----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: "Benjamin Udell" <budell[…]hdgonline.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 03:22:21 -0500
X-Message-Number: 1

Jon, list,

I'm in the process of moving back to NYC & have had little opportunity =
to do more than glance through posts during the past few weeks, but this
struck me because it sounds something I really would like to know about,
but I didn't understand it:

Jon Awbrey:

3. Notice that Peirce follows the mathematician's usual practice,
then and now, of making the status of being an "individual" or
a "universal" relative to a discourse in progress. I have come
to appreciate more and more of late how radically different this
"patchwork" or "piecewise" approach to things is from the way of
some philosophers who seem to be content with nothing less than
many worlds domination, which means that they are never content
and rarely get started toward the solution of any real problem.
Just my observation, I hope you understand.

"Many worlds domination", "nothing less than many worlds domination" --
as opposed to the patchwork or piecewise approach. What is many worlds
domination? When I hear "many worlds" I think of Everett's Many Worlds
interpretation of quantum mechanics.

-Best, Ben Udell

 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Penumber
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:16:40 -0500
X-Message-Number: 2

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

|"The N.I.C.E. marks the beginning of a new era -- the 'really' scientific era.
| Up to now, everything has been haphazard. This is going to put science itself
| on a scientific basis. There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting
| every day and they've got a wonderful gadget -- I was shown the model last time
| I was in town -- by which the findings of each committee print themselves off
| in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour.
| Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it's connected up
| by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports. A glance at
| the Board shows you the policy of the whole Institute actually taking shape under
| your own eyes. There'll be a staff of at least twenty experts at the top of the
| building working this Notice-Board in a room rather like the Tube control rooms.
| It's a marvellous gadget. The different kinds of business all come out in the
| Board in different coloured lights. It must have cost half a million. They
| call it a Pragmatometer."
|
| C.S. Lewis, 'That Hideous Strength', 1943

Happy Beethoven's Birthday!

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:26:27 -0500
X-Message-Number: 3

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

LOR. Discussion Note 2

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

BU = Ben Udell
JA = Jon Awbrey

BU: I'm in the process of moving back to NYC & have had little opportunity
to do more than glance through posts during the past few weeks, but this
struck me because it sounds something I really would like to know about,
but I didn't understand it:

JA: Notice that Peirce follows the mathematician's usual practice,
then and now, of making the status of being an "individual" or
a "universal" relative to a discourse in progress. I have come
to appreciate more and more of late how radically different this
"patchwork" or "piecewise" approach to things is from the way of
some philosophers who seem to be content with nothing less than
many worlds domination, which means that they are never content
and rarely get started toward the solution of any real problem.
Just my observation, I hope you understand.

BU: "Many worlds domination", "nothing less than many worlds domination" --
as opposed to the patchwork or piecewise approach. What is many worlds
domination? When I hear "many worlds" I think of Everett's Many Worlds
interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Yes, it is a resonance of Edward, Everett, and All the Other Whos in Whoville,
but that whole microcosm is itself but the frumious reverberation of Leibniz's
Maenadolatry.

More sequitur, though, this is an issue that has simmered beneath
the surface of my consciousness for several decades now and only
periodically percolates itself over the hyper-critical thrashold
of expression. Let me see if I can a better job of it this time.

The topic is itself a patchwork of infernally recurrent patterns.
Here are a few pieces of it that I can remember arising recently:

| Zeroth Law Of Semantics
|
| Meaning is a privilege not a right.
| Not all pictures depict.
| Not all signs denote.
|
| Never confuse a property of a sign,
| for instance, existence,
| with a sign of a property,
| for instance, existence.
|
| Taking a property of a sign,
| for a sign of a property,
| is the zeroth sign of
| nominal thinking,
| and the first
| mistake.
|
| Also Sprach Zero*

A less catchy way of saying "meaning is a privilege not a right"
would most likely be "meaning is a contingency not a necessity".
But if I reflect on that phrase, it does not quite satisfy me,
since a deeper lying truth is that contingency and necessity,
connections in fact and connections beyond the reach of fact,
depend on a line of distinction that is itself drawn on the
scene of observation from the embodied, material, physical,
non-point massive, non-purely-spectralative point of view
of an agent or community of interpretation, a discursive
universe, an engauged interpretant, a frame of at least
partial self-reverence, a hermeneutics in progress, or
a participant observer. In short, this distinction
between the contingent and the necessary is itself
contingent, which means, among other things, that
signs are always indexical at some least quantum.

There is more, but I am overdue for caffenation ...

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Penumber
From: Gary Richmond <garyrichmond[…]rcn.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 10:26:25 -0500
X-Message-Number: 4

>
>It must have cost half a million. They
>| call it a Pragmatometer
>
If it weren't so expensive, it would no doubt make a terrific Christmas
present for members of this list.

>Happy Beethoven's Birthday!

Muss es sein? Es muss sein!
(Inscription written at the top of the last movement of the String
Quartet op. 135)
Jon Awbrey wrote:

[SEE MESSAGE ABOVE]
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [Arisbe] Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:39:59 -0600
X-Message-Number: 5

Jon:

Would the Kripke conception of the "rigid designator" be an instance of the
"many worlds domination"? I was struck by your speaking of the "patchwork
or piecewise" approach as well in that it seemed to me you might be
expressing the same general idea that I have usually thought of in terms of
contextualism instead: I mean the limits it puts upon what you can say a
priori if you really take contextualism seriously, which is the same as
recognizing indexicality as incapable of elimination, I think.

Joe Ransdell

 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
>
> BU: "Many worlds domination", "nothing less than many worlds >domination" --
> as opposed to the patchwork or piecewise approach. What is many worlds
> domination? When I hear "many worlds" I think of Everett's Many Worlds
> interpretation of quantum mechanics.
>
> Yes, it is a resonance of Edward, Everett, and All the Other Whos in Whoville,
> but that whole microcosm is itself but the frumious reverberation of Leibniz's
> Maenadolatry.
>
> More sequitur, though, this is an issue that has simmered beneath
> the surface of my consciousness for several decades now and only
> periodically percolates itself over the hyper-critical thrashold
> of expression. Let me see if I can a better job of it this time.
>
> The topic is itself a patchwork of infernally recurrent patterns.
> Here are a few pieces of it that I can remember arising recently:
>
> | Zeroth Law Of Semantics
> |
> | Meaning is a privilege not a right.
> | Not all pictures depict.
> | Not all signs denote.
> |
> | Never confuse a property of a sign,
> | for instance, existence,
> | with a sign of a property,
> | for instance, existence.
> |
> | Taking a property of a sign,
> | for a sign of a property,
> | is the zeroth sign of
> | nominal thinking,
> | and the first
> | mistake.
> |
> | Also Sprach Zero*
>
> A less catchy way of saying "meaning is a privilege not a right"
> would most likely be "meaning is a contingency not a necessity".
> But if I reflect on that phrase, it does not quite satisfy me,
> since a deeper lying truth is that contingency and necessity,
> connections in fact and connections beyond the reach of fact,
> depend on a line of distinction that is itself drawn on the
> scene of observation from the embodied, material, physical,
> non-point massive, non-purely-spectralative point of view
> of an agent or community of interpretation, a discursive
> universe, an engauged interpretant, a frame of at least
> partial self-reverence, a hermeneutics in progress, or
> a participant observer. In short, this distinction
> between the contingent and the necessary is itself
> contingent, which means, among other things, that
> signs are always indexical at some least quantum.
>
> There is more, but I am overdue for caffenation ...
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> ________ ___
____________________________________
> Arisbe mailing list
> Arisbe[…]stderr.org
> http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arisbe

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:45:03 -0500
X-Message-Number: 6

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

LOR. Discussion Note 3

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

JR = Joe Ransdell

JR: Would the Kripke conception of the "rigid designator" be an instance
of the "many worlds domination"? I was struck by your speaking of
the "patchwork or piecewise" approach as well in that it seemed to
me you might be expressing the same general idea that I have usually
thought of in terms of contextualism instead: I mean the limits it
puts upon what you can say a priori if you really take contextualism
seriously, which is the same as recognizing indexicality as incapable
of elimination, I think.

Yes, I think this is the same ballpark of topics.
I can't really speak for what Kripke had in mind,
but I have a practical acquaintance with the way
that some people have been trying to put notions
like this to work on the applied ontology scene,
and it strikes me as a lot of nonsence. I love
a good parallel worlds story as much as anybody,
but it strikes me that many worlds philosophers
have the least imagination of anybody as to what
an alternative universe might really be like and
so I prefer to read more creative writers when it
comes to that. But serially, folks, I think that
the reason why some people evidently feel the need
for such outlandish schemes -- and the vast majority
of the literature on counterfactual conditionals falls
into the same spaceboat as this -- is simply that they
have failed to absorb, through the fault of Principian
filters, a quality that Peirce's logic is thoroughly
steeped in, namely, the functional interpretation
of logical terms, that is, as signs referring to
patterns of contingencies. It is why he speaks
more often, and certainly more sensibly and to
greater effect, of "conditional generals" than
of "modal subjunctives". This is also bound up
with that element of sensibility that got lost in
the transition from Peircean to Fregean quantifiers.
Peirce's apriorities are always hedged with risky bets.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: lanother report on the listserver situation
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 12:46:45 -0600
X-Message-Number: 7

The listserver is still limping along, delivering its messages at an
irregular pace. As best I can make it out, it is delivering everything (or
almost everything) to all but a few though unpredictaby as regards time.
Some messages seem to go through fairly rapidly, others not. However, it is
always possible to find out what has been posted by going to the lyris
website, which does have a good reading format on-line for reading messages
one at a time, with various ways of sorting the messages -- by author, by
subject, and by date -- though it won't let you go back further than about
a monthi in time at this point. The URL for the lyris website is

http://lyris.acs.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=peirce-l

You can move through the messages rapidly and you can manually SELECT the
content of individual messages you want to download, COPY them to your
clipboard and then PASTE them to a word processor and PASTE them wherever
you want.

To help keep things going during this difficult period, I am also posting
daily, to a page on the Arisbe website, the messages in the digests which
lyris puts out once a day. The digests are simply the messages from the
previous day, linked together in a single file. I have to format them a bit
to put them up: they are in htm format, but they are basically just ascii
text, and you can download the whole digest for the whole day from your
browser to your word processor by using SElECT ALL, COPY, and PASTE to it,
or you can manually SELECT individual messages, COPY, and PASTE them. The
URL is:

http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/people/peirce-l/digests.htm

Now that I have the paper finished that was taking up all of my time, I will
start reviewing the possible moves to find a more reliable home for the
list. I will review the problems connected with that in a separate
message, though.

 
Joseph Ransdell manager of PEIRCE-L
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 17:36:12 -0500
X-Message-Number: 8

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

LOR. Note 5

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

| The Signs of Inclusion, Equality, Etc.
|
| I shall follow Boole in taking the sign of equality to signify identity.
| Thus, if v denotes the Vice-President of the United States, and p the
| President of the Senate of the United States,
|
| v = p
|
| means that every Vice-President of the United States is President of the
| Senate, and every President of the United States Senate is Vice-President.
| The sign "less than" is to be so taken that
|
| f < m
|
| means that every Frenchman is a man, but there are men besides Frenchmen.
| Drobisch has used this sign in the same sense. It will follow from these
| significations of '=' and '<' that the sign '-<' (or '=<', "as small as")
| will mean "is". Thus,
|
| f -< m
|
| means "every Frenchman is a man", without saying whether there are any
| other men or not. So,
|
| 'm' -< 'l'
|
| will mean that every mother of anything is a lover of the same thing;
| although this interpretation in some degree anticipates a convention to
| be made further on. These significations of '=' and '<' plainly conform
| to the indispensable conditions. Upon the transitive character of these
| relations the syllogism depends, for by virtue of it, from
|
| f -< m
|
| and
|
| m -< a,
|
| we can infer that
|
| f -< a;
|
| that is, from every Frenchman being a man and every
| man being an animal, that every Frenchman is an animal.
|
| But not only do the significations of '=' and '<' here adopted fulfill all
| absolute requirements, but they have the supererogatory virtue of being very
| nearly the same as the common significations. Equality is, in fact, nothing
| but the identity of two numbers; numbers that are equal are those which are
| predicable of the same collections, just as terms that are identical are those
| which are predicable of the same classes. So, to write 5 < 7 is to say that 5
| is part of 7, just as to write f < m is to say that Frenchmen are part of men.
| Indeed, if f < m, then the number of Frenchmen is less than the number of men,
| and if v = p, then the number of Vice-Presidents is equal to the number of
| Presidents of the Senate; so that the numbers may always be substituted
| for the terms themselves, in case no signs of operation occur in the
| equations or inequalities.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 3.66
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives,
| Resulting from an Amplification of the Conceptions of Boole's Calculus of Logic",
|'Memoirs of the American Academy', Volume 9, pages 317-378, 26 January 1870,
|'Collected Papers' (CP 3.45-149), 'Chronological Edition' (CE 2, 359-429).

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: "Benjamin Udell" <budell[…]hdgonline.net>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 21:32:58 -0500
X-Message-Number: 9

I wish I had more time to ponder the "many-worlds" issue (& that my
books were not currently disappearing into heavily taped boxes). I had
thought of the piecemeal approach's opposite as the attempt to build a
kind of monolithic picture, e.g., to worry that there is not an infinite
number of particles in the physical universe for the infinity integers.
But maybe the business with rigid designators & domination of many
worlds has somehow to do with monolithism.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

There spring to mind some VERY tangential remarks, i.e., on a topic
related to the present only by the contingency of Jon's way of writing
things:

Like Jon apparently, I was sad to hear recently of William "Tex"
Henson's death (hit by a pick-up truck). (Animator of Rocky &
Bullwinkle, Sherman & Mr. Peabody with his Way-Back machine, & Fractured
Fairy Tales narrated by character actor & sometimes Fred Astaire
sidekick Edward Everett Horton, to whom Jon alludes. Did Horton narrate
an animated version of Dr. Seuss's "Horton Hears a Who"? Google comes up
sparse on this.) Seuss's Horton the Elephant discovers a mini-world, a
universe very small for us but quite large enough for its inhabitants.
By way of excuses for drawing out the threads of Jon's allusions, I can
say: they are allusions that not everybody on this international list
may recognize. Also I've been thinking, or daydreaming, lately about the
extent to which American sensibilities have been influenced starting
during the latter half of the 20th Century by comic strips, comic books,
"the funny papers" ("See you in the funny papers!"), _Mad Magazine_,
animated cartoons. I'd say it's gotten into American literature too.
(One way or another, I notice or "sense" it, in Ishmael Reed of course,
Douglas Woolf, Gilbert Sorrentino, William Eastlake a little, & some
others. Of course there's the Italian writer Italo Calvino's
_cosmicomics_ & _t zero_ with "The Evolution of Birds" especially!)

- Best, Ben Udell

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

LOR. Discussion Note 2

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

BU =3D Ben Udell
JA =3D Jon Awbrey

BU: I'm in the process of moving back to NYC & have had little opportunity
to do more than glance through posts during the past few weeks, but his
struck me because it sounds something I really would like to know about,
but I didn't understand it:

JA: Notice that Peirce follows the mathematician's usual practice,
then and now, of making the status of being an "individual" or
a "universal" relative to a discourse in progress. I have come
to appreciate more and more of late how radically different this
"patchwork" or "piecewise" approach to things is from the way of
some philosophers who seem to be content with nothing less than
many worlds domination, which means that they are never content
and rarely get started toward the solution of any real problem.
Just my observation, I hope you understand.

BU: "Many worlds domination", "nothing less than many worlds domination" -
as opposed to the patchwork or piecewise approach. What is many Worlds
domination? When I hear "many worlds" I think of Everett's Many Worlds
interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Yes, it is a resonance of Edward, Everett, and All the Other Whos in Whoville,
but that whole microcosm is itself but the frumious reverberation of Leibniz's
Maenadolatry.

More sequitur, though, this is an issue that has simmered beneath
the surface of my consciousness for several decades now and only
periodically percolates itself over the hyper-critical thrashold
of expression. Let me see if I can a better job of it this time.

The topic is itself a patchwork of infernally recurrent patterns.
Here are a few pieces of it that I can remember arising recently:

| Zeroth Law Of Semantics
|
| Meaning is a privilege not a right.
| Not all pictures depict.
| Not all signs denote.
|
| Never confuse a property of a sign,
| for instance, existence,
| with a sign of a property,
| for instance, existence.
|
| Taking a property of a sign,
| for a sign of a property,
| is the zeroth sign of
| nominal thinking,
| and the first
| mistake.
|
| Also Sprach Zero*

A less catchy way of saying "meaning is a privilege not a right"
would most likely be "meaning is a contingency not a necessity".
But if I reflect on that phrase, it does not quite satisfy me,
since a deeper lying truth is that contingency and necessity,
connections in fact and connections beyond the reach of fact,
depend on a line of distinction that is itself drawn on the
scene of observation from the embodied, material, physical,
non-point massive, non-purely-spectralative point of view
of an agent or community of interpretation, a discursive
universe, an engauged interpretant, a frame of at least
partial self-reverence, a hermeneutics in progress, or
a participant observer. In short, this distinction
between the contingent and the necessary is itself
contingent, which means, among other things, that
signs are always indexical at some least quantum.

There is more, but I am overdue for caffenation ...

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

 
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Logic Of Relatives
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 23:14:31 -0500
X-Message-Number: 10

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

LOR. Note 6

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

The quantifier mapping from terms to their numbers that Peirce signifies
by means of the square bracket notation has one of its principal uses in
providing a basis for the computation of frequencies, probabilities, and
all of the other statistical measures that can be constructed from these,
and thus in affording what we might call a "principle of correspondence"
between probability theory and its limiting case in the forms of logic.

This brings us once again to the relativity of contingency and necessity,
as one way of approaching necessity is through the avenue of probability,
describing necessity as a probability of 1, but the whole apparatus of
probability theory only figures in if it is cast against the backdrop
of probability space axioms, the reference class of distributions,
and the sample space that we cannot help but to abdeuce upon the
scene of observations. Aye, there's the snake eyes. And with
them we can see that there is always an irreducible quantum
of facticity to all our necessities. More plainly spoken,
it takes a fairly complex conceptual infrastructure just
to begin speaking of probabilities, and this setting
can only be set up by means of abductive, fallible,
hypothetical, and inherently risky mental acts.

Pragmatic thinking is the logic of abduction, which is just another
way of saying that it addresses the question: "What may be hoped?"
We have to face the possibility that it may be just as impossible
to speak of "absolute identity" with any hope of making practical
philosophical sense as it is to speak of "absolute simultaneity"
with any hope of making operational physical sense.

Jon Awbrey

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
 
 
---
END OF DIGEST 12-16-02
---