11 Feb
2024
11 Feb
'24
10:47 p.m.
Edwina, Gary, Jon, List,
As Peirce frequently pointed out, he had a solid understanding of all the methods of
reasoning from the ancient Greeks to the medieval Scholastics to the methods from the
Renaissance to the early 20th C.
In general, the "proper way" depends very much on the theorem proving
algorithms. Peirce did not invent the method of transforming a sentence to make
'is' the verb that connects subject and predicate. That method was invented by
Aristotle and systematized by Boethius. It was widely used in 19th c textbooks,
which were the ones that everybody, including Peirce, had studied .
For the differences between Plato and Aristotle, see slides 13 to 24 of
https://jfsowa.com/talks/patolog1.pdf . For Aristotle's syllogisms and the methods
for transforming sentences to make 'is' the main verb, see slides 25 to 32. The
remainder of patolog1 discusses other patterns of logic from the middle ages to modern
times, including those by Frege and Peirce. For more about modern methods, including
Peirce's influence on them, see patolog2, 3, 4, and 5.
Fundamental principle: The methods of transforming formal logics are reversible.
Anything represented in one format can be translated back and forth without loss of
information. But transformations to and from natural languages and other formats --
formal, informal, linguistic, or graphic -- can lose information (or even worse DISTORT or
CORRUPT Information).
When Peirce wrote anything on logic, he assumed that his readers were familiar with the
kind of material summarized in patolog1.pdf. It's helpful to read that in order to
distinguish Peirce's innovations from his sources and his assumptions about his
readers. Modern methods of reasoning often transform the logic to different formats to
adapt them to various algorithms. Those transformations are reversible (provided that
both formats have equal expressibility).
Re dicisigns: Stjernfelt emphasized the trichotomy of rheme, dicisign, and argument
because he was developing methods of reasoning with sources in natural languages.
But Peirce moved to the more general triad of seme, pheme, and delome, which allow
diagrams and images as representations. He made that switch in 1904-5 when he was mapping
images in the phaneron to existential graphs. Note that he continued to use the term
'phemic sheet' up to the end. But he never used the word 'dicisign' after
he introduced the word 'pheme'. That is an indication of the way his theories
were developing. And I believe that his correspondence with Lady Welby had a strong
influence on that development.
John
_______________________________________
From: "Edwina Taborsky" <taborsky(a)primus.ca>
Gary, list
Thanks - that book however, is from ten years ago. My point is that current research in
information dynamics in the ’natural realms’ - which, very often, doesn’t use Peircean
terms but is obviously working within the same analytic framework of morphological
formation, information generation, transmission and transformation, and the nature of
‘objective idealism’ [ the integration of matter and mind] …is extensive. I’d say that
these are all analyses well within the notion of the dicisign- ie, the concept that
information generation, processing etc is not dependent on language or even consciousness
but is a basic process in the biological and physico-chemical realms. ..operative within
sensate rather than symbolic networking. And - I’d say that these fit the definition of a
dicisign propositional interaction, where meanings [Interpretants] are in direct or
factual connection to the object. The problem is - as noted - this research doesn’t use
Peircean terminology!
Edwina
On Feb 11, 2024, at 11:39 AM, Gary Richmond <gary.richmond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Edwina, List,
ET: I’m a bit surprised by your request - since surely you are aware of the focus in
science of Peircean principles in the biological, physic-chemical and artificial worlds.
Yes, I'm well aware of that focus and have read extensively in the literature. Thank
you, though, for providing some recent examples, none of which I knew.
My question, however, specifically pointed to Stjernfelt's work on dicisigns. I wrote:
"I've been wondering how this move of Peirce [throwing everything possible into
the subject] might figure, if it plays a part at all, in consideration of what Stjernfelt
called 'Natural Propositions'," the dicisign being a generalization of the
proposition. Helmut Pape called Stjernfelt's book "an inter- and
transdisciplinary study that discusses and criticizes theories and uses examples coming
from psychology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, biosemiotics etc."
So, mine was not a general question as to the influence of Peirce in fields other than
logic -- there is no question of that -- but of this particular matter which Jon discusses
at length and which may nor may not extend beyond logic as we generally think of it.
Btw, here is another book I'd highly recommend for discussions of Peirce's
influence in biosemiotics in particular, edited by two fine Peirce scholars.
Peirce and Biosemiotics: A Guess at the Riddle of Life Vinicius Romanini (Editor), Eliseo
Fernández (Editor)
The table of contents suggests the depth of the scholarship both by distinguished Peirce
scholars and equally distinguished biosemioticians.
Table of Contents
Introduction; V. Romanini, E. Fernández.- 1. The Intelligible Universe; N. Houser.- 2. The
Continuity of Life: On Peirce’s Objective Idealism; I.A. Ibri.- 3. Peircian Semiotic
Indeterminacy and Its Relevance for Biosemiotics; R. Lane.- 4. Peircean Habits, Broken
Symmetries, and Biosemiotics; E. Fernández.- 5. Semeiotic Causation and the Breath of
Life; M. Hulswit, V. Romanini.- 6. The Ineffable, the Individual, and the Intelligible:
Peircean Reflections on the Innate Ingenuity of the Human Animal; V. Colapietro.- 7.
Instinct and Abduction in the Peircean Informational Perspective: Contributions to
Biosemiotics; L.F. Barbosa da Silveira, M.E. Quilici Gonzalez.- 8. The Life of Symbols and
Other Legisigns: More than a mere Metaphor?; W. Nöth.- 9. Signs without Minds; J.
Collier.- 10. Dicent Symbols and Proto-propositions in Biological Mimicry; J. Queiroz.-
11. Semeiosis as a Living Process; V. Romanini.
Best,
Gary Richmond
On Sun, Feb 11, 2024 at 10:34 AM Edwina Taborsky <taborsky(a)primus.ca> wrote:
Gary R,list
I’m a bit surprised by your request - since surely you are aware of the focus in science
of Peircean principles in the biological, physic-chemical and artificial worlds.
A few quick examples:
Homeostasis and Information Processing: Eduardo Mizraji. Biosystems 2024 February
"Teleonomic objects are purpose-oriented entities lacking a creator (Igamberdiev,
2023).
"What is the nature of the various types of information that different living beings,
at different scales of their organization, use to inform their regulatory systems? This
information is the result of the simultaneous existence of patterns and receptors capable
of detecting these patterns. In this context, information is an emergent property of the
interaction of two categories of entities, patterns and receptors.
This duo of conditions, thermodynamic openness and the need for homeostatic regulatory
systems, are inherent to all forms of life that we know."
———————
Computation in Biological Systems as a quantum mechanical simulation .
Ron Cottam. Biosystems April 2022.
This article actually references Peirce.
——————————————————
The Information Continuum Model of Evolution BioSystems November 2021 R.Skern Mauritzen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Biosystems journal is a major site for the examination of informational processing
within the natural world. That is - the focus is on information processes - and this,
after all, is what Peircean semiotics is all about. [And there are other journals tha
examine information processing]...
As I’ve kept saying, you don’t have to use Peircean terms to examine the same outlines
Peirce was writing about …Unfortunately, the tendency of many Peircean scholars, to
insist, almost with a religious and even cult-like fervour, on the use of exact and
specific Peircean terms, obscures the fact that the same objective processes are being
outlined in many papers - but- using different terms.
It is no secret that the difficulty of both accessing Peircean texts AND the obscure
terminology [AND, I’ll add, the isolationism of the Peircean scholarly set] has hindered
the widespread use of Peircean theories. But -once past these Walls - it is clear that
the Peircean analysis is a fundamental outline of both the natural and human worlds of
information processing.
Edwina
On Feb 11, 2024, at 12:23 AM, Gary Richmond <gary.richmond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Jon, List,
Thanks for these additional comments and examples as they further clarify Peirce's
bold logical move. As you noted:
JFS: Throwing everything possible into the subject recognizes the indexical nature of most
words--functioning much like proper names, since one must already be acquainted with their
objects in order to understand them--and leaves only the pure/continuous predicate as the
iconic part of the proposition.
Since you mentioned Frederik Stjernfelt, I've been wondering how this move of Peirce
might figure in consideration of what Stjernfelt called "Natural Propositions."
In his extraordinary book, Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce's Doctrine of
Dicisigns, Stjernfelt takes Peirce at his word, so to speak, and generalizes the meaning
of proposition well beyond the logical-linguistic into the natural world, that which
biosemioticians naturally have a particular interested in. I don't know what lasting
impact -- if any -- his book has had in that community since, as far as I can tell, it has
been somewhat resistant to Peircean thinking. This antipathy was suggested to me when I
attended a Biosemiotics Gathering at Roosevelt University in NYC some years ago (I was
asked by Vinicius Romanini to read a paper he himself could not deliver since officials
refused to allow him to board a plane to the USA because he'd brought his Italian,
rather than his Brazilian, passport to the airport) as the several Peircean-inspired
biosemioticians present seemed to be contradicted at every turn.
Be that as it may, Stjernfelt argues in Natural Propositions that Peirce's
generalization of the logical concept of proposition to dicisign as to include semiosis
that occurs in the natural world, is of the greatest consequence for our understanding of
reality beyond our specie's intellectual/logical conception of it. For dicisigns do
not necessarily require human language, thought, and logic -- not human consciousness --
whatsoever.
I'm not a biosemiotician -- although I find the field of considerable interest -- and
I know that you aren't either, Jon. But I'd be most interested in what you or
others on the List might think regarding the generalization of Peirce's furthest
thinking as regards propositions into the natural world.
Best,
Gary Richmond
On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 9:35 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschmidt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Gary, List:
GR: It makes clear why you titled this new thread "The Proper Way in Logic,"
which, when I first read it, sounded quite shocking.
Of course, that characterization is Peirce's own, again written in late 1908 (NEM
3:885) when he evidently adopted it rather suddenly and decisively. Throwing everything
possible into the subject recognizes the indexical nature of most words--functioning much
like proper names, since one must already be acquainted with their objects in order to
understand them--and leaves only the pure/continuous predicate as the iconic part of the
proposition. By contrast, standard first-order predicate logic goes the other way,
throwing everything possible into the predicate and leaving only quantified variables as
the subjects. Peirce himself endorses that approach in some earlier writings.
CSP: The most perfectly thorough analysis throws the whole substance of the Dicisign into
the Predicate. (CP 2.318, 1903)
CSP: It has been shown that in the formal analysis of a proposition, after all that words
can convey has been thrown into the predicate, there remains a subject that is
indescribable and that can only be pointed at or otherwise indicated, unless a way, of
finding what is referred to, be prescribed. (CP 5.525, c. 1905)
CSP: Take the proposition "Burnt child shuns fire." ... On this view, the
predicate is, "is either not a child or has not been burned, or has no opportunity of
shunning fire or does shun fire"; while the subject is "any individual object
the interpreter may select from the universe of ordinary everyday experience." (CP
5.473, 1907)
"Cain killed Abel" becomes "there exists an x and there exists a y such
that x is Cain and y is Abel and x stands in the relation of killing to y." It is an
interesting historical fact that the usual abbreviated notation for such formulations is
derived from one developed by Peirce--for these two examples, ∀x (¬Cx ∨ ¬Bx ∨ Sx) = ∀x
((Cx ∧ Bx) → Sx) and ∃x ∃y (Cx ∧ Ay ∧ Kxy). Still, notice how compact the natural language
expressions are, by virtue of utilizing syntax that iconically matches the flow of
causation instead of spelling everything out with symbols. Likewise, as Frederik
Stjernfelt observes on pages 138 and 172 of his 2022 book, Sheets, Diagrams, and Realism
in Peirce, EGs are more iconic than the corresponding algebraic expressions in the
specific sense that each indefinite individual--now a line of identity instead of a
variable--always appears exactly once, instead of at least twice; in these cases, four and
three times, respectively.
<image.png>
Technically, in "burnt child shuns fire," shunning is a dyadic relation whose
additional correlate is fire. That makes the algebraic notation ∀x ∀y (¬Cx ∨ ¬Bx ∨ ¬Fy ∨
Sxy)) = ∀x ∀y ((Cx ∧ Bx ∧ Fy) → Sxy). Throwing everything possible into the predicate,
there are now two subjects (lowercase letters) and four predicates (uppercase letters).
Throwing everything possible into the subject, there are six subjects--four general
concepts (names) and two indefinite individuals (lines of identity)--and a single
pure/continuous predicate (syntax).
<image.png>
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 4:12 PM Gary Richmond <gary.richmond(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Jon,
Your post sheds light on both associated matters that you discussed in it. This snippet of
a quotation -- and which I've reflected on a number of times previously -- represents
for me something of a succinct summary of the matter, especially as emphasizing the need
for collateral knowledge.
CSP: A proposition can be separated into a predicate and subjects in more ways than one.
But the proper way in logic is to take as the subject whatever there is of which
sufficient knowledge cannot be conveyed in the proposition itself, but collateral
experience on the part of its interpreter is requisite. ... The result is that everything
in a proposition that possibly can should be thrown into the subjects, leaving the pure
predicate a mere form of connection, such as 'is,' 'possesses (as a
character),' 'stands in the dyadic relation ___ to ___ ,' 'and' =
'is at once ___ and ___ ,' etc.
It makes clear why you titled this new thread "The Proper Way in Logic," which,
when I first read it, sounded quite shocking. But it becomes understandable that "a
proposition may have any number of subjects but can have but one predicate which is
invariably general, namely, a pure or continuous predicate that cannot be analyzed further
and expresses the logical relations between the subjects."
As to your question: JAS: "Where do these different constituent signs within a
proposition fit into Peirce's late taxonomies?
You answered: JAS: They are distinguished in his trichotomy according to the mode of
presentation of the immediate object, as he explains in another late 1908 writing."
This will require a bit more study on my behalf. But this summary sentence is clear
enough:
JAS: When a proposition is expressed linguistically in a sentence, the subjects that
denote its objects are either descriptive names or designative pronouns or gestures, while
the pure/continuous predicate that signifies its interpretant is often a copulant sign.
Equally clear is the question of "a sentence like "Cain killed Abel," which
includes no words except those serving as its subjects," Peirce's answer, given
in this lovely passage, explains it quite nicely (within the context of the entire
quotation, of course).
CSP: What, then, is left to serve as Predicate? Nothing but the flow of causation. It is
true that we are more acquainted even with that in Experience. When we see a babe in its
cradle bending its arms this way and that, while a smile of exultation plays upon its
features, it is making acquaintance with the flow of causation. So acquaintance with the
flow of causation so early as to make it familiar before speech is so far acquired that an
assertion can be syntactically framed, and it is embodied in the syntax of every tongue.
Finally, the whole matter is tied up in your concluding paragraph which begins with this
idea.
JAS: Pure/continuous predicates are sometimes conveyed entirely by syntax, which in
natural languages tends to reflect "the flow of causation."
In conclusion: Jon, I did not expect such a complete response to my request for an
explication of this comment in your last post:
JAS: The necessity of collateral experience/observation for any sign to be understood is
one of Peirce's most notable insights. It leads to the recognition that every name in
a proposition is a subject that indexically denotes one of its objects, while its syntax
is the pure predicate that iconically signifies its interpretant as the general form of
their logical relations. (I've added the emphasis I put in this quotation as a kind of
"more iconic" diagram for the purpose of studying your post today. GR).
Again, much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to explain at
length that which was succinctly -- albeit abstractly -- posited in that single sentence I
just added emphasis to above. As usual, quotations and examples proved extremely helpful.
Best,
Gary Richmond