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[ontolog-forum] Influence of Perice (WAS: Current Semantic Web Layer piz

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Schiffel, Jeffrey A" <jeffrey.a.schiffel@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 13:38:03 -0500
Message-id: <ECF42862FCA16D41BFA98F8C45F0955402E27146@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

John Sowa wrote:    (01)

> Jeff,
> 
> If you want to formulate fine distinctions, every person has 
> a distinct idiolect, which changes with time, audience, and purpose.
> Similarly, written language is distinct from spoken language, 
> but it can be converted to spoken language by reading it aloud.
> However, a good actor can read something in a way that is 
> often better than it was intended by the author.    (02)

Yes, writing can be turned into the spoken word. Still, something
qualitative may be lost in addition to the possibility that something
can be added.
> 
> JFS>> The pragmatics, of course, is how the sheet is supposed to be
>  >> interpreted by a performer.
> 
> JAS> Not quite. The pragmatics is how the sheet music is in fact
>  > performed.  It is almost never clear from spots on a page 
> how  > the music is to sound.
> 
> As I said in previous messages, the terms 'syntax', 
> 'semantics', and 'pragmatics' are watered-down versions of 
> Peirce's semiotics.
> 
> CSP actually made very precise distinctions about the 'interpretant'
> of a sign as intended by the speaker (or person who wrote, 
> drew, built, arranged, sculpted, etc.) and 'interpretant' by 
> the listener (or the one who views, feels, smells, tastes, 
> etc.) the sign.
> 
> CSP was very clear about the fact that the speaker and 
> listener can interpret the same sign in very different ways 
> -- and sometimes the interpreter may have a much more 
> elaborate interpretation than the one who generated the sign.    (03)

C.S. Peirce was a brilliant thinker, and strongly influences my views of
"how things are." His influence appears to be much greater today than
fifty years ago, because of a sort of rediscovery by philosophers,
through the Peirce Project, the ICCS conferences, and of course, your
own writings. My only problem with Peirce is this: I often hear that CSP
wrote on X before the other guy, but in many of the fields he worked he
was either not well known or was even unknown.     (04)

I'd appreciate a discussion of CSP's influence on the developing fields
of a hundred years ago. It is not clear that he had much impact then.
For example, if Peircean semiotics had been more widely appreciated, we
wouldn't have been stuck with the excesses of post-structuralism,
cultural relativism, and similar subjects traceable back to (a possible
mis-interpretation of) Saussurean semiotics. In a like vein, Popper is
understood to have had a hand in demolishing logical positivism of the
Vienna School in his book of 1934. It wasn't until the late 1950s that
Popper knew about Peirce, even though falsification (Popper) and
fallibilism (CSP) are the same.    (05)

Regards,    (06)

-- Jeff Schiffel    (07)

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