Gary M. Phyllis, list, Gary, here, as in yesterday's long post on the same topic (Peirce's view that generals are real), you keep saying things like "Gary R. said" or, here, referring to "Gary's" point as to what constitutes a nominalist--in that earlier long post even copying snippets of Peirce quotes I've given in earlier posts and, again, saying "Gary said." It would be helpful if, rather, you wrote something like "Gary has offered quotations supporting Peirce's position that. . ." with which I, Gary M., disagree.
Although I personally tend to agree with Peirce in this matter, I have mainly, if not exclusively, been presenting *his* view, especially through quotations, and not my own. Just because Peirce wrote it doesn't mean I necessarily *fully* agree with it. And I certainly did not say or imply that you, or Eco, do not believe in thirdness or interpretants. But, in Peirce's view (I won't copy the quotation), if you do not believe that there are real generals then you are indeed a nominalist (and then one might wonder how your notions of thirdness and interpretant are constituted in excluding real generals). I am still away from my desk so I won't say much more now except to point to Robert Lane's excellent paper, "On Peirce's Early Realism," which argues that Peirce himself early on did not hold that generals were real but only gradually came to that understanding (eventually he saw his own earlier view as too nominalistic). But he *never* believed that generals are real in the sense of *universals*, fixed and invariant laws, but in the sense of *general habits* having the potential to grow and evolve (he even saw the laws of nature as evolving in cosmic time, supporting Phyllis remark suggesting that they *really* do evolve even before we're here to observe anything). In the 1905 paper, "What Pragmatism is," speaking of the scholastics he remarks that "nobody ever thought that *all* generals are real," and this would appear to be Peirce's position as well. In this list Jim Willgoose once analyzed Peirce's dictum that "Generals are really operative in nature" from the standpoint of semiotic, and I would tend to agree with his analysis: 1) "Really operative" signs are not just in the ego of an individual or community 2) "We" includes nature 3) "Really operative" signs are not deduced from cases of actual knowledge 4) The hypothesis of knowledge is abduced from cases of "really operative" signs http://osdir.com/ml/science.philosophy.peirce/2007-06/msg00057.html Best, Gary R. *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 4:57 AM, Gary Moore <[email protected]> wrote: > GCM: GR's point was that he said that Nominalists, like he said we all > are as opposed to himself, do not believe in "real generals" or "Thirdness" > or the "Interpretant". I proposed purely provisionally that I and Umberto > Eco do not believe in "real generals" but do believe in "Thirdness" and the > "Interpretant" as ποίησίς: production (Herstellung), and έπιστήμη: > science, familiarity with things, knowledge. So then are we still > Nominalists? > > > > On Saturday, June 14, 2014 11:19 PM, Phyllis Chiasson < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > Am I correct in interpreting Peirce's concept of Nominalism as believing > that we make it up as we go; that before we name a thing or concept, it > does not have being? And that Peirce's realism says things, including > concepts and stuff, have being (and therefore reality) whether anyone ever > knows or names things? > > If I read him correctly, then we may be essential for the practice > (existence?) of pragmaticism but not for being or reality, which do not > require human minds or any minds for its operation. > > (Speaking of which, I just had one, so I may have missed the point of this > conversation.) > > Regards, Phyllis > > ----------------------------- > 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 > . > > > > > > > > > ----------------------------- > 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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