> methods used by large populations in earlier times. Sequoia was aware of the 
> written language used by settlers - and developed one for his language.
> 
> I'd suggest that the other written forms emerged as communal efforts but 
> that's as far as one can go with any certainty. The point is, it isn't needed 
> in small populations and only needed in large settled [some form of 
> agriculture] societies.
> 
> As you say - it only emerged a few times in world history - among peoples 
> separate from each other; i.e., no diffusion - and I feel that it is related 
> to the need for some kind of mnemonic device and a different perspective on 
> history - and authority.
> 
> Edwina
> 
>  
> 
> On Tue 14/08/18 4:36 AM , Daniel L Everett danleveret...@gmail.com sent:
> 
> Written language has only been invented a handful of times in world history. 
> It was never invented for English, for example, but adapted from a 
> pre-existing system invented by others. 
> 
> It was invented separately by Sequoia, for his language - Cheokee. Not a 
> large civilization. Sequoia’s syllabary was an intellectual breakthrough of 
> the first rank. 
> 
> Dan
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Aug 13, 2018, at 21:27, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
>> List
>> 
>> I certainly don't want to promote or support Derrida, - I could never stand 
>> him, and much preferred Mikhail Bakhtin's focus on language - back when I 
>> was myself studying language and the nature of oral and literate cultures. 
>> BUT - I think it's a huge misunderstanding to think that Derrida's promoting 
>> of Writing meant that he placed writing as emerging prior to the spoken 
>> language! 
>> 
>> Even if one were not referring to a phonetic language but instead to a 
>> non-phonetic one, such as Chinese - even then, It is illogical to suppose 
>> that the written form preceded the spoken form. Even if one refers to the 
>> written form for the numbers of one, two, three in Chinese [one horizontal 
>> line, two lines, three lines].
>> 
>> At any rate, written language, to my understanding, only emerges in large 
>> settled populations, i.e., ones that use some form of agriculture and 
>> require some kind of mnemonic device. And that -, i.e., large agricultural 
>> populations - only emerged about 10,000 years ago.
>> 
>> What I think Derrida is referring to - in his dense, mystical writings - is 
>> that writing represents the structure of the Sign in its orignary, 
>> essentialist nature - in its most Truthful nature [akin to the Final 
>> Interpretant?] and that the articulated Sign [Saussurian: signifier and 
>> signified] 'fight' with each other in Writing; they have a relationship of 
>> difference,[ Though he does reference Peirce ] But that Writing sets up a 
>> conflict between the signifier and signified [Object and Interpretant] such 
>> that they cannot reconcile. How does one arrive at Truth - only be 
>> deconstructing this 'differerance'...
>> 
>> And that's as far as I'll go since I could never stand himMy only point 
>> here is that it's a misunderstanding to think that he thought that writing 
>> preceded speech!
>> 
>> Edwina
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Mon 13/08/18 3:46 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu sent:
>> 
>> I also agree. To twist Ernst Haeckel's saying: ontology does not 
>> recapitulate philology, contra Derrida.
>>  Gene H 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018, 3:20 PM Mary Libertin  wrote:
>>> I agree. With you, and with my interpretation of Sternfeldt.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 3:18 PM Daniel L Everett  
>>>> wrote:
>>>> Derrida is completely wrong. Both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. 
>>>> Besides doing field research on Amazonian languages that lack any form of 
>>>> writing, I have written extensively on language evolution. I have heard 
>>>> Derrida

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Music in some theories of the origin of language, Was, A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

Hi Gene

I do not have an individualistic perspective. In How Language Began I make 
clear that language is a cultural invention and no individual could have 
invented it. My theory of culture is developed in my U of Chicago Press book, 
Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious. 

As for my (dis)agreement with Peirce, I am currently working on a book for 
Oxford U Press on his empiricism (Peircean Linguistics: A Chapter in the 
History of Empiricist Thought). While he was open to the idea of evolutionarily 
acquired “habits” of thought, these are not required by the archetectonic of 
his theory. 

Dan
Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2018, at 22:45, Eugene Halton  wrote:
> 
> Dear Daniel,
> 
> I read your introductory chapter for the book that you linked in your 
> post last week. Many interesting ideas. But I wonder why you seem to be 
> arguing for a purely individual perspective on learning, if I understand you 
> correctly, and why you claim there is no inborn social influence on the self, 
> especially given your interest in Peirce. Do you reject Peirce's ideas on 
> these points?
> I also wonder what your opinion would be on another investigator 
> of Amazonian peoples, who like you went there with a completely different 
> purpose from what she ended up observing and recording. I really like the 
> fact that you went there as a missionary and allowed your observations to 
> temper your beliefs. Something similar happened with this other person who 
> went there, Jean Liedloff. 
>  After repeated trips over years she came to understand the different 
> parenting styles of the people in the Venezuelan Amazon she observed. She 
> termed what she observed “The Continuum Concept,” and produced a really 
> interesting book on this idea with that title. She allows the idea of 
> instinctive impulses as powerful positive influences on parenting and on the 
> expectations of infants and developmentally young children, which seems to me 
> of a piece with Peirce's view of critical Common Sense-ism.
> 
>  Gene Halton
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 6:37 PM, Daniel L Everett  
>> wrote:
>> Changzi and I share many ideas in common and have corresponded about them. 
>> Indexes are used by all living creatures. The first valued icon in the 
>> fossil record is 3 million years ago, the Makapansgat Manuport, collected by 
>> Australopithecus africanus. The first symbols emerege with Homo erectus and 
>> are linked with the sailing revolution where erectus becomes the first ocean 
>> voyager. 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Aug 13, 2018, at 19:34, Gary Richmond  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Gene, Mary, Daniel, List,
>>> 
>>> I also agree that spoken language precedes written language. 
>>> 
>>> There are even some philosophers and scientists who have suggested that 
>>> perhaps music preceded spoken language.
>>> 
>>> You recently mentioned, Gene, and I recall studies I read long ago which 
>>> suggested that response to music and vocal imitative play with the mother 
>>> occurs long before a baby begins to develop any of the other of the human 
>>> 'intelligences' (cf. Gardner's multi-intelligence model) such as speech or 
>>> being able to walk!
>>> 
>>> The American aesthetician and philosopher of Mind, Susanne Langer, argued 
>>> that while music isn't actually a language (in her ground breaking 1942 
>>> work, Feeling and Form: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 
>>> she refers to it an "unconsummated symbol"), yet music bears some 
>>> interesting structural similarities to music.
>>> 
>>> "Music, like language, is an articulate form. Its parts not only fuse 
>>> together to yield a greater entity, but in so doing they maintain some 
>>> degree of separate existence, and the sensuous character of each element is 
>>> affected by its function in the complex whole. . [it] is articulated, i.e. 
>>> its internal structure is given to our perception.
>>> 
>>> "Music has import, and this import is the pattern of sentience — the 
>>> pattern of life itself, as it is felt and directly known."
>>> 
>>> The "sensuous characters" affected by the whole 'composition' is present in 
>>> the simplest ditty, child's song, or lullaby.
>>> 
>>> In the mid-50's, in Mind: An Essay in Human Feeling, she hypothesized that 
>>> music might have worked in tandem with ritual dance and ecstatic vocalizing 
>>> to have created the first vocal symbols. Perhaps in some ecstat

Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

Written language has only been invented a handful of times in world history. It 
was never invented for English, for example, but adapted from a pre-existing 
system invented by others. 

It was invented separately by Sequoia, for his language - Cheokee. Not a large 
civilization. Sequoia’s syllabary was an intellectual breakthrough of the first 
rank. 

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2018, at 21:27, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> List
> 
> I certainly don't want to promote or support Derrida, - I could never stand 
> him, and much preferred Mikhail Bakhtin's focus on language - back when I was 
> myself studying language and the nature of oral and literate cultures. BUT - 
> I think it's a huge misunderstanding to think that Derrida's promoting of 
> Writing meant that he placed writing as emerging prior to the spoken 
> language! 
> 
> Even if one were not referring to a phonetic language but instead to a 
> non-phonetic one, such as Chinese - even then, It is illogical to suppose 
> that the written form preceded the spoken form. Even if one refers to the 
> written form for the numbers of one, two, three in Chinese [one horizontal 
> line, two lines, three lines].
> 
> At any rate, written language, to my understanding, only emerges in large 
> settled populations, i.e., ones that use some form of agriculture and require 
> some kind of mnemonic device. And that -, i.e., large agricultural 
> populations - only emerged about 10,000 years ago.
> 
> What I think Derrida is referring to - in his dense, mystical writings - is 
> that writing represents the structure of the Sign in its orignary, 
> essentialist nature - in its most Truthful nature [akin to the Final 
> Interpretant?] and that the articulated Sign [Saussurian: signifier and 
> signified] 'fight' with each other in Writing; they have a relationship of 
> difference,[ Though he does reference Peirce ] But that Writing sets up a 
> conflict between the signifier and signified [Object and Interpretant] such 
> that they cannot reconcile. How does one arrive at Truth - only be 
> deconstructing this 'differerance'...
> 
> And that's as far as I'll go since I could never stand himMy only point 
> here is that it's a misunderstanding to think that he thought that writing 
> preceded speech!
> 
> Edwina
> 
>  
> 
> On Mon 13/08/18 3:46 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu sent:
> 
> I also agree. To twist Ernst Haeckel's saying: ontology does not recapitulate 
> philology, contra Derrida.
>  Gene H 
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018, 3:20 PM Mary Libertin  wrote:
>> I agree. With you, and with my interpretation of Sternfeldt.
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 3:18 PM Daniel L Everett  
>>> wrote:
>>> Derrida is completely wrong. Both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. 
>>> Besides doing field research on Amazonian languages that lack any form of 
>>> writing, I have written extensively on language evolution. I have heard 
>>> Derrida’s unfortunate claim before. 
>>> https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307386120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0307386120
>>> 
>>> https://www.amazon.com/How-Language-Began-Humanitys-Invention/dp/0871407957
>>> 
>>> Dan Everett
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>> On Aug 13, 2018, at 16:40, Mary Libertin  wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Jon A S and list,
>>>> 
>>>> I find this discussion interesting. I have no thesis, instead just some 
>>>> observations for possible discussion.
>>>> 
>>>> Peirce in EP 2:488, as previously quoted, writes that the tinge/tone/mark 
>>>> precedes the token/type. Are three senses possibly being alluded to: 
>>>> sight, sound, and touch? 
>>>> 
>>>>  In regard to the sound and touch, I recall Peirce’s use of the utterer 
>>>> and the graphist. 
>>>> 
>>>> The latter two suggest more agency. Saussure discussed the 
>>>> signifier/signified relation in terms of the phoneme and speech, and 
>>>> rarely the grapheme and writing.  Speech can not be removed or erased, and 
>>>> it assumes permanence with quote marks. 
>>>> 
>>>> Derrida argued the grapheme preceded the phoneme, the written vs the 
>>>> spoken. How relevant that is remains to be seen. Frederick Sternfelt in 
>>>> the title of his insightful book _Diagrammatology_ makes implicit 
>>>> reference to Derrida’s _Grammatology_, whose work is given short shrift. 
>>>> It may be that preceed-ence is not an issue with the decisign, or not 
>>>> relevant. 
>>>> 
>>>>

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Music in some theories of the origin of language, Was, A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

I provided the links to my book on language evolution which is written for a 
general audience. 

The evidence for Homo erectus sailing is in there, as well as references to all 
the primary sources. There was a recent article summarizing the evidence also 
in New Scientist. 

On icons, again, I discuss the famous Makapansgat pebble. 

Recently it was also discovered that erectus made it to the Philippines 700kya. 

Music may have preceded other forms of symbols, though it would have been no 
easier than speech. 

In the book, How Language Began, I discuss in detail the evolution of the 
brain, vocal apparatus, etc. and the first Homo cognitive revolution nearly two 
million years ago. 

I am working on a more technical paper on further evidence for erectus symbols 
with a archaeological team based on recent discoveries. 

Dan


Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2018, at 20:56, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> Daniel, List,
> 
> Daniel wrote: 
> 
> DE: Changzi and I share many ideas in common and have corresponded about 
> them. Indexes are used by all living creatures. The first valued icon in the 
> fossil record is 3 million years ago, the Makapansgat Manuport, collected by 
> Australopithecus africanus. The first symbols emerege with Homo erectus and 
> are linked with the sailing revolution where erectus becomes the first ocean 
> voyager. 
> 
> This is all very intriguing but rather too tersely stated for me to make much 
> sense of (it suggests a lot of background information which I certainly am 
> not in possession of). So some further explication of at least some of these 
> ideas would be most helpful.
> 
> I would tend to agree that "Indexes are used by all living creatures." But 
> would you be able to offer some support for "The first valued icon in the 
> fossil record is 3 million years ago"?
> 
> I am particularly intrigued by this comment: The first symbols emerge with 
> Homo erectus and are linked with the sailing revolution where erectus becomes 
> the first ocean voyager. 
> 
> This seems to contradict Langer's theory which would seem to antecede ocean 
> voyaging by perhaps hundreds of thousands of years and is, as it were, linked 
> to the land (ritual singing/dancing around a proto-totem pole, etc.) 
> 
> Thanks for joining this discussion, Daniel. It may be necessary for forum 
> members not familiar with some of the ideas you've pointed to to read up on 
> them. So links to relatively easily accessible material on these topics would 
> be much appreciated.
> 
> As always, any connections to Peirce-related pragmatic and/or semiotic ideas 
> would be more than desirable.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> 718 482-5690
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 6:37 PM Daniel L Everett  
>> wrote:
>> Changzi and I share many ideas in common and have corresponded about them. 
>> Indexes are used by all living creatures. The first valued icon in the 
>> fossil record is 3 million years ago, the Makapansgat Manuport, collected by 
>> Australopithecus africanus. The first symbols emerege with Homo erectus and 
>> are linked with the sailing revolution where erectus becomes the first ocean 
>> voyager. 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Aug 13, 2018, at 19:34, Gary Richmond  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Gene, Mary, Daniel, List,
>>> 
>>> I also agree that spoken language precedes written language. 
>>> 
>>> There are even some philosophers and scientists who have suggested that 
>>> perhaps music preceded spoken language.
>>> 
>>> You recently mentioned, Gene, and I recall studies I read long ago which 
>>> suggested that response to music and vocal imitative play with the mother 
>>> occurs long before a baby begins to develop any of the other of the human 
>>> 'intelligences' (cf. Gardner's multi-intelligence model) such as speech or 
>>> being able to walk!
>>> 
>>> The American aesthetician and philosopher of Mind, Susanne Langer, argued 
>>> that while music isn't actually a language (in her ground breaking 1942 
>>> work, Feeling and Form: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 
>>> she refers to it an "unconsummated symbol"), yet music bears some 
>>> interesting structural similarities to music.
>>> 
>>> "Music, like language, is an articulate form. Its parts not only fuse 
>>> together to yield a greater entity, but in so doing they maintain some 
>>> degree of separate existence, and the sensuous charac

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Music in some theories of the origin of language, Was, A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

Changzi and I share many ideas in common and have corresponded about them. 
Indexes are used by all living creatures. The first valued icon in the fossil 
record is 3 million years ago, the Makapansgat Manuport, collected by 
Australopithecus africanus. The first symbols emerege with Homo erectus and are 
linked with the sailing revolution where erectus becomes the first ocean 
voyager. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2018, at 19:34, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> Gene, Mary, Daniel, List,
> 
> I also agree that spoken language precedes written language. 
> 
> There are even some philosophers and scientists who have suggested that 
> perhaps music preceded spoken language.
> 
> You recently mentioned, Gene, and I recall studies I read long ago which 
> suggested that response to music and vocal imitative play with the mother 
> occurs long before a baby begins to develop any of the other of the human 
> 'intelligences' (cf. Gardner's multi-intelligence model) such as speech or 
> being able to walk!
> 
> The American aesthetician and philosopher of Mind, Susanne Langer, argued 
> that while music isn't actually a language (in her ground breaking 1942 work, 
> Feeling and Form: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, she 
> refers to it an "unconsummated symbol"), yet music bears some interesting 
> structural similarities to music.
> 
> "Music, like language, is an articulate form. Its parts not only fuse 
> together to yield a greater entity, but in so doing they maintain some degree 
> of separate existence, and the sensuous character of each element is affected 
> by its function in the complex whole. . [it] is articulated, i.e. its 
> internal structure is given to our perception.
> 
> "Music has import, and this import is the pattern of sentience — the pattern 
> of life itself, as it is felt and directly known."
> 
> The "sensuous characters" affected by the whole 'composition' is present in 
> the simplest ditty, child's song, or lullaby.
> 
> In the mid-50's, in Mind: An Essay in Human Feeling, she hypothesized that 
> music might have worked in tandem with ritual dance and ecstatic vocalizing 
> to have created the first vocal symbols. Perhaps in some ecstatic communal 
> dance associated with some significant recurring event affecting human 
> physiology and feeling, one known as doing so by a tribal community--the 
> hypothetical example which Langer gives, as I recall, is how the moon affects 
> a woman's menstrual cycle, the tides, etc.--certain ecstatically uttered 
> sounds, perhaps first vocalized loudly by a tribal leader or shaman in a 
> tribal dance, became associated with that shaman's utterance, was repeated by 
> the community, and became their word for 'moon'. 
> 
> On the "significance of music" Langer wrote:
> 
> Let us therefore call the significance of music its “vital import” instead of 
> “meaning,” using “vital” . . . as a qualifying adjective restricting the 
> relevance of “import” to the dynamism of subjective experience.
> 
> Some have gone even deeper into the science involved in such a theory. One 
> example is the cognitive scientist, Mark Changizi, in his book, Harnessed. 
> From the publisher's blurb
> 
> In Harnessed, cognitive scientist Mark Changizi demonstrates that human 
> speech has been very specifically “designed” to harness the sounds of nature, 
> sounds we’ve evolved over millions of years to readily understand. Long 
> before humans evolved, mammals have learned to interpret the sounds of nature 
> to understand both threats and opportunities. Our speech—regardless of 
> language—is very clearly based on the sounds of nature.
> 
> Langer's work in this area has been largely neglected, while Changizi's 
> remains controversial.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Gary
> 
> 
> Even more fascinating, Changizi shows that music itself is based on natural 
> sounds. Music—seemingly one of the most human of inventions—is literally 
> built on sounds and patterns of sound that have existed since the beginning 
> of time.
> ccc
> 
> Gary Richmond
> Philosophy and Critical Thinking
> Communication Studies
> LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
> 718 482-5690
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 3:47 PM Eugene Halton  
>> wrote:
>> I also agree. To twist Ernst Haeckel's saying: ontology does not 
>> recapitulate philology, contra Derrida.
>>  Gene H 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018, 3:20 PM Mary Libertin  wrote:
>>> I agree. With you, and with my interpretation of Sternfeldt.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 3:18 PM Daniel L Everett  
>>>> wrote:
>>>&

Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Sign Is Not a Real Thing

[Daniel L Everett]

Derrida is completely wrong. Both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Besides 
doing field research on Amazonian languages that lack any form of writing, I 
have written extensively on language evolution. I have heard Derrida’s 
unfortunate claim before. 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307386120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0307386120

https://www.amazon.com/How-Language-Began-Humanitys-Invention/dp/0871407957

Dan Everett
Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 13, 2018, at 16:40, Mary Libertin  wrote:
> 
> Jon A S and list,
> 
> I find this discussion interesting. I have no thesis, instead just some 
> observations for possible discussion.
> 
> Peirce in EP 2:488, as previously quoted, writes that the tinge/tone/mark 
> precedes the token/type. Are three senses possibly being alluded to: sight, 
> sound, and touch? 
> 
>  In regard to the sound and touch, I recall Peirce’s use of the utterer and 
> the graphist. 
> 
> The latter two suggest more agency. Saussure discussed the 
> signifier/signified relation in terms of the phoneme and speech, and rarely 
> the grapheme and writing.  Speech can not be removed or erased, and it 
> assumes permanence with quote marks. 
> 
> Derrida argued the grapheme preceded the phoneme, the written vs the spoken. 
> How relevant that is remains to be seen. Frederick Sternfelt in the title of 
> his insightful book _Diagrammatology_ makes implicit reference to Derrida’s 
> _Grammatology_, whose work is given short shrift. It may be that preceed-ence 
> is not an issue with the decisign, or not relevant. 
> 
> I do recall Peirce using tinge with regard to existential graphs, and tinges 
> perhaps served a purpose, perhaps with reference to layering and 
> juxtaposition in logic, that could not achieved with the spoken or written.
> 
> It may be possible that Peirce ultimately chose mark rather than tinge or 
> tone because it is more permanent. 
> 
> I apologize for lacking a thesis and any mistakes, and I look forward to your 
> responses.
> 
> Mary Libertin
> 
> 
>> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 1:45 PM Jon Alan Schmidt  
>> wrote:
>> John S., List:
>> 
>> JFS:  I believe that the subject line blurs too many issues.
>> 
>> It is a direct quote from Peirce (EP 2:303; 1904), and the point of the 
>> thread is to explicate it.
>> 
>> JFS:  Since mark is his final choice, I'll use mark instead of tinge or tone.
>> 
>> In the referenced passage, Peirce stated, "I dare say some of my former 
>> names are better than those I now use" (EP 2:488; 1908).  In fact, less than 
>> two weeks earlier, he had asked Lady Welby specifically about Tone vs. Mark 
>> (SS 83; 1908); and if I remember right--I do not have a copy of her 
>> reply--she found Tone preferable because a tone of voice is a paradigmatic 
>> example.  Peirce also used Tone in what I think is one of his clearest 
>> passages about this division of Signs (CP 4.537; 1906).
>> 
>> JFS:  General principle:  In any occurrence of semiosis, there is always a 
>> perceptible mark that is interpreted by some mind or quasi-mind as a token 
>> of some type.
>> 
>> This may be a case of hair-splitting on my part, but I would suggest instead 
>> that in any Instance of a Sign, the Tone is the character (or set of 
>> characters) by which the interpreting Quasi-mind recognizes the Sign-Replica 
>> to be an individual Token of the Type.  Acquaintance with the system of 
>> Signs (Essential Information) is necessary and sufficient for this.  It is 
>> analogous to the role of the Immediate Object as that by which the 
>> interpreting Quasi-mind identifies the Dynamic Object of the Sign, for which 
>> Collateral Experience (Experiential Information) is necessary and sufficient 
>> (cf. CP 8.179, EP 2:494; 1909).
>> 
>> As a Possible, the Tone can only have an Immediate Interpretant--"its 
>> peculiar Interpretability before it gets any Interpreter."  As an Existent, 
>> the Token is what produces the Dynamic Interpretant--"that which is 
>> experienced in each act of Interpretation."  As a Necessitant, only the Type 
>> has a Final Interpretant--"the one Interpretative result to which every 
>> Interpreter is destined to come if the Sign is sufficiently considered," 
>> which corresponds to the correct Habit of Interpretation (Substantial 
>> Information).  In other words, "The Immediate Interpretant is an 
>> abstraction, consisting in a Possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a 
>> single actual event. The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual 
>> tends" (SS 111; 1909).
>> 
>> JFS:  In summary, semiosis turns real possibilities into real actualities.
>> 
>> I agree, and would add that semiosis also governs Real actualities in 
>> accordance with Real regularities.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
>> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
>> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>> 
>>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 1:15 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
>>> I believe that the subject 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Culture wires the brain

[Daniel L Everett]

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo16611802.html

https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004132

Here are two recent works of mind on culture and cognition. I will be exploring 
these further in a specifically Peircean context in a book coming out next year 
from OUP. 

Dan Everett

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 8, 2018, at 06:12, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> List, here's an interesting article that resonates with ideas that I've
> touched on in this forum (culture, neural plasticity, scaffolding,
> bucket-of-bugs... no such thing as instinct, no such thing as a "blueprint"
> that wires the brain). I'm not sure whether the author would take it as far
> as I do, but definitely of direct semiotic/biosemiotic relevance:
> https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/08/06/what-if-people-from-different-cultu
> res-and-economic-backgrounds-have-different-brain-wiring/
> 
> Barrett's paper also got me thinking about a point that I've been mulling
> over recently... the importance of initial conditions (scaffolding in the
> context of chaos theory)... the idea that experiences can never occur in
> isolation (objectivity), but must build on prior experiences (subjectivity):
> 
>"This leads to another significant implication-that childrearing and
> early childhood experiences are more important than we thought. Not only do
> early experiences shape our personality and values, they also create the
> wiring that will govern our perception of the world far into adulthood."
> 
> Initial conditions are particularly important in the cultural relativism
> debate, for example, where the Left entertains nonsense about more than two
> genders. Initial conditions based on childhood AND the body that you inhabit
> lock you into a fairly narrow trajectory, with the implication that you
> cannot just wake up one morning to decide that you're a special snowflake in
> the wrong body, and that you need to change genders.
> 
> sj
> 
> 
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON 
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu 
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: peerages

[Daniel L Everett]

Amen. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 31, 2018, at 15:28, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
>> On 7/31/2018 12:37 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
>> I do think it’s become clear that there is more than one community /within/ 
>> this community.
> 
> Peirce had such a broad range of interests that I don't believe
> that anybody could correctly classify them.
> 
> I know that people who have tried to classify my interests
> have always been wrong, and I don't presume to classify
> anybody else's.
> 
> I attended the Peirce Congress at Harvard in 1989 and the
> Peirce Centennial in 2014.  At both of them, there was such
> a broad range of topics and people who attended multiple
> branches that I believe that any attempt to classify anyone's
> interests in Peirce would be misleading and counterproductive.
> 
> In general, I am highly suspicious of any attempt to classify
> anybody, especially so when somebody is trying to classify me.
> 
> John
> 
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON 
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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