Jim, Gary, List
Great comments, responses, and remarks all round. One of the great disappointments in my somewhat oddball academic career has been the experience of `teachers' who treat their work and their students as a sort of occupational hazard. I have found that there is an enormous wellsp
Arnold, Jim, List,
Thanks for your good responses especially as there hasn't been much yet
to my proposing an inquiry into pragmatic inquiry (perhaps I posted too
many Peirce quotations?) But given the near central importance of
inquiry to pragmatism (note for example that in Peirce's Classifi
Jim,
> [Jim Willgoose] The proposition "She is possibly pregnant" is easily
understood by all. I overstated my case. (nor is their a potential
contradiction) But I think it masks a problem for the theory of cognition, and
furthermore, not all ordinary expressions are as clear as they might
Jim,
I should add, upon re-reading your comments, that the idea of possibility
that I've been discussing has pretty much been in terms of ignorance, but it
seems to me that the terms don't need to be essentially in terms of ignorance.
If one is talking about a future event, then the reason
Thanks Ben,
There is a difference between treating possibility epistemically or treating it ontologically. "Possibly black' and "possibly non-black" are (sub) contraries, indeterminate with respect to a state of information. But since we are considering "this stove," and not allowing multiple r
Jim,
>[Jim Willgoose] There is a difference between treating possibility
epistemically or treating it ontologically. "Possibly black' and
"possibly non-black" are (sub) contraries, indeterminate with respect to a state
of information. But since we are considering "this stove," and not allo
Ben,
Peirce says,
"Very many writers assert that everything is logically possible which involves no contradiction Let us call that sort of logical possibility, essential, or formal, logical possibility. It is not the only logical possibility; for in this sense, two propositions contradict
Ben,
(I responded to your later message first.) I agree with a lot here. The idea that there are objective possibilities that are true, regardless of our knowledge, has been arguably the central issue in discussions of philosophical realism for 2500 years. The idea of objective indeterminacy is
