I think you're right, Gary, that Peirce doesn't really need to be saved
from the circularity you (very astutely) pointed out in your earlier
message. And I think that you make a good start of showing why he
doesn't need saving. But I would add that Peirce is very concerned
about avoiding what he takes to be vicious circularities in philosophy,
and that he does think of psychologism as involving a vicious
circularity. As some of Peirce's writings on the classification of
sciences make apparent and as Christopher Hookway has emphasized in a
couple of papers, Peirce maintained that we claim a kind of autonomy or
rational self-control when we undertake inquiry. He seemed to think
that some facts are not subject to logical criticism. These give shape
to the project of inquiry and we don't give troubling hostages to
fortune in relying on them to formulate the goals and methods of
inqury. But Peirce was very concerned about building claims that
couldn't be established by the coenscopic sciences into the goals and
methods of inquiry, because he feared that they would then be placed
beyond the possibility of falsification through inquiry. It's an open
question whether the coenscopic/idioscopic distinction can bear the
weight that Peirce asks it to bear, but I do think that Peirce is very
troubled by some apparent circularities and not at all troubled by (what
some would see as) other circularities.
Best to all, and with warm admiration for the departed Arnold Shepperson,
Jeff
gnusystems wrote:
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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