This is intriguing stuff, Joe and I'd like to hear more about what you have in
mind.
First, I'm not sure what sort of special relationship the two psychological
laws in question need to bear to the method of tenacity. If they're in fact
psychological (i.e. psychical) laws, then it would be unsurprising if the other
methods of inquiry made important use of them. I thought that the only special
connection between the laws and tenacity is that the method tries to deploy
those laws especially simply and directly.
Next, can you help me see more clearly how the passage you quote in support of
your suggestion that Peirce has in mind laws concerning the properties of
neural tissue, etc. is supposed to yield *two* psychological (in any sense of
""psychological," since you rightly point out that idioscopic laws might be
fair game at this point) laws? I don't love my interpretation and would like
to find a way of reading Peirce as clearer and less sloppy about this issue.
But I don't see how your reading leaves us with two laws that Peirce could have
expected the reader to extract from the text.
Thanks to you and to both Jims and the other participants; Ithis discussion
makes me resolve to do less lurking on the list (though I've so resolved
before).
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Ransdell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:57:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce
referring to?
Jeff Kasser says:
JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it
seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two
conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place.
These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the
settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the
nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any
answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to
ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to
turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the
context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of
the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce
sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws"
tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield
from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
REPLY:
JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either
of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the
second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound
like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief
is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has
been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something
he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out
the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all
four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or
less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which
will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might
have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an
occurrence of a belief establishment and, again,
there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular.
I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the
method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when
he says
"… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question
any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all
which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred
from anything that might disturb it?"
This involves reiteration of effort with anticipation of it having a result in
consequence of it , and thus implicitly makes reference to a possible
sequential regularity of a lawlike nature. The two psychological laws might
then be idioscopic rather than coenoscopic laws, having to do with the
responsiveness of neural tissue to repeated stimulation and the like, which
Peirce would know something about. It doesn't make any difference that it is
not cenoscopic or properly philosophical since he is referring to it as
something the devotee of tenacity exploits, not as something logic is based
upon. This means that in referring to the two laws he is NOT referring to the
basic principle that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as constituted by
what would be logically described as a formal contradiction.
Now, as regards that principle, the idea that inquiry -- thinking in the sense
of "I just can't seem to think today" or "he is a competent thinker" -- is
driven by doubt in the form of an exerienced contradiction is not a modern
idea but has its origins at the very beginning of philosophy in the West in the
practice of the dialectical craft of Socrates. Let me quote myself, from a
paper I wrote a few years back, on the Socratic tradition in philosophy, which
I claim to be the proper logical tradition to which we should be putting Peirce
in relation
In its origins Socratic dialectic probably developed as a
modification of practices of eristic dispute that made use
of the reductio techniques of the mathematicians, perhaps
as especially modified by the Parmenidean formalists.
Socratic dialectic differs importantly from the earlier
argumentation, though, in at least two major respects,
first, by conceiving of the elenchic or refutational aspect of
the argumentation not as a basis from which one could then
derive a positive conclusion either as the contradictory of
the proposition refuted, as in reductio argumentation, or
by affirming the alternative because it was the sole
alternative available, but rather as inducing an aporia or
awareness of an impasse in thought: subjectively, a
bewilderment or puzzlement. Second, it differs also by using
the conflicting energies held in suspense in the aporia as the
motivation of inquiry. (Ransdell, "Peirce and the Socratic
Tradition in Philosophy", Proceedings of the Peirce Society, 2000)
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/socratic.htm
Peirce could take this for granted not because of some well known
psychological laws but because of the adoption (in a modified form) of the
basic dialectical principle by Hegel and others, following upon the use of it
in the Kantian philosophy in the transcendental dialectic of pure reason in the
First Critique. I do not say that this should also satisfy us today as
sufficient to persuade us to the acceptance of the thesis that inquiry is
driven by doubt, construed as a "dissatisfaction at two repugnant
propositions". But it is possible that Peirce did, at the time of composition
of the Fixation article, think that this would be regarded as being something
no one would be likely to dispute, or at least as something which no reader of
the Popular Science Monthly would be likely to dispute. (That Journal was, as
I understand it, a rough equivalent of the present day Nature as regards its
targeted audience, whereas the Scientific American at that time was oriented
more
towards applications and inventions than theoretical science.) It is not
obvious that logic should be based in a theory of inquiry, but it is not clear
to me that Peirce regarded that as something which had to be argued for. In
any case, none of this affects your thesis about Peirce not regarding the
Fixation as suffering from psychologism.
I have a couple of other comments to make, Jeff, but I will put them in
another message which I probably won't write before tomorrow.
Joe Ransdell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2006 3:04:13 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce
referring to?
Joe and other listers,
Thanks, Joe, for your kind words about my paper. I fear that you make the
paper sound a bit more interesting than it is, and you certainly do a better
job of establishing its importance than I did. It's something of a cut-and
paste job from my dissertation, and I'm afraid the prose is sometimes rather
"dissertationy," which is almost never a good thing.
First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to
me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional
statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are
stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of
opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a
habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a
question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves,
dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with
contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of
the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea
that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems
to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity
rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from
the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
This interpretation does have two disadvantages, however. If my paper is at
all close to right, then Peirce considered these laws "psychical" rather than
"psychological," in the 1870's as well as in the 1860's and in the latter half
of his career (I don't mean that he had the term "psychical" available in 1877,
however). But this is one of those places where the fact that Peirce was
writing for *Popular Science Monthly* can perhaps be invoked to account for
some terminological sloppiness. A second consideration is a bit more
troublesome, however. It's not easy to see how Peirce could have considered
"the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry" a psychical or a
psychological law. It seems charitable here to see Peirce as writing a bit
casually once again and to construe him as meaning that the statement in
question is a normative truth more or less forced on us by psychological (i.e.
psychical) facts. But, as the following quote from another of your
messages indicates, Peirce was pretty quick to close the is/ought gap with
respect to this issue:
The following axiom requires no comment, beyond the remark that it seems
often to be forgotten. Where there is no real doubt or disagreement there is no
question and can be no real investigation.
So perhaps he really meant that a statement about the aim of iqnuiry could be
a (coenscopic) psychological law. This raises an issue you mention in yet
another message, viz. what exactly makes doubts "paper" or otherwise
inappropriate. There's been some good work done on this issue, but I think
Peirce's confidence that the coenscopic data rather directly warrants his
methodological conclusions is puzzling and I'm trying to wrestle with this
problem these days.
I'd like to add to remarks about your message concerning my 1999 paper,
neither of which amounts to a disagreement. First, I'm inclined to supplement
your valuable considerations about the coenscopic sense of "mind." You focus
on some of our locutions concerning minds like ours, and I'd just add the
Peircean thought that the coenscopic notion of "mindedness" extends to cases at
some remove from the human exemplar. Even something as simple as a sensor is
going to, as Peirce sees matters, need belief-like states (ways of storing
information, assumptions about what the world is like, etc.) and doubt-like
states (ways in which the world can get the sensor's attention). This needs
some working out, but Peirce seems to think that the doubt-belief theory will
hold of anything that can play a certain role (perhaps picked out
communicatively) in inquiry.
Finally, I should note that I'm perhaps less confident than you are, Joe, that
Peirce's apparent complaints about the "psychological" basis of "Fixation" and
"How To" are primarily admissions of a rhetorical failure in allowing those who
don't understand psychologism to accuse Peirce thereof. That may account for
some such passages, but I suspect that in some cases Peirce had in mind his
preferred (at the time) notion of a philosophical grounding (in phenomenology
or semiotics or the normative sciences, etc.) and was faulting himself for not
providing a sufficiently "deep" argument for some of his methodological claims,
especially the pragmatic maxim. But you and I are in agreement on the central
point, which is that Peirce was not accusing himself of anything worth calling
psychologism.
Best to all,
Jeff
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