[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben: I will have to leave it to Gary R. and Jim to respond to whatever it is you are doing here. I just don't follow what is going on, what the problem is to which what you say is an answer or clarification or whatever.. (That is not a way of dismissing what you say, but just a personal confession of bewilderment.) Joe - Original Message - From: Benjamin Udell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 5:30 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? Jim, list, A few corrections, then a discussion which may be of interest to, ahem, not only Sir Piat, but also Sir Ransdell Sir Richmond. Interpretants iconicity are dealt with, eventually. I beg a little patience on this one, good Sir Knights, unsheathe thy swords not too quickly. (Note to self: ask them later what, if any, effect this near-flattery had on them.) Correction: I left reality accidentally off this trikon, now I've put it where I originally meant to: 1. Term (seme, etc.) - (univocality?) -- (case in the sense of question, issue, matter, _res_?) --- possibility. | 3. Argument -- validity -- law --- (conditional) necessity, reality. 2. Proposition - truth -- fact --- actuality. Correction the second, I said: ...we did not find resemblance embodied except in compromise form with indexicality, in material kinships I think that Peirce would take the embodiment of mathematical diagrams as the embodiment of icons and as not needing to be in something like the compromise form with embodied indexicality which I was discussing as material kinship. I forgot that at that moment because I generally think of the mathematical diagram not as an icon of its object but instead as an instance of a sign defined by that support which it would supply to recognition (of its experimentational decision-process legitimacy), across any all disparities of appearance (and of time, place, modality, universe-of-discourse, etc.) between said sign its object. \ 1. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, neither opens nor closes questions (i.e. it keeps information the same), then the ground is a reaction or resistance, a concrete factual connection with its object. Then the sign itself is an index. (I strongly suspect that this info-preservative kind of abstraction can indeed be called an abstraction; but, if not, then not.) 2. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, only opens questions (only removes information), then the ground is, to that extent, a quality, a semblance, a sample aspect apparent as sustained and carried on by the sign so long as the sign is true to itself in this. (To gain such a sign brings an increase of information, of course, but I am focusing on the info relationship between the ground and that from which it is abstracted.) Then the sign itself is an icon. 3. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, only closes questions (only adds information), i.e., reduces away or sums over all factors seen as extraneous to the abstraction's purpose, then the ground is, to that extent, a meaning or implication, a gist, an effect that it will, by habitual tendency, have on the interpretant, of making the interpretant resemble the gist, in meaningfully _appearing_ as -- without iconically resembling -- the object. (This is clarified further down.) 4. If a genuine sign's ground is an abstraction which, by its categorial character, both opens closes questions (removes some information adds some information), then the ground is, to the extent, a validity, soundness, legitimacy (in that respect in which the sign counts _experientially_ as the object itself without necessarily being confused with the object at all), a support which the sign would most naturally and directly supply to its recognition, a support via its reacting legitimately in some respect as -- without indexically pointing to -- the object itself, and the reaction or resistance being _with the recognizant._ Then the sign itself is that which I call a proxy. Its ground's abstraction involves a closing and settling of questions (adding of information) as to what object-related information is relevant, (e.g., There are five initially selected objects in question, it doesn't matter whether we miscounted them or whether they're really oranges, etc.) and an opening of questions (removal of information) (e.g., how would the five behave and interact and collaborate with us, the mathematical observer-experimenter, sheerly in virtue of their fiveness, supplying us with answers to _fresh and unforeseen_ questions in accordance with _the rules_ of fiveness? I.e., in the concrete world, the question, for instance, of 5^3=? is taken as closed in the sense that the world will behave as determined by the answer -- but in the
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben, list, this thread on The New Elements of Mathematics started with Charles Peirce writing: None of them approved of my book, because it put perspective before metrical geometry, and topical geometry before either. Even today if one would consider to engage in the project of writing such a book, one should really think twice. Nobody has a really good idea how to write it and if it were written, nobody would understand it, and if one would understand it, one would have to unlearn lots of things one already knows and that only for a curiosity. One criterion for scientific progress is, that a new theory should explain everything that the preceding ones explained and something else besides (ha!). Charles was, together with his father Benjamin Peirce, part of a movement in 19th Century mathematics called Universal Algebra. Others were e.g. William Rowan Hamilton and Hermann Grassmann. All of them or their followers erected a philosophy on their mathematical ideas, by the way. What Felix Klein has written about Hermann Grassman's Ausdehnungslehre (Theory of Extension) in his Lectures on the Development of Mathematics in 19th Century (1926) applies to Charles Peirce too and is still considered relevant today. The main point is on page 178 in my Springer Reprint of Klein's book (I believe there exists an English translation too). It is this: The grand project in mathematics for much more than a century now has been arithmetization¨, i.e. to reduce mathematical structures to the abstract structure of the natural numbers. If you put the continuous before the discrete, then you are not alone in history, but nobody has as yet really succeeded with such a project. The problem is, simplistically speaking, that, starting with a continuum, you will have great difficulties to introduce discrete entities, except by way of an arbitrary addition. So the relevant book today is David Hilbert's Grundlagen der Geometrie¨ (Foundations of Geometry). There are today followers of the other approach, especially in Grassmann's footsteps, e.g. David Hestenes with his Geometric Calculus¨ and Geometric Algebra¨, but their success, despite some very striking simplifications and insights, till today is quite limited. It is more or less regarded as a curiosity, some flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness��� ... On the other hand there is in Sir Roger Penrose's Road to Reality¨ (now we come to the noble celebrities) an introductory chapter on The roots of science¨ and especially Three worlds and three deep mysteries¨ (chap 1.5) with the usual Popperian sermon preached (sorry, Sir Karl Raimund). But one deep puzzle¨ for Sir Roger is why mathematical laws should apply to the world with such phenomenal precision. Moreover, it is not just the precision but also the subtle sophistication and mathematical beauty of the successful theories that is profoundly mysterious¨(p.21). Finally Roger Penrose writes in this context: There is, finally, a further mystery concerning figure 1.3, which I have left to the last. I have deliberately drawn the figure so as to illustrate a paradox. How can it be that, in accordance with my own prejudices, each world appears to encompass the next one in its entirety? I do not regard this issue as a reason for abandoning my prejudices, but merely for demonstrating the presence of an even deeper mystery that transcends those that I have been pointing to above. There may be a sense in which the three worlds are not separate at all, but merely reflect, individually, aspects of a deeper truth about the world as a whole of which we have little conception at the present time. We have a long way to go before such matters can be properly illuminated.¨(pp. 22/23) Noble words to be considered well! But don't tell Sir Roger about the sign and it's interpretants. That will not do for him. There are a lot of philosophical soap shops out there. You had better understand fully what his problems are in the next 980 or so pages of mathematics and physics that come then, before you tell him about The New Elements of Mathematics���. So what we do with Peirce's work appears to the outside world either as a more or less philatelistic pastime with historical curiosities. It's all good and fine and edifying and very logical except for a few paradoxes here and there, perhaps. Or else you start getting your hands really dirty and do whatever it takes to find out what is going on behind the scenes. We had better find out and make our mistakes as quickly as possible in order not to flog a dead horse, I believe. Enough name dropping for now. Ben, you write: begin citation 1. The idealized system of motions forces -- classical Newtonian or pure-quantum-system -- is time- symmetric, completely deterministic in the given relevant sense, unmuddled, pure OBJECT to us,
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Br ier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosop hy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why inform
Thanks for bringing Soren Brier's summary statement to our attention, Gary.I put a link to it up at Arisbe. (Soren was on the PEIRCE-Llist for quite awhile some years back.) Does anyone know anything about what he calls "the critical realist" movement? With whom does that originate? Joe Ransdell -- Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 4:56 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: "Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough!" ] Excerpt perhaps summarizing a 15 page abstract in English of Briers Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough!http://www.cbs.dk/content/download/36989/554713/file/doctoralsummary.pdf The Cybersemiotic paradigm combines a non-mechanistic universal evolutionary semiotic approach to epistemology, ontology, and signification with a systemic and cybernetic approach to self-organization, drawing on Luhmanns theories of social communication. This combines a semiotics of nature with pragmatic linguistics in a second-order approach, reflecting the role of the observer as the producer of meaningful contexts that makes processes and differences information. Bateson claimed that information is a difference that makes a difference, whereas Maturana and Verela clarified that structurally coupled autopoiesis is necessary for any cognition to take place. Like Peirce I will claim that an interpretant, and therefore a sign process, must be established to create signification, which differs from objective information because of its meaning content. A short version of how integration between the different approaches can be made could be the following: Individuals [sic] interpreters see differences in their world that make a difference to them as information. Thus the world is the world of Heidegger (1962) in which the observer is thrown among things ready at hand, through which a breakdown of the original unconscious unity become [sic] present at hand. This situation is possible only by assigning signs to differences and interpreting them against a general non-reducible context. Living autopoietic systems do this by producing signs as parts of life forms. Signs can thus be said to obtain meanings through sign games. In the human social spheres forms of life give rise to language games. This part of social autopoiesis is what Luhmann calls social communication, employing what Peirce calls genuine triadic signs. Thus cognition and communication are self-organizing phenomena on all three levels: biological, psychological, and sociological/cultural. They produce meaningful information by brining forth an Umwelt, which in Cybersemiotics is called a signification sphere, connected to specific life practices such as mating, hunting, tending the young, defending etc. These characteristics distinguish cognition and communication in living systems from the simulations of these processes by computers. The forces and regularities of nature influence and constrain our perceptions and spark evolution. This process can be explained scientifically to some degree, but probably never in any absolute or classical scientific conception of the word, as Laplace thought. In my opinion, meaning cannot be defined independently from an observer and a world. Meaning is only created when a difference makes such a difference to the living system that it must make signs, join a group of communicating observers, and produce a meaningful world. ---Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message.Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] S øren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is def ending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemioti
Dear Joe Ransdell, dear list!Let me introduce myself to the list, my name is Jan-H. Passoth, I work as a junior sociologist at Hamburg University. The 'critical realist movement" Brier mentions goes back to the writings of Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskars main topic - as far as I can see - is to (re)establish a pluralistic, non-representationalistic version of realism in the area of epistemology and the philosophy of science. Recently some social scientists try to adopt Bhaskars moderate realism in the field of sociological theory. As far as I can see, there are some similarities between Bhaskar and Peirce but also some differences. I for example find it hard to find concepts like the difference between the real, the actual and the empirical in Peirces writings, but I guess that is because I have to read and compare them again carefully. Best,Jan___Jan-Hendrik PassothSoziologe M.A.mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Universität Hamburg | Institut für SoziologieAllende-Platz 1 | 20146 Hamburg | Raum 338tel: +49(40) 428 38 - 38 11 | fax: +49(40) 428 38 - 42 46mobil: +49 (0) 176 20 80 1934 Am 15.02.2006 um 14:44 schrieb Joseph Ransdell: Thanks for bringing Soren Brier's summary statement to our attention, Gary. I put a link to it up at Arisbe. (Soren was on the PEIRCE-L list for quite a while some years back.) Does anyone know anything about what he calls "the critical realist" movement? With whom does that originate? Joe Ransdell -- Original Message -From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 4:56 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: "Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough!" ]Excerpt perhaps summarizing a 15 page abstract in English of Brier’s Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough! http://www.cbs.dk/content/download/36989/554713/file/doctoralsummary.pdfThe Cybersemiotic paradigm combines a non-mechanistic universal evolutionary semiotic approach to epistemology, ontology, and signification with a systemic and cybernetic approach to self-organization, drawing on Luhmann’s theories of social communication. This combines a semiotics of nature with pragmatic linguistics in a second-order approach, reflecting the role of the observer as the producer of meaningful contexts that makes processes and differences information. Bateson claimed that information is a difference that makes a difference, whereas Maturana and Verela clarified that structurally coupled autopoiesis is necessary for any cognition to take place. Like Peirce I will claim that an interpretant, and therefore a sign process, must be established to create signification, which differs from objective information because of its meaning content. A short version of how integration between the different approaches can be made could be the following: Individuals [sic] interpreters see differences in their world that make a difference to them as information. Thus “the world” is the world of Heidegger (1962) in which the observer is thrown among things “ready at hand”, through which a “breakdown” of the original unconscious unity become [sic] “present at hand”. This situation is possible only by assigning signs to differences and interpreting them against a general non-reducible context. Living autopoietic systems do this by producing signs as parts of life forms. Signs can thus be said to obtain meanings through sign games. In the human social spheres forms of life give rise to language games. This part of social autopoiesis is what Luhmann calls social communication, employing what Peirce calls genuine triadic signs. Thus cognition and communication are self-organizing phenomena on all three levels: biological, psychological, and sociological/cultural. They produce meaningful information by brining forth an Umwelt, which in Cybersemiotics is called a signification sphere, connected to specific life practices such as mating, hunting, tending the young, defending etc. These characteristics distinguish cognition and communication in living systems from the simulations of these processes by computers. The forces and regularities of nature influence and constrain our perceptions and spark evolution. This process can be explained scientifically to some degree, but probably never in any absolute or classical scientific conception of the word, as Laplace thought. In my opinion, meaning cannot be defined independently from an observer and a world. Meaning is only created when a difference makes such a difference to the living system that it must make signs, join a group of communicating observers, and produce a meaningful world. ---Message from peirce-l forum
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Co penhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why informatio
Steven and Gary R: Sorry to have overlooked that it was you who initially posted the reference to Brier, Steven. Your message had somehow gotten misfiled and overlooked by me and I didn't realize at first that Gary was responding initially to your prior post. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:18 PM Subject: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Because I think it relevant to Peirce-l ... :-) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why informatio
Joe, What happened to the forwarded message on information is not enough? It looks like a must read from the business community... Bob Chumbley From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 02/15/2006 08:02 AM Please respond to Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu cc:(bcc: Robert E Chumbley/rchumbl/LSU) Subject:[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Steven and Gary R: Sorry to have overlooked that it was you who initially posted the reference to Brier, Steven. Your message had somehow gotten misfiled and overlooked by me and I didn't realize at first that Gary was responding initially to your prior post. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:18 PM Subject: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Because I think it relevant to Peirce-l ... :-) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics
To Bob Chumbley: It is available as an attachment to Steven's message and by URL in Gary Richmond's subsequent post. It is now available at Arisbe on the webpage for Peirce-related papers, listed under Soren Brier. I don't think it is to be regarded as a message from the business community, though, but is simply a summary statement of a book which is also Brier's Ph.D. dissertation. It does not seem to have any special reference to business. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Robert E Chumbley [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:11 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Joe, What happened to the forwarded message on information is not enough? It looks like a must read from the business community... Bob Chumbley From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 02/15/2006 08:02 AM Please respond to Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu cc:(bcc: Robert E Chumbley/rchumbl/LSU) Subject:[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Steven and Gary R: Sorry to have overlooked that it was you who initially posted the reference to Brier, Steven. Your message had somehow gotten misfiled and overlooked by me and I didn't realize at first that Gary was responding initially to your prior post. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:18 PM Subject: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Because I think it relevant to Peirce-l ... :-) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] Re: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Departmen t of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his d octoral thesis: Cybersemiotics
No problem Joe, thanks for the acknowledgment. I am glad to see Brier's work appreciated. With respect, Steven Joseph Ransdell wrote: Steven and Gary R: Sorry to have overlooked that it was you who initially posted the reference to Brier, Steven. Your message had somehow gotten misfiled and overlooked by me and I didn't realize at first that Gary was responding initially to your prior post. Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Steven Ericsson Zenith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 1:18 PM Subject: [peirce-l] [Fwd: [Fis] Søren Brier, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School is defending his doctoral thesis: Cybersemiotics - Why information is not enough! ] Because I think it relevant to Peirce-l ... :-) --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] immediate/mediate, direct/indirect
This bears on nothing currently under discussion, but I happened upon a note copying a passage from the Logic Notebook in which Peirce explicitly defines immediate and direct and thought I should record it here, given how frequently the question comes up.. Of course it may or may not record his actual usage, but only an intended usage at that time. But it can be compared with other passages in which the terms are defined. Anyway, it goes as follows: A primal is that which is something that is in itself regardless of anything else. A Potential is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite A Feeling is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of it etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of anything else I call a state of consciousness immediate which does not refer to anything not present in that very state I use the terms immediate and direct, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is immediate to B means that it is present in B. Direct, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary [unreadable word] or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Question regarding literary jounals and pragmatism
Dear Martin Lefebvre, since your message/request seems as yet unanswered, here are my two cents: In CP 6.483 Peirce mentions Professor Papini. To Papini there is a footnote reading: See What Pragmatism is Like, The Popular Science Monthly, vol. 71, p.351 (1907). I cite from CP 6.483: About the time Professor Papini discovered to the delight of the Pragmatist school, that this doctrine [Pragmatism a la William James as of 1897; Th.R.] was incapable of definition, which would certainly seem to distinguish it from every other doctrine in whatever branch of science, I was coming to the conclusion that my poor little maxim should be called by another name; and accordingly, in April, 1905 I renamed it Pragmaticism. Mmh, the yeardates 1905 and 1907 do not fit together very well or has Peirce written the Popular Science Monthly article? Aah, feeding Google with papini pragmatism yields interesting results, particularly perhaps http://www.pragmatism.org/companion/pragmatism_wiener.htm (PRAGMATISM by PHILIP P. WIENER The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973-74), vol. 3, pp. 551-570.) In this you find: Giovanni Papini, an enthusiastic supporter of a magical pragmatism, had been hailed earlier by James as a leader of the pragmatic writers of articles in Leonardo, the philosophical journal founded by Papini in 1903. Voila. This should be very much to Peirce's taste ;-) Thomas Riese. On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:01:53 +0100, martin lefebvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Listers-, In What Pragmatism is, Peirce mentions with disaproval the use of the term pragmatism, especially as it had come to circulate in certain literary journals at the turn of the century (see quote below). Does anyone on this list know what publications he was refering to? Thanks in advance Martin Lefebvre From CP.5.414 After awaiting in vain, for a good many years, some particularly opportune conjuncture of circumstances that might serve to recommend his notions of the ethics of terminology, the writer has now, at last, dragged them in over head and shoulders, on an occasion when he has no specific proposal to offer nor any feeling but satisfaction at the course usage has run without any canons or resolutions of a congress. His word pragmatism has gained general recognition in a generalized sense that seems to argue power of growth and vitality. The famed psychologist, James, first took it up, seeing that his radical empiricism substantially answered to the writer's definition of pragmatism, albeit with a certain difference in the point of view. Next, the admirably clear and brilliant thinker, Mr. Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, casting about for a more attractive name for the anthropomorphism of his Riddle of the Sphinx, lit, in that most remarkable paper of his on Axioms as Postulates, upon the same designation pragmatism, which in its original sense was in generic agreement with his own doctrine, for which he has since found the more appropriate specification humanism, while he still retains pragmatism in a somewhat wider sense. So far all went happily. But at present, the word begins to be met with occasionally in the literary journals, where it gets abused in the merciless way that words have to expect when they fall into literary clutches. Sometimes the manners of the British have effloresced in scolding at the word as ill-chosen - ill-chosen, that is, to express some meaning that it was rather designed to exclude. So then, the writer, finding his bantling pragmatism so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his child good-by and relinquish it to its higher destiny; while to serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to announce the birth of the word pragmaticism, which is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: immediate/mediate, direct/indirect - CORRECTION
I did a check against an aging photocopy of the MS of the quote from Peirce in my recent message, and found some errors of transcription, and also a typo of punctuation that needed correction as well. I also include in this correction an indication of the words which are underlined in the original (using flanking underscores). I show one illegible word as a set of six question marks enclosed in brackets because the illegible word appears to have six letters, maybe seven. Here is the passage again, corrected (though not infallibly): A _primal_ is that which is _something_ that is _in itself_ regardless of anything else. A _Potential_ is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite. A _Feeling_ is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of [??] etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of [NOTE: should be to] anything else. I call a state of consciousness _immediate_ which does not refer to anything not present in that very state. I use the terms _immediate_ and _direct_, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is _immediate_ to B means that it is present in B. _Direct_, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary instruments or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell - Original Message - From: Joseph Ransdell [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 2:59 PM Subject: [peirce-l] immediate/mediate, direct/indirect This bears on nothing currently under discussion, but I happened upon a note copying a passage from the Logic Notebook in which Peirce explicitly defines immediate and direct and thought I should record it here, given how frequently the question comes up.. Of course it may or may not record his actual usage, but only an intended usage at that time. But it can be compared with other passages in which the terms are defined. Anyway, it goes as follows: A primal is that which is something that is in itself regardless of anything else. A Potential is anything which is in some respect determined but whose being is not definite A Feeling is a state of determination of consciousness which apparently might in its own nature (neglecting our experience of it etc.) continue for some time unchanged and that has no reference of anything else I call a state of consciousness immediate which does not refer to anything not present in that very state I use the terms immediate and direct, not according to their etymologies but so that to say that A is immediate to B means that it is present in B. Direct, as I use it means without the aid of any subsidiary [unreadable word] or operation. -- MS 339.493; c. 1904-05 Logic Notebook Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.8/260 - Release Date: 2/14/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
