SUO: Re: Propositional Equation Reasoning Systems (PERS)
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Subtitle: Agencies, Models, Reflections in a Glass Menagerie.
We are about to delve into to some fairly picayune details
of a particular sign system, non-trivial enough in its own
right but still rather simple compared to the types of our
ultimate interest, and though I believe that this exercise
will be worth the effort in prospect of understanding more
complicated sign systems, I feel that I ought to say a few
words about the larger reasons for going through this work.
My broader interest lies in the theory of inquiry as a special application or
a special case of the theory of signs. Another name for the theory of inquiry
is "logic". Another name for the theory of signs is "semiotics". So I might
as well have said that I am interested in logic as a special application or a
special case of semiotics. But what sort of a special application? What sort
of a special case? Well, I think of logic as "formal semiotics" -- though, of
course, I am not the first to have said such a thing -- and by "formal" we say,
in our etymological way, that logic is concerned with the "form", indeed, with
the "animate beauty" and the very "life force" of signs and sign actions. And,
yes, perhaps that is too Latin a way of understanding it, but it's all I've got.
Now, if you think about these things just a bit, I know that you will find them
just a little suspicious, for, what besides logic would I use to do this theory
of signs that I hope to apply to this theory of inquiry that I also call "logic"?
But that is, among other things, part of the significance of the word "formal",
for what I use will be a kind of logic, an innate or inured skill at inquiry,
but a kind of logic that is casual, catch-as-catch-can, formative, inchoate,
informal, partly built into our natural language and partly more primitive
than language itself, and to the extent that I use it more than mention it,
mention it more than describe it, describe it more than fully formalize it,
then to that extent it must be consigned to the realm of unformalized and
unreflective logic, where some say "there be oracles", but I do not know.
Still, one of the aims of formalizing what acts of reasoning
that we can is to draw them into an arena where we can examine
them more carefully, perhaps to get better at their performance
than we can unreflectively, and thus to live, to formalize more
another day. Formalization is not the be all end all of human
life, not by a long shot, but it has its uses on that behalf.
Jon Awbrey
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