Gary, list:
Peirce wrote: "I have no objection to saying that in my opinion what
makes a reasoning sound is the real law that the general method which
that reasoning more or less consciously pursues does tend toward the
truth." And,
"The very essence of an argument,— that which distinguishes it
from all other kinds of signs,— is that it professes to be the
representative of a general method of procedure tending toward the
truth. To say that this method tends toward the true is to say that
it is a real law that existences will follow."
An Argument is a semiosic process, and is as valid in the biological
realm as it is in the Seminar Room. The semiosic Argument functions as
a 'real law that existences will follow'. Therefore, the existence
that emerges/exists within this real law is 'the truth of that law'.
That's how I see it. I don't confine 'Truth' to the Seminar Room of
rhetoric and human mental analysis; I think it operates in the real
material world.
Edwina
On Sun 15/10/17 1:27 PM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
Edwina,
Your first sentence introduces a bit of confusion. Peirce does not
say that truth is a is a real law that existences will follow; he
says that the “general method of procedure tending toward the
truth” is a real law that existences will follow. This method, or
law, is what makes a consequent follow from an antecedent. Every
argument implicitly claims to follow that general method, and if it
really does, then the argument is sound. But the “following” is
independent of the factual truth of the premisses. Peirce is
essentially asking us what it means to say that one fact or idea
really follows from another, and in Lecture 2 he will give an answer
that analyzes the “following” (the inference process) into as
many small steps as possible. And he will do this for deductive,
mathematical, “necessary” reasoning, where the “facts” are
about mathematical objects which have no empirical existence in the
usual sense of “empirical.”
In short, this law or method is not itself a fact, nor is it
“truth.” It is general, and its whole mode of being consists in
really governing a reasoning process so that “the conclusions of
that method really will be true, to the extent and in the manner in
which the argument pretends that they will.”
Gary f.
From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 15-Oct-17 10:30
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1: overview
Since truth " is a real law that existences will follow." and that
this is achieved via "the soundness of argument to consist in the
facts of the case and not at all in whether the reasoner feels
confidence in the argument or not" [this is a comment against
subjective opinions]....
AND that this observation of the experienced facts is subject to the
self-criticism of reasoning..AND that this reasoning operates within
the reality of the Three Categories, derived from:
"I undertook to do was to go back to experience, in the sense of
whatever we find to have been forced upon our minds,"
Then, it seems to me that Peirce's analysis is 'rationally
phenomenological' [objective idealism] - in the above sense, that
reason must assure us that our opinions conform to the facts. After
all, he also asserts that we cannot know the unknowable. This, to me,
means that our capacity for sensual observation and our capacity for
reasoning cannot, by us, by surmounted. We can only, ourselves, know
what we can phenomenologically and rationally experience. There may
indeed be 'facts' outside of our human capacities - but - we cannot
Know them.
Edwina
On Sun 15/10/17 6:56 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca [1] sent:
[EP2:534] Four days after this lecture (Lowell 1), an anonymous
listener sent Peirce the following question: “If not inconvenient
for you, will you be kind enough to give tonight a summary— however
brief— of your answer to the question ‘What makes a Reasoning
Sound?’” Peirce prepared a response that he read at the beginning
of the third lecture. This response, found in MS 465, is as follows:
My first duty this evening is to reply to a note which asks me to
give an explanation at my last lecture. The letter did not come to
hand until the following morning. The question asked is what my
answer in the first lecture was to the question “What makes a
Reasoning to be sound?” I had no intention of answering that
question in my first lecture, because I dislike to put forth opinions
until I am ready to prove them; and I had enough to do in the first
lecture to show what does not make reasoning to be sound. Besides in
this short course it seems better to skip such purely theoretical
questions. Yet since I am asked, I have no objection to saying that
in my opinion what makes a reasoning sound is the real law that the
general method which that reasoning more or less consciously pursues
does tend toward the truth. The very essence of an argument,— that
which distinguishes it from all other kinds of signs,— is that it
professes to be the representative of a general method of procedure
tending toward the truth. To say that this method tends toward the
true is to say that it is a real law that existences will follow. Now
if that profession is true, and the conclusions of that method really
will be true, to the extent and in the manner in which the argument
pretends that they will, the argument is sound; if not, it is a false
pretension and is unsound. I thus make the soundness of argument to
consist in the facts of the case and not at all in whether the
reasoner feels confidence in the argument or not. I may further say
that there are three great classes of argument, Deductions,
Inductions, and Abductions; and these profess to tend toward the
truth in very different senses, as we shall see. I suppose this
answers the question intended. However, it is possible that my
correspondent did not intend to ask in what I think the soundness of
reasoning consists, but by the question “What makes reasoning
sound?” he may mean “What causes men to reason right?” That
question I did substantially answer in my first lecture. Namely, to
begin with, when a boy or girl first begins to criticize his
inferences, and until he does that he does not reason, he finds that
he has already strong prejudices in favor of certain ways of arguing.
Those prejudices, whether they be inherited or acquired, were first
formed under the influence of the environing world, so that it is not
surprising that they are largely right or nearly right. He, thus, has
a basis to go upon. But if he has the habit of calling himself to
account for his reasonings, as all of us do more or less, he will
gradually come to reason much better; and this comes about through
his criticism, in the light of experience, of all the factors that
have entered into reasonings that were performed shortly before the
criticism. Occasionally, he goes back to the criticism of habits of
reasoning which have governed him for many years. That is my answer
to the second question.
http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm [2] }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures
of 1903
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'g...@gnusystems.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2] http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm
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