Re: Frederik Stjernfelt
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13977
Frederik,
In the 70s I read as almost as much Frege and Russell as I did Peirce and I think I grasped Frege's
attitude fairly well, along with the mess Russell made of just about everything he touched. It is
not the simple anachronism of the term, of course we have to re-describe positions in contemporary
language. It has to do with projecting any Weltanschauung or ism on a thinker who protested the
very idea of interpreting his position in that way. And yes, that applies even to pragmat(ic)ism.
Peirce's work has the power to lift our thinking off the plane of many old and pointless disputes.
That is the attraction it always had for me, at any rate. But the worst distortions of Peirce's
thought come from trying to assimilate him to the very planes on which he is too, too solid to melt.
Regards,
Jon
Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
Dear Jon, lists
"Psychologism", as a critical term, was invented in 1866 in Germany - referring
to the idea that
logic is a branch of psychology - and "anti-psychologism" came to denote the
opposite viewpoint.
When Peirce began speaking about a "... thoroughly unpsychological view of
logic" the year
before that, he could not know neither of these terms, and apparently he also
did not learn about
this terminology later. So the absence of these terms in Peirce seems not be be
one of deliberate
choice.
So, when I characterize Peirce's position as antipsychologism, it has two
reasons
1) his claim for the independence of logic from psychology is at least as
strong if not stronger
than those of Frege and Husserl - and it predates both of them. Peirce even
attacked Husserl for
psychologism (without using the word) in 1906 when he writes about German
logicians, among them:
"… the distinguished Husserl (Note: See, e.g. his Logische Untersuchung , Teil
I, Kap. 3 (1900))
after underscored protestations that their discourse shall be of logic
exclusively and not by any
means of psychology (almost all logicians protest that on file), forthwith
become intent upon
those elements of the process of thinking which seem to be special to a mind
like that of the
human race, as we find it, to too great neglect of those elements which must
belong, as much to
any one as to any other mode of embodying the same thought."
2) I think it is important to make Peirce's position communicate with general
issues in the
history of philosophy where possible - actualizing Peirce requires a delicate
balance between his
own idiosyncratic terminology on the one hand and his possible contribution to
problems also
addressed by other thinkers on the other.
These issues point to the 2nd chapter of my book which deals with precisely
(anti-)psychologism.
Best F
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