Phyllis, list,
Thanks for your thoughtful and clear post. I'm a fellow "unreal"
philosopher, but differ from you in that I've no professional occasion
of connection with Peirce's thought at all.
I remember years ago finding a discussion of the ways in which people
mean things that they say, and it occurred to me that the ways seemed to
correspond, ingeniously, to at least of some of Peirce's 10 trichotomies
of signs in a letter to Lady Welby, and then I noticed that you were the
author or one of the authors (this was long ago and I don't now know
what article I was reading).
Anyway, I'll attempt to form a few thoughts. I just skimmed some of
Jeremiah McCarthy's Version 2*.*0 of "An Account of Peirce's Proof of
Pragmatism"
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/mccarthy/proof2.htm, so I
may have been influenced by it.
I'd say that (as McCarthy points out), for Peirce's proof of pragmatism
(on which I'm no expert), one needs to know his ways of thinking.
Insofar as one does not know his phaneroscopic categories, one will need
to study them, and so, to the outsider pursuing the proof, they'll seem
like part of the proof - a preparation at least. For Peirce, all
(cenoscopic) philosophy, pure or applied, is phaneroscopic analysis. So
one needs to think in a framework where phaneroscopy and, in particular,
Peirce's tri-categorial phaneroscopy, is the philosophical basis of
philosophy; this sets things up for Peirce to argue that logical
goodness is a species of moral goodness, and moral goodness is a species
of the most general goodness: esthetic goodness. So I agree with you
that the proof of pragmatism needs to begin in phaneroscopy, in the
sense that all Peircean philosophy so begins, and also as a present-day
practical matter, in the sense that people interested in the proof don't
always know Peirce's phanerscopy and categories well. Well, my
experience with basic categorial thinking, even before I first read
Peirce, has been that basic philosophical categories don't shed much
light except in exchange for at least a little light shed upon them. To
the extent that that's true, even for Peirceans the proof will take one
back to the categories for some exploration.
Best, Ben
On 4/28/2014 5:17 PM, Phyllis Chiasson wrote:
Listers
I would like to approach this section about Kee's discussion of the
'proof of pragmatism' backwards--from experience to theory. I came
into my understanding of pragmatism in this way and still find it
difficult to analyze from the other direction. I've many years of
practical experience with these concepts (15 of the nearly 40 years
pre any knowledge that they WERE concepts, let alone Peircean). This
experience still shapes the way I am most able to think clearly about
these issues.
In 1975, circumstances that left me without any other materials with
which to teach junior and senior language arts students forced me to
make use of a set of unused workbooks called, "Creative Analysis," by
Albert Upton. Once my students and I made it through the first three
sections of that workbook, we all (me included) had learned to qualify
(affective, sensory, rational), to analyze based upon diagrams
developed by deliberate qualitative choices and to understand and
apply the immensely complex construct that Upton simply called "Signs."
So, I feel that everyone should know that I am not a 'real'
philosopher—my only credentials are that I was able to write my first
book (and everything else) in isolation (I have still never met a
formally trained Peircean in the flesh). I started my first book
pre-searchable discs, using only my limited collection (3 anthologies)
of Peirce's writings, a few well-answered questions from Dr. Ransdell,
Cathy Legg (and some amiable Deweyans) and what I knew (know) from
Creative Analysis, as well as a non-verbal assessment of Peirce-based
non-verbal inference patterns, which I also did not know was based on
Peirce.
If Howard Callaway had not read an early snippet from the manuscript
and suggested I send it to Rodopi via him when it was complete & if
John Shook had not refereed that manuscript and accepted it for
publication, that first book would probably still be just a
manuscript. If I had not made an online (and now actual and close)
friend of Jayne Tristan (a Deweyan) who vetted my manuscript for
philosophical trigger words—like "necessary," I would probably have
made a complete fool of myself. (I still worry a lot about that, but
should probably just say /dayenu/ here).
Thus, it is from this perspective of an aging and experience-based
amateur that I invite Peirce-l to join me in this excellent adventure.
Kee's points out that any "…proof should begin with phaneroscopy and
then run through the normative sciences." I understand this as meaning
that the proof of pragmatism begins with a close examination of the
qualities (potential as well as actual) of phanera (as facts and
occurrences).
Peirce says that an occurrence is "a slice of the Universe [that] can
never be known or even imagined in all its infinite detail" and that
every fact within every occurrence is "inseparably combined with an
infinite swarm of circumstances, which make no part of the fact
itself" (Rosenthal, 1994, pp. 5-6). Peirce points out that a fact,
which can be extracted from this swarm of circumstances by means of
thought, is only so much of reality as can be represented by a
proposition (Rosenthal, 1994, p. 5). One aspect of preparing a
proposition for testing is determining which factors within the swarm
of circumstances matter and which do not.
It seems that the call for the proof of pragmatism to begin with
phaneroscopy speaks to the examination of relevant properties
(qualities of affect, sense, reason) of whatever fact is under
consideration.
Since Peirce allows for comparison & contrast, as well as sorting (and
by implication) diagrammatic thinking (as a perceptual, rather than a
logical judgment) in this non-normative branch of philosophy, it seems
there is much "work" that a phenomenologist can do here before
engaging the normative sciences, in particular, logic as semiotic (the
semiotic paradigm) to craft the theoretical construct.
It seems to me that the individual "strands" of the rope are
discovered and explored within phaneroscopy, based upon their
qualities and their possible relevance to something &/or one another.
Only then would they be tested against norms before being added to the
rope-like braid that Kees describes.
I wonder how many others also see the 'Proof' beginning in
phenomenology in this sense of discerning? In another sense? Or do
some of you see it beginning somewhere else altogether?
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