Jeff,

Let me expose my ignorance.

Recently I chanced to read the first few pages of a recent book on
Heidegger who is supposed to be phenomenologist, but the book never
mentioned Peirce's phenomenology (or phaneroscopy) who preceded Heidegger
by half a century.  Was there any influence of Peirce's semiotics on
Heidegger's philosophy ?

With all the best.

Sung
___________________________________________________
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701

www.conformon.net



> List,
>
> This chapter on the philosophy of science breaks with the established
> pattern of following Peirce's architectonic.  Given the centrality of
> scientific inquiry in his philosophical theory, there is good reason to
> devote a separate chapter to this topic.  When I compare Peirce's view to
> those developed by other major philosophers, I can't help but wonder if
> Peirce has drawn the boundaries of philosophical theorizing too narrowly.
> In his phenomenological theory and in his normative sciences, so much
> attention has been devoted to the philosophical foundations of the
> scientific method, that one might wonder if he has paid too little
> attention to the kinds of questions that figure prominently in the
> philosophical theories developed by the likes of Plato, Aristotle,
> Aquinas, Kant, Heidegger, and others.
>
> With these kinds of concerns in mind, let me try to frame two questions.
> Peirce is trying to model philosophical inquiry on the scientific method.
> In turn, the scientific method is itself the main focus of his
> philosophical inquiries.  Has the single minded focus on scientific method
> come at too high a price?  Has it caused him to pay too little attention
> to other methods:  dialectical, genealogical, hermeneutic?  Has it caused
> him to pay too little attention to other kinds of philosophical questions
> about morality, art, and the like?
>
> --Jeff
>
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Benjamin Udell [[email protected]]
> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 8:46 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar:  Chapter 6, Philosophy
> of Science
>
> Jeffrey, Sam, Jeff K., list,
>
> Jeffrey, you wrote,
>
> is this list of three methods for fixing belief only a partial list of the
> possible alternatives to the scientific method?
>
> Joe Ransdell and Jerry Dozoretz transcribed many draft manuscripts that
> Peirce wrote back in the 1870s. Joe posted the transcriptions to the
> Papers by Peirce page http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm
> at Arisbe. Scroll down to "1872-1873" where there are a number of drafts
> on the inquiry methods. It's been a while since I've read them, maybe
> somebody can find something on the methods there as to their list's
> exhaustiveness.
>
> I'd say that the method of contest needs to be accounted for somehow. I
> tend to see the method of authority as a species of it, though maybe one
> could do it the other way around. In a previous post I said that the
> method of contest doesn't seem obviously generally infallibilistic, but,
> as a method of arriving at truth/falsity of the general opinions of the
> contestants, arguably it is infallibilistic, insofar as it's
> winner-take-all, never mind who would have won under different
> circumstances, 'the gods have spoken' and all that.
>
> Peirce presents the inquirial methods as tending, for reasons that he
> describes along the way, to be adopted and (three of them) abandoned in
> the order in which he presents them. I think that he is trying to bring to
> light a systematic character that they have collectively.
>
> I would guess that Peirce did use the categories as a heuristic in
> organizing his ideas of three unscientific methods of inquiry in hopes of
> arriving at an exhaustive list and that nevertheless he was not persuaded
> that the result, on which he worked for years, was a genuine,
> categorially-correlated trichotomy.  Peirce or a Peircean would hope for a
> genuine trichotomy there because the distinctions are logical, not
> natural.
>
> I've had the notion that some Peirceans would be inclined to try (and may
> have done so in some publication) to clarify the trio of unscientific
> inquiry methods as an exhaustive, categorially-based trichotomy, logically
> related to other such trichotomies of related issues. The exhaustiveness
> would be further corroborated if other infallibilistic methods could be
> classified as subclasses in the trichotomy, or maybe there could be other
> global trichotomies of classes of the same things, as Peirce did with
> classes of signs. Likewise, some fallibilistic methods of inquiry, such as
> inquiry by trial-and-error, could be classified as dimensions or elements
> or at least rudiments of scientific inquiry.
>
> I've generally thought of the three unscientific methods as the bad
> methods despite Peirce's insistence that one should be, well, scientific
> about it, anyway, impartial, and give them their due, weigh them
> carefully, etc. So I'll just call them 'methodologically infallibilistic'.
>
> I doubt that I'm the first to entertain following picture, in which the
> three unscientific methods seem to have the lineaments of a Peircean
> trichotomy of infallibilistics:
>
> 1. Method of tenacity - policy of adherence to FIRST opinion - a
> methodologically infallibilistic First?
>
> 2. Method of authority - deciding opinion by force or threat of force, the
> knocking of heads - a methodologically infallibilistic Second?
>
> 3. Method of the _a priori_ - deciding opinion in a deductive spirit from
> principles reached through fermentation, some capricious sort of
> mediation, comparison and conversation, a choosing of or adherence to
> principles by intellectual taste and fashion, 'agreeability to Reason',  -
> a methodologically infallibilistic Third?
>
> In a previous post I connected the idea of the method of tenacity
> (putatively the 'methodologically infallibilistic First') with the idea of
> practice and repetition (of one's first opinion), however practice and
> repetition are not mainly a First. But all three infallibilistic methods
> involve the idea of conduct of ongoing activity, so maybe that intrusion
> of a non-First into the method of tenacity doesn't prevent it from being
> relatively First within the trichotomy.
>
> Now, the various more-or-less non-cognitive methods of learning (such as
> practice and repetition in general) that I mentioned in that post do not
> seem to me to constitute a Peircean trichotomy, so I'd guess that a
> Peircean who were to think that there's something to them as correlating
> with the infallibilistic inquiry methods would be inclined to rework the
> conceptions of those three non-cognitive methods, perhaps making one of
> them cognitive, since Peirce tends to divide the mind's powers into those
> of feeling (sensation, more or less), sense of reaction (including
> volition), and general conception. Again, there would be an idea of
> clarifying a genuine trichotomy of the infallibilistic methods by relating
> that trichotomy (i.e., relating its divisions one-to-one) to (the
> divisions of) other genuine trichotomies.
>
> Best, Ben
>
> On 4/11/2014 6:25 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
>
> Sam, Ben, Jeff K., List,
> You point out that "An interesting interpretation of the moral dimension
> of FoB is to be found in the 5th Chapter of Richard Smyth’s <Reading
> Peirce Reading>, where Smyth draws an extended comparison between Peirce’s
> argumentative strategy in FoB and the argumentative strategy Kant uses in
> his ethics, particularly the second Critique."  A nice way to test this
> reconstruction of Peirce's argument is to ask if the list of methods is
> meant to be a complete of the major classes of methods, or if there is a
> larger list of possible methods for fixing belief--some of which he does
> not consider in this essay.
> The basic gist of Smyth's reconstruction of the argument is that Peirce is
> employing a Kantian strategy, and that the target of his argument is any
> philosophical position to tries to ground the methods of inquiry on
> material practical principles.  As such, he thinks that Peirce is
> borrowing the strategy Kant uses in his ethics and is putting it to work
> in his theory of logic.  As such, Peirce is arguing that the scientific
> method is the only one that is grounded on an understanding of the
> requirements of logical inquiry as *formal* constraints on our conduct.
> As you suggest, the defect of all material practical principles is that,
> in one way or another, they are all based on a principle of self-love.
> That is, they all rely on a pattern of justification that is based on the
> idea that the fact that someone has a desire for X is a good enough reason
> to adopt X as an end.  Kant points out that this kind of principle does
> not function as an imperative.  As such, it is does not !
>  function
>  as a rational constraint on deliberation.  When Peirce claims that we
> should adopt those ends that can be consistently pursued, it certainly
> has echoes of Kant's claims that moral duties are grounded on rational
> constraints of consistency.
> Here is a follow up question that is designed to see who agrees and who
> disagrees with this reconstruction of the argument in "Fixation":  Do you
> think Peirce's list of tenacity, authority and the a priori methods is
> exhaustive of the major classes of material principles that one might
> claim are fundamental in a normative theory of logic?  Or, is this list of
> three methods for fixing belief only a partial list of the possible
> alternatives to the scientific method?
> I think it is worth noting that, if it is a partial list, it would be hard
> to see how Peirce could argue that the scientific method is the only
> method that admits of any distinction of a right and a wrong way of fixing
> beliefs.  At most, he could argue that the scientific method is the only
> one of the four that he considers that admits of such a difference, but
> that others methods he has not considered might admit of the same
> difference.
> --Jeff
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Sam Bruton [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> ]
> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 2:03 PM
> To: Benjamin Udell;
> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> Subject: RE: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar:  Chapter 6, Philosophy
> of Science
> Ben, Jeff, Jeffrey, List,
>           I appreciate Ben’s reconstruction and interpretive remarks –
> thanks.  With regards to Jeff’s question about the role of
> ethics in FoB, and at the risk of stating the obvious, paragraph
> 5.387 seems to me simply shot through with ethical claims that
> are clearly distinct from the various efficiency-related points
> that also run through the essay, e.g., “what is more wholesome
> than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to
> avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it
> may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is
> disadvantageous.”  And at the end of the para., “one who dares
> not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of
> mind indeed.”
>           So perhaps I’m missing the point at issue, but my simple-minded
> reconstruction is that Peirce is arguing that anyone who
> experiences doubts (i.e., virtually all of us) is committed to
> an interest in arriving at the truth, or caring about the truth,
> or something like that.  For all such people, there is an
> essentially moral obligation not to avoid looking at the truth,
> i.e., an obligation not to adopt one of the failed three methods
> described in the essay.  It’s an assertion of the moral status
> of epistemic responsibility. Or at least that’s how I take it.
>           An interesting interpretation of the moral dimension of FoB is
> to be found in the 5th Chapter of Richard Smyth’s Reading Peirce
> Reading, where Smyth draws an extended comparison between
> Peirce’s argumentative strategy in FoB and the argumentative
> strategy Kant uses in his ethics, particularly the second
> Critique.  Hints of that strategy can be seen in Peirce’s
> passing reference to the “costs” of the method of science, and
> his praise of the advantages of the other three methods.  Like a
> commitment to morality, the method of science may require
> sacrifice of personal interests.
>           Hopefully someone else can take these thoughts further.  – Sam
> From: Benjamin Udell [mailto:[email protected]
> ]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 2:12 PM
> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of
> Science
> Jeff, Jeffrey, Sam, list,
> Jeff, I have trouble making more of Peirce's esthetic and ethical frames
> of inquiry in "The Fixation of Belief." When the inquirially good is the
> inquirially efficient (apart from countervailing moral concerns such as
> involuntary tests of people), it seems a simple Peircean genus-species
> relation of the good to the true. Insofar as theoretical inquiry is
> subject to extra-inquirial ends, the ethical and esthetic issues get more
> complex, and this happens inevitably. A lot may be implicit, but the
> explicit statements toward the end of "Fixation" seem to sum up pretty
> well the esthetic and ethical frames as conceived of in that article. But
> I think that the problem is probably just me, in need of an IQ boost.
> Anyway, in "Fixation" he is trying to get away from, or perhaps to
> _precede_, metaphysical nominalist-realist arguments over truth, the real,
> etc., so he pursues the issues in terms of belief, belief's security, a
> hypothesis that there are reals, etc., and even denies that anybody cares
> about truth _per se_. In later years he embraces the inquirial importance
> of a hearty will to truth, and even disparages the idea of beliefs (in
> some sense) in genuine science. But in those later years it is still
> essentially truth as eventually distinguished from falsehood and defined
> in "Fixation" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" - e.g., that opinion
> which, unlike a false opinion, will not steer one wrong in what one aims
> at, and the final opinion that _would_ be reached by sufficient inquiry -
> it is truth so distinguished and presuppositionally defined that he
> embraces as inquiry's end. He does not come to drop the idea that belief
> and doubt are important terms in which to understand the !
>  ideas of
>
>
>  truth and inquiry - for example in the 1902 Carnegie application. Thus
> truth is a belief's ideal security or 'stability' as some put it - but
> it's a stability not only in actual situations but across would-be
> situations as well. I think that Peirce is quite right to see modal
> realism as a necessary implication of his kind of pragmatism.
> Peirce in later years allows of practical certainty, as opposed to
> theoretical certainty. A practical general certainty would still in
> principle be 'falsifiable', i.e., testable for falsity, at least by
> critical discussion. Otherwise it would be a belief that makes no
> practical difference, and thus, as you put it, not to be prized, not worth
> having. One might say that an in-principle untestable belief lacks all
> intellectual _vividness_, at least at heart. It's interesting how you link
> this with how we don't value that which comes to us inevitably and free of
> cost, risk, etc. I wish that I had thought of that; you've traced a
> connection from logic back through ethics to esthetics.
> There's another point that I can make, however. In "Fixation", Peirce
> argues that the scientific method is, _among the four methods that he
> outlines_, the only one that leaves room for its own misapplication.
> Peirce's big picture of inquiry methods is part of an even bigger picture
> of methods of learning and development cognitive and otherwise, which
> beckons when one starts to consider esthetic and ethical frames of
> inquiry, a bigger picture that people like me, who are far less
> encyclopedic than Peirce, find it helpful to thematize and explore now and
> then.
>>From here onward, my post becomes something of a ramble. Those who
>> continue should not worry too much about what I'm 'driving at'.
> One could outline further methods - e.g., the method of struggle, trial as
> combat - which could be seen as a not-generally-obviously-infallibilistic
> genus of which the method of (despotic) authority is an infallibilistic
> species, a species such that one side in combat has become dominant and
> seemingly infallible. Then there is the method of trial-and-error, which
> is fallibilistic, and is the method of 'men of experience', whom Aristotle
> rated below artisans and scientists, because the 'men of experience' are
> least able to give an account of their supposed knowledge. Yet Peirce
> defines a scientific intelligence as an intelligence capable of learning
> from experience. One could argue that the method of trial-and-error is a
> rudiment of scientific method, in a way trial-and-error, especially as
> involving personal stakes (even if 'only' those of one's time, energy,
> reputation, etc.), is the struggle-level of scientific inquiry. However,
> struggle as trial-and-error is also, in addi!
>  tion to
>
>
> that, a way of learning not so much cognitively as volitionally, i.e.,
> some sort of strengthening or unshackling of virtues or character
> strengths, particularly in areas, arenas so to speak, where the struggle
> element is predominant - conflicts for power and freedom, competition for
> means and wealth, more-or-less cultural rivalries for glory, glamour, and
> at least non-eclipse, and more-or-less societal disputes for standing,
> honor, legitimacy. From these one could derive conceptions of
> (infallibilistic) inquirial methods of authority - authority of power,
> authority of wealth, authority of glamour (obviously related to the method
> of the _a priori_), and authority of status (like the traditional
> 'argument from authority', known in Latin as _argumentum ad verecundiam_
> (respect, reverence, etc.)), which settle opinions by the wrongs of
> coercion, corruption, emotional manipulation, and delusion. Anyway, while
> all inquiry involves learning, there is a broad sense of 'learning' suc!
>  h that n
>
> o
> t all learning is cognitive (and even cognitive learning is not always
> particularly inquirial or opinion-fixative even when it is a bit of
> struggle, e.g., rote memorization).
> Among the methods of authority, perhaps the biggest temptation in
> discovery research is the method of status, especially when it is a method
> of _self_-deception, such that one grants oneself a status of greater
> knowledgeability, etc., than one fairly has; it's a temptation of the
> intelligent; magicians find it easier to bewilder or beguile 'smart'
> people than to do so with 'stupid' people, by whom magicians mean, the
> people who are unimpressed and chuckle, "well, you did it somehow" (but
> those people are obviously smart enough in another way). As Feynman said,
> the person whom it is easiest for one to fool is oneself. Peirce focuses,
> near the end of "Fixation," on the closing of one's eyes or ears to the
> information or evidence that might bring one the truth particularly when
> one should know better. This closing of one's perception, in sometimes
> less guilty ways, plays a particularly vulnerable role in the method of
> tenacity because it is there unprotected by folds of authori!
>  ty or of
>
>
>  aprioristic emulation of some fermented paradigm; instead there is to
> keep practicing and repeating one's initial opinion, it seems a bit like
> the gambler's fallacy, boosted sometimes by some initial luck. Well,
> practice and repetition of something that has shown _some_ success is the
> core practical-learning method, not inevitably infallibilistic, of
> artisans and more generally practitioners productive and otherwise; to
> which method they add the appreciational method of devotees (including
> the religious) - identification (appreciation) and imitation (emulation)
> and, these days, the methods of reflective disciplines as well (sciences,
> fine arts, etc.). What I'm getting at is that some infallibilistic
> methods of inquiry can be seen as misapplications, or at least as echoes,
> of methods that have some validity outside of inquiry as the struggle to
> settle opinion, and thus have validity in applications in inquiry (e.g.,
> one needs to keep _in practice_ in doing math, etc.), as lo!
>  ng as th
>
> o
> se applications are not confused with inquiry itself. Anyway, one's
> barring of one's own way to truth inhabits the core of all infallibilistic
> inquiry. Perhaps one can reduce all logical sins to this, as long as one
> remembers the difference between logical sin and other logical errors,
> errors sometimes imposed on one.
> Best, Ben
> On 4/9/2014 1:09 AM, Kasser,Jeff wrote:
> Sorry. I originally sent this only to Ben.
> Sent from my iPhone
> Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Kasser,Jeff"
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
>  >
> Date: April 8, 2014 at 10:54:58 PM MDT
> To: Benjamin Udell <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
>  >
> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar:  Chapter 6, Philosophy of
> Science
> Hi Ben, Sam, Jeffrey, et al.
> I like Jeffrey's question about the status in Peirce's argument of the
> claim that the scientific method is the only method that leaves room for
> its own misapplication. And I like the answer Ben gave below. Peirce
> rightly prefers overlapping strands of argumentation to a single line of
> reasoning, but it's hard to resist raising questions about what in
> "Fixation" depends on what.
> I tend to trace his argumentative resources back to the doubt-belief
> theory.  I think Peirce wants to come as close as he can to deriving such
> things as fallibility and openness to improvement from those resources
> centered on Section III of the paper. For belief to be worth wanting, it
> has to be something that can go wrong. Any game that makes it trivially
> true that I win every time isn't worth playing, and if there's no prospect
> at all of going wrong, there's no real sense in which one can claim to be
> right.  So belief couldn't be satisfactory unless it were, in principle at
> least, open to correction.  I can use a method that as a matter of fact
> guarantees that I can't go wrong, but I can't think of myself as doing
> that w/o undercutting the very notion of success. So such methods as
> authority can be used but can't be voluntarily and clear-headedly adopted.
>  This comes close to building the hypothesis of reality into the notion of
> belief, but Peirce does that a couple of tim!
>  es in "F
>
>
> ixation," so far as I can tell.
> I'd like to hear and talk more about how you see the role of ethics and
> esthetics in the argument of "Fixation," Ben. I think you and I agree that
> the contrast between the efficiency aspects of the argument and the
> normative appeals involved isn't as clear as it's often been taken to be.
> Best to all,
> Jeff
> ________________________________________
> From: Benjamin Udell [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
>  ]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 11:10 AM
> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar:  Chapter 6, Philosophy of
> Science
> Jeffrey, Jeff,
> Off to an excellent start!
> Jeffrey, you wrote,
> [Peirce] says:  “This is the only one of the four methods which presents
> any distinction of a right and a wrong way.” (EP, vol. 1, 121)
> What is Peirce saying here?  Let us try to clarify the bases of this
> claim.  In a number of places, including the lectures in Reasoning and the
> Logic of Things, he stresses and develops the idea that the scientific
> method is self-correcting.  I’d like to ask a question about the
> relationship between these two claims.
> Peirce means that, of the four methods, the scientific method is the only
> one whereby inquiry, according to the method's own account, can go wrong
> as well as right; scientific method alone among them presupposes, or
> hypothesizes, that there are real things that are what they are
> independently of the opinion of particular minds or communities - hence
> the scientific method's fallibilism. According to each of the other three
> methods' own accounts, inquiry by the method in the account cannot go
> wrong. On the other hand, scientific method is like the other methods in
> that, according its own account, inquiry by it can go right - hence, the
> scientific method's rejection of radical skepticism, a rejection also
> expressed in the opposition to merely quarrelsome or verbal doubt. The
> scientific method's supposition of real things, external permanency, to be
> cognized albeit fallibly, is what gives it hope of inquiry's not
> floundering in opinion's vicissitudes. The scientific method takes!
>   fallibi
>
>
> lity as well as the possibility of success into account by having inquiry
> genuinely address genuine doubts. By this it can improve the security of
> beliefs, sometimes by changing them. It lets such doubts in, instead of
> leaving them to accrue against overall scientific method itself.
> It seems to me that the claim that the inquirer is fallible but has the
> potential for success is the basis for the scientific method's claim that
> inquiry should be self-critical and self-corrective. The argument does not
> seem to me to run in the opposite direction.
> Near the end of "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce does frame inquiry in
> terms of ethical and esthetic issues, even though he did not at that time
> regard the studies of esthetics and ethics as preceding the study of
> logic.
> http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html
> But, above all, let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any
> particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into
> the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite
> as immoral as it is disadvantageous. The person who confesses that there
> is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by
> this, that if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the
> point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares
> not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind
> indeed.
> Yes, the other methods do have their merits: a clear logical conscience
> does cost something -- just as any virtue, just as all that we cherish,
> costs us dear. [....]
> "...immoral...", "Just as any virtue..." - those words point to ethics.
> "...just as all that we cherish..." - those words point to esthetics (in
> Peirce's sense of 'esthetics').
> Now, in ethics there is usually the idea of a struggle, e.g., in virtue
> ethics, courage is due boldness (or at least due confident behavior)
> despite pressure to do otherwise; prudence is due caution despite contrary
> pressure; and so on. In the above-quoted passage, Peirce sees issues of
> struggle, costs, and trade-offs reaching into issues of one's most general
> values, i.e., the esthetic level. "The Fixation of Belief" starts with the
> idea of inquiry as struggle, and this struggle is also a case of ethical
> right and wrong and of esthetic good and bad, in Peirce's view at that
> time, even though he didn't yet see the studies of esthetics and ethics as
> preceding that of logic.
> As regards your last paragraph, the scientific method's fallibilism about
> opinion seems quite thoroughgoing enough to apply to premisses,
> conclusions, methods, etc., since all premisses, conclusions, and methods
> that are actually adopted are adopted on the basis of actual opinions. The
> infallibilism of the other three methods seems likewise.
> Best, Ben
> On 4/7/2014 3:12 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
> List,
> In addition to joining Jeff K. in looking forward to the prospect of
> bouncing ideas off each other as we explore this chapter of the ’ <Guide
> for the Perplexed>, I’d like t0o start by saying that I found his
> introductory remarks about “The Fixation of Belief” clear and to the
> point.
> For the sake of getting the discussion started, I’d like raise a question
> about a claim Peirce makes in part V of the essay.  He says:  “This is the
> only one of the four methods which presents any distinction of a right and
> a wrong way.” (EP, vol. 1, 121)
> What is Peirce saying here?  Let us try to clarify the bases of this
> claim.  In a number of places, including the lectures in Reasoning and the
> Logic of Things, he stresses and develops the idea that the scientific
> method is self-correcting.  I’d like to ask a question about the
> relationship between these two claims.
> Peirce seems to suggest that the self-correcting character of the
> scientific method is quite remarkable because it is able to correct for
> three kinds of errors:
> 1)      in the premises (i.e., the observations) we’ve used as starting
> points,
> 2)      in the conclusions we’ve drawn (i.e., the beliefs we’ve formed) in
> our scientific reasoning,
> 3)      and in the method itself.
> I want ask a question about these three different kinds of error.  Call
> them, if you will, observational errors, errors in our conclusions, and
> methodological errors.  How might the claim that the scientific method is
> the only one that admits of any distinction of a right and wrong way be
> used in arguments to support each of these three claims about the
> self-correcting character of scientific inquiry?  My hunch is that the
> other three methods he is considering—tenacity, authority and the a priori
> methods--fail on each of these three fronts.
> Yours,
> Jeffrey D.
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> ________________________________________
> From: Kasser,Jeff
> [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
>  <mailto:[email protected] ><mailto:[email protected]>
>  ]
> Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 10:55 AM
> To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
> Cc: Peirce List
> Subject: de Waal Seminar:  Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science


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