"Jerry Rhee" <jerryr...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Dear list,
I have tried to stay quiet but this statement really offends me:
“So now I will tell you what nobody has told you before this;
that we older folks are waiting for you.”
It is as though the older folk have forgotten their obligation to address the following criticism:
'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?'
thus do many people ask;
'hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to him?'
For
There are Two Causes of Sin, Ignorance and Weakness;
And We need Divine Help to Overcome Both
There are two causes that lead to sin:
either we do not yet know our duty,
or we do not perform the duty that we know.
___
All this talk about esthetics ethics logic and normative sciences..
Is it not obvious that Peirce was incompetent for the task imposed upon him of defining the esthetically good?
For if he had, then it would be just as obvious that we would recognize and communicate it.
For are we not, already, the moral community?
I mean, what other reason is there for the surprising fact, that
America today has largely abandoned what might be called the normative trivium of aesthetics, ethics, and logic -- Peirce's three Normative Sciences
To the question, then, for
"Why then had it not been put to its serious use?"
No reason can be given, except that the motive to do so was not strong enough.
The motives to doing so could only have been desire for gain and philanthropy.
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility,
or the Greatest Happiness Principle,
holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain;
by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain motivate all our actions.
The initial question,
“Why does cognition sometimes lead to action and sometimes not?”
should be understood to demand the answer that the syllogistic examples will provide: because sometimes there are present both a desire for the apprehended goal and a cognitive specification of what must be done if the goal is to be reached, and sometimes not.
“as I was saying all along, in respect to these matters I go astray, up and down, and never hold the same opinion; and that I, or any other ordinary man, go astray is not surprising;
but if you wise men likewise go astray, that is a terrible thing for us also,
if even when we have come to you we are not to cease from our straying.”
From A Little Known Argument for the Being of God to A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God
So that this is not yet ‘another’ kind of criticism put forth by the likes of Mrs. Bell to Emerson,
I would demand of the older folk, then, to
summarize the article in a concluding page or two, to be added to the article, in order to forestall careless cavillers who might say,
Œwhat, then, precisely, is your neglected argument?'"
With best wishes,
Jerry R
List,My good friend, Joseph Dauben, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York/Lehman College, whose research interests include History of Science and History of Mathematics, wrote in response to my initial post in this thread:Many thanks for your very insightful observations. When I read what you've written, I immediately thought of the graduation speech E.L. Doctorow gave at his own alma mater, the Bronx HS of Science, a few years ago. You may well already have seen this, but if not, I think you’ll find what he had to say of interest.While the entire piece is of interest (in a subsequent email, Joe remarked how he ". . . especially liked how Doctorow foiled the chemistry class experiment. He really wasn't so bad at chemistry after all!"), I've excerpted a quote from its conclusion as being of particular relevance to this thread. Doctorow writes:I’m thinking now of the principal at Science in my day, Dr. Morris Meister. I remember that he said about scientific knowledge that in the passage of time, it was like a searchlight beam expanding and lighting up more and more of the darkness. But as it did, he said, so did the circumference of darkness expand. That’s a pretty good line, don’t you think? As the light spreads out so does it discern more and more of the darkness. Actually this may have been said first by Albert Einstein, but no matter.
The human quest for knowledge, for knowing everything there is to know, will always face that expanding circumference of darkness. That is what makes learning such an adventure. You will find that in the world great progress is made in some ways, like curing disease, like inventing robotic devices, going into space, while in other ways, as in our wars, our brutalization of others, our pollution of the natural world, we are faltering. It is possible that our great technical achievements notwithstanding, our moral natures are not keeping up, that we have the brains but not always the hearts to do the right thing. But there is always hope, and there is always the next generation coming along to make things better. So that the circumference of darkness, which turns out to be the questions for which science has no answer, can eventually be illuminated.
So now I will tell you what nobody has told you before this; that we older folks are waiting for you. We’re waiting for you. Did you know that? It’s a fact. I look out from this stage and see a beautiful assembly of the American future.
And I’ll tell you something else about which there is no question: Your parents are proud of you, your teachers are proud of you, and this alumnus of Bronx Science, ’48 — I’m proud of you, too. If I were a clergyman, I’d cast a blessing. But I’m a writer, so I say: Be brave. Be kind. Take good care of yourself. And carry it on.
Best,Gary
"Time is not a renewable resource." gnox
Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York
Virus-free. www.avg.com On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 4:03 PM Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> wrote:List,In a recent op-ed piece titled "The End of College as We Knew It" (https://tinyurl.com/ybha8mhb), Frank Bruni reflects on something I've been informally discussing with friends and colleagues now for years; namely, that "A society without a grounding in ethics, self-reflection, empathy and beauty is one that has lost its way” (Brian Rosenberg, recently president of Macalester College). It seems to me that this has happened in the United States.It has long seemed to me that America today has largely abandoned what might be called the normative trivium of aesthetics, ethics, and logic -- Peirce's three Normative Sciences, not the classical trivium (for which see Sister Miriam Joseph's 2002 book, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric) that he generalized to serve as the three branches of Logic as Semeiotic.This philosophical trivium points to the possible application of Peirce's three Normative Sciences -- not their theoretical forms, but rather their ordinary and potentially pragmatic guises as they appear in life practice, including reflection and action upon what is beautiful in art and nature, what is ethical in our behavior in the world, and how we can apply 'critical commonsenseism' in our quotidian lives. Bruni writes: "We need writers, philosophers, historians. They’ll be the ones to chart the social, cultural and political challenges of this pandemic -- and of all the other dynamics that have pushed the United States so harrowingly close to the edge. In terms of restoring faith in the American project and reseeding common ground, they’re beyond essential."Bruni's op-ed reflection came in part in response to a recent article by Rosenberg in The Chronicle of Higher Education; see "How Should Colleges Prepare for a Post-Pandemic World" (https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Should-Colleges-Prepare/248507). Rosenberg writes: “If one were to invent a crisis uniquely and diabolically designed to undermine the foundations of traditional colleges and universities, it might look very much like the current global pandemic.” In a similar vein, Professor Andrew Belbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation which gives as its purpose promoting the liberal arts, writes: “This is not only a public health crisis and an economic crisis, though Lord knows it’s both of those. It’s also a values crisis. It raises all kinds of deep human questions: What are our responsibilities to other people? Does representative democracy work? How do we get to a place where something like bipartisanship could emerge again?”Commenting on the economic divide of the American university, Bruni notes that "the already pronounced divide between richly endowed, largely residential schools and more socioeconomically diverse ones that depend on public funding grows wider as state and local governments face unprecedented financial distress. A shrinking minority of students get a boutique college experience. Then there’s everybody else." Gail Mellow, former president of LaGuardia College of the City University of New York (where I taught for decades before my retirement) is quoted as saying, “We always knew that America was moving more and more toward very different groups of people," to which Bruni adds, "that movement is only accelerating."Confronting all this will undoubtedly be one of the great challenges that America -- and for that matter, the world -- will have in the years and decades to come. The question I pose is: Can Peirce's version of pragmatism (or pragmaticism) -- which he also calls 'critical commonsenseism' -- creatively contribute to these enormous challenges? And, if so, how? And are there ways in which Peirce's philosophical trivium might help inform the aesthetics, ethics, and critical thinking of the world as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic? If so, how?[Note: I have Bcc'd this post to several former members of this forum, a few members who rarely if ever post but who have stayed in contact with me offlist, and a few friends and colleagues who have not been members but who may have an interest in this topic. Those who are not current members of the forum may send your thoughts on the topic off-list to me letting me know if I have your permission to post them.]Best,Gary"Time is not a renewable resource." gnox
Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New York
Virus-free. www.avg.com
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