BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Mary- there is no need to apologize!! For what? Your phrase of
'getting better' is hardly offensive! It's a perspective - and quite
a few people consider that we should work towards enabling our
society to 'be better'. - with the term 'better' clearly defined.
I'm certainly in favour of that; my concern is only about what we say
is 'better'. That's all. I think we have to be careful of what we wish
for, so to speak. I tend to be rather fearful of utopian idealism.
And you don't need to apologize either for defending Eliot!
My post was only to comment on MY understanding of Peirce's view of
the natural process of adaptation and evolution.
Regards,
Edwina
On Thu 14/12/17 6:03 PM , Mary Libertin [email protected]
sent:
I retract my offending term “getting better,” if indeed that and
not the concept of meliorism is what you refer to. I understand
evolution neither heedlessly nor blindly but “by virtue of the
continuity of mind,” as Peirce claims in your quote below. By the
way, George Eliot is one of the great minds of the century and though
a novelist, an occupation considered pejoratively often on the list,
her ideas pertain to the prior discussion on the list as to who
coined the term meliorism. I do not suggest Eliot was referring to a
moment or an individual but the history of archeology—part of the
theme of and occupation of a major character. She credits herself as
coining the word. Thus my contribution, not geared towards defining
the term but answering the comments about the word. By the way, my
reference to Eliot’s name of a location was what I hoped would be a
glance askance. If it helps, omit my crude and hurriedly made, terse
phrase. The point is really about the term neologism, a thread which
I did not start.
My apologies for my defensiveness of Eliot. I urge members read it
for her elucidation of the philosophy.
Mary LibertinOn Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 11:00 AM Edwina Taborsky
wrote:
List
My own view is one of caution about considering that agapastic
evolution , or 'evolutionary love' means 'improvement'.
Peirce's view of agapasm is that adaptation and change develop "not
altogether heedlessly as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere
force of circumstances or of logic as in anancasm, but by an
immediate attraction of the idea itself, whose nature is divined
before the mind possesses it, by theh power of sympathy, that is, by
virtue of the continuity of mind" 6.307.
Since 'all matter is mind' - then, it is that universal Mind that is
the generating force of evolutionary love - with the understanding
that since 'all that exists is a Sign' then, everything is networked
and connected. But, to me, all that this means is that the METHOD of
change is not random nor mechanical, but interactive and
collaborative. That's all.
To me, this has nothing to do with the idea of 'things getting
better' within either the natural or societal realm. I think those
are problematic words. Can we assign, as Peirce noted with regard to
Darwinian theories, 'politico-economic views of progress' to the
entire world of animal and vegetable life"? 6.293?
Can we further assign biological evolution to the politico-economic
and societal world? I acknowledge that we have enabled a world
population of billions rather than thousands or millions. But I
remain very cautious about the idea of a utopian world - for utopian
politico-economic-societal realms tend to rapidly become
totalitarian, with their insistence on homogeneity of Type - and so
far, tend to evolve to an Animal Farm scenario. That is, idealism
without pragmatism is dangerous.
Edwina
On Thu 14/12/17 2:50 PM , Mary Libertin [email protected] [2]
sent:
Dear Peirce list,
The term MELIORISM was first used by George Eliot (Maryanne Evans).
I first found it while reading it in her mid-1800s masterpiece
_Middlemarch_ (but my 1980 paperback is somewhere hidden in my trove
along with my OED, which I think credits Eliot with the First use). I
recall thinking the novel’s location near “egg” is significant.
I have her 3 vol of Letters where she states she believed she coined
the term. This is confirmed in my current research today. I believe
Eliot’s concept of meliorism is very similar to Peirce’s concept
of evolutionary love. The belief in the idea that things can improve
over time has been mentioned in relation to her feminism and the
feminism of Emily Dickinson. The concept is fertile ground for
pragmatism.
Mary
On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 9:05 AM Stephen C. Rose wrote:
Agreed. It's an excellent notion -- with maybe a nod to the arc
being a bit stronger than any counter-currents. Fits in with
continuity, fallibility and warrants inclusion in a notion of what
Peirce is up to. It is realistic! Look at what's happening now.
amazon.com/author/stephenrose [3]
On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 8:36 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Franklin, Gary f, list,
You may be correct as most references to 'meliorism' I found were to
James or Dewey.
Although I wouldn't make too much of it, Mats Bergman wrote a paper,
"Improving Our Habits: Peirce and Meliorism," in which he includes a
definition of 'meliorism' from the Century Dictionary which, he
believes, may be by Peirce.
(1) “[the] improvement of society by regulated practical means:
opposed to the passive principle of both pessimism and optimism”;
or (2) “[the] doctrine that the world is neither the worst nor the
best possible, but that it is capable of improvement: a mean between
theoretical pessimism and optimism”
http://www.helsinki.fi/peirce/MC/papers/Bergman%20-%20Peirce%20and%20Meliorism.pdf
[4] In a footnote he remarks that Francoise Latraverse suggested to
that the second definition especially seems altogether Peircean.
I'm not sure where I got my sense that meliorism was a Peircean
concept as searches of the CP, EP, etc. have not yielded any
instances of the word. I haven't read much James, I must admit, but
at one point I was reading a great deal of Dewey and may have gotten
the notion from him
Be that as it may, I think that there is a great deal in Peirce
which is compatible with an attitude and philosophy of meliorism,
that, for example, wherever it is up to us to put our shoulder to
some task towards improving our human lot that we ought do that.
Best,
Gary R
Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication
StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York718
482-5690 [5]
On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 6:44 AM, wrote:
Franklin, I think you’re right about James; as for Peirce’s use
of the term, all I can find is this bit from the Robin Catalogue:
953. [First and Second Conversazione]
A. MS., n.p., n.d., pp. 1-8, with variants.
The three views of knowledge: Epicurean, pessimistic, and
melioristic. Second conversazione is on the idea of clearness.
Gary f.
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 13-Dec-17 22:57
Gary,
I thought meliorism was a term introduced by William James, not CSP.
I believe James discusses it in his latter Pragmatism lectures, and
references his son as providing the term to him. It appears to have
the same meaning that you say CSP ascribed to it. Did CSP also adopt
this term? Where does he mention it?
— Franklin
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 12, 2017, at 11:17 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Mary, list,
Mary, if you're a clodhopper than I'm a bumpkin. But, of course,
quite the opposite is the case, so I'm spared for yokeldom!
More and more I hope that this forum can find ways, as you wrote, to
help "newcomers to Peirce to feel welcome," and I personally am
devising strategies to do more of that in the new year. For example,
I am working with Laureano Battista (a NYC Semiotics Web
member/organizer who is also a member of this forum), and bouncing
off Joe Ransdell's original introduction on 'How the Forum Works'
(which can be found on the Peirce-L page of Arisbe
[6]http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/PEIRCE-L/PEIRCE-L.HTM [7] ) to
develop a perhaps more "user friendly" introduction to the working of
this forum. I am also planning a few 'pragmaticist' games for the new
year (I won't say more on that topic yet, but I'll be soliciting help
from you and others on this idea early in the year).
But more to the present point, recently, in other threads, several
forum members offered some very interesting questions which I thought
were quite promising for further list discussion. I hope that some of
those folks will start new threads with these questions, some of
which I think ought appeal to "newcomers to Peirce" as well as to
"the usual suspects." I point to this matter of creating new threads
as it is possible for some very good ideas to get 'lost' in a thread
introduced for some other purpose. So I hope those questions will yet
be asked in threads with very specific Subject lines.
You wrote:
ML: What attracts me to Peirce is the awe I feel and the depth and
breadth of his journey to understand and to believe in the movement
of semiosis. It is makes so much sense. . .
I agree that a kind of belief "in the movement of semiosis" does
make much sense, and from my perspective, more sense than any other
philosophical work since the 19th century (although there's much to
admire elsewhere, including the work of Whitehead, Apel, some of the
existentialists, Camus, Wittgenstein, as well as much contemporary
work.) This is why I think some of the questions recently asked (but
not answered) might provoke us to deeper reflections on how this
profound and original philosophy of pragmaticism (and including all
the cenoscopic sciences: phenomenology, theoretical
esthetics/ethics/semiotic, as well as scientific metaphysics) might
contribute something of substance to what Peirce refers to as
meliorism, which is nothing more nor less than the belief that the
world we live in can be made better by our very human, albeit, often
sadly, "all too human" (Nietzsche), efforts. Pragmatism ought to have
some very important to contribute to meliorism, and this was Peirce's
belief.
I see a commonality in your work relating Peircean perspectives to
literature to Gene Halton's, and I think literature, as well as art,
and music, etc., are all potentially fruitful directions for
semiotics and pragmatism to be moving into (Gene is also, and perhaps
primarily, a sociologist, and I recommend his books to everyone on
this list, as pragmatism has a great deal to offer that field as
well). We have artists and art theorists, architects, and
practitioners and students of many disciplines on this list, and I
hope to find ways of encouraging more of them to participate actively
on the list in 2018. But, again, lurkers are prized!
Meanwhile, the extraordinary work that Gary f has been doing in
presenting the whole of the 1903 Lowell Lectures and, in my view,
very useful commentary (even if one doesn't necessarily agree with
all of it) presently remains my primary focus.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
718 482-5690 [8]
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