From talking with colleagues, some say they think only in words and others, like me, say they think mostly in diagrams or in physical feelings that I attach no words to (and probably couldn’t in many cases). Although I am surprised when I find someone who believes they think in words only, I have little reason to doubt them, as it seems these people also think quite differently from me. One of the hardest things for me in learning analytic philosophy (after original training and work in physics) was to think in words. Dick Cartwright helped me immensely with this.
Surely it is a psychological issue, if people differ so much in this respect. John Collier Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Benjamin Udell [mailto:baud...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, 15 February 2017 8:16 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism - Eric, none of the statements that you quoted in your 2/14/2017 message originate with Peirce. Peirce held that logic generally involves icons (including diagrams and not only graphic-looking ones), indices, and symbols, and he saw all three kinds of signs as needed. Remember also that Peirce so defined 'symbol' that plenty of symbols are not words and some words are not symbols. You wrote in your subsequent message: One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by all evidence) have lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e., they cannot do language), and yet those people otherwise seem to think perfectly well. I remember a course on Merleau-Ponty decades ago in which the professor discussed patients who could no longer think about absent things. He said that they had lost their "symbolic function" - taking "symbol" in an old traditional sense as sign of something not perceived, especially something not perceivable, picturable, etc. I can't say off-hand whether those patients had completely lost their ability to think in symbols in Peirce's sense. I don't know whether Peirce held that actual people usually think in words or in any particular kind of signs, and what basis he would have offered for the claim; anyway it wouldn't be a philosophical statement, but a psychological statement, and Peirce was as adverse to basing cenoscopic philosophy (including philosophical logic) on psychology as he was to to basing pure mathematics on psychology. When he discusses semiotics and logic, he is discussing how one ought to think, not how people actually do think. Peirce said of himself: I do not think that I ever _reflect_ in words. I employ visual diagrams, firstly because this way of thinking is my natural language of self-communication, and secondly, because I am convinced that it is the best system for the purpose [MS 629, p. 8, quoted in _The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce_, p. 126, by Don D. Roberts] Google preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4K30wCAf-gC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=%22I+do+not+think+I+ever+reflect+in+words:+I+employ+visual+diagrams%22 Peirce described corollarial deduction as verbal and philosophical, and theorematic deduction as diagrammatic and mathematical. He seemed to have a higher opinion of the latter, which is not unusual for a mathematician. Peirce left innumerable drawings among his papers. I somewhere read that a considerable percentage of his papers consisted in drawings, I seem to remember "60%" but I'm not sure. A project involving those drawings (and accumulating an archive of reproductions ofthem) resulted in the publication of a book: http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/newbooks.htm#engel_queisner_viola<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/newbooks.htm#engel_queisner_viola> Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. [Visual Thinking: Charles S. Peirce].Actus et Imago Volume 5. Editors: Franz Engel, Moritz Queisner, Tullio Viola. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, March 21, 2012. Hardcover http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/224194 346 pages., 82 illustrations in black & white, 31 illustrations in color. Peirce, as you say, often focuses on clear thought, but he sometimes discusses vague thought, and says that vagueness is often needed for thought. For example in his critical common-sensism. Peirce thought that there are logical conceptions of mind based not on empirical science of psychology nor even on metaphysics. See for example Memoir 11 "On the Logical Conception of Mind" in the 1902 Carnegie Application: http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-05.htm<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-05.htm> As to how linguistic people actually are or how linguistic one needs or ought to be, that will depend at least partly on the definition of language. In the quote of him above, Peirce uses the word "language" more loosely than some would. Best, Ben On 2/15/2017 11:16 AM, Eric Charles wrote: Jerry, Clark, Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I have great love for Peirce and his work. But there are parts that I love less, particularly where Peirce ... seems to me to.... forget the parameters of his own argument. Peirce tells us what clear thinking is, while fully and responsibly acknowledging that most people do not think clearly most of the time. On that basis, if anyone thinks of anyone else's thoughts as entailing at all times the third degree of clarity, something is seriously amiss. Further, when Peirce elsewhere starts making broad pronouncements about "thought" it oftentimes seems that he is referring solely to those rare instances of clear thinking, but other times is referring to the typical thinking, or all thinking? The later is particularly suspicious. Assertions regarding the nature of all thinking would presumably be subject to extreme empirical scrutiny. As we have rejected traditional metaphysics, and denied any special powers of introspection, one would expect "thought" to be examined in the same way Peirce's exemplars, the early bench chemists, examined their subject matter. All the same challenges and limitations, and the same potential for novel triumph. Thus when Peirce talks about clear thinking he seems on steady ground, and when he talks about how a scientist-qua-scientists thinks about the world he seems on steady ground, but when there are no caveats regarding what "thinking" he is referring to, I get nervous. To Clark's question: While one could certainly find people who would find those assertions uncontroversial, there are problems. One can readily, for example, find individuals who (by all evidence) seem to think more readily and more commonly in words than in "images and diagrams". One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by all evidence) have lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e., they cannot do language), and yet those people otherwise seem to think perfectly well. On 2/14/2017 10:41 AM, Eric Charles wrote: Yikes! My inner William James just raised an eyebrow. This is probably a separate thread... but how did we suddenly start making claims about the nature of other people's thoughts? People think, not so much in words, but in images and diagrams..." They do? How many people's thoughts have we interrogated to determine that? "Consciousness is inherently linguistic." It is? How much have we studied altered states of consciousness, or even typical consciousness? Sorry, these parts of Peirce always make me a bit twitchy. I'm quite comfortable when he is talking about how scientists-qua-scientists think or act, but then he makes more general statements and I get worried. Best, Eric ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Supervisory Survey Statistician U.S. Marine Corps
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