List
What I find disturbing in this compartmentalization of empirical and
analytic explorations of our reality is precisely that: its
compartmentalization. What happens if a scientist, engaged in
examining the phaneron of, let's say, the X-gang in a modern inner
city, ALSO ventures into the realm of psychology to explore the gang
behaviour. Does this bewildered scientist disappear in a puff of
smoke, for violating the purity of each particular science?
Edwina
On Thu 02/09/21 10:21 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
List, after a closer look at the R 645 text I posted, I see a need
to make an amendment to Ketner’s transcription.
One sentence in the 3 rd paragraph reads: “Psychology deals with
questions of what we are directly conscious of, and involves very
little or no reasoning.” But it seems to me that this description
fits phaneroscopy and not psychology. In the source manuscript (page
4 as numbered by Peirce), the entire sentence after the word
“Psychology” is crossed out, and the following words, which are
not crossed out, continue the sentence: “endeavours to make known
the positive facts of the workings of the mind.” (This obviously
does refer to Psychology, but is omitted from Ketner’s
transcription.) The last sentence on the page which is not crossed
out reads: “Logic inquires into the theory [of] what must follow in
hypothetical cases.”
So I have amended (and bolded) the third paragraph in the text
below, in a way better reflects the manuscript (and makes more
sense):
CSP: Three studies are needlessly and very unhappily confounded:
Phaneroscopy (as I call it, or Phenomenology), Logic, and Psychology
Proper. One of the three is a Science, though youthful and immature;
that is Psychology Proper. One is an Embrio-science; so I rate Logic,
because it still lacks that considerable body of well-drilled workers
pursuing methods acknowledged by all, taking advantage of one
another's discoveries to push research still on and on, and turning
out new discoveries at a healthy rate; all of which I take to be
essential to a developed science. The third is Phaneroscopy, still in
the condition of a science-egg, hardly any details of it being as yet
distinguishable, though enough to assure the student of it that,
under the fostering care that it is sure to enjoy, if the human
culture continues long, it surely will in the future become a strong
and beneficient science.
By Psychology Proper I mean the Empirical Science of the workings
and growths of Minds and their relations to the animal or other
organisms in which Psychical phenomena can be detected. In short, it
is a sort of Physiology of the Soul. By Logic I mean the study of the
distinction between Truth and Falsity, and the theory of how to attain
the former together with all that the investigator of that theory must
make it his business to probe. It comes, in my opinion, in the present
state of science, to a study of the general nature of Signs and the
leading kinds of Signs. By Phaneroscopy I mean the study of whatever
consciousness puts into one's Immediate and Complete possession, or
in other words, the study of whatever one becomes directly aware of
in itself. For such Direct objects of Consciousness I venture to coin
the term “Prebits.” Some may think this word would idly cumber the
dictionary in the unlikely contingency of its ever coming into use.
They will regard it as a superfluous synonym of “appearances,” or
“phenomena,” “data,” etc., etc. I admit that “datum” might
do. But then many other things are called “data”; as for the word
“phenomenon,” I think that is better reserved to express those
more special meanings to which it is usually restricted; as, for
example, to denote any fact that consists in the uniformity with
which something peculiar and perceptible to the senses (without or
with instrumental aid) will result from the fulfillment of certain
definite conditions, especially if it can be repeated indefinitely.
Thus, the fact that small bits of paper or anything else that is
light enough will be attracted to a rod of shellac, glass, vulcanite,
etc. provided this has just before been briskly rubbed upon a soft
surface of suitable material with a harder backing is one single
phenomenon, while the fact that a rod of steel or of one of a few
other substances will attract small filings or other bits of iron, as
magnetite, etc. is a different single phenomenon. By a “Prebit” I
do not mean anything of that nature, but a single Object of immediate
consciousness, though usually indefinitely denoted. As for the word
“Appearance,” it would be stretched in an inconvenient and quite
unexpected way if it would be applied to some of the objects I call
Prebits. Before he has read many pages the Reader will come upon an
example that will bring the truth of this home to him. In the above
Definition of “Prebit,” the adjective “Immediate” is not to
be understood in a Properly Psychological sense, as if it were
intended to exclude the case of my becoming aware of a Prebit in
consequence of becoming aware of another thing, whether Prebit or
not; but what I do mean is that once I do become aware of the Prebit,
I am aware not merely before of a Sign Substitute for it, or any sort
of proxy, vicar, attorney, succedaneum, dummy, or representative of
it, but am put facie ad faciem before the very Prebit itself.
The importance of distinguishing between the three studies is due in
the first place to the diversity of their general aims. Phaneroscopy
asks what are the possibilities of consciousness. Psychology
endeavours to make known the positive facts of the workings of the
mind. Logic inquires into the theory [of] what must follow in
hypothetical cases.
In the Second place, the methods of the three inquiries are as
divergent as their aims. In Phaneroscopy there is little reasoning.
Its questions are only settled by the finest of keen observations.
Logic on the other hand involves no more observation than does Pure
Mathematics itself, that is to say only the observation of our own
diagrams. It is a science of reasoning and subtle distinctions.
Psychology Proper again uses all the methods and involves all the
difficulties of all the other Empirical Sciences.
For the purposes of the present essay, however, the most urgent
reason for distinguishing these studies from one another, and more
especially the two that are most apt to be confounded,—Phaneroscopy
and Psychology Proper,—is that, on the one hand, Logic must be
founded on the results of Phaneroscopy, so that the Phaneroscopist
has no right to appeal to the science of logic ; while on the other
hand, Psychology Proper, more than any other study, excepting only
metaphysics, depends for its support upon the science of Logic, in
consequence of which the Logician is forbidden to appeal for support
to Psychology Proper. Moreover, Psychology Proper, thus mediately
rests on Phaneroscopy and can furnish no support to the latter. Still
less can it question the latter's results, which would be not more nor
less than sawing off the bough on which it is astride. [end CSP quote,
R 645, 1909 December 22]
Gary f.
} Any analytical approach to understanding simplicity always turns
out to be very complex. [Howard Pattee] {
https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ [1] }{ living the time
Links:
------
[1] https://gnusystems.ca/wp/
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu .
► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu
with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the
body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html .
► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and
co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
