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PEIRCE-L Digest 1273 -- January 26, 1998
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PEIRCE-L Digest 1273
Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
2) Re: "Oppositional Identity"
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
3) Re: "Oppositional Identity"
by David.Low[…]anu.edu.au (David W. Low)
4) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by Tom Burke
5) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by Cathy Legg
6) Re: "Oppositional Identity"
by David.Low[…]anu.edu.au (David W. Low)
7) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
8) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
9) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
10) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
11) Re: "determines"
by Ken Ketner
12) Re: "determines"
by Ken Ketner
13) note to Howard and David
by joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 03:29:34 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID: <34e0020c.15417632[…]pop3.cris.com>
piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat) wrote:
>Bill Overcamp wrote:
>>Smell the flowers? They have the most heavenly bouquet. It's
>>enough to seduce the most hardened heart! And I warn you: You
>>will never understand the New List until you delight in these
>>simple flowers.
>Yikes, Bill, never? That's discouraging, but I appreciate the fair
>warning. I know enough of man's chartity to man to recognize a merciful
>sentence when I get one! (;>)
>Hard of heart is not for me to say. I'm not proud of it if I am. But
>I'm pretty sure I really do love the heavenly scent of flowers.
>Especially the simple ones - I try, but can't smell some of those effete
>inbred varieties.
>If I may turn a phrase of yours : In essentials diversity, in
>nonessentials unity, in all things charity. At least in this I think we
>might agree that all's well that ends well.
There are two lessons to be learned from the flowers. First that
we must slow down to smell them. The second is more hidden in
their manifold beauty. But no one has answered my question: Why
reduce multiplicity to mere unity?
-----------------------------------
"In essentials unity, in nonessentials diversity,
in all things charity"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
William Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 23:19:22 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "Oppositional Identity"
Message-ID: <19980125.231924.13062.0.piat[…]juno.com>
Dear folks,
Seems to me there are at least two major issues:
1. What if any are the grounds for justifying one individual having power
over another.
2. What are the types of interpersonal influence.
With respect to issue one I believe that it in general with few
exceptions no adult individual should have power based or coercive
authority over another. However, I believe it is in the interest of
society and its children that the parents and adults in general have some
authority over the children. I believe this principle should also be
generalize with extreme caution to some individuals who are incapable of
self support or freely choose a dependent role.
Also there may be rare occasions when the interests of the group must
take precedence over those of the individual and vice versa. In these
cases I believe it would be justifiable for one individual to have power
over another or others. Societies are still sorting out under what
conditions these circumstances occur. To the extent possible I think a
direct democracy and government based upon rule of law is the best way to
conduct this sorting out. Where direct democracy can not be achieved I
would resort to random lotteries to pick representatives. I believe it
is in the interests of societies and individual to establish humane but
power based ways of enforcing whatever interim conclusions they reach
while at the same time allowing sufficient latitude for change and
development. I agree with Howard that progress depends upon more than
the mere elimination of error. Constructive alternatives are needed as
well. I also agree with Joe's point that all forms of coercion
(including the group over the individual or vice versa) ought be accepted
rarely and then only with extreme care, deep concern and vigilance.
Finally I agree with David that persistent objectors are an interesting
and instructive group. Some seem to do so to preserve freedom of choice.
Some seem to "misbehave" just for attention. I believe Dostoevsky's
Underground man was, among other things, an example of the former.
As for issue two, I believe that rewards and punishments are the basic
forms of interpersonal control. Rewards increase the reinforced
behavior. Withholding rewards extinguishes the behavior and punishment
suppresses the behavior. Removing one from punishment is a form of
negative reinforcement. Providing expertise can also be a form of
reward. Some folks have also found occasions to single out "identifying
with the aggressor" and "positive identification" (as with a loved one)
as processes by which reinforcement patterns are internalized.
Punishment is very effective in suppressing behavior as long as the
threat of punishment is there. But as we have repeatedly seen
demonstrated (Bosnia eg) when the cats away the mice will play because
punishment supresses but does not extinguish behavior. Moreover
punishment interferes with the learning of new alternative behavior .
It must also be recognized that control of resources gives one the power
to reward and punish others. Thus a just society must provide for the
just distribution of resources. In the family, where the golden rule is
most likely to obtain, a form of natural communism seems to hold in most
societies. In the society at large some kind of modified free enterprise
seems to work best in justly distributing resources.
Nothing much new from me I realize. Much of it no doubt shop worn and
faulty. Still I wanted to join the discussion because I enjoy the group
interaction and I think the issues are interesting. After all, what's
more interesting to Peirceans than matters of one verses others (not
one) and whatever mediates between the two.
Best to all,
Jim Piat
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 15:22:48 +1100 (EST)
From: David.Low[…]anu.edu.au (David W. Low)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "Oppositional Identity"
Message-ID: <199801260422.PAA05541[…]anugpo.anu.edu.au>
On Thu, 24 Jan 1998, Howard Callaway wrote:
>I can
>imagine two general directions of explication of your talk of an "opposi-
>tional identity." I can imagine on the one hand that your talk of identity
>here concerns something like "appearance" or identity as a kind of pub-
>lic stereotype. This direction of interpretation seems to be called for
>where you talk of someone's "visible identity" and how it may appear
>unreasonable. Here I certainly sympathize with what you say, and I would
>add that I do not think that any viable self-identity can be built on
>mere opposition to something or other. But on the other hand, you talk
>of identity also may invite a deeper conception of identity, according
>to which it really does make no sense to think of self-identity or
>identity of a position merely in terms of opposition. Opposition, put
>into terms of discourse is a critical attitude. But a significant depth
>of criticism depends upon some positive alternative to what is being
>criticized.
This is pretty much what I had in mind, Howard. We might say the first
variety is an oppositional identity built in the mode of secondness, the
other, a semiotic identity built in the mode of thirdness, or as Joe
Ransdell put it so well a while back on this thread, an identity that is
"other than of mere otherness"('Context and Continuity' 9/1/98).
Environmentalists who build an 'otherwise identity' are in secondness,
while those who build a semiotic identity are 'other than otherwise', that
is, thinking in the mode thirdness. In the latter identity, I suggest, the
environmentalist sees that it is not sufficient to be concerned with the
visible opposition only (the 'stop this stop that' mode of action). To
oppose secondness with secondness merely displaces the environmental
concern into another domain (temporally, geographically, politically or
perhaps, most hard of all to detect, ideologically). As Peirce explained,
thirdness has a way of continually reappearing -- we just can't seem to get
rid of it no matter how hard we try to transform the world into a machine.
You continue:
>There is a kind of authority which comes from mastering a subject of
>interest. This kind of authority may or may not be found, in a given
>instance, in combination with any social authority or position. I
>think that a communicational community is much the pooer for not
>recognizing this kind of authority. Concerning the Peirce-l in
>particular, I think of Joe's authority, exercised it directing us
>to relevant texts of Peirce, or I think of Tom Anderson's authority
>as a mathematician or knower to the philosophy of mathematics (although
>he always claims to be no professional). I could perhaps mention other
>examples.
>
>So, to me, thinking that we need not recognize any authority seems a
>mistake, though what you perhaps intended to bring out of the passage
>from Joe's posting is the idea that we need not recognize any source of
>authority which does not arise from the discussions themselves. In
>the end, of course, I should add that the authority which arises out of
>the discussions has (or should have) a good deal to do with the
>development of positive identity regarding the problems and issues of
>interest.
>
>It is crucial to liberal democratic societies that they provide social
>support to social criticism. It is equally crucial that the be able to
>distinguish between criticism embedded in developed alternatives and
>criticism which operates without contextual support.
I find it interesting that you introduce the idea of professionalism. To
work within social structures, we first have to see them, which is
something that arises in the experience of opposition (being different can
be very empowering in this sense). Only in the semiotic identity,
however, can we accept that authority not only exists, but that it can be
consciously controlled (thought about) in the domain of legitimate public
knowledge (thirdness). In other words, we can recognise the structure of
authority as something general (ie., a sign), and perform intellectual
experiments upon our conceptions of it.
For example, there are a potentially infinite number of ways to build a
house, but once house-building becomes a professional activity, that is,
something only to be done by accredited individuals, we find that
house-building becomes embedded in a set of institutional contexts that
limit the way we go about it. This is not a bad thing if these limiting
institutions are thought of as beings capable of thinking in thirdness, or
as Joe puts it, as capable of being thought about by communicational
communities. If the communicational community is interested in learning
more about the subject-matter it forms in respect to, it might allow solar
architects to join the community. This, in turn, might grow a scientific
interest in the orientation of buildings to the weather, or perhaps
generate research into the thermodynamics of the materials used in
construction. Building a house in this world-view then becomes an
interdisciplinary, cooperative scientific endeavour, not a matter of blind
belief. Indeed, community-minded architects might even think to ask people
what it feels like to live in the buildings they make (a move from the
macro-level to the micro-level of the sign).
What I am suggesting, then, is that structures of authority permit ways of
thinking that are not what we sometimes think they are. Authority is
general, thus, it necessarily fails to isolate ideas in the oppositional
mode of thinking. Put another way, authority is defined in the same terms
that it seeks to define itself within.
Perhaps the above has something to do with why Peirce uses the term
'semiotic' rather than 'semiotics'. Maybe he wanted to emphasise the
semiotic of semiotic. The same idea might apply to 'authority' rather than
'authorities' if we place the emphasis on the general rather than the
particular. I am inclined to think that this is the kind of progression in
reasoning that enables us to distinguish between resemblance and
contiguity, or abduction and induction. (Does this match up with your
'criticism without contextual support' and 'criticism embedded in
developed alternatives' Howard?)
Joe also mentions in his posting of 9/1 that to communicate, we need all
three forms: abduction, induction, and deduction (Joe did not use these
terms as he was working from Peirce's earlier subject, predicate, and
illative relationship framework, but I think what I am suggesting here
matches up). I mention this as there appears to me to be some disagreement
in the reading I am doing as to whether the order should be
abduction-induction-deduction, or abduction-deduction-induction. I have
used the former, but if anyone wants to oppose this ordering, I would be
interested.
David Low
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David W. Low
Centre for the Public Awareness of Science
Faculty of Science
Australian National University
Canberra 0200, Australia
ph: +61 2 6249 2456; fax: +61 2 6249 4950
http://www.anu.edu.au/scicom/scicom/students/low/DAVIDHM.HTM
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 00:29:38 -0500
From: Tom Burke
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID:
At 9:20 PM -0600 1/25/98, BugDaddy wrote:
>... But no one has answered my question: Why
>reduce multiplicity to mere unity?
As a starting point for "New List", Peirce is taking a cue from Kant's
notion of judgments as "functions of unity" ("by `function' I [Kant] mean
the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one
representation", "in every judgment there is a concept which holds of many
representations", etc etc). See Book I of the "Transcendental Analytic" in
Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. It's not a matter of "reducing"
multiplicity to unity, but of determining objects in the manifold of
impressions (or something like that). Peirce, of course, will have
different story to tell about how all of this works.
______________________________________________________________________
Tom Burke http://www.cla.sc.edu/phil/faculty/burket
Department of Philosophy Phone: 803-777-3733
University of South Carolina Fax: 803-777-9178
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 17:08:42 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID:
On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, Bill Overcamp wrote:
> >I wholeheartedly agree with your spirit of challenging every bit of this
> >essay. Otherwise I don't believe I'm ever going to really get a full
> >grasp of it. So I want to take a try at responding to the substance of
> >your challenge to see if I'm reading the intent of this essay correctly.
> >As I understand the notion of a conception - a conception of something- A
> > is not merely a mechanical response to A but includes the notions of
> >comprehending or being aware of and grasping the idea of A. To conceive
> >is to bring into being - the moment of conception!
>
> Yes, but what's the point of unity when multiplicity is so much
> more fun?
>
Dear Bill,
Cabbage, scissors, brain in a vat, 89 x 89, world, coffee, Duns Scotus,
Empire State Building, swiss cheese, pine tree, several hundred thousand
flying sea-gulls...
Are you bored yet?......
Cheers,
Cathy.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg, School of Philosophy,
A14, University of Sydney,
Sydney, 2006.
"Empty is the argument of the philosopher by which no human disease is healed."
Epicurus
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 18:24:24 +1100 (EST)
From: David.Low[…]anu.edu.au (David W. Low)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "Oppositional Identity"
Message-ID: <199801260724.SAA17850[…]anugpo.anu.edu.au>
At 9.:26pm 25/1/98 Jim L Piat wrote:
>
>It must also be recognized that control of resources gives one the power
>to reward and punish others. Thus a just society must provide for the
>just distribution of resources. In the family, where the golden rule is
>most likely to obtain, a form of natural communism seems to hold in most
>societies. In the society at large some kind of modified free enterprise
>seems to work best in justly distributing resources.
Jim,
One of the passages of Roberta Kevelson's book _Peirce, Science, Signs_
(New York: Peter Lang,1996) that grabbed my attention may be of interest
here:
"The concept of property...is always...a relational concept: the property
owner is always related to those who are non-owners. The various functions
of Property, such as power, privilege, obligation, responsibiltiy, are all
relational terms, and understandable by a logic of relations.
By contrast, the ideas of Wealth, Asset, Resource are all attributes or
extensions of the possessor and carry with them no duty or relational
responsiveness to others" (p65f).
As I typed this in I noticed for the first time the use of capitalisation
as an additional means to underscore the use of Peirce's catgories.
Anyway, by way of a more personal example of the way we can distinguish
thinking in secondness or thirdness, I would like to mention some of what
happened to me when I was an environmental representative on a community
land-management committee. I can vividly remember the most powerful farmer
in the group telling me (well, yelling at me actually), "I can do anything
I want on my land". He rather seemed to me to have missed the point of
being a member of a community-based land-care group, perhaps he was even
missing the point of being a human being, as he was adopting an
oppositional identity with the intention of shutting me up. It worked for
a short-time, but once I managed to get him off the topic of
land-degradation and locate him back into his usual 'community spirited
self' we soon managed to talk sensibly.
My encounter with the local water-board chemist is also pertinent. He was
also trying to silence me in the 'voice of authority', so to get him to
think in thirdness I asked him which of the chemical elements he thought we
could intentionally make extinct. I can't recall the exact element it was
he mentioned, but he happily gave me an element that he thought we could do
without (forever mind you). I then asked him what that particular element
he had selected could be used for. He thought about this for quite a long
time, and then some thirdness crept in. He then changed his mind about the
wisdom of rendering an element extinct and began to support some of my
conservation suggestions. (It is interenting to think of the trans-Uranic
elements in the above context, as the only reason these exist is because we
set about inventing nuclear weapons.)
Anyway, before I digress too far into personal recollections, I want to
mention that in writing the above I am led to recall that Peirce had
discussed the issues we seem to have in mind at CP 8.160. Upon reading it
again, I am led to think that perhaps we should add Peirce's name to the
list of people who founded environmental ethics as a subject-matter. At CP
8.160 Peirce says:
"If [Professor Mezes] would not follow the decisions of Texas courts as the
ultimate evidence concerning right and wrong, he could not fail to see that
the real reason why the judge awards damages to B is that to allow a
private person to undertake a business humanly sure in the long run to
injure his heighbors (and all the more so if he 'cannot learn to use'
suitable preventative measures), and then to allow him to pocket all the
profits, and make his neighbors pay for the incidental losses, woud be to
bring himself and his court into public contempt and into no little
danger."
Still a very current problem in relation to environment issues. Many
people still think that by diluting pollution, or by 'selling' toxic waste
to countries without preventative regulations, that they have somehow
'fixed the problem'. I think Peirce would have been a greenie if he was
living now. I mean, he even formulated a nice version of the environmental
slogan 'Think globally, act locally!". Here is how it sounded in 1901: "A
stay-at-home conscious does the most to render earth habitable" (CP 8.162).
(In case I am being too opaque, an ecosystem is a home-system.)
I seem to be writing my thesis on-line here, but I am enjoying this thread.
Cheers
David Low
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David W. Low
Centre for the Public Awareness of Science
Faculty of Science
Australian National University
Canberra 0200, Australia
ph: +61 2 6249 2456; fax: +61 2 6249 4950
http://www.anu.edu.au/scicom/scicom/students/low/DAVIDHM.HTM
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 12:58:51 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID: <34d887bc.4668983[…]pop3.cris.com>
Cathy Legg wrote:
>> Yes, but what's the point of unity when multiplicity is so much
>> more fun?
>Dear Bill,
>Cabbage, scissors, brain in a vat, 89 x 89, world, coffee, Duns Scotus,
>Empire State Building, swiss cheese, pine tree, several hundred thousand
>flying sea-gulls...
Is this what psychologists call free association?
>Are you bored yet?......
No, why? I particularly like the sea gulls, by the way.
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
Bill Overcamp
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 13:03:15 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID: <34d9888f.4880396[…]pop3.cris.com>
Tom Burke wrote:
>At 9:20 PM -0600 1/25/98, BugDaddy wrote:
>>... But no one has answered my question: Why
>>reduce multiplicity to mere unity?
>As a starting point for "New List", Peirce is taking a cue from Kant's
>notion of judgments as "functions of unity" ("by `function' I [Kant] mean
>the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one
>representation", "in every judgment there is a concept which holds of many
>representations", etc etc). See Book I of the "Transcendental Analytic" in
>Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. It's not a matter of "reducing"
>multiplicity to unity, but of determining objects in the manifold of
>impressions (or something like that). Peirce, of course, will have
>different story to tell about how all of this works.
That gives us a start, at least: Kant. Personally, I don't know
much about him. What I do *seem to* recall is that he made a
sharp distinction between the world of ideas and that of
phenomena, so that the two were, at best, only accidentally
related. Am I getting warm, or does this have something to do
with the New List?
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
Bill Overcamp
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 10:14:01 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID: <19980126.101413.12222.1.piat[…]juno.com>
Tom Burke wrote:
> It's not a matter of "reducing"
>multiplicity to unity, but of determining objects in the manifold of
>impressions (or something like that). Peirce, of course, will have
>different story to tell about how all of this works.
>
Tom, thanks. This is part of what I was trying to get a hold of in my
response to Bill. I'm glad we're going slowly. Peirce is so compact
that for me there is both the danger of my finding him incomprehensible
as well as the danger of my too quickly assuming I've understood him when
I haven't. Come to think of it, these are problems I have with everyone
and everything.
Jim Piat
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 10:13:36 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID: <19980126.101413.12222.0.piat[…]juno.com>
>
>Dear Bill,
>
>Cabbage, scissors, brain in a vat, 89 x 89, world, coffee, Duns
>Scotus,
>Empire State Building, swiss cheese, pine tree, several hundred
>thousand
>flying sea-gulls...
>
>Are you bored yet?......
>
>Cheers,
>Cathy.
>
Cathy, your too kind _ How about:
Cabbagescissorsbraininavat...
or maybe:
C a b b a g e s c i s s o
or perhaps even
((=)lolo
or even worse:
::::::::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::
And Bill, More fun than conception? Let's see, that's hard to conceive.
Oh I get you, multiple conceptions. Seriously, I think Pierce and Kant
are talking about the process whereby the dyadic multitude of sensory
impressions are conceived (brought into the triadic being of awareness so
to speak). True enough many conceptions are better than one, but all the
dyadic impressions in the world do not equal the heavenly majesty of even
one conception (cognitive or otherwise). As you so aptly remind us:
"Life is a miracle waiting to happen."
And thanks too for the following:
>>There are two lessons to be learned from the flowers. First that we
must slow down to smell them. The second is more hidden in their
manifold beauty.<<
Bill, I just thought some more about this unity business. I do not
dismiss your points lightly. I'm thinking the unity of the reduction
is not so much pointing to the idea of reducing clutter so much as toward
the idea that "more is less". The unity spoken of is that of
"connecting" the diverse elements under a coherent (unified?) theme or
conception. Yes, I believe you are quite right above!
Bill, I don't think any of this definitively answers/resolves your
question/comment. Just some long winded thoughts your more succinct and
pointed question provoked.
Jim Piat
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 98 10:27:28 CST
From: Ken Ketner
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "determines"
Message-ID: <199801261628.KAA05197[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu>
It is called "further research." You could be perfect and get as much of the
list right, and then someone come along later and find more. It is
called fallibilism. k
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 98 10:31:29 CST
From: Ken Ketner
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "determines"
Message-ID: <199801261646.KAA05365[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu>
I would hazard to say that there is no fundamental entity, a person.
There is but the flow of relationships. So what seems to me to be happening
is that there is a process by which a limited amount of information is being
determined by an anticipated future bit of information: to wit, the name
by which the blond-haired mand standing in the strand is normally known. So
a likely hypothesis, it seems to me, about 'determined', is that x determines
y if x "fixes" y more meaningfully. If some approach like that is
sustainable, then 'determine' in the sense that CSP uses it, is a word on the
side of interpreting, instead of being an efficiently causal word on the
side of the object (object causes or determines something). That is, I suspect
that Peirce's use of 'determine' is not at all the typical causal sense.
Just as a short and possibly meaningless daydream: It is well known in
logic that X if Y is translated into standard logical form as Y implies X.
X determines Y (in CSP's sense) might be translated into a more standard
sentence in semeiotic as Y is a correct interpretation of X.
So if Watson correctly determines the name of the blond-haired man in the
Strand, the man's name will be a correct interpretation of his phaneroscopic
appearance "blond-haired man standing THERE in the Strand."
Ken Ketner
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 11:33:14 -0800
From: joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
To: peirce-l[…]TTACS.TTU.EDU
Subject: note to Howard and David
Message-ID: <34CCE4F9.93DCF92D[…]door.net>
To Howard C and David L:
Since there is no apparent disagreement, I won't push further on the
authority topic with you, Howard (though I may be discussing it
independent of reference to your post), and since I have not had time
yet to think through David's message about oppositional identity, to
which your earlier post was primarily addressed, I have no response to
make on that part of your message either.
Later,
Joe
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