Re: Peirce List • John Sowa

I gave Frederik Stjernfelt’s Natural Propositions a careful reading back when the Peirce List took it up.  The following archive links will take you to the topic thread and initial post.

• Peirce List • Frederik Stjernfelt

There are remnants of my own comments and reflections at the following locations.

• C.S. Peirce • Syllabus • Selection 1 • Selection 2
• Semiotic Theory Of Information • (1) • (2) • (3) • (4) • (5) • (6)

I have in mind getting back to the issues raised by that reading someday but it would take me too far afield from my current focus to do that now.

The short shrift for now is that Peirce is not talking about propositions in the sense of “double signs, informational signs, quasi-propositions, or Dicisigns” at this juncture but rather the simpler sorts of propositions falling under the head of propositional calculus as currently understood, most felicitously dealt with of course by means of Peirce’s own Alpha Graphs.

The concept of information arising this context is rather distinct.  Peirce’s early notion of information, however roughly cut, is clearer and stronger in its underlying realism than the residual nominalism of his later formulations, at least, as interpreted by others.

cc: Peirce List