ONT Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information
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JA = Jon Awbrey
JD = Jean-Luc Delatre
I am now having to skip around through the file
of JD's comments and meta-comments, and that is
far too risky a strategy for a linear mentality
like me, so I should discontinue to discontinue
in a moment and continue from where I broke off,
but I find this piece at the end of his remarks
that I can address within the immediate context,
and since it constitutes only around the second
time in recorded history that one of my readers
has tried one of the "exercises for the reader",
how can I possibly think to overlook it?
| It is important to distinguish between the two
| functions of a word: 1st to denote something --
| to stand for something, and 2nd to mean something --
| or as Mr. Mill phrases it -- to 'connote' something.
|
| What it denotes is called its 'Sphere'.
| What it connotes is called its 'Content'.
|
| Thus the 'sphere' of the word 'man' is for me every man
| I know; and for each of you it is every man you know.
|
| The 'content' of 'man' is all that we know of all men, as
| being two-legged, having souls, having language, &c., &c.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 459.
JA: The question is: What sort of thing is a connotation?
Is it a sign? That is to say, is it yet another term?
Or is it something like an abstract attribute, namely,
a character, an intension, a property, or a quality?
And while we're asking, does it really even matter?
JD: NO.
"No" is one answer worth considering.
But then: Why does it not matter?
What reason might be given that
would excuse the indifference?
JD: Before trying to answer a question do you ever ask yourself
for which ultimate purpose you want to get an answer?
I've been known to. But that usually gets me into a lot of trouble.
JA: Hmmm. Now that I think of it,
I think I'll leave that as an
exercise for the reader, till
tomorrow, then ...
JD: My understanding of 'Sphere'
is the set of all things which
the word can possibly name.
Already, then, your putative understanding
of "sphere" is very different than Peirce's.
| Thus the 'sphere' of the word 'man' is for me every man
| I know; and for each of you it is every man you know.
Peirce's concept is parameterized in relation to an interpreter,
and thus in relation to a "moment of interpretation" (MOI), but
your concept is stated in absolute, "perfect information" terms.
In a teapot parallel to our own tiny contre-tempest,
our country-partners are having a future contingent
sea battle over this very vacuity of extensionality.
Let's not go there.
JD: My understanding of 'Content' is the set of attributes,
properties, predicates (whatever you name this, I hope
you understand what I mean) that applies to *all* of
those things in the 'Sphere'.
Again, your understanding is vastly more encompassing than Peirce's:
| The 'content' of 'man' is all that we know of all men, as
| being two-legged, having souls, having language, &c., &c.
Peirce's content is contented with very little in comparison to yours,
accepting what we know by a term instead of passing over our terminus.
That is why I persist in advertising Peirce's lectures of 1865-1866 as
having grasped the thistle of "computational information theory" (CIT),
while many people on the scene today have grown up utterly obliviscent.
JD: But these are *not* the meanings of "denotation" or "connotation",
I *really* don't need to talk about these provided I can talk about
what is denoted and connoted. That is another level of discourse.
Yes, but it is the level of discourse in which we swim,
the one of which we have some immediate grasp, the one
that is "closer to us", as Aristotle said, and the one
in which we cannot help but to begin. So let us begin.
Jon Awbrey
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