[MD] Ham & swiss cheese

[Scott Roberts]

Ham,

Ham said:
Scott, I'd like your clarification on the tradic relation that you seem to
be advancing.  For example, on 2/24 you said:

> "The car hit a tree" is a dyadic relation. "John gave Mary a
> book" is a triadic relation. Giving requires three participants.
> Meaning is also a triadic relation: something means something
> else to someone. There's nothing deeper than this going on.

I can understand that giving something to someone else presupposes three
things, therefore is triadic.  But what do you find so significant about
this?

Scott:
As I said to SA, what I find significant is that one cannot build a triadic 
relation out of dyadic relations. Since the materialist point of view is 
that the non-human world is made up of dyadic relations (mechanism, in 
short), this is an argument (though not a proof) against materialism.

Ham continued:
 The book that John gives to Mary is an object.  The object is
observed by both parties as something experienced.  So you have awareness as
the subject and the book as its object.  The fact that there are two people
involved does not change the fundamental epistemology.

Scott:
Yes it does change. If you remove any one of the variables (the donor, the 
recipient, or the thing given) you do not have an act of giving. Similarly 
with meaning (which in S/O terms is two objects and one subject), remove any 
one of the three and it ceases to be an act of meaning.

Ham continued:
It seems to me that
this is still dyadic in the same way that one's cognizance or understanding
of a meaning is dyadic.  Why do you introduce a second person to make it
triadic?

Scott:
Because the donor needs someone to give something to in order to give. I 
can't give something to no one.

Ham continued:
You could as well argue that the "act of giving" is also an
element of the John-Mary-book relationship, and call it 'tetradic'.  Or add
a few more people and call it "x-adic".

Scott:
In that case you are calling something else tetradic, not giving. I'm not 
saying that there are no tetradic relations. I am only saying that giving, 
and meaning, are triadic. Giving has three variables, as does meaning. I am 
using "relation" in a logical sense, the sort of thing that one might write:

give(donor, recipient, object)

So one could say that awareness is dyadic:

aware(subject, object)

What I am saying is that, though the "aware" relation as given is 
syntactically valid, metaphysically, it isn't complete. That, instead, what 
is "really going on" is

meaning(interpretant, representamen, referent).

(These are Peirce's terms: substitute "signifier" for "representamen", and 
"signified" for "referent" if you want.) Peirce also claimed, and I agree, 
that the referent is always another sign. So awareness is the unceasing 
movement from sign to sign.

- Scott