Jon, I changed the subject line to emphasize this topic.
JAS
I have to wonder exactly what you mean by "harmonize and synthesize," since you find it so objectionable.
By that, I mean exactly what you set out to do: the task that Peirce himself was not able to do. It's the height of hubris for any of us to claim that we can do the task that Peirce himself was unable to do.
Peirce would have been the first to acknowledge his own fallibility and the incompleteness of his own investigations. His prolific output over the course of decades surely contains numerous discrepancies and outright contradictions, often simply reflecting the fact that he changed his mind--sometimes in the midst of writing, resulting in alternate drafts. In such cases, each interpreter must choose which passages to embrace and which to reject, especially if the goal is to systematize Peirce's thought as a whole--as it is for me
Whenever you attempt to do that, I keep saying No! No!! No!!! If you want to write a book about your view of what Peirce was doing and saying, that's fine. But it would be *your book*, not Peirce's.
I have consistently presented my interpretations and provided supporting argumentation (including ample quotes) for each reader's consideration.
Yes. You have found many good quotations and their relationships to other good quotations. I thank you for that. But in many lengthy threads, you have a very clear preconceived "harmony" in the back of your mind. No matter what anybody else says, you defend your "harmonious synthesis", tooth and nail.
each interpreter must choose which passages to embrace and which to reject.
No!!!!!!!!! Peirce never rejected anything unless he found a new version that subsumed everything useful in the earlier version *and* the new version demonstrated a fatal flaw in the earlier. There are many cases were he rejected his new ideas and went back to an older version, which, with some revisions, was superior to the old one. Peirce himself couldn't make a firm decision about which older versions to keep, revise, or reject.
Why not trust the List community to evaluate what I say for themselves? Again, when you believe that I am getting something wrong, you are welcome to make your case.
Open debate in any and every community is always important. But the term "design by committee" is usually a pejorative.
JFS: In conclusion, I promise that I'll be kinder and gentler in stating my corrections to Jon's mistakes. This presupposes that you are the authority on what is correct and what is a mistake.
No. There is no authority. Any evaluation must be based on evidence and reasoning about the evidence. Peirce's writings are the primary evidence for what he thought. Almost as important are the sources he read or learned through discussions. But even more important are the developments during the century after his death. Peirce said that the meaning of any general is in the future - a "would-be". An evaluation of Peirce's writings must consider what has been and what would be. And the methodeutic requires a dialog. There should always be a "devil's advocate" for challenging any claim. John
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