Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 3:15
PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite
photograph" metaphor
Joe, list,
>[Joe] I was just now rereading your response to Charles, attending
particularly to your citation of Peirce's concern with verification, and I
really don't see in what you quote from him on this anything more than the
claim that it is the special concern for making sure that something that
someone -- perhaps oneself -- has claimed to be a fact or has concluded to be
so (which could be a conviction more or less tentatively held) really is a
fact by putting the claim or acceptation of that conclusion to the test, in
one way or another. This verificational activity could involve many different
sorts of procedures, ranging from, say, reconsidering the premises supporting
the claim as regards their cogency relative to the conclusion drawn to
actively experimenting or observing further for the same purpose, including
perhaps, as a rather special case, the case where one actually attempts to
replicate the procedure cited as backing up the claim made. Scientific
verification is really just a sophistication about ways of checking up on
something about which one has some doubts, driven by an unusually strong
concern for establishing something as "definitively" as possible, which is of
course nothing more than an ideal of checking up on something so thoroughly
that no real question about it will ever be raised again. But it is no
different in principle from what we do in ordinary life when we try to "make
sure" of something that we think might be so but about which we are not
certain enough to satisfy us.
The purpose (
http://www.mail-archive.com/peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu/msg01288.html also
at
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/1344)
of my quoting Peirce on verification was to counter Charles' claim that
verification amounts to nothing more than one's acting as if a claim were
true, and Charles' making it sound like there's something superfluous
about verification, that it's somehow meaningless to think of really verifying
or disverifying a claimed rule like "where there's smoke, there's fire,"
meaningless insofar as it supposedly involves indulging in Cartesian doubt and
insofar one has already done whatever verification one can do, by acting
as if the claimed rule were true -- as if the way to understand verification
were to understand it as a piece of symbolism about a rule only hyperbolically
doubtable, understand verification as an act which stands as symbol (or, for
that matter, as index or whatever) to another mind, rather than as an
observing of sign as truly corresponding to object, and of interpretant as
truly corresponding to sign and object. Verification does not need to be
actually public and shared among very distinct minds, though it should be, at
least in principle, sharable, potentially public in those ways. (Of course,
_scientific_ verification has higher standards than that.) I quoted Peirce on
verification to show that, in the Peircean view, the doubting of a
claimed rule is not automatically a universal, hyperbolic, Cartesian doubt of
the kind which Peirce rejects, especially rejects as a basis on which (a la
Descartes) only deductive reasoning will be allowed to build -- a
Cartesian needle's eye of doubt through which all philosophical ideas are
mistakenly forced to pass or be discarded. I was defending myself against
Charles' claim that my view of verification implied some systematic
incorporation of Cartesian doubt into research practices and against
Charles' suggestion that therefore maybe I was a nominalist.
>[Joe] My point is that it is surely obvious that we don't take steps
to verify something in ordinary life unless we have some special reason to do
so, and that any steps actually taken to verify anything are taken only if
something has come to our attention as requiring such action. Ordinarily, we
just accept what we unreflectively learn (come to believe or to think to be
so) either in the ordinary course of living and perceiving things or in the
course of learning about what other people think to be so, supposing we have a
normal regard for the competence of others as regards the sort of thing in
question (which of course varies a lot). Always, though, something of the
nature of an acceptance or claim to the effect that something is so is
presupposed by the activity of verifying it. It cannot be the case, then, that
all of our understanding of things includes verification as an essential part
of it. In fact, it must be only a very small percentage of the opinions,
beliefs, etc., that we acquire in the normal course of living involve
verification in their acquisition. And this makes it quite out of the question
to suppose that verification especially and essentially involves or includes
something which is of a categorial nature which is not already present in all
cognition, which must surely include much that involves no verification and is
never considered to be in any need of it.
Evidently you still think that I'm talking only of conscious deliberate
verification involving the taking of physically active steps. That is not at
all the only kind of verification which I've been discussing.
The things which you describe are only part of that which I mean by
"verification," which I'm using as a forest term for the various trees. In
experience and life, the greater part of experience whereby the mind supports
and verifies (to whatever extent) is experience which the mind already has,
and the main active steps are usually at most a bit of digging through memory.
The whole "feeling" of experience, acquaintance, knowledge, recognition, etc.,
as involving a _pastward_ orientation is no mere accident of linguistic
history; likewise the "feeling" of settlement, establishment, etc., as
involving becoming part of the past (not in the sense of the departed but
instead in the sense of that which has been, that which is the foundation
on which we stand). Oftenest, when a mind forms an interpretant supported
by that mind's experience, that's it right there -- recognition takes place at
near lightspeed -- "verification accomplished," as far as that mind is
concerned, and accomplished more or less fallibly as is often if not always
also recognized by the given mind. That is a big part of what I mean by
"verification," and I hold that it happens just as largely and minutely and
consciously and unconsciously at every semiosic stage and level, just as
largely and minutely and consciously and
unconsciously as objectification, representation, and interpretation
happen.
Science is distinguished by (among other things) a very active attitude
of taking verificational steps in a context where
an everyday mind (and also a scientific mind busy with other things)
is often content to stand/sit/rest on the established. Science swims
especially hard "upstream." Science involves one's being very active in order
to arrange to be "acted-on," determined, and supported, by truth. This
interesting tension between research activity and that at which it aims
-- a basic kind of passivity of/in subjection to truth -- is, I think
most will agree, no mere figment of conception, but instead a challenge
which research confronts in its practices every day. One keeps deciding and
determining steps in order to _let the truth decide_, ultimately also in order
to see to it that the verificational steps are also determined by truth rather
than arbitrarily by truth's student, and many are the de-legitimizing
entanglements, the pitfalls and traps, and many are the precautions taken
against the student's (unwittingly or, unfortunately, otherwise) stacking
the deck, a stacking which can easily happen when, after all, the student is
being so _active_, mentally and/or physically. But the kind of concentrated of
example of verificational process which science is, is not typical in every
respect of verificational processes in everyday life, any more than scientific
representations, portrayals, indications, symbolizations, etc., are typical in
every respect of signs and representations in general and in everyday life. As
we remain well aware of science's prized unusually high standards which make
its representations "special cases" even as we look to science for clarified
examples of representation, so, likewise, we can remain aware of the
various respects in which scientific verification is representative and
unrepresentative of verification in its more common forms. In particular, in
everday life, one often prizes knowing about things. But a scientist prizes
and makes a discipline of knowing in or on what light or basis one knows
things -- a scientist prizes verification and makes a discipline of it.
Novelist Henry Green's occasional feat of making the reader "know" something,
somehow infer to it conclusively, without the reader's knowing how s/he
"knows" it, could work as a guilty pleasure, if not a source of discomfort, to
a scientist.
If, after all this, you wish that I would just use some other word than
"verification," I'm open to suggestions. I've also used "recognition" but the
problem with that word is that it also names a psychological act in some sense
that "interpretation" and "representation" do not, and there are other and
related problems with it as well. Though I didn't see it clearly from the
start, "recognition" in the sense in which I've used it really should not be
_equated_ with "acknowledgement" any more than "representation" should be
_equated_ with "assertion." "Establishment" seems to come closest to the
desired sense, but it is also used in the sense of "founding" or "setting up"
as in "establishing an organization" etc., and even in the verificational
sense it's kind of strong in its "up-or-down" feeling; one is particularly
unaccustomed to a phrase like "degrees of establishment." Also it's hard to
form a word like "interpretant" or "recognizant" from "establish" -- going
back to Latin, it should be "stabilient" but that word does not evoke the word
"establish." Maybe I could go half-Spanish and coin "establecent." Or
"establizant"? "Establicant"? "Establishant"?
>[Joe] This is not to say that you are mistaken in stressing the
importance of verification as a philosophical topic. it is remarkable just how
little attention has been paid to it even by philosophers of science, where it
has usually been discussed only in the context of (1) the verificationist
theory of meaning and (2) the context of induction and the problem of
establishing its validity as a mode of inference. Those are not trivial
contexts and what you are saying may have considerable importance relative to
those contexts of interest and some others as well, perhaps. Thus I don't
intend any discouragement or disparagement of what you are concerned about as
regards those contexts of interest. But I think you may be inadvertently
blunting the significance of what you are driving at by relativizing it to the
context of interest which concerns the categorial conceptions, and, moreover,
the attempt to make it relevant to the problematics of the categories may
actually be distorting your thinking in some way. I think it may in fact be
doing precisely that, and the reason for my thinking so is that I keep finding
myself unable to make what you are saying add up to anything, regardless of
how impressive it may seem prima facie.
I agree that you seem not to have understood at least some of what I've
said, and, in the case of the conception of verification, you've taken me to
be discussing verification much more narrowly than I've been discussing it,
and so it's left you wondering why I see it as broad enough for
general relevance in a broad categorial context. It would leave me wondering
too. So I'm inclined to regard as arising from such misunderstandings your
feeling that something not yet articulable is big-time wrong with my ideas and
your idea that a categorial context is not right for this.
Lately I've noticed that people talk about "the categories" and seem to
mean the basic semiotic elements (object, sign, interpretant). When I see
"categories" or "categorial" I usually take it initially in the
cenopythagorean sense (quality, reaction, representation). Anyway, I'm unsure
how you mean "categorial" here, but it may ultimately make not that much
difference. Anyway, I'll respond to the rest of your post later.
Best regards,
>[Joe] It is my experience in doing philosophy over the years that one
frequently has to trust one's intuitive judgment or intuitive sense as regards
whether something being said really makes any sense. Sometimes one has to go
with something that seems clearly not to do so because, in spite of that, one
also has the feeling that it really does make good and important sense even
though one can't figure out what exactly that might be at the moment. And this
also holds for things that may seem to make sense, though one is not really
sure of that and one is suspicious of it as probably being senseless in spite
of seeming, on the face of it, to do so. In fact, on most topics of interest
one's hunches along these lines must be relied upon or else one will never get
to anything very interesting or worthwhile. And it is easy to be seriouisly
mistaken in both ways, which raises important questions about research
methodology in philosophy that are too often avoided.
>[Joe] But as regards the matter in question here, I can only say that
I have a strongly felt hunch that your argumentation is being distorted by the
misguided attempted to try to fit the problematics of verification into the
context of the problematics of category theory, where it simply doesn't fit.
You are mistaken in thinking that I am so totally persuaded that there is no
fourth category to be added to Peirce's three that I am simply prejudiced
against what you are saying for that reason. In fact, I am not persuaded of
that at all and would not be inclined to want to put the time in on trying to
demonstrate it. I just don't know of any reason that persuades me that there
is such a thing. As regards your work, It is just that when I read what you
say on the topic I don't really understand what you are saying most of the
time, whereas I usually find you very good at understanding and commenting
upon what Peirce is saying, but I do not find myself inclined to trust your
judgment on this particular topic because I find you saying so many things
that seem to me to be off in some way, even though I usually can't say exactly
why. I can't simply refute your claim, Ben, but I am suspicious enough of so
much of what you are saying in that connection that I am content with the
hunch that you are mistaken, and I do think that the reasons I have adduced in
respect to the claim about verification as being or essentially involving a
fourth categorial factor are pretty good ones for rejecting that particular
claim of yours.
>[Joe] Well, maybe that really is the last word on that for me!
Best regards,
Joe
================================================
----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Udell
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 2:46 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite photograph" metaphor
Sorry, I forgot to compensate for an MS Outlook Express problem which
involves URLs not getting copied properly. Now taken care of.
Charles, list,
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