Jeff Kasser (JK) says:
JK: 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 simply and directly.
REPLY
(by JR = Joe Ransdell):
JR: Peirce says, of the tenacious believer:
". . . if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws . . .".
That seems to me plainly to be saying that the method of tenacity is based on two fundamental psychological laws. It would be odd for him to say "basing his method, like every other is based, on two psychological laws" in a passage in which he is explaining that method in particular. And if he wanted to say that this method is different from the others in that it applies these laws "simply and directly" whereas the others do not then I would expect him to say something to indicate what an indirect and complicated use of them would be like. Also, to say that use of such laws (whatever they may be) occurs in all four methods would contradict what he frequently says in the drafts of the essay and seems to think especially important there but which does not appear in the final version of the paper except in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", where it is not emphasized as being of special importance, namely, that in the fourth method the conclusions reached are different from what was held at the beginning of the inquiry. This is true in two ways. First, because in the fourth method one concludes to something from premises (the starting points) which are not identical to the conclusion with which the inquiry ends; and, second, because, sometimes, at least, the starting points of different inquirers in the same inquiring community in relation to the same question will be different because the initial observations which function as the basis for the conclusions ultimately drawn are different (as in the passage two or three pages from the end of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" about investigation into the velocity of light.) Great weight is put upon that sort of convergence as at least frequently occurring in the use of the fourth method. Moreover, the third method is not one in which use of the two laws is characteristic since it depends upon a tendency for people to come to agreement in the course of discussion over some period of time though they do not agree initially. (There is no convergence toward truth but only toward agreement, since use of the third method in respect to the same question in diverse communities can result in the settlement of opinion by agreement in diverse communities which will, however, often leave the various communities is disagreement with one another about what they have severally come to internal agreement on.
There is something of importance going on in his understanding of this particular point, Jeff, about the relationship of the starting points of inquiry to the conclusion of it that has to do with the logic of the movement from the first to the fourth method, as is evident in the draft material from 1872 in Writings 3, but is more difficult to discern in the final version where the discussion of the four methods is partially in the Ideas article as well as the Fixation article, which are really all of a piece.
JK: 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.
JR: I don't think he necessarily expected the readers to extract them from the text, Jeff, since it would not be necessary for his purposes there for the reader to do so. It is possible that in fact he did provide some explicit clues, at least, to what he had in mind in some draft version not yet generally available, but I don't find any place in what is in print (in Writings 3 and CP 7 in the section on the Logic of l873) where there is any explicit attempt at identifying them. It may only be a learned allusion to what someone of the time would be familiar with from the inquiries into psychological matters that were starting up around that time in Europe.
If they pertained to the first method but not the fourth he would not have any logical need to make sure that the reader knew what he was alluding to, given that his aim in the paper was primarily to establish an understanding of the fourth method only. As regards why I think the two psychological laws might have had something to do with neural responsiveness, I say this because of the reference to that sort of consideration at the end of section 3 of the Fixation article. Whatever these laws are, though, they would have to be ones that could be instantiated by the will of the person threatened with the prospect of losing a belief, such that a result would be the reinforcement of the shaky belief such as would be involved in deliberately avoiding any further exposure to possible doubt-inducing ideas and in the repeating of reassuring experiences. But how to formulate anything like that which might pass muster as a psychological law simply escapes me.
Joe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
JK: 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 simply and directly.
REPLY
(by JR = Joe Ransdell):
JR: Peirce says, of the tenacious believer:
". . . if he only succeeds -- basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws . . .".
That seems to me plainly to be saying that the method of tenacity is based on two fundamental psychological laws. It would be odd for him to say "basing his method, like every other is based, on two psychological laws" in a passage in which he is explaining that method in particular. And if he wanted to say that this method is different from the others in that it applies these laws "simply and directly" whereas the others do not then I would expect him to say something to indicate what an indirect and complicated use of them would be like. Also, to say that use of such laws (whatever they may be) occurs in all four methods would contradict what he frequently says in the drafts of the essay and seems to think especially important there but which does not appear in the final version of the paper except in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", where it is not emphasized as being of special importance, namely, that in the fourth method the conclusions reached are different from what was held at the beginning of the inquiry. This is true in two ways. First, because in the fourth method one concludes to something from premises (the starting points) which are not identical to the conclusion with which the inquiry ends; and, second, because, sometimes, at least, the starting points of different inquirers in the same inquiring community in relation to the same question will be different because the initial observations which function as the basis for the conclusions ultimately drawn are different (as in the passage two or three pages from the end of "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" about investigation into the velocity of light.) Great weight is put upon that sort of convergence as at least frequently occurring in the use of the fourth method. Moreover, the third method is not one in which use of the two laws is characteristic since it depends upon a tendency for people to come to agreement in the course of discussion over some period of time though they do not agree initially. (There is no convergence toward truth but only toward agreement, since use of the third method in respect to the same question in diverse communities can result in the settlement of opinion by agreement in diverse communities which will, however, often leave the various communities is disagreement with one another about what they have severally come to internal agreement on.
There is something of importance going on in his understanding of this particular point, Jeff, about the relationship of the starting points of inquiry to the conclusion of it that has to do with the logic of the movement from the first to the fourth method, as is evident in the draft material from 1872 in Writings 3, but is more difficult to discern in the final version where the discussion of the four methods is partially in the Ideas article as well as the Fixation article, which are really all of a piece.
JK: 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.
JR: I don't think he necessarily expected the readers to extract them from the text, Jeff, since it would not be necessary for his purposes there for the reader to do so. It is possible that in fact he did provide some explicit clues, at least, to what he had in mind in some draft version not yet generally available, but I don't find any place in what is in print (in Writings 3 and CP 7 in the section on the Logic of l873) where there is any explicit attempt at identifying them. It may only be a learned allusion to what someone of the time would be familiar with from the inquiries into psychological matters that were starting up around that time in Europe.
If they pertained to the first method but not the fourth he would not have any logical need to make sure that the reader knew what he was alluding to, given that his aim in the paper was primarily to establish an understanding of the fourth method only. As regards why I think the two psychological laws might have had something to do with neural responsiveness, I say this because of the reference to that sort of consideration at the end of section 3 of the Fixation article. Whatever these laws are, though, they would have to be ones that could be instantiated by the will of the person threatened with the prospect of losing a belief, such that a result would be the reinforcement of the shaky belief such as would be involved in deliberately avoiding any further exposure to possible doubt-inducing ideas and in the repeating of reassuring experiences. But how to formulate anything like that which might pass muster as a psychological law simply escapes me.
Joe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:15:49 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:15:49 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What
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
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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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