Hi! This is all very confusing to me. Language, words, versus reality: Is this the real contradiction? Is truth, expressed with language/words something that has been there in the far past: "In the beginning there was the word" (logos) (Bible), or something in the far future: "Final interpretant" (Peirce)? I would like to experience some truth (of course expressed with words, as these are the means I can handle: This is not nominalism, but just a lack of other, directer means) here and now. Because I have not been living in the year one of the bible, possibly the big bang, and I will not still live, when every mind will have agreed with some final interpretants. So neither religion, nor Peirce, is something that I have a use for, looking for truth. Lest it is not different: a final interpretant is not something in the far future, but something that occurs regularly anytime when somebody is convinced of something. This is a temporary truth, when this convincement might later possibly be falsified. A truth becomes truer and truer, the more time passes without falsification. But only in a society that allows falsification. This sounds like relativism, so there must be added, that there may also be "synthetic apriori statements" (Kant). What about these? Can they give us some truth here and now? I guess so.
Best,
Helmut
"Clark Goble" <[email protected]>
On Oct 23, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is - truly terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.
Yes, I just don’t think Heidegger and Derrida were doing word mysticism. Just that a lot of people who missed the key phenomenology part were able to ape the language. To me both Heidegger and Derrida were realists in the same mold as Peirce (albeit with a very different style of language focused on metaphor). To see this one need only look at the place of key scholastic realists on the thought of Heidegger and Derrida.
And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant. Is it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned with metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but Peirce was well aware of that as you know.
The real issue are what are the implications for philosophy of the final interpretant being at best off in an infinite future.
I think in particular the problem for Derrida was that most of philosophy at the time thought that the final interpretant was here in the present in our presence. This is key for say the positivists but is really part of what Descartes introduces as epistemology. I don’t think we appreciate in these years where few are epistemological foundationaglists just how widespread this view affected philosophy.
Arguably the whole reason Peirce critiques most philosophy as nominalistic is wrapped up with this legacy of Plato and Descartes. The idea of a present final interpretant. If under Descartes we have thoughts that correlate with things then the immediate thoughts take the place of the final interpretant. However if you recognize the problem with this then all you’re left with are the names in the mind. That is the immediate and dynamic interpretant without the final interpretant is nominalism. Nominalism arises because of how the mind is cut off from reality. The combination of shifting the nature of truth plus scholastic realism avoids all this.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
