Glen... I quite confused as to what you mean by tight and loose control... Let us take the case of belief in a tight relationship between my height off the ground and my likelihood of being injured in a jump. If I firmly believe that, then whether or not I jump is tightly coupled with the height. If I doubt such a relationship exists, then the height I find myself at will be only loosely coupled with my likelihood of jumping... right? Is that not the type of thing you are referring to with "tight" and "loose" control?
Either way, Peirce is more interested in the higher-order question of what leads beliefs to be stable. There are many answers to that question (see his "Fixation of Belief"), though the interesting answer, the one he tries to elaborate for the rest of his life, is fixation via the scientific process, in which beliefs stabilize (control behavior more tightly) as their implications attain in practice, and destabilize (control behavior more loosely) as their implications fail to attain in practice. In that context, the scientific context, "Truth" or "Real" are odd terms we use to refer to those things for which all implications will attain in the very, very long run. (... which might, in the very, very long run, turn out to be almost nothing...) So, there is, on the one hand, something to be said about the "control" that is the belief itself, and something else to be said about the "control" that is the sociological stability of the belief and the basis of that stability. In your case of the "dead horse" of putting feet on the floor, the "tight coupling" is what happens when one acts their entire daily life without once checking the belief. Doubt makes one put ones feet down tentatively, makes one walk with caution. The relation of the person to the floor gets looser as doubt increases... doesn't it? The person who firmly believes the floor is there acts towards it unhesitatingly the whole day, thousands of times; his behavior is tightly coupled to a floor being present... as becomes obvious in a dramatic fall if it isn't. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps <echar...@american.edu> On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 12:01 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: > To be a little more concise, Peirce's position on "self-control" is > irrelevant to this point. Where the agency lies is irrelevant. This point > is that Peircian belief and Peircian doubt seem well-elaborated by the > concept of the looseness and tightness of the feedback loop between reality > and the behavior under consideration. > > Any behavior (be it belief in the æther or eyeball saccade) can be > considered Peircian-doubtful if it's tightly coupled to the environment and > Peircian-believed if it is loosely coupled to the environment. > > And to go back to "What Pragmatism Is", when Peirce says: "if a given > prescription for an experiment ever can be and ever is carried out in act, > an experience of a given description will result", I think you'll notice > that the tightness or looseness of the coupling is a tacit experimental > target for pretty much any habit/belief. E.g. my atheist friends delight > in pointing out how our theist friends always fail to check their idea of > God against reality (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). Or e.g. arguing > for/against gun control, one can't help but notice how often an arguer > (fails to) cite(s) data. Or e.g. when I run, the first mile or so is > painful and horrible (strong evidence of Peircian-doubt), yet the final > mile or 2 are wonderfully liberating (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). > > Or to go back to the dead horse, it should be clear whether a person > believes the floor is there when they get up out of bed or not. Did they > look first (tight coupling) or not (loose coupling). > > OK. I feel like I've done as much as I can to make the point clear. I'll > stop. Thanks for everyone's patience. > > ### > -- > ☣ uǝlƃ > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
