List,
As Edwina pointed out, the argument which Peirce declares to be a miserable fallacy bears a close resemblance to what we now call moral or ethical relativism (I prefer to avoid the term postmodern though). Peirce spells out the analogy between the defendant argument and the fallacious argument to prove that there is no distinction of moral right and wrong, and this reinforces his classification of critical logic as a normative science which draws principles from ethics. Logic in this sense is the ethics of reasoning. Edwina has also noticed the phenomenological basis of Peirces counter-argument, which emerges in the last paragraph of Lowell 1.2. Peirce does not introduce the terms Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness until the third lecture of the series, but I think the presence of the three categories is unmistakable in the last paragraph of 1.2: Secondness as embodied in the efficient agency, whose very existence consists in its acting when and where it is; Thirdness in the form of a general mental formulation; and Firstness as feeling, which the German philosophers confuse with the other two categories when they talk about a minds feeling of logicality (logisches Gefühl). I think the final sentence of 1.2 is a prime example of Peirces sense of humor and the butt of the joke is the blunder of presuming to theorize about logic without grounding ones theory in a sound phenomenology. Gary f. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 25-Sep-17 08:04 Continuing Peirces Lowell Lecture 1 (from EP2:243): I had better mention that the argument I shall criticize is open to quite another objection than that which I notice, and a more obvious one. You may wonder why I pass over it. It is simply because some forms in which the same confusion of thought occurs are not open to this same objection. I only notice the radical objection that is common to all forms. But you will think it high time I told you what this tangle of ideas of which I have said so much consists in. First let me state the fallacious argument which embodies it. The particular argument which I have chosen to exemplify it leads to a more extreme conclusion than some of the others. It does so because it is less illogical than those others. Its conclusion is that there is no distinction of good and bad reasoning. Although, thus nakedly exhibited, this conclusion might find few to embrace it, yet it is substantially what I might almost say that all Germany believes in today. For example, few nineteenth-century treatises on logic in the German language have a word to say about fallacies. Why not? Because they hold the law of logic to be, like a law of nature, inviolable. Or to state the matter more exactly, enough of them hold to this opinion to set the fashion for the others. Fashion is everything among German philosophers, for the simple reason that the professors livelihood depends on his lectures being in the favored vogue. The fallacious argument itself runs thus: Every reasoning takes place in some mind. It would not be that minds reasoning unless it satisfied that minds feeling of logicality (logisches Gefühl). But as long as it does that, nothing can be gained by criticizing the reasoning any further, since there is no other possible sign by which we could know that it was good than that feeling of logicality in the reasoners mind. For if the reasoning be criticized, that criticism must be conducted by reasoning; and that reasoning, in its turn, must either be accepted because it satisfies the reasoners feeling of logicality, or else be criticized by further reasoning. He cannot carry through an endless series of reasonings. Therefore, some final reasoning there must be that is adopted on the assumption that a reasoning which satisfies the feeling of logicality is as good as any reasoning can be; and if this be not true, all reasoning is worthless. Consequently, since every reasoning satisfies the reasoners feeling of logicality, every reasoning is as good as any reasoning can be. That is, there is no distinction of good and bad reasoning. That is the argument which I pronounce a miserable fallacy. If we extend to arguments a just maxim of our law, every argument must be presumed to be sound until it is proved fallacious. Accordingly, I will refer to this argument as the defendant argument, and to the writers who adhere to it as the defendants. In order to emphasize that confusion which I think so pestilent, and to prevent your minds from being distracted from it to another fault in the defendant argument, I put it into parallel with another argument that involves a quite analogous confusion. Namely, we find in some of the old writers a fallacious argument to prove that there is no distinction of moral right and wrong. The argument runs as follows: The distinction between a good act and a bad one, if there be any such distinction, lies in the motive. But the only motive a man can have is his own pleasure. No other is thinkable. For if a man desires to act in any way, it is because he takes pleasure in so acting. Otherwise, his action would not be voluntary and deliberate. Thus, there is but one possible motive for action that has any motive; and consequently, the distinction of right and wrong, which would be a distinction between motives, does not exist. You see the parallelism between the two arguments. Each undertakes to refute a distinction between good and bad; the one in reasoning, the other in endeavor. Each does this by pronouncing something unthinkable; the one, that a man should adopt a conclusion for any other reason than a feeling of logicality, the other that a man should adopt any line of conduct from any other motive than a feeling of pleasure. My position, in opposition to these arguments, is that it is so far from being true that every desire necessarily desires its own gratification, that, on the contrary, it is impossible that a desire should desire its own gratification; and it is so far from being true that every inference must necessarily be based upon its seeming satisfactory, that it is, on the contrary, impossible that any inference should be based in any degree upon its seeming satisfactory. I want to lead you to see clearly that the defendants confound two disparate categories, and, having identified objects belonging to these categories, attribute to them a nature belonging to a third category. They confound an efficient agency, whose very existence consists in its acting when and where it is, with a general mental formulation; and as if this were not blunder enough, they call the identified two a feeling. The first blunder is as if a man, being asked what made the Campanile fall in Venice, were to reply that it was the regularity of nature. That is a confusion tolerably common, the confusion of a decree of a court with the sheriffs strong right arm. But, after having identified these, to call them a feeling is, I believe, a mistake peculiar to philosophers. It is something like confusing a living man with the general idea of a man and, having done so, saying that he was constructed of two nasal consonants and a vowel. <http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm> http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirces Lowell Lectures of 1903
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