Jeff D.,
Good question. I think that for the late Peirce, the key method for avoiding
bias and prejudice is phaneroscopy, because that is grounded in observation of
that which is most directly and immediately observable, namely the phaneron. MS
337:4-5, 7, 1904: “The word φανερόν is next to the simplest expression in Greek
for manifest.… There can be no question that φανερός means primarily brought to
light, open to public expression throughout.… I desire to have the privilege of
creating an English word, phaneron, to denote whatever is throughout its
entirety open to assured observation” (quoted by De Tienne 1993, 280).
CP 1.286: “There is nothing quite so directly open to observation as phanerons;
and since I shall have no need of referring to any but those which (or the like
of which) are perfectly familiar to everybody, every reader can control the
accuracy of what I am going to say about them. Indeed, he must actually repeat
my observations and experiments for himself, or else I shall more utterly fail
to convey my meaning than if I were to discourse of effects of chromatic
decoration to a man congenitally blind. What I term phaneroscopy is that study
which, supported by the direct observation of phanerons and generalizing its
observations, signalizes several very broad classes of phanerons; describes the
features of each; shows that although they are so inextricably mixed together
that no one can be isolated, yet it is manifest that their characters are quite
disparate; then proves, beyond question, that a certain very short list
comprises all of these broadest categories of phanerons there are; and finally
proceeds to the laborious and difficult task of enumerating the principal
subdivisions of those categories.”
In saying this, I’m going somewhat beyond (or behind?) what Frederik says about
“direct access” in in NP (p. 14), where he argues that according to a
psychologistic view, “the meaning of a word in a language may be taken to be
the sum or average of the set of individual mental representations of that
word's meaning (something similar goes for the acoustic or graphic image of the
word which is also identically repeatable or multiply realizable). An immediate
problem in such a conception is that an object to which we have fairly direct
access — word meaning as accessed by linguistics, dictionaries, encyclopaedias,
public definitions, introspection, action, intersubjective agreement in
everyday speech — is replaced by an object to which we have no access (or very
limited access), namely a sum of different bundles of associations in the minds
of a vast array of individual persons.” Clearly we have even more direct access
to the phaneron, as Peirce defines it, than we do to dictionaries etc., all of
which (insofar as they are media) can be sources of bias.
One can of course argue that Peirce’s phaneroscopy itself (or his
phenomenology, as he called it from 1902 to 1904) was biased in its quest for
the “categories”, because Peirce had already by 1867 arrived at a short list of
categories by means of a logical analysis, and it looks suspicious that he
arrived at essentially the same list, decades later, by phaneroscopic means. As
I tried to show in my Transactions paper, Peirce was well aware of this danger
and took (by his account) extreme measures to avoid it. But whether he
succeeded or not, each phaneroscopist has to do this for herself, i.e. do her
own direct observation and generalizing while setting aside (“bracketing” as
Husserl would say) any preconceived notions of categorial classes. There is no
abductive method of avoiding bias altogether, and that’s why hypotheses have to
be checked by the self-correcting methods of inductive logic before we can
claim truth for them. Whether those methods are available to phaneroscopy
itself is a difficult question, I think, but I also think that phaneroscopy,
due to our direct access to the phaneron, was the essential key to Peirce’s
efforts to avoid bias in constructing his logic considered as semiotic.
gary f.
} For we are fed of its forest, clad in its wood, burqued by its bark and our
lecture is its leave. [Finnegans Wake 503] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 14-Sep-14 5:36 PM
Jeff K., Frederik, Lists,
I agree with Peirce in thinking that the normative theory of logic should serve
as an important basis for our inquiries in metaphysics. If we start with an
account of the metaphysical categories and then use it in setting up the
logical theory, then we would be putting the cart before the horse. Having
said that, I do think that Peirce, from early on, was drawing on a
phenomenological and a logical understanding of the categories in his inquiries
in logic, and that his reflections on these accounts of the categories guide
many of his inquiries concerning the nature of dicisigns.
I think it would be fair to say that Peirce is trying to develop a logical
theory that is free from the kinds of bias that would tend to unduly skew the
development of the theory. The sources of such bias take a number of different
forms. He characterizes them in the following way in his later reflections on
his youthful works:
"The first question, and it was a question of supreme importance requiring not
only utter abandonment of all bias, but also a most cautious yet vigorously
active research, was whether or not the fundamental categories of thought
really have that sort of dependence upon formal logic. ... I will not trouble
the reader with my answers to these and similar questions. Suffice it to say
that I seemed to myself to be blindly groping among a deranged system of
conceptions; and after trying to solve the puzzle in a direct speculative, a
physical, a historical, and a psychological manner, I finally concluded the
only way was to attack it as Kant had done from the side of formal logic." (CP
1.561-3)
We can see that he has actively tried other methods of inquiry--including the
method of philosophical speculation, a physical method, a historical method and
a psychological method--and has found each of them wanting. He is not merely
rejecting these methods out of hand. Consequently, we could attach the
following labels to his approach in logic. It is un-speculative, un-physical,
un-historical, un-metaphysical and un-psychological in its methods. There are
three points that he is stressing in these passages as objections to each of
these other methods: first, they all bring unwarranted biases and prejudices
into the inquiry; second, they lead us to blind groping and, third, the results
of such methods are a deranged system of conceptions.
Can we say more about his reasons for thinking that each of these methods
involves biases and prejudices--along with his reasons for thinking that these
biases and prejudices will tend to undermine the process of formulating
plausible hypotheses that will give rise to systems of conceptions that will
fit coherently with the phenomena we're trying to explain? I'd like to see if
we could tease this points out a bit more if others are interested in the
question.
--Jeff
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