Clark wrote: The old joke of 90% of any philosophical argument consists of coming to agreement over the semantics of terms is all too often true.
And in a logically narrow sense, this is what Peirce suggests is the purpose and value of the Pragmatic Maxim. Best, Gary R [image: Gary Richmond] *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* *C 745* *718 482-5690* On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 6:02 PM, CLARK GOBLE <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sep 8, 2016, at 3:37 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Thank you for your comments. I cited the first part of that quote earlier > to show that Peirce considered "Real" and "Reality" to be the adjective and > noun for the same basic concept. The excerpt from Ben is also relevant and > helpful, especially the remark that many people want "real" to mean > "actual"; it is the same tendency that causes many people to conflate > "reality" and "existence." I suspect that this reflects the dominant > secular worldview in contemporary Western cultures, which is > materialism--if it does not (physically) exist, then it cannot be real (at > all). > > > Yeah, sorry, I just thought the full quote and then Ben’s comments were > interesting. I didn’t mean to come off as dismissing your post. It was more > agreeing in depth. LOL. > > I think the way Quine thinks about it, for all the problems of Quine, is > interesting. Now it doesn’t get at everything. But I think it’s helpful for > thinking about some issues. For instance Quine makes the argument against > nominalism by invoking the Real numbers since they all aren’t named yet we > seem able to quantify over them. If numbers are just names or terms then > how do we provide the terms when using Reals. It seems we can’t. Now this > doesn’t apply as well to common terms like “red” but I think it gets at > some of the issues Peirce raised decades earlier about finite and infinite > communities as tied to realism. > > Like you I tend to think a nominalistic materialism has shifted the > meaning of some terms that means using those terms in philosophy often > brings in hidden metaphysical assumptions we don’t intend. We thus have to > be careful to be explicit. > > The old joke of 90% of any philosophical argument consists of coming to > agreement over the semantics of terms is all too often true. > > > > > ----------------------------- > 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 > . > > > > > >
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