Re: SUO: RE: Ontology, Epistemology, Semiotics
> >
> >So - consider a gift. A gives B to C. Peirce says at one point that this
> >situation does not consist in A's throwing B away, and B's hitting C.
> >
> >So, how would you decompose such a situation description into dyadic
> >relations? One might perform a 'hypostatic abstraction' of the giving
> >event (Davidson-style) and say:
> >
> >(giver GIVINGEVENT001 A)
> >(givee GIVINGEVENT001 C)
> >(gift GIVINGEVENT001 B)
> >
> >However, note the implicit triadic relation of identity which links the
> >denotata of the three tokens of GIVINGEVENT001 together, which is
> >actually required for the representation to mean what we want it to.
>
> Cathy,
>
> I'm one of the Peircean unwashed and hence appreciate the attempt at a simple
example. Could you say a bit more about how this example illuminates or
exemplifies the notion of Thirdness?
Because in that analysis Cathy assumes that there is a ternary identity
relationship. Jon Awbrey will confirm and send you his tutorial. In essence,
ternary means three hence thridness... I'm still a bit confused.
> After all, couldn't I say more about GIVINGEVENT001, e.g., (date
GIVINGEVENT001 D), (eventOccursAt GIVINGEVENT001 E), etc,, and wouldn't this
then involve an implicit quartic, quintic, etc. relation of identity? So why
does this demonstrate Thirdness as opposed to, say, Fourthness or Fifthness or
whatever?
I find this problematic as well. Though I think dealing with events will always
end up in muddy tricks. The problem with them is that you can always claim that
the determinations you want to add are essential but not distinguishing
characteristics, whereas that there is a gift a giver and a givee would be. In
that case you end up with three binary relations and it's not clear that you
can make justice to the ternary claim.
However it seems that this is true also in hogher arity claims: John is between
Mary and Rosamonde according to Wilbert. It does not seem reducible to any
combination of ternary claims by the standards of the analysis of ternary
claims themselves.
Pierre
> best,
>
> Mike Pool
>
>
> >Cheers,
> >Cathy.
> >
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Cathy Legg, Phd Cycorp, Inc.
> >Ontologist 3721 Executive Center Dr., ste 100
> >www.cyc.com Austin, TX 78731-1615
> >
> > download OpenCyc at http://www.opencyc.org
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
--
Pierre Grenon, IFOMIS Uni Leipzig
http://people.ifomis.uni-leipzig.de/pierre.grenon/