Ben N., Edwina, list,Ben N. wrote: "The book involves the application of Peirce's theoretical structure of abduction to facts" and that thus "the devil is in the details." To be clear, the book involves the uses of abductive inference both explicitly by the book itself and in its subject matter, i.e., by Hitler.
To be clear, a good deal of the book consists in Ben N.'s explicit and detailed application of Peirce's theory of abductive inference (especially as outlined by Peirce in "The Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents, especially Testimonies") to facts of Hitler's life. That procedure makes the book particularly Peirce-related. Ben N. discusses and follows Peirce, for example, in regard to avoiding the traditional method of "weighing probabilities" and instead in accepting testimony until there is good reason to doubt it. Meanwhile, in the facts as they are known of Hitler's life, Ben N. attempts to show a pattern of Hitler's becoming focused (by way of his love of the popular novels of Karl May) on abductive inference and Hitler's specialized use and abuse of abductive inference, which depended on Hitler's cultivated awareness of how other people may be led to abduce conspiracy theories as explanations of historical disasters and humiliations, and how it affects their behavior. As to how unique Hitler was or wasn't in this, maybe I'll have more to say later.
Best, Ben U. On 7/10/2015 8:56 AM, Ben Novak wrote:
Dear Edwina:You have made a number of interesting points. Most of them have been addressed rather well by Ben Udell. But let me add a few points that I think will be helpful to many others on the list.First, it is important that one read the book or dissertation, rather than for summarizing its salient points, for one main reason. The book involves the application of Peirce's theoretical structure of abduction to facts. Therefore, the book is not the presentation of a theory, whose salient points can be summarized and presented in bite-size form for others to critique in theoretical terms and argue over principles, definitions, and soundness of syllogisms. Rather, in this case, the "devil is in the details."In this respect, I think that the work should be of particular interest to the members of Peirce-L precisely because it involves the messy world of facts, in other words, it is an experiment of seeing whether certain theories can actually explain certain facts. It is like the situation when a scientist claims to have established something by experimental methods; one must meticulously go over each step of the experiments to see whether the result holds.In this respect, Eco and Sebeok's /The Sign of Three /is very instructive.They wrote that book because their studies of Peirce had introduced them to several other scholars who noted the presence of Peirce's adductive logic in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. They therefore set out to show how this form of logic pervades the work of these two giants of the detective story genre. In that case, in order to see if their premise holds, one must not only read Eco and Sebeok's book, but must also be familiar with the works of Poe and Doyle. A lot of work.Second, I don't think that I am making more of a mystery of Hitler than is warranted. Almost every major historian has shouted out that the facts of Hitler so far constitute a major mystery. That was the thesis of Ron Rosenbaum' book, /Explaining Hitler/, which he boldly states: "Hitler has escaped explanation."I set out to deal with one part of the Hitler mystery, specifically, what there was about him that enabled him to succeed. It seemed that simply to say he was lucky is not an explanation. First because he was the most unlikely of people to have any success in politics. He was a high school dropout, a denizen of the poor houses of Vienna, had shown no signs of leadership through four years of war in which any sign of leadership was sought to replace the high mortality of line officers. More importantly, however, one must keep in mind that he was not a citizen, and could neither vote nor hold office.Finally, he built up his political movement from scratch not once, but twice.He took the tiny DAP from a /stammtisch/ organization and built it into the largest force in Bavaria in four years. Then came the Putsch, and he was imprisoned, the party declared illegal and all its assets seized, and he was convicted of treason. No one believed that he could be any further trouble. But he said he could be back on top in a few years, and within five years after he was released, he was the leader of the second largest party in Germany. To say it was luck alone is to believe that lightning strikes twice in the same place....This brings up another fact that is disconcerting. Many people believe that Hitler succeeded because of his oratory. But he built up his party the second time under a complete ban on public speaking, effectively from November 1923 till spring of 1927 in Bavaria, and until 1928 throughout the rest of Germany,during which he gave only one public speech in February 1925, which is the speech that got him banned again from public speaking. Yet his party grew by leaps and bounds during this period from a party of one, to 49,000 dues-paying members in 1927, and to 78,000 members and almost 3 percent of the vote in 1928. This calls out for explanation.(Understand that in Germany at this time, one did not register for a party as we do in the US when one registers to vote. Every German was automatically registered, but one had to actually go to Party headquarters to join, and that meant paying dues and being required to perform organizing services. So, building an army of 49,000 dues-paying, hard working election organizers in two years was no small thing. My point it that this was done when Hitler was forbidden to give public speeches, so it cannot be because of his oratory.)Well, my point is that this process has not been explained. My book offers to provide at least one part of an explanation.Again, I agree with you that this is different from the usual discussion on Pierce-L where abstract issues can be discussed. My original announcement was simply that there was now a book trying to apply Peirce's theory of abduction to an historical event, with the idea that people on the list might be interested to know that. Of course, I hoped that someone would actually read it and critique it. But if you choose not to read it, that is a fair choice.Thanks for responding, Ben *Ben Novak <http://bennovak.net>* 5129 Taylor Drive, Ave Maria, FL 34142 Telephones: Magic Jack: (717) 826-5224 /*Best to call and leave messages.*/ Landline: 239-455-4200 */My brother's main phone line./*Mobile (202) 509-2655*/I use this only on trips--and in any event messages arrive days late./*Skype: BenNovak2/"All art is mortal, //not merely the individual artifacts, but the arts themselves./ /One day the last portrait of Rembrandt/ /and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — //though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes may remain — //because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message //will have gone." /Oswald SpenglerOn Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 11:36 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:Tom, yes, this is the kind of thing where I speak of rephrasing. Fresh from a first reading of 3/4 of the thesis, my impression was that Ben N. was attributing more originality to Hitler than seems established. Still I think Ben N. is on to something. Mainstream German politicians were offering practical programs, while Hitler was offering a Big Explanation of Everything and avoiding proposing solutions to particular problems. Best, Ben U. On 7/9/2015 11:15 PM, Ozzie wrote:Ben ~ Thanks for your helpful summary ("Ben N. is saying that Hitler was the first leader to invite the public to follow a pattern of abductive inference like in a detective story ...") Both for sport and to attain positions of leadership, Greek orators at the time of the Peloponnesian Wars invited the general public to form, accept and act on abducted hypotheses. The logical tales spun by Hitler were based upon resentment, which places him among the demagogues. Regards - Tom Wyrick On Jul 9, 2015, at 8:37 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:Edwina, Ben N., list, I've been reading the online version of Ben N.'s thesis. I found that I could not save it to my computer without first opening it online, and in order to save it computer, one has to move one's mouse over some buttons in the upper right-hand corner of the view pane till a little tool tip says "Download". I'm convinced that visual design of computer programs these days is largely done by sadists. Anyway, I've been reading it, it's two PDFs, and I'm half-way through the second one. It really is very readable, and that involvement of Hitler does add a certain electric current to the discussion of abductive inference. It's not a labor to read, and it's quite interesting. There are a number of technical errors (as Ben N. warns) evident to a Peirce scholar, but these can be corrected without damaging the thesis. In response to Edwina, I'd say that Ben N. does not present Hitler's rise as having a magical or mystical element, rather a mysterious element that requires explanation. He makes a case that many scholars think that there are some very difficult questions as to who Hitler was and how did he get so far. I'm no historian and hadn't read a book on Hitler since I was a teenager. So far, I'd say that the case is not made clear enough to the general reader that Hitler didn't just get lucky in the sense that some party had to come out on top or, in the classic formulation, "somebody has to be the king of France." Ben N. outlines some argument that luck wasn't such a big part of it, but it's not clear to me yet. On the other hand, I don't think that Ben N. is relying on a "Great Men" theory of history - he says that Hitler might have made very little difference in other times and circumstances. Insofar as everybody uses abductive inference, Ben N. perhaps doesn't bring out clearly enough the difference between Hitler's use of it and others' use of it, instead he talks about how Hitler was the first leader to use it. I think I know what Ben N. is getting at, but I'd phrase it more carefully. Ben N. is saying that Hitler was the first leader to invite the public to follow a pattern of abductive inference like in a detective story (Who Murdered Germany?), and that Hitler relied for credibility on the justificatory plausibility and complex cohesion of an untested hypothesis that would take a long time to verify. Well, there's more to it, which it would be foolish of me to try to summarize. I'd ask, is Ben N. so sure that Hitler was the first such leader? Many other regimes have 'explanations' that they give to their people, sometimes involving the idea of hidden forces behind events. Anyway, I'm enjoying reading it. One can certainly say that Ben Novak has made a serious effort, deserving of more attention than what some rather pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey stuff has received occasionally on peirce-l. Best, Ben On 7/9/2015 7:12 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:Ben, I'm going to disagree with your view that in order to discuss the basic issue of your book, namely, your attempt to correlate the rise of Hitler with abductive logic - that it requires that we either buy your book or read it. I think that on a Peirce-list, the members ought to have a reasonable reading knowledge of Peirce's works, but I don't think that a research topic dealt with by a member requires that members of this list read that member's work. My view is that it is incumbent on YOU, to provide members with a reasonably thorough precis of the salient points of your argument. With regard to the points you have so far provided, my concern is that you seem to be trying to imbue Hitler's rise to power with some 'magical' or mystical element. For example, you claim that when his party took power, German politics consisted of 28 parties - why was Hitler's dominant? In Canada, at the federal level, there are 26 political parties - and there is nothing particularly magical or surprising that only three are dominant. There are about 30 minor political parties in the US. Only two-three are dominant. Second, my concern is your method of explaining this history. You seem to be using what is known as the 'Great Man Theory' of historical analysis, which examines history by focusing on the charisma or whatever of some singular causal individual. I consider this a weak analytic frame; I prefer the 'long duree' framework of the 'Annales' school (eg, Braudel), which considers infrastructural causality such as the population size, economic mode, technological capacity, trade relations etc...rather than individuals. As for fascism, it is an ideology of the mind, i.e., it is not rooted in pragmatic reality but in a notion of utopian purity of the past, such that 'if only we returned to that pure mode', then, all would be well. It is now rampant in the Al Qaeda (from the 19th c!) and ISIS of the MENA. There are, I maintain, population and economic reasons for the refusal of these populations and governments to deal with the pragmatic problems of the area and the resultant retreat into fascism. Same with Germany of the 1930s. And, once an infrastructure is set up, e,g, National Socialism's Third Reich, it is extremely difficult to move out of the rhetoric and back down to hard reality. That requires an external intervention. Certainly, internally, some tried to stop Hitler - As for Hitler being logical - what??? I think some examples would be helpful. His behaviour around Stalingrad was hardly logical. Is the popularity of various cult figures, of wealthy preachers, of due to their being logical? Or for some other reason(s)? What is abductive about Hitler's 'reasoning'? Again, my view - and I say it is my view - is that the onus for explanation of a topic is not to have readers buy your book or read it online, but for you to explain key points to us - and then, explain why you align it with Peircean theory. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Ben Novak <mailto:[email protected]> *To:* Stephen Jarosek <mailto:[email protected]> *Cc:* Stephen C. Rose <mailto:[email protected]> ; Peirce List <mailto:[email protected]> *Sent:* Thursday, July 09, 2015 5:12 PM *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Recently published: Hitler and Abductive Logic
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