- From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:14:02 -0500
- To: Arisbe <arisbe@stderr.org>, Conceptual Graphs <cg@cs.uah.edu>, RDF Logic <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>, SemioCom <semiocom@listbot.com>
- CC: Dietrich Fischer <fischer@DARMSTADT.GMD.DE>, Mary Keeler <mkeeler@u.washington.edu>, Jack Park <jackpark@VERTICALNET.COM>, John F Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net>
¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤ This is the edge of what I know, at least, it is one of the edges, a place where everything appears sharper and clearer, and yet just beyond which it all becomes just a half-bit too hazy and tantalizing to bear. It is for me another one of those personal boundaries where the finite that I am comes to meet the infinite that I am not. And in this meeting I find that the Fables or Parables of Turing are especially apt to be instructive about nature of the juncture. I have already invited you to help me to shape this edge -- I believe that it would have some utility for all of us! -- and I will not withdraw it just because I run into one or two or three or a finite number who would prefer to abrade, or to blunt, or to dent, or to dull it. You are probably wondering, if you are one who wonders: Where Is This Differential? And that is what I will try to transmit, the bit that I currently have in my wit, or at any rate, the one that I can find or invent any fashion or method for its proportionate sharing, in the hope that another one or two or three or a finite number may have the residual bits of it. I have alluded to the Alpha Level of Peirce's Logical Graphs, which, for the sake of a brief life, I think that I will now dub "PerLog". The reason that I cannot, with total accuracy, subsume this under the names of "Conceptual Graphs", or even "Existental Graphs" is that Peirce's actual system of formal graphical structures is so abstract that the interpretations in logic for all of its basic structures, except for the one fixed point of negation, that is, "(X)" mapping into "Not X", are not yet determined in the ways that we would customarily expect when we decrypt them as "Entitative" or "Existential". There are several extensions of PerLog that I have developed, merely by applying to their form of construction a conjoined couple of "Esthetic Injunctions" that I distilled, condensed, and refined from out of the whole body of Peirce's full work. These founding principles, or "Esthetic Imperatives", pervading Peirce's logical work, and perhaps present throughout his entire philosophy, are: 1. Try to reduce the number of primitive notions. 2. Try to vary what has been held to be constant. I used to imagine that I had extracted yet a third devoir, but it slipped from my mind one morning, on the threshold of a dream, and has never returned to my waking awareness, though I suspect that it's bearing is kin to the devotion that we Peirceans call the "Pragmatic Maxim" (PM), and so perhaps it shall come back to me as I near to the Evening. Until Later, Jon Awbrey ¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
Received on Tuesday, 23 January 2001 14:01:02 UTC