Auke, list, [[ All pragmatists will further agree that their method of ascertaining the meanings of words and concepts is no other than that experimental method by which all the successful sciences (in which number nobody in his senses would include metaphysics) have reached the degrees of certainty that are severally proper to them today; this experimental method being itself nothing but a particular application of an older logical rule, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” ] Peirce, CP 5.465 (R 318, 1907)]
Auke, I think I get the point of your example dealing with the classification of autism and how it illustrates the pragmatic application of Peirce. I would suggest that the behavioral pattern of those who post to the list is another example. There appears to be a general consensus that the way to learn from Peirce is to read Peirce; but there is a wide variation in practice among list members, which pragmatically shows that the consensus is more verbal than practical. Some posters to peirce-l like to share recent discoveries they feel they’ve made by reading Peirce. As the readers of their posts, we then have to make our own judgments of whether those posts are fruitful or not, i.e. whether they are useful for the purpose of learning from (or about) Peirce. We are not, of course, obligated to respond to those posts in any way, but we are likewise not prevented from responding if we find a post especially helpful or especially misleading. Pragmatically, though, we ought to make a concerted effort to understand what a post is saying before we respond to it; and some people frequently react vociferously against opinions that the originally poster clearly did not express. Among the posters here are some who regularly express rather idiosyncratic views. Some admit that these views are different from Peirce’s, while others do not. Some take offense when their views are challenged, while others do not. Some respond to imagined insults with real insults and name-calling, or disparage other posters ad hominem by accusing them of various intellectual crimes such as elitism, illegitimate claims to authority etc., or complain about being ignored. A reader’s pragmatic response to all of the above is to get to know posters by their fruits and respond (or not respond) accordingly. When someone has a long track record of aggressively contentious or otherwise unhelpful posts, one pragmatic response is to habitually ignore their posts. I consider this a pragmatic response, not the only one, but the one I personally prefer to practice. I give any poster the benefit of the doubt (about the usefulness of his or her post), until I get to know them by their fruits over a period of years. Thus there are a number of posters to the list whose byline triggers me to reach for the delete key, unless their post addresses me directly. This is simply a matter of pragmatic economy, as reading those posts has so often proven to be a waste of time, and reading more of them would take time away from reading Peirce. I am quite aware that if I did read a post instead of deleting it unread, I might find something I agree with, or even something conducive to learning something new from Peirce. So when I do read a post from someone I habitually ignore, I am careful to read exactly what it says; and sometimes I even share my personal response to it with the list. In the present thread, that has proven to be unwise on my part. That’s all I have to say right now about “the pragmatics of Peirce.” I might point out that others evidently have a very different view of what “pragmatic” means … but we are discouraged from discussing terminology here, so I won’t do that. I’d just like to thank you and Gary R for your furnishing actual examples of it, and I hope I have done the same with this post. Gary f. From: Auke van Breemen <[email protected]> Sent: 2-Apr-19 05:33 To: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] The pragmatics of Peirce .. and its importance Gary, List, Regarding Stampers Ladder you wrote: my interests have changed considerably in the baker's dozen of years since I wrote that paper and … RE: The ‘might’ in ‘you might be interested’ wasn’t meant as ‘you should’, but as a polite alternative to ‘may’. My aim was not to get you reading Stamper, but to show that from practical need somebody extended the amount of layers in such a way that somebody interested in nagging about the technical terms of semiotics and their relations, could recognize this as fitting with the Peircean scheme and decided to try to put the idea further in such a way that all sign aspects are covered. This example seemed especially fit since, lately, I see some quit fundamentalist attitude on this list regarding the interpretation of Peircean semiotics. If you look at the foundation of those attempt, it strikes me that the one seems to originate in turning speculative grammar to the end all of the enterprise and the other the semantic layer. If we do this when interested in information systems (as well man as an information system as in building them for organizations) then not only such enterprises fall short in coming to terms with the subject matter. They also tend to block the way of inquiry. Each sign aspect provides another perspective on the problem and each aspect has its own telos. The question ought not to be ‘who is right according to Peirce’, but how do we connect the different perspectives? When a student, I bought a worn reproduction because I wanted the frame it was put in. When home I hung it at the wall and soon decided to keep it because it showed three reformation ladies reading the holy bible. 1. One was intensely scrutinizing the text (Jon, John). 2. The other reads it at an arm’s length (Tom Short, with the first involved, he did a great job in his books on understanding Peirce, and remained critical), 3. with the third the book on her lap, while see looked around (Edwina, Dan). It nicely expresses the way one should deal with the philosopher one has a particular interest in, as a safeguard for an uncritical attitude. With regard to the example. Let’s take the DSM classification of autism. The label z is deemed applicable if x out of x+y characteristics is applicable, where x+y=characteristics of z. Let x be the characteristics pertaining to information processing and let y be the characteristics pertaining to empathy and social behavior. Now a parent and a school disagree regarding a child/pupil having z. If we now turn the attention to each of the characteristics, it will prove the case that on that score, there is less divergence in opinion. On top of that, in many cases the characteristics that remain contested prove to result from the context the child is in, i.e. home for the parents and school for the authorities. For me it is an expression of “inconsistencies arise at the level of axioms” at the social level and “they can usually accept lower-level facts without creating any conflict”. Hope this is more clearly stated. Best, Auke van Breemen
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