Re: [PEIRCE-L] Debate on the List

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

Gary F, list

That's an interesting analysis of 'problems with the List'.

1] I don't think that Bernard Morand's critique of the emphasis on
quotations on the List can be diverted to gratitude for having these
quotations at hand. I think his criticism was their being used
instead of analysis and argumentation.

As for your view that we should be grateful for these quotations
since online resources were not always available - I think that's
another red herring. I, myself, and I suspect many others on this
list, have been reading Peirce, in hard copy, for many years before
we even had a computer.

I admit to having photocopied all 8 volumes of the CP collection and
the 2 of the EP collection many, many years ago - a violation probably
of a zillion copyright laws - and have been reading and re-reading
them for over 20 plus years.

So I don't think that 'lack of access to Peirce writings' justifies
the use of many quotations. Instead, some of us feel that the heavy
use of quotations prevents discussion and debate. 

2] As for your differentiation of Peirce Listers into 'Learners' and
'Complainers' [another tribalism?] - I don't see the justification for
this. I myself joined the List because I was interested in exploring 
the use of the Peircean framework in analyzing societal systems and
biological systems. So- I was interested in whether other people were
also involved in these areas and how they use Peirce to do so. 

3] As for 'Learners' - I don't see that this exists as a reality.
How often have I been chastised, not merely for a 'different
interpretation' but even for using terms that 'Peirce never used';
for interpretations that were deemed 'non-Peircean'. How often have I
been faced, not with a comment such as: 'In my view, I think
differently from you - but instead - with the authoritative
assertion: 'NO, That is not what Peirce meant'. How can this other
person be so sure of this? That's not a comment from a Learner!!

 Haven't you told me that my comments aren't worthy of response?
Didn't you inform the List that Robert Marty was 'post-Peirce'?

Those types of assertions, authoritative and final, don't seem to me
to come from a Learner.

I do admit, however, that I have learned a LOT from other posters on
this list - but I note these are people who have not rejected debate
or insisted on their own authority but have instead, posted both
their analysis and use of Peirce, fascinating and exploratory
outlines; and who have examined alternate views and enabled the
expansion of Peircean analysis. To me - that's what I hoped this List
would be all about!

4] What do I see as problems with the List? Exactly as others have
said - and these are not 'emotional rants' dismissed as a tribal
anger. They are from serious scholars - and if you consider yourself
a Learner - perhaps you should take them seriously. 

Edwina
 On Sun 29/08/21 11:24 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
List,

Rather than take a side in this recurring “debate”, I’d like
to take a long view of how the list has changed over the two decades
that I’ve been subscribed to it. I will try to keep it relevant,
but those who are inclined to dismiss it as the mere reminiscences of
an old man, or as a statement representing some “tribe” or other,
are welcome to do so. 

My first impression of the list, all those years ago, was that its
contributors were a group of people from diverse backgrounds, most of
whom were there for the purpose of learning from Peirce, or learning
about Peirce, or in many cases both. These people evidently had what
Peirce called “the Will to Learn. The first thing that the Will to
Learn supposes is a dissatisfaction with one's present state of
opinion” (CP 5.583, EP2:47, 1898). I certainly had good reason to
be dissatisfied with  my opinions of what Peirce was saying, as I was
still working my way through the two volumes of The Essential Peirce,
and finding that every Peirce text I read was forcing me to modify my
rather crude understanding of those I had read previously. I was
gradually building up a mental context which guided my interpretation
of whatever Peirce text I read next. At the same time I was
incorporating this developing understanding, along with many texts
from Peirce, into the philosophical book I was working on, which
eventually became  Turning Signs [1]. So I was simultaneously
learning from and learning about Peirce.

I got a lot of help in those days from other learners on the list,
especially those who took the trouble to post entire long excerpts
from Peirce’s work. It’s probably hard for more recent
subscribers to realize how limited online access to Peirce’s work
was back then, even on the  Arisbe website; the situation has changed
radically since then. Very early on, I started making my own
collection (in an HTML file) of many of the Peirce texts I had read,
arranged in

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Debate on the List

[gnox]

List,

Rather than take a side in this recurring “debate”, I’d like to take a long 
view of how the list has changed over the two decades that I’ve been subscribed 
to it. I will try to keep it relevant, but those who are inclined to dismiss it 
as the mere reminiscences of an old man, or as a statement representing some 
“tribe” or other, are welcome to do so.

My first impression of the list, all those years ago, was that its contributors 
were a group of people from diverse backgrounds, most of whom were there for 
the purpose of learning from Peirce, or learning about Peirce, or in many cases 
both. These people evidently had what Peirce called “the Will to Learn. The 
first thing that the Will to Learn supposes is a dissatisfaction with one's 
present state of opinion” (CP 5.583, EP2:47, 1898). I certainly had good reason 
to be dissatisfied with my opinions of what Peirce was saying, as I was still 
working my way through the two volumes of The Essential Peirce, and finding 
that every Peirce text I read was forcing me to modify my rather crude 
understanding of those I had read previously. I was gradually building up a 
mental context which guided my interpretation of whatever Peirce text I read 
next. At the same time I was incorporating this developing understanding, along 
with many texts from Peirce, into the philosophical book I was working on, 
which eventually became Turning Signs  . 
So I was simultaneously learning from and learning about Peirce.

I got a lot of help in those days from other learners on the list, especially 
those who took the trouble to post entire long excerpts from Peirce’s work. 
It’s probably hard for more recent subscribers to realize how limited online 
access to Peirce’s work was back then, even on the Arisbe website; the 
situation has changed radically since then. Very early on, I started making my 
own collection (in an HTML file) of many of the Peirce texts I had read, 
arranged in chronological order, so that I could easily revisit them in search 
of statements by Peirce that I recalled, and recover the immediate context. By 
now, this searchable collection of mine amounts to over 5MB and includes, 
besides the entire contents of EP1 and EP2, many texts gleaned from CP, W, many 
anthologies, secondary sources, and manuscript images I found online. (For help 
with finding those manuscripts I must thank especially Jeff Downard and Jon 
Alan Schmidt.) 

I included every one of these texts in my collection because they were parts of 
my learning process, and in most cases it was peirce-l posts by other learners 
that directed my attention to Peirce texts I had been unaware of or unable to 
find. So I am eternally grateful to those other learners; and soon I was able 
to “give back” to the list by posting relevant quotations myself (always citing 
the source so that others could find the original context if they took the 
trouble to do so). I’m still doing that; so I plead guilty to the crime 
(according to a recent Bernard Morand post) of posting Peirce quotations to the 
list.

Over the early years of my participation in peirce-l, however, I began to 
notice that not all the participants were demonstrating “the first thing that 
the Will to Learn supposes.” Some were so satisfied with their own opinions of 
what Peirce meant that they adamantly refused to modify them when they were 
questioned or criticized by others. Some of them, who had evidently based their 
notions of Peirce’s work on a relatively limited stock of familiar quotations, 
began to complain when others posted quotations from Peirce that were 
incompatible with their opinions about Peirce’s system of philosophy or 
semiotics. 

In the past few years these complaints have grown louder, accompanied by 
accusations of “cherry-picking” (as if the complainer’s own favorite quotes 
were not cherry-picked out of context), and accusations of claiming some sort 
of authority (as if the complainers were not asserting their own expertise and 
authority as interpreters of Peirce). The complainers also accuse the quoters 
of Peirce of misunderstanding Peirce’s work — not seeing the beam in their own 
eye, the limitations of their own opinions about Peirce. Hence the “debate” 
which has degenerated into an series of personal attacks, with the attackers 
claiming to defend their right to an opinion, or even claiming to defend 
Peirce, against the learners who insist on posting what Peirce wrote. A genuine 
learner would not behave this way, but would welcome opportunities to 
reconsider and perhaps modify their entrenched opinions, especially when they 
are manifestly at odds with what Peirce wrote (not with anyone’s interpretation 
of what Peirce wrote).

These complaints and accusations directed against those who post Peirce 
quotations to the list —especially those who point out their incompatibility 
with interpretations expressed by the complainers — is in my opinion the

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Debate on the List

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Edwina, List:

ET: Because the complaint refers to methodology - doesn't mean that it is
an empty complaint!


Yes, it does--it is empty as opposed to substantive. When someone thinks
that I am getting Peirce wrong, the proper response is to *make a better
argument*, not just complain about mine.

ET: You frequently insist to us that one must 'be faithful to Peirce's own
texts' - but this is an 'attack tactic',  for it assumes that there is no
interpretation involved and that your interpretation is 'faithful' while
that of others is not.


Striving for faithfulness to Peirce's texts should not be at all
controversial here, and I make no such assumption. If we are truly
interested in understanding and applying *his *ideas, then we need to
discern accurately *from his writings* what they were in the first place.
There is indeed a *range *of interpretations that are valid for a given
text, but any interpretations outside that range are *invalid*. For
example, there is *no *valid interpretation of CP 3.559 to the effect that
a mathematician inquires or cares whether a pure hypothesis that he/she has
framed agrees with the actual facts or not, because the text *explicitly *says
otherwise. According to Peirce, someone who *does *inquire or care about
this is not acting *as a mathematician*.

ET: Surely you cannot object to my point that ALL of us are involved in
taking responsibility for the level and nature of debate!! Why leave it all
up to Gary!


I said nothing whatsoever about the responsibility of individual
participants, and neither did Robert. He invoked the "moral authority" to
*intervene* in a List debate, which is possessed only by the moderator.

ET: Why do you then belittle and denigrate others?


I reject the accusation. Apparently we have very different definitions of
"belittle" and denigrate."

Cheers,

Jon S.

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 4:37 PM Edwina Taborsky  wrote:

> JAS, list
>
> Because the complaint refers to methodology - doesn't mean that it is an
> empty complaint!
>
> You frequently insist to us that one must 'be faithful to Peirce's own
> texts' - but this is an 'attack tactic',  for it assumes that there is no
> interpretation involved and that your interpretation is 'faithful' while
> that of others is not. Again, you ignore that even your reading of Peirce -
> is an interpretation and subject to your own 'Thirdness'.
>
>  You did not say that Gary R's intervention refers only to 'this
> particular forum'. You said, "the only relevant moral authority is the List
> moderator, Gary Richmond, and it is entirely up to him whether, when and
> how to intervene". And we are talking about problems with the nature of
> debate on this List. Surely you cannot object to my point that ALL of us
> are involved in taking responsibility for the level and nature of debate!!
> Why leave it all up to Gary!
>
> If you say that you have been a frequent target of denigration and
> belittling - then, how can you not condemn it? Why do you then belittle and
> denigrate others? ...eg..emotional rant, empty complaint, baselessleave
> the List...etc.
>
> And your only solution to the critiques that others have made about the
> mode of discussion on this list is: So- unsubscribe. You feel no obligation
> or interest in dealing with these complaints - indeed - you belittle and
> denigrate them and their writers. Why?
>
> Edwina
>
> On Sat 28/08/21 5:11 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com sent:
>
> Edwina, List:
>
> ET: - an over-reliance on quotations-as-truth rather than as open
> topics-of-discussion;
>
>
> This is a good example of an empty complaint, since as usual it has to do
> with methodology rather than substance.
>
> ET: - an assertion by you, that it is possible to interact with texts [in
> this case, Peirce's texts] directly rather than semiosically; i.e., that
> you have the capacity for direct knowledge of the truth of 'what Peirce
> meant' while others are incorrect.
>
>
> This is a good example of a baseless allegation, since I have never made
> any such assertion.
>
> ET: - a habit by some on this List to denigrate, belittle others - rather
> than engage in discussion;
>
>
> Indeed, I have been a frequent target of such inappropriate behavior.
>
> ET: - an assertion by you that the only person on this list who is allowed
> or required to engage in moral actions - is Gary Richmond, while others on
> the List are not obliged and not responsible for their words and actions.
>
>
> Again, I made no such assertion. Robert bemoaned the level of debate on
> the List and attributed it to the lack of "any moral authority
> intervening." I simply noted that only Gary R. as the List moderator has
> the moral authority to intervene in this particular forum. Anyone
> dissatisfied with this arrangement is welcome to unsubscribe and find
> another venue for discussing their ideas.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christia