Jon, On the contrary, your reply to JS does not address the points I raised at all — the chief of which was the ambiguity of the word “logic” in Peirce’s usage, which he managed to gloss over in CP 1.191, the one place where he did use “logic” in the broad sense (i.e. as semeiotic) while also referring to it as “Normative.” My post (plus correction) was an attempt to account for that example, and for the other passage you quote below, by situating them in their context. If my attempt doesn’t work for you, or you prefer to use these terms inflexibly rather than admit their ambiguity in Peirce’s usage, there’s nothing further I can do.
As for your dispute with John S, rather than taking sides on the issue, I prefer to attribute the dispute itself to the ambiguity of the words “phenomenology” and “semeiotic.” This is the same ambiguity which caused Joe Ransdell, a very responsible scholar, to say that almost all of Peirce’s phenomenology really came under the heading of semeiotic. I don’t agree with that position, or with John’s, or with yours for that matter, because I think you are all assuming that the references of these classificatory terms are more exact than they actually are, and coming to different conclusions about what they (so exactly) mean. I think it would help to consider all of Peirce’s “Ethics of Terminology,” and not only the recommendation that every scientific term should have a single exact meaning. That simply doesn’t work with terms that are in widespread use; it only works in highly specialized disciplines. (I think it was rather quixotic on Peirce’s part to try to make cenoscopy, or philosophy, into such a specialized discipline.) Ironically, Peirce himself recognizes this kind of problem in the very text named in our subject line. It’s the problem that in the discourse of positive sciences, generalization necessarily leads to simplification which amounts to falsification if considered too precisely. I’ve quoted it before, but here it is again: [[ in speaking above of a “generalized” icon, I used the qualification in a sense of “generalize” common among designers, especially among cartographers, as well as in vernacular talk, though it is not the proper logical sense of the verb, since it does not signify the removal of any constituent of logical depth from a condition, nor confers any liberty on the interpreter, but implies some almost microscopic items that are really falsifications committed in the interest of simplification. Thus, a map “generalizes” its image of a river in representing the latter as not making sundry small windings that it really does make. So recollection may be said to “generalize” the remembered perception in representing this to be without many insignificant details that really did belong to it; and although an icon is not, properly speaking, general, so far as it is a pure icon, yet every icon must “generalize,” more or less, in this peculiar sense. ]] Peirce is referring specifically to icons here, but it is obviously true of verbal descriptions, and even more so of class-names, that they tend to “generalize,” “falsify” and “simplify” simultaneously. I would argue that this happens whenever Peirce refers to “logic” as a “normative science.” As I think I have shown, the term “normative” does much more than distinguish one kind of logic (“normative”) from another (“formal logic”). Hence the need for Peirce to explain, as he does in your quote, that some adjustments are needed in our concept of what “normative” means in the phrase “normative sciences.” Those rivers have windings which are glossed over by the usual signification of the term “normative.” Also relevant here, I think, are Peirce’s remarks about thinkers getting into “ruts” which prevent them from presenting their own theories as well as they might be presented by somebody else. He is talking specifically about improvements to his system of Existential Graphs, but he is also generalizing from that: [[ Experience seems further to show, what is credible enough a priori, the needful improvements are more likely to be discerned by some second person, whose mind is free from any deep ruts that may probably have been formed in that of the original inventor, by the particular way in which he has happened long to ponder the problem while it was not yet solved, passing over and over again one roadway of thought; not to speak of the effect of those same ruts in causing the original inventor to regard his way of solving the problem as simpler, that is to say, more facile and natural, than others that, in the absence of such ruts, are far superior to it in that respect. This consideration has encouraged me to publish my proof in the simplest form in which I can present it in a limited time; since I am led to believe that it is not my part, but that of some other thinker, to metamorphose my proof into a new form, in which it shall be vastly superior to its first incorporation, alike in point of evidence and in that of simplicity. ]] I might surmise that the “simplest form” in which he tried to publish his “proof” of pragmaticism turned out to be MS 318 (simply entitled “Pragmatism” in EP2), which was unfortunately rejected by two publishers and did not appear in Peirce’s lifetime. In any case, he was hoping that “some other thinker” would improve on what he had done because it would avoid his own “ruts.” Whether that has happened, I am not prepared to say. Anyway, I think one’s attempt to regularize terminology that is naturally multivalent is likely to deepen whatever ruts one already tends to get stuck in. Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 10-Mar-19 16:35 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Bedrock Beneath Pragmaticism Gary F., List: My reply to John Sowa addresses most of the points that you raised, but I will touch on a couple of items anyway. GF: “Normative laws” are those which determine whether a reasoning procedure is (1) good or bad, or (2) subserves an end or fails to do so, where (1) and (2) are taken to be equivalent. Thus the basic signification of the term normative involves the “emphatic dualism” which, as Peirce says, is characteristic of normative sciences. As I already pointed out, he also stated that one of the "widely spread misconceptions of the nature of normative science ... is that the chief, if not the only problem of normative science is to say what is good and what bad, logically, ethically, and esthetically; or what degree of goodness a given description of phenomenon attains" (CP 5.127, EP 2:199; 1903). GF: Peirce never says that Semeiotic is a Normative Science ... there is no single context in Peirce where he applies all three of the words Normative, Logic and Semeiotic to a single science. But he did say in CP 1.191 that logic is a Normative Science, "may be regarded as the science of the general laws of signs," and has three branches--Speculative Grammar, Critic, and Methodeutic. Are you really going to quibble over the absence of the word "Semeiotic," when that is unquestionably what he had in mind? Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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