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PEIRCE-L Digest 1290-- February 8-9, 1998
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From PEIRCE-L Forum, Jan 5, 1998, [name of author of message],
"re: Peirce on Teleology"
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: string search vs conceptual index
by joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
2) Re: Hypostatic Symbols (i.e., the concepts underlying the highest , abstractions)
by Cathy Legg
3) Re: What is zero? What is number?
by Cathy Legg
4) Re: Hypostatic Symbols
by Cathy Legg
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Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 12:04:51 -0600
From: joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
To:
Subject: Re: string search vs conceptual index
Message-ID: <002801bd34bc$0e7e5be0$21a432ce[…]ransdell.door.net>
To Thomas Riese:
Because of the many different contexts in which "concrete" appeared that
might be relevant to what you are concerned about, and not being sure of
what the most relevant considerations might be, I just sent to you
separately all of the passages in the CP in which "concrete" occurs
(around 60 of them), in a long message of about 100k. I did it the easy
way, by just including the whole batch of them in the content of the
message rather than by sending them as an attachement. If it doesn't
come out right let me know and I will try another way. I will respond
to you further on the string search, which I welcome the opportunity to
talk about here. I was sure you would understand immediately why I
think it so important, but I would like to try to articulate that
further in response to what you said as I think it has a great deal of
methodological significance at present.
Joe Ransdell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell or <>
Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX 79409
Area Code 806: 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax
ARISBE: Peirce Telecommunity website - http://members.door.net/arisbe
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Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 22:37:48 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: John Oller
Cc: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Hypostatic Symbols (i.e., the concepts underlying the highest , abstractions)
Message-ID:
On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, John Oller wrote:
> The difference between the discriminated patch of yellow associated with
> the banana and the prescinded image of the same is merely one of
> abstractness and not reality....
Thanks, John. This helps a lot.
In what follows, if I read you correctly, you claim that a prescinded
sign concerns a particular instance of, say, a yellow banana, at a
particular space and time. Hypostatic abstraction then moves to
considering the yellow banana at any time or space whatever. Is this right?
If so, and if this is close enough to Peirce's view to make it worth while
discussing in this context, it strikes me that prescissive abstraction
must have a fairly limited use, except possibly as a stage that must be
passed through in order to proceed to hypostatic abstraction. So, for
instance, it appears that any generalising that takes place in scientific
contexts must be hypostatic rather than prescissive abstraction, for
scientists require repeatable and therefore time-and-space-independent
results.
> In my definition of prescission (a little,
> I think, different from Peirce's and formed for a different purpose),
> the prescinded sign (in this case an image of the banana with its
> particular associated yellow color) is actually removed from the yellow
> banana that is discriminated right where the object sits. The
> discriminated sign is that which is actually associated with the object
> in its present position (or inertial location is a better term, because
> the thing might be moving). The prescinded sign in the case of a moving
> object is exactly what is required to remember it where it was before it
> moved from that position, or to anticipate where it will be next.
>
> A prescinded sign of the "yellow" of the banana, on my view, would be
> associated most directly with the prescinded sign of the banana from
> which that yellow was also abstracted by prescission. The difference
> between me and Peirce here may turn out to be trivial but it is that I
> emphasize an actual mental operation carried out in time relative to a
> present perceptual experience. Move your coffee cup a few inches and
> remember it where it was (i.e., imagine it still there in the nearby
> location from which it was moved). This imagined coffee cup is
> prescinded from the one you moved and is a prescinded image of it. Or
> you could move the gorilla with its yellow banana in hand.
>
> Next, to get to hypostatic level, let us suppose that you are somewhere
> away from the gorilla with the yellow banana. It is not in your
> perceptual field at the moment. Then, a concept of that banana would be
> hypostatic. That is, it would be abstracted from one or more actual
> occasions on which you perceived the yellow banana and would be as
> applicable to any one of those occasions as to any other [....]
You then write:
> There is no loss of reality in any of the
> successive abstractions, only a greater mental distance from the object
> with which the process began. The latter, mental distance, is, on my
> reading, the very essence of the idea of abstraction.
This phrase "mental distance" is somewhat vague to me...how does it
function logically apart from with respect to the issue discussed above (re.
spatio-temporal location)?
> The power of the system, and the theory of abstraction which reveals
> that system, is that signs generated by abstraction become material upon
> which further abstractions can be based. They re-enter the stream of
> experience as projections produced by the sign-user.
Yes, I can see this.
You then argue, however, for a certain discontinuity with respect to
the "levels" created by this process:
> [...] Interestingly, the theory
> shows that indefinitely many signs can be produced at each level of
> abstraction but that distinct levels can be defined based on the number
> of cycles necessary to reach a given sign structure. Yet the system does
> not run on without limits. A semantic limit of generality is reached on
> the third cycle of abstraction (i.e., discrimination, prescission,
> hypostasis repeated in this order three times over), and a syntactic
> limit of diminishing returns is reached on the sixth cycle, and a
> pragmatic limit of abstractness is reached on the ninth cycle. Within
> the resultant system, 30 levels of abstractness can be distinguished and
> defined.
Good grief! I wonder whether it would be possible for you to give me an
example of, for example, a sign at the 28th level of abstraction? I'm
curious.
I'm emboldened to ask for this by your dealing so efficiently with my
earlier proffered example (my Banana Gorilla).
>
> > Do I give a degree of existence to the property concerned
> > in the latter case? Or a greater degree of reality?? What is meant
> > exactly by "full generality to a limit" in your passage above?
>
> By "full generality to a limit" is meant the kind associated with a
> hypostatic concept. [..]
> A young child first approximates this limit when the first conventional
> signs begin to emerge. For instance, take even a proper name or its
> equivalent, e.g., Mamma. When the semantic value of this sign is
> discovered and generalized, and the same happens for similar signs, the
> semantic limit is achieved and since a higher degree of generality for
> such signs cannot be attained, the child's attention must turn to other
> tasks.
Is this limit a matter of pure discovery on our part, or is it possible
for us to increase the generality of our own signs by fiat, or a sudden
burst of creativity?
> Pardon me, Cathy, for going on at such length, but your question goes to
> the heart of one of the subtlest results of the theory of abstraction.
> We find that the reality of the object abstracted from, and the reality
> of the material content (if it can be called that) which is abstracted
> from that object (again construing the term "object" as broadly as is
> required) remains exactly as it was in its first estate when it was
> discriminated in its object. When I used to think of abstractions, I
> supposed they were like ghostly spirits hovering in some half-formed
> wispy shape like Casper from the old-time comics.[...]
So did I! But that is nominalistic Platonism.
Thanks again for writing such a detailed response to my query, John.
Cathy.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg,
Philosophy Programme,
RSSS, ANU, ACT, AUS.,
0200.
Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,
Her eightieth winter approaching: "Yesterday he threatened my life.
I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,
The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,
Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
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Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 22:53:47 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: What is zero? What is number?
Message-ID:
I'm coming in a bit late on the discussion of numbers and what category they
might "pertain to". Alan M. suggested initially that they might be
second, as they function indexically (as signs). George S. suggested on the
other hand that they are thirds, legisigns which evoke relationships.
On a more metaphysical note, if we consider numbers as "places" on a
continuous number line, there are remarks in NEM where it seems Peirce
considers numbers as second in that they are, in that sense, points or
haecceities which interrupt the continuity of the line.
He also says:
"We become habituated to think that numbers are capable in themselves of
expressing magnitude, or at least proportional magnitude...but taking
magnitude in the sense of continuous magnitude, numbers in themselves can
express neither magnitudes, nor the ratios of magnitudes. Numbers express
nothing whatsoever except order, discrete order...Numbers cannot possibly
express continuity." (NEM, Vol. III/i, p. 93)
However, I suspect that there is no one answer to this question, but it
rather depends in what light we are regarding numbers, and to what end.
(The categories being not things, properties of things, or parts of things,
but modes of being, as is currently being discussed in another thread.)
Cheers,
Cathy.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg,
Philosophy Programme,
RSSS, ANU, ACT, AUS.,
0200.
Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,
Her eightieth winter approaching: "Yesterday he threatened my life.
I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,
The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,
Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
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Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 22:58:40 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: Everdell[…]aol.com
Cc: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Hypostatic Symbols
Message-ID:
On Fri, 6 Feb 1998 Bill Everdell wrote (slightly subversively):
> To which I cannot resist appending the poem by Hughes Mearns which
> illustrates so many of my classes and sums up so much of ontology for me:
>
> As I was sitting in my chair
> I knew the bottom wasn't there
> Nor legs nor back; but I just sat
> Ignoring little things like that
- which moves me to add a poem by a gifted poet from my hometown of
Melbourne which expresses a very similar idea:
"Come sit down beside me", I said to myself,
And although it doesn't make sense,
I held my own hand in a small sign of trust,
And together I sat on the fence.
(Michael Leunig, a classic work from the mid-'80s).
Now *that's* bootstrapping.
Cheers,
Cathy.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg,
Philosophy Programme,
RSSS, ANU, ACT, AUS.,
0200.
Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,
Her eightieth winter approaching: "Yesterday he threatened my life.
I told him that nightly from six to seven I sat at this table,
The blinds drawn up'; Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train,
Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head:
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
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