Jim Piat
Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:54:55 -0700
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Dear Joe,
I agree with your characterization of the
scientific method as including the distinctive elements of the other
three. You have clarified the issue in a way that is very helpful to
me. I agree as well that taken individually each of the lst
three methods (tenacity, authority and reason) can lead to
disaster. So, without going into all the details let me just sum up by
saying I agree with you and that includes your cautions about my misleading
metaphors, etc. Thanks for two very helpful posts.
Picking up on your suggestion of a possible
hierachical relationship between the methods I have been thinking about some of
their possible connections with Peirce's categories. Again, my ideas on
this are vague and meant only to be suggestive and I look forward to your
thoughts. First, very roughly, it strikes me that iconicity is the
crux of direct apprehension of reality. In essence perception is
the process by which one becomes impressed with (or attunded
to) the form of reality. In effect a kind of resonance is
established by which subject and environment become similar. This I think
accounts for the conviction we all have that in some fundamental way what we
perceive "is" the case -- which I think is in part the explanation
for the method of tenacity. Second is the notion of otherness or
dissimilarity. The existance of resistance which we experience as the will
of others or as the limits of our own wills. Third is the notion of
thought or reason by which one is able to mediate between these two modes
of existence. Unfortunately, as you point out, one can get lost
in thought (or without it) and thus we are best served not by some
form of degenerate representation (minimizing either the iconic, indexical
-- or mediative component) but by a full blown common sense form
of reasoning or inquiry that has been formalized as the scientific
method. So, to recap -- method one is a form of overly
iconic settlement, method two a over-reaction in the direction of excessively
referentially settlement, and method three an overly rationalistic
form of settlement at the expense of the other two.
I think that Peirce did not intend that we take the
lst three methods as examples of belief fixation which folks
actually employ in their pure form. By itself each method is not
a example of symbolic or representational thought but of something more
akin to a degenerative form of representation. So, I
think Peirce intended them as exaggerations in order to
illustrate degenerative ways of representation and inaequate ways of belief
fixation or settlement of doubt. What he did was to describe the
three modes of being involved in representation (the fourth method) as isolated
forms of belief settlement. The result of course was a bit of a stretch or
caricature of the degenerative ways in which we distort common sense in the
settlement of our doubts. Because we are in fact symbols using
symbols we can in theory come up with all sorts of false possiblities --
which is part of what makes thinking about thinking so difficult. Even
erroneous thinking or representation involves representation. Sometimes we
build sand castles in the air and pretend we are on the beach pretending
the waves will never come.
Again, just some vague notions
-- I can't help but feel that in the case of Peirce his categories
are properly and consistently the foundation of all he
says.
Jim Piat
-------
Joe wrote:
"But I would disagree with this part of what you say, Jim. Considered
simply as methods in their own rights, I don't think one wants to speak of them
as being incorporated AS methods within the fourth method. As a methodic
approach to answering questions the method of tenacity is surely just a kind of
stupidity, and it seems to me that the turn to authority, not qualified by any
further considerations -- such as, say, doing so because there is some reason to
think that the authority is actually in a better position to know than one is --
apart, I say, from that sort of qualification, the turn to authority as one's
method seems little more intelligent than the method of tenacity, regarded in a
simplistic way. The third method, supposing that it is understood as
the acceptance of something because it ties in with -- coheres with -- a system
of ideas already accepted, does seem more intelligent because it is based on the
properties of ideas, which is surely more sophisticated than acceptance which is
oblivious of considerations of coherence. But it is also the method of
the paranoid, who might reasonably be said to be unintelligent to a dangerous
degree at times. But I think that what you say in your other message
doesn't commit you to regarding the methods themselves as "building blocks",
which is a mistaken metaphor here. It is rather that what each of them
respectively appeals to is indeed something to which the fourth method appeals:
the value of self-identity, the value of identification (suitably qualified)
with others. the value of recognition of a universe -- all of which are redeemed
as valuable in the fourth method by the addition of the appeal to the force
majeure of the real given the right sort of conditions, i.e. objectiviy."
---Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com |