List: As outlined in my previous post, my method of interpreting Peirce's writings is retroductive rather than deductive, producing fallible but plausible hypotheses that attempt to explain the accompanying excerpts. How should we go about assessing whether they are successful? Consider another passage from the same discarded draft of his seventh 1903 Harvard Lecture, "Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction," that I quoted last time.
CSP: If it is to be good as an abduction it must subserve the end of abduction. Now the end of abduction is that the deductive consequences of it may be tested by induction. So alone is any application made of its essential anticipatory character. Consequently the good of abduction, as such, that is, its adaptation to its end, will consist of its being of such a character that its deductive consequences may be experimentally tested. (EP 2:532n12) As I have said before, *inductive evaluation* of a proposed interpretation can only proceed by explicating its "deductive consequences" and then comparing them with what Peirce actually wrote in the texts themselves, including (wherever possible) others that were not part of the particular "mass" that prompted the initial flash of insight. I do not stop reading and studying once I have come up with an interpretation, treating it as if it were a settled matter. On the contrary, I keep looking for both confirming and disconfirming evidence, especially as additional texts come to light--in manuscript <https://rs.cms.hu-berlin.de/peircearchive/pages/home.php> images <https://fromthepage.com/collection/show?collection_id=16>, in new volumes like Pietarinen's <https://books.google.com/books?id=IUnSDwAAQBAJ> and Bellucci's <https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/539483>, and in the secondary literature. For me, the overall goal of interpretation is discerning the author's intended meaning as expressed in the text. The second part of this is key, since the text itself is often the *only* objective basis for discerning what the author had in mind when composing it. In semeiotic terms, we aim to translate the immediate interpretant (as written) into a dynamical interpretant (as *actually *understood) that closely approximates the final interpretant (as *ideally *understood). Notice that these are all correlates of the *sign*, not independent determinations of its *utterer*. As Peirce wrote in his Logic Notebook ... CSP: The Immediate Interpretant is the Interpretant represented, explicitly or implicitly, in the sign itself. I have thus omitted the *intended* Interpretant. So far as the intention is betrayed in the Sign, it belongs to the Immediate Interpretant. So far as it is not so betrayed, it may be the Interpretant of *another *sign, but it is in no sense the Interpretant of *that* sign. (R 339:414[276r], SWS 167, 1906 Apr 2) I agree accordingly with the following comments <https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=asburyjournal> by William J. Abraham. WJA: Hermeneutics is not so much the study of what an author intended as the study of what the author achieved. If meaning has an equivalence, it is to be located less in intention and more in achievement. What is achieved may be more or less than what the author intended; happily we can be generous and charitable in our initial judgments and trust that intention and achievement may coincide more often than not. In any case, the old proverb holds; actions speak louder than words; so it is the actions which should get our full attention. ("Intentions and the Logic of Interpretation," p. 20) I have never claimed that Peirce *intended* any of my retroductive interpretations, nor that he would have *endorsed* them. I have merely recognized his achievements, sought to make sense of them to the best of my ability, and attempted to build on them further. I plan to continue doing so, always acknowledging when I deviate from or go beyond his own words. I hope that others will do likewise. Peirce once said, "One generation collects premises in order that a distant generation may discover what they mean" (CP 7.87, 1902). How might we work together as a community of inquirers to collaborate further in discovering the meaning of the vast and remarkable body of premisses that he collected for us? What additional methods of interpretation should we include in the mix? Regards, Jon S. On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 8:09 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote: > List: > > While refraining from posting over the last couple of weeks, I have been > reflecting on my overall approach to Peirce's writings. Some > participants seem to contend that the *only* valid interpretations of > them are those that follow *deductively* from his verbatim statements. By > contrast, I generally formulate interpretative *hypotheses* and then > assess whether and how well they hold up in light of Peirce's actual words. > After all, consider the following passage from a discarded draft of his > seventh 1903 Harvard Lecture, "Pragmatism as the Logic of Abduction." > > CSP: A mass of facts is before us. We go through them. We examine them. > We find them a confused snarl, an impenetrable jungle. We are unable to > hold them in our minds. We endeavor to set them down upon paper; but they > seem to be so multiplex intricate that we can neither satisfy ourselves > that what we have set down represents the facts, nor can we get any clear > idea of what it is that we have set down. But suddenly, while we are poring > over our digest of the facts and are endeavoring to set them into order, it > occurs to us that if we were to assume something to be true that we do not > know to be true, these facts would arrange themselves luminously. (EP > 2:531-532n12) > > > Peirce adds, "That is *abduction*." Now substitute "texts" (here in > bold) for each instance of "facts." > > A mass of *texts* is before us. We go through them. We examine them. We > find them a confused snarl, an impenetrable jungle. We are unable to hold > them in our minds. We endeavor to set them down upon paper; but they seem > to be so multiplex intricate that we can neither satisfy ourselves that > what we have set down represents the *texts*, nor can we get any clear > idea of what it is that we have set down. But suddenly, while we are poring > over our digest of the *texts* and are endeavoring to set them into > order, it occurs to us that if we were to assume something to be true that > we do not know to be true, these *texts* would arrange themselves > luminously. > > > I add, that is *interpretation*. As Umberto Eco puts > <https://books.google.com/books?id=H4q8ZosSvB8C&pg=PA59> it, "The logic > of interpretation is the Peircean logic of abduction" (*The Limits of > Interpretation*, p. 59). > > This is especially true when reading a prolific author who never assembled > a *magnum opus* providing his own comprehensive exposition of his entire > system of thought. Instead we have "a confused snarl, an impenetrable > jungle" of various published articles, personal letters, and tens of > thousands of manuscript pages, many of which are "multiplex intricate" and > none of which can be considered definitive or final. As a result, my > conclusions are not *deductive implications* of the extensive quotations > that I routinely provide; rather, they purport to be *retroductive > explanations* of those quotations. They are by no means certain, but > they are plausible. As Peirce observes during the actual lecture ... > > CSP: The abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash. It is an act of > *insight*, although of extremely fallible insight. It is true that the > different elements of the hypothesis were in our minds before; but it is > the idea of putting together what we had never before dreamed of putting > together which flashes the new suggestion before our contemplation. (CP > 5.181, EP 2:227) > > > He twice uses the word "suggestion" here, and for more than a year now I > have been trying--although admittedly not always succeeding--to be more > conscientious about prefacing my hypotheses with "I suggest that ..." > rather than presenting them in a way that makes them sound (misleadingly) > like definitive assertions. Moreover, I do not consider myself to be an > original thinker in the sense of coming up with new ideas. The tendency > that I *do* seem to have is "putting together" someone else's ideas in a > new way--what I have variously called "harmonizing," "regularizing," > "synthesizing," or "systematizing." > > As Peirce states plainly, this kind of insight is "extremely fallible" and > must be put to the test. I will elaborate on that in another post. > > Regards, > > Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA > Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian > www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt >
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