> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > In the Wikipedia article "Synechism," somebody wrote, without providing a > reference, "The fact that some things are ultimate may be recognized by the > synechist without abandoning his standpoint, since synechism is a normative > or regulative principle, not a theory of existence."
Yes, if there were a late quote along those lines that would have answered my question directly. I suspect though that is just someone assuming it’s merely regulative. > On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > In his review "An American Plato" of Royce (1885 MS) W 5:222-235 (see > 227-230), also EP 1:229-241 (see 234-236), Peirce says: That’s a very good quotation. I’d forgotten about that since I’ve tended of late to restrict myself too much to the later Peircean writings. i.e. after 1895 when his ideas are more stabilized. Plus of course it helps that EP2 is available on Kindle while inexplicably EP1 is not. But that’s a really good quote related to some other discussions I was having over unknowable things and Peirce. > On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]> wrote: > > In that quote Peirce very clearly holds that not all will be known or can > even be imagined. What is left is the idea that details may remain vague (as > indeed a house that one sees is a kind of "statistical" object, compatible > with the existence of innumerable alternate microstates and that, in any > case, the object as it is "in itself" does not involve the idea of some > secret compartment forever hidden from inquiry; it is instead a matter of > deciding which questions one cares about. Material processes scramble > information, and life interpretively unscrambles some of it according to > standards of value and interest. > An other excellent quote and helpfully quite late - almost 15 years into his modal realist period. I rather like his keeping actuality and reality separate since that was what confused me the most all those years ago. What’s so interesting in that quote is that the realism seems wrapped up in his modal realism yet recognizes something is knowable in one possible world but not in the other. It’s hard not to think of the hamiltanian equation in the wave collapse model of quantum mechanics (say the Dirac Equation). There you have all the possible states as real but not actual. As soon as one makes one measurement then that constrains the possibilities. So Peirce is recognizing on a practical economics of epistemology something akin to uncertainty relations. (Here making just an analogy and not saying they are really the same sort of thing) > On another note, Joe Ransdell used to insist that Peirce's realism was > stronger in the 1860s than it was when he wrote things like "How to Make Our > Ideas Clear" (1878). I think he was more of a platonist by way of Kant in that very early phrase. Yet so many of the details weren’t worked out. I tend to see his modal realism as the most important idea. It’s connecting realism and possibility that seems like the leap that fully makes his ideas work (and leads him back to a certain kind of platonism defined in terms of possibilities) > Of course his fellow pragmatists were not such strong realists as Peirce, and > William James later wrote of liking to think that J,S. Mill if he were still > alive would be the pragmatists' leader. > Yes James definitely wasn’t and was more focused on what individuals think rather than the logical and community angle Peirce focused on. Dewey seems to be much more of a realist of the style of Peirce even if he doesn’t quite embrace Peirce’s logic. The rest (except perhaps for Royce depending upon how one looks at him) are too caught up in the nominalism of philosophy IMO.
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