Joe, Kirsti, list,
[[ Well, Gary, it looks like some fancy footwork with the term "is
rooted in" might have to be resorted to if we are to save Peirce on this
one! You've caught him with a flat contradiction there! ]]
Personally i think the contradiction is more apparent than flat. As i
said (and i think Kirsti said the same), this is not circulum vitiosum
but a pattern which underlies inquiry and therefore can only be itself
investigated via a cyclical process.
The "social principle" is implicit in explicit (formal) logic, *and*
logic/semeiotic is implicit in the "social principle". (Though Peirce
would not have put it that way in 1869 or 1878.) "The social
principle is intrinsically rooted in logic" (1869) because recognition
of others as experiencing beings is a special case of seeing a
difference between phenomenon and reality, or between sign and object --
or between "soul" and "world", to use the terms Peirce uses in both of
these passages. Logic begins with the revelation of a real world out
there beyond phenomenal consciousness. "Logic is rooted in the social
principle" (1878) in that it explicates the relationship between
experience and reality, which it cannot do prior to the developmental
stage at which the difference between the two is recognized -- a stage
accessible only to *social* animals who can handle symbolic signs. (The
"method of tenacity" is, in a sense, a reversion to an earlier stage of
development even though it is also a social stance.)
So i don't think Peirce needs to be saved; or if he does, it's only
because (like a bodhisattva) he has "sacrificed his own soul to save the
whole world."
gary F.
}To seek Buddhahood apart from living beings is like seeking echoes by
silencing sounds. [Layman Hsiang]{
gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson & Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin University
}{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/gnoxic.htm }{
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