SUO: Re: Natural Language, Thought, Ontology
John Sowa wrote:
>
> I recommend the following article by Peirce,
> which he wrote early in his career (age 29):
>
> "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities Claimed For Man",
> Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 140-157.
>
> Available online at:
>
> http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/LIBRARY/bycsp/conseq/cn-main.htm
>
> Following are the "four incapacities",
> which he discusses in further detail:
>
> 1. We have no power of Introspection, but all knowledge of
> the internal world is derived by hypothetical reasoning
> from our knowledge of external facts.
>
> 2. We have no power of Intuition, but every cognition
> is determined logically by previous cognitions.
>
> 3. We have no power of thinking without signs.
>
> 4. We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable.
>
> He was writing this in criticism of Decartes, but it has
> a lot of relevance to the study of thinking in general.
>
> John Sowa
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Phil,
Thanks for opening up an interesting line of inquiry,
one that is crucial, essential, vital to our success,
in which you draw together and highlight three lines
of subject matter, "Language, Thought, and Ontology",
that I, for one, do not believe can be cut apart in
any case, as if in some vain attempt to dictate its
own complexity to the knot of phenomena that we all
wish to understand, not, that is, if what we really
desire is really to understand its integral reality.
Having tarried in the diverse fields, diverting gardens,
and diverted streams of psychology long enough to carry
away a Master's degree, officially in the "Quantitative"
concentration, though I did most of my courses, reading,
and seminar work in Cognitive and in Clinical, I have a
veritable wealth of anecdotes here that I will no doubt
not be able to help regaling you with someday -- but no,
not today! -- I will restrain myself to a more pressing
task, and that is to try and head off what I know to be,
from past experience, a potentially deep and persistent
form of misunderstanding over this tenet of Peirce, and
a maxim that is dear to the hearts and the minds of all
pragmatic thinkers, as a class and as a rule, in effect:
"All thought takes place in signs."
Depending on the implicit definition of "signs" that you bring to the table,
you will either be tempted to remain for the feast or else get up and leave
in disgust on hearing this grace said. That is to say, less farcially, if
your idea of a sign is very restricted when you come in the door, then you
will probably feel that this tenet places an absurdly severe constraint on
the degrees of freedom in thought that you know yourself already to possess.
But if you already share the tenet in the sense that it was indeed intended,
then you will scarcely be shocked at the "very idea", since you will be able
to recognize that it is actually the concept of a sign that is being expanded
and expatiated here, to encompass everything that could conceivably be found
in thought. Thus, it may help to supplement John's benediction from one of
the most important series of papers ever written in the neighborhood of our
present philosphy, if I add these references to my favorite ways of stating
the "pragmatic definition of signs", the likes of which definition is quite
essential to understanding the sense of the statements that Peirce laid out.
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| No. 12. 'On the Definition of Logic'.
|
| 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. (NEM 4, 20-21).
|
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| No. 12. 'On the Definition of Logic'.
|
| 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. (NEM 4, 54).
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References & Additional Commentary:
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00829.html
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/suo/email/msg00894.html
Food For Thought?
A Moveable Feast!
I Wish You E-Joy ...
Jon Awbrey
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