Zeroth Law Of Semiotics

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/30/zeroth-law-of-semiotics/
Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Comment 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/31/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-comment-1/

Zeroth Law Of Semiotics
=======================

Meaning is a privilege not a right.
Not all pictures depict.
Not all signs denote.

Never confuse a property of a sign,
just for instance, existence,
with a sign of a property,
for instance, existence.

Taking a property of a sign
for a sign of a property
is the zeroth sign of
nominal thinking
and the first
mistake.

Also Sprach 0*
2002 October 09
http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=32824

Comment
=======

New discussions of the so-called “Liar Paradox” have
broken out at several places on the web in recent weeks,
just to mention a couple of cases:

• Foundations Of Mathematics (FOM) • The Liar Revenge
https://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2015-July/thread.html#18825

• Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP • Playing Chess With The Devil
https://rjlipton.wpcomstaging.com/2015/07/28/playing-chess-with-the-devil/

Bedevilments of that ilk always bring to mind — to my mind at least —
the critical ways the Peircean paradigm of logic as semiotics differs
from the fallback paradigm bedeviling the thinking of those who have
yet to see by Peirce’s lights.

And that in turn brings to mind the [above] oldie but still goodie
pointing to what I take to be the issue at the root of the “Liar”
and many other pseudo-problems.

Regards,

Jon

--

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[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Comment 2
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/31/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-comment-2/

Re: Peirce List
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2015-07/thrd11.html#00303
::: Edwina Taborsky
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2015-07/msg00304.html

My old avatar 0* (Zero-Aster) does incline to laconic verses
but I hope to address a class of concrete applications which
will serve to unpack their sense.

The main thing I wish to communicate is the possibility that many
so-called insolubilia and paradoxes are merely cases of conceptual
difficulty which can be resolved when viewed within the right sort
of conceptual framework, namely, Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics or
a natural extension of it.

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/10/26/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-1/

Re: Laws of Form
https://groups.io/g/lawsofform/topic/zeroth_law_of_semiotics/86576118
::: John Mingers ( https://groups.io/g/lawsofform/message/1109 )

<QUOTE JM:>
Hmmm. Sounds terribly like analytic philosophy to me.
There are not real philosophical problems, it’s all just
a matter of misuse of words. Have you seen the world out there —
there really are problems that philosophy ought to try and help with!!!
</QUOTE>

Dear John,

If I have a philosophy it would be pragmatism. A pragmatist —
or pragmatician as I sometimes prefer — is more like a type of
reflective practitioner, one who applies the pragmatic maxim to
clarify ideas, all the better to apply ideas to pressing realities.

<QUOTE Pragmatic Maxim:>
( https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/08/07/pragmatic-maxim/ )

The pragmatic maxim is a guideline for the practice of inquiry
formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative
recommendation or regulative principle in the normative science
of logic, its function is to guide the conduct of thought toward
the achievement of its aims, advising the addressee on an optimal
way of “attaining clearness of apprehension”.
</QUOTE>

In pragmatic ways of thinking, semiotics is a discipline of
critical thinking charged with sorting out the respective roles
of signs, ideas, and objects (including “objects” in the sense of
aims, ends, goals, objectives, and purposes) in the activities of
communication, learning, and reasoning.

That is what I'm about here.

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 2
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/10/27/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-2/

Re: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/30/zeroth-law-of-semiotics/
Re: FB | Charles S. Peirce Society
https://www.facebook.com/groups/peircesociety/posts/2757776511024990/
::: Joseph Harry
https://www.facebook.com/groups/peircesociety/posts/2757776511024990?comment_id=2757903444345630

<QUOTE JH:>
“Meaning is a privilege not a right” would seem to be
a meaningless proposition, since ‘privilege’ and ‘right’
are third-order evaluative, symbolic terms, while ‘meaning’
is a neutral second-order term, implying only existential
individualized dynamic activity or process. Driving (a car)
is a privilege not a right, but meaning is neither.
</QUOTE>

Dear Joseph,

That may be too literal a reading for Zero‑Aster's poetic figure.
If I read the oracle right, the contrast between “privilege” and
“right” serves merely to mark the distinction between meanings
optional and obligatory. Whether any hint of “private law” or
“law unto itself” is intended or involved is something I would
have to spend more time thinking about.

Regards,

Jon

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 2

https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/10/27/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-2/
Re: All Liar, No Paradox
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/08/01/all-liar-no-paradox/

Re: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/30/zeroth-law-of-semiotics/

All,

I could see my last post needed more by way of
background and context so I'm adding that here.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Paradoxes star among my first loves in logic. So enamored was I
with tricks of the mind’s eye I remember once concocting the motto,
“Only what is paradoxical is ornery enough to exist”. These days
my less precocious self tends to suspect all our nominal paradoxes
will gradually dissolve on sufficient inspection and placement in
the proper light. There I find the pragmatic spectrum of C.S. Peirce,
stretching from the theory of triadic sign relations to the mathematical
forms underlying logic, provides a full range of lights to the purpose.

It was by those lights, Peirce’s semiotic and logical graphs,
I came to see through the fog of misdirection surrounding the
so-called Liar Paradox, inscribing my epitaph to Epimenides
under the heading “All Liar, No Paradox”. More than that it
became possible to see how the apparent paradox derives its
appearance from unexamined assumptions about the relation
between signs and objects.

That much prologue brings us up to speed with
the Zeroth Law Of Semiotics and the scene of
Joseph Harry’s remarks.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

On 10/27/2022 11:30 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 2
> http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/10/27/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-2/
>

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 3
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/12/14/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-3/

Re: All Liar, No Paradox
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/08/01/all-liar-no-paradox/
Re: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/07/30/zeroth-law-of-semiotics/

Re: FB | Charles S. Peirce Society

https://www.facebook.com/groups/peircesociety/posts/2761722340630407/
::: Kent Olson
https://www.facebook.com/groups/peircesociety/posts/2761722340630407/?comment_id=2804566123012695

All,

A recent discussion on Facebook led me to explain a point about
semiotics I fancy a wee bit better than I've ever done before.

<QUOTE KO:>
The liar paradox is a self-referential paradox, yes?
I think Russell answered these.
</QUOTE>

Dear Kent,

Russell had no inkling of pragmatic semiotics so his perspective on signs
and sign relations was bound to remain mired in syntacticism, in effect,
a species of nominalism. From a fully three-dimensional Peircean point
of view we are able to ask, and we have to ask, what could it possibly
mean for a sign to refer to itself? Indeed, do signs refer to themselves
at all, or is it only that interpreters refer signs to their objects?
The whole problem looks very different once we take that point of view.

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: Zeroth Law Of Semiotics • Discussion 4
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2022/12/25/zeroth-law-of-semiotics-discussion-4/

Re: FB | Pattern Languages for Systemic Transformation
https://www.facebook.com/groups/125513674232534/posts/5698095106974335
::: Esteban Trev
https://www.facebook.com/groups/125513674232534/posts/5698095106974335?comment_id=5701465213303991

<QUOTE JA:>
A statement S₀ asserts that a statement S₁
is a statement that S₁ is false.

The statement S₀ violates an axiom of logic,
so it doesn’t really matter whether the
ostensible statement S₁, the so-called “liar”,
really is a statement or has a truth value.
</QUOTE>

<QUOTE ET:>
Well the truth value can me true or false or something else —
akin to 5 + 5 = 12 being a true statement, if one knows what base
it involves, else it may be false. The same for 4 + 4 = 10 being
a true statement, if one knows what base it involves.
</QUOTE>

Dear Esteban,

Yes, reference is relative to a frame of reference.
In pragmatic semiotics, frames of reference are
called “sign relations”.

Regards,

Jon