ONT Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information
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My head is spinning, and I need to try and get a grip on the matter
of how we are supposed to understand words like attribute, character,
intension, feature, mark, predicate, property, quality, and so on, not
to say that all of them even belong to the same series of near synonyms,
and when we have achieved a measure of clarity about these general issues
of not quite common enough usage, then maybe we can begin to address the
question of what Peirce intends for us to understand by way of the more
specialized terms of art, to wit, comprehension, connotation, content.
| 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.
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?
In this context, is the word's function to mean something,
to connote something, and all that we know by means of it,
is it meant to mean that it mean a thing quiet apart from
signs, or is it meant to mean just more of the same order
of signs, ever and again yet more signs, if yet new kinds?
Rather than just make up whatever comes into my head,
let me go back to some passages that I cited earlier
and consider them more carefully in the light of all
that has transpired in the mean time. Also, for the
sake of equipping this discussion with a comparative
anchor in contemporary usage, let me first cite this:
| Predicate.
|
| The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions are:
| All S is P, No S is P, Some S is P, Some S is not P. In each
| of these the concept denoted by S is the 'subject' and that
| denoted by P is the 'predicate'.
|
| Hilbert and Ackermann use the word 'predicate' for
| a propositional function of one or more variables;
| Carnap uses it for the corresponding syntactical entity,
| the name or designation of such a propositional function
| (i.e., of a property or relation).
|
| Alonzo Church, in Runes, page 248.
|
| Dagobert Runes (ed.), 'Dictionary of Philosophy',
| Littlefield, Adams, & Company, Totowa, NJ, 1972.
Well, that was a helpful verdict. Evidently a predicate
is proclaimed to be anything from a syntactic signifier
to a propositional function (property or relation) to
a concept denoted by a term in a categorical premiss.
The Latin "predicamentum" is supposed to translate
the Greek "kategoria", a manner of speaking about
a subject, initially as a "put-down in public".
I tend to think of a predicate as a sign or utterance,
but maybe it is better to avoid the word in favor of
object-sign pairs like "feature" and "feature name".
Jon Awbrey
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