List (and Jon),
On 2020-05-14 20:50, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
John, List:
JFS: The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the
listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author
are true.
Where have I claimed otherwise? Specific examples, please.
JFS: For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable
interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was
different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote.
Different readers can and often do disagree about what constitutes a
charitable interpretation of someone else's writings. Naturally, a
_different_ interpretation of what Peirce wrote leads to a different
conclusion, and the burden is then to _support _one's own
interpretation (or refute someone else's) with arguments. That is one
reason why the secondary literature has become so extensive.
Often one can't quite "refute" something, we have to have both-and. But
degrees of inference mean that stronger and weaker arguments speak for
themselves and continue to do so.
JAS: We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make
sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding
Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We
(apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing
exactly that.
JFS: I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce.
It is not about me individually, it is about "sweeping judgments" like
the following.
JFS [1]: You cannot understand anything Peirce wrote unless you
repeat the kind of disciplined testing that he did in developing and
revising his theories.
JFS [2]: As Peirce said, it's indeed wonderful that different
people have very different ways of thinking. But in order to
understand any of them, we must recognize their background in order
to understand how and why they came to their conclusions.
While certain kinds of experiences and familiarity with Peirce's
biography are certainly _helpful _for understanding his writings,
absolute statements like these set an unreasonably high bar that no
one has the authority to impose on others. Rather than dismissing
someone else's interpretations because of _who_ is giving them, the
appropriate response when there is disagreement is to make a better
argument.
I'm tolerated for not being an insider to notations and special terms,
so, as JAS says here, those who don't happen to cite context extensively
should be tolerated also. I'm inexpert in almost everything but I
harness my "vision thing" to contextualise; I'm glad of the lifetime's
work others have put into the notations and the terminology.
JFS: A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about
making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation
to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are
inappropriate.
Gary R. did [3] exactly that regarding Edwina's [4] comments [5] that
theorizing is "an irrelevant exercise" undertaken only by people who
"prefer the isolation and comfort of what [she calls] 'the seminar
room' ... far, far, far from the real empirical objective world."
It did strike me that comment was somewhat adrift, but I didn't join in.
When I attend an informal seminar these days, I bring the universe in
with me (and don't always pipe up).
JFS: But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to
interpret Peirce without stating a single example where my statement
was wrong or inappropriate. He also made a blanket statement that
your arguments were superior to mine.
Where has Gary R. made any such "blanket statements"? Specific
examples, please.
JFS: On several occasions, he said that he agreed with you and not
with me. But he never explained why any particular point I made was
wrong.
Presumably he agreed not only with my conclusions, but also with the
reasoning behind them, which I had already presented. Merely saying
that one agrees with someone else does not impose an obligation to
restate that person's arguments.
This is indeed a very fair point, especially when facilitated by
hyperlinks and / or explicit pointers to time and date.
...
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [6] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[7]
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
