> On Dec 14, 2015, at 12:57 AM, John Collier <[email protected]> wrote: > > I agree with the connection to the Pragmatic Maxim, especially in its later > formulations, but I am pretty sure that there are even earlier formulations > have a subjunctive component.
I just checked and you’re right. It appears the preliminary drafts to his changed proposal published in Popular Science Monthly in 1878 were written in 1873. So much earlier than I thought. However even in these drafts, “Logic of 1873” (CP 7.340-1), they are a tad problematic. Peter Skagestad makes hay with this in his argument that the maxim and Peirce’s realism are at odds. (He argues it’s only this middle period which has the position coherent with scholastic realism - although I disagree with Skagestad’s views here) I must confess I primarily just stick to Peirce in the mid 1890’s onward so I don’t get even more confused by his using the same terms but with slightly different meanings. He can be difficult enough in his terminology as is at times. > I think that verificationism is about meaning in all cases, not about the > definition or nature of truth, though the two are connected by the notion of > “truthmakers” – that which makes something true. I agree with that - although clearly this is the main thing that splits the different strains of pragmatism. > I am not keen on possible worlds as a way to deal with modality, partly > because of the Platonic implications. I think possibilities as forms are about the only way to salvage a strain of platonism. However I think it’s different enough from the types of platonism or neoplatonism most think of as characteristic of the movements so as to not pose a problem. I just am careful not call it platonism unless people are clear on terms. Platonic has a pretty strong negative connotation in our philosophical community. For perhaps understandable reasons since typically platonism sees forms as a cause in a stronger since than possibility really suggests. > As I described it, this takes us Aleph 3 cardinality at least, raising issues > about accessibility of the possible worlds for things like verifiability (or > truth, for that matter). I don’t see this as a bad thing, though it takes us > some way from the usual interpretations of acceptance in the long run that > people like Putnam and Rescher ascribe to Peirce. Since I think that this > idea leads to at best internal realism, and Peirce has a stronger form of > realism, I would say that Peirce should have had a stronger form of the end > of though, not just the end in our world, but, as you suggest, across all > possible worlds (assuming a rigorous notion of possible worlds, perhaps of > the form I have suggested). I think Peirce in his own conceptions was moving much more to a kind of maximal cardinality. (Cantor moves to something similar, adopting some odd notions out of Jewish Kabbalism as I recall of the En Sof) But that’s from some articles I read long ago. Whether that’s required for Peirce’s epistemology is of course a different matter.
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