Edwina,
oh, this is a Peirce list, that's interesting, isn't it? What kind of
red hering is this? You keep writing this stuff on this list for
years over and over again. Now, when someone asks you for some
evidence of your "theory" you say you can't provide it because this
is a Peirce list? Why the heck do state that stuff in the first place
on this list over and over again?
Asking for evidence is quite a natural thing for scientists - not
willing to provide it for ideologists.
Got nothing more to say and ask.
Best,
Stefan
Am 20. November 2016 03:36:35 MEZ, schrieb Edwina Taborsky
<[email protected]>:
Stefan - I can't deal with your questions on this list, as it is
a site devoted to Peirce - and Peirce has nothing to do with
ecological analysis of societal adaptation.
i may deal with it off-list - but your questions are, to me,
rather strange, for you seem to be approaching societal
adaptation as if it were some kind of chemical formula carried
out in a laboratory. There are plenty of books on 'cultural
ecology' [look up the term]- which is basically what I'm talking
about [R. Netting, E. Moran.] And plenty of books dealing with
non-industrial societies, their physical environments, their
societal systems, their economies, their populations sizes..etc.
There are all kinds of data on population dynamics among various
groups..
As for technological change - there are equally well-documented
works on the development of technology, the development of
sources of energy [manpower, animal, wind, water, fossil fuels,
etc]. The development of towns, of currency, roads, ...literacy
etc...And there are plenty of books on societal organization and
the development of the middle class market economy in the West.
[J.D. Bernal, Ferdinand Braudel..]
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* sb <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Gary Richmond <mailto:[email protected]> ;
Peirce-L <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 19, 2016 8:34 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina,
where can we find these descriptive data? Did you use
archival data? Did you do any fieldwork? Has it been
published? What sources do you draw on? How did you conduct
your qualitative research? What hypotheses guided your
qualitative research? Have documented how you get to your
conclusions? Could you provide us your analytical framework?
What are the exact cases you did study? What are the
dimensions of comparison between the cases? Where are they
similar? Where are they different? What is your ecological
analysis based on? Where did you get the ecological data? How
did you link it with the cases you have studied? Have your
heard of Qualitative Comparative Analysis?
In short: Could you please provide us information on what
data you did use, where to find these data, how you analyzed
the data and where to find the documentation of your analysis
to back up any of your claims?
"Looking" at "the West", "late industrialism" and "climate",
is a bit abstract, isn't it? I would really appreciate if you
could elaborate a bit more on data and how you arrived at
your conclusions, than on the conclusions themselfes.
Best,
Stefan
Am 20. November 2016 01:35:38 MEZ, schrieb Edwina Taborsky
<[email protected]>:
Stefan - the analysis is based on descriptive data of the
ecological anthropological analyses of various
socioeconomic peoples - hunting/gathering; the different
types of agriculturalism - wet and dry horticulture,
pastoral nomadic, rainfall agriculture...and early and
late industrialism. It includes first a consideration of
the ecological realities in the area; second the
socioeconomic descriptions of the way [kinship,
political, legal] that people have adapted to those
ecological realities..and third, the history and
technological developments ...particularly of the West.
Why the West? Because it has the richest most
fertile biome on the planet - which is why its population
kept increasing and why it eventually had to, with
difficulty, change its technology to support that
increased population.
Data would be based around ecological factors: arable
land and soil, water type and availability [ie, desert,
tundra, seasonal, irrigation, rainfall, rainforest..] ;
climate and temperatures; plant and animal types and the
domestication capacities of both; carrying capacity of
the land; carrying capacity of the technology to extract
food/sustenance;
Then, you'd look at population size. And then societal
systems - such as kinship systems, and political systems.
There is no lab test possible; there are no falsifying
assumptions. It's pure description of 'the ecological
realities and the societal forms of actual peoples. Then,
one can generalize. And it's interesting to see how
peoples - completely out of touch with each other - have
nevertheless developed the SAME societal structures if
they are in similar ecological realities.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* sb <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:[email protected]> ;
Gary Richmond <mailto:[email protected]> ;
Peirce-L <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 19, 2016 6:35 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina,
i would be really interested how you tackled such a
complex theoretical concept empirically.
Which historic datasets of demography and economics
did you use? To build up such a database must have
been quite labourious!
I would also be really interested in how you
operationalized your theory? What constructs and
variables did you use? In which datasets are they
found? How did you model your assumptions statistically?
In testing your theory, what were your initial
hypotheses? Where have you been able to falsify or
verify your assumptions? Where did you struggle
empirically because of data quality?
Best,
Stefan
Am 19. November 2016 22:48:20 MEZ, schrieb Edwina
Taborsky <[email protected]>:
Yes - I've taught this relationship between
economics, population size and political
infrastructure for about 20 years. No- it's not
really in the /Architectonics/ book. It IS in a
graphic book, /The Graphic Guide to
Socioeconomics/ - which a retired CEO banker and
myself have just finished [about 170
slides]....which deals with the pragmatic
relations between population size and economic
modes and political modes. I am not sure if I
should attach it since is has nothing to do with
Peirce. It's a powerpoint presentation which we
are planning to promote as a 'graphic guide for
dummies' on the topic, so to speak.
That is - we tried to make it clear that
democracy, which means 'political power of the
majority decision' is suitable only in large
population, flexible-risktaking- growth
economies, and unsuitable in small population
no-growth steady-state economies which must
ensure their economic continuity by focusing on
retaining the capacity-to-make-wealth by stable
measures [control of the land, control of the
cattle, control of fishing rights, etc].
And we've been very surprised in our test runs
with various people - how many people don't
understand the basic issues of growth/no growth
economies, carrying capacity of the economy;
growth vs steady-state populations; what is a
middle class; what is capitalism; the role of
risk; the role of individuals..etc. etc.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Gary Richmond
<mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Peirce-L <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 19, 2016 4:20 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina, list,
You've clearly given this a lot of prior
thought, Edwina. I want to reflect on wht you
wrote and see what others think before
commenting further. Btw, would looking again
at your book, /Architectonics of Semiosis/,
for example, Chapter 2, "Purity and Power,"
be of any value in this discussion (as I
initially began reading it I recall that in
an off-list message you commented that in
some ways you were now seeing things quite
differently than you did in 1998)?
Best,
Gary R
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 Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Edwina
Taborsky <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Gary R- that's an interesting topic.
1) I'd like to first comment that
/democracy/, as a political system for
arriving at authoritative government
decisions, is the 'right' method but ONLY
in a very large population with a growth
economy and a growth population. That is,
political systems have FUNCTIONS; the
function is: who has the societal right
to make decisions among this population?
In economies which are /no-growth/, such
as all the pre-industrial agricultural
and horticultural economies which
dominated the planet until the industrial
age, democracy is dysfunctional. That is,
all political systems must privilege the
wealth-producing sectors of the
population. If your economy is
agricultural/horticultural - which can
only produce enough wealth to support a
/steady-state/ or no-growth population,
then, the political system must put the
authority to make decisions in the
control of the owners of wealth
production; i.e., the landowners. This
control over the land must be hereditary
[you can't have fights over ownership],
and limited [you can't split up the land
into minuscule small farms]. Democracy,
which puts decision-making into the hands
of the majority, doesn't work in such an
economy.
When the economy moves to a /growth/ mode
[and enables a growth population], the
political system must empower those
sectors of the population which /make an
economy grow/. This is the middle class -
a non-hereditary set of the population,
made up of private individual/small group
businesses. This economic mode is highly
flexible [new business can start,
succeed, fail]; extremely adaptable and
enables rapid population growth. As such
an economic mode, political
decision-making must fall into the
control of this middle class - and we
have the emergence of elected
legislatures and the disappearance of
hereditary authority.
For a growth economy to work, it
must support individual rights [to
invent, differ from the norm, to succeed
AND fail] so that failure, for example,
will only affect those few individuals
and not a whole village/collective.
Therefore, individualism must be stressed
and empowered; a growth economy must
enable novelty, innovation, freedom of
the periphery....as well as success,
which is measured by the adoption by the
collective of that product/service. FOR A
WHILE.
2) But - it seems that the definition and
function of democracy in Dewey does not
deal with the economy and the questions
of the production of wealth and size of
population. Instead, it deals with social
issues - Talisse writes:
"The core of Deweyan democracy can be
stated as follows. Deweyan democracy is
/substantive /rather than proceduralist,
/communicative /rather than
aggregative,and /deep /rather than
statist. I shall take these contrasts in
order.Deweyan democracy is /substantive
/insofar as it rejects any attempt to
separate politics and deeper normative
concerns. More precisely, Dewey held that
the democratic political order is
essentially a /moral /order, and,
further, he held that democratic
participation is an essential constituent
ofthe good life and a necessary
constituent for a “truly human way of
living”.... Dewey rejects the idea thatit
consists simply in processes of voting,
campaigning, canvassing, lobbying, and
petitioning in service of one’s
individual preferences; that is, Dewey
held democratic participation is
essentially /communicative/, it consists
in the willingness of citizens to engage
in activity by which they may “convince
and be convinced by reason” (MW 10:404)
and come to realize“values prized in
common” (LW 13:71).
The above seems to me, to be a social
relations account - and doesn't deal with
the fact that democracy as a political
system, empowers a particular segment of
the population - the middle class, in an
economy based around individual private
sector small businesses. It has nothing
to do with 'the good life' or a 'truly
human way of living'. Nomadic
pastoralists, and land-based feudal
agriculture were also 'human ways of living.
3) From the Stanford Encyclopaedia, I
found the following on Dewey:
"As Dewey puts it, ‘men are not isolated
non-social atoms, but are men only when
in intrinsic relations’ to one another,
and the state in turn only represents
them ‘so far as they have become
organically related to one another, or
are possessed of unity of purpose and
interest’ (‘The Ethics of
Democracy’,/EW/1, 231-2).
Dewey is anti-elitist, and argues that
the capacity of the wise few to discern
the public interest tends to be distorted
by their position. Democratic
participation is not only viewed as a
bulwark against government by elites, but
also as an aspect of individual freedom–
humanity cannot rest content with a good
‘procured from without.’ Furthermore,
democracy is not ‘simply and solely a
form of government’, but a social and
personal ideal; in other words, it is not
only a property of political institutions
but of a wide range of social relationships.
The above, seems to me, at this first
glimpse, to totally ignore the economic
mode - and again, some economies whose
wealth production rests in stable,
no-growth methods [land food production]
MUST ensure the stability of this economy
by confining it to the few, i.e., those
elites'...the wise few if you want to
call them that'.
That is - the to put power in the
majority/commonality rests with the
economic mode. Certainly, Peirce's
/community of scholars/ was a method of
slowly, gradually, arriving at 'the
truth'. But this has nothing, absolutely
nothing, to do with governance and the
question of who in a collective has the
ultimate authority to make political
decisions. That is, political decisions
are not really, I suggest, the same as
scientific or 'truth-based' inquiries.
There is no ultimate 'best way' for much
is dependent on resources, population
size, environment..
And, I don't see a focus on the required
capacity of a growth economy for rapid
flexible adaptation - which HAS to be
focused around the individual. That is,
risk-taking shouldn't involve the WHOLE
collective, but only a few individuals.
4) As for Peirce's philosophy of
democracy - again, Talisse writes:
"the Peircean view relies upon no
substantive
/moral /vision. The Peircean justifies
democratic institutions and norms
strictly in terms of a set of substantive
/epistemic /commitments. It says that /no
matter what one believes /about the good
life, the nature of the self, the meaning
of human existence, or the value of
community, one has reason to support a
robust democratic political order of the
sort described above simply in virtue of
the fact that one holds beliefs. Since
the Peircean conception of democracy does
not contain a doctrine about “the one,
ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity” (EW
1:248), it can duly acknowledge the fact
of reasonable pluralism. p 112
This seems to suggest that a societal
system that enables exploratory actions
by individuals is a 'robust democracy'.
And, since a growth economic mode, that
can support growth populations, requires
risk-taking by flexible individuals to
deal with current pragmatic problems -
then, this seems to be a stronger
political system.
My key point is that the political
system, economic mode and population size
are intimately related.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Gary Richmond
<mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Peirce-L
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 19, 2016
2:59 PM
*Subject:* [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and
Democracy
List,
I read Robert B. Talisse's /A
Pragmatist Philosophy of
Democracy/ (2007) a few year ago and
was thinking of it again today, in
part prompted by an op-ed piece in
/The New York Times/ by Roger Cohen
which quotes H. L. Mencken (see
below). At the time of my reading
PPD, I was not at all convinced that
Talisee had demonstrated his
principal thesis, namely, that we
ought replace the inadequate, in his
opinion, Dewyan approach to thinking
about democracy with a Peircean based
approach. This is how David
Hildebrand (U. of Colorado) outlined
Talisse's argument in a review in
/The Notre Dame Philosophical Review.
//http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23707-a-pragmatist-philosophy-of-democracy/
<http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23707-a-pragmatist-philosophy-of-democracy/>/
[Hildebrand] As I read PPD, I
kept returning to two fundamental
propellants powering Talisse's
argument for a Peircean-based
democratic theory. The first is
constructive: his quest for a
lean, non-normative pragmatist
inquiry to provide /just
enough/ of a philosophical basis
for a broadly effective
conception of democracy. The
second is destructive: the
argument that political theorists
should reject Dewey's
self-refuting philosophy of
democracy. Taken together, the
insight is this: get over Dewey
and accept this particular Peirce
and we get just what we need from
pragmatism for the purposes of
democracy.
Hildebrand's review is a good
introduction to the PPD. While I'm
not much of a Deweyan, and I wouldn't
presume to argue for or against his
ideas, yet I don't think Talisse
makes a strong case /for/ a Peircean
approach to political theory on
democracy,.
I should add, however, that Talisse
is, in my opinion, a very good
thinker and an excellent writer.
Besides this book, over the years
I've read a number of his scholarly
articles and heard him speak in NYC
and elsewhere. PPD is definitely
worth reading, while those with a
Deweyan democracy bent will probably
find themselves arguing with him
nearly point for point (as Hildebrand
pretty much does). On the other hand,
the concluding chapter on Sidney Hook
is valuable in its own right. As
Talisse writes:
Hook's life stands as an
inspiring image of democratic
success; for success consists
precisely in /the activity of
political engagement by means of
public inquiry/.
I haven't got my e-CP available, so I
can't locate references, but it seems
to me that Peirce's view of democracy
as I recall it is, if not nearly
anti-democratic (I vaguely recall
some passages in a letter to Lady
Welby), it may at least be closer to
H. L. Mencken's:
As democracy is perfected, the
office represents, more and more
closely, the inner soul of the
people. We move toward a lofty
ideal. On some great and glorious
day the plain folks of the land
will reach their heart’s desire
at last and the White House will
be adorned by a downright moron.
I doubt that a discussion of PPD
would be very valuable, but it might
be interesting to at least briefly
reflect on Peirce's views of
democracy. As I recall,he hasn't much
to say about democracy in what's
published in the CP and the other
writings which have been made
available to us. Perhaps more will be
uncovered in years to come as his
complete correspondence is published
in W (I probably won't be alive for
that as I understand that it will
probably be the last or near last
volume in W, and at the snail's pace
the W is moving. . .)
Meanwhile, can anyone on the list
offer some Peirce quotations which
might help quickly clarify his views
on democracy? I would, of course,
hope that if there is some discussion
here that we keep to a strictly
theoretical discussion, especially in
light of the strong feelings
generated by the recent American
presidential election.
Best,
Gary R
st Philosophy of Democracy
Gary Richmond*
*
*
*
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City
University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
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]
<mailto:[email protected]> . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to
PEIRCE-L but to [email protected]
<mailto:[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
<http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm>
.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
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 .
--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon
mit K-9 Mail gesendet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
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 .
--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon mit K-9
Mail gesendet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
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 .
--
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Mobiltelefon mit K-9 Mail
gesendet.
