Gary, Jon, list, I very much like your “argument contra the 'Great Man' theory of scientific advancement. In my view, what individual investigators principally contribute are promising abductions.” And I think this suggests an intimacy between what Peirce called “abduction” and what he called “Musement,” and described as “Pure Play,” in his “Neglected Argument<https://gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm>.” This is the kind of thought that Czikszentmihalyi called “autotelic,” which i take to mean intrinsically rewarding rather than extrinsically purposeful as science is. I see no reason why an AI or LLM could not fully participate in that; even a random word generator could supply material for Musement, given an interpreter who could use it in that way. At least it could help to keep the conversation going.
Love, gary f Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg Gary Fuhrman on Substack<https://gnox.substack.com/> | Turning Signs<https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> ________________________________ From: Gary Richmond <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2026 11:37 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Cc: Gary Fuhrman <[email protected]>; VINCENT M Colapietro <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The End(s) of Inquiry (was A Peircean Argument for the Reality of AI Intelligence) Jon, Vincent, Gary F., List, Jon, thank you for directing us to Vincent Colapietro's new Cognito paper, "C. S. Peirce’s radically heuristic conception of inquiry: futural endeavors, substantive discoveries, and sublime play" https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/cognitiofilosofia/article/view/76328/50654 I have begun to wonder whether the apparent difference between your positions is less a disagreement than a matter of emphasis on different 'moments' within the same Peircean account of inquiry. Your post stresses that inquiry is a normative activity directed toward truth: Unless inquiry remains answerable to the DO it may become but the manipulation of symbols. I agree. But what I take Vincent to be emphasizing is something somewhat different, though not necessarily incompatible. In my view, the value of scientific discoveries is not their being 'settled' results but, shall we say, heuristic achievements that become resources for further inquiry. This is to suggest that science is not only the accumulation of knowledge but also the continual renewal of inquiry itself. Is it possible that these are in fact successive 'moments' within a single process? If so, then inquiry remains both answerable to reality through the DO, but that it also enlarges the methods and practices by which future inquiry might proceed. Jon, you have consistently emphasized that present AI systems lack the 'outward clash' with reality. But I have argued that scientific inquiry does not depend solely on the experiences of isolated investigators. As I've emphasized throughout the several threads of this discussion, inquiry also depends -- and, perhaps principally depends on philosophical and other scientific communities continually testing, criticizing and, hopefully, extending one another's observations. I guess this represents something of an argument contra the 'Great Man' theory of scientific advancement. In my view, what individual investigators principally contribute are promising abductions. Finally, I wonder whether the AI question might be framed a bit differently than we've been doing. Rather than asking whether AI itself 'possesses' collateral experience, maybe we should ask whether AI-generated signs can contribute to inquiry in communities whose continuing relation to the oD is sustained by observation, experiment, criticism, and possible correction. If that is so, then Vincent's paper, your comments, and Gary F.'s observations may not be positing different conceptions of inquiry as much as suggesting a far richer understanding of how inquiry's normative and heuristic dimensions naturally belong together. Best, Gary R On Wed, Jul 15, 2026 at 5:55 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Gary R., List: The question in bold below is the subject of a new paper that Vincent Colapietro just published online<https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/cognitiofilosofia/article/view/76328/50654> in Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia, entitled "C. S. Peirce’s Radically Heuristic Conception of Inquiry: Futural Endeavors, Substantive Discoveries, and Sublime Play." As he explains in the text itself, "What I mean by a radically heuristic account of inquiry is one in which inquiry is undertaken for the sake of inquiry, and this implies that it is undertaken for the sake of the growth of inquiry and, by implication, the growth of understanding." Here is the full abstract. In a late manuscript (MS 283 [1906]), Peirce addressed the question, "What are signs for, anyhow?" and raised the possibility that they have no purpose other than being instruments of a Spieltrieb (a play-impulse). Peirce however rejected this view and proposed a rival one: signs ultimately serve habituation, the processes by which habits, especially ones more finely and fully attuned to the circumstances of our lives, are formed. But the exercise of our most reliable habits generates sequences of signs apparently displaying a life of their own (e.g., witness the history of science or indeed that of culture). That is, the operation of habits itself seems to be in the service of the generation of novel signs, the furtherance of open-ended processes, destined to transform even some of our most settled habits. Closely connected to this, Peirce appears to slight the monumental achievements of experimental inquiry, treating them as merely the ashes of what was once living science; in effect, he denies their contemporary salience to experimental inquiry. For these and other reasons, the author explores the extent to which inquiry for inquiry’s sake might be seen as an instance of pure play, having its purpose solely in its own perpetuation. While this radically heuristic conception of pure inquiry needs to be qualified, an appreciation of it might require a revision of how the relationship between habits and semiosis is to be understood (a revision in which neither is subordinated to the other). However, it seems to me that there is an important difference between inquiry for its own sake and inquiry for the sake of increased understanding. Peirce himself identified the growth of concrete reasonableness as the summum bonum, the ideal end toward which the entire universe is tending asymptotically (though not monotonically). Accordingly, I suggest that the proper end of inquiry is increased knowledge, i.e., adopting true beliefs--affirming only those propositions whose dynamical objects are realities, such that the corresponding habits of conduct would not be confounded by any possible future experience. "The purpose of every sign is to express 'fact,' and by being joined with other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth ... [which] is the ultimate interpretant of every sign" (NEM 4:239-40, EP 2:305, 1901). As I have said before, this is what makes logic as semeiotic a normative science--it identifies the principles to which any sincere inquiry ought to conform. "In logic, it will be observed that knowledge is reasonableness; and the ideal of reasoning will be to follow such methods as must develop knowledge the most speedily" (CP 1.615, EP 2:255, 1903). With that in mind, it seems noteworthy that the dynamical objects of all the signs that "AI" systems generate are other signs. Tracing the entire chain of those signs back far enough would eventually reach dynamical objects that humans actually experienced and then represented in their writings, thereby providing the texts on which the "AI" systems were "trained." However, as Ulysses has pointed out, the latter are always and only processing those symbolic signs iconically; and as a doubly degenerate sign, an icon "gives no assurance that any such object as it represents really exists" (NEM 4:242-3, EP 2:307, 1901). Consequently, as I have said before, "AI" systems cannot verify the truth of any given sentence apart from probabilistically comparing it with a massive collection of other sentences, so it is no wonder that they sometimes suffer from "hallucinations" that produce false or misleading responses to prompts. They lack the "outward clash" that causes the irritation of doubt when our belief-habits are confounded by actual experience with reality, thereby prompting inquiry. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 10:27 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Gary F., List,. Your examples of the surgical robot and the climate-monitoring AI are especially helpful in that they help make concrete what we've been discussing somewhat abstractly. From a Peircean point of view, a crucial consideration is that inquiry remains answerable to reality. Whether the relevant observations come through human perception, scientific instruments, robotic and other sensors, or some future combination of these (and who knows what else?) reality continues to constrain inquiry by resisting inadequate interpretants and interpretations and supporting better ones. Human collateral experience no doubt remains paradigmatic, but it is conceivable that future AI systems might participate more directly in the larger web of observations through which communities of inquiry remain connected to the world. So, perhaps we differ a bit here (that is, should humanity, let alone life-valuing inquiry survive the onslaught of planet degrading activity by the 'masters of destruction' -- you know whom I mean). Which brings us to your related question of alignment. For even if future AI systems were to become increasingly integrated into inquiry through richer forms of interaction with reality, the normative question would still remain: To what ends is inquiry directed? That returns us to Peirce's architectonic where logic ultimately depends upon ethics and ethics upon esthetics. (There's much more to be said here, but I happen to be on vacation in the Finger Lakes district of New York State.) Suffice it to say that I too radically distrust "the small group of owners and developers of AI [who] have purposes which are clearly out of alignment with the purposes and the well-being of life on earth including the rest of humanity." And I too am frankly horrified by AI's "energy- and water-sucking data centers." As for the first, the "filthy rich" owners of AI: they already own so much and control so much of what has become destructive of humanity and the planet that AI would appear to be just another 'add on' to their greedy lust for wealth and power if it were not for the second, the already horrific waste of energy and water of their data centers. While I personally think AI is 'here to stay', I personally fear for humanity's and the planet's future. Best, Gary R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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