John, could it be you’re thinking of Peirce’s “Logic of Quantity,” 1893 (CP 4.85-92)? It concludes like this:
[[ The very word a priori involves the mistaken notion that the operations of demonstrative reasoning are nothing but applications of plain rules to plain cases. The really unobjectionable word is innate; for that may be innate which is very abstruse, and which we can only find out with extreme difficulty. All those Cartesians who advocated innate ideas took this ground; and only Locke failed to see that learning something from experience, and having been fully aware of it since birth, did not exhaust all possibilities. Kant declares that the question of his great work is “How are synthetical judgments a priori possible?” By a priori he means universal; by synthetical, experiential (i.e., relating to experience, not necessarily derived wholly from experience). The true question for him should have been, “How are universal propositions relating to experience to be justified?” But let me not be understood to speak with anything less than profound and almost unparalleled admiration for that wonderful achievement, that indispensible stepping-stone of philosophy. ]] Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa <[email protected]> Sent: 7-Apr-19 15:30 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy and logic On 4/7/2019 1:59 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: > As an example of an /a priori/ element in moral cognition, consider > the role of the /feeling/ of respect in deliberation about the what is > required as a matter of duty. As an example of an a priori element in > aesthetic judgment, consider the condition of seeking harmony in the > experience of the beautiful. As an example of an /a priori/ element in > mathematical cognition, consider the role of the intuition of the > whole of ideal space in geometrical reasoning. > > In each case, I tend to think that Peirce agrees with Kant that these > are /a priori/ and not merely /a posteriori/ elements in our > practical, aesthetic and mathematical cognition. That's an interesting argument. But I recall something Peirce said about that issue (but it would require quite a bit of search to find exactly where). He said that Kant's Critik drV was his basic training in philosophy (when he was 16). But he diverged from Kant about what is a priori. Peirce admitted that there are probably some innate tendencies and preferences that determine value judgments. But experience (i.e., informal phaneroscopy) is essential to develop the details. John
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