[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] 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] 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] 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
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Good point, Gary. Still another way of thinking about it might be to
suppose that the emphasis is supposed to fall on thing rather than sign:
no sign is a real THING rather than no sign is a REAL thing; but that
doesn't sound very plausible to me. I like your solution better.
Joe Ransdell
'.
- Original Message -
From: gnusystems [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 2:15 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
[JOE] I don't understand yet how these terms are being
used in a way that satisfies me that I understand what those distinctions
really are. I was shocked, for example, to find Peirce saying that no sign
is a real thing, though he does go ahead to explain this in such a way that
it does not seem to involve a retraction of his realism about signs after
all. But I don't really understand that yet.
[gary F] I wonder if Peirce might have cleared this up a little -- without
losing the shock value of no sign is a real thing -- by saying also that
no thing is a real sign. (Since a thing can be at best a *replica* or
token of a sign.)
gary
}The Realized One comes from nowhere and goes nowhere; that is why he is
called the Realized One. [Diamond-Cutter Sutra]{
gnusystems }{ Pam Jackson Gary Fuhrman }{ Manitoulin University
}{ [EMAIL PROTECTED] }{ http://users.vianet.ca/gnox/ }{
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[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Ben says: Yet attributions, ascriptions, copulations, distributions, etc., etc., of predicates to subjects, or of accidents to substances, or of qualities to reactions, all have a certain similarity and parallelism. Then when we associate connotation in one way with firstness, quality, iconicity and, in another way, with thirdness, meaning/implication/entailment, we get confused. Or at least I get confused. [JOE] That is exactly the confusion that I was trying to express, Ben. Then, dropping further down in your reply, you say: [BEN] Anyway, I suspect that it's as if the formation of a proposition leads to a polymorphous play of roles, abstractions, who knows what, in potentia, so that seconds can take on firstness, vice versa, maybe all combinations, but in any case, such that all will take on a certain thirdness, for the formation of a proposition is semiosis. So a quality's taking on thirdness in that regard is just as a reaction's doing so. [JOE] I agree. Then, dropping down a bit further, you say: [BEN] These are the sorts of things about which in the past you've spoken in terms of dimensions. Sure, they're still puzzling, as such things always are. But in pointing at them and their familiar oddities now with special force, what particular puzzzle are you pointing to? [JOE] What I am especially concerned with at present is the distinction he is often more or less consciously working with between expressed thought and thought which occurs silently. In general, he is as much concerned to establish something about unexpressed thought as he is about expressed thought, though we usually content ourselves with regarding him as being concerned only with the latter. The philosophical move he is making is not merely to establish that expressed thought -- taking the form of word-signs -- has all of the features which are required for the purposes of logic, so that logic can proceed on the basis of verbal expressions of thought -- things that appear on blackboards or pieces of paper -- without being defeated by the inability to access invisible -- or, more generally, imperceptible -- thought, but also to establish that unexpressed thought, though often non-linguistic because it makes do with a person's personal and unshared symbolically functioning notation, is nevertheless capable of being regarded AS being symbolic just as a word is. In other words, he seems to regard the introduction of the conception of the symbol as a way of getting past the limitations implicit both in the word thought but also implicit in the word word. On can thus talk indifferently of words OR thoughts. The so-called linguistic turn is the turn to expressed thought -- the internal dialogue is just the externally observable dialogue imagined to be what also transpires imperceptibly because it really makes no difference what occurred imperceptibly, anyway -- but Peirce didn't merely make the linguistic turn but also re-turned to the unexpressed to reclaim it, as it were, on the basis of its presumed equivalence to what he has established about linguistically expressed thought. The linguistic turn replaces thought by word; the semiotic turn and return replaces both word and thought by symbol (though also of course by icon and index as appropriate, too). Maybe that is not an important further step but only a gratuitous addition that really has no logical significance, but I think Peirce did regard it as a significant move. Over the years I recall reading several different books that claimed to be able to teach people how to calculate with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy involving mental moves and observations not described in the usual instructions on how to perform calculations. (There are apparently a number of such counting techniques which individuals seem to have mastered but never seem to be able to explain clearly enough to others to have any effect on the pedagogy of mathematics.) The ability of autistic lightning calculators to calculate remote dates and weekdays, to count spilled matches with a glance, and so on, or of musical geniuses to perform feats of memory and musical construction that seem unbelievably difficult as individual accomplishments but have been shown time and again to be possible, and the like, seem to require being accounted for in ways that seem impossible when construed merely as rapid movements which are linguistic in character but which must be construed as involving symbolism as well as iconism. I have a hunch that Peirce -- who had his own unique and personal way of thinking things through -- was concerned with that, too, though it was not high on the list of his priorities to develop any research in that direction. [BEN] Peirce in Kaina Stoicheia speaks of the real as the _hic et nunc_ and as only part of a pattern. That's just not how he usually talks about the real. Instead it's how he talks about the
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Well, I'll sleep on it, Gary, and see how it looks to me tomorrow. Joe - Original Message - From: Gary Richmond To: Peirce Discussion Forum Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 8:52 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? Joseph Ransdell wrote: I stlll seem to see a difficulty, Gary, in the idea of existence as reality at an instant, which would appear to be a flash devoid of resistance even. But if the instant is to be construed instead as something enduring across some spread isn't it reality? Why the need for the notion of existence? It seems to have no distinctive role to play. I do not see any reason to conflate the Three Universes of Experience, Joe, and why you would suggest that we cannot presciind one from the others mystifies me. Peirce speaks of existence, categorially associated with secondness, as the class. This sort of prescinding allows him, for example, and as I've suggested in an earlier post today, to criticize Hegel's tendency to disvalue the clash. "Why the need for the notion of existence?" I have no idea why a Peircean would even ask the question.Gary---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: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 2/7/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Theresa and list: I hadn't read your message below when I sent off the self-correction in my most recent message , but as you can see I agree with your correction of my mistake there. I referred to the wrong lecture. I don't believe that the point I was making was mistaken, though, -- but I will have to return to that in that message I am currently composing. As for the rest of it, I still do not see anything in what you say about Royce which makes it implausible that Peirce would be concerned to communicate with him using a common way of framing the topics. He had very good reason to do so, first because Royce was already being influenced by him, as he surely knew, and second, because Royce was the one and only figure in the philosophy department at Harvard who understood his work and its tendencies and saw in it something like the value which Peirce himself saw in it and who could be counted upon to do what could reasonably be done to keep his thinking alive in that crucially important intellectual milieu. (We only have to reflect upon what happened to Peirce's intellectual legacy at Harvard in consequence of Royce's death only two years after his own to see just how important that relationship with Royce was for the future of his work.) When his hopes for support for his magnum opus on logic were dashed in 1902, Peirce was -- and there is plenty of evidence that he knew that he was -- entering into a period in which he was racing against death as regards the realization of his ambitions to do what he believed he had a mission to do, and it is surely improbable in the extreme that it would not occur to him at that time to take advantage of the opportunity that Royce's growing discipleship opened up. What more could he have asked for than what Royce subsequently did in fact start doing for the future of his work? Yet you seem to be insisting that it is somehow improbable that he would want to address himself to that opportunity. If you were merely saying that I hadn't established that Peirce actually did make some move in that direction in the New Elements I wouldn't be arguing with you since I hadn't claimed to have established that evidentially in any message thus far. But I am instead trying to duly acknowledge that you have that sort of objection to it, and am answering it accordingly. And my answer is that I just don't find anything in what you say which suggests such an improbability. It surely is not the fact of their disagreement about certain things, important as they may be, which makes that improbable, given what they shared in common as regards the problematics of philosophy as each of them understood it, and I don't find any other reason being given than their doctrinal disagreement. In any case, I will go ahead to make the positive case for it, and I hope to make clear in doing so why it might be worth doing so, though it is hardly a matter of profound importance. But don't misunderstand me on one thing, Theresa: I do think it is important to pursue these things far enough that we at least understand what we are disagreeing about and why, regardless of whether others agree on the value of this sort of discussion or not. Joe Ransdell. - Original Message - From: Theresa Calvet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 5:08 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about? Joe and list, You have not convinced me and I do not read the supplementary lecture (Lecture Seven) of the 1903 Harvard Lectures as you do and suggest that this lecture may well have been addressed directly to Royce and to his students. The discussion of the map [the example of the self-representing map] is in the Third Lecture. In Peirce's manuscript, writes Turrisi, Peirce denied credit both to himself and to Royce for the origin of the metaphor, but claims to have used it himself some thirty years earlier (p. 104). Is there something shameful in Peirce addressing the interests of the one philosopher capable of understanding him sufficiently well to promote his philosophy in his own work and in that of his students?, you ask. No, of course not. But is this one philosopher Royce, and is this what Peirce is doing in his Harvard Lectures? Peirce, just as undiplomatically as I usually write, wrote in his December 1 (1902) letter to James that what he (James) termed pragmatism happened to be in need of some modification - one could also read the 1903 lectures on pragmatism, delivered at Harvard, and Turrisi suggests this, as an elaboration on these same corrections of the version of pragmatism that James had so famously set forth. And this explains James reaction to the First Lecture and what he wrote to Miller five days after Peirce's first lecture. That is why I did mention James (and Peirce's letter to Christine Ladd-Franklin). No, I do not see (and you say that it must be that I see!) an equivalence of sorts of
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Theresa and list: You say: What I do not agree is with your suggestion that Peirce decided subsequently to accommodate himself to Royce's sensibility as much as possible (why not the other way round? that Royce, particularly after Peirce's Lectures of 1898 (the Cambridge Conferences), was influenced by Peirce? REPLY: Of course he was influenced by him! Is there something shameful in Peirce addressing the interests of the one philosopher capable of understanding him sufficiently well to promote his philosophy in his own work and in that of his students? 'Why in the world would Peirce not want to address Royce as effectively as possible? That is what I am saying. Perhaps it is the word accommodate which confuses you as to my meaning. I am not saying that Peirce changed his views to agree with Royce but that he was addressing Royce in a way he thought proper for Royce to understand what his, Peirce's, views are. I've been baffled by why you keep misreading my intention, and I think I understand why, namely, because of a disagreement in our understandings of Royce and of how Peirce would regard Royce. I am making a claim about how Peirce would regard Royce that would account for the way Peirce is addressing the topic of the New Elements, the claim being that Peirce was addressing Royce himself -- perhaps as one of many addressees of a similar type, to be sure -- and saying that this accounts for a similarity I think I perceive in the way Peirce is formulating his view. You think, though, that this could not be Peirce's aim in composing the paper as he does because Peirce would not want to accommodate himself to Royce's interests. Who was Royce -- I imagine you to be saying -- such that Peirce would take him as implicit addressee of the New Elements? You do not find that plausible, presumably because you do not think Royce shared Peirce's interests sufficiently for Peirce to have any motive for doing so. This is, I think, the basis of our disagreement, and I want to address that because it may be based on a misunderstanding of what Royce was as a philosopher and how Peirce regarded him. This misimpression of Royce may be due to Royce's flowery literary style which I, too, find unappealing and somewhat difficult to get past at times. But notwithstanding that, Royce was a true amateur of science, in the laudatory sense of amateur, and was professionally the magisterial voice for science in the philosophy department, with a campus-wide interdisciplinary influence, cultivated assiduously for years. Moreover, Royce had already showed his grasp of the importance of Cantor's work on infinities and continuity in The World and the Individual, published in 1899 (in the Supplementary Essay: The One, The Many, and the Infinite), especially in connection with the case of the self-representative world map. Peirce was not only aware of that but had replied to Royce on it shortly thereafter and then did so again in the specially scheduled Seventh Lecture of the Harvard Lectures of 1903. There is a definite affinity of that and of other parts of the Lecture series as well which makes it plausible that the New Elements was composed in the same compositional project that included the Harvard Lectures. The manuscript material for the lectures is such that it is impossible to tell what version of each lecture was actually delivered or even that the one delivered is among the surviving drafts. No matter. There is nothing especially problematic in that. Peirce composed that way. He had some place he wanted to go, he selected a starting point, and he set out in a trek of discovery that seemed to him to be a way to go that could get there, though he corrects himself repeatedly in the process and he may never get to wherever he first thought of himself as going -- but that is not to say that he gets nowhere! He wrote as a true discoverer and explorer, and anybody who has worked with the MS material in depth, as we both have, will have experienced the peculiar excitement that attempting to follow him on his self-correcting path can yield precisely because one constantly gets the sense that the unknown is being carefully, patiently, and ingeniously explored. This is the pleasure of the hunt, vivifying research by conceiving it -- living it -- as reSEARCH, in the spirit of the hunt. But I digress. The point is that Peirce's compositional procedure was such that you can often quite clearly identify all of those manuscripts that are related to one another as paths struck out in a single though peculiarly free-flowing line of inquiry, and there is good reason to believe that the New Elements is a part of the same particular compositional project or hunt which is originally focused by the task of composing those public lectures. Now, going by Patricia Turrisi's account in the volume mentioned, there is reason to believe that the Seventh Lecture in particular would have been of special interest to Royce in particular and may well
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Theresa and list: Theresa, you say: I agree that Peirce here was implicitly opposing himself to Royce as a Pragmatist (and a Realist) vs. a non-Pragmatist. But I disagree with what Joe suggests [And what I am suggesting is that at least some of what I find most puzzling in what Peirce is saying in certain places in the New Elements seems to me to be being said by him as a kind of emulation of Royce's way of framing those grand questions about being, purpose, perfection, entelechy, and so forth. I am not suggesting that Peirce was changing his view but that he was filling it out in certain ways so that his view and Royce's would be regardable or comparable with use of a common vocabulary, expressing to some extent a shared sensibility, etc. There are a number of different themes mentioned in the New Elements which Peirce shared with Royce To me these are important clues as to what Peirce was saying and why he was saying it]. REPLY: I don't know what it is in what I say that you disagree with, unless you read me as suggesting that Peirce was somehow pandering to Royce in formulating things as he does in the New Elements. Maybe I should explain that my point was not that, but rather that Peirce had good reason to formulate his views in a way that would make contact with the way Royce formulated his, which is surely in the spirit of cooperative inquiry and the legitimate aims of philosophical rhetoric. But maybe that is not what you had in mind. You go on to say: [THERESA:] If one wants to read what I consider a mistaken account not only of Peirce's influence on Royce but of pragmaticism, then one could read Ludwig Nagl's Beyond Absolute Pragmatism: the Concept of Community in Josiah Royce's Mature Philosophy, published in Cognitio, Vol. 5, N. 1 (January-July 2004), pp. 44-74). REPLY: Thanks for the reference on that. Some time when you have time, I wonder if there is some especially important thing way in which you think Nagl misconstrues Peirce's influence on Royce, i.e. what it is in Royce's later view he thinks of as due to Peirce which really is not. A related but distinct question which I've wondered about but not got around to investigating is whether Royce modified his absolute idealism in the direction of Peirce's conditional idealism in consequence of Peirce's advice and criticism? This would go towards answering the question of whether Royce actually became an inheritor of Peirce's pragmaticism in in his later work or was tending in that direction when he died. In any case, it is was a disaster for Peirce that Royce died when he did since it left Peirce without defense against the savaging of his Nachlass at Harvard, among other things, such as whatever other tendencies were at work there that resulted in his marginalization. . Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.14.22/239 - Release Date: 1/24/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS: So what is it all about?
Just a quick note to remark that Creath is clearly right about there being a close relationship between the New Elements and the 1903 Harvard Lectures. Creath gives some indication of what that is, but I won't attempt to describe that in more detail myself at the moment since it will take some time for me to re-read the lectures closely enough to see what light that might throw on some of the puzzling things said in New Elements. A quick browse, though, verifies what Creath says. One version of the lectures can be found in Vol. 5 of the Collected Papers and there is also a volume edited and with an extensive commentary by Patricia Ann Turrisi called _Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism_, with an extensive commentary by Turrisi as well. (SUNY Press 1997) I still think, though, that there might also be a connection with Peirce's reviews of Royce's The World and the Individual, which may help account for some of the things happening in the New Elements, One reason for thinking this is Peirce's use of the example of the self-representing map in the Harvard lectures, which was first used by Royce in one of the supplementary essays in Vol 1 of The World and the Individual, and the other and more substantial reason -- the reason I actually had in mind -- is Royce's long argument for absolute idealism in Vol. 1, using the notions of internal and external meaning, which are comparable to Peirce's notions of signification and denotation (intension and extension, sense and reference, etc.). Peirce does not agree with Royce on this, identifying himself as a conditional idealist rather than an absolute idealist -- but still an idealist -- and the crux of the argument, as I recall it, has to do with the fact that Royce sets out and purports to show that although we can begin by drawing a distinction between internal meaning and external meaning, we supposedly find that there really is no such thing as external meaning, i.e. reference is only a sort of illusion: all meaning is internal. Thus Peirce's opposition to Royce at that time is that he, Peirce, regards reference or denotation as incapable of being reduced to connotation or sense or internal meaning: i.e. there is no object, just the idea. This is of course a very fundamental difference between their views at that time. Now in calling himself a conditional idealist Peirce was presumably making reference to the pragmatic maxim, which correlates the concept being defined with a conditional relationship (i.e. with a consequence or if-then relationship), so that Peirce was implicitly opposing himself to Royce as a pragmatist vs. a non-Pragmatist. This was around 1900 but that was really only an early stage of the evolving Peirce-Royce relationship which resulted finally in Royce becoming, in his own words, a kind of disciple of Peirce by the time of Peirce's death, incorporating sign-interpretational conceptions into his own work in his late years, publicizing Peirce in his university seminars, etc.. How faithfully this was done and when, exactly, these changes in his philosophy were taking place I do not know because I don't know Royce's later work well enough to track changes in it to bring it into conformity with Peirce's view. But they were happening and Royce was openly urging study of Peirce on others in the yearly and highly prestigious university seminars on philosophy of science he was holding at Harvard, traveling back and forth to Milford during the last years of Peirce's life, and so forth. And what I am suggesting is that at least some of what I find most puzzling in what Peirce is saying in certain places in the New Elements seems to me to be being said by him as a kind of emulation of Royce's way of framing those grand questions about being, purpose, perfection, entelechy, and so forth. I am not suggesting that Peirce was changing his view but that he was filling it out in certain ways so that his view and Royce's would be regardable or comparable with use of a common vocabulary, expressing to some extent a shared sensibility, etc. There are a number of different themes mentioned in the New Elements which Peirce shared with Royce To me these are important clues as to what Peirce was saying and why he was saying it. Does anyone know of anyone who is working on a overall comparison of Royce and Peirce, i.e. of Peirce's influence on Royce? It turned out that this influence not only did Pierce no good, as regards the problem of getting himself into the mainstream of academic philosophy, but may have been -- this is my guess -- the main reason why Peirce was instead moved inexorably out of the mainstream, marginalized with increasing calumny, his Nachlass treated with contempt while being raided shamelessly while under the protection of the department, etc., since Royce died only two years after Peirce and
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe
J-MO = Jean-Marc Orliaguet JR = Joe Ransdell Jean-Marc says: [J-MO] I don't really understand the subtle distinctions that you are making between direct and unmediated and between indirect and mediated, and in what way they contribute to a better philosophical understanding.. REPLY: [JR] The difference in meaning between direct/indirect and immediate/mediate is not especially subtle. They are simply different distinctions, as far as normal English usage goes, For example, as regards vision, I am presently perceiving the keyboard of my computer quite directly inasmuch as there is nothing intervening between my eyes and the keyboard that I would have to get past in order to perceive it. But whether or not my perception of it is mediated is another matter. In fact, since I wear glasses, it is mediated by those lenses, but it is precisely that mediation which enables me to perceive it directly rather than making it necessary ghgor me to resort to some indirect means of perceiving it. Peirce's usage of these terms is another matter, though. It is getting clear on those disttinctions that is the problem, as I see it, and it is a mistake to simply dismiss the difference as unimportant. I don't claim to have accomplished anything in pointing that out other than making a start on addressing the problem the difference poses. [J-MO] Such a sentence as whether or not direct knowledge is to be construed as unmediated is disturbingly convoluted, especially as Peirce does not seem to introduce such distinctions himself. Sometimes he uses in a same sentence direct, as another word for unmediated or immediate. I fail to see the rationale for introducing a distinction. It is a bit like shoving a needle under the fingernails. [JR] Llke shoving a needle under the fingernails? Hmmm. I don't understand the comparison, but as regards Peirce's usage, I think we will want to find out more about that. I don't think Peirce tended to speak loosely about this -- or, indeed, about anything -- contrary to what is often assumed in commentary on Peirce, but it seems that in discussing matters of perception in particular he was constrained by several different factors: in part by what he thought of as being the best usages for philosophical purposes, in part by the way in which the topic he was addressing was typically addressed in the philosophical literature at that time, and in part by the difference between what was relevant to a psychological analysis and what was relevant to a logical analysis. One major oroblem we have4 in interpreting him adequately is that we are not sufficiently familiar with how things were discussed in the traditions of discussion he was taking for granted. At the time of and at least in part as a consequence of the First World War there was a major disruption and discontinuity in the Western tradition of philosophy as that was understood in the US in particular which made it all but impossible for American philosophers to understand what Peirce's philosophical world was actually like. What Peirce takes for granted as commonly understood by somone at the leading edge at his time is not at all the same as what people in this country in particular came to take for granted after that war. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this. By the time I got into philosophy, beginning in the late 1950's the difference in the understanding of philosophical issues was so great that it had become all but impossible for an American to read Hegel, for example, with any grasp at all of what he might be saying. That is merely one example. As I said, this cannot be overemphasized, in my opinion, and it is at least true that it would be unwise to take anything for granted about what he must have meant in the case of terms which seem to us now to have been used casually and loosely by him. My point is that I see it as a major problem to be clear on what he did mean by what might seem to be rather obvious synonymous usages, such as in the case of the distinctions in question. ; [J-MO] For example according to: CP 6.392¨ Proximate knowledge is direct knowledge of a thing, not knowledge through something else. Better called direct knowledge. if knowledge through something else is mediated knowledge, then CP 6.392 simply says that direct knowledge is not mediated knowledge, or that direct knowledge is unmediated. But there is nothing that is construed here, since these are just definitions of concepts that everyone already understands. [JR] Well, it is your assumption that knowledge through something else = mediated knowledge, but I see no reason to accept that. Given what Peirce says, I think we can equate knowledge through something else with indirect knowledge, i.e. we can assume that this is his usage. But the word mediate and other terms derivative of that are far too loaded with usage in specifically semiotical
[peirce-l] Re: R: Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe
Clark says: With regards to Peirce, I wonder how to consider the analysis of persuasion that Joseph brings up - especially considering that Peirce's ideal of science didn't really involve belief. I admit that's a view of science in Peirce I've long struggled with. But without belief, what is the role of persuasion? REPLY: There are certainly problems to be confronted in this, Clark. I wish I had a verifiying reference at hand but I don't, but Peirce sometimes in later writings used the locution holding for true in place of the term belief, presumably because of the problem he perceived in it himself;; and then, too, in the earlier work where his theory of inquiry is first being explicitly formulated, the word opinion is frequently used instead of belief at times, as e.g. when he talks of settlement of opinion instead of fixation (i.e. the fixing of) belief. In reconstructing his view with as much consistency as the text, context, etc., will permit we will surely want to make some shrewd choices as to which of these -- and other locutions as well -- make the whole thing work out in such a way as to accommodate what he has to accommodate in his account of the truly scientific attitude. My impression is that Peirce did not fret much about possibly having made a bad choice of words in the 1877-78 papers when speaking of belief. It is possible that he should have been more disturbed than he was and it surprises me that he does not insist upon clarifying or remedying this in particular in his later writings. But I don't think he would object in the least to our correcting his terminological errors as we need to as long as the basic facts about the nature of inquiry are respected. My guess is that we probably have plenty of terminology available to us which is supple enough to work this out, and can figure out when and why belief is at times the proper term, perhaps, but nevertheless surely is not the word wanted at other times, and construct all of the kinds of situations we might need to construct conceptually in order to do justice to the reality of inquiry as ideally conceived. Peirce was certainly aware that in accepting something as a finding or discovery in research science, one is always taking a chance on being wrong, and the ability to take that possibility seriously, when something is subsequently learned that seems to cast doubt on it, is in his view precisely the distinguishing mark of the scientist as such. So we will certainly have to retain that in reconstructing or developing his view as best we can, if that is what we aim at doing. Now, this is true not merely of scientists in the abstract but of concretely existing scientists insofar as they really are scientists. It would be foolish to say that it is easy to be a scientist, but it is also true that we do in fact find people who show themselves capable of rising to the appropriate occasion and exhibiting that ability. Such persons really do exist, and when you find one you have found somebody markedly different from what you have, say, when you have found a confidence artist of the sort to be found among the run-of-the-mill politicians of our time, or when you find a religious demogogue, or when you find a fanatic of whatever stripe. (Ordinary people are in fact more capable of that sort of detachment in matters of daily life than usually given credit for, by the way.) The point is that such people are possible, and we are somehow able to be at once detached and committed, however that is to be explained. In fact, that peculiar sort of detached commitment (or committed detachment) is what we all practice, more or less well or ineptly, when we play games or watch dramas or read books or conduct ourselves in a mannered way, or . . . well, what don't we do with just such detachment? Eat our meals? Converse with our friends? Play our social roles generally? (Peirce was especially interested in drama, by the way.) Also, as we all know as well, it is possible to act upon something proposed -- a proposition -- with hope that it will prove to have the consequences one thinks it will have even though one fears that it may be mistaken. And, again, this sort of thing is simply obvious as a human ability, however we are to account for it. Now in order to make all of this of logical interest, we have to figure out how to formulate the norms of conduct which the truth seeker has to acknowledge as ideal and attempt to conform to in his or relationships with other truth seekers. And this takes us, of course, to communicational conceptions and the questions about the role which this and that norm of critical self-control is to be understood as playing in the inquiry process properly conducted or lived. The reason I think the conception of assertion is especially important is that there are two different directions we can go in articulating what assertion is: on the one
[peirce-l] Re: NEW ELEMENTS (KAINA STOICHEIA) available at Arisbe
Jean-Marc says: Of course, not to restart an old debate... I am curious about how the following lines are going to be interpreted: We have a direct knowledge of real objects in every experiential reaction, whether of /Perception/ or of /Exertion/ (the one theoretical, the other practical). These are directly /hic et nunc/. But we extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling, peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters of which we have no immediate consciousness. REPLY: As I recall it, Jean-Marc, the main bone of contention in that earlier discussion had to do with whether or not direct knowledge is to be construed as unmediated and thus with the relation of the distinction direct/indirect and the distinction immediate/mediate, and this in the context of questions about his analysis of perception generally. I see no reason not to raise that old debate once again in hopes of coming to a better understanding of it than we could agree upon then. I think, though, that I would prefer to get into that only after we get ourselves better situated in respect to what is going on in general in the New Elements. Overall, I find the rationale of it baffling. It is not a complete paper of course, but even considered as only an intended preface to a book on the logic of mathematics, it is seems puzzlingly incomplete, at the least. Why does he start off with the theory vs. practice distinction? What does that have to do with the logic of math? And what exactly does he have in mind in distinguishing the theoretical from the practical? Is this the same as what we would now identify as the distinction between theoretical science and engineering? Or what he elsewhere calls practical sciences? Or is it rather the distinction between the normative science of logic and the normative science of ethics? (A certain parallel with something in John Locke suggests this possibility to me.) Assuming this was written in 1904, he has been doing the classification of the sciences stuff for some time, but how does this distinction fit in with the distinctions he draws there? Maybe I'm missing the obvious, and it may turn out not to be important, anyway, but it seems worth raising a question about initially. I intended to get a bit further into this, taking up the three connections of the sign with truth in the first part of Part III, which seems to me to parallel the three references (to the ground, to the correlate, and to the interpretant) in the New List, but I'm under siege from something flu-like or maybe a bad cold and getting so groggy I had best stop with this much for the moment. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.21/236 - Release Date: 1/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
