List,
Since the Peirce Centennial conference last week, i've been thinking about
its explicit aim, "Invigorating Philosophy for the 21st Century", and about
the role of peirce-l in doing that.
It seems to me that most subscribers to peirce-l occupy some space on a
spectrum between two poles, which i'll describe here as personified ideals
(meaning that no actual person is absolutely one or the other): the Peircean
scholar, and the peircean Philosopher.
The Ideal Peircean scholar participates in a largely professional community
working toward a fully developed, pragmaticistic and widely shared
understanding of Peirce's work as a whole. The PS regards that work as a
single sign (namely an Argument) and a living system, every part of which is
functional in the context of the whole. It follows that the critical study
of any part contributes to the comprehension of the other parts and of the
whole -so the specialists in this community have good reason to work
together.
The peircean Philosopher on the other hand is more philosophical than
Peircean - that is, the PP participates in a community hoping to tell the
Whole Truth (which, were it ever to arrive, would include its confession
that it does not profess to be Exactly True.) The PP regards Peirce as
another member of that philosophical community, one who fortunately has left
abundant representations of his trains of thought in his published and
unpublished work. We could say that PPs are miners of Peirce because in his
work they find realizations that deserve to be replicated in the
philosophical community, in many other human communities, and ultimately in
the Earth community. So while the PS is after the Whole Truth about Peirce,
the PP is mining Peirce for functional components of the Whole Truth (about
life, the universe and everything, if we may use this language).
As someone who gravitates toward the PP pole, i realize that some of those
peircean components may need to be reformulated and revised in order to
function better in other communities; indeed some of them are already
functioning in other communities in formulations that owe nothing to Peirce.
But i also realize that Peirce's work is more a network than a nest of
nuggets. Pull on any of its strands of system hard enough, and you have to
either take the whole thing on board (hoping it doesn't sink you) or be left
with a bleeding chunk of "Peirce" on your hands, feeling like a thief. This
should motivate us to work together with the PS community. Actually
peirce-l, as i see it, is a single community with a common interest in
Invigorating Philosophy for the 21st Century.
Toward that end, it's been suggested that we might conduct a seminar of
sorts to study Frederik Stjernfelt's new book Natural Propositions. I
suggested this to Frederik at the Lowell conference and he's keen on the
idea. It will be organized in a similar way to our seminar on Kees de Waal's
book, in which each chapter was assigned a volunteer to start a thread on it
and lead the discussion. We called these volunteers "emcees", but since
that's a strange term to many readers who aren't North Americans (as I
learned at the Lowell conference), I'm going to call them Threadleaders. So
this is a call for volunteers to let me know (offlist if you like) what
part(s) of the Stjernfelt book you'd like to lead a thread on, and perhaps
what would be the best time for you to do that, say between now and
December. As before, this seminar can run concurrently with whatever else is
happening on the list.
I'll assume that anyone interested in doing that probably has a copy of the
book already, so I won't list the table of contents here. If you haven't
seen the book yet, I recommend it because it exemplifies the virtues of both
the Peircean scholar and the peircean Philosopher: that is, I think it gets
Peirce right in the context of his system and places a crucial part of that
system in a broader context - one which includes biosemiotics as well as
logic, and develops the concept of iconicity to new levels. I'll be happy to
expand on this if anyone wishes, and in the meantime you can "look inside"
the book at Amazon.
Please come forward, prospective threadleaders! If you want to message me
privately, just Reply to this and delete the peirce-l address from your
"To:" field before you Send.
gary f.
} In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds. [Tao Te Ching 63
(Feng/English)] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
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