> On Sep 16, 2014, at 10:32 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes, analytic philosophy seems tepid next to Peirce. I hardly know what > analytic philosophers mean by 'analysis' or, more importantly, by > 'philosophy'. Decades ago I got a similar vagueness from continental > philosophy.
I think the roll of intuitions are key here. However as you might recall this is also the place I have most of my trouble with logical analysis within analytic philosophy. It seems too tied to intuitions (i.e. conclusions to thought experiments) attempting to create clearly defined definitions. The problem is that often the intuitions of philosophers differ greatly from other groups. Experimental philosophy attempts to reconcile this but I think it still rests on the idea that it’s somehow clear judgments that get a definitions and thus analysis. (This gets at Frederik’s comments on Peirce and Husserl too) The key problem is that it misses the logic of absence. Peirce’s conception of the sign and the difference between object and interpretant avoids that error. Continental philosophy, especially the brief period of Heideggarian inspired post-structuralism, seems to recognize the importance of that absence but instead of going to a clear logic of absences the way Peirce’s signs allow instead went to an overly metaphoric language where the words were intentionally exemplifying the gaps but which in the process lost clarity. (Nothing was more frustrating to me than philosophers who I know could write clearly, concisely and insightfully aping Derrida’s demonstrative period) The problem is that both get at part of the problem, and both recognize the other misses something important. But neither seem able to reconcile. (Although to be fair that’s been changing a lot the past 10 years or so - but it has a long ways to go) > In the preface to his _Phenomenology of Perception_, Merleau-Ponty mentioned > that his own kind of philosophy "cannot define its own scope," at least not > yet, insofar as it "has existed as a movement before arriving at complete > awareness of itself as a philosophy”. To be fair, when one considers how broad Peirce’s approach to signs is and (my own belief) that the post-Husserlian phenomenologists were touching on this, it makes sense that they recognized the problem. They were working from the much more restrictive approach of Husserl but recognizing there was much more. (This is made explicit in Derrida’s approach to Husserl where he explicitly says Peirce comes closest to what he sees as beyond) While I think there was a method in the madness of Derrida’s demonstrative period, I confess as I get older I prefer his older works best. Every thing after seems the same idea expressed different ways via an immanent critique that seems designed to annoy people. To me Derrida’s play is very much Peirce’s musement but perhaps done in a less than ultimately fashion. (Of course I think that of most of the “revolutions” of the 60’s - it seemed like people could revolt only through a process of excess) Anyways, I raise this due to your quote from Baldwin Dictionary. Analysis (in logic): Ger. logische Analyse; Fr. analyse logique; Ital. analisi logica. Literally a resolution, an unloosening of that which has been combined. (Emphasis mine) That is explicitly the meaning of deconstruction too so that as we deconstruct what is combined we can start to see it. This is a kind of backwards working through a genealogy. For Peirce, especially in that quote from MS 318 I gave, is doing that very kind of analysis. Now thankfully he avoids the excesses of Derrida as well as usually the aporias that characterize many Socratic dialogs and even at times Aristotle. (The place of aporias in Derrida is interesting but tangental here) Still he approaches that at times, such as when he says, When this is the case, there must be a sign without an utterer and a sign without an interpreter. Indeed, there are two pretty conclusive arguments on these points that are likely to occur to the reader. But why argue, when signs without utterers are often employed? I mean such signs as symptoms of disease, signs of the weather, groups of experiences serving as premisses, etc . To my ears, this is very much a productive use of aporia. In Peirce’s case (as I’d argue in Derrida, although it’s more confusing there) this leads to all interesting expansions of the notion of the sign into the various “quasi” elements we’ve discussed. Sorry for the tangent, but I think the path of the post-Husserlian philosophers is interesting relative to Frederik’s book.
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