Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Semiotic Argument for the Reality of God

[Matt Faunce]

> On Feb 3, 2019, at 6:49 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> MF:  Yes, in my counter argument I rejected the part of Peirce's 
> generalization that included the whole universe as a sign.
> 
> I thought that you were rejecting the major premise, not the minor premise.  

I was talking about your major premise, For an example of why, I offer the 
following syllogism, then I draw some parallels with yours. Starting with 
"Furthermore" I add a new point to consider.

Every real thing is ephemeral. 
God is a real thing. 
God is ephemeral.
What we call God is a natural thing.

In the major premise, you will probably reject the over generalization. By 
generalizing the subject, "real thing", out to include 'every' real thing, I 
include God as one of the subjects qualified by the predicate. Yes, God was 
introduced in the minor premise, but I designed this syllogism to have its 
major premise over-generalize so to include God as subject to the predicate, 
"is ephemeral". 

Here's your syllogism.

* Every Sign is determined by an Object other than itself.
* The entire Universe is a Sign.
* Therefore, the entire Universe is determined by an Object other than itself.
* And this we call God.

I said, "I rejected the part of Peirce's generalization that included the whole 
universe as a sign." This meant, 

In the major premise, I reject the over generalization. By generalizing the 
subject, "Sign", out to include 'every' sign, you (and presumably Peirce) 
include the Universe as one of the subjects qualified by the predicate. Yes, 
the Universe was introduced in the minor premise, but it appears that you 
subconsciously, but nonetheless gratuitously, designed this syllogism to have 
its major premise over-generalized so to include the Universe as subject to the 
predicate, "is determined by an Object other than itself."


Furthermore, I question your assumption of what "other than" can mean.

Peirce acknowledged two traditional ways of classifying otherness: by a 'real 
distinction' and by a 'formal distinction'. (The term, "real", in 'real 
distinction', is an unfortunate term which really means existent.) For example, 
a single triangle drawn in blue on a page has these two formally distinguished 
elements, blueness and triangleness. These elements are "other than" each other 
only by a formal distinction; there is no 'real distinction' between them.

If you accept the idea that God is real but not existent, then you can't say 
He, as the object of the universe, is distinguished from the universe by a 
"real (existent) distinction". So that leaves the possibility that God and the 
Universe are formal distinctions. Pantheism fits the bill here. You offered 
another explanation, viz., transcendence of all three universes, but doesn't 
that exclude His reality? Or wouldn't 'reality' need to be redefined to 
accommodate this transcendence?

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Semiotic Argument for the Reality of God

[Matt Faunce]

First off, please ignore my second from last paragraph in my previous post, as 
I didn't flesh out my ideas very well.

Further comments below.

> On Feb 3, 2019, at 5:13 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Matt, List:
> 
> Which of the Five Ways of Aquinas includes only premises that "can possibly 
> have a shred of inductive support"?  They are not intended to persuade 
> non-theists to become theists, but rather to demonstrate how certain 
> combinations of other beliefs warrant or even require theism.  As I stated 
> previously, that is also my objective here.
> 
> On the other hand, my first premise is falsifiable, at least in principle.  
> All we need is one counterexample--a single Sign that is not determined by an 
> Object other than itself.  Can you suggest one?  Your proposed 
> revision--"every Sign save the universe-as-a-whole is determined by an Object 
> other than itself"--not only begs the question, but also amounts to special 
> pleading.
> 

The special pleading was specifically this analogy: Just as the character of 
points in the outer borderline of a black dot doesn't follow the same logic 
which determines the character of the points in the interior of the dot, the 
character of the whole collective of all signs, i.e., the whole universe, 
doesn't follow the same the same logic which determines the character of the 
signs interior to the universe.

> The support that I offered for my two premises consisted entirely of quotes 
> from Peirce's writings.  Someone who rejects his definitions of Sign and 
> Object--which require the latter to be external to, independent of, and 
> unaffected by the former--will obviously reject my argumentation out of hand. 
>  Likewise, someone who denies that the entire Universe is a Sign will just as 
> readily dismiss it.
> 

Yes, in my counter argument I rejected the part of Peirce's generalization that 
included the whole universe as a sign. I'm not that wedded to this rejection; I 
just think it should be considered.

> However, in either case, it should be acknowledged that one is deviating from 
> Peirce's own explicitly stated views; i.e., that he was incorrect to affirm 
> one or both of those propositions.  Then the question becomes what 
> ramifications this has for his (and our) understanding of Signs and the 
> Universe.
> 

Yes. I agree.

> Regards,
> 
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
> 
>> On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 3:34 PM Matt Faunce  
>> wrote:
>>> On Feb 3, 2019, at 3:55 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
>>> wrote:
>>> My argument is deductively valid, so in order to disagree with its 
>>> conclusion, one must also disagree with at least one of its premises.  With 
>>> which of those premises do you specifically disagree, and why?  
>> Jon, here's my 2 cents.
>> 
>> I don't think your inclusion of "every" in your major premise, "every Sign 
>> is determined by an Object other than itself," can possibly have a shred of 
>> inductive support. That is, I think your major premise is a mere hypothesis.
>> 
>> I wonder if your major premise is analogous to this: "Every point making a 
>> black dot is black." Here I'm referring to a black area on an otherwise 
>> white plane. According to bivalent logic it is either true or false that a 
>> given point making up the black dot is black—and we'd have to say "true." 
>> But, Peirce discovered tri-valent logic by wondering about the color of the 
>> outer borderline of the dot separating the black dot from the white 
>> surroundings, and determined that, since no point in the line can be half 
>> black and half white, and since you can't butt two points up together (one 
>> point in the white line surrounding the dot and the other point at the outer 
>> black line of the dot abutting the white line) with no room in between, the 
>> borderline's color must be indeterminate. So, the logic by which everyone 
>> thought the major premise, "every point making a black dot is black", was 
>> secure, was in fact not applicable to that outer edge, and therefore the 
>> inclusion of "every" is specious. I think that it may be, by analogy, that 
>> the logic by which you think the major premise, "every Sign is determined by 
>> an Object other than itself", is secure, is likewise not applicable to your 
>> task. I can accept this revision: "every Sign save the universe-as-a-whole 
>> is determined by an Object other than itself," but that's not useful for 
>> your task.
>&g

Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Semiotic Argument for the Reality of God

[Matt Faunce]

On Feb 3, 2019, at 3:55 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:

> My argument is deductively valid, so in order to disagree with its 
> conclusion, one must also disagree with at least one of its premises.  With 
> which of those premises do you specifically disagree, and why?  
> 

Jon, here's my 2 cents.

I don't think your inclusion of "every" in your major premise, "every Sign is 
determined by an Object other than itself," can possibly have a shred of 
inductive support. That is, I think your major premise is a mere hypothesis.

I wonder if your major premise is analogous to this: "Every point making a 
black dot is black." Here I'm referring to a black area on an otherwise white 
plane. According to bivalent logic it is either true or false that a given 
point making up the black dot is black—and we'd have to say "true." But, Peirce 
discovered tri-valent logic by wondering about the color of the outer 
borderline of the dot separating the black dot from the white surroundings, and 
determined that, since no point in the line can be half black and half white, 
and since you can't butt two points up together (one point in the white line 
surrounding the dot and the other point at the outer black line of the dot 
abutting the white line) with no room in between, the borderline's color must 
be indeterminate. So, the logic by which everyone thought the major premise, 
"every point making a black dot is black", was secure, was in fact not 
applicable to that outer edge, and therefore the inclusion of "every" is 
specious. I think that it may be, by analogy, that the logic by which you think 
the major premise, "every Sign is determined by an Object other than itself", 
is secure, is likewise not applicable to your task. I can accept this revision: 
"every Sign save the universe-as-a-whole is determined by an Object other than 
itself," but that's not useful for your task.

The mere possibility that your major premise, "Every Sign is determined by an 
Object other than itself", is analogous to this major premise, "Every point 
making a black dot is black", means that your major premise is a mere 
hypothesis. It's not inductively supported because you can't possibly assign a 
probability to the status of the analogy, for example, "the probably that the 
analogy holds is 25%." It would be like determining the color content of beans 
in a bag after randomly sampling a percentage of beans from all but the bottom 
layer of the bag. The probability that you assign to your induction doesn't 
apply to the contents of the whole bag but only to the area from which you were 
capable of sampling. If you pulled all white beans, the statement, "all the 
beans in the bag are white", must still be treated as a hypothesis. (I'm not 
considering that you have a clue as to how the beans got into the bag, as that 
would be useful information; all that you could include in your induction about 
how the universe got here are further hypotheses.)

A valid syllogism that has a hypothetical major premise has a hypothetical 
conclusion. So your deduction begs the question: Can the reality of God be 
logically supported?

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Recommendation: In email notes, avoid the word 'you'

[Matt Faunce]

John, Edwina, Gary F., and List,

> On Aug 2, 2018, at 3:18 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> EX 2
>> I’m glad to see that you now acknowledge the reality of truth.
> 
> This is a gratuitous insult.  Various subscribers to Peirce-L
> may quibble about the criteria in different circumstances, but
> I'm sure that all of them distinguish T and F.


Below are Edwina's two seemingly contradictory statements.

On Aug 1, 2018, at 6:00 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:

>>> John, list
>>> And from your post - I conclude that not merely 'absolute precision' is 
>>> impossible, but by that notion, absolute truth is impossible since 
>>> 'continuous variation subsists'. ..which means - no final Truth. 
>>> 
>>> Therefore - the agenda of some to find the ultimate or final truth of the 
>>> meaning of Peirce's work which will then stand as The Final Word On Peirce 
>>> - is not possible. Such ultimate finality seems to me to occur only within 
>>> mathematics, pure logic or the natural laws of physics and chemistry - and 
>>> even these realms must be open to questions. Other explorations in 'what is 
>>> reality' - which includes the complex semiosis of Peirce within his 
>>> examination of the triad and the categories are subject to that fact that 
>>> 'absolute precision is impossible'. 
>>> 
>>> This doesn't mean relativism; it doesn't mean nominalism; it means instead 
>>> that our 'intellectual conceptions'   must be offered as open 
>>> interpretations by one person, open to questions and different views and 
>>> not defined as 'the truth'. 
>>> 
>>> Edwina
>>> 

On Aug 2, 2018, at 9:13 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
>>> Gary F, list
>>> 
>>> The issue is NOT whether or not 'the truth' exists as a reality. We can all 
>>> acknowledge that there IS such a final stage. Such an acknowledgment 
>>> therefore denies relativism and nominalism  - which rejects the reality of 
>>> truth - and equally, denies the reality of falseness.
>>> 
>>> And this same acknowledgment of a final Truth also necessarily acknowledges 
>>> that objective reality exists regardless of what anyone thinks or says 
>>> about it. […]
>>> 

Edwina, perhaps there's something, for those of us who have a hard time 
rectifying what appears prima facie as contradictory, to learn by an 
explanation of their compatibility. 

I've wrestled with the import of logic being ultimately grounded in esthetics 
in light of the question of how much deviation of esthetic sense is allowed 
from one person to another especially in different eras. Perhaps there's a 
point in that problem to be addressed.

Perhaps these two meanings of 'truth' were not clearly separated in the 
conversation, whether by the sender or receiver: (1) truth as a fully 
encapsulated description of the object, or (1.5) truth as a description 
encapsulated within a certain understood perimeter, e.g., the perimeter might 
surround what is practical in general, or surround what is practical to the 
matter at hand, and (2) truth as the universal alethic value of a specific 
proposition (however precise or vague the proposition is). 

You capitalized the T of 'truth' sometimes: what does that mean? When you said 
"[the] final truth of the meaning of Peirce's work", does that 'truth' used 
according to (1) or (1.5) above? Did Peirce ever use the term 'truth, in that 
sense? (I don't remember, but I'd have to check.)

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Empirical or inductive logic (was Reality and Theism

[Matt Faunce]

John, I went through Venn's book with a fine-toothed comb. It was, and
still is, a most excellent introduction to empirical logic, but nothing was
groundbreaking. I think of it as Inductive Logic 101, and Peirce's
Illustrations on the Logic of Science as Induction 201.

Peirce mentioned the book somewhere in the Collected Papers, but doesn't
say much. If I recall correctly, he picks at a detail.

Venn's book, The Logic of Chance, was more groundbreaking, but not to
Peirce. Peirce writes a bit more on that book in the Collected Papers.

I've only seen Venn mention Peirce in regard to Peirce's symbolism for
symbolic logic.

It's too bad there wasn't more interaction between the two. To my taste, I
would love to read a logic book with Venn's prose, consummately organized
as he's done with his three logic books, but including Peirce's concepts.
To me, reading Venn is like taking a long pleasant walk through the woods
with my wise grandpa. I'm sure others have complained that the walk could
have been significantly shortened and still have covered the same info.
Peirce complained… something about too much talk about words.

Matt


On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 10:36 AM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote:

> On 5/17/2018 3:34 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
> > John Venn, in Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic. pg. 277-278:
>
> Thanks for citing that passage.  It reminded me of the value of checking
> Peirce's sources and contemporaries in order to understand the context
> of his writings.  I found the book at
>
> https://ia601408.us.archive.org/12/items/principlesempir00venngoog/principlesempir00venngoog.pdf
>
> Venn's book was published in 1889.  It would be interesting to see
> if the topics and ideas had any effect on what Peirce wrote before
> and after that date.  But that period also included a disruption
> in his life that was far more significant:  becoming unemployed.
>
> John
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Reality and Theism (was Skepticism regarding)

[Matt Faunce]

Jerry, I think you're right. At the very least I overly precided two very
vague concept, viz., God and 'Being in general', by relating them to force
and acceleration which can be fairly precided.

CSP: "All the instinctive beliefs, I notice, are vague. The moment they are
precided, the pragmatist will begin to doubt them." (CP 6:499)

As for why Being should be understood as vague, I think John Venn puts it
very well.

John Venn, in Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic. pg. 277-278:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
IV. The next question for discussion concerns the limits of Definition. In
other words, over what range of existences of any kind can we reasonably
ask for definitions, and where and why must we cease to do so? The answer
to this, enquiry turns in great part upon the kind of definition we propose
to offer.

(1) On the old scholastic view the limits assigned were quite definite.
Every class, except the widest, must be included in some genus, and be
marked off from it by a differentia, and must therefore possess the
elements of a complete definition. The point needing explanation here,
however, is as to what must be reckoned as the widest class. Some writers
speak as if this must always have been held to be *Being* in general. This
however was the view of none, or next to none, of the Aristotelian
logicians. They took the Categories as their standard, and looked no
further upwards than to the highest class in a Category. These ten
Categories were regarded as so radically distinct from each other, that it
was a misapplication of the process of abstraction to attempt to bring them
under one single head. Accordingly the upward limit of definition in each
category was reached at the highest class but one in that category. In the
other direction the limit was reached when we got down to *infima species*;
that is, one in which the members were separated by no essential, but only
by accidental characteristics.

One other exception must also be noticed. These Categories were by no means
intended, as sometimes stated, to be a 'list of all nameable things'. On
the contrary there were a number of things which were definitely excluded
from any category, and which were consequently incapable of technical
definition. They were generally summed up as follows:—

"Complexum, Consignificans, Privatio, Fictum, Pars, Deus, Æquivocum,
Transcendens, Ens Rationis, Sunt exclusa decem classibus ista novem."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Matt


On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 1:23 PM Jerry LR Chandler <
jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com> wrote:

> Matt:
>
> On May 17, 2018, at 11:47 AM, Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> in "not 'the physico-psychical universe' itself". Isn't the relation of
> God the Creator to His Creation, viz., the physico-psychical universe, for
> all we know, the same as the relation of force to acceleration?
>
>
> Physical mathematics is wed to geometry is a very very deep way.
>
>
> Thus, I do not see any logical possibility for a relation between a simple
> mathematical concept such as a symbol representing a variable with theology
> in general or a notion of God in particular.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Jerry
>
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Reality and Theism (was Skepticism regarding)

[Matt Faunce]

Jon, are you warranted in saying "not", in "not 'the physico-psychical
universe' itself". Isn't the relation of God the Creator to His Creation,
viz., the physico-psychical universe, for all we know, the same as the
relation of force to acceleration?

CSP: "Whether we ought to say that force *is* an acceleration, or that it
*causes* an acceleration, is a mere question of propriety of language…"

Matt


On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 11:08 AM Jon Alan Schmidt 
wrote:

> Edwina, Stephen R., List:
>
> Robert Lane's new book, *Peirce on Realism and Idealism*, helpfully
> clarifies Peirce's verbal and pragmaticistic definitions of "real," and how
> he carefully distinguished that term from "external."  On Peirce's account,
> the "real" is "that which is independent of what anyone thinks *about it*,"
> while the "external" is "that which is independent of what anyone thinks 
> *about
> anything at all*" (Lane, p. 3).  The upshot is that there are *internal
> realities*, such as the fact that I had a particular dream last night;
> but this by no means entails that *what I dreamed* was real.  On the
> contrary, since the contents of my dream are directly dependent on my
> (unconscious) thoughts *about them*, what I dreamed is most definitely *not
> *real (cf. CP 6.453).
>
> Likewise, according to Peirce a belief is not a reality merely by virtue
> of someone holding it; on the contrary, in order to be real, the *Dynamic
> Object *of the belief must be such as it is independently of anyone *holding
> *that belief.  Hence when Peirce described God as "*Ens necessarium*; in
> my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452),
> he was not merely asserting his (subjective) belief in God; he was
> explicitly claiming that the referent of the vernacular word "God" is
> (objectively) Real--"having Properties, i.e. characters sufficing to
> identify their subject, and possessing these whether they be anywise
> attributed to it by any single man or group of men, or not" (CP 6.453).
> Based on this and other writings, those attributes include necessary Being,
> creative power/activity, omniscience, omnipotence, benignity, transcendence
> (vs. immanence), infinity, supremacy, and infallibility.
>
> Since you mentioned CP 6.502, I think that it is worth quoting at greater
> length.
>
> CSP:  If a pragmaticist is asked what he means by the word "God," he can
> only say that just as long acquaintance with a man of great character may
> deeply influence one's whole manner of conduct, so that a glance at his
> portrait may make a difference, just as almost living with Dr. Johnson
> enabled poor Boswell to write an immortal book and a really sublime book,
> just as long study of the works of Aristotle may make him an acquaintance,
> so if contemplation and study of the physico-psychical universe can imbue a
> man with principles of conduct analogous to the influence of a great man's
> works or conversation, then that analogue of a mind--for it is impossible
> to say that *any *human attribute is *literally *applicable--is what he
> means by "God" ... the discoveries of science, their enabling us to *predict
> *what will be the course of nature, is proof conclusive that, though we
> cannot think any thought of God's, we can catch a fragment of His Thought,
> as it were.
>
>
> Peirce is clearly saying here that by carefully reading the "book of
> nature," we become acquainted with its Author, which is what we mean by
> "God"--not "the physico-psychical universe" itself, but the One who created
> it and is still creating it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 7:09 AM, Edwina Taborsky 
> wrote:
>
>> Stephen, list:
>>
>> This refers to the 'reality' of belief - as outlined by Peirce in his
>> Fixation of Belief.
>>
>> In my view, a belief is - as you say, supposition. It does not function
>> in the realm of facts. However, since, as Peirce also pointed out, our
>> universe operates within the mode of Reason [Thirdness], then - can we
>> presume that all of our beliefs are not merely logical but also - real?
>> That is - because we rationally THINK of something, does this make that
>> belief a reality? The same kind of reality as, for instance, the reality of
>> generals - which are the commonality of the instantiation?
>>
>> I don't think that we can conclude that IF we think of something, THEN,
>> this means that 'something' is real. That would commit the error of
>> 'affirming the consequent'. We can't declare that something is real.
>> BECAUSE we think of it. Therefore - my view is that views of 'the divine'
>> or any name you want to call it - can only be beliefs. And this is what I
>> see as a key problem: definitions. Until we define what we mean by our
>> terms, such as 'God' , 'theism', 

Re: : [PEIRCE-L] The failure of Intelligent Design

[Matt Faunce]

ve of life in "Notes on Positivism."  Consistent with
> pragmaticism, the meaning of our concept of an *infinite *God is to be
> found, not in precise verbal definitions, but "in our religious adoration
> and the consequent effects upon conduct."
>
> I also just came upon this comment from a letter to Francis Russell, dated
> just nine days earlier.
>
> CSP:  Your *summum bonum*, 'life,' is probably at bottom about the same
> as mine, though I view it more concretely. I look upon creation as going on
> and I believe that such vague idea as we can have of the power of creation
> is best identified with the idea of theism. So then the ideal would be to
> be fulfilling our appropriate offices in the work of creation. Or to come
> down to the practical, every man sees some task cut out for him. Let him do
> it, and feel that he is doing what God made him in order that he should do.
> (CP 8.138n4; 1905)
>
>
> Here we see Peirce once again affirming that "the work of creation" is
> ongoing, and yet also that the power involved "is best identified with the
> idea of theism."  I personally find it noteworthy that the last three
> sentences are remarkably consistent with the doctrine of vocation that has
> always been a major point of emphasis in Lutheran theology.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:06 PM, Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 8:25 AM Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> And this is the crux of the debate - the meaning of the terms we use.
>>>
>> Two important elements could  be added to this discussion:
>>
>> (1) Peirce said "the capital principle of theism" is the principle "that
>> whatever is is best." This is in Critique of Positivism, MS. 146, in the
>> first paragraph. So, the fact that logic is normative is a key.
>>
>> I would love to read your interpretation of this first paragraph. Perhaps
>> someone could copy and paste it here—I'd have to type it out on my
>> cellphone. Or, perhaps someone could post a link to it—I couldn't find it
>> on the internet just now, although that's where I found it a couple of
>> years ago.
>>
>> (2) Peirce's justification of the anthropomorphism of nature.
>>
>> Matt
>>
>

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Re: : [PEIRCE-L] The failure of Intelligent Design

[Matt Faunce]

On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 8:25 AM Edwina Taborsky  wrote:

> And this is the crux of the debate - the meaning of the terms we use.
>
Two important elements could  be added to this discussion:

(1) Peirce said "the capital principle of theism" is the principle "that
whatever is is best." This is in Critique of Positivism, MS. 146, in the
first paragraph. So, the fact that logic is normative is a key.

I would love to read your interpretation of this first paragraph. Perhaps
someone could copy and paste it here—I'd have to type it out on my
cellphone. Or, perhaps someone could post a link to it—I couldn't find it
on the internet just now, although that's where I found it a couple of
years ago.

(2) Peirce's justification of the anthropomorphism of nature.

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 9:05 PM Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> I was just looking at my comment about all things changing and therefore
> the change of meanings. I now see it was not a valid criticism of Peirce's
> regulative long-run confirmation of any specific proposition. I'm looking
> now to see if Peirce ever said the general conception of a thing would be
> confirmed in the infinite long run of inquiry. That was what I was
> attacking.
>

I meant 'I'm looking now to see if Peirce ever said a single contained
conception, however broad, of a thing would be confirmed in the infinite
long run...'.

Of course he didn't. I knew that. Geeez. I've gotta sharpen my game.

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Yes, we addressed that in this thread, or, that is, in the thread with the
title that starts off the same.

I was just looking at my comment about all things changing and therefore
the change of meanings. I now see it was not a valid criticism of Peirce's
regulative long-run confirmation of any specific proposition. I'm looking
now to see if Peirce ever said the general conception of a thing would be
confirmed in the infinite long run of inquiry. That was what I was
attacking.

Matt

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 8:20 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote:

> On 3/17/2018 3:59 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
> > what anything is, according to Peirce, accords with the final opinion.
> > So, the two statements make a paradox or not depending on whether
> > alterations of things are ultimately bounded by some overarching law or
> not.
>
> Your suggestion led me to check the original CP 5.555, and I believe
> that Margolis (and many others) misinterpreted what Peirce was trying
> to say.  JM thought that Peirce was asserting the following sentence:
> "the act of knowing a real object alters it."
>
> But in the complete paragraph, it occurs in a dependent clause,
> which I believe Peirce was denying.  Following are the first two
> sentences:
>
> CP 5.555
> > It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
> > waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it.
> > They are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them,
> > it may be amusing to see how I think.
>
> My interpretation:
>
>   1. There are certain mummified pedants.
>
>   2. They have not waked to (become aware of) the so-called "truth"
>  that the the act of knowing a real object alters it.
>
>   3. I, CSP, am one of those mummified pedants.
>
>   4. I, CSP, am amusingly (ironically) stating the implications
>  of that so-called truth.
>
> I started to type in the remainder of that paragraph from a paper copy
> of Vol 5 & 6.  But I did some googling and found a PDF.  See below.
>
> John
> 
>
>  From page 3981 of
>
> https://colorysemiotica.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/peirce-collectedpapers.pdf
>
> 555. It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
> waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
> are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
> amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to this truth is
> due to our not having made the acquaintance of a new analysis that the
> True is simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory. As to this
> doctrine, if it is meant that True and Satisfactory are synonyms, it
> strikes me that it is not so much a doctrine of philosophy as it is
> a new contribution to English lexicography.
>
> 556. But it seems plain that the formula does express a doctrine of
> philosophy, although quite vaguely; so that the assertion does not
> concern two words of our language but, attaching some other meaning
> to the True, makes it to be coextensive with the Satisfactory in
> cognition.
>
> 557. In that case, it is indispensable to say what is meant by the True:
> until this is done the statement has no meaning. I suppose that by the
> True is meant that at which inquiry aims.
>
> 558. It is equally indispensable to ascertain what is meant by
> Satisfactory; but this is by no means so easy. Whatever be meant,
> however, if the doctrine is true at all, it must be necessarily true.
> For it is the very object, conceived in entertaining the purpose of
> the inquiry, that is asserted to have the character of satisfactoriness.
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

John, I think the following idea should be considered, because what
anything is, according to Peirce, accords with the final opinion. So, the
two statements make a paradox or not depending on whether alterations of
things are ultimately bounded by some overarching law or not.

It's one thing for a general thing to change to and fro but stay within
limits over time and maintain an average over the long run. It's another
thing for a general to change without bounds. When all things change
without bounds it makes inquiry into any one thing's meaning increasingly
difficult over the long run, and at some point, practically impossible.
But, even given the theoretical possibility of continued inquiry, the
meaning of any thing over infinite time will have changed to cover an
infinite and unbounded range, so you have to question its pragmatic worth
both because of its unbounded meaning—determined by the final opinion after
considering the whole range of its changes—as well as because its meaning
at some point way down the road will be so impractical to your life right
now. If things change infinitely and unboundedly there could be no
theoretical final opinion with any pragmatic value.

So, I think the Margolis quote I posted earlier might make more sense now.

"I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends in
some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves, however, if
the conception of a fluxive world can complete effectively with the usual
commitments to invariance."

Matt


On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 12:30 PM John F Sowa  wrote:

> I have been traveling and working on a tight deadline, so I haven't
> been able to read, much less comment on the discussions.  But I
> fail to understand why people think that CP 5.555 and CP 5.565 are
> inconsistent.  (Excerpts below)
>
> In CP 5.555, Peirce is talking about "the act of knowing a real object".
>
> In CP 5.565, he's talking about how "minds may represent it to be".
>
> Those are totally different kinds of actions.  Knowing something
> requires some active experiment and observation.  It's a fundamental
> principle of quantum mechanics that any method of observing anything
> invariably alters the thing in some respect, however small it may be.
>
> Furthermore, representing something as something is independent of
> how much we know or think we know about it.  We can know something
> without being able to represent it accurately.  And we can represent
> something x as y without knowing anything about x (or even y).
>
> Note what I just did.  My choice of letters x and y may be used
> to represent anything, but they do not affect anything or depend
> on any knowledge of whatever they may or may not represent.
>
> Peirce, of course, did not know modern quantum mechanics.  But
> he was very familiar with the experimental methods of his day:
> dissecting, measuring, and analyzing plants, animals, rocks,
> people, languages, and social institutions.  That activity
> would change the things that are being observed.
>
> When Peirce went to some remote location to measure gravity,
> his presence had no effect on the value that he could detect.
> But just disturbing one grain of sand had some effect on gravity.
>
> As another example, Peirce's act of analyzing how a word is used
> and publishing a definition did not change the meaning as intended
> by previous speakers.  But it could change the way future readers
> and speakers might understand and use it.
>
> John
> 
>
> Joseph Margolis:
> > Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
> > well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between
> > truth and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike
> > me as required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:
>
> > the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
> >
> > Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is
> > as it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection
> > of minds may represent it to be. (5.565)
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Jon, Edwina, and List,

If each of us has a connection to the infinite world, in that world, for
every one truth there are infinite falsehoods. We have a connection to
those falsehoods too. So, given infinity, we search for what's true despite
the fact that 1/infinity=zero. If the world isn't infinite, but some
astronomical number, the problem of scientific progress isn't that
good-luck guesses are impossible but that these guesses would still only
yield an exceedingly slower rate of discovery than what we witness.

Here's Peirce on the problem:

"It is evident that unless man had some inward light tending to make his
guesses on these subjects much more often true than they would be by mere
chance, the human race would long ago have been extirpated for its utter
incapacity in the struggles for existence; or if some protection had kept
it continually multiplying, the time from the tertiary epoch to our own
would be altogether too short to expect that the human race could yet have
made its first happy guess in any science."

He continues with this explanation:

"The mind of man has been formed under the action of the laws of nature,
and therefore it is not so very surprising to find that its constitution is
such that, when we can get rid of caprices, idiosyncrasies, and other
perturbations, its thoughts naturally show a tendency to agree with the
laws of nature."

So, we have an "inward light" due to our minds having been "formed under
the action of the laws of nature."

Does synechism have a feature, called "inward light", which favors
connections to true propositions over false propositions? It must, but how
can that be explained?

Is this problematic? Some men *seem* to have a brighter light than others:

"But it is one thing to say that the human mind has a sufficient magnetic
turning toward the truth to cause the right guess to be made in the course
of centuries during which a hundred good guesses have been unceasingly
occupied in endeavoring to make such a guess, and a far different thing to
say that the first guess that may happen to possess Tom, Dick, or Harry has
any appreciably greater probability of being true than false."

Formation "under the action of the laws of nature" doesn't explain why this
light seems brighter in some men than in others. Peirce explains (or
suggests?) differences in abductive abilities by the differences of their
methods:

"It is necessary to remember that even those unparalleled intelligences
would certainly not have guessed right if they had not all possessed a
great art of so subdividing their guesses as to give to each one almost the
character of self-evidence."

However, recent research, led by Zach Hambrick, has been showing that
people are not equally endowed; method and practice do not explain the
ability gap. I find this problematic for Peirce's explanation of "inward
light."

It still seems like magic to me, especially as compared with how
contructivism in a 'robust relative' philosophy explains how discovery of
truths is possible, viz., that people discover only what people have
created (including artifacts, or spandrels, i.e., consequences of what
people created), and each discovery was merely of what is most useful from
the lot which was actually searched, rather than each discovery being what
is eternally true and found from searching the whole world: the problem for
Margolis isn't <1/infinity> or <1/astronomical-number>, but it's  where Tyche isn't such
a devil.

All Peirce quotes are from MS 692.

Matt


On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 2:31 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Matt, List:
>
> There is nothing "magical" about the power of retroduction in Peirce's
> philosophy.  It is a direct result of the *continuity *of all things
> (synechism), which entails that there is no "correspondence gap" between
> Reality and Mind, including human minds.  While Reality is indeed
> independent of what you or I or any *discrete* collection of *individual 
> *minds
> may think about it, it is not independent of thought *in general*.  This
> is precisely the basis for the regulative hope that the final opinion at
> the end of *infinite *inquiry--the *ultimate *Interpretant of *every *
> Sign--*would *perfectly conform to Reality, and thus constitute the
> perfect (or absolute) Truth.  In the meantime, any or all of our beliefs
> may turn out to be mistaken--that is the principle of fallibilism--but we
> have no good reason to doubt any one of them in particular, unless and
> until we are confronted by the "outward clash" of experience with an
> unpleasant surprise that forces us to reconsider it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmi

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina,

In Margolis's philosophy, habits are bound to eventually be overcome by the
flux of life. So if he's right, everything about Margolis's own philosophy
will eventually pass into irrelevance except the rule that flux > habit.
(Flux is greater than habit.) That rule looks to me to be his achilles
heel, because it needs to stay true; whereas Peirce's achilles heel is the
magical power of abduction to bridge the correspondence gap between a
reality that's independent of finite minds and the finite minds that
inquire into reality.

"Insufferably arrogant" was a bit of an exaggeration, as I'm willing to
suffer through reading his arrogant comments in order to learn what I can.

Matt


On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:41 AM Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:

> Matt, list:
>
> You wrote:
> "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
> irrelevance."
>
> I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as 'insufferably
> arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely relative to the time
> - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant?
>
> Edwina Taborsky
>
>
> On Thu 15/03/18 9:39 PM , Matt Faunce matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com sent:
>
> Yeah. Apparently Nathan Houser pointed that CP 5.555 mistake, because
> Margolis apologized for it in Rethinking Peirce's Fallibilism. (bottom of
> pg. 243 into the top of pg. 244 of Transactions, vol. 43, no. 2. from 2007.)
>
> Anyway, the only reason I brought up Margolis was as an example of an
> equal competitor to Peirce's realism; and that point was merely to
> highlight that fact that given the fact that empirical support for Peirce's
> realism is so-far very weak, the thing that kept Peirce so passionately
> driven to defending it must have been a belief in some rationalistic
> support for it. The reason I brought that up was because of his quip
> scoffing at rationalism in the same breath as he scoffed political/social
> views that he opposed:
>
> Peirce: "Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
> necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and folly in
> politics can go no further than English liberalism. The people ought to be
> enslaved..."
>
> Although Margolis has his moments of arrogance, e.g., calling Peirce's
> experiment of dropping the stone "comical", Joseph Margolis much more often
> strikes me as more humble than Peirce. For example, at the end a short
> overview of one of his books, an article called "Joseph Margolis on the
> Arts and the Definition of the Human", he writes this:
>
> "I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends in
> some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves, however, if
> the conception of a fluxive world can complete effectively with the usual
> commitments to invariance."
>
> He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
> irrelevance.
>
> I still have yet to read Parker and Hausman. I'll keep in mind your point
> about Savan.
>
> Matt
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:10 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Matt, List:
>>
>> Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to access
>> them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's Fallibilism."  Having
>> just finished reading the latter, I am afraid that it includes yet another
>> clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in fact, a blatant misrepresentation.
>>
>> JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
>> well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between truth
>> and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike me as
>> required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:
>>
>> the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
>>
>> Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it
>> is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may
>> represent it to be. (5.565)
>>
>>
>> It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed Peirce's
>> texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they are, are as
>> characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely incompatible as
>> they seem to be. (p. 549)
>>
>>
>> I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Typo correction:

"I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends in
> some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves, however, if
> the conception of a fluxive world can complete effectively with the usual
> commitments to invariance."
>

"compete"; not 'complete'.

>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

f fallibilism
> fails--and therefore his realism and concept of 3ns also fail--because his
> metaphysics of inquiry fails.  Incredibly, he even *defines *the latter
> in a way that misleadingly invokes *both *of the quotes.
>
> JM:  Thus:  the "real" is altered by action, in the sense of finite human
> life; but the "real" is, also, what it is "irrespectively of any mind,"
> *at* the ideal limit of infinite inquiry. (p. 554)
>
>
> Peirce obviously meant any *individual *mind in CP 5.565, since he
> appended "any definite collection of minds."  Such a formulation is
> consistent with others going all the way back to his review of Fraser on
> Berkeley (CP 8.12; 1871), "The Logic of 1873" (CP 7.336), and "How to Make
> Our Ideas Clear" (CP 5.408; 1878).  In trying to drive a wedge between
> truth as the achievable goal of finite inquiry and Truth as a regulative
> hope, Margolis seems to make the same mistake that Kelly Parker attributed
> to David Savan in *The Continuity of Peirce's Thought*.
>
> KP:  Savan says that this position (let us call it *extreme semiotic
> realism*) "is of no interest to anyone who is in pursuit of
> understanding.  For such a realist, whatever [apparent] knowledge and
> understanding human inquiry may attain, the truth may quite possibly be
> otherwise.  Such a possibility can not be the goal or presupposition of
> science."  I argue that, unsettling as the position may be, Peirce's
> logical realism implies just this form of extreme semiotic realism. (pp.
> 219-220)
>
> KP:  Peirce insisted that *at* the end of inquiry, all information about
> the world would be represented in the perfect and all-encompassing
> *entelechy*.  Short of that perfect state of information, though, we may
> well be ignorant or mistaken about any given character of existence ...
> Savan is correct to say that this ontology leaves the door wide open for
> all our present readings of the book of nature to be exposed as mistaken
> ... This is hardly a position of "no interest" to one who pursues
> understanding, however:  it is a direct consequence of the principle of
> fallibilism. (pp. 221-222)
>
>
> Frankly, at this point I am not inclined to put much stock in *anything *that
> Margolis has to say about realism in general, or (especially) Peirce's
> extreme semiotic realism in particular.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon S.
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Jon,
>>
>> I now see I did send that earlier post just to you. Oops, (I'm using a
>> new email app.) Thanks for posting the whole conversation.
>>
>> I'll have to read those two articles, The Telos of Peirce's Realism, and
>> Contra Margolis' Peircean Constructivism. I didn't know about them, so
>> thanks for mentioning them. The little bit you quoted wasn't enough for me.
>> Hopefully they're on Jstor.
>>
>> Matt
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 9:34 AM Jon Alan Schmidt <
>> jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Matt, List:
>>>
>>> I replied to you off-List only because you replied to me off-List
>>> first--you sent the message below that begins, "Thanks for the quote, Jon,"
>>> only to me.  Since you said that you would prefer to have this conversation
>>> on-List, and my approach is the same as yours--"I would welcome, in fact I
>>> hope for, corrections, criticisms, or expansions of what I write"--I am now
>>> posting our entire exchange.
>>>
>>> Last night, I read Margolis's 1993 *Transactions* article, "The Passing
>>> of Peirce's Realism," as well as the 1994 replies by Carl Hausman and
>>> Douglas Anderson, "The Telos of Peirce's Realism:  Some Comments on
>>> Margolis's 'The Passing of Peirce's Realism'," and Kelley J. Wells, "Contra
>>> Margolis' Peircean Constructivism:  A Peircean Pragmatic 'Logos'."  I found
>>> the latter two persuasive that Margolis fundamentally misinterprets Peirce,
>>> and it sounds like you may be making the same mistake by imposing on him a
>>> foundationalist criterion for metaphysics that he clearly rejected.
>>>
>>> CH:  According to the evolutionism affirmed by Peirce, then, there is
>>> no independent, pre-established structured reality. Thus, what is commonly
>>> said to be the Peircean notion of a convergence of thought toward a final,
>>> true opinion is not toward a pre-fixed structure to be matched, but toward
>>> a reality that is dynamic. And as this reality constrains inqu

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Jon,

I now see I did send that earlier post just to you. Oops, (I'm using a new
email app.) Thanks for posting the whole conversation.

I'll have to read those two articles, The Telos of Peirce's Realism, and
Contra Margolis' Peircean Constructivism. I didn't know about them, so
thanks for mentioning them. The little bit you quoted wasn't enough for me.
Hopefully they're on Jstor.

Matt


On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 9:34 AM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Matt, List:
>
> I replied to you off-List only because you replied to me off-List
> first--you sent the message below that begins, "Thanks for the quote, Jon,"
> only to me.  Since you said that you would prefer to have this conversation
> on-List, and my approach is the same as yours--"I would welcome, in fact I
> hope for, corrections, criticisms, or expansions of what I write"--I am now
> posting our entire exchange.
>
> Last night, I read Margolis's 1993 *Transactions* article, "The Passing
> of Peirce's Realism," as well as the 1994 replies by Carl Hausman and
> Douglas Anderson, "The Telos of Peirce's Realism:  Some Comments on
> Margolis's 'The Passing of Peirce's Realism'," and Kelley J. Wells, "Contra
> Margolis' Peircean Constructivism:  A Peircean Pragmatic 'Logos'."  I found
> the latter two persuasive that Margolis fundamentally misinterprets Peirce,
> and it sounds like you may be making the same mistake by imposing on him a
> foundationalist criterion for metaphysics that he clearly rejected.
>
> CH:  According to the evolutionism affirmed by Peirce, then, there is
> no independent, pre-established structured reality. Thus, what is commonly
> said to be the Peircean notion of a convergence of thought toward a final,
> true opinion is not toward a pre-fixed structure to be matched, but toward
> a reality that is dynamic. And as this reality constrains inquiry, it
> suggests the hypothesis that it is developmental. Experience presents
> inquiry with laws or regularities, many of which tend to be rigid while at
> the same time undergoing divergences sometimes followed by the origination
> of new regularities, the general drift seeming to be toward what *would
> be* a [*sic*] in final harmony if inquiry were to continue into the
> infinite future. (p. 833)
>
>
> KJW:  Since we cannot escape some sort of ontological commitment either by
> doubting or not doubting, Peirce argues that we are *pragmatically
> justified* in believing that there exists *independently* "some *active
> general principle*" whose discontinuance would be a cause for surprise
> ... The nub of the matter is that, for Peirce, scholastic realism is never
> justified by an appeal to an indubitable metaphysical insight, but by an
> appeal to pragmatic likelihood. Furthermore, Peirce is saying not only
> pragmatically speaking we are all realists, but also that the
> realism/anti-realism debate should be recast. The dispute between the
> realist and the nonrealist must be determined exclusively on a pragmatic
> basis. Peirce denies the certainty of *both* positive and negative
> metaphysical insights regarding the real. Within the context of pragmatism
> and Critical Common-Sensism, he argues that there exists good grounds for a
> belief in the independent reality of universal generals. (p. 844)
>
>
> Of course, Peirce would have no problem acknowledging that both the
> hypothesis that reality is developmental and the pragmatically justified
> belief in the independent reality of universal generals are eminently
> fallible.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon S.
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 12:15 AM, Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Jon,
>>
>> (I just realized you sent that response just to me. I actually prefer to
>> keep all Peirce-related stuff on the list because I would welcome, in fact
>> I hope for, corrections, criticisms, or expansions of what I write. But, I
>> don't want to post anything you wrote exclusively to me to the list, so
>> this is to just you.)
>>
>> Here's a short definition of 'rationalism' from James's article, Hegel
>> and his Method:
>>
>> "Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the way of thinking that
>> methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so Hegel here is rationalistic
>> through and through. The only whole by which all contradictions are
>> reconciled is for him the absolute whole of wholes, the all-inclusive
>> reason to which Hegel gave the name of the absolute Idea…"
>>
>> Rationalism, which subordinates parts to wholes, is contrasted with
>> Empiricism, which subordinates wholes to parts.
>>
>> In my posts yesterday,

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 6:54 PM Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> Eugene, Edwina, and list,
>
> First, Hi to everyone! I've missed a lot of the conversations in the past
> year or so, but the concept of 'perfect sign' in the other thread caught my
> attention and pulled me in for the moment. Here are my thoughts on what is
> an opinion of science and what isn't.
>
> The state which a belief can, at any given moment, best be justified is
> represented by its point on the parabola branch as the branch is
> approaching its asymptote. The justification of a proclamation of science
> is represented by its place on the parabola branch, and the truth is
> represented by the asymptote. Perturbations that move an inquirer or group
> of inquirers away from the truth are caused by three things, (1) purposeful
> deception, (2) appeasement of a psychological state, and (3) pure bad luck.
> I call errors that are due to (3) pure bad luck 'scientific errors',
> whereas I don't call errors that are due to (1) and (2) 'errors of science'.
>
> Is this not reasonable?
>
> Here's my assessment and opinion of opinions on such overarching and
> complex subjects as social order:
>
> It's my opinion that Peirce's conservative social beliefs, which were
> quoted earlier in this thread, were a perturbation, and were not due to bad
> luck that can possibly come from random sampling or repeated honest errors
> of observation. (By 'honest' I mean that due scientific rigor was
> observed.) Peirce's social beliefs, at best (giving him the benefit of the
> doubt), logically followed from weakly tested Major Premises which he
> inherited from his father and/or got from his environment and/or got from
> appeasing a psychological state. It's my opinion that his beliefs were
> wrong; but I think I'm well justified in say he's guilty of the rationalism
> that he so despised; so I don't believe he was luckily right even though
> his methods were exceedingly weak.
>
> It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for one man or small group of
> men (in our current or any past state of biological and social evolution)
> to strongly test empirical premises (and assumptions) purportedly
> supporting the validity of a given overarching social order.
>

I meant 'empirically test premises', not "test empirical premises." Here's
the corrected sentence, followed by a clearer explanation for one part of
my charge of rationalism.

It's practically impossible for one man or small group of men (in our
current or any past state of biological and social evolution) to strongly
test at least one (but maybe both) of the major-premises that purportedly
supports the claim that a given overarching social order is better than
another proposed social order.

Since we can't run parallel social experiments and assess the results of
each order, we have to test the character of the proposed (imaginary)
social order with analogies which are in turn supported with assumptions.
Those analogies, at this relatively early stage in our inquiry, are weak.
The conclusion of this stands as the following premise: 'the proposed
social order would have the character x'. Then the current social order,
whose character was better tested, (although I question the strength of the
conclusion by the scientific community's consensus, if there is a
consensus), is compared to the imaginary one. In as much as even half of
the comparison is based on weak test results is as much as the logic of the
comparison is rationalistic.


Never mind 'difficult'; it's practically impossible. So, my assessment of
> Peirce having come to the wrong conclusions about these matters are also
> due to despicable rationalism. And so are everyone else's—despicable
> rationalism is all we have to go on.
>
> I accuse Peirce of dismissing Plato's idea of 'second-best (political)
> state' in favor of his (Peirce's) personal conception of 'best state'. And,
> I'm sure, he'd accuse me of advocating a third-or-worse-best. C'est la vie;
> it's all based on weakly tested hypotheses.
>
> The following is the Major Premise supporting my belief in universal
> democracy.
>
> Just like a hive of bees has a collective intelligence, humans do too; and
> this is the type of intelligence that will lead us toward the right social
> order in the long run, that is, if the leveraging of elite individual will
> from elite individual intelligence doesn't drive the human race into
> extinction.
>
> Matt
>
>

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 2:57 PM Edwina Taborsky  wrote:

1] When scientists such as Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s bulldog” T.
> H. Huxley and noted for coining the term “the new synthesis” in mid-20th
> century genetics called for “the lower strata” to be denied “too easy
> access” to hospitals to reduce reproduction, and stated that “long
> unemployment should be a ground for sterilization,” it was the voice of
> actually existing science speaking, just as it was when noted ethologist
> and Nazi Konrad Lorenz made similar statements in 1941, after Nazi “medical
> murders” under the aegis of eugenics had begun. Admitting ways in which
> wrongheaded and potentially evil ideas can operate in the practices of
> science and technology is, to my way of thinking, a means of acknowledging
> the fallibility and potentials of these practices for self-correction.
>
> EDWINA: I consider that you making the critical thinking errors of
> generalization as well as 'post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Because SOME
> individuals involved in science had certain opinions about non-scientific
> topics, does not mean that ALL scientists feel that way nor does it mean
> that science CAUSES these beliefs. These beliefs remain individual and
> psychological; i.e., specific to the individual and have absolutely  nothing
> to do with science.
>
>

Eugene, Edwina, and list,

First, Hi to everyone! I've missed a lot of the conversations in the past
year or so, but the concept of 'perfect sign' in the other thread caught my
attention and pulled me in for the moment. Here are my thoughts on what is
an opinion of science and what isn't.

The state which a belief can, at any given moment, best be justified is
represented by its point on the parabola branch as the branch is
approaching its asymptote. The justification of a proclamation of science
is represented by its place on the parabola branch, and the truth is
represented by the asymptote. Perturbations that move an inquirer or group
of inquirers away from the truth are caused by three things, (1) purposeful
deception, (2) appeasement of a psychological state, and (3) pure bad luck.
I call errors that are due to (3) pure bad luck 'scientific errors',
whereas I don't call errors that are due to (1) and (2) 'errors of science'.

Is this not reasonable?

Here's my assessment and opinion of opinions on such overarching and
complex subjects as social order:

It's my opinion that Peirce's conservative social beliefs, which were
quoted earlier in this thread, were a perturbation, and were not due to bad
luck that can possibly come from random sampling or repeated honest errors
of observation. (By 'honest' I mean that due scientific rigor was
observed.) Peirce's social beliefs, at best (giving him the benefit of the
doubt), logically followed from weakly tested Major Premises which he
inherited from his father and/or got from his environment and/or got from
appeasing a psychological state. It's my opinion that his beliefs were
wrong; but I think I'm well justified in say he's guilty of the rationalism
that he so despised; so I don't believe he was luckily right even though
his methods were exceedingly weak.

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for one man or small group of
men (in our current or any past state of biological and social evolution)
to strongly test empirical premises (and assumptions) purportedly
supporting the validity of a given overarching social order. Never mind
'difficult'; it's practically impossible. So, my assessment of Peirce
having come to the wrong conclusions about these matters are also due to
despicable rationalism. And so are everyone else's—despicable rationalism
is all we have to go on.

I accuse Peirce of dismissing Plato's idea of 'second-best (political)
state' in favor of his (Peirce's) personal conception of 'best state'. And,
I'm sure, he'd accuse me of advocating a third-or-worse-best. C'est la vie;
it's all based on weakly tested hypotheses.

The following is the Major Premise supporting my belief in universal
democracy.

Just like a hive of bees has a collective intelligence, humans do too; and
this is the type of intelligence that will lead us toward the right social
order in the long run, that is, if the leveraging of elite individual will
from elite individual intelligence doesn't drive the human race into
extinction.

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

Peirce's "there were" means 'existent'. In the past, here, I've spoken 
of the "potential interpretant". In the hypothetical science that 
mathematics is, a pencil-lead streak forming a (rough but acceptable) 
circle signifies the hypothetical object of a perfect circle. In these 
cases the signs are still only signs within their triad; it's just that 
the object or interpretant doesn't need to be existent.


Matt

On 12/29/15 3:14 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

On 12/29/15 2:56 PM, Sungchul Ji wrote:

Jon A, List,

Here is one quotation of Pierce cited in Charles Peirce's Guess at 
the Riddle (K. Sheriff, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1994):


"A sinsign may be index or icon.  As index it is 'a sign which would, 
at once,  (122915-1)
lose the chracter wich makes it a sign if its object were removed, 
but would

not lose that character if there were no interpretant."

That's in CP 2.304

"A sign is either an icon, an index, or a symbol. An icon is a
sign which would possess the character which renders it
significant, even though its object had no existence; such as a
lead-pencil streak as representing a geometrical line. An index is
a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a
sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character
if there were no interpretant. Such, for instance, is a piece of
mould with a bullet-hole in it as sign of a shot; for without the
shot there would have been no hole; but there is a hole there,
whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to a shot or not. A
symbol is a sign which would lose the character which renders it a
sign if there were no interpretant. Such is any utterance of
speech which signifies what it does only by virtue of its being
understood to have that signification."

calvert Frome calvert Frome


So it seems to me that (122915-1) establishes the concept of a 
*dyadic sign*.


Therefore,

"Not all signs are triadic." (122915-2)

as some Peirceans on this list seem to believe.

All the best.

Sung

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

Jon S, this is similar to a problem I had in another thread where Clark 
Gobel said that the long-run is a regulative principle that doesn't need 
to be actualized. I still have a problem with it. I need to spend some 
time working on fleshing out a concise explanation of the problem I see.


Matt

On 12/29/15 6:08 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:

Matt, List:

The "annihilation" of a particular dynamical (actual) interpretant 
does not negate the reality of the corresponding final/normal 
(potential) interpretant, does it?  This reminds me of Peirce's 
example of whether a diamond that is never actually scratched can be 
properly predicated as hard--something on which he changed his mind 
over time, ultimately deciding that what matters is what WOULD 
happen IF it were scratched.  The interpretant idea WOULD be 
discoverable under different circumstances--namely, if the individual 
consciousness in which it was determined were NOT annihilated.


Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt 
<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>


On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com 
<mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Edwina, List,

OK. I see that Peirce said it, but how can believing that an
interpretant can be annihilated not block the way of inquiry. See
CP. 1.138:

"The second bar which philosophers often set up across the
roadway of inquiry lies in maintaining that this, that, and
the other never can be known. When Auguste Comte was pressed
to specify any matter of positive fact to the knowledge of
which no man could by any possibility attain, he instanced the
knowledge of the chemical composition of the fixed stars; and
you may see his answer set down in the Philosophie positive.^1
But the ink was scarcely dry upon the printed page before the
spectroscope was discovered..."

With this: "the sign is thereby rendered imperfect, at least." I
wonder what "at least" means, i.e., what more might the sign be
rendered. An illusion? If the interpretant, as an object of
inquiry, is rendered "absolutely undiscoverable" then there can be
no potential final opinion of it, therefore it was never real.

What year was CP 1.303 written?

Matt

On 12/29/15 4:24 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Exactly, Matt. As Peirce said - the interpretant doesn't need to
be existent NOW, for it could be existent in the future - that
potential interpretant to which you refer. BUT - "if the series
of successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby
rendered imperfect, at least." 2.303. And he continues, "If, an
interpretant idea having been determined in an individual
consciousness, it determines no outward sign, but that
consciousness becomes annihilated, or otherwise loses all memory
or other significant effect of the sign, it becomes absolutely
undiscoverable that there ever was such an idea in that
consciousness..." 2.303.
The point is, that without the interpretant, now or in the
future, the semiosic triad is 'empty' and thus - is no longer a sign.
Edwina





--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity.

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the 
number of terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual 
symbols as units of the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the 
equation) for the message to be communicated.  This is NOT the usual 
linear process extracting meaning of a written or spoken sentence.


If I've learned one thing from learning a new philosophy, with its new 
assumptions, it's that I, for one, won't get anywhere reading it 
linearly. Since the philosopher has to explain a new sphere of thought 
via a string of words, it takes me at least two readings, but usually a 
lot more, often reading the first chapter of several other books, 
articles on Jstor, various online encyclopedia entries, etc., just to 
make any good sense of the first chapter of the book I first picked up. 
It's like making a sculpture, the first reading gives me a rough view of 
the overall scope and shape. The next few passes fill in many details. 
Another pass for the refinement. Etc. Only after I've grasped the 
overall concept of a new philosophy can I can jump to the right 
conclusions about the meanings (connotations) of the terms and phrases 
as they're strung along.


--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and 
the things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over 
time; the development of a language to the point where it can 
articulate scientific terminology is not a development shared by every 
human language.


Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite from 
two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to search for 
the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 'passkey'.) Edward 
Vajda writes


" Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."

"Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age technology 
speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken in the most 
highly industrialized society. _There are no primitive languages_.  
Virtually no linguist today would disagree with this statement."


--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the meaning of unity.

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/14/15 8:00 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:

List,

The argument given in Matt's email below is problematic.  I will raise 
a question and make a brief and casual effort to place a Peircian 
interpretation on symbolic communication in terms of current 
scientific terminology.


While human language is a very powerful source of human communication, 
is it complete with regard to expressibility of information?


I give two examples of what I consider to be the incompleteness of 
utterances as the sole source of the meaning of information.


One idea is that music, science, and mathematics were only able to be 
born because language enabled them. For this reason Joseph Margolis 
calls these non-language sign systems /lingual/. That is, lingual 
systems are natural extensions of language by encultured people.


Matt

1. Mathematical equations can be read as sentences, but when the 
number of terms is large, the reader must evaluate the individual 
symbols as units of the whole and as the unity (wholeness of the 
equation) for the message to be communicated.  This is NOT the usual 
linear process extracting meaning of a written or spoken sentence.


2. A chemical icon (rheme) is even more difficult to interpret. The 
message emerges from a perception of its components, its arrangement 
of components and often, it role in the chemistry of life such as 
"DNA".  It can requires a huge number of words (the name of each 
symbol) and ALL of the individual relations among them (bonding 
pattern) but also A QUANTITATIVE EXACT NAME for the specific entity.


These two examples go to the very root of understanding the unity of 
human communication among two academic units - mathematics and 
chemistry. Musical symbols, as units, are less exact as the artist 
must interpret them, thereby adding information during a performance.


Human communication CAN requires icons (in the traditional sense) with 
a countable number of terms (indices) that are visualizable  and 
interpretable within the logical rules (legisigns) that can be formed 
from multiple premises (rhemata) and multiple possible arrangements 
(dicisigns) such that arguments can be made that are consistent with 
the individual members of a category (sinsigns), their proper 
attributes (qualisigns), and their common symbols in a symbol system 
designed for that purpose.


 (The preceding sentence strives to integrate the nine rather 
arbitrary terms of CSP into a meaningful thought.)


The two examples above are both examples of the perplexity of 
artificial symbol systems that put exact and extreme requirements on 
the meaning of expressibility and completeness, the consistency of 
arguments and the logical soundness for the meaning of signs and symbols.


Cheers

Jerry




On Dec 14, 2015, at 4:08 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:


On 12/13/15 6:24 PM, Franklin Ransom wrote:
Human languages differ with respect to the rules of construction and 
the things that can be said, and they also develop and evolve over 
time; the development of a language to the point where it can 
articulate scientific terminology is not a development shared by 
every human language.


Can you give your source for this? I remember reading the opposite 
from two different linguists. Michael Shapiro is one. (I'd have to 
search for the exact statements, but the keyword I'd use is 
'passkey'.) Edward Vajda writes


" Human language is unlimited in its expressive capacity."

"Today, it is quite obvious that people living with Stone Age 
technology speak languages as complex and versatile as those spoken 
in the most highly industrialized society. _There are no primitive 
languages_.  Virtually no linguist today would disagree with this 
statement."


--
Matt



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/13/15 9:38 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote:


Matt wrote:

EP2.227: "perceptual judgments contain general elements," whereas
percepts don't. So, if you have a general type (legisign) in mind
then you have a perceptual judgment. So, smoke, as understood as
being a type, e.g., relating to other instances of smoke, is a
perceptual judgment.


Smoke, qua type, is not a perceptual judgment. A perceptual judgment 
is not the general element, but includes the general as its predicate.


I meant that the token of a type 'smoke' is a perceptual judgment. I 
hoped that would've been understood from the context, e.g., my clause 
"relating to /other instances/ of smoke," as an instance is a token, not 
a generality. As usual, I could've written it better. Then I continued 
to give my argument for the fact that there can be no token in 
perception without that token being of a type, concluding with "If this 
is correct then all perceptual judgments are dicisigns."Let me add 
bracketed insertions to my first paragraph to clarify what I meant:


 EP2.227: "perceptual judgments contain general elements," whereas 
percepts don't. So, if you have a general type (legisign) in mind then 
you have a perceptual judgment. So, [the token of] smoke [in your mind], 
as understood as being a type, e.g., relating to other instances of 
smoke, is a perceptual judgment.


I continued...


Any dichotomy made within a percept is a perceptual judgment. One
very basic dichotomy is 'me and not me'. The judgment 'x is not
me' is judging x to be the general class of 'not me'. The judgment
'x is not y' is to generalize x by thinking it belongs to the
general class of not y.  For example, let's say 'x is not y' is
'the dark part* of my percept is different from the light part';
this is a way of typifying x, the dark side, as 'not y', 'not of
the same type as the light part.'

In merely seperating the tone of dark from the tone of light, the
tone of dark becomes a token of the type 'not the tone of light'.
I can't imagine there can be a token that's not also a type of
this most basic kind. If this is correct then all perceptual
judgments are dicisigns.

Your question about how the categories fit into this analysis is a
good one.

* Here I mean the word 'dark' as only indicating the mere tone
(qualisign), i.e., before 'dark' is typified with other instances
of dark. Similarly, 'x is not y' etc., need not be verbalized
propositions. It seems to me that this basic level of dicisign
precedes the sinsign, in that 'x', 'the dark tone' only comes as a
result of the distinction (this basic level generalization)


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

Franklin, Peircers,

Here a distinction that I find helpful: 

EP2.227: "perceptual judgments contain general elements," whereas percepts 
don't. So, if you have a general type (legisign) in mind then you have a 
perceptual judgment. So, smoke, as understood as being a type, e.g., relating 
to other instances of smoke, is a perceptual judgment. 

Any dichotomy made within a percept is a perceptual judgment. One very basic 
dichotomy is 'me and not me'. The judgment 'x is not me' is judging x to be the 
general class of 'not me'. The judgment 'x is not y' is to generalize x by 
thinking it belongs to the general class of not y.  For example, let's say 'x 
is not y' is 'the dark part* of my percept is different from the light part'; 
this is a way of typifying x, the dark side, as 'not y', 'not of the same type 
as the light part.'

In merely seperating the tone of dark from the tone of light, the tone of dark 
becomes a token of the type 'not the tone of light'. I can't imagine there can 
be a token that's not also a type of this most basic kind. If this is correct 
then all perceptual judgments are dicisigns.  

Your question about how the categories fit into this analysis is a good one.

* Here I mean the word 'dark' as only indicating the mere tone (qualisign), 
i.e., before 'dark' is typified with other instances of dark. Similarly, 'x is 
not y' etc., need not be verbalized propositions. It seems to me that this 
basic level of dicisign precedes the sinsign, in that 'x', 'the dark tone' only 
come as a result of the distinction (this basic level generalization).

Matt


On Dec 12, 2015, at 11:35 AM, Franklin Ransom  
wrote:

> Gary F,
> 
> Just to clarify, do the categories still apply to a percept when it is 
> considered as a singular phenomenon?
> 
> I noticed that you say the verbal expression of the perceptual judgment is a 
> dicisign, but you do not say that the perceptual judgment is a dicisign. Is 
> it your position that the perceptual judgment is not a dicisign?
> 
> -- Franklin
> 
> --
> 
>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 10:36 AM,  wrote:
>> Franklin, Jeff,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Just to clarify, a percept is a singular phenomenon: X appears. To perceive 
>> X as smoke is a perceptual judgment. The verbal expression of that judgment, 
>> “That is smoke,” is indeed a dicisign (proposition), uniting its subject 
>> (that) with a predicate (__ is smoke), which like all predicates is a 
>> general term (rhematic symbol). If you infer the presence of fire from the 
>> smoke (i.e. perceive the smoke as a sign), then you have an argument 
>> (whether it is expressed verbally or not).
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> I’m going to be offline for about a week now, so you may have to continue 
>> the thread without me for awhile ...
>> 
> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/10/15 4:06 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
Or we may recognize that we simply don’t have any confident way at 
this time of conducting that sort of analysis.


I don't see a way out.

Induction can't work when there are potentially infinite samples to be 
drawn, and the long-run opens up the pool of potential samples to 
infinity. Maybe Peirce's phenomenology limits the potential samples at 
any given time (I still haven't decided what I think about that), but 
what principle makes the potential samples in the long-run finite? What 
class of argument could possibly secure this sort of principle? 
Induction won't work; and deduction is only as good as its major-premise 
which needs to be established inductively. All that's left is abduction.


My guess is that Peirce postulated the uniformity of certain aspects of 
nature and rested them on his Neglected Argument. (He rejected 
'uniformity of nature' as a ground for induction, not as a hypothesis.)


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Matt Faunce]

Clark,

Are you saying that we should judge music like we judge medicine—e.g., just 
because certain music works for me doesn't mean music that doesn't work for me 
is bad? Similarly, should we judge music like we judge mathematics relative to 
their applications?

Just like I can recognize that a class of certain medicine doesn't work for me 
but does for others, I can recognize that certain subsets of that class are 
more effective. This recognition is by analogy. By analogy I can recognize that 
that the surprise in Haydn's Surprise Symphony was invigorating to people in 
the Classical Period, even though its not invigorating to me because I can 
relate to more modern musical surprises.

Are you saying that we'll always have a way to properly judge music from other 
times? That can always there will always be an over-riding category to 
adjudicate the objects being compared 

Matt

On Dec 8, 2015, at 1:41 PM, Clark Goble  wrote:

>>> Is the quality of music determined by the final opinion of that music?
>> 
>> My first response is that "in the long run" for Peirce is a normative idea 
>> in science and does not apply necessarily--maybe only very little, or not at 
>> all--to the fine arts. 
>> 
>> It is true that Bach and Mozart, for example, after hundreds of years, still 
>> have considerable appeal. In my opinion, some of this is the result of (or 
>> at least involves) acoustical phenemona which they 
>> exploit--harmonies,counterpoints, etc.--which really do have a visceral 
>> effect on the human nervous system. But I do not think that it is at all 
>> certain that even they will be appreciated in several hundred or so years.
> 
> Aren’t we making a category error here? 
> 
> Peirce’s regulatory notion of final opinion seems tied towards 
> representations and their truth values. This isn’t to deny we can talk about 
> final interpretants, but more that certain representation are finalized. So 
> the claim “this music is of high quality” meaning aesthetic value seems 
> something we can determinate and thus sensible for consideration as a final 
> interpretant.
> 
> My sense though is that we need to unpack what we’re actually analyzing. 
> After all as Gary notes just because something is held as true today need not 
> imply it will in the future. This is both due to the nature of inquiry but 
> also I think because we’re conflating two issues. The first whether something 
> is appealing to some finite group. Obviously just because something appeals 
> to one group it need not appeal to an other group. The second issue is 
> whether something is universally aesthetical. These are two very different 
> questions. One can answer differently for each.
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Matt Faunce]

I accidentally hit the send button. I started to re-write it but I'm out 
of time now. I won't be able to clean this up, or re-write it, until 
tonight. But I did clean up the last sentence so hopefully you know 
where I was going with this response.


Matt

On 12/8/15 2:16 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

Clark,

Are you saying that we should judge music like we judge medicine—e.g., just 
because certain music works for me doesn't mean music that doesn't work for me 
is bad? Similarly, should we judge music like we judge mathematics relative to 
their applications?

Just like I can recognize that a class of certain medicine doesn't work for me 
but does for others, I can recognize that certain subsets of that class are 
more effective. This recognition is by analogy. By analogy I can recognize that 
that the surprise in Haydn's Surprise Symphony was invigorating to people in 
the Classical Period, even though its not invigorating to me because I can 
relate to more modern musical surprises.

Are you saying that we'll always have a way to properly judge music from other 
times? That there will always be an over-riding category to adjudicate the 
objects being compared?

Matt

On Dec 8, 2015, at 1:41 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:


Is the quality of music determined by the final opinion of that music?

My first response is that "in the long run" for Peirce is a normative idea in 
science and does not apply necessarily--maybe only very little, or not at all--to the 
fine arts.

It is true that Bach and Mozart, for example, after hundreds of years, still 
have considerable appeal. In my opinion, some of this is the result of (or at 
least involves) acoustical phenemona which they 
exploit--harmonies,counterpoints, etc.--which really do have a visceral effect 
on the human nervous system. But I do not think that it is at all certain that 
even they will be appreciated in several hundred or so years.

Aren’t we making a category error here?

Peirce’s regulatory notion of final opinion seems tied towards representations 
and their truth values. This isn’t to deny we can talk about final 
interpretants, but more that certain representation are finalized. So the claim 
“this music is of high quality” meaning aesthetic value seems something we can 
determinate and thus sensible for consideration as a final interpretant.

My sense though is that we need to unpack what we’re actually analyzing. After 
all as Gary notes just because something is held as true today need not imply 
it will in the future. This is both due to the nature of inquiry but also I 
think because we’re conflating two issues. The first whether something is 
appealing to some finite group. Obviously just because something appeals to one 
group it need not appeal to an other group. The second issue is whether 
something is universally aesthetical. These are two very different questions. 
One can answer differently for each.

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--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Matt Faunce]

OK, that was a bit sloppy, (so I edited it slightly below, mainly taking 
out the mutual exclusivity of the three consequences in the third 
paragraph) but I hope the main point got conveyed, which is this:


I only see two choices: establish a principled division between 
aesthetics and esthetics (as I believe Peirce did), or do away with the 
long run and embrace historicism.


Matt

On 12/5/15 12:16 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:

Michael, Peircers,

Is the quality of music determined by the final opinion of that music?

If 'yes', do all inquiries into its quality take into consideration 
the music's impact on people relative to their history? For example, 
Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, a very dissonant 
piece, might be rightly judged as excellent to those in the shadow of 
WWII but potentially not to future people after 500 years of peace 
(when, say, a Kyle Gann piece with his more sonorous intonations might 
be considered the greatest composition of the 20th century!) In 
considering change shouldn't we then say the quality of Threnody as 
played in one time period to the people with its history is 
incommensurable with the quality of the same piece as played to people 
with a very different history?


If 'no' and if the piece's true quality is only that which would be 
opined in the long run, then you must (1) believe there is some 
principle limiting how much people can change relative to that music, 
keeping perceptual judgments in a corral, and/or (2) you believe 
people today who disagree with the final opinion have 'perverted' 
tastes, perhaps due to their perverted culture, (I'm using 'perverted' 
in the Buddhist sense of viparyasa*), and/or (3) you believe the music 
has inherent quality, that is, you believe its quality should be 
judged by the potential final opinion, that after the long run cancels 
out all transitory effects the music has had on people there will be 
some effect left to signify the music's quality. The third position 
without the principle of the first position is contrary to pragmatism 
because there would be no quality left to judge, (this is the Buddhist 
position.) If the first position is your stance, then what is that 
principle and how is it established?


The 'esthetics-ethics-logic triad is easily justified with pragmatism 
by doing away with 'the long run' and replacing it with historicism. 
How else can it be justified?


* viparyasa contains the root 'to throw'; it's also translated as 
'overthrow', 'inversion', 'perverseness', 'wrong notion', 'error', 
'what can upset', 'upside-down views', all which throw one off the 
path toward inward calm. Buddhist Thought in India, pg. 40. by Edward 
Conze


Matt

On Dec 3, 2015, at 12:15 PM, Michael Shapiro <poo...@earthlink.net 
<mailto:poo...@earthlink.net>> wrote:



*Harmony, Linguistic and Musical*

**

*GLOSSARY*

**

/cacoglossic/, adj.: exhibiting or characteristic of distorted or 
ungrammatical speech


/cacophonic,/adj. < /cacophony/, n.: harsh or discordant sound; 
dissonance


/dialogism/, n.: the principle that all utterances (and hence all 
communication) acquiremeaning only in the context of a dialogue to 
which they contribute and in which the presence and contributions of 
other voices (or other discourses, languages, etc.) areinescapably 
implied, with the result that meaning and expression cannot be 
reduced to a single system or subjected to a single authority; the 
embodiment of this principle in a form of expression, esp. a literary 
text


/figurative/, adj.: transferred in sense from literal or plain to 
abstract or hypothetical (as by the expression of one thing in terms 
of another with which it can be regarded as analogous)


/lexically/, adv. < /lexical/, adj.: of or relating to words, word 
formatives, or the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its 
grammar and construction


/Peirce: /Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), American logician and 
scientist


/triadic/, adj. < /triad/, n.: a union or group of three, esp. of 
three closely related persons, beings, or things


**

My hero, Charles Peirce, rightly says that logic exists in the 
service of ethics, and ethics in the service of aesthetics. Following 
this triadic characterization of the foundations of knowledge, both 
language and music, in order to be good and beautiful, must be 
underpinned by well-formedness, alias logic. Thus even a child’s 
grammatically and lexically well-formed utterance is to be deemed 
superior to an adult’s cacoglossicone, just as the harmonically 
grammatical commercial jingle always puts the typically cacophonic 
piece of contemporary classical music to shame.


In this matter, my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus “The 
Obscure” (of “No man ever steps in the same river twice” fame), has 
something pertinent to say.


One of Heraclitus’ most famously enigmatic fragments goes like this:

Οὐ ξυνίασι ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῷ ὁμολογέει·
παλίντροπος ἁρμον

Re: [PEIRCE-L] in case you were wondering

[Matt Faunce]

Michael, Peircers, 

Is the quality of music determined by the final opinion of that music? 

If 'yes', do all inquiries into its quality take into consideration the music's 
impact on people relative to their history? For example, Penderecki's Threnody 
for the Victims of Hiroshima, a very dissonant piece, might be rightly judged 
as excellent to those in the shadow of WWII but potentially not to future 
people after 500 years of peace (when, say, a Kyle Gann piece with his more 
sonorous intonations might be considered the greatest composition of the 20th 
century!) In considering change shouldn't we then say the quality of Threnody 
as played in one time period to the people with its history is incommensurable 
with the quality of the same piece as played to people with a very different 
history? 

If 'no' and if the piece's true quality is only that which I would be opined in 
the long run, then either (1) you must believe there is some principle limiting 
how much people can change relative to that music, keeping perceptual judgments 
in a corral, or (2) you believe people today who disagree with the final 
opinion have 'perverted' tastes, perhaps due to their perverted culture, (I'm 
using 'perverted' in the Buddhist sense of viparyasa*), or (3) you believe the 
music has inherent quality, that is, you believe its quality should be judged 
by the potential final opinion, that after the long run cancels out all 
transitory effects the music has had on people there will be some effect left 
to signify the music's quality. The third position without the principle of the 
first position is contrary to pragmatism because there would be no quality left 
to judge, (this is the Buddhist position.) If the first position is your 
stance, then what is that principle and how is it established?

The 'esthetics-ethics-logic triad is easily justified with pragmatism by doing 
away with 'the long run' and replacing it with historicism. How else can it be 
justified?

* viparyasa contains the root 'to throw'; it's also translated as 'overthrow', 
'inversion', 'perverseness', 'wrong notion', 'error', 'what can upset', 
'upside-down views', all which throw one off the path toward inward calm. 
Buddhist Thought in India, pg. 40. by Edward Conze

Matt

> On Dec 3, 2015, at 12:15 PM, Michael Shapiro  wrote:
> 
> Harmony, Linguistic and Musical
>  
> GLOSSARY
>  
> cacoglossic, adj.: exhibiting or characteristic of distorted or ungrammatical 
> speech
> cacophonic, adj. < cacophony, n.: harsh or discordant sound; dissonance
> dialogism, n.: the principle that all utterances (and hence all 
> communication) acquiremeaning only in the context of a dialogue to which they 
> contribute and in which the presence and contributions of other voices (or 
> other discourses, languages, etc.) are inescapably implied, with the result 
> that meaning and expression cannot be reduced to a single system or subjected 
> to a single authority; the embodiment of this principle in a form of 
> expression, esp. a literary text
> figurative, adj.: transferred in sense from literal or plain to abstract or 
> hypothetical (as by the expression of one thing in terms of another with 
> which it can be regarded as analogous)
> lexically, adv. < lexical, adj.: of or relating to words, word formatives, or 
> the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its grammar and 
> construction
> Peirce: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), American logician and scientist
> triadic, adj. < triad, n.: a union or group of three, esp. of three closely 
> related persons, beings, or things
>  
> My hero, Charles Peirce, rightly says that logic exists in the 
> service of ethics, and ethics in the service of aesthetics. Following this 
> triadic characterization of the foundations of knowledge, both language and 
> music, in order to be good and beautiful, must be underpinned by 
> well-formedness, alias logic. Thus even a child’s grammatically and lexically 
> well-formed utterance is to be deemed superior to an adult’s cacoglossic one, 
> just as the harmonically grammatical commercial jingle always puts the 
> typically cacophonic piece of contemporary classical music to shame.
>  In this matter, my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus 
> “The Obscure” (of “No man ever steps in the same river twice” fame), has 
> something pertinent to say.
> One of Heraclitus’ most famously enigmatic fragments goes like 
> this:
>  
> Οὐ ξυνίασι ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῷ ὁμολογέει·
> 
> παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης.
> Ou xyniasin hokōs diaferomenon heoutoi homologeei 
> palintropos harmoniē hokōsper toxou kai lyres.
>  
> (“They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with 
> itself [literally how being brought apart it isbrought together with 
> itself]; it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: signs, correlates, and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

On 11/26/15 10:28 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:


I know that you consider my view that Peirce uses the term 'sign' to 
mean both the representamen and the full triad as 'peculiar' - but I'm 
hardly alone in that perspective.

For example, 
And see Cornelius de Waal,


Cornelius de Maximus de Waalius !

where he writes that "a sign relates three components, not just two as 
with Saussure's signifier and signified. The sign is a genuine triad" 
- 79. "Peirce, a Guide for the Perplexed'.


Happy Thanksgiving!

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

[Matt Faunce]

This was bugging me, so I went searching. The first place I saw 'sign' 
denoting a triad was not by Peirce, but by Cornelis de Waal, pg. 79 of 
Peirce, A Guide for the Perplexed, in the first paragraph: "The sign is 
a genuine triad--one that cannot be reduced to a combination of dyads."


In the Collected Papers Peirce's use of a triadic sign is rare, but here 
are two examples:


CP 8.305: "I shall show that a Concept is a Sign and shall define a Sign 
and show its triadic form."


6.344: "Signs, the only things with which a human being can, without 
derogation, consent to have any transaction, being a sign himself, are 
triadic; since a sign denotes a subject, and signifies a form of fact, 
which latter it brings into connexion with the former."


Matt

On 11/26/15 12:49 AM, John Collier wrote:


I don’t have quotes handy, but I am pretty sure that Peirce uses 
“sign” in both ways. This caused me some problems in the past in 
applying his ideas to biosemiotics and other non-mental phenomena 
until I realized he was using the term in more than one way. I think 
if one is careful about the context it is possible to select which 
usage Peirce makes in each case.


John Collier

Professor Emeritus, UKZN

http://web.ncf.ca/collier

*From:*g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
*Sent:* Thursday, 26 November 2015 4:14 AM
*To:* 'PEIRCE-L'
*Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates and triadic relations

Yes, Peirce says that “meaning is a triadic relation.” But /meaning/ 
is not /a sign/. Edwina, you say that a */sign/* is a triadic 
relation, or a “triad,” while Peirce says that a sign is “a 
/correlate/ of a triadic relation.” Do you really not see the difference?


Likewise with reference to CP 1.540, you don’t acknowledge the 
difference between /representation/ and a /representamen/. It might 
help if you quoted Peirce’s whole sentence, and the one following it:


[[ In the first place, as to my terminology, I confine the word 
/representation/ to the operation of a sign or its /relation/ to the 
object /for/ the interpreter of the representation. The concrete 
subject that represents I call a /sign/ or a /representamen/. ]]


Once again, Peirce says that /representation/ is a triadic relation – 
and that a sign, or representamen, is the /correlate/ of the relation 
that represents the object for the interpretant.


You still have not cited a single quote where Peirce says that a 
*sign* is either a “triadic relation” or a “triad.” No amount of 
repeated recapitulation on your part can conceal that fact, or the 
obvious inference from it, that Peirce simply does not use the word 
“sign” that way.


Gary f.

*From:*Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
*Sent:* 25-Nov-15 13:51

Gary F - the triad is a basic component of Peircean semiosis. If you 
know of any place where he rejects the triad as this basic component, 
please inform us.


Please see his diagramme, 1.347 (The Categories in Detail) and his 
insistence on this triad (1.345) where 'meaning is obviously a triadic 
relation' - which means, that it is not mechanical (which is dyadic). 
You can also read his discussion of the triad in 'A Guess at the 
Riddle'. And of course, since his semiosis is triadic, then, you can 
read this perspective all through his work.


You can read his definition of the Representamen, which is the_mediate 
part of the triad_, in various parts of his work as well: "I confine 
the word representation to the operation of a sign or its relation to 
the object for the interpreter of the representation" 1.540.


Note that this necessarily is a RELATIONAL process and not singular; 
the Representamen does not exist 'per se'.


" A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, 
called its object, for a third, called its Interpretant, this triadic 
relation being such that the Representamen determines its interpretant 
to stand in the  same triadic relation to the same object for some 
interpretant" 1.541.


Note again: This is a RELATIONAL PROCESS in A TRIADIC SEMIOSIS. Again, 
the Representamen does not exist 'per se'.


Kindly remember that Peirce often used the term 'sign' to stand for 
the Representamen in itself. Not for the whole triad.  Again,


"A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine 
triadic relation to a Second, called its Object as to be capable of 
determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same 
triadic relation to its Object in which stands itself to the same 
Object". 2.274.


Again- it's in a  triadic relation. The Representamen does not stand 
on its own.


Thirdness, by the way, is the same as mediation (5.104) which of 
course implies relations..and the Representamen is in a mode of 
Thirdness in 6 of the ten Signs.


Edwina

- Original Message -

*From:*g...@gnusystems.ca 

*To:*'PEIRCE-L' 

*Sent:*Wednesday, November 25, 2015 9:33 AM

*Subject:*RE: 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8927] Re: Peirce's categories

[Matt Faunce]

Gary F.,

That was a wonderful explanation! From here on out I'm gonna hold to the 
standard you followed:


Secondness refers to the category or mode.

Second (capital S) is the referent which is in the mode of Secondness 
because of its relation to a relata (but no other relata).


second (small s) refers to the relata from above.

Matt


On 10/29/15 11:04 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got 
the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s 
about all I will have time for, until next week). I’m also copying to 
the Peirce list since this is more about Peirce than biosemiotics.


Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all /modes of being/. They are 
not entities or beings. These /modes/ of being are /defined/ by Peirce 
in terms of how a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to other 
beings makes that being what it is.


Let X = the being.

Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively and 
without reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a 
First,” but this X is by definition unrelated to anything else; there 
is nothing else in its universe, and consequently nothing we can say 
about it that will locate it in /any/ universe. So it is /not/ the 
first of a series.


If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any 
third,” then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an 
/effort/, it cannot be that without /resistance/; there is no effort 
without resistance, no resistance without effort. We can designate 
resistance then as Y. So we can say that each of them is Second to the 
other, or “a Second.” The presence of the other in its universe, /and 
nothing else/, makes each of them what it is. If we think of them as a 
pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which one we call 
X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary which of them is 
first or second in the series. /That/ use of the words “first” and 
“second” has nothing to do with Firstness or Secondness as Peirce is 
defining them.


Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and 
third into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a /gift/, it 
must be given by somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can 
say that X is what it is only because it brings Y into relation with 
Z. We can /also/ say that Y, as giver, brings X into relation with Z; 
/and/ that Z, as recipient, brings X into relation with Y (remember 
we’re talking about /logical/ relations, not human relations). X is 
what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation with Y 
and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the 
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of 
them is “a Third.”


But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining 
their mode of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count as 
first, or second, or third. What counts is that there are three 
/relata/ here, each of which is made what it is by its role in the 
triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what sort of commodity X is, 
or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z is. Thirdness is 
a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given being. 
And the same applies to the other two modes.


Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message 
below, hoping that the explanation is given above.


Gary f.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8927] Re: Peirce's categories

[Matt Faunce]

Correction, /relata/ is plural. /Relatum/ is singular. So, take two:

The word/Secondness/ refers to the category or mode.
/
/The word /Second/ (capital S) refers to the referent which is in the 
mode of Secondness because of its relation to a single relatum (but no 
other).


The word /second/ (small s) refers to the relatum from above.

Matt

On 10/29/15 3:56 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

Gary F.,

That was a wonderful explanation! From here on out I'm gonna hold to 
the standard you followed:


Secondness refers to the category or mode.

Second (capital S) is the referent which is in the mode of Secondness 
because of its relation to a relata (but no other relata).


second (small s) refers to the relata from above.

Matt


On 10/29/15 11:04 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got 
the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s 
about all I will have time for, until next week). I’m also copying to 
the Peirce list since this is more about Peirce than biosemiotics.


Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all /modes of being/. They 
are not entities or beings. These /modes/ of being are /defined/ by 
Peirce in terms of how a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to 
other beings makes that being what it is.


Let X = the being.

Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively 
and without reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a 
First,” but this X is by definition unrelated to anything else; there 
is nothing else in its universe, and consequently nothing we can say 
about it that will locate it in /any/ universe. So it is /not/ the 
first of a series.


If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any 
third,” then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an 
/effort/, it cannot be that without /resistance/; there is no effort 
without resistance, no resistance without effort. We can designate 
resistance then as Y. So we can say that each of them is Second to 
the other, or “a Second.” The presence of the other in its universe, 
/and nothing else/, makes each of them what it is. If we think of 
them as a pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which 
one we call X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary 
which of them is first or second in the series. /That/ use of the 
words “first” and “second” has nothing to do with Firstness or 
Secondness as Peirce is defining them.


Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and 
third into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a /gift/, it 
must be given by somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can 
say that X is what it is only because it brings Y into relation with 
Z. We can /also/ say that Y, as giver, brings X into relation with Z; 
/and/ that Z, as recipient, brings X into relation with Y (remember 
we’re talking about /logical/ relations, not human relations). X is 
what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation with Y 
and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the 
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of 
them is “a Third.”


But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining 
their mode of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count 
as first, or second, or third. What counts is that there are three 
/relata/ here, each of which is made what it is by its role in the 
triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what sort of commodity X is, 
or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z is. Thirdness is 
a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given being. 
And the same applies to the other two modes.


Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message 
below, hoping that the explanation is given above.


Gary f.




--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

[Matt Faunce]

My uses of 'First', 'Second', or 'Third' are to denote specific 
instantiations of the categories of Firstness, Secondness, or Thirdness. 
This is similar to how I use 'a general' as a specific instantiation of 
generality. Perhaps we all should follow this standard. Saying "category 
the Third" just seems like bad grammar. Same with saying "a Thirdness."


Matt

On 10/28/15 5:49 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:

Gary, list,

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion of this question which, 
however, seems to focus on Peirce's writings on categories prior to 
the 20th century.


At the moment my sense (and that's pretty much all it is, while I do 
think that at least a mini-research project is in order) is that as he 
approaches, then enters, the 20th century that Peirce uses the -ness 
suffix more and more, especially in introducing his tricategoriality 
into a discussion. Once /that/'s been done, the context makes it clear 
what is first (i.e, 1ns), etc. in the ensuing discussion.


So, in a word, I think he sees that employing the -ness helps 
disambiguate its use in any given context, especially in introducing 
his no doubt strange, to some even today, notion of three 
phenomenological categories.


Best,

Gary R

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing things

[Matt Faunce]

In this lecture  Dr. Ramachandran tells 
how to create an illusion. It goes like this:


Have someone place both arms and hands out straight on the table in 
front of him. Place a rubber hand from the Halloween shop, (or a glove, 
or even bare table will work), in between his hands but close to the 
left hand. Place a mirror between his left hand and rubber hand, such 
that when he looks in the direction of his left hand he'll be looking at 
the reflection of the rubber hand. Prime his brain by stroking both his 
left hand and rubber hand with the same motions. Then after a while, 
stroke just the rubber hand, not his actual hand, and he'll feel it in 
his left hand.


His sense of sight is reinforcing his sense of feel so much that he can 
be fooled to think he feels something based on his sight alone. So, each 
sense works as a reinforcement to each other sense, when applicable. I 
believe that language, at any arrested stated in a person's development 
of it, acts as a reinforcing agent in the same way.


Matt

On 10/23/15 9:01 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


We see what we focus on: what we see distinguishes itself from the 
visual field: the dynamic object determines the sign to determine its 
interpretant. Cognition begins by making distinctions; recognition 
continues with emergence of relations from the phaneron, now that 
/things/  have emerged from the 
phaneron.


/A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they 
are called so. /


— Chuangtse  2 (Watson 1968, 40)

The chaotic background murmur and crackle of neurons firing, cells 
doing what they muddily must to stay alive, organizes itself into 
definite rhythmic patterns, and lo, forms emerge and begin to branch. 
Presence parts from itself and proliferates as the branches take 
names. But a metaphor reverses the process by unmaking a familiar 
distinction, revealing a richer and stranger relationship. By thus 
renewing our vision, metaphors ‘literally create new objects’ (Jaynes 
1976, 50) – /immediate/ objects. Naming is creation, metaphor 
recreation. “A road” is a metaphor: a road is made by people walking 
on it; things are so because they are called so.


Gary f.

} Thought is not an out-of-body experience. [Mark Turner] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ /Turning Signs/gateway




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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/16/15 12:36 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Matt- the 'precognitive' physical world functions in all three modes: 
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.  After all, the habits of 
formation of a molecule of water are an example of Thirdness and an 
example, according to Peirce, of the operation of Mind. I will yet 
again, repeat from 4.551 (I ought to know it by heart by now!)...
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the 
work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world".


Yeah, "pre-cognitive" was a bad choice of words, since "cognition" is 
distinguished from "thought". I conflated the two terms. I was just 
thinking of Secondness.


Hmm,  I find your comment that 'a constructed god' is as real as 
gravity to be questionable. Gravity is a natural force; an ideology 
about a god(s) is imagined by man.


I was talking about the law of gravity, which isn't a force.

Margolis counts the world of secondness as prior to any construction. 
I'm weighing this against the more Madhyamaka idea of it all. I can see 
how we should think that the secondness abstracted from the law of 
gravity is not a construction.


If you're referring to gravity as a third, then you're making the 
distinction, about what is constructed and what isn't, in a different 
place than me. I think all thirds are constructions.


Matt

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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina,

This gets at something that's been bugging me for a long time regarding 
the categories.


Compare the laws of mathematics and the law of gravity. No law needs to 
be instantiated, which means the second within that third need not be 
two existing things. Gravity and mathematics are laws that are real 
without regard to any physical effects that act in their accord. This is 
why I say, within relativist-historicism, that the law of gravity is a 
creation of man, whereas the bruteness of things acting in its accord 
may not be.


I do question, within Peircean philosophy, whether what we call 
bruteness is really just a more refined third abstracted from a complex 
of thirdness. We can deduce, from knowledge of the form of a third, that 
a second is within; but we can't say anything about that second. Seconds 
have to be abstracted from Thirds, otherwise you'll have to admit that 
there might be a second completely isolated from reality and therefore 
unknowable. So seconds' constant association with their thirds, in 
reality, I think leads some people to think they're experiencing 
secondness when it's really a less complex level of thirdness. A second 
without regard to a third cannot be defined. It has no character without 
that third, nor relation (e.g., there is no concept of measuring their 
distance without introducing a third, so the very concept of distance 
has no meaning without a third, nor is there a force of their impact 
until a third is introduced), so it can't be whiffed. This is the reason 
that idea of 'experiencing firstness' always struck me as an absurdity. 
I have to believe that they're only whiffing a paired down third.


Matt

On 10/16/15 2:27 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Matt- when I said that 'gravity is a natural force' - I meant it is a 
law that 'forces' matter to behave in interaction with other 
matter according to the strength of the gravity.
Is gravity a mode of Thirdness? Certainly, habits are arrived at via 
construction. Now, Secondness assumes that 'something concrete exists' 
- some THING...differentiated from some OTHER THING. That's where the 
idea of 'Secondness' comes in - that duality, that dyad.  Now, to be a 
'Thing' means that it is organized in itself. This, to me, suggests 
that it already is operating - just in itself - within the 
organizational mode of Thirdness.  So - the interaction between the 
two things may be strictly within a mode of Secondness but the 
existential nature of each thing - must include Thirdness. So - is 
gravity a mode of Thirdness?
I'm going to say - yes. I'm not 100% sure but I can't see it as 
anything else. Laws are, after all, Thirdness. Gravity is a natural 
law - a law 'natural' to matter and when gravity interacts with matter 
- it does X. When there is LESS gravity, then, matter behaves 
differently. So, this law, this gravity actually organizes how matter 
functions. So - I'll conclude that gravity is a mode of Thirdness.

Edwina

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 2:10 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

On 10/16/15 12:36 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- the 'precognitive' physical world functions in all three
modes: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.  After all, the
habits of formation of a molecule of water are an example of
Thirdness and an example, according to Peirce, of the operation
of Mind. I will yet again, repeat from 4.551 (I ought to know it
by heart by now!)...
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in
the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical
world".


Yeah, "pre-cognitive" was a bad choice of words, since "cognition"
is distinguished from "thought". I conflated the two terms. I was
just thinking of Secondness.


Hmm,  I find your comment that 'a constructed god' is as real as
gravity to be questionable. Gravity is a natural force; an
ideology about a god(s) is imagined by man.


I was talking about the law of gravity, which isn't a force.

Margolis counts the world of secondness as prior to any
construction. I'm weighing this against the more Madhyamaka idea
of it all. I can see how we should think that the secondness
abstracted from the law of gravity is not a construction.

If you're referring to gravity as a third, then you're making the
distinction, about what is constructed and what isn't, in a
different place than me. I think all thirds are constructions.

Matt


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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

I saw as soon as I sent this that I made two mistakes:

On 10/16/15 3:18 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:

In historicism, reality is what is here and possible from here.**


That's not right at all. Read the Venn link for an excellent explanation.


As for thinking in graphs and images, this is applied mathematics.


I was thinking of Stefan's examples. Obviously thinking can be in 
theoretical math...


If you get only one thing out of that post, I hope it's the Venn pages I 
linked to.


--
Matt


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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina,

By "we" I means 'the widest collective of creative agents.' By "we 
chose" I meant 'we chose to construct this out of nothing.' In that way 
we are like the Biblical God; and the real God is our construction. But 
that doesn't make Him any less real than gravity. It's just that He 
isn't eternal. Even the conception of 'creating' must have changed over 
our evolution, it just looks like creating from my perspective looking back.


I'm pretty sure Margolis draws the line in the middle of reality between 
encultured artifacts and the rest. In what I've read, he only questions 
whether we should include mathematics, but he doesn't commit. I'm pretty 
sure his stance on the pre-cognitive physical world (distinguished from 
cognitive determinations about what it is), which is so prominent in 
Secondness, is prior to any things we created. I push things maybe too 
far in the Madhyamaka direction, where everything even remotely 
conceivable is our construction. But hey, someone's gotta test the waters.


Matt

On 10/16/15 8:42 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
We have 'chosen' language? I wasn't aware, first, that man' 
constructed his world through evolution'  - and what does this 
actually mean? That man 'evolved' [clarify?]and so, began to do what - 
grow wheat? And second, to 'choose' language suggests that it existed 
a priori, along with other options, and mankind simply 'chose one option.

Edwina

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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Holy crap! I was never said anything about abstracting particles from 
generals, or counting particles. You gave everything I said the wrong 
interpretation. We have a serious communication breakdown here.


On 10/16/15 7:32 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- see my replies below:

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 6:04 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Edwina,

This gets at something that's been bugging me for a long time
regarding the categories.

1) MATT: Compare the laws of mathematics and the law of gravity.
No law needs to be instantiated, which means the second within
that third need not be two existing things.
EDWINA: Sorry - I don't know what you mean by this (second without
that third).
2) MATT: Gravity and mathematics are laws that are real without
regard to any physical effects that act in their accord. This is
why I say, within relativist-historicism, that the law of gravity
is a creation of man, whereas the bruteness of things acting in
its accord may not be.
EDWINA: Gravity is real and universal and exists quite
independently of mankind, and defined by its physical effects -
namely, the attraction of mass for other mass. Again, totally
independent of man - after all, gravity as a force existed long
before mankind! Surely  you aren't referring simply to the formula
for figuring out the effect (Newton's Law). Gravity as that force
is quite indifferent to the mathematical formula.

3) MATT: I do question, within Peircean philosophy, whether what
we call bruteness is really just a more refined third abstracted
from a complex of thirdness. We can deduce, from knowledge of the
form of a third, that a second is within; but we can't say
anything about that second.
EDWINA: No. Thirdness is a generalization of habitual modes of
organization and there is no discrete particle (a Secondness)
within Thirdness.
4) MATT: Seconds have to be abstracted from Thirds, otherwise
you'll have to admit that there might be a second completely
isolated from reality and therefore unknowable. So seconds'
constant association with their thirds, in reality, I think leads
some people to think they're experiencing secondness when it's
really a less complex level of thirdness.
EDWINA: No- you don't abstract a particular from a general. What
happens is that the 'right-now' instantiation (Secondness)  of a
long-term general (Thirdness) is guided within its 'right-now'
emergence by the rules/laws of the general.
5) MATT: A second without regard to a third cannot be defined. It
has no character without that third, nor relation (e.g., there is
no concept of measuring their distance without introducing a
third, so the very concept of distance has no meaning without a
third, nor is there a force of their impact until a third is
introduced), so it can't be whiffed. This is the reason that idea
of 'experiencing firstness' always struck me as an absurdity. I
have to believe that they're only whiffing a paired down third.
EDWINA: Thirdness is not a third particular existential unit.
Thirdness is a continuous non-particular general mode of
organization. It cannot exist per se, i.e., on its own. It exists
only as expressed within individual instantiations (Secondness).

Your terms of 'second' and 'third' refer to NUMBERS, not to the
Peircean categorical modes - which are modes of organization - and
have nothing to do with  numbers.
Firstness is a mode of experiencing an interaction - it is an
'acceptance of stimuli' (say a blast of heat) _without_ awareness
of it as 'heat'; without even awareness of it as differentiation
from yourself.



Matt

On 10/16/15 2:27 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- when I said that 'gravity is a natural force' - I meant it
is a law that 'forces' matter to behave in interaction with other
matter according to the strength of the gravity.
Is gravity a mode of Thirdness? Certainly, habits are arrived at
via construction. Now, Secondness assumes that 'something
concrete exists' - some THING...differentiated from some OTHER
THING. That's where the idea of 'Secondness' comes in - that
duality, that dyad.  Now, to be a 'Thing' means that it is
organized in itself. This, to me, suggests that it already is
operating - just in itself - within the organizational mode of
Thirdness.  So - the interaction between the two things may be
strictly within a mode of Secondness but the existential nature
of each thing - must include Thirdness. So - is gravity a mode of
Thirdness?
I'm going to say 

Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Substitute these words in my post:

'quality' for 'first'
'reaction' or 'relation' for 'second'
'representation' or 'triadic sign' for 'third'.

Does my post not make sense with these substitutions? It should.

Matt

On 10/16/15 8:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Matt- I think it's because you are understanding the terms of 
Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness (which are mode of organization) as 
the same as the ordinal numbers of First, Second, Third.

Edwina

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 7:46 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Holy crap! I was never said anything about abstracting particles
from generals, or counting particles. You gave everything I said
the wrong interpretation. We have a serious communication
breakdown here.

On 10/16/15 7:32 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- see my replies below:

- Original Message -
    *From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 6:04 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Edwina,

This gets at something that's been bugging me for a long time
regarding the categories.

1) MATT: Compare the laws of mathematics and the law of
gravity. No law needs to be instantiated, which means the
second within that third need not be two existing things.
EDWINA: Sorry - I don't know what you mean by this (second
without that third).
2) MATT: Gravity and mathematics are laws that are real
without regard to any physical effects that act in their
accord. This is why I say, within relativist-historicism,
that the law of gravity is a creation of man, whereas the
bruteness of things acting in its accord may not be.
EDWINA: Gravity is real and universal and exists quite
independently of mankind, and defined by its physical effects
- namely, the attraction of mass for other mass. Again,
totally independent of man - after all, gravity as a force
existed long before mankind! Surely  you aren't referring
simply to the formula for figuring out the effect (Newton's
Law). Gravity as that force is quite indifferent to the
mathematical formula.

3) MATT: I do question, within Peircean philosophy, whether
what we call bruteness is really just a more refined third
abstracted from a complex of thirdness. We can deduce, from
knowledge of the form of a third, that a second is within;
but we can't say anything about that second.
EDWINA: No. Thirdness is a generalization of habitual modes
of organization and there is no discrete particle (a
Secondness) within Thirdness.
4) MATT: Seconds have to be abstracted from Thirds, otherwise
you'll have to admit that there might be a second completely
isolated from reality and therefore unknowable. So seconds'
constant association with their thirds, in reality, I think
leads some people to think they're experiencing secondness
when it's really a less complex level of thirdness.
EDWINA: No- you don't abstract a particular from a general.
What happens is that the 'right-now' instantiation
(Secondness)  of a long-term general (Thirdness) is guided
within its 'right-now' emergence by the rules/laws of the
general.
5) MATT: A second without regard to a third cannot be
defined. It has no character without that third, nor relation
(e.g., there is no concept of measuring their distance
without introducing a third, so the very concept of distance
has no meaning without a third, nor is there a force of their
impact until a third is introduced), so it can't be whiffed.
This is the reason that idea of 'experiencing firstness'
always struck me as an absurdity. I have to believe that
they're only whiffing a paired down third.
EDWINA: Thirdness is not a third particular existential unit.
Thirdness is a continuous non-particular general mode of
organization. It cannot exist per se, i.e., on its own. It
exists only as expressed within individual instantiations
(Secondness).

Your terms of 'second' and 'third' refer to NUMBERS, not to
the Peircean categorical modes - which are modes of
organization - and have nothing to do with  numbers.
Firstness is a mode of experiencing an interaction - it is an
'acceptance of stimuli' (say a blast 

Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/16/15 6:04 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
No law needs to be instantiated, which means the second within that 
third need not be two existing things.
Correction: No law needs to be instantiated, which means the second 
within that third need not be an existent thing. But yeah, nor two 
existing things.


Matt

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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/16/15 8:38 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Matt - no. Quality is Firstness; Reaction is Secondness but I would be 
careful of using 'relation'. And I don't agree that Representation or 
Triadic Sign is a synonym for Thirdness. For example, you wrote:
"I do question, within Peircean philosophy, whether what we call 
bruteness is really just a more refined third abstracted from a 
complex of thirdness. We can deduce, from knowledge of the form of a 
third, that a second is within; but we can't say anything about that 
second. "
If I subsitute 'bruteness' for Secondness, then, I don't consider that 
Secondness is a 'more refined 'representation or triadic sign' from a 
complex of 'representation or triadic sign'.


Right there. I was trying to show that what we call bruteness isn't 
secondness, but here you are trying to insert 'bruteness' for 'secondness'.


And, can you deduce from 'knowledge of the form of a 
'representation/triadic sign' that a 'second' (second what, a 
reaction?)


Yes. If there's a representation, there's a second as a relation or 
reaction, that can be abstracted from it.


And Thirdness does not have a FORM - it is a mode of organization, not 
a specific Form.


Not a platonic form or a material form. But there's gotta be a way of 
thinking of a third and distinguishing it from a second or first; that 
way is what I referred to as its form. You can call it mode, whatever.


Matt


- Original Message -
    *From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 8:32 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Substitute these words in my post:

'quality' for 'first'
'reaction' or 'relation' for 'second'
'representation' or 'triadic sign' for 'third'.

Does my post not make sense with these substitutions? It should.

Matt

On 10/16/15 8:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- I think it's because you are understanding the terms of
Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness (which are mode of organization)
as the same as the ordinal numbers of First, Second, Third.
Edwina

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 7:46 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Holy crap! I was never said anything about abstracting
particles from generals, or counting particles. You gave
everything I said the wrong interpretation. We have a serious
communication breakdown here.

On 10/16/15 7:32 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- see my replies below:

----- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ;
Peirce-L <mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 6:04 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Edwina,

This gets at something that's been bugging me for a long
time regarding the categories.

1) MATT: Compare the laws of mathematics and the law of
gravity. No law needs to be instantiated, which means
the second within that third need not be two existing
things.
EDWINA: Sorry - I don't know what you mean by this
(second without that third).
2) MATT: Gravity and mathematics are laws that are real
without regard to any physical effects that act in their
accord. This is why I say, within
relativist-historicism, that the law of gravity is a
creation of man, whereas the bruteness of things acting
in its accord may not be.
EDWINA: Gravity is real and universal and exists quite
independently of mankind, and defined by its physical
effects - namely, the attraction of mass for other mass.
Again, totally independent of man - after all, gravity
as a force existed long before mankind! Surely  you
aren't referring simply to the formula for figuring out
the effect (Newton's Law). Gravity as that force is
quite indifferent to the mathematical formula.

3) MATT: I do question, within Peircean philosophy,
whether what we call bruteness is really just a more
refined third abstracted from a complex of thirdness. We
can deduce, from knowledge of the form of a third, that
a second is within; but we can't say anything about that
second.
 

Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Example.

My being is a first.
My being bothered is a second.
My understanding of being bothered is a third.

Within my understanding is my being bothered.
Within my being bothered is my being.

Yes or no? Don’t explain, because I’ll take what you’ve already said and 
keep it mind next time I revisit Peirce’s writings. And that will only 
be as early as next week.


Matt

On 10/16/15 10:04 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt - we aren't getting anywhere with this. This will be my last attempt.
1) To Peirce, Secondness is a mode of interaction that operates as a 
'brute action-reaction'.
2) Secondness is NOT a 'more refined Third[ness].  Again - you are 
mixing up numbers with modes of organization. There is no such thing 
as the 'form of Thirdness'.  If you are talking about the 'form of a 
third [object]' - that has NOTHING to do with the modal categories of 
Peirce.
3)And, can you deduce from 'knowledge of the form of a 
'representation/triadic sign' that a 'second' (second what, a 
reaction?)


MATT:Yes. If there's a representation, there's a second as a relation 
or reaction, that can be abstracted from it.
EDWINA: No - the triadic sign is NOT the same as Thirdness; NOT the 
same as the Representamenand if you are NOW using the term of 
'representation' to mean the triadic sign (and not Thirdness, not the 
Representamen)...then, this does not mean that there is another entity 
in a mode of Secondness. Or do you mean - the ordinal number of 'second'..
And - no, you cannot necessarily 'abstract' a unit in a mode of 
Secondness from a triadic sign. What if that Sign, the triad, is 
totally operating in a mode of Firstness?

Are you aware of the ten classes of signs?
4) And Thirdness does not have a FORM - it is a mode of organization, 
not a specific Form.


MATT: Not a platonic form or a material form. But there's gotta be a 
way of thinking of a third and distinguishing it from a second or 
first; that way is what I referred to as its form. You can call it 
mode, whatever.
Again- you are misusing the terms.  Thirdness is a mode of 
organization - these are Peircean terms - I am not using the term 
'mode' arbitrarily; these are Peirce's terms - and refers to a 
habitual pattern of organization.
You have mixed up ordinal numbers of first, second, third..referring 
to a first thing, a second thing, a third thingand are confusing 
these terms with the Peircean categorical modes of Firstness, 
Secondness and Thirdness.

_There is no comparison; they are not the same thing_.

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 9:13 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

On 10/16/15 8:38 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt - no. Quality is Firstness; Reaction is Secondness but I
would be careful of using 'relation'. And I don't agree that
Representation or Triadic Sign is a synonym for Thirdness. For
example, you wrote:
"I do question, within Peircean philosophy, whether what we call
bruteness is really just a more refined third abstracted from a
complex of thirdness. We can deduce, from knowledge of the form
of a third, that a second is within; but we can't say anything
about that second. "
If I subsitute 'bruteness' for Secondness, then, I don't consider
that Secondness is a 'more refined 'representation or triadic
sign' from a complex of 'representation or triadic sign'.


Right there. I was trying to show that what we call bruteness
isn't secondness, but here you are trying to insert 'bruteness'
for 'secondness'.


And, can you deduce from 'knowledge of the form of a
'representation/triadic sign' that a 'second' (second what, a
reaction?)


Yes. If there's a representation, there's a second as a relation
or reaction, that can be abstracted from it.


And Thirdness does not have a FORM - it is a mode of
organization, not a specific Form.


Not a platonic form or a material form. But there's gotta be a way
of thinking of a third and distinguishing it from a second or
first; that way is what I referred to as its form. You can call it
mode, whatever.

Matt


- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Edwina Taborsky <mailto:tabor...@primus.ca> ; Peirce-L
<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Friday, October 16, 2015 8:32 PM
*Subject:* Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

Substitute these words in my post:

'quality' for 'first'
'reaction' or 'relation' for 'second'
'representation' or 'triadic sign' for 'third'.

Does my post not make sense with these substitutions? It should.

Matt

Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 6:10 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
Clearly there is however a relationship between the values at any 
given time and the ideal values. Effectively the universe is working 
out the ideal values for any given circumstance.


That's the Peircean way of looking at it. Sometimes I see the world that 
way, where Ananke is stronger than Tyche; but other times I see them as 
equal partners engaged in an eternal dance. In Peirce's way, the 
universe will eventually harden; in the Relativist-Historicist way, 
habits will sometimes become more hard in some area, and be loosened in 
other areas, and no habit will remain forever hardened. I find this 
relativity to be optimistic; and see Peirce's way as leading to death. 
Life is creativity (and the best creative space is where there is plenty 
of space for repose into law); death is where there is no room or hope 
for creativity. Even in sitting back and enjoying the creative work of 
Peirce, Beethoven, or God, a large part of the appreciation (the 
enrichment) comes from knowing––which comes out most prominently in a 
feeling––that this creative work is analogous to your creative work.


Matt

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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/14/15 5:53 PM, sb wrote:

Matt,

ah! This makes things much clearer. And it makes my critique pretty 
pointless, because i assumed you (and Margolis?) used a narrow 
definition of language. 

Stefan,

Venn uses the wider definition, but leaves open any determination 
whether lingual sign systems depend (to any extent) on the narrow view 
of language. Margolis uses the narrower definition of language. I see 
both sides like trying to judge which side of an out of focused Necker 
Cube is closest to me.


Nevertheless discussing Peirce realism and Margolis historicism would 
be very interesting, because i'm interested in all forms of sociology 
of knowlede and history of thought systems. But i think it would make 
sense if i read some Margolis first - like you suggested to me a year 
ago or so. What is the best to start with?


There's a lot I haven't read, but of what I have read, the first two 
articles listed below I found very very helpful. So I suggest anyone 
starts with them. Also, of course, read his Wikipedia entry.


Aristotle on the Nature and Art of Selfhood
by Peter Fettner
https://www.academia.edu/8925529/Aristotle_on_the_Nature_and_Art_of_Selfhood

Protagoras and Margolis on the Viability of Ancient Relativism
by Ugo Zilloli
https://www.academia.edu/6294788/Protagoras_and_Margolis_on_the_viability_of_ancient_relativism

These next two are what I found the easiest access of what I've read or 
tried to read of Margolis himself (e.g., I gave up on trying to 
understand his (much earlier) paper entitled Abortion. His writing style 
in that was pure mental torture.)


A Second-Best Morality
by Joseph Margolis
http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/12411

Religion and Reason
by Joseph Margolis
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20005371

I own three books by him, all of which are more difficult than what's 
listed above. But they became easier after having read the above. I did 
go through /Historied Thought, Constructed World/ and read the intro and 
everything he wrote about Peirce; that was a few years ago and I can't 
remember what my impression of the book's style was. But I'm not a fan 
of ebooks, a hardcopy is too expensive, and other options seemed just as 
good, so I never looked much further into that or his other free ebooks.


My long post in response to Clark drew heavily from the following 
article. You'll see I stole his use of the phrase 'deux ex machina' from 
Margolis. 


The Passing of Peirce's Realism
by Joseph Margolis
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320422

Here's another that deals with Peirce, but which I haven't read yet:

Peirce's Falliblism
by Joseph Margolis
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320713


Matt

Am 14. Oktober 2015 23:37:41 MESZ, schrieb Matt Faunce 
<mattfau...@gmail.com>:


On 10/14/15 4:01 PM, sb wrote:

Matt,

the example in the Margolis quote is exactly what i doubt.

  >snip<
To use Venns metaphor you used: In my opinion there are other
sign systems which can be used as scaffolding.

Stefan, just a side note. Venn described a broader idea of
language than what is used by most of today's linguists. His
"language in the widest sense" would cover any sign system that
fulfills the three functions he describes below. These functions
might be used to define his /language//:/

1. The communication of ideas from one intelligent being to another.

"It's primary object is to communicate ideas from one person
to another, or rather, from one intelligent being to another.
To enable any sign to come under the strict designation of
language, we ought to insist that it shall be deliberately
intended to answer this purpose of communication;"

2. The recording of ideas for ourselves and for others. Writing.

3. The acquisition of ideas, by aiding the processes of synthesis
and analysis.

"[W]ithout some such system of symbols as that which we call
language in the widest sense, all power of acquiring or
retaining ideas would be lost."

"'Language is not the dress but the incarnation of thought.'"
[Here Venn quoted a common saying.]

Quotes are from The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic.

Matt


Am 13. Oktober 2015 02:35:13 MESZ, schrieb Matt Faunce
<mattfau...@gmail.com>:

Hi Stefan,

Regarding /language/, I think the crux of the debate is
whether thinking in images and diagrams presupposes
linguistic competence, as Joseph Margolis says in The
Unraveling of Scientism, pg. 22:

"Thinking is an activity we engage in deliberately; and
where we do, we do so linguistically or (as I would add)
"lingually" (as in composing at the piano or
choreographing a dance, which presupposes linguistic
competence but is not itself an exercise of speech)."



-

Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/14/15 4:01 PM, sb wrote:

Matt,

the example in the Margolis quote is exactly what i doubt.


Stefan, I'm working on a reply. Although, I'm afraid it might have to be 
overly vague. I have a feeling that tendencies to think one way or 
another hinge on presuppositions about more fundamental philosophical 
ideas: perhaps Peircean Realism vs. Relativist Historicism explains the 
fulcrum. I'm trying to see if the difference can be as logically 
presented as an 'if this then that', where 'this' is either Peirce's 
Realism or Margolis's Historicism. I think so, but I'm not clear yet. 
We'll see.


--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Perhaps Ben's "whiff of Firstness", to which I'm so perplexed by, is a 
key. I don't know. All I can do now is store such ideas away 
unprocessed, and see if they click with anything that comes up in my 
future readings.


Matt

On 10/14/15 4:35 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Matt - the universe would eventually harden only if it were confined 
to the modes of Secondness (individual instances) and Thirdness 
(general habits/rules of organization). You are ignoring the reality 
of Firstness, which is freedom, spontaneity, diversion.


Edwina

- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Faunce" <mattfau...@gmail.com>

On 10/6/15 6:10 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

Clearly there is however a relationship between the values at any
given time and the ideal values. Effectively the universe is working
out the ideal values for any given circumstance.


That's the Peircean way of looking at it. Sometimes I see the world that
way, where Ananke is stronger than Tyche; but other times I see them as
equal partners engaged in an eternal dance. In Peirce's way, the
universe will eventually harden; in the Relativist-Historicist way,
habits will sometimes become more hard in some area, and be loosened in
other areas, and no habit will remain forever hardened. I find this
relativity to be optimistic; and see Peirce's way as leading to death.
Life is creativity (and the best creative space is where there is plenty
of space for repose into law); death is where there is no room or hope
for creativity. Even in sitting back and enjoying the creative work of
Peirce, Beethoven, or God, a large part of the appreciation (the
enrichment) comes from knowing––which comes out most prominently in a
feeling––that this creative work is analogous to your creative work.

Matt

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Re: Fwd: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/14/15 4:01 PM, sb wrote:

Matt,

the example in the Margolis quote is exactly what i doubt.

>snip<
To use Venns metaphor you used: In my opinion there are other sign 
systems which can be used as scaffolding.
Stefan, just a side note. Venn described a broader idea of language than 
what is used by most of today's linguists. His "language in the widest 
sense" would cover any sign system that fulfills the three functions he 
describes below. These functions might be used to define his /language//:/


1. The communication of ideas from one intelligent being to another.

   "It's primary object is to communicate ideas from one person to
   another, or rather, from one intelligent being to another. To enable
   any sign to come under the strict designation of language, we ought
   to insist that it shall be deliberately intended to answer this
   purpose of communication;"

2. The recording of ideas for ourselves and for others. Writing.

3. The acquisition of ideas, by aiding the processes of synthesis and 
analysis.


   "[W]ithout some such system of symbols as that which we call
   language in the widest sense, all power of acquiring or retaining
   ideas would be lost."

   "'Language is not the dress but the incarnation of thought.'" [Here
   Venn quoted a common saying.]

Quotes are from The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic.

Matt

Am 13. Oktober 2015 02:35:13 MESZ, schrieb Matt Faunce 
<mattfau...@gmail.com>:


Hi Stefan,

Regarding /language/, I think the crux of the debate is whether
thinking in images and diagrams presupposes linguistic competence,
as Joseph Margolis says in The Unraveling of Scientism, pg. 22:

"Thinking is an activity we engage in deliberately; and where
we do, we do so linguistically or (as I would add) "lingually"
(as in composing at the piano or choreographing a dance, which
presupposes linguistic competence but is not itself an
exercise of speech)."


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Clark, I find a lot of what you say intriguing, but I'm at a loss for 
words because my thoughts regarding these ideas are at the edge of my 
thoughts, where it's still in the mist.


On 10/6/15 5:33 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
Ultimately my problem with Kuhn though isn’t from the more radical 
perspective but simply that I think Kuhnians (if not Kuhn himself - 
see his Structure Reconsidered) often see language and culture as more 
determinate than it really is. That is the old Sapir-Worf hypothesis 
about how language limits us is taken to imply grave limits on what we 
can know until the language develops. I tend to think that nonsense if 
only because any given language is already so terribly open as to not 
preclude many conceptions. But because language is itself open to 
evolution as I measure (verify according to the Pragmatic maxim) I 
change the very meaning of terms. It’s verification, not language that 
limits. Kuhn seems very much at odds with Peirce from this conception.


Regarding language and thought I can't find a reason to agree with 
anything beyond John Venn's analogy of the two working together like 
digging a tunnel: language is the scaffolding securing the hole, and a 
new thought is that hole you dug a little beyond the scaffolding (of 
language). Like tunneling, you can only grab and secure a new thought 
that's in your reach, then you better express it with language or you'll 
either lose it or at best find it very thin to build upon. (See again, 
below, the Margolis quote on the limits of reach of abduction.*) I can't 
believe that Peirce believed that all truths are potentially within the 
immediate grasp of abduction, (although I, of course, accept that the 
acceptance of many true hypotheses are limited by the reach of 
verification.) In fact, his explanation for how Archimedes was so good 
at abduction, in MS 692, is evidence that he believed that there are 
limits to the reach of abduction at any given time.** Why not say 
language limits our reach of discoveries, and as language expands so 
will our reach?


The problem of abduction can be shown by asking 'what is this creative, 
non-lingual, thought?' Is it the mind's magical connection to truth, as 
Peirce said in MS 692, the "magnetic turning toward the truth",*** where 
the truth is one of infinite choices; or is it, as second-best 
constructivists say, a turning toward only the possibilities that are in 
reach, which are able to be quickly tested (usually by analogy), and one 
(or two) will be judged as best and sufficiently in accord with what 
we've already chosen? 'Best in accord' doesn't necessarily equate with 
'true', but rather that which works, and sufficiently satisfies us such 
that its accord is judged to be analogous to the degree of accord of 
other accepted truths. This judgment of sufficiency by analogy is what 
prevents us from accepting the best of a bad sample lot, and tells us to 
keep searching and guessing. We need to find what satisfies our criteria 
for working. So, the first chosen truths in our evolution, having had 
little to compare with, had to pass a very low criterial bar for 
acceptance, so they could have pretty much been randomly chosen (the 
problem then being that something is needed to secure the new truth, 
like language does). Peirce left us a huge lacuna, viz., the unexplained 
correspondence between our thoughts and the truth. Constructivism solves 
this problem. A non-constructive reading of Peirce exposes Peirce to the 
same basic criticism he leveled at Kant with his 'thing-in-itself,' 
viz., correspondence is impossible: The 'thing-in-itself' is by 
definition of 'in itself' impossible to know; Peirce's concept of truth, 
that it's one out of infinite choices, is impossible find.


We might solve this problem by saying that some false propositions are 
in closer reach to the true than others, so in this regard there are 
degrees of being false, ranging from 'so close you can smell it' to a 
feeling of 'way off'. But still, this relies on that magical "magnetic 
turning toward the truth" to close the gap.


* From A Second-Best Morality, Margolis writes,

   "We must bear in mind that we ourselves are surely the creatures of
   our own cultural history; what we can and dare judge to be morally
   and politically reasonable must fit the living options of our actual
   world. Even if we supposed an "ideal" answer might serve as a guide
   at least, we need to remember that our visions cannot be more than
   projections from local habits of thought or neighboring possibilities."

And then he says that this applies to the judgment of all encultured ideas.

** From MS 692, Peirce wrote,

   "It is necessary to remember that even those unparalleled
   intelligences would certainly not have guessed right if they had not
   all possessed a great art of so *subdividing their guesses as to
   give to each one almost the character of self-evidence*. Thus, the
   proof by Archimedes of the 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Matt Faunce]

Ben, you sent this right at the end of my time for philosophical studies 
today. So I can't say much now, except that it relates to CP 7.198, to 
which Jon Awbrey directed me when I inquired here about "the hard 
problem of consciousness".


Matt

On 10/11/15 7:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:


List,

Some may remember my attempts to outline, as forming a system, such 
heuristic aspects, given by conclusions to premisses, as an abductive 
inference's natural simplicity, an induction's verisimilitude, an 
attenuative deduction's new aspect, and an equipollential deduction's 
nontriviality.


I've hit upon something that strikes a novel (to me) but also Peircean 
note, involving the idea of Firstness, so I thought I'd pass it along.


For a long time I was careful to distinguish between surprise (of an 
anomaly) and bewilderment at excessive complexity or complication. 
Peirce usually mentions surprise as the occasion of inquiry in general 
and of abductive inference in particular, but occasionally mentions 
complication as such occasion. Now, the idea of abductive inference's 
natural simplicity seems more a response to complication than to 
anomaly or surprise. I won't belabor that appearance, but will just 
say that I wondered what appearance or feeling (akin to puzzlement, 
but not puzzlement) would be the occasion of a chiefly inductive 
inquiry, or of an inductive inference in the course of inquiry. Then 
it finally dawned on me that I was paying too much attention to the 
temporal mode of the feeling (overturning of expectation versus 
overturning of supposition) and not enough to the overturning, the 
conflict. What occasions induction (besides an occasioning inquiry) is 
not a conflict (a secundan thing), a cognitive dissonance, but a sense 
of something _/arbitrary/_, gratuitous, spontaneous, unnecessary 
though possible, which, in Peircean terms, means a whiff of Firstness 
(see Peirce's "Quale-Consciousness" for example).


If one has a sample from a population about which one had no 
particular expectations, then any definite result is bound to seem 
arbitrary, arbitrarily one-sided, to seem like some things that one 
has seen and unlike other things (unless one supposes some Bayesian 
priors in the absence of evidence, which isn't a Peircean approach 
anyway). While the occasion of abductive inference seems surprising, 
contrarian, so to speak, the occasion of induction seems partisan, it 
just takes sides. This arbitrary character, while not surprising or 
perplexing, is still, let's say, striking. From a non-Bayesian 
viewpoint, if one knew in advance that that the population consists of 
reds and greens, and if one found in the sample a 50-50 distribution 
of red and green, that would still seem arbitrary. How does one 
'explain' it or account for it? One induces that the total population 
has a 50-50 distribution of red and green; if true, then the sample's 
distribution is _/not so arbitrary/_. I am unsure what emotional 
response to associate with such arbitrariness. It may involve a sense 
of being detoured, skewed, diverted, interested, something like that.


Best, Ben




--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/7/15 8:47 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt - I have some logical questions:
1) "instincts are no longer considered to work toward the probable 
perpetuation of the species, but they work only toward the probable 
perpetuation of their specific gene type, sometimes at the expense of 
the species."
I always dislike the passive tense "no longer considered to 
work'...because it leaves out the important AGENT. Who says that 
instincts no longer work toward the continuity of the species"? Proof? 
Or just some 'expert' (Appeal-to-Authority Fallacy).


Here's my 'expert' cued up to where he explicitly states it:
https://youtu.be/Y0Oa4Lp5fLE?t=16m21s

Instincts work only toward the perpetuation of their gene type? Ah, a 
reductionist view - and how does the gene harm the species? Examples 
of both privileging the gene and harming the species?


Reductionism would be the case for a theory that genes determine 
behavior, but I said the opposite, that behavior (instincts) works 
toward preserving a gene type.


He later mentions fish who choose mates who are bright and colorful 
despite this trait making them more likely to be preyed on.


A seed beetle's aggressive mating behavior favors its gene type over its 
competitor's but harms the species:

http://www.mediadesk.uzh.ch/articles/2011/paarungsverhalten_en.html

Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 11:20 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

On 10/6/15 10:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Science, on the other hand depends on objective reality as its 
reference base - and therefore, cannot depend on encultured opinion. 
Galileo was quite clear on that. That is, you can have a _belief_ 
that witches cause the plague but this is not science since there is 
no objective empirical evidence.
I think you're example here shows that you're conflating surface 
beliefs of individuals with deep-seated believes, i.e., beliefs that 
are so deep seated that the all people of many contiguous eras don't 
question them.


That was a hack answer by me. Deep seatedness and shallowness of belief 
often accompany their truth and falseness, in relativist theory, but 
that relation is besides the point. Sorry for the noise. This is to the 
point:


In Margolis's relativism, if your belief is supportable with available 
evidence and fares better than available alternatives, then you are 
right, if not you're wrong. The belief that witches caused the plague 
was not supportable at that time, so in historicism-relativism that 
belief is wrong. But remember, morals belong on a multi-valent scale 
with degrees of rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure what other classes 
of beliefs he puts on that scale. He did put some religious beliefs on 
the multi-valent scale in his article Religion and Reason.


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/7/15 8:38 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

In reply to Matt's comment :
"In Margolis's relativism, if your belief is supportable with 
available evidence and fares better than available alternatives, then 
you are right, if not you're wrong. The belief that witches caused the 
plague was not supportable at that time, so in historicism-relativism 
that belief is wrong. But remember, morals belong on a multi-valent 
scale with degrees of rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure what other 
classes of beliefs he puts on that scale. He did put some religious 
beliefs on the multi-valent scale in his article Religion and Reason."
Hmm. I think that's a weak defense  - to declare that a belief that is 
supported by 'available evidence' is right and 'fares better'...The 
belief that witches caused the plague could very well be supported _at 
the time_. After all, one could readily come up with 'evidence' that 
when she danced and sang (and no-one needed to see/hear her) then, the 
plague broke out, and after murdering her, the plague stopped. The 
FACT that correlation is not causationwell...


It's a second-best defense. Given that reality changes it becomes 
necessary to put the word /evidence/ in scare quotes.


 I don't understand the belief that 'Morals belong on a 
multi-valent scale with degrees of rightness and wrongness". Is he 
saying that IF one is starving, then it is OK to steal? And if one has 
no such physical need, then, it is not OK to steal? I'm not sure what 
a scale of morality includes.

Edwina


How exactly certain classes of judgments belong on multi-valent scale is 
something I'm looking into. Just last week I received Susan Haaack's 
book Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic in the mail. In the book she claims 
"truth does not come in degrees" and that fuzzy logic isn't even logic. 
In 2012 she gave a lecture in Bonn where she repeated that phrase, but 
she later said (in a lecture available on YouTube) that on the airline 
home she changed her mind: lies and mistakes come in degrees, so truth 
must also. I haven't read from her book yet, although I took a cursory 
look at what I can expect. I feel I'd need to understand her arguments 
to best answer your question. But, I do have reasons for believing what 
I already believe.


Hopefully these analogies will serve to explain. Saying that an act of 
charity is morally good is like saying a Beethoven symphony is musically 
good. I judge his third symphony as better than his eighth; and some 
charitable acts are better than others. Jesus said, about the poor lady 
who gave two small coins, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put 
in more than all the others." Also, the legendary charitable act by 
Fatima exemplifies 'very very good' on that scale, which is better than 
'pretty good'. When a poor woman begged her for some clothing, Fatima 
only had two dresses, an old worn one and her new wedding dress for her 
upcoming wedding. Fatima gave the poor lady her wedding dress. It would 
have been good to give her old dress but it was better to give her new 
one. That represents something of how people thought in her culture, and 
still think in ours.


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 10:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Science, on the other hand depends on objective reality as its 
reference base - and therefore, cannot depend on encultured opinion. 
Galileo was quite clear on that. That is, you can have a _belief_ that 
witches cause the plague but this is not science since there is no 
objective empirical evidence.
I think you're example here shows that you're conflating surface beliefs 
of individuals with deep-seated believes, i.e., beliefs that are so deep 
seated that the all people of many contiguous eras don't question them.


I see how you'd come to your conclusion when plugging the ideas I 
present into Peirce's philosophy. I'm not saying that Peirce's 
philosophy is incoherent. Margolis, who proposes an alternative, agrees 
that Peirce was "remarkably coherent." I'm just saying there's an 
alternative that can be backed up with equal strength. So I think 
certain classes of truths can rightly be said to be based on what the 
potential of inquiry, within its own 'sphere of belief' and in its own 
time, would conclude.


That Margolis is a pragmatist, a realist, but also a relativist and a 
constructivist, I think offers us an alternative to see realism and 
pragmatism from a new perspective, perhaps yielding a wider 
understanding of what these terms mean, and maybe even deepening our 
understanding of Peirce's pragmatism and realism. That's why I brought 
this here.


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Tom,

Somewhere the Essential Peirce he says something to the extent that an 
act in violation of love is illogical. You might find some support for 
your idea if you can find it.


On the other hand, I know instinct isn't logic, but this might be 
relevant: I learned from listening to a lecture by Robert Sapolsky that 
instincts are no longer considered to work toward the probable 
perpetuation of the species, but they work only toward the probable 
perpetuation of their specific gene type, sometimes at the expense of 
the species.


Right now I can only narrow the source down to the first two or three 
lectures in this series:

https://youtu.be/NNnIGh9g6fA?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

Perhaps you're right. If so, and if the scientists who say we've already 
embarked on the sixth mass extinction, which is caused by man and 
threatens man's existence, and if Sapolsky is also right, it's because 
man's instincts outweighed his logic.


https://woods.stanford.edu/news-events/news/mass-extinction-here

Matt

On 10/6/15 11:49 PM, Thomas wrote:

Matt, Edwina, List -

I am still persuaded that we (humans) evolved the cognitive ability to 
manipulate logic for the sole purpose of ensuring our survival.  We 
didn't choose that - it evolved, and we are the beneficiaries.  Our 
brains+logic were optimized in nature to ensure our survival, over 
millions of years.  The Pragmatic way we analyze issues and weigh 
options comes naturally, because it defines who we are.


Likewise, the social institutions created by Pragmatic logic have the 
primary purpose of ensuring the survival of the species.  We will 
never reach perfection, but it survival is the normative objective 
that we instinctively use to judge and change our institutions.


Pragmatic logic cannot aim for any other long-run result ahead of 
survival.  It wouldn't know how.  Other goals to animate our social 
institutions will either fail to gain (informed, logical) adherents, 
or those goals must actually be intermediate goals that promote survival.


If I'm wrong about the way evolution works, we should be able to 
identify prominent features of other species that have no survival 
value, and are simply optional.


Regards,
Tom Wyrick

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[PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Tom,

You misunderstood what "second-best" means. In Plato (to the best of my 
knowledge) it means that in lieu of the ever elusive best, we should 
take the second best. This reading of Plato makes him out to be like 
today's cancer doctors who criticize the fact that way too much money is 
being spent to find the silver bullet cure (the ideal, the best) rather 
than the second best way of funding research for palliative care 
(second-best). Margolis says that what is commonly called "best", in 
regard to a moral ideal, is a fantasy, (or that commonly cited criteria 
for how we can know what is best are pie-in-the-sky ideals, e.g., 
perfect coherence, chasing after pie-in-the-sky moral precepts,) but 
there's still a way, it just requires taking a step or two back in your 
rationale and adjusting your faulty premise to a better one. Here, 
second-best is actually best. It helps to understand this to know that 
Margolis is also a constructivist for matters determined by culture, 
like morality. If morals are actually constructed (by humans), then 
chasing after some non-human given (God given) ideal, that most people 
consider best, is a fools errand.


As for survival of the species being a ground for logic... Were samurais 
who committed seppuku (harakiri) illogical? What about the suicidal Jews 
at Masada? Was Edwina illogical when she said to you, on July 22, "I'm 
not a member of the set of people who weep over extinctions. Something 
else emerges, just as you point out, with that E=MC2. Exactly."? A 
strong case could be made for the rationality of all of these.


Matt


On 10/6/15 12:52 AM, Ozzie wrote:

Matt, List ~
Margolis explains, "We are to construct a state ... in spite of the 
fact that no one knows how to detect the would-be guiding Forms."


If I were in charge of constructing the society of monkeys (or any 
other species), I would pay greatest attention to ensuring the 
survival of the species.  If Plato or Margolis don't take the survival 
principle as a starting point for humans, I can understand their 
search for direction.


There is no such thing as a second-best objective at which our logic 
should aim.  If one does not know what is best, one doesn't have any 
way of judging what is second-best, either.  Also, second-best is not 
so good if we are all dead.   A value judgment is required. 
 Pragmatism requires a purpose, or there is no logic.


The ability to manipulate logic is our (humankind's) evolved 
superpower.  Other species wait for accidents, death and time to adapt 
to challenges in optimum ways, while we can (potentially) do it 
overnight.  The evolved purpose of human logic is to survive and 
thrive.  The interpretants in that logic do not favor the interests of 
one person, one party or one nation over another.  The challenges (and 
opportunities) are human and nonhuman, earthborn and from space.


For the individual (person), the first purpose of logic is to survive 
and thrive within the laws of mankind.  A congruence between logic 
serving humankind as well as serving individual humans occurs when 
"efficient" laws and institutional incentives generate decisions that 
are both personally and socially rewarding.  Free thought, free 
communication, free association and free trade are generally believed 
to contribute to those ends, though with limitations.


... Anyway, that's how I see it.

Regards,
Tom Wyrick



On Oct 5, 2015, at 3:05 PM, Matt Faunce '<mattfau...@gmail.com 
<mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>> wrote:


I'm in the middle of re-reading a lecture by Joseph Margolis titled A 
Second-Best Morality. I've been wanting to introduce some of his 
concepts to Peirce-L because they both challenge and expand Peirce's 
philosophy. Among the several things I've read by Margolis, A 
Second-Best Morality seems to be the easiest introduction to this 
otherwise very difficult-to-read philosopher.


The term /Second-Best/ comes from Plato's "second-best state." Since 
there is no discoverable first principles to guide us in what sort of 
state to form. Margolis explains,


"We are to construct a state, it seems––we must live within one
political order or another––in spite of the fact that no one
knows how to detect the would-be guiding Forms."

I have many thoughts on how concepts from this paper relate to the 
subject we're talking about. Unfortunately I haven't organized them 
in a presentable way yet, nonetheless, at the risk of foregoing 
presenting some important premises that Margolis does present, here's 
a quote that is of paramount importance to pragmatism. Speaking of


"We must bear in mind that we ourselves are surely the creatures
of our own cultural history; what we can and dare judge to be
morally and politically reasonable must fit the living options of
our actual world. Even if we supposed an "ideal" answer might
serve as a gu

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 4:49 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
Conceptions of physics do too; and it can be argued, using Thomas Kuhn 
for example, that sometimes our changing conceptions of physics are, 
to some extent, due to changing attitudes regulated by 
history/culture. As far as I can see physics and historical/culture 
affect each other, like when I push against a tree it pushes against me.
Think of the evolution or Reality according to Peirce. In the beginning 
there was all but utter chaos. According to Peirce's article, The Order 
of Nature, in Illustrations of the Logic of Science, we can find order 
in randomness. I imagine that near the beginning of this evolution that 
the order we found and locked onto was pretty much randomly chosen, like 
seeing faces and things in fast moving clouds. The possibilities of what 
we––we being that growing inkling of order––could have chosen and locked 
onto were mind-bogglingly numerous. Peircean cosmology, in this way, 
seems to support constructivist and relativist philosophy: we were 
pretty much constructing the laws of reality. Instead of the analogy of 
me pushing against a tree, imagine me pushing against a rock: early in 
our evolution the rock was small and would move, but now that rock is 
huge, like the Earth, and according to Newton, when I push it it does 
push back but it doesn't seem to budge.


Matt

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[PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 3:22 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:
Were samurais who committed seppuku (harakiri) illogical? What about 
the suicidal Jews at Masada?


Those two questions were in response to your statement here: "For the 
individual (person), the first purpose of logic is to survive and thrive 
within the laws of mankind."


Moral rationality is based on values. There is no conceptual necessity 
to subscribe to the idea that there is one standard of moral values that 
applies to all people for all time, or, for that matter, for all people 
at any given time. (I could have taken the word 'moral' out and, I could 
argue, it would still be true.)


Matt



On 10/6/15 12:52 AM, Ozzie wrote:

Matt, List ~
Margolis explains, "We are to construct a state ... in spite of the 
fact that no one knows how to detect the would-be guiding Forms."


If I were in charge of constructing the society of monkeys (or any 
other species), I would pay greatest attention to ensuring the 
survival of the species.  If Plato or Margolis don't take the 
survival principle as a starting point for humans, I can understand 
their search for direction.


There is no such thing as a second-best objective at which our logic 
should aim.  If one does not know what is best, one doesn't have any 
way of judging what is second-best, either.  Also, second-best is not 
so good if we are all dead.   A value judgment is required. 
 Pragmatism requires a purpose, or there is no logic.


The ability to manipulate logic is our (humankind's) evolved 
superpower.  Other species wait for accidents, death and time to 
adapt to challenges in optimum ways, while we can (potentially) do it 
overnight.  The evolved purpose of human logic is to survive and 
thrive.  The interpretants in that logic do not favor the interests 
of one person, one party or one nation over another.  The challenges 
(and opportunities) are human and nonhuman, earthborn and from space.


For the individual (person), the first purpose of logic is to survive 
and thrive within the laws of mankind.  A congruence between logic 
serving humankind as well as serving individual humans occurs when 
"efficient" laws and institutional incentives generate decisions that 
are both personally and socially rewarding.  Free thought, free 
communication, free association and free trade are generally believed 
to contribute to those ends, though with limitations.


... Anyway, that's how I see it.

Regards,
Tom Wyrick



On Oct 5, 2015, at 3:05 PM, Matt Faunce '<mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm in the middle of re-reading a lecture by Joseph Margolis titled 
A Second-Best Morality. I've been wanting to introduce some of his 
concepts to Peirce-L because they both challenge and expand Peirce's 
philosophy. Among the several things I've read by Margolis, A 
Second-Best Morality seems to be the easiest introduction to this 
otherwise very difficult-to-read philosopher.


The term /Second-Best/ comes from Plato's "second-best state." Since 
there is no discoverable first principles to guide us in what sort 
of state to form. Margolis explains,


"We are to construct a state, it seems––we must live within one
political order or another––in spite of the fact that no one
knows how to detect the would-be guiding Forms."

I have many thoughts on how concepts from this paper relate to the 
subject we're talking about. Unfortunately I haven't organized them 
in a presentable way yet, nonetheless, at the risk of foregoing 
presenting some important premises that Margolis does present, 
here's a quote that is of paramount importance to pragmatism. 
Speaking of


"We must bear in mind that we ourselves are surely the creatures
of our own cultural history; what we can and dare judge to be
morally and politically reasonable must fit the living options
of our actual world. Even if we supposed an "ideal" answer might
serve as a guide at least, we need to remember that our visions
cannot be more than projections from local habits of thought or
neighboring possibilities."

The question that this lecture poses is 'how much of reality does 
this principle cover?' And it makes the case that it should be much 
more than morals and judgments of art. If abduction of moral 
principles (and the value of art) is not the guessing of what is 
true in a Cartesian-Realist way but true in a 'second-best' way, 
then is this also the case of other truths? Understand that Margolis 
brings to light premises that give this question a lot of force. (By 
Cartesian-Realist, I mean that truth is out there, outside of us, 
waiting to be discovered, and we have the means to discover it. I 
mean to challenge the first clause.)


How far did Peirce move, say, compared with Descartes, or Kant, 
toward this idea of second-best truth? Margolis somewhere, on video, 
say something to the extent that this is where the future of 
pragmatism is.

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

On 10/6/15 10:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
 Peirce wrote: "The object of the belief exists it is true, only 
because the belief exists; but this is not the same as to say that it 
begins to exist first when the belief begins to exist."
The object exists, regardless of whether or not you KNOW about it or 
have any belief about it. As Peirce wrote in other places - the object 
exists independent of what you or I think of it. BUT, when you start 
to examine that object, and gain knowledge about it - then, the object 
exists _within the belief_.


OK, an object's existence _within the belief_ is the immediate object, 
as opposed to the dynamic object. (After 100+ "I disagrees" I'm going 
for an "I agree".)


Many people speak of a teleological aspect of Peirce's philosophy. I 
assumed that the above quote was an example of it. Do you agree?


Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina,

In response to your use of quotes of Peirce on the definition of reality...

According to Peirce, reality is dependent on us, if "us" is the totality 
of thinking over time (including potential thought in the future). When 
I spoke of the inkling of order in the early time of cosmic evolution, 
and called it 'we', I meant all that was generalized. I do suggest a 
break from Peirce, as I state below.


Peirce, in CP 5:408. "But it may be said that this view is directly 
opposed to the abstract definition which we have given of reality, 
inasmuch as *it makes the characters of the real depend on what is 
ultimately thought about them*. But the answer to this is that, on the 
one hand, reality is independent, *not necessarily of thought in 
general*, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may 
think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the 
final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is 
does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks."


Where I first break from Peirce is in rejecting the idea that the final 
opinion over time is what defines the real. In giving more credibility 
to each sphere of thought in history, as history and thinking change, it 
seems more reasonable to say that the real is defined by the potential 
for infinite inquiry during that time, or in its own sphere, rather than 
over time. So out with the final opinion and in with the potential for 
current inquiry. Granted, that's a big break. I believe it's fair to tag 
that onto Margolis. (I wish someone more authoritative than me on 
Margolis's philosophy would back me up. So...)


I claim that the validity of a judgment of a moral truth is not 
dependent on this totality of actual and potential thought over time, 
and that judgments about moral acts and values of people 5000 years ago 
by those people compared to acts now by us, are probably 
incommensurable. Then my question is this: If, as I suggest, this is 
because morals are dependent on encultured opinion, then isn't science 
also dependent on encultured opinion albeit more deeply rooted and more 
slowly changing?


I don't think Peirce allowed for incommensurability of any truths, but 
is his argument against it so strong that I shouldn't entertain it?



To my memory- in the beginning, there wasn't chaos. There was Nothing.


I got that phrase "all but chaos" from Peirce. This is similar:

   "If the universe is thus progressing *from a state of all but pure
   chance* to a state of all but complete determination by law, we must
   suppose that there is an original, elemental, tendency of things to
   acquire determinate properties, to take habits. This is the Third or
   mediating element between chance, which brings forth First and
   original events, and law which produces sequences or Seconds."

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-one-two-three-kantian-categories-1

Chaos by itself is nothingness, but due to that inkling of order having 
the tendency to form habit, laws are formed:


EP2:124

   "Efficient causation without final causation, however, is worse than
   helpless, by far; it is mere chaos; and chaos is not even so much as
   chaos, without final causation; it is blank nothing."

Again, I'm suggesting that we should replace'final causation' and 'final 
opinion' with 'potential for infinite inquiry within one's paradigm'. 
The change is called for, as far as I can tell, in giving more 
credibility to each sphere of thought in history, as history and 
thinking change.


If you accept Peirce's final-opinion then this akwardness comes with it:

   "At first it seems no doubt a paradoxical statement that, “the
   object of final belief which exists only in consequence of the
   belief, should itself produce the belief”; but their have been a
   great many instances in which we have adopted a conception of
   existence similar to this. The object of the belief exists it is
   true, only because the belief exists; but this is not the same as to
   say that it begins to exist first when the belief begins to exist."
   (W.3:57, 1873) (I took this quote from Mayorga pg. 97)

Perhaps Margolis shows a less maladroit way.

Matt

On 10/6/15 6:47 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Matt- see my replies below:

- Original Message -
*From:* Matt Faunce <mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com>
*To:* Peirce-L <mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu>
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 06, 2015 5:18 PM
*Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality

On 10/6/15 4:49 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

1) Conceptions of physics do too; and it can be argued, using
Thomas Kuhn for example, that sometimes our changing conceptions
of physics are, to some extent, due to changing attitudes
regulated by history/culture. As far as I can see physics and
historical/culture affect each other, like when I push against a
tree it p

[PEIRCE-L] A Second-Best Morality

[Matt Faunce]

I'm in the middle of re-reading a lecture by Joseph Margolis titled A 
Second-Best Morality. I've been wanting to introduce some of his 
concepts to Peirce-L because they both challenge and expand Peirce's 
philosophy. Among the several things I've read by Margolis, A 
Second-Best Morality seems to be the easiest introduction to this 
otherwise very difficult-to-read philosopher.


The term Second-Best comes from Plato's "second-best state." Since, as 
Margolis argues, there are no discoverable first principles to guide us 
in what sort of state to form, Margolis explains,


   "We are to construct a state, it seems––we must live within one
   political order or another––in spite of the fact that no one knows
   how to detect the would-be guiding Forms."


I have many thoughts on how concepts from this paper relate to the 
subject we're talking about. Unfortunately I haven't organized them in a 
presentable way yet, nonetheless, at the risk of forgoing presenting 
some important premises that Margolis does present, here's a quote that 
is of paramount importance to pragmatism.


   "We must bear in mind that we ourselves are surely the creatures of
   our own cultural history; what we can and dare judge to be morally
   and politically reasonable must fit the living options of our actual
   world. Even if we supposed an "ideal" answer might serve as a guide
   at least, we need to remember that our visions cannot be more than
   projections from local habits of thought or neighboring possibilities."


The question that this lecture poses is 'how much of reality does this 
principle cover?' And it makes the case that it should be much more than 
morals and judgments of art. If abduction of moral principles (and the 
value of art) is not the guessing of what is true in a Cartesian-Realist 
way but true in a 'second-best' way, then is this also the case of other 
truths? Understand that Margolis brings to light premises that give this 
question a lot of force. (By Cartesian-Realist, I mean that truth is out 
there, outside of us, waiting to be discovered, and we have the means to 
discover it. I mean to challenge the first clause.)


How far did Peirce move, say, compared with Descartes, or Kant, toward 
this idea of second-best truth? Did he go far enough? Margolis 
somewhere, on video, says something to the extent that this is where the 
future of pragmatism is.


Here's a relevant quote by Peirce in CP 1:316.

   "I hear you say: "This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic
   conception." I reply that every scientific explanation of a natural
   phenomenon is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to
   which the human reason is analogous; and that it really is so all
   the successes of science in its applications to human convenience
   are witnesses. They proclaim that truth over the length and breadth
   of the modern world. In the light of the successes of science to my
   mind there is a degree of baseness in denying our birthright as
   children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from
   anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe."


Here is the link to a page where you can download the PDF of the written 
lecture (26 pages).


http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/12411

Matt

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Re: [peirce-l] [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8863] The problem with instinct - it's a category

[Matt Faunce]

Daniel,

In case you're new to Peirce's philosophy, it's a good idea to look up 
words in that dictionary that you think are common enough to know the 
meaning, e.g., 'sign' and 'object', because he explains them in context 
to his other aspects of his philosophy. Jumping around these definitions 
is helpful in getting a broader picture of his philosophy.


Also, I'm curious what developments of the cultural industry you're 
going to explain.


Matt

On 9/27/15 4:24 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

Hi Daniel,

Go to http://www.commens.org/dictionary

You'll find definitions of terms Peirce used using Peirce's own words.

Matt Faunce

On Sep 27, 2015, at 1:42 PM, Daniel Guimarães <dxdslasher...@gmail.com 
<mailto:dxdslasher...@gmail.com>> wrote:



Dear Arisbe members,

Good evening to all,

I am researching about some developments of the cultural industry 
that might be explained within the confines of Peirce’s concept of 
semiosis.


I would like to know where I can find a good definition for semiosis 
by Peirce in the CP’s,  and how I can cite it properly.


Any suggestion and help would immensily welcome and appreciated!!

Thank you in advance.

Bets regards,
Daniel



--
Matt


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[PEIRCE-L] Laura Schulz on Babies' Use of Logic

[Matt Faunce]

I found this fascinating. Laura Schulz's experiments that show babies' 
use of logic:


https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_schulz_the_surprisingly_logical_minds_of_babies?language=en

I assume that the use of logic is instinctive.

--
Matt


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[PEIRCE-L] Re: Laura Schulz on Babies' Use of Logic

[Matt Faunce]

On 9/8/15 9:17 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
I found this fascinating. Laura Schulz's experiments that show babies' 
use of logic:


https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_schulz_the_surprisingly_logical_minds_of_babies?language=en

I assume that the use of logic is instinctive.
--
Matt
That video isn't playing for me on the ted.com webpage, so here's a link 
to the same lecture on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/y1KIVZw7Jxk

--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] More Peirce MSS posted online by Harvard, incl [Reasoning and Instinct] - MS 831

[Matt Faunce]

Thanks Ben, for telling us about this and transcribing it!

I noticed a few typos.

Pg. 6: replace [X] with C.
1. Any member of Section A not belonging to Section B may read a paper 
if he has paid his subscription, but otherwise not. And the same applies 
to every member of Section B not belonging to Section *[X]*, and to 
every member of Section C not belonging to Section A.


Pg. 9, replace all with call:
Supposing such a machine to be constructed, ought we, or ought we not, 
to *all* it a reasoning-machine?


Pg. 16, you put two a's before 'coffin':
In like manner, we may picture to ourselves a number of men each in *a 
a* coffin to signify that he is mortal, one of the number being labelled 
Aquinaldo.


Pg. 24, fist should be first, and cases should be case:
Even effects of color contrast, which deceive one at *fist* so 
absolutely, become much weakened, in time. In this *cases*, we...


Pg. 26, change read to red, whem to when, add to.
one deep *read* and the other appearing quite white *whem* seen by 
itself, the two being brought *to* the same degree of apparent 
luminosity. The observer looks...


Matt

On 7/22/15 8:32 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:


List,

Harvard has placed more Peirce manuscript images online. They keep 
changing the URL for the list of Peirce MS images online, and now one 
has to search at Harvard's Oasis instead of Harvard's Hollis. I'll 
need to update the info at Arisbe. Anyway, for the current list of 
Harvard's online images of Peirce's manuscripts, go (or try to go) to


http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/deepLinkDigital?_collection=oasisinoid=nullhistno=nulluniqueId=hou02614

One of the manuscripts newly available is MS 831. I've mentioned MS 
831 a number of times, based on the Robin Catalog's description of it:


831. [Reasoning and Instinct]
A. MS., n.p., n.d., pp. 2–29, incomplete.
The fine gradations between subconscious or instinctive mind and 
conscious, controlled reason. Logical machines are not strictly 
reasoning machines because they lack the ability of self-criticism and 
the ability to correct defects which may crop up. Three kinds of 
reasoning: inductive, deductive, hypothetical. Quasi-inferences.


I've transcribed and posted MS 831 at 
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms831/ms831.htm


Best, Ben




--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for

[Matt Faunce]

 On Aug 3, 2014, at 2:09 PM, John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za wrote:
 
 At 08:00 PM 2014-08-03, Stephen C. Rose wrote:
 The notion of how signs get to their editing is clearly ultimately a matter 
 of theory. But the theory can stipulate that there is the penumbra which I 
 infer from direct experience.
 
 I don't think you entitled to do this. Do you really think I would be so 
 stupid as to ignore this possibility? I am arguing that what you experience 
 is already interpreted, and hence not a pure first.

John, was your consideration of the possibilities along the same lines as mine, 
described below?

When I read Dewey's critique of the reflex arc in psychology and his 
explanation that it would be better thought of as a circuit, (described below), 
I thought of an electrical circuit where no electrons move until the circuit is 
complete. So likewise, no part of the reflex arc has independence from the 
other parts.
Then I considered that maybe it's more like the coupled wave system of an 
acoustic guitar. In a guitar, the first half-cycle of the string first 
vibration is independent of the reaction of the soundboard, and the first 
half-cycle of the soundboard is independent of the reaction of the air in the 
inside chamber. After the first half-cycle of the string the reaction of the 
soundboard affects the string's vibration. (The affect of the air chamber on 
the string is visually apparent when comparing the string's vibration during a 
wolf-tone, whose cause is from a standing air pressure wave in the guitar body, 
to the vibration during a good tone.)

I tend to think our thinking is more like an electrical circuit, and that 
Peirce agreed but sometimes threw sops to Cerberus when describing firsts and 
seconds.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   
Here's a description of Dewey's reflex circuit, which I copied from a post of 
mine from last year:

Which reminds me of Dewey's criticism of the reflex arc, in The Reflex Arc 
Concept in Psychology (1896), where he described the cyclical view of 
communication among sender and receiver -- as a circuit, a continual 
reconstitution, rather than information jerked through one-way-valves, from 
sensation to idea to action. For those who haven't read it, here's a very short 
description of Dewey's idea:
  The reflex arc is sensation-followed-by-idea-followed-by-movement. Dewey 
saw the understanding of these parts as too isolated. Better would be this: The 
act, e.g. of looking, and sensation are coordinated; Looking/sensation and idea 
are coordinated; Looking/sensation/idea and movement are coordinated. The 
knowledge comes from the coordination of all the parts, not the output after a 
one-way flow through the parts.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Burgin's Fundamental Triads as Peirceasn Signs.

[Matt Faunce]

Thanks Edwina,

I recently decided to back up and brush up on the basics of philosophy, so I 
bought Joseph Margolis's book Introduction to Philosophical Problems. The first 
chapter was enlightening and I'm looking forward to the rest. Now I think a 
good thorough brush up on formal logic would do me good. So, having previously 
enjoyed Venn's treatise on Inductive logic, I just  ordered his book Symbolic 
Logic. All this will keep me pretty silent here for the next year. 

I also think my comments, questions, and objections will be better articulated 
after this study, bringing into focus so much that's stuck in the morass of my 
logica utens.

Matt


 On Jul 6, 2014, at 11:29 AM, Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
 
 Matt - right. And your switch to If-Then has removed all universals; your 
 three assertions are all 'particular'. In a genuine syllogism, at least one 
 of your assertions must be universal (All or No) and therefore, with both 
 your premises non-universal, your conclusion is...well, it's dogs all the way.
 
 Sure, you can move the S, M, P clauses around and come up with a formally 
 valid syllogism, but then, you run into the problem of the falseness of  the 
 assertion itself.
 Take an example. The Saussurian 'triad', where the Sign is made up of the 
 Signifier-Signified.  This is not similar to the Peircean 
 Object-Representamen-Interpretant. Why not? Because the two so-called triads 
 operate within two entirely different processes. To ignore this is to focus 
 only on the shallow semantics that there are 'three 'sets' or nodes in 
 each..and ignore that their interaction is not comparable.
 
 That is, are all triadic forms similar, such that one can simply equate one 
 triad (the Burgin triad) with another one (the Peircean triadic process). No. 
  Can you compare the Peircean triad, which includes that vital mediation 
 process of transformation (not just naming) - which the Burgin triad lacks, - 
 with the Burgin? I don't think so. The Burgin is Saussurian - and Saussure 
 and Peirce are not comparable.
 
 Edwina
 
 - Original Message - From: Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com
 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
 Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2014 10:32 AM
 Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Burgin's Fundamental Triads as Peirceasn Signs.
 
 
 Edwina, you're right. My first one is exposed if I write,
 
 If he's a logician he's a man
 If he's a logician he's mean
 Therefore some who are mean are men
 
 There might be no logicians, and maybe the only who are mean are dogs.
 
 But Sung assumed the existence of logicians. I'll look more closely at this 
 and the others later today.
 
 Matt
 
 
 On Jul 6, 2014, at 8:07 AM, Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
 
 No, Sung and Matt -  your attempt to validate Sung's syllogism sets up yet 
 another fallacy: the Existential  Fallacy.  Sung chose the first one of the 
 three you suggested, Matt - as a 'best fit' for what he was trying to assert.
 
 But, it's just as invalid as his previous illicit major, for it moves into 
 the Existential Fallacy, where  'if both premises are universal then the 
 conclusion must also be universal'. You, Matt, changed the conclusion to 
 'some', which is a non-universal. Can't be done - and reduces Sung's claim 
 to irrelevance. After all, he is trying to claim that Peircean signs can 
 unify mathematics and to reduce that to 'some Peircean signs'renders the 
 claim trivial. [Your other two, Matt, are also formally invalid.]
 
 Sung- the quantifier 'All' is normal in a syllogism as differentiated from 
 'some'. It shows that a term is distributed as differentiated from 
 undistributed (some).
 
 Again, check out a brief outline on syllogistic logic.
 
 Furthermore, just because you line up two sets of  coloured blocks side by 
 side, and the two sets each share a colour, doesn't mean that the remaining 
 colours are related.
 
 Edwina
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - Original Message - From: Sungchul Ji s...@rci.rutgers.edu
 To: Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com
 Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
 Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2014 5:38 AM
 Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Burgin's Fundamental Triads as Peirceasn Signs.
 
 
 Matt,
 
 Thank you for your  attempt to clarify what I mean by my proposed
 mathematics-semiotics (MS) syllogism.
 
 Of the three syllogisms you constructed, the first one may fit the MS
 syllogism best, probably because of the existential quantifier some
 appearing in the conclusion.
 
 Interestingly, in the original MS syllogism that I constructed, there is
 no quantifier at all. However, in Edwina's (mis- ?) interpretation of the
 MS syllogism, she introduced the universal quantifier, all.  I wonder if
 this is at the root of the controversy between her and me.  (Although I
 have taken no formal course on logic, my thinking, I hope, is logical
 most, if not all, of the time.)
 
 With all the best.
 
 Sung
 
 
 Please, Sung - try to read a basic course in logic

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Thanks Gary, Ben, and Jon,

By relativism I meant that truth is mutable, and I was thinking that some form 
of, development of, historicism might one day prove to be just as robust as 
Peirce's Realism. 

 Esthetic ideals are not subject to “belief” in their “truth”, but beliefs are 
pulled by the esthetic ideal, (I assume that the esthetic ideal is an aspect of 
the final cause,) and if truth is the would-be final opinion then this won't 
allow for the esthetic ideal to shift over time. In that case there might be 
final opinions (plural) regarding any proposition, each different opinion being 
relative to a different zeitgeist. 

Regarding James's will to believe, My understanding has been that this 'will' 
is just a desire to believe something, not a decision to desire something. And 
in the essay James defends the right to believe it against Clifford's 
objections that to do so only because you had a desire, without logic, is 
immoral and a sin against logic.
   I'll re-read it this week sometime to double check.

Matt

 On Jun 25, 2014, at 8:04 AM, Gary Fuhrman g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
 
 Matt, I’m short of time too, but want to register agreement with Jon’s point. 
 (And Ben’s too, which arrived as I write this.)
  
 Your restatement still looks kind of “sloppy” to me  … Peirce’s realism is 
 opposed to nominalism, not to relativism in the sense you seem to mean here. 
 And you’re putting the cart before the horse when you speak of a “fixed 
 esthetic ideal”. Esthetics is the normative science prior to logic in 
 Peirce’s classification, so esthetic ideals are not subject to “belief” in 
 their “truth”; “realism”, in conjunction with the logic of relatives, just 
 asserts that the generality of a symbol or legisign is no obstacle to its 
 reality. An esthetic ideal would have to be essentially iconic, and since an 
 icon unconnected with an index can carry no information, there is no question 
 of “belief” in it. Only late in life did Peirce affirm that esthetics was a 
 normative science; his “objective idealism” is a logical doctrine, not an 
 esthetic or ethical one, and does not stem from any “will to believe”.
  
 This comment by Peirce might clarify the issue:
  
 [[[ When a hand at whist has reached the point at which each player has but 
 three cards left, the one who has to lead often goes on the assumption that 
 the cards are distributed in a certain way, because it is only on that 
 assumption that the odd trick can be saved. This is indisputably logical; and 
 on a more critical analogous occasion there might be some psychological 
 excuse, or even warrant, for a “will to believe” that such was really the 
 case. But all that logic warrants is a hope, and not a belief. It must be 
 admitted, however, that such hopes play a considerable part in logic. For 
 example, when we discuss a vexed question, we hope that there is some 
 ascertainable truth about it, and that the discussion is not to go on forever 
 and to no purpose. A transcendentalist would claim that it is an 
 indispensable “presupposition” that there is an ascertainable true answer to 
 every intelligible question. I used to talk like that, myself; for when I was 
 a babe in philosophy my bottle was filled from the udders of Kant. But by 
 this time I have come to want something more substantial. ]] CP2.113, from 
 the “Minute Logic”, 1902).
  
 Peirce’s belief in God was not transcendentalist in that sense, as far as I 
 can see.
  
 gary f.
  
 } The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. [Kenko] {
 www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
  
 From: Matt Faunce [mailto:mattfau...@gmail.com] 
 Sent: 24-Jun-14 10:09 PM
 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Cc: Jon Awbrey
 Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science 
 and Religion
  
 Let me restate that less sloppily. It appears to me that Peirce's belief in 
 realism with the fixed esthetic ideal, and rejection of relativism started 
 with his personal inclination for realism, and only later after he developed 
 his philosophy was he able to show that his realism is more coherent than any 
 extant relativist philosophy. All he did was score a point for the side of 
 his realism near the beginning of the test. Knowing that philosophy is in its 
 infancy it's quite a leap of faith to declare realism and the esthetic ideal 
 to be true—and of all facts, a declaration about the nature of reason has to 
 be considered amongst the least secure. Judging by his fervor for realism and 
 animosity for relativism he must have had the will to believe his realism is 
 true when he started and at the end of his life.
 
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 24, 2014, at 2:21 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Jon, List,
  
 This bothers me. It appears to me that Peirce invoked this right to will to 
 believe for his belief that reason reaches toward a fixed esthetic end.
  
 Can you, or someone, point me toward Peirce's thoughts on James's Will to 
 Believe

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Ha! I love it! Inscribed on the walls of every music conservatory in the US are 
the words If your gonna make a mistake, make it big! Or as Peirce said of 
Sigwart's idea of Gefhl, Good! This is good intelligent work, such as advances 
philosophy—a good, square, explicit fallacy that can be squarely met and 
definitively refuted.

You've been assuming Cartesian duality, redefined Peirce's Mind, which is a 
strictly idealist concept, into dualistic terms, and concluded that it is 
illogical. 
   You assumed Peirce's Mind is equal to a consistently progressive 
organization; so any backwards motion, disassembling, shows that it is 
not-Mind. This distinction for Mind is not necessary. I think Peirce made it 
clear that Mind is rather marked by the greater tendency toward organization so 
to reach toward an ultimate end. The backwards motion that you call 
disorganization is necessary to regroup so to move forward farther toward the 
end than what would otherwise be possible. Do you look at your own mind only as 
a mind when it is assembling order and not a mind when disassembling?
   I know that this disorganizing that precedes regrouping sometimes happens 
when you think it would be better if it had not happened, that in specific 
cases the disorganizing is nothing but the evil of randomness, but  this is 
your anthropocentric intrepretation. In the bigger picture Chance is the oil of 
our machine.
   Sometimes I'll lose writings or musical compositions and I'm put in the 
uncomfortable position of trying to recall what I had written. Every time the 
loosely recalled version is better!
   I think of Tarkovsky's movie The Stalker, which had to be completely 
scrapped for some reason, so he had to start over and this time had to rush 
through it. His movies are excruciatingly slow so I can only imagine that the 
second version had a better ability to connect with more people, and it 
certainly wasn't dumbed down.

When you earlier asked if I implied that matter is a necessary condition for 
mind you were assuming a duality. This is why I said I can't agree.

Matt

 On Jun 24, 2014, at 11:53 AM, Sungchul Ji s...@rci.rutgers.edu wrote:
 
 Edwina wrote:
 
 After all, Peirce's 'Mind' or Thirdness  (062414-6)
 or habits-of-organization, are evolving . . .
 
 
 If Peirce's 'Mind' is identifiable with 'organization' in the Universe,
 what would be identifiable with the 'disorganization' in the Universe
 whose existence is mandated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (as I
 explained in my previous post) ?  'Mindless' ?
 
 Just to stimulate the discussion and based on the thermodynamic argument 
 presented above, I am tempted to make the following assertion:
 
 Only the 'Mindless' may be content with the  (062414-7)
 'Mind' of Peirce.
 
 With all the best.
 
 Sung
 
 Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
 Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
 Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
 Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
 Rutgers University
 Piscataway, N.J. 08855
 732-445-4701
 
 www.conformon.net
 
 Ah, I see, thanks. But I wasn't commenting on your comment that 'Peirce
 looked askance on James' portrayal of a will to believe'.  I was focusing
 on
 the fact that Peirce rejected Platonic Forms; he was an Aristotelian - and
 the 'form' of the matter was never, in Aristotle, separate from that
 matter,
 whereas for Plato, it existed as a pure ideal.
 
 The notion of a demiurge, i.e., an agent controlling the Forms and using
 them in moulding matter - would be rejected by Peirce whereas it was
 accepted within Plato's outline. After all, Peirce's 'Mind' or Thirdness
 or
 habits-of-organization, are evolving and therefore, operate within matter
 and not by some external agent's Will.
 
 Edwina
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net
 To: Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca
 Cc: Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 5:50 PM
 Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ;
 Science
 and Religion
 
 
 Edwina,
 
 Sorry for the ambiguous construction.
 I meant that Peirce looked askance on
 James' portrayal of a will to believe.
 Not sure about the rejection of Forms,
 as it's hard if not impossible to sift
 the spirit of Plato from the flesh of
 Scholastic Realism.  And the Timaeus
 is allegory or parable, so it has to
 be taken with a grain of hermeneutic
 salt, to my taste, anyway.
 
 Jon
 
 Edwina Taborsky wrote:
 Yes, that's a very good comment - Plato's demiurge who was a 'master
 craftsman' using the Pure Forms to create matter.  And yes, Peirce did
 indeed reject Platonism is all its forms - both the ideal Forms and the
 metaphysical Master Craftsman.
 
 Edwina
 
 
 - Original Message - From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net
 To: Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com
 Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 5:16 PM
 Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re

[PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Jon, List,

This bothers me. It appears to me that Peirce invoked this right to will to 
believe for his belief that reason reaches toward a fixed esthetic end.

Can you, or someone, point me toward Peirce's thoughts on James's Will to 
Believe, or any of his concepts that are contrary to it?

Matt

 On Jun 23, 2014, at 5:16 PM, Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net wrote:
 
 Matt, List,
 
 I was minded more of Plato's demiurge
 than James' will to believe, a notion
 on which Peirce looked rather askance,
 if I recall correctly ...
 
 Jon
 
 Matt Faunce wrote:
 Here is William James in his lecture Is Life Worth Living? on the urge y'all 
 are speaking of. Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner 
 interests can have no real connection with the forces that the hidden world 
 may contain? In other cases divinations based on inner interests have proved 
 prophetic enough. Take science itself! Without an imperious inner demand on 
 our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we should never have 
 attained to proving that such harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks 
 and interstices of the crude natural world. Hardly a law has been 
 established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first 
 sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence 
 such needs come from we do not know: we find them in us, and biological 
 psychology so far only classes them with Darwin's 'accidental variations.' 
 But the inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of 
 something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and 
 authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need
 of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. 
 The toil of many generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why may 
 not the former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the 
 physical universe, why may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is 
 there? What, in short, has the authority to debar us from trusting our 
 religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can 
 only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic 'thou shall not believe 
 without coercive sensible evidence' is simply an expression (free to anyone 
 to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar 
 kind.
 

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[PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Let me restate that less sloppily. It appears to me that Peirce's belief in 
realism with the fixed esthetic ideal, and rejection of relativism started with 
his personal inclination for realism, and only later after he developed his 
philosophy was he able to show that his realism is more coherent than any 
extant relativist philosophy. All he did was score a point for the side of his 
realism near the beginning of the test. Knowing that philosophy is in its 
infancy it's quite a leap of faith to declare realism and the esthetic ideal to 
be true—and of all facts, a declaration about the nature of reason has to be 
considered amongst the least secure. Judging by his fervor for realism and 
animosity for relativism he must have had the will to believe his realism is 
true when he started and at the end of his life.

Matt

 On Jun 24, 2014, at 2:21 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Jon, List,
 
 This bothers me. It appears to me that Peirce invoked this right to will to 
 believe for his belief that reason reaches toward a fixed esthetic end.
 
 Can you, or someone, point me toward Peirce's thoughts on James's Will to 
 Believe, or any of his concepts that are contrary to it?
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 23, 2014, at 5:16 PM, Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net wrote:
 
 Matt, List,
 
 I was minded more of Plato's demiurge
 than James' will to believe, a notion
 on which Peirce looked rather askance,
 if I recall correctly ...
 
 Jon
 
 Matt Faunce wrote:
 Here is William James in his lecture Is Life Worth Living? on the urge 
 y'all are speaking of. Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our 
 inner interests can have no real connection with the forces that the hidden 
 world may contain? In other cases divinations based on inner interests have 
 proved prophetic enough. Take science itself! Without an imperious inner 
 demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we should 
 never have attained to proving that such harmonies lie hidden between all 
 the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world. Hardly a law has 
 been established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first 
 sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence 
 such needs come from we do not know: we find them in us, and biological 
 psychology so far only classes them with Darwin's 'accidental variations.' 
 But the inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of 
 something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and 
 authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need
 of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific 
 head. The toil of many generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why 
 may not the former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the 
 physical universe, why may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is 
 there? What, in short, has the authority to debar us from trusting our 
 religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can 
 only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic 'thou shall not believe 
 without coercive sensible evidence' is simply an expression (free to anyone 
 to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar 
 kind.
 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

I wrote:
Your insult to us is that you say we who reject your conclusion and still…

To clarify, I accept the contents of your explanation as playing a part, but I 
reject it as the exclusive role. 

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Sorry. Thats twice i accidentally hit the send button. 

 I wrote:

 I see no reason to bar my will to believe that the explanation may lie in 
 part in what is currently occult. And I'll even add to that that it may be 
 the nature of the relation of the occult to us that the occult will always 
 remain occult. (Peirce would scoff at that addition on the grounds that it 
 entertains nominalism, which I certainly still do at times.)
 
That was a bit sloppy. This is what I meant:

I see no reason to bar the possibility that the explanation may lie, in part, 
in what is currently occult. I see no reason I should be barred from the right 
to believe and thus live the experiment. …

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina, The question is if logic or any philosophical principle bars me from 
believing. Bar from meaning conflicts with. 

I've made a few radical changes in my beliefs over the years, and my family and 
friends have never put any pressure on me to not carry through with my 
decisions. I've also tried to pushed some social boundaries only to basically 
hear from my family and friends There goes Matt again. The variations of 
beliefs within my family are wide enough ranged that I've always felt free to 
experiment. I did get in some trouble in my teens for smoking pot, but the 
reaction was different than I expected, it was pretty much limited to a deep 
disappointment that I'm creating future opportunity losses.

No, I didn't think you were barring me or even wishing to bar me from believing.

I do welcome logical or reasonable challenges to my most cherished beliefs, 
because that's what really gets me driven to investigate—and not purely, or 
even mostly, so to defend my position, although that's usually the easiest 
angle to investigate, e.g., referencing influential books. Plus, being told I'm 
wrong gives me an initial rise of adrenaline which although I know narrows my 
scope of possibilities, and clouds my thinking a bit, I also know it will fade 
at least by the next day, so I allow it to kick start my obsessive 
investigating (in books, jstor, etc.) 

 Matt

 On Jun 23, 2014, at 8:33 PM, Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
 
 Matt - who is barring you from having your own beliefs! I am certainly not 
 doing so. I am merely outlining MY opinion.
  
 Edwina
 - Original Message -
 From: Matt Faunce
 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 6:39 PM
 Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; 
 Science and Religion
 
 I wrote:
 I see no reason to bar my will to believe that the explanation may lie in 
 part in what is currently occult. And I'll even add to that that it may be 
 the nature of the relation of the occult to us that the occult will always 
 remain occult. (Peirce would scoff at that addition on the grounds that it 
 entertains nominalism, which I certainly still do at times.)
 
 I wrote:
 I see no reason to bar my will to believe that the explanation may lie in 
 part in what is currently occult. And I'll even add to that that it may be 
 the nature of the relation of the occult to us that the occult will always 
 remain occult. (Peirce would scoff at that addition on the grounds that it 
 entertains nominalism, which I certainly still do at times.)
 
 
 -
 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 .
 
 
 
 

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[PEIRCE-L] Jstor.org

[Matt Faunce]

Gary M., List,

In case you didn't know, Jstor.org changed their policy about a year ago and 
now allows anyone to read full articles free of charge. The free membership—you 
just need to sign up—is restricted access: you can't download, but only read 
online, and you can only put four articles on your shelf, and there's a 
minimum period an article must stay on your shelf.

Their search engine works great, so of course you'll want to search for Scotus 
and… you know.

Matt

 On Jun 22, 2014, at 4:15 PM, Gary Moore peirce-l@list.iupui.edu wrote:
 
 Thank you! Since I have little money, this reassurance is very welcome! I 
 would have ordered the book if I had run across it at 

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[PEIRCE-L] Re: Jstor.org

[Matt Faunce]

 I wrote:
 
 you can only put four articles on your shelf, and there's a minimum period 
 an article must stay on your shelf.
 
Correction only three articles 
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[PEIRCE-L] Re: Jstor.org

[Matt Faunce]

 I wrote:
 
 you can only put four articles on your shelf, and there's a minimum period 
 an article must stay on your shelf.

Correction only three articles on your shelf and each must stay 14 days. So 
choose wisely. When I'm maxed out I'll browse on jstor then see if I can find 
the article elsewhere.

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

Here is William James in his lecture Is Life Worth Living? on the urge y'all 
are speaking of. 

Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have no 
real connection with the forces that the hidden world may contain? In other 
cases divinations based on inner interests have proved prophetic enough. Take 
science itself! Without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical 
and mathematical harmonies, we should never have attained to proving that such 
harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks and interstices of the crude 
natural world. Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact 
ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and blood, to 
gratify an inner need. Whence such needs come from we do not know: we find them 
in us, and biological psychology so far only classes them with Darwin's 
'accidental variations.' But the inner need of believing that this world of 
nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as 
strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform 
laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. The toil of 
many generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why may not the former 
one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the physical universe, why 
may not that be a sign that an invisible universe is there? What, in short, has 
the authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands? Science as such 
assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and 
the agnostic 'thou shall not believe without coercive sensible evidence' is 
simply an expression (free to anyone to make) of private personal appetite for 
evidence of a certain peculiar kind.
-
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to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; Science and Religion

[Matt Faunce]

 On Jun 22, 2014, at 9:44 PM, Edwina Taborsky tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
 
 If I may lift a quote:
  
 What, in short, has the authority to debar us from trusting our religious 
 demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say 
 what is, not what is not; and the agnostic 'thou shall not believe without 
 coercive sensible evidence' is simply an expression (free to anyone to make) 
 of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind.
  
 That is a remarkable statement; however, I am not using 'remarkable' as a 
 word of praise.
  
 'Science has no authority for it can only say what is, not what is not'.  I 
 certainly hope that science does not make any assertions about 'what is not'.

I almost cut that part out and replaced it with ellipses, but I figured that 
either James was assuming that his context made it clear that what science 
can't say 'is not' is anything of so vague a class as something spiritual, or 
because caught up in his poetic rhapsody he made a mistake. I'm pretty sure he 
knew of Michelson and Morley's famous experiment. 

I'll give you the same benefit of the doubt. 

 Am I to conclude, because my religion demands it, that witches and devils 
 exist - even though objective evidence and rational examination (science) can 
 say nothing about them, for science can only refer to 'what is' empirically 
 evident?

Conclude because my religion demands it? He said nothing about making logical 
conclusions or about any exterior demands. This is about the hypothesis that 
something spiritual is the final cause pulling them to express a belief in that 
something, and is about the testing of the hypothesis by expressing the belief, 
i.e., by believing, by living the experiment.

 Is it agnostic or scientific to rest my conclusions on compelling sensible 
 evidence? After all, Peirce's 'Fixation of Belief' readily shows us that 
 tenacity is one method that rejects evidence; as is authority; and the a 
 priori rejects peer evidence and rests only on a 'private personal evidence' 
 . Only the scientific method, rooted in objective evidence of 'a community of 
 scholars' can lead us to a true evaluation of reality.

If your conclusion is that you should dissuade others from testing an unproven 
hypothesis then do what ya gotta do. 

[T]here is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come 
into our heads…  —C. S. Peirce

I'm curious though, did you do the math to estimate just how secure your 
induction is? Did you estimate the ratio of samples drawn to the total? Did you 
adjust your numbers for the lack of randomness in your sample draws? Just how 
scientific is your conclusion? 

 As for Without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical and 
 mathematical harmonies, - my comment is that because, in our species, we 
 lack an innate knowledge base, our knowledge of 'how to live' must be 
 learned, developed, stored symbolically and passed on to the next generation. 
 Therefore, this 'imperious inner demand' is based on the particular needs of 
 our species. We MUST explore and learn 'what is the nature of the 
 environment' because we have no innate knowledge. There is no mysterious 
 'inner demand'; nor is there a demand for 'ideal harmonies' but instead - for 
 'what works here', i.e., for pragmatic results.

That's it? You're convinced you've explained the whole situation? Edwina, you 
don't even know half of what you've claimed to explain.

Matt

 - Original Message -
 From: Matt Faunce
 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 9:23 PM
 Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: De Waal Seminar Chapter 9 : Section on God ; 
 Science and Religion
 
 Here is William James in his lecture Is Life Worth Living? on the urge y'all 
 are speaking of. 
 
 Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have no 
 real connection with the forces that the hidden world may contain? In other 
 cases divinations based on inner interests have proved prophetic enough. Take 
 science itself! Without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal 
 logical and mathematical harmonies, we should never have attained to proving 
 that such harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks and interstices of the 
 crude natural world. Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a 
 fact ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and 
 blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence such needs come from we do not know: 
 we find them in us, and biological psychology so far only classes them with 
 Darwin's 'accidental variations.' But the inner need of believing that this 
 world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself 
 is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need 
 of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. 
 The toil of many generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why may 
 not the former

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

I don't see how anyone can avoid choosing, either consciously or 
subconsciously, either monism or dualism. You can switch, but I don't see a way 
out. 
I'm not sure if there's a real philosophical difference between the two 
monistic philosophies or if one is just a more convenient view from which to 
explain and understand certain issues.

If we've successfully boiled our philosophical disagreement down to a 
difference in the values we hold then I consider this a successful discussion. 

Matt


 On Jun 20, 2014, at 10:43 AM, Jerry LR Chandler jerry_lr_chand...@me.com 
 wrote:
 
 List, Matt:
 
 Thank you for articulating your views.
 
 I was somewhat stunned by the notion that the First person pronoun, a simple 
 term of reference from grammar would lead to so many broad philosophical 
 generalizations. 
 
 To me, your post illustrates a clear example of a relation between Firstness, 
 Secondness and Thirdness, within the mindset of philosophers. Firstness is 
 the personal pronoun I, Secondness is the brute action of 
 personality/belief and Thirdness is the relation between the two.:-)  :-) 
  :-) 
 
 We disagree on some issues.
 Most notably, the following 
 We have to choose between these three philosophies: idealism, where 
 everything is mental; materialism, where everything is material; and 
 pluralism,
 
 I am not aware of any imperatives in choosing a philosophy.  Perhaps you 
 could explain what/ where/ how/ and why such imperatives exist. 
 
 If you admit the importance of simplicity, in Ockham's Razor, then you 
 should admit that is everything is continuous,
 
 
 1. The simple is for simpletons.  I admit the critical importance of 
 perplexity in all of nature.
 2. The natural sciences of which I am a student of, electricity, chemistry, 
 biology and medicine, are all based on the concept of the discrete identity 
 of the individual parts of the whole. The identity of every human being is 
 discrete and unique. Space and time are continuous. 
 
 Our differences are so profound that I will read your response and then drop 
 the tread.
 
 
 Cheers
 
 Jerry 
 
 
 On Jun 17, 2014, at 10:33 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
 
  Jerry asked,
 
 What is your understanding of your usage of the term us in your sentence?
 Could you find a better articulation of your intended meaning(s)?
 
 
 My usage was in response to what Stephen said, quoted here:
  Pragmaticism is a bastion against the dominant notion that we are all 
 reality is. We are not all of reality. Our individual perceptions are not 
 all reality. Before we are, reality is. After we are, reality remains.
 
 The part of my response Jerry asked me to better articulate:
  The Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, who were objective 
 idealists, concluded that there could never have been a before us and 
 there will never be an after us. I came to see things their way.
  And I defined 'we' as those of us whose essence is our mind.
  In another post I wrote: 
  Regarding what I meant by 'essence of mind,' Peirce did say 'Matter is 
 effete mind', but I think he could have also said the reverse, that 'Matter 
 is nascent mind.' Maybe some minds are hardening into nothing but habit, 
 i.e., matter, and some minds hardened into habits are transforming into what 
 most people would recognize as minds.
 
 Now, why idealism? We have to choose between these three philosophies: 
 idealism, where everything is mental; materialism, where everything is 
 material; and pluralism, eg., dualism says part of the world is ideal and 
 the other part is material. If you admit the importance of simplicity, in 
 Ockham's Razor, then you should admit that is everything is continuous, 
 since the alternative is only more complicated. That leaves the first two 
 mentioned which are monistic. Since in anyone's thinking the material world 
 is derived from their ideas, it seems simpler to choose idealism, and admit 
 the mental as the primordial stuff of reality and the physical as a special 
 case of the ideal. To infer that in our evolution, somewhere along the line, 
 particles snapped together and produced ideas seems to gratuitously give the 
 common notion of mind, e.g., that animals have a mind but non-animals don't, 
 a privileged status analogous to the idea that the current human form 
 couldn't have evolved from an extremely simple past so it must have snapped 
 together from God's command; anything that preserves our nobility.
 
 I used we as in those of us whose essence is our mind in a way I 
 understand Peirce. He was an idealist, as I am, which means we believe 
 reality is mental. I used 'we' in the widest sense because there is no value 
 in Stephen Rose's statement if the term is taken in a narrower sense. Here's 
 why i think that: If he claimed pragmaticism was a bastion against solipsism 
 he would've use the term 'I' or 'you' in the singular. If he meant some 
 narrow use of 'we' like 'all Americans', or 'all humans over

Re: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

Hi Sung,

 On Jun 20, 2014, at 6:34 PM, Sungchul Ji s...@rci.rutgers.edu wrote:
 
 Matt wrote:
 
 Just like 'standing still' is a special case of  (062014-1)
 motion, matter is a special case of mind.
 
 
 Do you mean by (062014-1) that Matter is a necessary condition for mind ?

I didn't mean that. That the special case is a necessary condition for the 
usual case? Maybe it's true, but I'm not signing my name to that.

 Would you agree that
 
 Just as 'standing still' is assocaited with a zero(062014-2)
 velcoity and motion with non-zero velocities, so matter
 is associated with a zero capacity for thinking while
 mind has non-zero capacity of thinking ?

I thought of this. I do agree. 
   I used to be a relativist. Back then I would've agreed and further stated 
that thinking and not thinking are each special states relative to each 
other—each seeing itself as mind and the other as matter; or if keeping short 
of the absolutes*, each one thinking he has the superior capacity of mind. But 
now I tend to think that matter is dormant mind, not completely dead, and that 
capacity is not relative.**

* The pre-quantum physicists must have thought that the special case of 
absolute zero velocity was nowhere to be found in the physical universe. But 
now there's a Planck-Wheeler time and space so I guess there's a minimum speed. 
But that's out of my scope. Is there a similar minimum capacity for thought? I 
don't think I'd even understand the answer. 

** Relativism still nags me. I haven't yet jumped with both feet into 'extreme 
scholastic realism'.

Matt

 
 It may be that Statement (062014-1) is akin to saying that a glass is half
 full, whereas Statement (062014-2) is akin to saying that a glass is half
 empty: Both statements are true.
 
 With all the best.
 
 Sung
 __
 Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
 Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
 Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
 Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
 Rutgers University
 Piscataway, N.J. 08855
 732-445-4701
 
 www.conformon.net
 
 
 
 
 
 You're unnecessarily complicating things. Just like 'standing still' is a
 special case of motion, matter is a special case of mind.
 
 Matt

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

Stephen, Our evolution can be understood as having a direction without the 
belief that it will or can reach an end. We might be heading asymptotically 
toward that end.

It occurred to me that you might not be using the term realism in the way 
Peirce did. He used the term as it's mostly used in philosophy, as a 
philosophical position maintaining that universals are real as opposed to 
merely nominal.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good article on the realist 
vs nominalist debate, titled Universals. 

Matt

 On Jun 18, 2014, at 6:17 AM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Where does the word realism come in? In Law of Mind Peirce describes his 
 synechistic philosophy as follows: first a logical realism of the most 
 pronounced type; second, objective idealism; third, tychism, with its 
 consequent thoroughgoing evolutionism. While I have indeed seen pragmaticism 
 as linked to what I think and do, I have been scrupulous in the obvious 
 rejection of the notion that I am qualified to or have a desire to, represent 
 Peirce as a scholar might seek to do. Here is what I mean in the text cited 
 regarding us and reality. Precisely because I see us as involved in an 
 evolutionary process I assume that the reality of which we in any conscious 
 sense are a part is bound by a beginning and that it is likely to be bound by 
 an end.  If anything I have said suggests that reality can be separated from 
 that process or that it does not contain it, I reject it. Reality and us is a 
 unity and to say it circumscribes us is to say what within that unity we are 
 an event,  endowed with the capacity to understand ourselves as part and 
 parcel of all that is. Triadic Philosophy is principally a method which 
 should be obvious from the excerpts I am posting here. It is a means of using 
 memorial maxims to improve one's life. There is plenty in Peirce to suggest 
 the usefulness of such an effort and plenty to discuss regarding the veracity 
 of its underlying premises. But it seems to me that the notion that us and 
 reality are somehow separated within triadic philosophy is simply not the 
 case. 
 
 @stephencrose
 
 
 On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 11:33 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com wrote:
  Jerry asked,
 
 What is your understanding of your usage of the term us in your sentence?
 Could you find a better articulation of your intended meaning(s)?
 
 
 My usage was in response to what Stephen said, quoted here:
  Pragmaticism is a bastion against the dominant notion that we are all 
 reality is. We are not all of reality. Our individual perceptions are not 
 all reality. Before we are, reality is. After we are, reality remains.
 
 The part of my response Jerry asked me to better articulate:
  The Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, who were objective 
 idealists, concluded that there could never have been a before us and 
 there will never be an after us. I came to see things their way.
  And I defined 'we' as those of us whose essence is our mind.
  In another post I wrote: 
  Regarding what I meant by 'essence of mind,' Peirce did say 'Matter is 
 effete mind', but I think he could have also said the reverse, that 'Matter 
 is nascent mind.' Maybe some minds are hardening into nothing but habit, 
 i.e., matter, and some minds hardened into habits are transforming into what 
 most people would recognize as minds.
 
 Now, why idealism? We have to choose between these three philosophies: 
 idealism, where everything is mental; materialism, where everything is 
 material; and pluralism, eg., dualism says part of the world is ideal and 
 the other part is material. If you admit the importance of simplicity, in 
 Ockham's Razor, then you should admit that is everything is continuous, 
 since the alternative is only more complicated. That leaves the first two 
 mentioned which are monistic. Since in anyone's thinking the material world 
 is derived from their ideas, it seems simpler to choose idealism, and admit 
 the mental as the primordial stuff of reality and the physical as a special 
 case of the ideal. To infer that in our evolution, somewhere along the line, 
 particles snapped together and produced ideas seems to gratuitously give the 
 common notion of mind, e.g., that animals have a mind but non-animals don't, 
 a privileged status analogous to the idea that the current human form 
 couldn't have evolved from an extremely simple past so it must have snapped 
 together from God's command; anything that preserves our nobility.
 
 I used we as in those of us whose essence is our mind in a way I 
 understand Peirce. He was an idealist, as I am, which means we believe 
 reality is mental. I used 'we' in the widest sense because there is no value 
 in Stephen Rose's statement if the term is taken in a narrower sense. Here's 
 why i think that: If he claimed pragmaticism was a bastion against solipsism 
 he would've use the term 'I' or 'you

Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Matt Faunce]

Let's look at the ethics of religious terminology in light of efficient cause 
and final cause. The authors of the New Testament were members of a fertility 
cult and the term Jesus was a thinly veiled code word for a psychedelic 
mushroom. (Source: the Dead Sea Scroll scholar, John Allegro). This is the 
humble beginnings of Christianity.  But thanks to the final cause Christianity 
has been slowly transforming into a religion that is moral.
   In arithmetic the term 'division' once meant that your result could only 
amount to something less than the original amount. Today the term has been 
expanded to where it can be used to represent ratios like 2/6. (Source: de 
Morgan)
   I'm afraid people's resistance to the expansion of the term 'God', 
especially with the capital G, is creating the undesired effect of making 
common religious people feel an aversion to expanding their ideas of 'god'.
   I once read that the evolution of dogs from wolves happened a lot quicker 
than what was once believed. Maybe the expansion of some terms should follow 
suit.

OK, I think Allegro's idea is rough, but I do believe that the concept of 'god' 
when the term was first coined was closer to Allegro's portrayal of the belief 
of the original Christians than the common contemporary church-goer's concept. 

Matt

 On Jun 17, 2014, at 10:33 AM, John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za wrote:
 
 Quite. The term 'god' has been used traditionally to refer to something that 
 wills from no place in existence. There is no such being. It is impossible.
 

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Matt Faunce]

 On Jun 17, 2014, at 1:16 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   In arithmetic the term 'division' once meant that your result could only 
 amount to something less than the original amount. Today the term has been 
 expanded to where it can be used to represent ratios like 2/6.

Wow. Lack of sleep… I wanted to say that you can divide a number by a fraction 
of 1 and get a result greater than the starting number. Eg., 2 divided by 1/3 = 
6. Which some people thought should properly be represented as 2:1/3 = 6:1 and 
division is improper.

Matt
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

 than us , or is it better to say 
 they are richer than we (are) ? See usage at personal pronoun and than.
 
 
 
 On Jun 15, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:
 
 Please explain or cite the scientific facts that are opposed to the idea 
 that minds always were and always will be. 
 
 To answer what I think you meant: The big-bang and accelerating expansion of 
 the universe do not refute the idea that minds always were or that minds 
 won't adapt to the expansion. I can only imagine you would say what you said 
 because you either have a definition of mind much narrower than Peirce's, 
 or a weltanshauung very different from his so to interpret scientific facts 
 as opposing the idea that minds always were and always will be.
Regarding the weltanshauung, maybe you assumed science agrees with 
 Cartesian dualism and disagrees with the idealist side of objective-idealism.
Regarding what I meant by essence of mind, Peirce did say Matter is 
 effete mind, but I think he could have also said the reverse, that 'Matter 
 is nascent mind.' Maybe some minds are hardening into nothing but habit, 
 i.e., matter, and some minds hardened into habits are transforming into what 
 most people would recognize as minds.
 
 Matt
 
 
 On Jun 15, 2014, at 12:05 AM, Jerry LR Chandler jerry_lr_chand...@me.com 
 wrote:
 
 Matt:
 
 Scientific facts are in opposition to your conclusion.
 
 Cheers
 
 jerry
 
 
 On Jun 14, 2014, at 5:11 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
 
 Stephen, It appeared to me that you had hijacked the term pragmaticism, 
 and I still think you might have. Peirce was an idealist, and the idea 
 that 'we are reality,' if we means those of us whose essence is our 
 mind, is a cornerstone of pragmaticism. In this sense there never was a 
 reality before we came into being and there would be no reality after us.
The Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, who were objective 
 idealists, concluded that there could never have been a before us and 
 there will never be an after us. I came to see things their way. (Although 
 I was warned that my source, the translations and explanations by Th. 
 Stcherbatsky, circa 1932, are too post-Kantian.) I'm not sure what 
 Peirce thought of the time before us but I suspect he agreed with the 
 Buddhist logicians.
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 13, 2014, at 10:51 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 All people is my definition of we in the following statement:  We 
 are inevitably social. We are capable of achieving a sense of 
 universality. This universal sense distinguishes Triadic Philosophy. 
 Triadic philosophy regards most accepted divisions among human beings as 
 secondary to a fundamental unity which transcends them all.
 
 @stephencrose
 
 
 On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 9:38 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 Stephen, please define we as you used the word below.
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 12, 2014, at 5:10 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Triadic Philosophy honors Peirce by claiming that it is a tiny offshoot 
 of what he came to mean by the term pragmaticism. This term was his 
 evolution of pragmatism. Pragmaticism is a bastion against the dominant 
 notion that we are all reality is. We are not all of reality. Our 
 individual perceptions are not all reality. Before we are, reality is. 
 After we are, reality remains. Pragmaticism opens the door to a 
 metaphysics based precisely on the premise that by our fruits we shall 
 be known. It is a now metaphysics. It proves out. It is not supposition.
 
 We are inevitably social. We are capable of achieving a sense of 
 universality. This universal sense distinguishes Triadic Philosophy.
 
 
 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

Jerry, I think my answer is important. I'm working on it. I just need a few 
days.

Matt

 On Jun 15, 2014, at 2:12 PM, Jerry LR Chandler jerry_lr_chand...@me.com 
 wrote:
 
 Matt:
 
 It is a question of the relation between your usage of the term us and how 
 I understood your sentence.
 
 My comment was based on my understanding of the term us as a 1 st person 
 pronoun.  I have copied the entry for us from the Apple dictionary below.
 
 What is your understanding of your usage of the term us in your sentence?
 Could you find a better articulation of your intended meaning(s)?
 
 Cheers
 
 Jerry
 
 
 us |əs|
 pronoun [ first person plural ]
 1 used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself and one or more other 
 people as the object of a verb or preposition: let us know| we asked him to 
 come with us | both of us . Compare with we.
 • used after the verb “to be” and after “than” or “as”: it's us or them | 
 they are richer than us.
 • informal to or for ourselves: we got us some good hunting.
 2 informal me: give us a kiss.
 PHRASES
 one of us a person recognized as an accepted member of a particular group, 
 typically one that is exclusive in some way.
 us and them (or them and us )expressing a sense of division within a group of 
 people: negotiations were hampered by an “us and them” attitude between 
 management and unions.
 ORIGIN Old English ūs, accusative and dative of we, of Germanic origin; 
 related to Dutch ons and German uns .
 usage: Is it correct to say they are richer than us , or is it better to say 
 they are richer than we (are) ? See usage at personal pronoun and than.
 
 
 
 On Jun 15, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Matt Faunce wrote:
 
 Please explain or cite the scientific facts that are opposed to the idea 
 that minds always were and always will be. 
 
 To answer what I think you meant: The big-bang and accelerating expansion of 
 the universe do not refute the idea that minds always were or that minds 
 won't adapt to the expansion. I can only imagine you would say what you said 
 because you either have a definition of mind much narrower than Peirce's, 
 or a weltanshauung very different from his so to interpret scientific facts 
 as opposing the idea that minds always were and always will be.
Regarding the weltanshauung, maybe you assumed science agrees with 
 Cartesian dualism and disagrees with the idealist side of objective-idealism.
Regarding what I meant by essence of mind, Peirce did say Matter is 
 effete mind, but I think he could have also said the reverse, that 'Matter 
 is nascent mind.' Maybe some minds are hardening into nothing but habit, 
 i.e., matter, and some minds hardened into habits are transforming into what 
 most people would recognize as minds.
 
 Matt
 
 
 On Jun 15, 2014, at 12:05 AM, Jerry LR Chandler jerry_lr_chand...@me.com 
 wrote:
 
 Matt:
 
 Scientific facts are in opposition to your conclusion.
 
 Cheers
 
 jerry
 
 
 On Jun 14, 2014, at 5:11 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
 
 Stephen, It appeared to me that you had hijacked the term pragmaticism, 
 and I still think you might have. Peirce was an idealist, and the idea 
 that 'we are reality,' if we means those of us whose essence is our 
 mind, is a cornerstone of pragmaticism. In this sense there never was a 
 reality before we came into being and there would be no reality after us.
The Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, who were objective 
 idealists, concluded that there could never have been a before us and 
 there will never be an after us. I came to see things their way. (Although 
 I was warned that my source, the translations and explanations by Th. 
 Stcherbatsky, circa 1932, are too post-Kantian.) I'm not sure what 
 Peirce thought of the time before us but I suspect he agreed with the 
 Buddhist logicians.
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 13, 2014, at 10:51 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 All people is my definition of we in the following statement:  We 
 are inevitably social. We are capable of achieving a sense of 
 universality. This universal sense distinguishes Triadic Philosophy. 
 Triadic philosophy regards most accepted divisions among human beings as 
 secondary to a fundamental unity which transcends them all.
 
 @stephencrose
 
 
 On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 9:38 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 Stephen, please define we as you used the word below.
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 12, 2014, at 5:10 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 
 Triadic Philosophy honors Peirce by claiming that it is a tiny offshoot 
 of what he came to mean by the term pragmaticism. This term was his 
 evolution of pragmatism. Pragmaticism is a bastion against the dominant 
 notion that we are all reality is. We are not all of reality. Our 
 individual perceptions are not all reality. Before we are, reality is. 
 After we are, reality remains. Pragmaticism opens the door to a 
 metaphysics based precisely on the premise that by our fruits we shall 
 be known. It is a now

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy Introduction

[Matt Faunce]

Stephen, It appeared to me that you had hijacked the term pragmaticism, and I 
still think you might have. Peirce was an idealist, and the idea that 'we are 
reality,' if we means those of us whose essence is our mind, is a cornerstone 
of pragmaticism. In this sense there never was a reality before we came into 
being and there would be no reality after us.
   The Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti, who were objective 
idealists, concluded that there could never have been a before us and there 
will never be an after us. I came to see things their way. (Although I was 
warned that my source, the translations and explanations by Th. Stcherbatsky, 
circa 1932, are too post-Kantian.) I'm not sure what Peirce thought of the 
time before us but I suspect he agreed with the Buddhist logicians.

Matt

 On Jun 13, 2014, at 10:51 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 All people is my definition of we in the following statement:  We are 
 inevitably social. We are capable of achieving a sense of universality. This 
 universal sense distinguishes Triadic Philosophy. Triadic philosophy regards 
 most accepted divisions among human beings as secondary to a fundamental 
 unity which transcends them all.
 
 @stephencrose
 
 
 On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 9:38 PM, Matt Faunce mattfau...@gmail.com wrote:
 Stephen, please define we as you used the word below.
 
 Matt
 
 On Jun 12, 2014, at 5:10 PM, Stephen C. Rose stever...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Triadic Philosophy honors Peirce by claiming that it is a tiny offshoot of 
 what he came to mean by the term pragmaticism. This term was his evolution 
 of pragmatism. Pragmaticism is a bastion against the dominant notion that 
 we are all reality is. We are not all of reality. Our individual 
 perceptions are not all reality. Before we are, reality is. After we are, 
 reality remains. Pragmaticism opens the door to a metaphysics based 
 precisely on the premise that by our fruits we shall be known. It is a now 
 metaphysics. It proves out. It is not supposition.
 
 We are inevitably social. We are capable of achieving a sense of 
 universality. This universal sense distinguishes Triadic Philosophy.
 
 
 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapter 8, Truth and reality

[Matt Faunce]

Here's Mill's position as given by Sigwart.

Logic, Vol. II pg. 299 –301, 303:

   In one respect J. S. Mill holds the same views as Hume. For him
   nothing is given but particular sensations, and these sensations are
   originally subjective states of feeling. But there must be some way
   of proceeding from these to science in the full sense, and this way
   is to be shown by inductive logic ; this will be, moreover, the only
   way in which we can pass beyond immediate experience to the
   knowledge of something which we do not experience immediately.

   Induction, as he defines it, is that operation of the mind by which
   we infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases
   will be true in all cases which resemble the former in certain
   assignable respects—the process by which we conclude that what is
   true of certain individuals of a class is true of the whole class,
   or that what is true at certain times will be true in similar
   circumstances at all times.

   But he goes on to add that this process of inference presupposes a
   principle, a general assumption with regard to the course of nature
   and the order of the universe, namely, that what happens once will,
   under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen
   again, and not only again, but as often as the same circumstances
   recur. This proposition, that the course of nature is uniform, is
   the fundamental principle, or general axiom of induction.

   Every particular so-called induction is therefore a syllogism, of
   which the major premise is this general principle, and which can be
   expressed as follows:—

   Under similar circumstances, the same event will always happen.
   Under circumstances a, b, c, D has been found ;
   Therefore under circumstances a, b, c, D will always be found ;

   It is clear, although Mill has not sufficiently noted it, that,
   regarded only in this aspect, the particular case proves just as
   much as a whole series of cases, and that I can draw exactly the
   same conclusion from a single observation as from many similar
   observations.

   But now the question arises as to the origin of the universal major
   premise and the consequent significance of this syllogism; and here
   comes in again Mill's doctrine as to the nature of the syllogism of
   which we have already spoken (I. § 55, 3, p. 359). The universal
   major premise cannot explain the inductive process, for it is itself
   obtained by induction; it is indeed one of the latest and highest
   inductions grounded upon preceding partial inductions. The more
   obvious laws of nature must have been already recognised by
   induction as general truths before we could think of this highest
   generalization. Hence we can only regard this highest major premise
   as a guarantee for all our inductions in the sense in which all
   major premises contribute something to the validity of their
   syllogisms; the major premise contributes nothing to prove the truth
   of the conclusion, but is a necessary condition of its being proved,
   since no conclusion can be proved for which there cannot be found
   from the same grounds a valid universal major premise.

   In other words, we really infer only from observed cases of
   uniformity to other cases ; because we have found a uniform relation
   between a certain number of phenomena, we infer that it will be so
   also with every other class of phenomena; but, according to Mill,
   this latter conclusion—a real Aristotelian inference from example—is
   only certain if we can infer from the observed uniformities to
   general uniformity.

   Upon what ground can we infer from a number of instances of observed
   uniformity to universal uniformity? […]

   […]

pg. 303:

   Taking away with one hand what he gives with the other. Mill shows
   in the uncertainty of his views the helplessness of pure empiricism,
   the impossibility of erecting an edifice of universal propositions
   on the sand-heap of shifting and isolated facts, or, more
   accurately, sensations; the endeavour to extract any necessity from
   a mere sum of facts must be fruitless.

   The only true point in the whole treatment is one in which Mill as a
   logician gets the better of Mill as an empiricist; namely, that
   every inductive inference contains a universal principle; that if it
   is to be an inference and not merely an association of only
   subjective validity, the transition from the empirically universal
   judgment all known A's are B to the unconditionally universal all
   that is A is B can only be made by means of a universal major
   premise, and that only upon condition of this being true are we
   justified in inferring from the particular known A’s to the still
   unknown A’s. But then the universal major premise cannot be obtained
   simply by means of a summation of facts, for this by itself can
   yield no more than it says, that in a certain number of cases 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Chapter 7.2.1 The Proof of Pragmatism Phenomenology

[Matt Faunce]

On 4/30/14, 5:52 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:

Real difference requires two things:  a conceivable test that could be run, and 
an observable difference we would expect to see.
Real difference means there is a potential test which would show this 
difference. If inquiry lasts long enough the test will become 
conceivable then executable, but in the mean time any real difference is 
having its so far unconfirmable effect.


With no positive test results there is no reason to believe there is a 
difference except for the reason of pure hope, i.e., James's Will to 
Believe. But what drives this will? Is it the same thing that makes 
abductions correct more often than chance allows?


Saying With no positive test results there is no reason to believe, 
appears, on its surface, very rough and shoddy to me. Well before a 
concrete peer-reviewable test is run the inquirer runs many deductions 
and inductions in his head. These proto-tests, filling up a whole 
spectrum ranging from the obvious, those at the fore-front of the mind, 
to the occult, those way at the back of the mind, are all assessed by 
the person and guide his actions.


So, does this potential test need to be so obvious that it can 
potentially be peer reviewable? Or, are its results sufficient even if 
its greatest possibility is that it can only reside in the occult end of 
our reasoning?


(I had the Peirce-Jastrow experiment in the back of my mind while 
writing this. Maybe there's potential to use their conclusions to 
support or detract from my point.)


--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Just Be Cause

[Matt Faunce]

That's also found in CP 6.66, Let he who has insight calculate the 
number...


Matt

On 4/2/14, 5:25 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:

Peircers,

The physics courses I took in college and all the extra reading I did 
on the side taught that the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics 
had overthrown former notions about the rock-bottom status of 
causality, space, and time, placing the causal picture and the 
spacetime picture in a kind of complementary suspension with one 
other, neither primary, neither complete in and of itself.


As longtime readers of Peirce may well expect, Peirce was prophetic on 
this point.


quote

Those who make causality one of the original _uralt_ elements in the 
universe or one of the fundamental categories of thought, — of whom 
you will find that I am not one, — have one very awkward fact to 
explain away.  It is that men's conceptions of a Cause are in 
different stages of scientific culture entirely different and 
inconsistent.  The great principle of causation which we are told, it 
is absolutely impossible not to believe, has been one proposition at 
one period of history and an entirely disparate one [at] another and 
is still a third one for the modern physicist. The only thing about it 
which has stood, to use my friend Carus's word, a κτημα ες αει, — 
_semper eadem_, — is the _name_ of it.


/quote Charles Sanders Peirce, ''Reasoning and the Logic of 
Things'', p. 197


It's a quote that John Sowa was fond of citing back in the days when 
the issue of causality came up on various discussion lists concerned 
with ontologies and their engineering.


☞ http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm

Regards,

Jon




--
Matt


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