Jeff, list - thank you for the interesting breakdown of different approaches to the study of Peirce. I'm not sure that #4 has any relevance other than the case where people misuse Peircean [ and other] analyses to somehow support their own views.
Jon, no, my argument with you was about your adamant denial, to the point of what I felt were personal attacks, that my comments fit into the first two approaches, and your insistence that your views were to be accepted as the accurate interpretations. Clark, list - yes, I agree with you that one's beliefs about religion do affect one's interpretation of the NA. After all, as Peirce wrote, we cannot begin with an empty mind but begin with our beliefs. Jon, who self-describes as a 'Lutheran Layman' would have a different approach than my own, as I self-describe as an atheist. Our very understandings of even the term 'god' would therefore differ. And as Jerry points out - we don't 'begin' our understandings with Peirce. Many of us are aware of Plato and Aristotle - and after all, Peirce described himself as heavily influenced by Aristotle. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Alan Schmidt To: Jeffrey Brian Downard Cc: Peirce-L Sent: Monday, September 26, 2016 2:10 PM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking Jeff, List: Thank you for this helpful breakdown of different approaches to Peirce's writings. I wonder if my dispute with Edwina earlier in this thread was rooted in either misunderstanding or genuine disagreement between us about whether #3 is properly characterized as an "interpretation" of Peirce. I have been operating under the assumption that this term should be confined to #1 and #2--i.e., clarifying and applying Peirce's own views, rather than going beyond them. I agree with your suggestion that #4 does not really belong on the List. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> wrote: Hello Clark, List, I do think there are a spectrum of different approaches and aims that might guide our engagement with the ideas and arguments Peirce was developing. Let's distinguish between three locations on the broad spectrum: 1. Interpreting Peirce's texts as faithfully as possible, where the aim is to find the truth about his particular arguments and philosophical views. 2. Reconstructing the arguments so as to put them in the best shape, where the aim is to find what are truly the best forms of those arguments working from the assumptions and methods he was employing. 3. Drawing explicitly from Peirce's ideas and arguments for the purpose of putting them to work to find the truth about what is really the case. 4. Working with one's own methods and with one's own aims with very little attention to or care for what Peirce wrote. For my part, I believe that all four approaches and aims may be considered reasonable (although the fourth might suffer in ways that might have been avoided). What is more, I believe that the first three sorts of inquiries belong in the discussion on the Peirce-list. Having said that, I do believe it is helpful to be clear about what one is doing in making a given post--and to make that clear to others. Otherwise, we will just be talking past one another. All things considered, I believe that you are correct in saying that Peirce thinks that the third sort of approach and aim should, in general, be controlling over the first and second. Having said that, he has written quite a lot on what it is to do the first or second sort of thing well or poorly. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Clark Goble <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, September 26, 2016 9:37 AM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Theory of Thinking On Sep 26, 2016, at 10:11 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> wrote: I, too, assume we're discussing what Peirce thought, rather than what we variously may think for our own parts. I do think it’s worth asking how the argument itself fares given the social changes in the intervening century or so. As I mentioned a few weeks ago I think that most thinkers in the academy were they to conduct the experiment might come to somewhat different results. Since what counts is the community of inquirers and not just Peirce, it does seem that is a fruitful avenue to consider. That’s not to deny the utility of focusing in on Peirce’s beliefs. It’s just that I think we can and must separate the arguments somewhat from the person proposing them. One danger I see in Peircean studies is that it falls into the trap of becoming purely about exegesis of Peirce’s thought. That’s an important step - especially given that many aspects of Peirce’s thought were so poorly understood for so many years. But when his thought isn’t extended beyond that, when a quote of Peirce becomes like a Bible verse quoted by a fundamentalist religious believer, I think we’re missing something fundamental about Peirce’s aims. (Not saying anyone here is doing that mind you - just that I think it’s an ever present danger I myself fall into occasionally) In Peircean terms we confuse the dynamic object with the immediate object. On Sep 25, 2016, at 1:15 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: Moreover, pragmatism is the logic of abductive inference to the extent that rules need to be specified for abductive inference at all. Peirce does not offer rules for instinct. Ben, do you think that Peirce distinguishes between those good at guesses or hypothesis formation and those who are not? For instance in a more contemporary context we’d distinguish between the hypothesis of a scientist working in their area of knowledge and someone not with that background. It seems to me that while Peirce usually discusses critical common sensism in the context of regular broad social common sense that it applies even better to subgroups. That is subgroups develop a common sense based upon their experience over years. It seems to me that if we distinguish the initial application of abduction towards a hypothesis with repeated community testing of the concept then things do get a bit trickier. I recognize that the discussion the past few days has primarily been on this initial application of abduction. The question then becomes to what degree continued inquiry upon what we might call metaphysical remains abductive and to what degree it goes beyond this. Again science offers many examples here. Ideas often are not falsified by continued inquiry and experimentation. Rather they simply fall out of favor slowly as alternative hypothesis seems more persuasive. That is the normal idea of verification or falsification never happens simply because our experiments are themselves so theory laden. (As Quine pointed out long ago although which I think one can find within Peirce as well) In turn this lines up with his critical common sensism. Allow me a quote from the archives. In this case from Teresa Calvet from way back in Feb 2006. The bare definition of pragmaticism, writes Peirce (in "What Pragmatism Is "), "could convey no satisfactory comprehension of it to the most apprehensive of minds" of the doctrines "without the previous acceptance (or virtual acceptance) of which pragmaticism itself would be a nullity" (CP 5.416). Peirce says here that these preliminary propositions "might all be included under the vague maxim, 'Dismiss make-believes'", a maxim that could also be called, "the adoption of the general philosophy of common sense". This normative exhortation "do not make believe; (...) recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least" (CP 5.416) was enounced before by Peirce, in 1868, in "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" (W2, p. 212). Instead of presenting Peirce simply as anti-Cartesian, I prefer to follow what he himself said: "Although pragmaticism is not a philosophy, yet (...) it best comports with the English philosophy, and more particularly with the Scotch doctrine of common sense" (CP 8.207) and to insist that pragmaticism "involves a complete rupture with nominalism" (CP 8.208). To illustrate Peirce's position, William Davis suggests (already in 1972) the analogy of a jig-saw puzzle, "where each new bit adds significance to the whole, although each bit is incomplete in itself and there is no real foundation piece upon which all else is based. Any piece will do to start with, where nothing is infallible in principle, though much does not fail in practice" (Peirce's Epistemology, p. 20). Ten years later Susan Haack also uses that image (in the last section, "The Jigsaw of Knowledge", of her paper "Descartes, Peirce and the Cognitive Community"). But we could also cite here the following paragraph of "Some consequences of four incapacities": "Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected" (W2, p. 213). One could then open Peirce's 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism (and present his conception of philosophy). It is also in these conferences that Peirce formulates three propositions which appear to him to put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism (or three cotary propositions): 1) there are no conceptions that are not given in perceptual judgments [or: all conceptions are given in perceptual judgments] (this is Peirce's interpretation of the slogan Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu); 2) perceptual judgments contain general elements; and 3) abductive inference "shades into perceptual judgments without any sharp demarcation between them" and states that "the maxim of pragmatism, if true, fully covers the entire logic of abduction" (CP 5.196). It’s that last point I wish to emphasize. Abduction "shades into perceptual judgments without any sharp demarcation between them.” This is very much akin to what philosophers of science since at least the middle of the 20th century have noted about competing theories that can explain data. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------- 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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