Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
Clark, List: Your post touches on several issues which may overlap with some of our previous interventions on the pragmatic differentiation of CSP's scientific philosophy and its relations to modern physical conjectures about the nature of “truth” in its many linguistic descriptors (coherence, correspondence, consistency, concordance, …) (I published a paper on this topic about the turn of the Century. I will look for the reference.) > On Mar 24, 2017, at 9:34 AM, Clark Goble wrote: > It seems to me the starting point for thinking about truth for Peirce ought > be externalism. I concur. And add that the externalism is necessary to unfold the historical development of his philosophy in parallel to the historical development of chemistry in the second half of the 19 th Century. A priori, externalism infers part-whole relations and ampliative logical operations, does it not?. This is a major differentiation from mathematic physics, which prides itself on the virginity of its abstractions and the infallibility of continuous mathematics. Obviously, I fully concur with this abstract description of the logical terms of qualisign, sinsign and legisign as three of the many possible descriptors of the external. In the long-range context, the external dynamics was in motion before man arrived on the scene. My reading of John Sowa and Frederick Sjernfelt’s writings is that the notion of the natural logics of external truths is not foundational in the sense that you propose. I believe that CSP’s central perspective of realism originates in externalism and chemical analysis of external objects and enumerable relations among external chemical objects. > That is are we talking about a knower who is roughly a human individual at a > specific time or are we talking about truth in semiotic broader than any one > individual. While Peirce occasionally talks of epistemology along a more > traditional Cartesian conception by and large when he speaks of truth he’s > speaking of this broader conception. Unless we keep that in mind I think > we’ll always go astray. I concur. Naturalism is one of the foundations of CSP’s “universal” ordering of arguments that depend on the discrete mapping of terms from icons to rhema in relation to indices. (Chemical indices include the molecular formula of a chemical sin-sign). > > An individual then ‘has’ truth to the degree that the sign within them is the > same as this final interpretant. In this context, is the final interpretant a legi-sign? > > The next thing to keep in mind is that Peirce still maintains the traditional > conception of proposition or statement as carriers of truth. By which he > means they are signs that signify this interpretant. As the quotes Jon put up > on wikipedia indicate we thus have a sort of correspondence but not a > Cartesian sort. It’s not the correspondence of an internal image with an > external object. Rather it’s the correspondence of the object signified > through a sign with an interpretant that is the same as the final > interpretant. The odd feature of Peirce’s conception of truth is that this > sign need not be in a particular knowing subject. (I’m not sure of the > implications of that since it gets into the question of intentionality in > Peircean semiotics) > > The biggest difference between Peirce and more traditional conceptions of > truth in the loose Cartesian tradition (including Kant) would be that truth > is essentially wrapped up with signs. Does it go beyond this? Do the Cartesian coordinates become axis for mathematical terms representing physical units representing signs? > It is triadic whereas for most philosophy correspondence and even coherence > is merely dualistic. Does the Cartesian correspondence constrain signs to three dimensions? > > I’ve been thinking of my original question I posed a month or two ago. That > is what is the status of truth. To the degree an object signifies a stable > interpretant it seems to me that truth is fated or necessary regardless of > whether one adopts modal realism. In chemical logic, the constraints of the table of elements, physical electro-neutrality (valence), and mereology (molecular weight, molecular formula, molecular structure) are necessarily “parts of the logical whole”. > I’ve come around to the idea that fundamentally what’s at stake with my > question is less the question of truth than the question of time. I disagree. A chemical sentence usually is written a-temporally under the conservative laws of physics (for mass and electricity). Simple example: Hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water. The temporal dimension has further dependencies on the thermodynamic context in a specific EXTERNAL context. > That is to ask if truth exists is to ask when a sign is complete. I disagree. Physically, mathematically and chemically, the completeness of a chemical sentence is a very different (linguistic?) issue. Inde
[PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
Thread: EVD:https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-03/msg00142.html JA:https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-03/msg00143.html Peircers, I had a lot of trouble with the first paragraph of my last post. Among other things, pace Cat Stevens and Rod Stewart, I decided that in this case the first cut is probably the shallowest, and that was just the least of its problems, so here is the rewrite I posted on my blog, where I believe I managed both to clarify and generalize the criterion rather succinctly: https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2017/03/24/pragmatic-theory-of-truth-%e2%80%a2-7/ Viewing the normative science of logic and its object, truth, in the medium of a triadic sign relation, the first cut among notions of truth divides those that take the object domain into account in a fundamental way from those that regard truth as a predicate of signs alone. Regards, Jon -- inquiry into inquiry: https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ academia: https://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey oeiswiki: https://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
Catching up on my reading - apologies for not responding much the past week or two. It seems to me the starting point for thinking about truth for Peirce ought be externalism. That is are we talking about a knower who is roughly a human individual at a specific time or are we talking about truth in semiotic broader than any one individual. While Peirce occasionally talks of epistemology along a more traditional Cartesian conception by and large when he speaks of truth he’s speaking of this broader conception. Unless we keep that in mind I think we’ll always go astray. An individual then ‘has’ truth to the degree that the sign within them is the same as this final interpretant. The next thing to keep in mind is that Peirce still maintains the traditional conception of proposition or statement as carriers of truth. By which he means they are signs that signify this interpretant. As the quotes Jon put up on wikipedia indicate we thus have a sort of correspondence but not a Cartesian sort. It’s not the correspondence of an internal image with an external object. Rather it’s the correspondence of the object signified through a sign with an interpretant that is the same as the final interpretant. The odd feature of Peirce’s conception of truth is that this sign need not be in a particular knowing subject. (I’m not sure of the implications of that since it gets into the question of intentionality in Peircean semiotics) The biggest difference between Peirce and more traditional conceptions of truth in the loose Cartesian tradition (including Kant) would be that truth is essentially wrapped up with signs. It is triadic whereas for most philosophy correspondence and even coherence is merely dualistic. I’ve been thinking of my original question I posed a month or two ago. That is what is the status of truth. To the degree an object signifies a stable interpretant it seems to me that truth is fated or necessary regardless of whether one adopts modal realism. I’ve come around to the idea that fundamentally what’s at stake with my question is less the question of truth than the question of time. That is to ask if truth exists is to ask when a sign is complete. If one adopts presentism or some related ontological conception of time then this seems to play havoc with Peirce’s semiotic. (Maybe others will disagree with me there) The way out of this problem is either to embrace a four dimensional theory of time in which case there is already a truth about the future or else to embrace the later Peirce’s modal realism and simply talk about truth as those signs that are in all possible universes. That is to embrace the kind of robust talk of possibilities we see in contemporary modal realism. - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
[PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
Val, all, Viewing the normative science of logic and its object, truth, from a sign-relational perspective, the first cut, the deepest, among notions of truth divides those that take the object domain into account in a fundamental way from those that regard truth as a matter to be decided solely on the grounds of the 2-dimensional semiotic or syntactic plane of sign-to-interpretant-sign relations. At first sight, then, it appears that we can usefully contrast the pragmatic and correspondence notions of truth from the motley crew of intuitions about truth based on coherence, consensus, and truth by logical consistency alone. That is, not incidentally, the perspective that Susan Awbrey and I adopted in our work on “Universities as Learning Organizations” and “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrated Universities”, where we applied a sign-relational framework to the problems of integrating knowledge across the walls of the intellectual silos that have come to make up the disciplinary architectures of our modern universities. Refs: 1. http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm 2. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350508401082013 Regards, Jon On 3/23/2017 3:31 PM, E Valentine Daniel wrote: > Hi Jon, > Sorry to get back to you as late this on a question as > pertinent as that. I've been on the road. I should have > mentioned "coherence" as, indeed it is, the foundation of > nominalism's theory of truth. As I read Peirce, if find > "concordance" subsuming coherence but exceeds mere coherence > (the 'ungrounded' symbolic) and includes the assent of what > we loosely call signs of nature, predominantly constituted of > indexical signs. This is a preliminary attempt on my part to > make the distinction between mere coherence (achievable nay > and in language alone) and concordance (which includes the > extra-linguistic and meta;inguistic aspects of our work > as well. > val inquiry into inquiry: https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ academia: https://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey oeiswiki: https://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache - 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 the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
