ONT Re: De In Esse Predication
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DEIP. Discussion Note 6
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Tom,
I will go back to your earlier questions and
try to work out my own way of answering them.
There are readers of Peirce I know who would
probably give you a significantly different
collection of answers and interpretations,
so this can only be my own sense of it.
Review.
Quiz 1.
CSP: | It must be remembered that
| possibility and necessity
| are relative to the state
| of information.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 4.517,
|"The Gamma Part of Existential Graphs",
|"Lowell Lectures of 1903", Lecture 4.
TJ: 1.1. Is Peirce saying here that there is necessity de dicto, but not de re?
1.2. Is he saying that there are no Aristotelian essences?
1.3. Is he distinguishing various kinds of necessity?
JA: My partially informed guesses:
1.1. No
1.2. No
1.3. Yes
It's not Molly Bloom, but 1 out of 3 ain't bad to my way of counting.
TJ: For example, one might argue that physical causality is necessity de re, and
is not influenced by how much information we have about physical processes.
JA: In the spirit of an even wilder guess, I think that he would say that there
is a difference between what we are destined to believe, for example, about
the objective referent, if any, of the phrase "physical causality" at the
"end of inquiry" (EOI) and what we are likely to believe in that respect
at the present time -- time being relative, too, of course -- and that
it may form a useful analytic ideal or a "hypostatic independentity",
to coin a phrase, to think of this "physical_causality_EOI" as being
there all along, or not being there all along, waiting for us to
discover the quantum of truth in the sign "physical causality".
Quiz 2.
TJ: Perhaps I should know better than to ask this, but what the heck:
2.1. What marks the EOI? No more disagreements among members of
the relevant community of inquiry (physicists, biologists, etc)?
2.2.1. Assuming we do reach an EOI in some
subject area, what accounts for it?
2.2.2. Why have we stopped disagreeing?
2.2.3. Is it that, guided by the pragmatic principle,
we have finally arrived at a set of statements
that accurately represent/describe things as
they really are?
JA: These are good questions, part of what I tried
to address in my dissertation ever in progress:
JA: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm
JA: Whatever the EOI might be in the end,
how it functions in the meantime is,
in effect, as a normative ideal.
JA: The Big EOI can be understood on analogy with the
little EOI's that make up the "fixions of belief"
that we reach every day in our everyday inquiries.
The primer canon shot on that score is found here:
CSP: http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/fixation/fx-frame.htm
I get a handle on this subject with the following two hands:
On the 1st hand, Peirce's Theory Of Signs (PTOS).
On the 2nd hand, Peirce's Theory Of Inquiry (PTOI).
PTOS.
Here is what I personally consider to be the clearest and
the completest of Peirce's definitions of a sign relation:
| A sign is something, 'A',
| which brings something, 'B',
| its 'interpretant' sign
| determined or created by it,
| into the same sort of correspondence
| with something, 'C', its 'object',
| as that in which itself stands to 'C'.
|
| CSP, NEM 4, pages 20-21, & cf. page 54, also available at:
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm
It is one of the few where Peirce is intrepid enough
to go boldly forward without the sop to psychologism.
More detail here:
| On the Definition of Logic [Version 1]
|
| Logic will here be defined as 'formal semiotic'.
| A definition of a sign will be given which no more
| refers to human thought than does the definition
| of a line as the place which a particle occupies,
| part by part, during a lapse of time. Namely,
| a sign is something, 'A', which brings something,
| 'B', its 'interpretant' sign determined or created
| by it, into the same sort of correspondence with
| something, 'C', its 'object', as that in which it
| itself stands to 'C'. It is from this definition,
| together with a definition of "formal", that I
| deduce mathematically the principles of logic.
| I also make a historical review of all the
| definitions and conceptions of logic, and show,
| not merely that my definition is no novelty, but
| that my non-psychological conception of logic has
| 'virtually' been quite generally held, though not
| generally recognized. (CSP, NEM 4, 20-21).
| On the Definition of Logic [Version 2]
|
| Logic is 'formal semiotic'. A sign is something,
| 'A', which brings something, 'B', its 'interpretant'
| sign, determined or created by it, into the same
| sort of correspondence (or a lower implied sort)
| with something, 'C', its 'object', as that in
| which itself stands to 'C'. This definition no
| more involves any reference to human thought than
| does the definition of a line as the place within
| which a particle lies during a lapse of time.
| It is from this definition that I deduce the
| principles of logic by mathematical reasoning,
| and by mathematical reasoning that, I aver, will
| support criticism of Weierstrassian severity, and
| that is perfectly evident. The word "formal" in
| the definition is also defined. (CSP, NEM 4, 54).
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|'The New Elements of Mathematics', Volume 4,
| Edited by Carolyn Eisele, Mouton, The Hague, 1976.
I will pick up from there next time.
Jon Awbrey
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