Gary F., Jon, Lists, Looking back on my own struggles to find coherence in Peirce's published and unpublished writings, I now think that the early lectures 1865-6 are actually quite a good place to start--at least when one reaches the point of trying to work more systematically through his philosophical position. That, I believe is what Jon was pointing to when he suggested that Peirce's later accounts of the different kinds of sign functions and relations were already present--sometimes in a quite a clear form--in the early lectures. Jon also referred to the 1870 essay on the logic of relatives, and that is more challenging for those of us who do not already find themselves at home in the worlds of logic and math--or do not find themselves at home in the world of Peirce's particular views on logic and math.
As we make our way into Peirce's account of the dicisign and the logical character of the proposition, I think these early essays are particularly helpful--in part because they show us there is remarkable continuity in the development of his thought on these logical matters from the very get go--and also because it provides a clear window on what exactly is providing much of the larger context and background we would need to study in order to deepen our understanding of what he is trying to do and what is guiding the development of his thought. Following this lead a bit, I think it will be helpful as we make our way through Chapter 3 of NP to consider the respective accounts of the proposition offered by Whewell, Mill and Kant, and then to consider their views in relationship to the larger historical trends. As we know, Peirce was drawing a number of key insights from his careful examination of the Aristotelian theory of the syllogism. In order to understand these insights, it is good to consider the development of logical accounts of deduction, induction and hypothesis--and the features of the premises and conclusions (i.e., the propositions) that function in such forms of argumentation--from the Port Royal Logic up through the modern period. As we can see from "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties," "Consequences" and "Further Consequences," he's trying to identify the roots of the most basic mistakes that were made in this tradition as a whole. Focusing on the account of the proposition in this tradition, we can see that Peirce is questioning a number of the key assumptions that were made about the kinds of data that might be used to get an account off the ground. He is rejecting data that is drawn from a supposed power of introspection, and he is rejecting data gathered through a supposed power of intuition. So, I'd like to ask, what are the key data that a logical theory should draw on for the purposes of generating and testing hypotheses about real the nature of the dicisign? How might we analyze those data for the sake of clarifying what needs to be explained? How might we correct for errors that might have been made in the collection of those data? --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Gary Fuhrman [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 8:15 AM To: [email protected]; 'Peirce List' Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Natural Propositions, Chapter 3.1 Jon, I too find more continuity than discontinuity in the development of Peirce's thought. However, I don't think that following that development in chronological order is the easiest or best way to understand his "truly radical ideas". My experience has been that we can clearly see the roots of those ideas in his early work (1865-70) only after we've become well acquainted with his later work (such as the contents of EP2). For instance, I would never recommend to a beginner in Peirce that they start with the 1867 "New List of Categories", because that paper is far more difficult to follow than almost anything in EP2. That's why I've recommended Peirce's "New Elements" (1904) as the best companion text to Chapter 3 of NP. For one thing, it serves as a better introduction to Peirce's concept of Information = Comprehension × Extension than Peirce's 1867 paper on the subject, important as that is. Personally I'm reluctant to spend much time studying Peirce's algebraic formulations of logic because, when I do so, I feel afterwards that I've learned a new notation but nothing about logic that I didn't already know; and that's also been my experience with translations of Peirce's early notation into the more prevalent notational conventions of our time. For someone well versed in those conventions, your work is a good pathway to Peirce, I think, but lacking any training in mathematical logic myself, it seems to be a long and roundabout path for the likes of me. I find NP itself to be much more direct. Or at least more concise. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 23-Sep-14 9:48 AM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: [email protected]; 'Peirce List' Subject: Re: Natural Propositions, Chapter 3.1 Thread: GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14236 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14249 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14264 Peircers, As a general rule, I find more continuity than discontinuity in the development of Peirce's thought over time. To my way of reading it, the divergences we see in the record of his thought have more to do with the increasing diversity of his audiences over time than earthshaking shifts in his general standpoint. I think as more people shove their spades down to the strata between 1865 and 1870 the more they will find the roots of truly radical ideas about signs and science, logic and inquiry, some of which have found their echoes in our time but most of which have yet to be fully developed. At any rate, these are the conclusions that I draw from my study of his writings on the "laws of information", going back to the Harvard and Lowell lectures of 1865 and 1866, to his first major work on the logic of relatives in 1870. Information = Comprehension × Extension http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Information_%3D_Comprehension_%C3%97_Extension Peirce's 1870 Logic Of Relatives http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Peirce%27s_1870_Logic_Of_Relatives Regards, Jon
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