ONT 10 Jul 2002 -A- Reflective Logic
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Note 5
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Subj: Continuous Predicates & Hypostatic Abstraction
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 15:30:30 -0400
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Arisbe <arisbe@stderr.org>,
Complexity Group <complexity-l@venus.vcu.edu>,
Peirce Online Resource Testbed <PORT-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU>,
SemioCom <semiocom@listbot.com>,
Stand Up Ontology <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
This is a quotation that I have been looking for since way last year,
when I thought it would bear on the topic of hypostatic abstraction,
more commonly known as "personification" or "reification", at least,
among the literate, if not yet the literati. But it fell outside my
presently beaten path, if yet again on the very first path that ever
I walked through these Peircean woods, primeval, and so it was only
with the more recent inquiry of that outside agitator and notorious
Peirce scholar Mary Keeler that I was led to happen on it once again.
To understand this excerpt you will need to know that Peirce uses the
noun form "relate" (with the accent on the first syllable, I guess) to
denominate the first term of a relation, whereas he uses the noun form
"correlate", sometimes specified by an ordinal adjective, to designate
any one of the remaining terms, if any, in that relation.
| When we have analyzed a proposition so as to throw into the subject everything
| that can be removed from the predicate, all that it remains for the predicate to
| represent is the form of connection between the different subjects as expressed in
| the propositional 'form'. What I mean by "everything that can be removed from the
| predicate" is best explained by giving an example of something not so removable.
| But first take something removable. "Cain kills Abel." Here the predicate
| appears as "--- kills ---." But we can remove killing from the predicate
| and make the latter "--- stands in the relation --- to ---." Suppose we
| attempt to remove more from the predicate and put the last into the form
| "--- exercises the function of relate of the relation --- to ---" and then
| putting "the function of relate to the relation" into a another subject leave
| as predicate "--- exercises --- in respect to --- to ---." But this "exercises"
| expresses "exercises the function". Nay more, it expresses "exercises the function
| of relate", so that we find that though we may put this into a separate subject, it
| continues in the predicate just the same. Stating this in another form, to say that
| "A is in the relation R to B" is to say that A is in a certain relation to R. Let
| us separate this out thus: "A is in the relation R^1 (where R^1 is the relation
| of a relate to the relation of which it is the relate) to R to B". But A is
| here said to be in a certain relation to the relation R^1. So that we can
| expresss the same fact by saying, "A is in the relation R^1 to the relation
| R^1 to the relation R to B", and so on 'ad infinitum'. A predicate which
| can thus be analyzed into parts all homogeneous with the whole I call
| a 'continuous predicate'. It is very important in logical analysis,
| because a continuous predicate obviously cannot be a 'compound'
| except of continuous predicates, and thus when we have carried
| analysis so far as to leave only a continuous predicate, we
| have carried it to its ultimate elements. (SW, 396-397).
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Letters to Lady Welby", Chapter 24, pages 380-432
| in 'Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)',
| Edited with an Introduction & Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications,
| New York, NY, 1966.
We'll be headed off for our summer dose of drama and so I will post
a few extra pieces in the most likely vain hope of maintaining some
continuity between what I think about before and afterwards. As you
can see, this is a line of inquiry that I keep trying to get back to,
but it keeps being interrupreted. In the meanwhile, y'all come! --
http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/
Jon Awbrey
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