Listers, As i reread this posting late last night, I realized that I had jumped across a deep chasm from categories to a specific, and not particularly philosophical example. The posting did have a larger point though. I just failed to make it. I'm not sure I've nailed it here, but ere it is: What if, in terms of sentient beings, the very mobility of living things that are not plants suggests the need for and application of a sort of instinctive bio -phenomenologist template, so that survival &/or flourishing of a given organism depends to a great degree upon the mental template it applies to make sense of phenomena. And what if that template differs not only among species as a tool for manuvering within an umwelt, but also among groups of individuals within species? (Think bees and wolf packs) And what if the only strategy available from the template applied by most members of a given species (say 60-70%--maybe much more in certain species/contexts) relies upon replication, similar in form and application to crude induction.
And what if only a much smaller %age have mental templates that allow them to deal effectively with novelty. And what if these templates, should they exist, were observable and turned out to be stable over time? And what if, in people, these templates had absolutely nothing to do with academic intelligence (e.g. IQ)? Because we have been observing the operation of these phenomenological templates for many years in people from various contexts, ages, intelligence levels, etc we've discovered some startling and confusing things. For one, most of the very high earners we've assessed belong to the replicator group; so do most of the criminals/delinquents. (This is is an operstional process instrument, not a moral assessment) We've found those who are complex thinkers; those who deal most effectively with novelty and potential opportunity (the Wozniac/Buffet types--and maybe Jobs) also find it difficult to deal with the replicators, who need them to stay ahead of the game, but micromanage them away. Criminals who deal with effectively with novelty tend to have the same excellent management skills as their business counterparts. However, IQ does matter. Our most cognitively impaired child is an habitual abductive/deductive-like thinker. She adapts easily to novelty and plans ahead for contingencies. Her non-genetically related brother, who manages a division in a large corporation and was identified as gifted in second grade, also deals with novelty in this way. Our second son, a straight A student through college, also non-genetically related to any of the others, makes more money each year than we'd need for a lifetime. And he is a replicator par-excellence. Our other two daughters, also adopted and unrelated, are replicators--one extraordinarily bright the other fetal alcohol affected and living on disability. When I taught the verbal version of Peirce's categories in the 1970s, I saw that those students of all template types did better as a group on standard tests inc SATs than students from other teachers in the school. Their templates didn't change but their ability to analyze and interpret increased significantly, as did writing ability. Which I am now wondering whether exposure to a broad range of enriched experiences and good grammar might do as well. Which brings me back to the two smart grandchildren with the low IQ mom & dad. And why I wonder whether it may have to do with having broadened their mother's exposure to phenomena in positive ways when she was growing up, though it did absolutely nothing to help her learn to read, etc. (And, yes there were tutors...many) on Phyllis Chiasson <[email protected]> wrote: >Ben & Listers, > >You wrote: Well, my experience with basic categorical 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. > >My comment: Speaking Of Categories > >I had a categorical discussion of sorts with my 3 year old grandson this >morning. Whether interesting or frustrating, I will leave to you to decide. >[I should mention that I have a rule that I have always enforced across the >board with 3 year old & teenager children & grandchildren: NEVER ARGUE WITH >THEIR TRUTHS. They already know everything and become very frustrated when >someone suggests otherwise. ] > >Jordie pointed to a stuffed dog and asked: "Gramma, what this?" > >I mistakenly thought it was an actual question. "It's a dog." > >"No!" he said forcefully, "It's a pet!" > >"Yes," I agreed. "It's a pet that is a dog." > >"No! Not a dog! A pet!" > >"Then what about Roo (their dog)? Isn't Roo a pet!" > >"NO! Roo a dog!" he said even more emphatically, "Not a pet!" > >"Oh. I didn't know that before," I said quickly. I followed my rule and >extricated myself from further discussion on the topic. > > > >So, we obviously have a little work ahead with Jordie on categories and >levels of abstraction. But that conversation set me to wondering about the >whole issue of how one's grasp of categories affects (or maybe effects) >one's place in society. I've been trying to figure out why my oldest >grandchildren (now 16 & 13) are so smart. Their mother, one of our adopted >fetal alcohol affected children, has an excellent vocabulary & perfect >grammar, despite an IQ hovering in the borderline retarded range (she cannot >read or do math). Their father is not by any stretch the sharpest knife in >any drawer and his grammar is rather poor. He reads only well enough to >follow a recipe, which is much more than mom can do. > >Yet Aaron & Sara have their mother's vocabulary and grammar skills. Aaron >was identified mathematically gifted in 2nd grade. He's in honors for most >HS classes (though not in one of the best schools in town). Sara is doing >terribly in school but reads and writes (fiction only) very well. (The >schools in her area only value expository reading and writing right now, >because they have to get their state test scores up. She says they give dumb >topics for the writing portion of those tests. I'm sure they don't offer >topics about vampires or werewolves, which would be her preference.) > >All of our 8 grandchildren are either the children of our various adopted >children or, in the case of my biological child, adopted. They're all real >smart. Which does not make sense, unless it has to do with categories. > >Even our two fetal alcohol damaged children have had the experiences & >learned the categories and language that children from educated upper middle >class backgrounds have (they were raised in Bill Gates' neighborhood). The >two alcohol damaged girls (now 40 & 42) are on Social Security Disability, >Medicare, Medicaid and participate in Arizona's remarkable program for the >seriously mentally ill (SMI). Each lives on her own, has a payee who manages >bills. They are teetotalers, keep close contact with the children, us, each >other, their extended family and many friends. They help us out now that >we're getting old and help my 89 year old mother too. > >And yet those two grandchildren are really, really smart as smart as all of >the others who have smart parents. > >It must be categories, don't you think? > > > >Regards, > >Phyllis > > > > > > > > > > > >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-categorical >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 categorical 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? > > > >----------------------------- >PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON >PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to >[email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but >to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of >the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . > > > > > > > >
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