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Dear Joe,
What you say below is all very interesting to
me. I hope you do give another go at writing up how lst three
methods exemplify some of the major ways in which our problem solving goes
astray. I think the three methods (while each having an attractive virtue)
if used exclusively or even in some sort of mechanistic combination often cause
more problems then they solve. They are pseudo solutions to lifes problems
because each denies some fundamental aspect
of reality -- either the self , the other or what mediates between the
two. Or to put it another way -- feeling, will, or thought. In
anycase you seem to be in an inspired mood and I hope you press on. Just
now for example the whole country seems at a loss for what to do about the Mid
East. I wonder how the approach you are thinking about might be applied
in trying to solve problems on that scale as well as in analyzing the
problems of our individual lives. And not just interpersonal problems, the
problems we face with our enviroment as well.
Best wishes,
Jim Piat
----- Original Message -----
I think
we may be getting close to the rationale of the four methods with what you say
below, Jim. I've not run across anything that Peirce says that seems to
me to suggest that he actually did work out his account of the methods
by thinking in terms of the categories, but it seems likely that he would
nevertheless tend to do so, even if unconsciously, given the importance
he attached to them from the beginning: they are present in the
background of his thinking even in the very early writings where he is
thinking of them in terms of the first, second, and third persons of
verb conjugation (the second person -- the "you" -- of the conjugation
becomes the third categorial element). But whether he actually worked it
out on that basis, the philosophically important question is whether it
is philosophically helpful to try to understand the four methods by supposing
that the first three correspond to the categories regarded in isolation and
the fourth can be understood as constructed conceptually by combining the
three methods consistent with their presuppositional ordering. That
remains to be seen. In other words, I do think we can read these factors
into his account in that way, and this could be pedagogically useful in
working with the method in a pedagogical context in particular, but it is a
further question whether that will turn out to be helpful in developing his
thinking further in a theoretical way. It certainly seems to be worth trying,
though.
If the overall improvement of
thinking in our practical life seems not to have improved much from what it
was in antiquity, when compared with the radical difference in the
effectiveness of our thinking in those areas in which the fourth method has
been successfully cultivated, it may be because we have failed to pay
attention to the way we handle our problems when we take recourse to one and
another of the other three methods, as we are constantly doing without paying
any attention to it.
I started to write up something
on this but it quickly got out of hand and I had best break off temporarily
and return to that later. I will just say that it has to do with the
possibility of developing the theory of the four methods as a basis for a
practical logic -- or at least a practical critical theory -- of the sort that
could be used to teach people how to be more intelligent in all aspects of
life, including political life -- and I will even venture to say, in religious
life: two areas in which intelligence seems currently to be conspicuously --
and dangerously -- absent. One potentiality that Peirce's philosophy has
that is not present in the philosophy and logic currently dominating in
academia lies in the fact that he conceived logic in such a way that
rhetoric -- the theory of persuasion -- can be reintroduced within
philosophy as a theoretical discipline with practical application in the
service of truth. One can expect nothing of the sort from a philosophy
that has nothing to say about persuasion.
Joe
Ransdell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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