Gary R., List, The pragmatic maxim is part of Peirce's speculative rhetoric. How does this rule of reasoning relate to the other principles that are also part of the speculative rhetoric? For example, in the Cambridge Lectures of 1898, he articulates two additional principles. I assume that both are part of his methodeutic. One is the first rule of logic. The other is the principle of continuity.
Are these three principles ordered in some fashion? I assume that, given its name, the first rule of logic has priority over the others. How do three rules fit together? Given the ordering and relations between the principles, how should the first rule of logic and the principle of continuity shape the proper use of the pragmatic maxim? --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Gary Richmond [gary.richm...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 5:54 PM To: Stephen C. Rose Cc: PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8 Stephen, Michael, Gene, List, It seems to me that in sum the argumentation so far has been that Michael maintains that Peirce should be seen as a structuralist, Gene has countered that Peirce is best seen as a thorough-going process philosopher, and Michael responded to this by saying that to refer to his philosophy as processual is redundant since a properly understood structuralism includes the ideas of process and growth, and I have suggested that structuralism is generally not understood as such (that is, as involving change and growth), and that many Peircean philosophers see Peirce as a process thinker, but not as a structuralist. Now you may be suggesting--but I'm not exactly sure what your intended meaning was, Stephen--that Michael may well be proven correct and that there is good reason to see Peirce as a structuralist when that theory is "properly understood" to include the notions of history, change, and growth. But currently--and although I'm not a big fan of post-structuralism and deconstruction, etc.--structuralism tends to connote to many certain ideas which are not processual. Thus, at the conclusion of a the overview of structuralism in the Wikipedia article one is give these tenets "common to the various forms of structuralism" as formulated by the feminist theorist, Alison Assiter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning. Now I would imagine that Michael would say that Assiter does not properly understand structuralism. Still, and again, structuralism does indeed connote these ideas to many. And especially for this discussion note that the third tenet is that "structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change." So, until structuralism is "properly understood" (and I have no doubt that Michael has things of considerable importance to say about this, especially in the realms of linguistics and semiotics), it's a heavy load at present to suggest that Peirce is more structuralist than processual (or, rather, that that the idea of structure properly understood includes process, as Michael is saying). I'll be eager to learn more about this proper understanding of structuralism, and in that sense I agree with you, Stephen, that we should reserved judgment. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Stephen C. Rose <stever...@gmail.com<mailto:stever...@gmail.com>> wrote: I think it is much too early in the course of things to exclude Michael's conjectures which I assume are intended to widen in a radical and original manner the scope of Peirce's influence. It has after all taken 2000 years to arrive at the start of an appropriate revision of Aristotle, again based in part on Peirce's growing influence. It is somewhat a problem for the dead, who cannot respond, to have exclusive interpretations attached to aspects of their thought. Particularly if, like Peirce, they were inclined to favor the growth of communities of discourse and partial to abduction which means, I assume, guessing. @stephencrose<https://twitter.com/stephencrose> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com<mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com>> wrote: Gene, Michael, List, I would tend to agree with Gene here, especially given the situation that Structuralism is not generally "properly understood" in the sense in which you are suggesting, Michael. Meanwhile, a number of Peircean scholars use 'processual' in this context much as Gene does, and these include Andre de Tienne, Floyd Merrell, Kelly Parker, Cathy Legg, and, perhaps, and especially, Nicholas Rescher. Even in a group of papers you edited, Michael, as Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Nils B. Thelin in "Biopragmatism, Space/Time Cognition, and the Sense of Language," finds what he calls a "hierarchical-processual understanding" implicit in Peirce's treatment of abduction-deduction-induction in inquiryh. Thelin's extension of this--involving a model of "hierarchical-processual-feedback"--appears to me to be an attempt at developing further what is implicit in this regard in Peirce. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Eugene Halton <eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu<mailto:eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu>> wrote: Dear Michael, Sorry, but it is not in the least redundant to characterize Peirce’s philosophy as processual. It clarifies what pervades his thinking. Calling Peirce a structuralist, on the other hand, does not, in my opinion. Gene From: Michael Shapiro [mailto:poo...@earthlink.net<mailto:poo...@earthlink.net>] Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 12:11 PM To: Eugene Halton; PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8 Gene, list, Structuralism properly understood does not exclude process or growth, just the opposite, so calling Peirce's doctrine "processualism" is both redundant and terminologically inadvisable, given the latter's unusualness. Cf. my 1991 book's title The Sense of Change: Language as History. Michael -----Original Message----- From: Eugene Halton Sent: Apr 27, 2014 12:02 PM To: "PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu>" Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8 Response to Michael Shapiro’s post that Peirce should be seen as a structuralist. Shapiro: “The use by Peirce of the form "rationalized" (rather than "rational") as a modifier of "variety" in the quotation above should be taken advisedly. This use of the participial form, with its adversion to process, should serve as a caveat that when Peirce talks about "objective idealism," what he ought to have said is "objectified idealism." Peirce: “The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws” Peirce, CP 6.25. Note “becoming.” And even those physical laws are still subject to evolution. A habit is a process, semiosis is an inferential process, “rationalized variety” is a kind of habituated variety yet still in process. I see no reason for calling Peirce a structuralist, since even a structure, in Peirce, is a habit-process, however slow or even seemingly invariant that inveterate habit may be: it remains potentially subject to growth. Why not simply acknowledge Peirce’s thoroughgoing processualism? Gene Halton From: Michael Shapiro [mailto:poo...@earthlink.net] Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2014 7:51 AM To: PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 & 8 Dear Fellow-Listers, I'd like to offer up the following as a take on ch. 7 and an anticipation of ch. 8, from the perspective of a non-philosopher interested in developing a Peircean theory of language for the twenty-first century: Because he was a practicing scientist in the modern sense, Peirce is the one great philosopher who escapes my definition of a philosopher as someone who only solves problems of his own devising. This makes him also a proto-structuralist (a structuralist avant la lettre). The essential concept of structuralism, whether applied to physics or linguistics or anthropology, is that of invariance under transformation. This makes theory, following Peirce's whole philosophy and his pragmaticism in particular, the rationalized explication of variety: "[U]nderlying all other laws is the only tendency which can grow by its own virtue, the tendency of all things to take habits .... In so far as evolution follows a law, the law or habit, instead of being a movement from homogeneity to heterogeneity, is growth from difformity to uniformity. But the chance divergences from laws are perpetually acting to increase the variety of the world, and are checked by a sort of natural selection and otherwise ... , so that the general result may be described as 'organized heterogeneity,' or, better, rationalized variety'' (CP 6.101). Or, translating law and habit into the appropriate phenomenological category: "Thirdness ... is an essential ingredient of reality" (EP 2:345). Once we properly understand structuralism not as the putatively debunked epistemology that originated in Geneva with Saussure, but rather as the revised, essentially correct version originating with Jakobson in Prague and Hjelmslev in Copenhagen, we can recognize the patterning of Thirdness and Secondness in language––the so-called "passkey semiotic"––for what it is. Consequently, the fundamental notion of alternation between basic form and contextual variant becomes understandable as immanent in theory, and not merely a construct or an artifact of description. The importance of this notion cannot be overestimated. A child learning its native language, for instance, is exactly in the same position as an analyst. It has to determine which linguistic form is basic, and which is a contextual variant. Take a simple example from English, that of the voiceless stops English voiceless (actually, tense) stops are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable, as in pen, ten, Ken. They are unaspirated when immediately following word-initial s, as in spun, stun, skunk. After an s elsewhere in a word they are normally unaspirated as well, except when the cluster is heteromorphemic and the stop belongs to an unbound morpheme; compare dis[t]end vs. dis[tʰ]aste. Word-final voiceless stops are optionally aspirate. This variation makes aspiration non-distinctive (non-phonemic) in English, unlike, say, in Ancient Greek or Hindi, where aspirated stops change the meaning of words by comparison with items that have their unaspirated counterparts ceteris paribus. I think it is only by taking such variation for what it is, i. e., the working out of Thirdness in the context of Secondness, that we can we understand what Peirce had in mind with his version of Pragmatism. Best regards, Michael P. S. The use by Peirce of the form "rationalized" (rather than "rational") as a modifier of "variety" in the quotation above should be taken advisedly. This use of the participial form, with its adversion to process, should serve as a caveat that when Peirce talks about "objective idealism," what he ought to have said is "objectified idealism." This slight grammatical change puts the meaning of the phrase (and the doctrine!) in a whole new––and completely acceptable––light. ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. 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