Thread:
HP:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14168
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14169
HP:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14177
JLRC:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14179
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14189
FS:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14204
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14228
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14229
Frederik, List,
Of all the admonitions that my teachers in logic, math, and science impressed on
my psyche over the years one the direst was to tread most angelically with the
temptations of that universal quantifier "all". That way lies paradox unless
each step along the way is carefully watched. So it's one thing to say that
analogies, diagrams, icons, likelihoods, likely stories, metaphors, morphisms,
probabilities, similes, and all the rest of their ilk are extremely important
and even the main attractions in math and science, but it's a wholly other
matter to say that's all there is to their pursuits.
Regards,
Jon
Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
Dear Jon, Howard, lists,
As far as I can make out, there are important relation between Hertz' basic
ideas and Peirce's.
To Peirce, the relation of similarity connecting a diagram to its real-world
object is not necessarily easy to grasp - on the contrary, in many cases it
requires protracted work of both empirical and theoretical stripe. In
Peirce's doctrine of how reasoning with diagrams is undertaken, however, the
central idea is that the manipulation possibiliites of the diagram correspond
(to some degree) to the real transformation possibilities of the object
depicted by the diagram. So this is an operational definition of diagrammatic
iconicity which I think is non-trivial because it removes similarity far away
from the simpler examples of immediately recognizing perceptual aspects of
one object in another. So, I think this relation between manipulation
possibilities in the diagram and real relations in the object (Peirce)
corresponds to Hertz' idea of the "narrow strip" connecting the consequences
in the model with the consequences in reality.
That said, there's a large difference in rhetoric between the two which may
be superficial but still may lead us astray. Hertz' dramatic language of the
cold and alien world of actual existence on the one hand and mere
"associations of the mind" on the other paints a sort of existentialist
picture of man as an isolated loner in the universe, a bit like Jacques Monod
a century later. Nothing of the kind is found in Peirce's general description
of knowledge which assumes a far more intimate relation between man and
reality. Maybe this difference in style is connected to Hertz' seeming idea
that the universe consists of little more than actual existence while Peirce,
of course, takes reality to encompass also, in addition to actual existence,
all sorts of laws, patterns, tendencies not reducible to such existence (but
here, my knowledge of Hertz may be insufficient).
In any case, despite these differences, I think there's an important core
shared by the two: the procedural, operational possibilities of a good model
mirrors those ot the object modeled - that is a relation which is most often
not direct and often hard to establish.
Best F
Den 20/09/2014 kl. 16.43 skrev Jon Awbrey:
Howard,
I was responding to your assertion that Peirce agreed with Hertz's
epistemology.
The snippets you cite all echo one version or another of the so-called
"correspondence theory of truth", also known as the "mirror of nature theory
of science" because it assumes a purely dyadic form of correspondence:
analogies, diagrams, morphisms, etc.
The correspondence theory is naturally everyone's first theory of truth, but
not all reflectors on the mirror theory stop with that as their next best
guess. It was roundly criticized by some of the Ancients, by Kant, and even
though he took it as a useful first stepping stone, by Peirce.
As reflected in the images and metaphors you invoke, the correspondence
theory of truth leads to a very Cartesian view of things, a very Saussurean
take on the use of signs, and it issues in all the false problems of "symbol
grounding" that so bedevil some corners and cul-de-sacs of the cognitive
cottage industries.
That "alien world" is no alien void, it is a plenum that we live our lives in
and play our parts in. The whole modifies the part that we are and the part
that we are modifies the whole. Many of those modifications, inside our
skins and out, amount to models and theories that we use to understand a part
of what is going on. The business of signs and inquiry is not mirrorly a
reflection of the whole but a form of participation in the world that leads
to understanding.
Regards,
Jon
HP:Peirce, as a chemist (1887) also agreed with Hertz's epistemology (1884):
"The result that the chemist observes is brought about by nature [Hertz: “the
image of the consequents of nature”]; the result that the mathematician
observes is brought about by the associations of the mind. [Hertz:
“consequents of images in the mind”] ... the power that connects the
conditions of the mathematicians diagram with the relations he observes in it
is just as occult and mysterious to us as the power of Nature that brings
about the results of the chemical experiment." [W:6, 37, Letter to Noble on
the Nature of Reasoning, May 28, 1987. (1897)]
HP: Hertz: "As a matter of fact, we do not know, nor have we any means of
knowing, whether our conception of things are in conformity with them in any
other than this one fundamental respect [Peirce's "power that connects"].
JA: Peirce, unlike Hertz, did not stop at a correspondence theory of truth.
And that has made all the difference.
HP: Hertz also did not stop thinking about the correspondence, or what
physics now calls the epistemic cut.
HP, quoting HH:
| Outside consciousness there lies the cold and alien world | of actual
things. Between the two stretches the narrow | borderland of the senses. No
communication between the | two worlds is possible except across this narrow
strip. | For a proper understanding of ourselves and the world | it is of the
utmost importance that this borderland | be explored. | | [Keynote
address,Imperial Palace, Berlin, 1891]
HP: Peirce has certainly explored this borderland, but I am still not clear
what "has made all the difference." Phaneroscopy is on only one side of the
border and doesn't get us across the narrow strip.
--
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