Re: “On the Paradigm of Experience Appro priate for Semiotic”

* Comments on the Peirce List slow reading of Joseph Ransdell,
   "On the Paradigm of Experience Appropriate for Semiotic",
   http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/paradigm.htm

Peirce List,

Here is the reply I made to John Sowa's earlier remarks on the CG List:

I am not saying that Peirce didn't use the word "formal" in
the same sense as *some* 20th century logicians. But not all
subsequent philosophers of logic and mathematics used the word
"formal" in the same sense as that, or even all the time, and it
often becomes necessary in certain discussions to point that out.

It is clear that one of the connotations of "formal" for Peirce
is "non-psychological", but that is precisely to differentiate
the normative science of logic from the descriptive science
of psychology.

It is also necessary to distinguish Peirce's use of "formal semiotics",
referring to the forms of sign relations that connect objects with signs
and their interpretant signs, from any use of "formal" to suggest "wholly
detached from all connection to meanings or objects or purposes outside the
sheer game of manipulating meaningless tokens according to arbitrary rules",
because there have arisen now and again tendencies to use "formal" that way.

Jon

---

JA = Jon Awbrey
JS = John Sowa

JA: Those remarks were tailored to the ears of a particular body of readers
     who are accustomed to hearing the word "formal" used as something akin
     to a pejorative term, as in "mere formalism" or "merely formalistic".

JS: But note the date of 1869 -- that was a year before Peirce's famous
     paper on relatives.  It was also ten years before Frege's famous
     Begriffsschrift, which everybody cites as the first complete version
     of FOL with the first complete *formal* rules of inference.

CSP (1869):
     All that the formal logician has to say is, that if facts capable
     of expression in such and such forms of words are true, another
     fact whose expression is related in a certain way to the expression
     of these others is also true.... The proposition ‘If A, then B’ may
     conveniently be regarded as equivalent to ‘Every case of the truth
     of A is a case of the truth of B.’”

JS: See http://www.peirce.org/writings/p41.html for the full article.

JS: He used the word 'formal' several times in that article, and in
     each case, he used it in the same sense as the 20th century logicians.
     He also contrasted that use with psychological discussions of 'thought'.

JA: But Peirce also used the word "formal" in another, more specialized sense,
     in which it became the practical equivalent of "normative". In that sense,
     his definition of logic as formal semiotic places logic within the sphere
     of the normative sciences, where it normally belongs.

JS: Peirce was very precise in his choice of worlds.  He often referred to
     logic as normative.  Since he frequently used both words, one should not
     assume that he might sometimes use one of them to mean the same as the
     other.  In the following statement, he would have written 'normative'
     if that had been the point he was trying to make:

CSP: Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. A definition of a sign will be
      given which no more refers to human thought than does the definition of a line
      as the place which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time.

JS: Here he is using the word 'formal' in contrast with a psychological interpretation.
     He makes a similar contrast in his earlier article of 1869.  Since he is trying to
     make a similar point both articles, the most reasonable interpretation is that he
     is using the word 'formal' in the same sense.

---

facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
knol profile: http://knol.google.com/k/Jon-Awbrey#
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
polmic: www.policymic.com/profiles/1110/Jon-Awbrey