List, Jerry, Thank you, Jerry, for your kind words in your last post. They are appreciated.
As nearly all of what I would say in response to your very interesting remarks on the concept of sincerity in relation to bias will come out as well the next segment of the paper we are considering, and its focus on truth, I am going to fold most of my comments to you into the discussion of that segment, which I will be working on sending out tomorrow (sorry listers, I'm a little late on that). However, one additional response first: your characterization of interdisciplinary bias as a mixture of arrogance and ignorance hits the bull's eye as far as I am concerned. I am struck by your identification of the dual, combined character of bias, generally speaking. My experience as well confirms this.
This would seem to bring us back to an appreciation of pragmaticism's recognition of the necessary role that humility must play in scientific communication, in addition to (or, perhaps, as a facet of?) the objectivity on which JR focuses. I would argue that a "peer" must be a sign of humility, just as much as a peer must be a sign of some subject matter. If a scientist is truly governed by a Dynamic Object/subject matter to the point that the DO/subject matter determines the scientist's representations of it (however fallibly), in that very process of determination, the scientist inevitably would be influenced by the relatively humble character of his/her own individual status as a sign in relation to that DO/subject matter, as well as by his/her own individual status as a peer in a much larger community of scientists. The consequence of this would be humility as well as sincerity.
This leads me to wonder what exactly is the relation, or what are the possible relations, of arrogance to ignorance, as they might be characterized in semeiotic terms. Both would seem to be the consequence of a failure, on the peer's part, to move into a relation to the DO/subject matter that would enable the subject matter to determine the peer's representational character. However, this is just a vague and obvious observation. Perhaps other listers may have something more to contribute on this question.
Thanks again and more to come tomorrow, Sally --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
