Re: Proposal for a Mini Slow Read -- Kaina Stoich eia❢

AE = Albert Einstein
GM = Gary Moore
JA = Jon Awbrey

GM: PURELY OFF HAND COMMENTS
     BASED ON A ‘MAYBE’ PERCEPTION OF A WHOLE PRESUPPOSITION

By way of elucidation, let me allude to one of those pictures worth a thousand words.
The picture I have in mind here is the one that I drew to illustrate Peirce's outline
of the dependencies among normative science, phenomenology, mathematics, and metaphysics.

  o---------------------------------------------------------------------o
  |                                                                     |
  |                  Metaphysics o                                      |
  |                              |\                                     |
  |                              | \                                    |
  |                              |  \                                   |
  |                              |   o Normative Science                |
  |                              |  / \                                 |
  |                              | /   \                                |
  |                              |/     \                               |
  |                Phenomenology o       o Mathematics                  |
  |                                                                     |
  | Normative science rests largely on phenomenology and on mathematics;|
  | metaphysics on phenomenology and on normative science.              |
  |                                                                     |
  | Charles Sanders Peirce, ''Collected Papers'', CP 1.186 (1903)       |
  |                                                                     |
  o---------------------------------------------------------------------o

Cf. http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/05/31/definition-and-determination-4/

JA: Just a few notes by way of getting myself re-oriented
     to the Kaina Stoicheia material, especially since I am
     likely to miss the formal opening of the group reading.

JA: My personal goal in reading this piece again is to acquire
     additional measures of clarity on a linked pair of questions:

JA: (1) Is there really such a thing as a "theory of signs",
         in the formal axiomatic sense, to be developed from
         Peirce's more complete definitions of sign relations?

GM: With his main principles of “maybe” and “falibilism” it would seem there can be no permanent or even durable sense of “complete”,
     that there is always a “more” and a “further” realization to be discovered no matter what –- even to the point of finding a new
     ‘axiom’ by which to newly view and completely re-do the whole lot of ‘things’.  If there can be no certainty, except for the
     certainty of the principle of ‘no certainty’ (a negative concept or argument I think there is already a name for but that I
     cannot recollect), then ‘fallibilism’ defines the whole tone of epistemology and ontology. Yes, there are certainties, but
     they are the certainties that deny certainty, as, ‘if everything is relative then only relativity is certain’ or ‘if ALL
     thought is signs’, as I just got through reading in Peirce and now cannot remember where, then everything experienced
     is perceived, as perceived it is individuated [which can only happen in the mind], and as individuated is then thought,
     and as it is then thought it becomes a sign which can turn into an epistemological nihilism except only for the ground
     and certainty that all thought is signs.[<<"The speculative rhetoric that we are speaking of is a branch of the
     analytical study of the essential conditions to which all signs are subject, -- a science named semeiotics” --
     a ‘speculative rhetoric’ “to which all signs are ‘subject’” -– a ‘science’ of certainties as we have become
     conditioned to view science?  Absolutely absurd and physically impractical as Einstein said.]¶

Under this number, (1), I am solely concerned with the mathematical footing.
Do we have the 4-fold root (primitives, definitions, axioms, inference rules)
it would take to put Peirce's theory of signs on a pedestal parallel to Euclid's
theory of geometry?

JA: (2) If so, does the prospective or putative theory of signs
         "save the phenomena" of signs that we find in the wild?

GM: As it says in the essay, (my paragraph 16), “a sign is not a real thing.  It is of such a nature as to exist in replicas.
     Look down a printed page, and every “the” you see is the same word, every “e” the same letter.  A real thing does not so
     exist in replica. The being of a sign is merely being represented. Now really being and being represented are very different.”

This is just one of several conventional ways to call attention to the type-token distinction.
Once that is understood to the point of becoming automatic, as it commonly is in mathematics,
we can safely go back to using words like "sign" to refer to either side of the distinction,
calling attention to it again only on a call-by-need basis.

GM: If a sign is the literal nothing of John Deely’s ens rationis, each word only has existence as a representing
     of the ‘indefinite something else’ which it leads us physically and materially back to -– with the most extreme
     proviso that this ‘indefinite something else’ is in no way the name or concept of it, the defining boundaries,
     to the near impossible point of erasing all defining boundaries to ‘it’. As Kant said, to know ‘a thing’ is to
     impose the structure of your ‘self, the X’ upon it so that all identity, as an act performed, a sign presented,
     is intellectual, ens rationis, and ego-centric.  Kant here took Cartesian certainty based on the cogito ergo sum
     to its only and real limits.  Identity is our reflection. So what would be the ‘phenomenon’ of something that
     is purely ‘something else’ referred to? You can probably say this better but I hope you get the turgid point.¶
     However, your phrase “signs that we find in the wild?” is perfect.  Everyone as a child comes to language as
     “signs that we find in the wild”. We wake up each day, do our jobs, and go to sleep via “signs that we find in
     the wild”. Only when we talk philosophically do we seem to control our signs strictly to make them perform in
     proper language [but then, guilty conscience, who is it determines proper language? The school teacher as
     absolute social paragon]. Immediately when released from the constraints of philosophical taking we are
     once again in the fields of “signs that we find in the wild”. So thank you.¶

JA: "Signs in the wild" is just a way of alluding to all the phenomena
     associated with signs, as given in experience, bidden or unbidden.

JA: Some of you will be recalling what Einstein said about the
     triadic relation among certainty, mathematics, and reality:

AE: | As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
     | they are not certain; and as far as they are certain,
     | they do not refer to reality.
     |
     | http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Quotations/Einstein.html

JA: If you do so recall, I commend you on your aptness.

-- 

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