----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 1:01
PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: The "composite
photograph" metaphor
Ben Says:
I don't know how Peirce and others have missed
the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open
regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on
the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it
is that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued
that Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem,
and I think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if
Peirce had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively.
REPLY:
I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like
that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal
element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic
as theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a
formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain
about how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the
making of research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying"
them. That would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate
experimental results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to
the fact that it would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental
procedures and observations of results, the far more usual case being the
setting up of related but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose
results would have rather obvious implications for the results claimed in the
research report being verified or disverified, depending on how it turns
out. I don't think there would be anything very interesting in getting
into that sort of detail, though.
Take a common sense case of that. You
tell me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me,
e.g. a large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a
mistake since the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof.
So I mosey over there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is
still going on at the place you said. Claim verified. Of course,
some third person hearing about this might think we are both mistaken or in
collusion to lie about it, and having some financial interest in the matter,
might not count my report as a verification of your claim. So he or she
might mosey over and find that we were both confused about the location and
there was no fire at the place claimed. Claim disverified. But
then some fourth person . . . Well, you get the
idea. So what is the big deal about verification? (This
is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying, too, perhaps.)
The question is, why have philosophers of
science so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if
something really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or
ought to count as such?
You tell me, but my guess is that it is just
the age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest
for absolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the
form of a major philosophical industry devoted to the production of
theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be
explained in terms of some natural confusion of thought like those which
make it seem so implausible at first that we can get better control over our
car when it goes into a skid if we turn the car in the direction of the
skid instead of by responding in the instinctively reasonable way of trying to
turn it in opposition to going in that unwanted
direction. Okay, not a very good example, but you know what I
mean: something can seem at first completely obvious in its
reasonableness that is actually quite unreasonable when all relevant
considerations are taken duly into account. some of which are simply too
subtle to be detected as relevant at first. Thus people argue
interminably over no real problem. It happens a lot, I should
think.
In any case, a will-of-the-wisp is
all that there is in the supposed need for some general theory of
verification. There is none to be given nor is there any need for
one. People make claims. Other people doubt them or accept them
but want to be sure and so they do something that satisfies them, and others,
noting this, are satisfied that the matter is settled and they just move
on. Of maybe nobody is ever satisfied. That's life. Of
course it can turn out at times that it is not easy to get the sort of
satisfacion that counts for us as what we call a verification because it
settles the matter in one way, or a dissatisfaction because it settles it in a
contrary way. But that is all there is to it. Maybe there are
fields or types of problems or issues in which the course of experience of
inquiry about them has resulted in the development and elaboration
of procedures that are regarded as having verification or disverification
as their normal result, but that will surely just be because that particular
sort of problem or subjectmatter happens to require analysis of a certain
rather complex kind involving a lot of detailed procedure. I don't know
what can lie at the end of it all, though, other than the fact, if it is a
fact, that people have finally had enough of it to not feel any need to do
anything further. That culminating de facto acceptance is of course
always capable of being mistaken. Such is the view of
the fallibilist who is not a pathological
sceptic.
Joe Ransdell
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free
Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.9/417 - Release Date:
8/11/2006
