Re: Hypostatic And Prescisive Abstraction -- Discussion Notes

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HAPA.  Discussion Note 10

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There are a several things of note that leap to mind
in reading Peirce's dictionary entry for "Predicate":

http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11239.html

1.  It is not so much a definition in the sense of stating logically
    necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be a predicate
    as it is a "key", an operational definition that tells you how to
    recognize a predicate if you encounter one in the wild, or better
    yet, a "recipe", a sequence of instructions that tells you how to
    construct all the examples of predicates that you might ever need.

2.  It is clear that we are looking at one of the precursors of what
    would in the fullness of time became a standard socket wrench in
    the AI toolbox, namely, frame-&-slot-&-filler systems.  Peirce's
    objection to this precursory distinction would probably take the
    form of a long list of proto-precursors from which he would say
    that he borrowed the tool, or derived the materials to build it.

3.  It is clear, too, that the precursor has already given rather
    more thought to the nature of the rhematic construction than
    most of his postcursors have yet to do.  For example, Peirce
    advises "The erasures are not to be made in a mechanical way,
    but with such modifications as may be necessary to preserve
    the partial sense of the fragment".  This means that the
    construction of the predicate is not a purely syntactic
    operation, whereby one perforates in a perfunctory way
    one isolated sentence at a time, but instead a fully
    sign-relational (referential, semiotic, or pragmatic)
    operation, working on whole equivalence classes of
    sentences at a time.

Jon Awbrey

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