Jim P,
I really like the connection you provided to Fechner's law. Peirce many times uses the "inward/outward" conceptual distinction that Fechner also uses with his psycho-physical laws. I do not know whether they are using them the same way and I do not know whether their metaphysical assumptions are close. Fechner was a panpsychist who wrote separate volumes on external and internal versions of his law. The intensity of sensation is a function of external stimuli or nervous activity in the brain. Put this way, Fechner appears to favor the physical, although the identity theory of mind/brain is compatible with his monism. Presumably, we could redescribe external stimuli and neural activity as mental events. In any case,
Peirce says, "It is entirely in harmony with this law [Fechner's] that the feeling of belief shoud be as the logarithm of the chance, the later being the _expression_ of the state of facts which produce the belief".
IAssuming a feeling of belief, then presumably it has a "dual aspect." It can be taken and measured in terms of units of physical energy or as a quality of mental experience. My question is what "state of facts produce the belief." If we treat the facts as the method, then the method produces the belief. Thus, neural activity may produce a corresponding amount of physical energy measurable as the intensity of feeling. But it may be redescribed in terms of mental events (habits?) producing a mental quality of feeling. (conviction?)
Jim W
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. Clark Goble wrote:
---I honestly don't recall Peirce addressing the problem of competing and contradictory beliefs. Does anyone know off the top of their head anything along those lines? The closest I can think of is the passage of 1908 to Lady Welby where he talks about the three modalities of being. Relative to the first, that of possibility, he talks of Ideas. One might say that the *idea* of infidelity, for example, can be accepted as well as its contradiction. So perhaps that's one way of dealing with it.Dear Clark,I'm tempted to say, facetiously, that Peirce often wrote of two fundamental laws of psychology. One of course being the law of association of ideas and the other being what he called a "general law of sensibility" or Fechner's psycho-phsical law. But I won't -). Fechner's law as you may recall states that the intensity of any sensation is proportional to the log of the external force which produces it.However, on page 294 of Vol III of _The Writings of Charles S Peirce, A Chronological Edition_ I did stumble accross something that may relate to what you have in mind. There Peirce writes that "It is entirely in harmony with this law [Fechner's] that the feeling of belief shoud be as the logarithm of the chance, the later being the _expression_ of the state of facts which produce the belief". He continues, "the rule for the combination of independent concurrent arugments takes a very simple form when expressed in terms of the intensity of belief, measured in the porposed way. It is this: Take the sum of all the feelings of belief which would b e produced separately by all the arguments pro, substract from that the similar sum for agruments con, and the remainder is the feeling of belief which we ought to have on the whole. This a a proceeding which men often resort to, under the name of balancing reasons".BTW, all of this occurs in his 1878 essay on Probability of Induction which apparently was published Popular Science Monthly.Cheers,Jim PiatThe question then becomes how inquiry relates to these ideas. I'd suggest, as you do, that it would cut off inquiry, but not because of knowledge. Rather, as Joe said earlier, it is the individual doing what they can to stave off the loss of a threatened belief. I think this is that they don't *want* discussion to leave the world of possibility and move to the realm of facts (the second of the three universes).It is interesting to me how many people do *not* want to move from possibilities (how ever probable) to the realm of facts or events.I think rather that tenaciousness is, as Joe suggested, more closely related to appeals to authority and their weakness. I'd also note in The Fixation of Belief that Peirce suggests that doubt works by irritation. "The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle *inquiry* though it must be admitted that it is sometimes not a very apt designation." (EP 1:114)To me that suggests something like a small boil or irritation on ones skin or small cut in ones mouth. One can neglect it but eventually it will lead to a change in action. As Peirce notes it may not seem like what we call inquiry. Thus his "sometimes not a very apt designation." But so long as it changes our habits, even if it takes time and is slow, then inquiry is progressing.It might be an error to only call a process of inquiry what we are conscious of as a more directed burden of will. Which I believe was Jim W's point a few days ago.Clark Goble---
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