SUO: Re: Thirdness
> It is always possible to analyze and represent
> things in many different ways.
...
> You can look at it that way if you wish.
You can or you can not... Thirdness may be regarded as about relations, or it
may not. Transitivity may be regarded as a ternary relation or it may not. A
definition may be regarded as a ternary relation or it may not. And so and and
so forth from nuts to nutsier until we've drowned in non sense .
...
> But as the
> theorem says, any quaternary (or tetradic) relation
> can be decomposed into triadic or dyadic relations.
Well, hello John, that's no theorem. Your having stated a claim in an email
doesn't turn the claim into a theorem the next time you make the claim. You
gave no proof but just refused to explain away a possible counter-example.
...
> Peirce's analysis provides much more than the recognition
> that there are irreducible triadic relations.
We're back to our point of departure now. The examples you give (I mean the
valid one, not the obfuscating ones) are picked out from a domain incorporating
agents and agency. We're speaking domain ontology. That doesn't make the goddam
thirdness - whatever it is - so pervasive in the SUO.
What you get from that is that: if SUO does things with agents, we'll have to
wonder about their intent, and we might want to use a ternary relation...
did anybody ever questioned that?
This whole thing got started because the question was: does semiology has any
relevance to the SUO? It does - in your sense, but since "it's always possible
to analyze and represent things in many different ways", maybe it doesn't -
provided the SUO is not a formal ontology and extends in domains involving
agents. The question is then what about the other fragments of SUO?
The stories about hurricanes being personalized and so on is a tissue of non
conclusive elucubrations. I don't see any thirdness in feedbacks, unless
thirdness is a really meaningless and useless notion. As far as I'm concerned
going further with this discussion now would be more unbearable than the loss
of time it already was.
...
> My primary claim is that people who do ontology
> should learn something about their subject. And
> Peirce's work is one place to learn -- not the
> only one, but an important one.
Well, we all want the world to be a better place, don't we? Next time I see the
good fairy, I'll ask for peace in the world and that people who write about kr
and spread their visions be a little bit more rigorous, less superficial, and
substitute reason to fanatism when it come to Peirce.
> John Sowa
>
>