Jeff, List,
I have to be traveling again and won't be able to get back to this,
except in mobile bits and snatches, until the middle of next week.
I collected a few links and thoughts pertinent to this part of
the discussion in the following blog post:
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/10/31/peirces-categories-%E2%80%A2-2/
Regards,
Jon
On 10/31/2015 3:47 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Hi Jon, Lists,
In the previous post, I start by trying to frame some of the questions that I
take Peirce to addressing in his work on phenomenology. It is quite possible
that I am framing the questions poorly. Feel free to point out who the
questions might be framed better. By way of supporting the suggestions I'm
offering for how we might frame the questions, I'm then doing a bit of
scholarship by taking a closer look at a part of a chapter in the Grand Logic
(1893). As a scholarly matter, it would be helpful if you (or anyone else on
the lists) might point out where I am going wrong in interpreting this passage.
Like Peirce, I am keen to point out that we are trying to answer a question
pertaining to the normative theory of logic. As such, in looking more closely
at how we might formulate an account of the fundamental law of mind, we are not
trying to address a question of empirical psychology. My aim in looking at
this passage was to let Peirce speak for himself as much as poss!
ible. A
s such, I've only separated some points that are in the text, and then I've
tried to provide some simple comments about what he is saying. As far as I can
see, I haven't (yet) said anything that goes very far beyond the letter of text
in offering this interpretation.
Peirce is bringing two things together--phenomenology and the normative theory
of logic--so we shouldn't be surprised to seem him moving relatively quickly
from one kind of consideration to the next. This shouldn't be surprising.
After all, there are specific aims we have that are guiding the development of
the theory of phenomenology. As the text itself makes quite clear, he is using
an account of the elements in the phenomena we observe to analyze the
observations drawn from common sense--and then to identify and correct for
sources of error. The whole point of identifying the possible sources of error
in our experience is to put ourselves in a better position to articulate an
account of the fundamental law of mind. As such, we are doing a bit of
phenomenological analysis of a part of some phenomena that is in common
experience, and then we say a bit more about the conceptions we need to refine
in order to provide a better articulation of the conceptions that are ne!
eded for
the sake of formulating a logical hypothesis concerning the law of mind. He
does this repeatedly in his passage: a little bit of phenomenological
analysis, and then a little bit more logical reflection about what we've
learned that might help us clarify out conceptions--such as our conception of
continuity.
I hear you saying that I've gone wrong somewhere, but it isn't much help to me
unless you are willing to take a stab at pointing out where I've gone wrong in
interpreting the passage. When it comes to the larger question of how we
should frame the guiding questions for a phenomenological theory, it will be
more difficult for you or anyone else to identify the sources of any mistakes
that I might be making. After all, I've moved some distance from any
particular text and and making bigger kinds of points. Having said that, it
shouldn't be difficult to point out where I have gone wrong in the
interpretation of this passage. It is quite short, and Peirce is saying a lot
more than I am.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 9:10 AM
To: [email protected]; PEIRCE-L
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Peirce's Categories
Hello Jon, Ben, Lists,
Does phenomenology need hypotheses? Let's take one of Peirce's many formulations of what
we are doing when we engage in the kind of phenomenological inquiry that he is
recommending to us. Here is a description of this science: "Phenomenology
ascertains and studies the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon;
meaning by the phenomenon, whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way."
So, in doing phenomenology, we are asking the following kind of question: are there some
elements that are universally present in the phenomena? Here are a series of hypotheses:
1) Yes, there are such universal elements.
2) There are three fundamental elements that are universal and necessary for
all possible experience.
3) The matter of these elements can be understood to consist in three
categories: quality, brute fact, thought (pick your favorite term for the last
of the three)
4) The form of these elements can be understood to consists in three basic
kinds of relationships: monadic, dyadic and triadic; or firstness, secondness
and thirdness (pick your favorite list)
5) The material categories correspond, in some sense, to the formal categories.
What is the purpose of examining these elements more carefully and trying to
generate a theory about the character of each and how experience might be
composed of relations between these formal relationships? Well, there are
several related purposes. Let me point to a few that are prominent in my mind.
In a long discussion of the character of the observations we should use for
the sake of engaging in philosophical inquiry, where Peirce is trying to
explain how we should go about analyzing the phenomena that we need to draw on
for the sake of developing better explanations in the normative science of
logic, he makes the following point about the method he is using:
Our object is to formulate the law of mind. We have to consider all mental action
whatsoever and, generalizing it, to say not what all the elements of it are, but what
that element of it is which is legislative. "Generalization," is the old
answer.... A feeling is an element of consciousness just as it immediately is in the
moment when it is there for itself and not as delegate of some other feeling not present.
Such a feeling is not a psychological datum. The data are highly complex. That there is a
cream colored surface with black characters on it is as near as I can readily describe
the datum of my consciousness at this minute, -- but in truth the moment I pick it to
pieces, as I must do to describe it, it ceases to be a datum. CP 7.464-5.
Let me now emphasize the following points that he makes: "As for the pure feeling, that
is a hypothetical entity, and is as completely veiled from me by its own immediacy as a
material particle, as it exists in itself, is veiled by the somewhat absurd requirement that
it shall be considered in itself. The truth is there are no data. We have a lot of inferences
from data, liable to error, and these we have to correct as best we can by putting them
together." Having made this point, Peirce draws an analogy between inquiry in the
cenoscopic sciences and inquiry in the ideoscopic sciencs: "The state of the case is
quite similar to that of a physical science, say astronomy. All we have to go upon in
astronomy is observations, and all those observations are erroneous. But we collect them and
take their means and find a general description of the path of the observed object; and from
this we can calculate an ephemeris, and finally, if there is any interest in doing so, ascerta!
in what
those observations ought to have been. We can no more start with immediate feelings in psychology than we can start with accurate places of the planets, as affected by parallax, aberration, refraction, etc. in astronomy. We start with mediate data, subject to error, and requiring correction."
This is think, articulates some of the main purposes of phenomenology. The
data we are working with in philosophy are mediate and highly subject to error.
Our aim is to build a theory of the phenomena we observe in common experience
for the sake of learning to: 1) analyze the data more carefully, 2) identify
possible sources of error, and then 3) correct for the observational errors we
might have made.
Does phenomenology need hypotheses? Yes. The point of the hypotheses is to
show us how to do 1-3 above better. If you have time, I recommend taking a
look at what Peirce says next about how he is refining the logical account of
the law of mind. Starting from the old answer, which is that the fundamental
law is one of generalization, Peirce goes on to analyze the experience of how
something, such as a line that is being drawn on a piece of paper, is
experienced as something that changes in a continuous manner over time.
Without going into the details of the analysis, I think that Peirce is really
onto to something about how we might build explanations in the normative
science of logic in a better manner than it has been done by the likes of
Descartes, Hume, Kant and Mill—and the other philosophers who have tried to
answer the same question. One key part of the strategy, I take it, is to
develop the logical theory with an improved understanding of how we should work
!
with the
data (i.e., the observations) that we're trying to explain.
--Jeff
Here is what Peirce says next, in case anyone who does not have volume 7 of the
CP handy would like to take a look.
466. The mind pronounces that what I see now resembles something I saw
yesterday. The whole aspect of things as flowing in time is, it is plain,
virtually a theory of the mind's creation. But, for the present, we take that
theory as true, that is, as a stable one. Taking it as true, it seems to
provide no possible means by which the mind could compare what is present to it
now with what is past and gone and done with. This compels us to say that the
time idea, -- at least, in its first crude shape, -- needs correction, like an
erroneous observation in astronomy. Examining it more carefully, we observe
that the idea is that the series of instants of time is continuous. Analyzing
this idea of continuity, as we shall do in a future chapter with the most
minute accuracy which an improved art of logic puts at our disposition,†30 we
find that it implies that there are instants infinitesimally close together;
that is that there are durations of time so short, that every one su!
ch start
ing with a given date has a character exactly like the one before it in some
respect, without any limitation to this rule, while yet a time a little later
does not possess that character. This enables us to suppose that the
consciousness is not limited to a single instant but that it immediately and
objectively extends over a lapse of time, without thereby extending over any
sensible lapse of time. We are thus able to suppose that consciousness is
carried along from one time to another, and is able to compare what is present
to it at different times. Such we may suppose to be the process of memory; and
this is the account of it which best squares with those natural beliefs which
are all the data the psychologist can possibly have upon which to found his
science, corresponding, as they do, to the observations of the astronomer.
467. But granting that memory is thus justified, -- while errors may, of
course, creep in during the process, -- it still remains that when the mind
declares that what it sees now, or remembers to have seen yesterday, I seen
last week, the likeness, which though accompanied like all mental processess
like what it remembers to have with a peculiar and characteristic sensation, is
mainly a fact, a mental fact, and the sensation of it is of no consequence
except as an advertisement of that fact. That fact is that by virtue of the
occult working of the depths within us, those two feelings coalesce into one
notion. For the sake of calling this by a familiar name, I call this
association by similarity. But the ideas united by virtue of an occult inward
power, are not always regarded as similar. Contraries are also so joined. Ideas
and feelings are so joined which are neither merely declared by the mind to be
similar nor to be contrary. Such, for instance, are length, breadth, an!
d thickn
ess. The mind delights in triads. In general, what the mind pronounces is that
the feeling or idea of yesterday and that of today belong to one system, of
which it forms a conception. A concept is not a mere jumble of particulars, --
that is only its crudest species. A concept is the living influence upon us of
a diagram, or icon, with whose several parts are connected in thought an equal
number of feelings or ideas. The law of mind is that feelings and ideas attach
themselves in thought so as to form systems. But the icon is not always clearly
apprehended. We may not know at all what it is; or we may have learned it by
the observation of nature.
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Jon Awbrey [[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 7:36 AM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard; [email protected]; PEIRCE-L
Subject: Re: Peirce's Categories
Jeff, List,
It seems to me there is something slightly off about looking for
the hypotheses that underlie phenomenology. I do not think any
number of verbal evasions will fix the problem. The whole point
of anyone's version of phenomenology is to “bracket away” all such
hypotheses and to “cleanse the doors of perception”, etc. We may
be convinced by subsequent reflections: “the myth of the given”,
“data are really capta”, all of Peirce's many analyses, and the
results of experimental cognitive psychology, to name just a few,
that such levels of purity are not really possible for the complex,
concrete creatures we appear to be, but that is the project anyway.
On the other hand, as far as Peirce's distinctive perspective
on mathematics ‘per se’ goes, there is a tempting but unhappy
tendency to adulterate it with all the notions of logicism,
syntacticism, and other species of nominalism that I think
we really ought to try and cleanse from the pons thereto.
Regards,
Jon
On 10/31/2015 4:52 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
> Hello Ben, List,
>
> I was particularly interested in the prospect of making a comparison
between the hypotheses that we are working with
in mathematics and the hypotheses that we are working with phenomenology.
There are good reasons to point out, as you
have, that the hypotheses in phenomenology are based on something that is, in
some sense prior. Call them, if you will,
particular discernments.
>
> Having searched around a bit, I don't see a large number of places where
Peirce uses this kind of language when
talking about phenomenology. Having said that, here is one: "Philosophy has
three grand divisions. The first is
Phenomenology, which simply contemplates the Universal Phenomenon and discerns its
ubiquitous elements...." (CP 5.121)
>
> There are interesting differences between the ways that we arrive at the hypotheses
that serve as "starting points"
for mathematical deduction, and ways that we arrive at the hypotheses that are
being formulated in phenomenology. One
reason I retained the language of "starting points" that was in the original
questions that Peirce asked about
mathematics is that hypotheses are, at heart, quite closely related to the
questions that are guiding inquiry. We
normally think of hypotheses as explanations that can serve as possible answers
to some questions. In some cases, I
think it might be better to think of the formulation of the questions were
trying to answer as itself a kind of hypotheses..
>
> We can ask the following kinds of questions about hypotheses in math,
phenomenology, normative science and the like.
What are we drawing on when we formulate these hypotheses? How should we develop the
hypotheses from the "stuff" that
we are drawing on so that the hypotheses we form will offer the greatest
promise as we proceed in our inquiries.
>
> With these kinds of issues in mind, let me rephrase the questions about
phenomenology so as to respond to the concern
you've raised:
>
> 1. What are the different kinds of hypotheses that might be fruitful for
phenomenological inquiry?
> 2. What are the general characters of these phenomenological hypotheses?
> 3. Why are not other phenomenological hypotheses possible, and the like?
>
> --Jeff
>
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
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