> On Dec 6, 2016, at 12:33 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > Peirce was opposed to behaviorism in any proper sense, because behaviorism > did not exist by his time. It came into being later. > > Behaviorism came from US, and sweeped over the field of anglo-american > psychology later than the span of life of CSP.
(Assume you mean “Peirce was not opposed to behaviorism in any proper sense…”) While this is true as far as it goes, the idea of the black box where all that matters are inputs and outputs is not only found in behavioralism. In Peirce’s paper “Issues of Pragmaticism” where he discusses critical common sensism he gets at many of these issues relative to what he terms the occult nature of habits. It’s in EP 2:347 although here’s a variant of it I found online to aid discussion. http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/coast_group/PNWPrag_2010_peirce.pdf <http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/events_readings/coast_group/PNWPrag_2010_peirce.pdf> I think it fair to put Peirce’s views here up against Skinner and company. Now to be fair, I think it is easy to uncritically read Peirce’s notion of habit as behavioralism. (Not that you or anyone else here is doing that - just that people have appealed to Peirce in that fashion in the literature) It doesn’t help that Peirce doesn’t always use his term “interpretant” but sometimes uses the term “responses.” The main objection by Peirce (although obviously a behavioralist could raise counter-objections) would be CP 6.23. …exact conformity [between stimulus and response] would be in downright conflict with the law; since it would instantly crystalize thought and prevent all further formation of habit. The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise. That is the very conception of habit for Peirce involves metaphysical assumptions that are at odds with behavioralism. That’s true even if a behavioralist doesn’t require a strict law between input and output. Now a behavioralist could raise other objections but fundamentally the way Peirce conceives of habit and mind seem at odds with them. Part of that is due to the way Peirce sees the relationship between consciousness and habit. The other typical objection is Morris’ behavioralism in the late 1930’s. But of course there are differences between Morris’ pragmatism and Peirce’s. Morris simply moves in a more positivist direction and I think his behavioralism is due to that.
----------------------------- 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 .
