Dear Folks-- poking about I found that much of what
Peirce says about perception relevant to our discussion of
verification. (I think what makes verification possible within
representation is that the capacity to respond to secondness is inherent in
representation -- Peirce didn't say that but I think it's so). But Peirce
did say this:
"Whatever Comte himself meant by verifiable, which
is not very clear, it certainly ought not to be understood to mean veifiable by
direct observation, since that would cut off all history as an inadmissile
hypothesis. But what must and should be meant is that the hypothesis must be
capable of comparing perceptual predictions deduced from a theory with the facts
of perception predicted, and in taking the measure of agreement observed as the
provisional and approximative, or probametric, measure of the general agreement
of the theory with fact.
It thus appears that a conception can only be
admitted into a hypothesis in so far as its possible consequences would be of a
perceptual nature; which agrees with my original maxim of pragmatiism as far as
it goes." (Source EP II page 225 -The Nature of
Meaning)
Well, whether the observation is direct
or otherwise it does seem that Peirce views verification as comparing an
prediction with an "observed" outcome. And elsewhere in discussions of
perception/observation he seems to make it clear that secondness is involved in
perception and perception is involved in cognition.
And also from EP II pages 24 and 26
respectively: "It thus appears that all knowledge comes to us from
observation. A part is forced upon us from without and seems to result
from Nature's mind; a part comes from the depths of the mind as seen from
within, whcih by an egotistical anacoluthon we call 'our' mind". . .
. "The remark that reasoning consists in the observation of an icon will
be found equally important in th theory and the practice of
reasoning".
None of the above intended as proof of
anything -- just an interesting line of inquiry.
Jim Piat
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