Edwina,
Yes, but my point was that JFS's opinion that "Opinions are never
acceptable in a court of law or in a scholarly edition.",
is an opinion that is incorrect, given that expert opinions are
admissible in a court of law.
Gene
On Thu, Jul 18, 2019, 8:47 AM Edwina Taborsky <edwina.tabor...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Gene - an opinion ‘per se’ is ambiguous and therefore irrelevant. An
> opinion-by-an-expert-in-the-field is similar to a conclusion that is based
> on evidence and analysis. Very different from an ‘opinion’.
>
> Edwina
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jul 17, 2019, at 10:23 PM, Eugene Halton <eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu>
> wrote:
>
> JFS: "Opinions are never acceptable in a court of law or in a scholarly
> edition."
>
> I'm no expert, but in the US, if I may nitpick:
>
> THELAW.COM LAW DICTIONARY & BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 2ND ED.
> "EXPERT TESTIMONY The opinion stated in court by an expert witness. An
> admissible expert opinion given in court."
> Gene H
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 1:52 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>> Jon,
>>
>> I agree that my comments were about methods of reasoning rather than
>> specific issues about Lane's book. So I changed the subject line.
>>
>> JAS
>> > As for this thread, it is supposed to be about Peirce's views on
>> > realism and idealism as explored by Lane in his recent book, not
>> > our different purposes and respective approaches for studying and
>> > discussing Peirce's views on those topics (and others).
>>
>> I'm not talking about your preferences or mine. I'm talking about
>> the long-established conventions for scholarship: Maintain a sharp
>> distinction between an author's "ipsissima verba" and any commentary
>> about them. If an author did not state something explicitly, any
>> claims about the text are opinions of the commentator. Opinions
>> are never acceptable in a court of law or in a scholarly edition.
>>
>> > JFS: The term 'objective idealism' could characterize a huge family
>> > of theories from antiquity to the present.
>> >
>> > JAS: Sure, but we are only discussing the particular theory that
>> > Peirce called by that name in 1891.
>>
>> My complaint was not about the topic, but about the method
>> of reasoning. The following example illustrates the issues:
>>
>> JAS
>> > The whole point of CP 6.24-25 (1891) is that once dualism is
>> > dismissed in favor of monism, there are only three options--mind
>> > and matter are independent (neutralism), matter is primordial such
>> > that mind depends on matter (materialism), or mind is primordial
>> > such that matter depends on mind (idealism). Peirce unambiguously
>> > endorsed the last alternative and rejected the others, and as far
>> > as I know, he never abandoned that view.
>>
>> My concerns: CP 6.24 is quite clear as Peirce stated it; there is
>> no need for a paraphrase to make it clearer. But this paraphrase
>> distorts CP 6.24 in several ways:
>>
>> 1. The phrase "the whole point" implies that there is no other
>> useful information in CP 6.24-25. But the last sentence of
>> CP 6.25 makes an important point about Peirce's methodology:
>> "But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable
>> of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of
>> motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with
>> mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be
>> demanded of every philosophy."
>>
>> 2. The phrase "there are only three options" is an unduly precise
>> grouping of the huge number of issues that have been debated
>> since antiquity. It's true that Peirce only mentioned three,
>> but he added the phrase "it seems" to each of the first two.
>> That sounds far more tentative than an unambiguous endorsement.
>>
>> 3. He calls the third option "the only intelligible theory" but adds
>> the qualification mentioned in point #1: an explanation of 3-D
>> space, laws of motion, and everything with "mathematical clearness
>> and precision". That would require a huge amount of work.
>>
>> 4. Since Peirce never accomplished the tasks in point #1, it would be
>> premature to claim that he "unambiguously endorsed" that option.
>> Einstein made more progress on those issues than Peirce did, but
>> there are still many unanswered questions today.
>>
>> 5. In the statement "matter is effete mind" (CP 6.25), the words
>> 'effete' and 'mind' are extremely vague, and the definitions
>> of 'matter' have changed enormously since the 19th century,
>> and new developments are continuing to make revisions. Those
>> words are so vague that "it's easy to be certain".
>>
>> 6. I also wrote that point #5 is so vague that any of the following
>> terms would be just as certain as Peirce's 'objective idealism':
>> Theos = Logos = Tao = Dharma = God of Spinoza = pantheism.
>>
>> JAS
>> > In any case, what I characterized as "unambiguous" was not Peirce's
>> > statement itself, but his endorsement of objective idealism...
>>
>> The best possible proof that Peirce endorsed objective idealism is
>> an exact quotation of CP 6.24-25. No paraphrase by anybody is
>> acceptable in a court of law or in a scholarly analysis.
>>
>> JAS
>> > but how about dealing with the substance of my posts, rather than
>> > continually nitpicking at my methodology and choice of words?
>>
>> Peirce's devoted his life's work to nitpicking. That is the essence
>> of logic and semeiotic: Developing and justifying precise methods
>> for analyzing language, thought, and reasoning down to the smallest,
>> most precisely defined and justified steps (AKA nits).
>>
>> As for substance, I have been begging you to drop the phrase
>> "harmonize and synthesize". The only things you are harmonizing
>> are your own opinions. No refereed publication would ever accept
>> anybody's claim of "harmonizing" anybody else's writings.
>>
>> JAS
>> > Why did you append a lengthy piece by Einstein?
>>
>> Three reasons: (1) Einstein was addressing similar issues, and he
>> started from the same physics that Peirce knew; (2) he adopted the
>> strategy that Peirce stated in CP 6.25; and (3) he made far more
>> progress in "explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws
>> of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with
>> mathematical clearness and precision."
>>
>> In fact, Peirce's foundation in logic, mathematics, philosophy,
>> science, and religion was closer to Whitehead than Einstein. It's
>> no accident that Charles Hartshorne, who was the primary editor of
>> CP vol. 6, adopted a version of Whitehead's process theism.
>>
>> See "Peirce and religion: Between two forms of religious belief"
>> by Hartshorne (1995), Ch. 20 of _Peirce and Contemporary Thought_,
>> ed. by K. L. Ketner. Also note "The response to Hartshorne" by
>> V. G. Potter in Ch. 21:
>>
>> > Hartshorne: "I shall be comparing three doctrines, Peirce's
>> > theism, classical theism, and my neoclassical or somewhat revised
>> > Whiteheadian theism."
>> >
>> > Potter: "I agree almost completely with Hartshorne's assessment of
>> > Peirce's strengths and weaknesses. I thoroughly agree that Peirce
>> > might indeed be characterized as between two worlds -- the world of
>> > classical theism (from which he moved away) and the world of process
>> > theism (at which he had not yet arrived)."
>>
>> For a more detailed comparison of Peirce's objective idealism with
>> Whitehead's process philosophy, see "The problem of novelty according
>> to C.S. Peirce and A.N. Whitehead" by Maria Regina Brioschi:
>>
>> https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/264520/367902/phd_unimi_R09823.pdf
>>
>>
>> In summary, Hawthorne and Potter agreed on the "strengths and
>> weaknesses" of Peirce's claims about objective idealism. Since
>> the issues are still debatable, Peirce's weaker claims are more
>> acceptable than any "unambiguous" version.
>>
>> JAS
>> > Why did your article, "Peirce's Tutorial on Existential Graphs,"
>> > include so much commentary--most of the total content, in fact
>> > -- rather than merely providing a bare transcription of his
>> > original text and diagrams?
>>
>> That's a good question. In fact, that article is an extension of
>> my comments on Michel Balat's version of R 514, which he transcribed
>> at Houghton Library. In my original version, all the text by Peirce,
>> including quotations from his other writings, is in black. And my
>> commentary is in red. For that version, with some revisions over
>> the years, see http://jfsowa.com/peirce/ms514.htm
>>
>> For the published version, the journal did not support "rubrics"
>> (commentary in red). See http://jfsowa.com/pubs/egtut.pdf
>>
>> In this version, I made a clear distinction between the quotations
>> by Peirce, and I never made any claims that my examples and
>> commentary were intended by Peirce or that I was "harmonizing"
>> anything Peirce wrote.
>>
>> But what I did do is something that William James told Peirce
>> not to do (for his 1898 lectures in RLT): use mathematical
>> (algebraic) notation. That may be the reason why Peirce did not
>> show the mapping between his EGs and his algebra of 1885.
>>
>> That was probably a good strategy for the audience of the lectures.
>> But it was a disaster for anybody who had learned and used the
>> algebraic notation. Christine Ladd Franklin, for example, was
>> one of Peirce's best students, but she never understood the EGs.
>>
>> But just look at the tables on pp. 5 to 9 of egtut.pdf. They show
>> how to translate each of the EGs to Peirce-Peano algebra. Those
>> tables are essential for modern (21st c) readers.
>>
>> Except for some explicit quotations, my presentation of what Peirce
>> wrote ends at Fig. 16 on page 13. It's quite possible that he may
>> have some unpublished remarks related to what I wrote. If so, I'd
>> love to see them. But I don't make any claims about his intentions.
>>
>> Section 6 (pp. 22 to 27) covers advanced topics in modern logic.
>> It shows how Peirce's EGs and rules of inference can clarify and
>> simplify developments 20 or more years after he died.
>>
>> John
>>
>
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