Gary R, list, My apologies for taking ten days to reply to your post, Gary, because I had to figure out what I really meant by “the primacy of esthetics.” What I had in mind (rather vaguely) was the “aesthetic contemplation” which is one form of “Musement” or “Pure Play” as Peirce called it (EP2:436 <http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#na1e> ) in his “Neglected Argument” essay of 1908. That would seem to differ widely from the esthetics which “studies the characters which will belong to the phenomenon so far as it is controllable, that is, the characters of what is aimed at” (as per your final Peirce quote), because “aiming at” something implies a purpose, and Musement “involves no purpose save that of casting aside all serious purpose.” And this I associate with an ethical principle which I find in several sources, as explained here: http://gnusystems.ca/TS/xrp.htm#x21 . (And that in turn is where the “non-judgmental” idea came from.)
I like your suggestion “that it is the three normative sciences taken together that makes them normative. Further, that the central science of ethics is, associated as it clearly is with 2ns, is the commanding one of the three.” It’s also clear that for Peirce, esthetics is the least normative of the normative sciences; and beyond that, I don’t seem to have anything new to say about it. As for the summum bonum, I’ve been reading Peirce’s entry on Pragmatism in Baldwin’s Dictionary, http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm#Pragmatism , where he says that “Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good lies in the evolutionary process in some way.” That may have been true in 1902, but in 2020 I don’t think I can agree with it, or with Peirce’s idea of progress toward “concrete reasonableness.” My reasons are at http://gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x31 if anyone’s interested in why I part company with Peirce on that point. Gary f. From: Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> Sent: 13-Jul-20 21:45 Gary f, List, I've been reflecting on your several posts in the Pragmatic Trivium thread(s) and found them, and especially this one, very useful in beginning to once again try to think through these matters. But, preparing for a medical procedure happening overmorrow (a word -- archaic, but used as recently as 1969 by James Krugman, and meaning 'the day after tomorrow'),I've a lot to do before then. So, I'll have to keep it short for now. You wrote: Gf: In all of this theorizing [by Peirce], it is clear that esthetics, ethics and logical critic correspond to Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness respectively. In his fifth Harvard Lecture of 1903, after expressing some doubts about his classification of the normative sciences, Peirce said: [[ Supposing, however, that normative science divides into esthetics, ethics, and logic, then it is easily perceived, from my standpoint, that this division is governed by the three categories. For Normative Science in general being the science of the laws of conformity of things to ends, esthetics considers those things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling, ethics those things whose ends lie in action, and logic those things whose end is to represent something. Just at this point we begin to get upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism … ](CP 5.129-30, EP2:200)] GR: I suppose many responded with excited anticipation as I did upon reading that last sentence, that "we begin to get upon the trail of the secret of pragmatism" in reflecting on the respective 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns, as well as the characters of each of the normative sciences. After all, the entire lecture series is meant to explicate pragmatism; and by 1903 we can imagine that Peirce has a pretty good, albeit fallible, understanding of what pragmatism is. GR: You then skipped over some material to get to some of Peirce's thoughts on "the primacy of esthetics" (EP2:201, CP 5.132). [[ . . . I find the task imposed upon me of defining the esthetically good,—a work which so many philosophical artists have made as many attempts at performing. In the light of the doctrine of categories I should say that an object, to be esthetically good, must have a multitude of parts so related to one another as to impart a positive simple immediate quality to their totality; and whatever does this is, in so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be. If that quality be such as to nauseate us, to scare us, or otherwise to disturb us to the point of throwing us out of the mood of esthetic enjoyment, out of the mood of simply contemplating the embodiment of the quality . . . ]] Parenthetically, I might draw our attention to Peirce's comment in the very first sentence above that he considers most work thus far on esthetics to have been done by "philosophical artists," that is, *not* scientists. But returning to the topic at hand, esthetic contemplation, you wrote "requires us to set aside any emotional reaction we may have to the object contemplated, which is esthetically good to the extent that it has a “positive simple immediate quality.” Thus the esthetically good is entirely different from the morally good, which only applies to actions, and only as a quality opposed to the morally bad. The act of judging any positive simple immediate quality to be “bad” – or even to be “good” as opposed to bad – incapacitates us for the “esthetic enjoyment” which comes only with “esthetic contemplation.” Peirce confirmed this point later in 1903, in his Syllabus: “no form is esthetically bad, if regarded from the strictly esthetical point of view, without any idea of adopting the form in conduct. All esthetic disgust is due to defective insight and narrowness of sympathy” (EP2:272). Gf: Peirce's Harvard lecture goes on to point out that his argument comes to a seemingly paradoxical conclusion: [[ This suggestion . . . [if] it be correct, it will follow that there is no such thing as positive esthetic badness; and since by goodness we chiefly in this discussion mean merely the absence of badness, or faultlessness, there will be no such thing as esthetic goodness. [(EP2:201)]] GR: My initial response is, that nothing is positively esthetically bad or good holds for science, and here Peirce is discussing normative science, a "pure theoretical science" and certainly not an applied one, nor even a "special science." In the latter case, the special sciences, the principles discovered by research into the theoretical cenosocopic sciences, perhaps especially the normative sciences, ought be applied to the special sciences keeping with the dictum that in Peirce's classification of the sciences (following Comte), those 'higher' on the list ought to supply laws and principles to those 'lower' on the list, while those 'lower' in the classification ought to offer realized cases as useful examples from those lower (I hope we won't get into another discussion here about whether 'higher' and 'lower' are valuations, as they most certainly are not. See Section 1: https://www.iep.utm.edu/peircear/). Gf:This raises the question of how a science can be called “normative” if it doesn't judge anything to be good or bad, but i won't delve into Peirce's answer to that. GR: I would be most interested to hear what you consider to be Peirce's answer as to "the question of how a science can be called “normative” if it doesn't judge anything to be good or bad,. I would suggest -- and Peirce comments to this effect (see quotations below) -- that it is the three normative sciences taken together that makes them normative. Further, that the central science of ethics is, associated as it clearly is with 2ns, is the commanding one of the three. There is much, much more to be said here about the relations amongst the three normative sciences, but that would take us far from our current central topic, esthetics. GR: I will, however, offer a hint of what might be further considered here via a couple of short quotations lifted from the Commens Dictionary. I will not at this point comment on them, but I do hope that we can discuss this in the future. 1903 | Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: Lecture V | CP 5.121-127 Philosophy has three grand divisions. [—] The second grand division is Normative Science, which investigates the universal and necessary laws of the relation of Phenomena to Ends. . . [—] Normative Science treats of the laws of the relation of phenomena to ends; that is, it treats of Phenomena in their Secondness. [—] 1905 | Adirondack Summer School Lectures | MS [R] 1334:36-37 The normative sciences are wholly said to be esthetics, ethics, and logic. . . They are all largely & I may say principally occupied with a dual distinction, the distinction of the approved and the unapproved. Esthetics relates to the immediately contemplated; ethics to doings; logic to thought. [—] It is not very easy to seize the exact meaning of the phrase normative science. It means the science of the approvable and unapprovable, or better the blameable and the unblameable. These sciences are distinguished from most others by involving the dual distinction. But it would be easy to exaggerate its prominence in them. This prominence is greatest in ethics, least in esthetics. (Emphasis added by me.) 1910-09-02 | Quest of Quest | MS [R] 655:24 The Normative Sciences . . . are confined respectively to ascertaining how Feeling, Conduct, and Thought ought to be controlled supposing them to be subject in a measure, and only in a measure, to self-control, exercised by means of self-criticism, and the purposive formation of habit. . . You concluded: Gf: I also won't try to explain here why i find the primacy of esthetics such an important part of Peirce's legacy in our 21st-Century situation, except to say that it's the non-judgemental quality that I consider essential to it. And that's the very quality implied in Peirce's appreciation of the elder James <http://gnusystems.ca/TS/snc.htm#x14> . So that's where i will leave this train of thought, for now anyway. GR: I will very much look forward to discussing this for I find Peirce somewhat inconsistent as regards his opinion of the putative non-judgmental quality of esthetics. I'll let a final quotation suggest what I have in mind in saying that. 1904 | A Brief Intellectual Autobiography by Charles Sanders Peirce | Peirce, 1983, p. 71; MS [R] L107:19-20 …philosophical esthetics (which becomes something very different from the study which the noun usually designates)[,] studies the characters which will belong to the phenomenon so far as it is controllable, that is, the characters of what is aimed at. Thus, the question, What is the summum bonum, is regarded as an esthetical question. (Emphasis added by me.) GR: Doesn't "control" here strongly suggest 2ns? Or, even if it does, is the kind of control which esthetics employs necessarily very different from other types of control, those, for example, involved in ethics and logic? Or is Peirce in error in making Esthetics a normative science? Best, Gary R
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