Ben
I've been there, even if for different reasons. You'll be welcome when you return.
Cheers and all the best
Arnold
On 9/13/06, Jim Piat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I know the feeling, Ben. I look forward to your return. All the best! Let me know if I can be of any practical help.
Jim Piat
- Original Message -
From: Benjamin Udell
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 4:14 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Until later (was Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List)
Jim, list,
This remains interesting, but, generally, this forum is too addictive for me! I have to get on with practical matters which are, at this point, getting over my head. So I'm unsubscribing for a few months. Thanks for people's interest, Gary, Joe, Jim P., Jim W.,Bernard, and any others, fordiscussing/arguing with me. More generally, keep peirce-l bustling.
Best, Ben Udell
http://tetrast.blogspot.com/
- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 3:50 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The roots of speech-act theory in the New List
Ben,
You say,
Saying that the NLC 'theory' of cognition (which seems to me no more a cognition theory than Peircean truth theory is an inquiry theory even though it references inquiry) is sufficient except when we talk about possibility, feasibility, etc., is -- especially if that list includes negation (you don't say) --to deny that there is an issue of cognizing in terms of alternatives to the actual and apparent, etc., even though then logical conceptions of meaning and implication become unattainable. (END)
It is not asufficient theory. I see it as askingwhat are the most general elements ina process by which the mind forms propositions. The example is a simple case ofperceptual data. But, it is not a complete theory of knowledge. In fact, it is more of a chapter in the history of cognitive psychology. It is a logical description of a psychological process;some parts of which may be empirically established. (For instance, Peirce thinks it is questionable what the then current results of empirical psychology have established with respect to acts of comparison and contrast.) If the paper is coupled with some theses from the JSP series, itseems clear to me that a theory of cognition emerges that could be of interest to psycholinguists and cognitive scientists working in language formation and even speech-act theory. Does it handle all epistemic interests, propositional attitudes, modalities? No.
But it is not a special science since the results uncovered are precisely the most general elements used in any inquiry.It is more nearly what the 1901 Baldwin entry suggests, namely, erkenntnislehre, a doctrine of elements. Peirce struggled with where to assign this study. Is it a part of logic or pre-logical? There doesn't seem to bemuch of the normative concern that later demarcates logic proper. But there is a law-like element that is presupposed in so far as one can only discover unity by introducing it. That transcendental point could easily mark a historical divide between naturalists such as Quine and static modelists such as Chomsky. In some sense, grammar is the issue, although generalized to the utmost. Both could take the spirit of the paper and do things, Chomsky in the specialized application to syntactic structures and transformational grammar, and Quine, in so far as the theory is empirically testable, as shedding some light on know
Modern epistemology cannot even get off the ground with this NLC paper unless the enterprise is so naturalized that the theory (historical curiosity or not) is used to guide research in the relevant special sciences. The specific perceptual cognition and cognitive assertion under discussion meet none of the criteria for knowledge in the classical picture. The assertion this stove is black need neither be justified, true, or even believed. The paper, at least in part, is merely explanatory, if only insufficiently, of what is required to even begin the classical assessment.
You say,
But the point in philosophy is not rephrasability, but instead to understand the result and end of such procedures, in which the description of signs is a _means_ to _transformations_ of extension and intension, transformations which themselves are a means to represent real relationships. The research interest of smoothing and smoothly encoding cognitions into common convenient keys ormodes guides deductive maths of propositions, predicates, etc.; but does not guide philosophy, which is more interested in the corresponding decoding. Philosophy applies deductive formalisms but is no more merely applied deductive theory of logic than statistical theory were merely applied probability theory. (END)
Well, I agree. It is not for nothing that normative science is structured the way it is in Peirce's architecture. The purpose of logical analysis, linguistic analysis, theory
