Jeff:
Your claim is that the two "psychological laws" of which the method of
tenacity makes use are what is implicit in the following sentence from
the "Fixation" article::
"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 [1] 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 [2] learning to turn with
contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it."
The numbers in brackets are inserted in the quote to help identify
the two laws. The method of tenacity is said to consist (importantly
if not exclusively) of instantiating an application of each of the
laws alluded to. Whatever exactly the proper statement of the two
laws might be, their expression will be an exact specification of
something like the following two conditionals:
(1) If a persuasive argument for a belief is repeated the belief
will become more fixed.
(2) If a countervailing objection to the belief is regarded with
contempt and hatred the belief will become less susceptible to doubt
To follow the method of tenacity is to act upon these laws by
(1) reiterating persuasive arguments for the belief which one is
tenaciously holding. and
(2) cultivating hatred and contempt for countervailing considerations.
Peirce's illustrations of the method are quite straightforward
exemplification of this, e.g. one watches intently the television news
channel that offers what one finds to be the most persuasive arguments
for the view one is tenaciously holding to and one allows oneself to
experience appreciatively expressions of contempt and hatred for the
views in opposition to the favored view. (Peirce's example refers to
the reading of certain journals and the turning away from others
instead of the watching of certain news channels.)
According to you, "the other methods do take into account the
psychological laws Peirce alluded to . . .; they even give those laws
a kind of pride of place. But they take into account a lot of other
things (disagreement, observational evidence, consistency) . . ."
The method of authority may do so, but the a priori method does not
appear to do so and the method of reason surely does not.make use of
them at all.
Joe
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2006 11:32:30 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What
Thanks for your response, Joe. I remain unconvinced; perhaps a look at
the relevant pages of W3 will help me see things your way. I'll be
traveling for the rest of this week, but will look into that upon my
return. Here I'll just offer a quick gesture or two about how our
disagreement looks from my side.
Nothing in what you say below seems to me to show that the other methods
are not based (in the sense my interpretation needs) on the two laws I
suggested Peirce had in mind. The official view of "Fixation" seems to
be that the only non-question-begging standard that can be imposed on a
method is that it fix belief well. Tenacity tries to do so very simply
and directly, and we are supposedly shown that such a simple and direct
method won't in fact do a very good job. In (very loosely) Hegelian
fashion, as several folks have recently suggested, we learn what a
successful belief-fixing method will have to take into account in order
to work, at least for people like us (i.e. readers of papers about the
theory of inquiry). So we go from a cheap and easy attempt to satisfy
our desire for stable belief to a more sophisticated standard of
satisfaction (this is a bastardization of one of Peirce's later comments
on "Fixation," but you get the idea), and we realize that we've only
made explicit the standard that was implicitly there all along (this is
another Hegelian strand of the paper). I'm being a bit quick here, but
my suggestion is that the other methods do take into account the
psychological laws Peirce alluded to (as I read him); they even give
those laws a kind of pride of place. But they take into account a lot
of other things (disagreement, observational evidence, consistency)
*because*, given those psychological laws, nothing else will satisfy us;
nothing less will produce stable beliefs. Clearly, a lot more needs to
be said here, but my point is that I don't see anything in your message
inconsistent with this reading.
Furthermore, it just seems implausible to me that Peirce would toss in
that line about the tenacious person basing his method on two
psychological laws without giving the reader a pretty clear indication
of what he (Peirce) had in mind. I realize that this is closer to a
conclusion than an argument, but the "why didn't he say X if he meant
X?" style of objection that you offered to my reading of the passage
seems to me more persuasive when used against your reading. I think
that some sense can be made of what he meant by "based on" in that
passage. I may well be wrong. But as a group it doesn't seem to me
that we've gotten very far in developing an account of what he expected
the reader to understand by the "two psychological laws," and that does
seem to me an important desideratum.
Sorry that this is a bit quick. I'll continue participating in the
discussion if my internet access permits me to do so.
Jeff
Joseph Ransdell wrote:
> 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]
>
>
>
> ----- 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
>
> 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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