Re: [xmca] The "Inner Form" of the Word

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Yes, Tony - you're right, of course. The central point is that word, with its outer and inner form, is socio-logical, or semio-logical if you prefer, neither logical nor psychological. That's why it is so important to LSV that the word is not merely an empty and conventional link between an object and a concept (whether the latter is construed either as logical or psychological).

Martin
 
On May 28, 2011, at 10:23 AM, Tony Whitson wrote:

> Thanks, Martin
> 
>> From a Peircean perspective, there seems to be a falsely exhaustive 
> dichotomy here between the ["laws of reason"]-logical and the psycho-logical. The semio-logical is not reducible to either of those.
> 
> Again, I think that Bakhurst's _The Formation of Reason_ is very much on point here. While he's not using Peirce, he is using Vygotsky et al. along with the Bildung tradition, which is all about forming within culture, but not [I would argue] as a matter of something merely psycho-logical.
> 
> On Sat, 28 May 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
> 
> ...
>> 
>> The charge of "psychologism" - which Frege made against Husserl, Shpet's teacher, for example - was that someone was reducing logic to psychology; turning the timeless and universal laws of reason into merely the way people happen to think, with all the imperfections that this involves. The counter charge would have been "logicism," that someone is treating as necessary and analytic matters that are in fact contingent and synthetic.
>> 
>> So LSV was willing to risk the accusation of psychologism; he rejected the notion that the inner form of the word is a timeless, universal essence, and instead located it in history. He was not separating word meaning entirely from sense, though he did, however, argue that word meaning is the most stable aspect of sense.
>> 
>> And the issue that would then have confronted him is whether he could build a convincing account of the genesis of reason using changing and contingent building blocks. Could he build logic from psychology? Or was he willing to propose a psychological account of logic? He does, seemingly approvingly, quote Lenin on the notion that logical truths are simply the result of millions of years of repetition of habits. I must say that I find that rather unsatisfying.
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
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