Talk:Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)

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[edit] Initial notes

Some emphasis on terminological issues to help beginners avoid needless confusions. The Tetrast 20:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms

Thanks for trying to help, but the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms should not be confused with any Commons dictionary. It's got its own Website and everything, check it out http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html The word "commens" itself is Peirce's word for that which he also called the "commind". Basically it's com- + mens or "mind".The Tetrast 15:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copied from section "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" at the Tetrast's User Talk page, in order to help meet attribution requirements for the article.

Hi! I was just reviewing Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce). It's very good work and you clearly have a lot of expertise on the subject. However, my concern is that some of the content may have been taken from another Wikipedia page or other material available on the web. What are the external sources of the article? Wikipedia articles are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License which means they may be copied, but must be attributed, meaning we might have to link back to the original article/its history, or do a history merge (by this point, that seems improbable). And copyrighted material on the web may not be used in most cases.

Cheers! — madman bum and angel 16:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I wrote or rewrote most of the "Classes of sign" section, some of it for "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" and some of it originally for the main Charles Peirce article. In the main Charles Peirce article, it appeared under "Types of signs" which was a subsection of "Theory of signs, or semiotic," which is a subsection of "Dynamics of inquiry", and some of that was in rewriting things which others had already written. In the main Charles Peirce article, I also replaced the "Types of signs" subsubsection with a "Classes of signs" subsubsection, and I wrote it. (I changed the title because "Types of signs" was always a bad title, since the word "type" itself is a label Peirce used for a certain kind of sign, the "type" as in the type-token distinction). Meanwhile, in the "Clases of signs" section "Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)" article, some phrases and a few sentences, I think, remain as written by others back in the main Charles Peirce article. For instance, the word "typology" was introduced by somebody besides me, and it proved a very useful word in discussing three of Peirce's most prominent typologies. (This in spite of "Types of signs" being a bad section title; if I had to use both or neither, I would get rid of "typology.")

The "Semiotic elements" section was originally the Peirce article in the section "Sign relations." I wrote a lot of it, including the bulleted definitions and the numbered definitions, but significant portions were written by others. And of course I've tweaked some of that stuff and others have tweaked some of my stuff.

The versions which I used as a basis for the "Semiotic elements and clases of signs (Peirce)" article had been reverted at the main Peirce article.

The main external sources were the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, and the definitions consist entirely in quotations from C.S. Peirce (b. 1839, d. 1914) himself. I did not copy whole unattributed sentences or paragraphs from Peirce, but some phrases such as "pure abstraction of a quality," yes. The main concern, then, will be with tracing the history back to the main Peirce article Charles_Peirce. I don't know anything about how to merge article histories. The Tetrast 17:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 17:45, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Only administrators can perform history merges. I think the link to the original article should suffice for attribution, but I'll ask around. Thank you! — madman bum and angel 17:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
The main external sources were the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, and ITS definitions, I should say, consist entirely in quotations from C.S. Peirce (b. 1839, d. 1914) himself. My definitions are not copied and pasted from there. Also I did use a long quote from Peirce, near the beginning. I don't think that there should be a problem there, but I'll inquire and I should be able to say by tonight or tomorrow. The Tetrast 17:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Now that I think about it, some of my phraseology in the definitions of rheme, dicisign, argument, are so close to Peirce's, that I should footnote to the sources. I'll do that tonight (I'm at work right now) and review more generally. But it's still a matter of sentence clauses rather than longer passages. The Tetrast 18:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 18:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The long quote is indeed in the public domain -- it was originally published in the in the Monist in October 1906. Google Books has it available with no registration required and in OCR text-only form as well. I've expanded the sourcing after the passage: "(Peirce, The Collected Papers, vol. 4, p. 551; originally in "Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism," pp. 492-546, The Monist vol. VI, no. 4, Oct. 1906, see p. 523)"

As regards the phraseology in my definitions of rheme, dicisign, and argument, I find that it's not as close to Peirce's sentences as I thought, and some is drawn also from things which Peirce said in A Letter to Lady Welby published in Signs and Significs. I want to work some more on it, but I have to go to sleep for work tomorrow. I don't know what I was thinking when I suggested that I could get it all done tonight. The Tetrast 00:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I notice that in "Classes of signs" I used the table of categories which I originally created in the main Charles Peirce article. I should just note that in the main article it's not in the "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section; instead it is in the "Theory of categories" section. So not everything coming from the main article came from the its "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section. Maybe I'm getting too detailed with this! Well, it's just a talk page. The Tetrast 01:33, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

If you copy something from one wikipedia page to another, you are supposed to say so in the edit summary; and if you forget then you are supposed to either say so in a subsequent edit summary or on the talk page. The idea is to fulfill the GFDL requirement for attribution in a reasonable way. Wikipedia is the largest and most significant GFDL copyrighted item in existence and since the issue has never been tested in court, it is expected that Wikipedia's customary practices will be influential if not defining in this regard. WAS 4.250 06:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

END OF COPY The Tetrast 10:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This version, or one much like it, of the main Peirce article is the one whose section on "Theory of signs, or semiotic" I used in starting the present article. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Peirce&diff=108168784&oldid=108168209#Theory_of_signs.2C_or_semiotic . There's also a paragraph now under "Sign relations" both here and in the main Peirce article, a paragraph which I got from some version of the main Peirce article and which I didn't originate. The Tetrast (talk) 23:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC).

Added note: Jon Awbrey contributed to the Charles Peirce wiki's "Theory of signs, or semiotic" section (and probably was the one who named it). I had written a lot of it before it was deleted it, but I think that some significant amount of material by him was already in it, and I'm pretty sure that he was doing some ongoing tweaking. The Tetrast (talk) 00:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The above discussion on attributions should be continued below here. Thank you.

The Tetrast 10:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC) Revised The Tetrast 10:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC) Re-revised The Tetrast 11:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

For reference, the following is the "long quote" to which I was referring in the discussion above:

Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really there. Consistently adhere to that unwarrantable denial, and you will be driven to some form of idealistic nominalism akin to Fichte's. Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying it, so there cannot be thought without Signs. We must here give "Sign" a very wide sense, no doubt, but not too wide a sense to come within our definition. Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic. (Peirce, The Collected Papers, vol. 4, p. 551; originally in "Prolegomena To an Apology For Pragmaticism," pp. 492-546, The Monist, vol. XVI, no. 4, Oct. 1906, see p. 523)

The Tetrast 10:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Again, please note the original publication in the Monist of October, 1906. The quoted passage is in the public domain. The Tetrast 11:03, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I've footnoted like crazy. Actual quotes in the Rheme-Dicisign-Argument section are indicated, and referenced and linked to public-domain text "Prolegomena To an Apology to Pragmaticism." Lots more footnotes as well. Whew! The Tetrast 18:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

When I have time, I have to nail down the issue of Peirce's 1906 retention of the word "rheme" as a word for predicate, even while he's started using "seme", "pheme", and "delome". It may just possibly be an "H" (predicate) versus "Hx" (predicate-of-"something") kind of issue. The Tetrast 14:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] (Birth–Death) Dates

I used to do that too, being used to it from composers, but I'm just passing on that tidbit of custom that someone told me was done here. Maybe it's in the style sheet somewhere, I don't know, I never bothered to look it up. But it does get a bit cluttered when people feel compelled to put the dates in on every first mention of a biographical name, which was starting to happen at one time. By the way, it does say in the style sheet to use endashes "–" = "–" between the dates.Armand Boisblanc 23:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I keep worrying that some folks still use old browsers on old computers and the endash won't be displayed correctly. Anyway, I don't put the birth and death dates for every name that appears, instead I do that or something else just for the hero, in order to give a frame of time and years old at the beginning of an article which, after all, needs to stand by itself somewhat. An admin got me to rewrite the beginning of one of these articles, an article which originally had simply launched into the topic as if it were nothing but an extension of the main Peirce article, which is pretty much what it is, but still.... At the beginning of the Categories (Peirce) article I say, "On May 14, 1867, the 27-year-old Charles Sanders Peirce..." and don't give the birth and death dates. The Tetrast 13:16, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tables now look right in Mozilla/Netscape

I should have checked a long time ago. There's always a problem across browsers. But I simply had no idea what difficulties Mozilla has with centering and widths. All fixed up now. The Tetrast 01:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)