Inquiry Into Inquiry

Re: Ontolog Forum • Alex Shkotin

Dear Alex,

You raised the following point:

AS:

One important usage of a sign is as an element of a language,
especially a formal one, i.e. with a formal grammar.

For context you cited a standard definition of a formal language with a formal grammar (Aho and Ullman 1972).

Viewed from the standpoint of pragmatic semiotics, where a sign relation is a structure of the form we are starting out on pretty much the same page, since I’m always thinking of a sign as an element of a sign domain and I’m mainly interested in cases where the sign domain is a formal language with a formal grammar along the lines defined above.

That brings us to your question, “What is the grammar of Peirce’s language?”, which I will take up next time.

References

• Barwise, J. (1977), “An Introduction to First-Order Logic”, pp. 5–46 in Barwise, J. (1977, ed.), Handbook of Mathematical Logic, Elsevier (North Holland), Amsterdam.
• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

Resources

• Logic Syllabus
• Sign Relations
• Triadic Relations
• Relation Theory

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Re: Ontolog Forum • Alex Shkotin

Dear Alex,

Thanks for the very apt segue from Jon Barwise —

Modern mathematics might be described as the science of abstract objects, be they real numbers, functions, surfaces, algebraic structures or whatever.  Mathematical logic adds a new dimension to this science by paying attention to the language used in mathematics, to the ways abstract objects are defined, and to the laws of logic which govern us as we reason about these objects.  The logician undertakes this study with the hope of understanding the phenomena of mathematical experience and eventually contributing to mathematics, both in terms of important results that arise out of the subject itself (Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem is the most famous example) and in terms of applications to other branches of mathematics.  (Barwise p. 6)

When it comes to mathematics as the science of abstract objects I have my personal favorite classes among its abstract gardens and zoos.  One order of particular interest in the great chain of abstract being descends from the family of mathematical relations to the genus of triadic relations to the species of triadic sign relations.

By a curious turn, but no real surprise when we stop to think about it, sign relations, with their object, sign, and interpretant sign domains, come into being whenever we reflect on the systems of signs we use to describe any universe of objects, abstract or otherwise, and thus they are just the tickets we need to enter that “new dimension” of mathematical logic.

References

• Barwise, J. (1977), “An Introduction to First-Order Logic”, pp. 5–46 in Barwise, J. (1977, ed.), Handbook of Mathematical Logic, Elsevier (North Holland), Amsterdam.
• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

Resources

• Logic Syllabus
• Sign Relations
• Triadic Relations
• Relation Theory

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Re: Ontolog Forum • Paul Tyson

Dear Paul,

“How We Think” is a topic for the descriptive science of psychology, and its ways are legion beyond definitive or exhaustive description.

“How We Ought To Think” if we wish to succeed at specified purposes is a topic for the normative science of logic, lumping together for the moment the evolving varieties of informal, formal, mathematical, and technologically augmented methods.

They’re all good questions and I see no reason not to pursue them all, aside from the limitations of our brief lives, but we have to keep the spectrum of different aims sorted.

John Dewey wrote the book How We Think in 1910.  Peirce had earlier summed up his “non-psychological conception of logic” in the pithy motto “Logic has nothing to do with how we think” and this led some scholars to suspect Dewey’s title was aimed as a poke in Peirce’s ribs.  But the book itself is a How-To guide devoted to improving our capacity for learning and reasoning, what we’d call today instruction in critical thinking.

All that is prologue to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article, “As We May Think”, projecting the ways technology may amplify our capacity for inquiry going forward into the future.  I think this is where we came in …

Reference

• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Re: Peirce List • Helmut Raulien

Dear Helmut,

It’s one of the occupational hazards of the classifying mind that one can start out consciously characterizing aspects of real situations and end up unwittingly thinking one’s gotten everything under the sun sorted into mutually exclusive bins.

Once the idols of compartmentality and the illusions of autonomous abstraction get their hold on our minds it is almost impossible to reconstitute or synthesize what we’ve torn asunder, if only in our own minds.  The ounce of prevention here is always keeping in mind that from which all abstractions are abstracted — living experience.

Reference

• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Re: Peirce List • John Sowa • Auke van Breemen • Jon Awbrey • Gary Fuhrman

Dear Gary,

Auke van Breemen wrote:

AvB:

It seems to come down to:  never consider the textual production of a scientist only in itself, but also look at the reality the text tries to explain.

I took this as an admirably succinct statement of the difference between (1) scriptural hermeneutics — I’d call it “corpus hermeneutics” except for the risk of confusion with Corpus Hermeneticum — and (2) scientific interpretation, that is, any development of interpretant texts in relation to an independent object domain with the aim of forming true descriptions or gaining knowledge of that domain.

What I wrote in response to Auke was this:

JA:

Exactly!

We interpret texts
in relation to
the object in view.

All I did there was mention the three roles in a sign relation.  We take in texts or whole bodies of work as signs of an object domain and we form interpretive texts as signs of the same domain.  For my part, I interpret Peirce’s work as signs of an object world, one with respect to which other writers, artists, signifactors of all sorts have generated signs worthy of our interpretation.

I wouldn’t take the words “in view” too literally.  I just as easily could have said “at hand” or “in mind” but I went with “object in view” on account of the fondness one of my old teachers had for Dewey’s signature “end in view”.  As far as indicial signs are concerned, we’re all embroiled in concernful situations all the time, making our selves the initial signs of those pragmata, from which we derive all the remainder.

Peirce’s distinction between theorematic and corollarial reasoning has come up before.  From what I recall of previous discussions, we should not read the word “theorematic” in too reductive or purely deductive a sense.  Years ago it was something of a commonplace, even outside Peircean circles, to call attention to the etymology of “theorem” as having an observational, even “visionary” sense, cognate with “theatre”, and some would even point to the sacred origins of theatre, though maybe that’s a bridge too far …

As far as the iconic aspects of mathematics go, or even our knowledge representations in general, they are nice when we can get them, but I’m careful not to stress them too far — it’s too easy to “fall victim to a picture”, in Wittgenstein’s phrase, or succumb to the short-sightedness of Russell’s isomorphism theory of knowledge.  Icons are specializations of symbols and thus fall short of symbols’ full potential.  There is more to science than serving as a mirror of nature.

Reference

• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

cc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Re: Peirce List • Auke van Breemen

AvB:

It seems to come down to:  never consider the textual production of a scientist only in itself, but also look at the reality the text tries to explain.

Dear Auke,

Exactly!

We interpret texts
in relation to
the object in view.

Reference

• Eisele, C. (1982), “Mathematical Methodology in the Thought of Charles S. Peirce”, Historia Mathematica 9, pp. 333–341.  Online.  PDF.

ccc: Cybernetics • Ontolog • Peirce List (1) (2) (3) • Structural Modeling • Systems Science