[peirce-l] Re: What

[Jim Piat]

Joe Ransdell wrote:   R:  This is well worth following up, Jim, but I want to say again that it won't work as long  you are making the mistake of trying to think of the fourth method as a combination of the first three methods, as distinct from thinking of the fourth method as somehow involving factors of central importance that are made use of in each of the first three methods.  Each of the methods -- the fourth as well as the other three -- introduces some distinct factors, but the basic problem is to figure out the relationships of the factors in the methods, not the relationships of the methods.    Dear Joe,   I agree with what you say above.  The factor of central importance that I think I see in each of the lst three methods are (1) an appeal to direct felt experience of a representation (2) an appeal to the reactive component of a represented experience and (3) an appeal to the rational component of all represented experience.  And (4) the triadic relation of the felt, reactive and interpretive component of all represented experience.  I take the first three "methods" be styles or habitual tendencies.  I would say that all methods of fixing belief are of necessity triadic and representational.  Each of the lst three methods being sort of a charicature of representation.  But still representation.    JR (continuing):        The method of tenacity is simply the individual doing what he or she can to stave off the loss of a threatened belief, i.e. to tenaciously keep on holding to it even though something has put it into question.  The method does not go anywhere or lead to anything.  It is, however, a definite effort of some sort or else it could not be regarded as a method, and so what would it be except whatever is involved in protecting the threatened belief?  One of the laws must be something that can be done of a repetitive nature which reinforces the falterng belief, such as going over again and again whatever it was that first instilled and entrenched the belief?  The second must be something that has the effect of blocking or destroying whatever it is which is contradicting the belief, attempting to take its place.  The methodic action will be something with a destructive effect on the cause of the incipient doubt.   But the laws that are appealed to in dealing with these factors, whatever exactly they may be, are not the method.  They are something the method uses.     JP:   I see you take psychological laws to be less fundamental than I do.  For me a fundamental psychological law is one that applies generally.  I think the four methods Peirce outlines are not distinct forms of fixing belief but are instead "varieties" of the one universal method.  The lst emphasizes feeling, the second will and the third thought.  It is only in the fourth that a balanced harmony of these respresentational styles is achieved.    JR (continuing):       Let me put it this way.  Obstinacy or stubborness -- Peirce sometimes calls it the method of obstinacy -- is not a method but a certain disposition of a person, a tendency to be strongly tenacious.   That is not a method.  The first method is the cultivation of obstinacy, if you will, but obstinacy is not something that it is always wise to cultivate.  Now it is true that great discoveries are often a function of great obstinacy in combination with some other factors as well.  But while there is some plausibility in saying that the fourth method will recognize the value that obstinacy can have, one surely does not want to say that it is part of the fourth method to cultivate the practice of obstinacy.        Moving to the second method is, as Peirce describes it, something that happens when the first doesn't work.  Now, that means that the person  seeking belief turns to someone else to tell them what to think, relying upon the superior forcefulness of the other -- e.g. of the people in power who can persuade more forcefully than the individual can persuade him or herself.    JP:   Yes I agree with all of what you say above.    JR (continuing):   This introduces a complexity, but whatever exactly that complexity is, we surely do not want to say that it is part of the fourth method to do what one can to make oneself as persuadable by the forceful social authority as possible.   Isn't that precisely what you see happening all around you day in and day out at present as people subject themselves to the ranters on certain cable news channels, or  to the religious rant and bullying they can find on other channels.  Is it a part of the method of reason to cultivate enslavement of oneself to another in matters of belief?  Now, again, this does not deny that  some factor at work in this process of self-enslavement is -- considered in itself and not in its involvement in the method of authority -- a factor of importance to be drawn upon  some way in the fourth method.  But that is very different from thinking of the fourth method as incorporating the method of self-enslavement.  And so  forth.    JP:   OK -- I think I've got you now.  I think we may be closer than it appears.  Or that I am in greater agreement with you than I've been able to make clear. I think our differences are more a matter of emphasis than substance.  Yes,  certainly stubborn obstinance is no part of genuine mediation. Quite the contrary as you point out.  Likewise for the method of authortarianism.  And yet behind these methods is an element of the truth in so far as they reflect some misplaced emphasis upon either feeling, willing or thinking (which are traditional psychological terms for Peirce's modes of being that form the relational nature of all representations)   JR (continuing): .        One mistake Peirce makes, by the way, is in talking about the method of authority as if from the point of view of the enslaving authority rather than that of the authority-seeking individual, depicted by Peirce as turning to authority because the self-persuasional attempt has failed.  That is a mistake because he loses the continuity of the second first with the second method when he does this without noting to the reader  that he has shifted his perspecitval stance.   JP:  I think I follow you.  Did you mean to omit the word "second" that starts the next to the last line?   The main thing I take from this comment is that you believe Peirce intended for there to be some logical or perhaps psychological -- but either way some meaningful -relationship among the methods.  Some conceptual link  -- and I think his categories are one way of exporing those relationships.  Jim Piat   --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com