ONT Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion

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ICE.  Discussion Note 4

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AK = Antti Karttunen
JA = Jon Awbrey

continuing from where i left off last time.

AK: So what is that "certain point" then?

i think that it would have to be called the point of definition.
as it happens in practice, far more usually than people like to
think about, we find terms in common use that have no consensual
definitions.  (for example, this is the ordinary state of affairs
in the standard upper ontology group.)  so we have to admit that
there is a state of information that precedes the definition of
a term, where we use the term but vaguely, or with insufficient
comprehension to determine its denotation.  this brings up the
question:  what is the form of argument that can reason toward
a definition, as opposed to having to start from a definition?
but let's put that aside for now.

when we actually have a definition of a term, then all the logical equivalents
of the definition add to the connotation of the term.  that is just my guess.

peirce is trying to answer more fully, in practical detail, kant's question:
what is the good, the use, the utility of a concept?  kant's answer was that
it reduces the manifold of sense impression to a unity, but peirce gives him
but partial credit for this answer, as peirce wants to know "how, exactly?"

in this light, the big critical point occurs at the conception of the concept,
the sign that brings the concept from infinite indeterminacy to a finite term.

at any rate, i think that is what peirce is saying here:

ICE 21.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000214.html

| Now, ladies and gentlemen, as it is true that every increase
| of our knowledge is an increase in the information of a term --
| that is, is an addition to the number of terms equivalent
| to that term -- so it is also true that the first step in
| the knowledge of a thing, the first framing of a term,
| is also the origin of the information of that term
| because it gives the first term equivalent to that
| term.  I here announce the great and fundamental
| secret of the logic of science.  There is no term,
| properly so called, which is entirely destitute of
| information, of equivalent terms.  The moment an
| expression acquires sufficient comprehension to
| determine its extension, it already has more
| than enough to do so.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 465.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in:
|
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition',
|'Volume 1, 1857-1866', Peirce Edition Project,
| Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

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