Gary R., Gary F., Cathy, List Having pointed to an alternate basis for classifying the other methods for fixing belief, let me offer a comment on your suggestion. The methods of tenacity and authority need not be random. In fact, great effort in reasoning can be spent defending one's own beliefs against evidence to the contrary, and similar efforts can be spent defending those held by the authorities that be.
Instead of focusing on a lack of direction in those methods, I would recommend focusing on the instrumental way in which the the reasoning is being construed. The a priori method purports to hold higher ends, but contrary to what it is often asserted in defense of this method, it too treats the rules as instrumental in character. The advantage of the alternate reconstruction I am recommending is that it recognizes that these alternatives treat the requirements of valid reasoning as prudential and not moral requirements. The distinction between methods based on principles of prudence and the one method that treats the requirements of logic as ethical obligations does help to articulate Peirce's point in moralizing at the end of the essay--such as when he says that what is more wholesome than any belief is integrity of belief. What is more, it helps to makes sense of the suggestions in the text that, for these other methods, the requirements are all held to be conditional. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Gary Richmond [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, May 02, 2014 1:51 PM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science Gary, Cathy, list, So, slightly modifying Cathy's list in consideration of Gary F's comments we get (and, personally, with an eye to introducing these methods to students): Method of Tenacity: private, random Method of Authority: public, random Method of Consensus: public, reasoned Method of Science: public, reasoned and tested Best, Gary R. Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 9:18 AM, Gary Fuhrman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Welcome back, Cathy! Your classification of the four methods of fixing belief describes the "A Priori Method" as "private, reasoned". But as Peirce describes it (EP1:118-19), it is no more "private" than the method of Authority; indeed it is more public, in that it recognizes a broader range of other people's ideas as being worthy of consideration. Actually I don't like to call it the "A Priori Method" because that does make it sound private, when actually it's quite social in practice. I think it might better be called the method of Consensus, where beliefs are fixed by agreement rather than tested against experience. It is reasoning prior to experiment, not prior to dialogue and debate with other reasoners. (Though of course a dialogue *can* be internal.) gary f. } A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest. [Havelock Ellis] { www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm<http://www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm> }{ gnoxics -----Original Message----- From: Catherine Legg [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: 2-May-14 5:59 AM Hi everyone, Having not been able to wrest open my peirce-l inbox for some time, I was able to peruse the chapter 6 thread pretty much in one reading last night. It was very nice to see the various themes unfold and develop before my eyes. Thank you Jeff K for your rich account of Peircean epistemology - informed by your own research career in this area - that you used to put a very lucid context around Kees' treatment. Thank you Jeffrey D for the sophisticated Kantian scholarly framework you brought to bear, and the many probing questions you asked to try to push the discussion deeper. Here are some thoughts I had: Ben pointed out how ethics and aesthetics might be seen to be in the background even of Peirce's remarks at the end of his very early paper FoB. It was possibly even unrecognised by Peirce at that point that these prior sciences were already 'growing there'. This was really interesting to me - thanks, Ben. Jeff K (and others) drew this out by distinguishing between an 'efficiency argument' and an 'ethical argument' in FoB for the method of science over the other three methods, suggesting that Peirce might have vacillated between the two. I wonder if we might put the two back together, though, via the discussion of 'ultimate ends' and 'the only evil is not to have an ultimate end', that took place at the tail-end of Chapter 4 between Stefan, Phyllis, Gary, Matt and others. Sam said we should distinguish between the claim that the 4th method is the only one for which it makes sense to say there is a right and wrong way of applying it, and the claim that science is self-correcting. Jeff D conceded this point, but I'm not sure I agree. What is it to self-correct other than to recognise that one is going about one's chosen task wrongly? This led into a very interesting discussion of whether the 4th method really is the only one that allows self-correction, as Peirce claims. I was thinking perhaps the method of authority also allows for *some* kind of right or wrong way of applying it. For instance we might imagine a group of scholastic philosophers realising that they had 'got Aristotle all wrong'. Peirce may try to get out of this by arguing that in that case the medieval scholars have begun scientific inquiry into the views of Aristotle, but this sounds a bit too easy of a solution, which broadens the concept of scientific inquiry merely to solve the problem. I was thinking that it would be the method of authority that would allow self-correction if any of the other 3 methods did, since that is the other 'public' method. I subscribe to a characterisation of the 4 methods that I can't remember where I picked up, but it goes like this: Method of Tenacity: private, random Method of Authority: public, random A Priori Method: private, reasoned Method of Science: public, reasoned Using this taxonomy I considered Jeff D's fascinating question of whether these 4 methods are the only possible. I was initially inclined to answer yes, because the taxonomy considered this way might be said to cover all of logical space. However, the examples Jeff D gave were very intriguing. With the dialectical method I agreed with Ben that it probably collapsed into the a priori method. The hermeneutic method I think is what the scholastic philosophers are doing with Aristotle above. But the genealogical method.............????? Maybe this breaks the mold? And Peirce seems to be relying on it more and more in his later philosophy insofar as he invokes an evolutionarily developing instinct, rather than ratiocination, as a guiding principle in inquiry.... I don't know. Cathy ----------------------------- 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]<mailto:[email protected]> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected]<mailto:[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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