[peirce-l] Peirce-L's ends

[Catherine Legg]

Hello all!



Some stimulating discussions at the SAAP regarding this list have
encouraged me to start a thread not with any particular goal in mind, but
to see where it might lead.



What I’m interested to pursue is of the nature of a “check-in” regarding
this list.



As a loosely affiliated group of Peirce enthusiasts, are we getting the
most out of the list that we could be?



What is currently working well on the list?

What, if anything, could be improved?

What are our goals with this list? Would it be right to say it is a
community of inquiry? If so, how is the inquiry going?

If it is not right to see the goal of the list as primarily a community of
inquiry, what goals does it have? And how might they be best realized?



Sharp observers may spot a certain encouragement towards communal critical
self-reflection in the above.



Cheers everyone, Cathy



Catherine Legg

Senior Lecturer, Philosophy Programme

University of Waikato

Private Bag 3105

3240, Hamilton, New Zealand

*http://waikato.academia.edu/CathyLegg*

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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Catherine Legg]

Tom that is a great quote in this context, thank you!



Gene your passionate warning against a  “Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated,
abstract intelligence in the service of ideals” is important I think. It
would seem that Peirce did criticize himself along these lines at one point
where he compared his character unfavorably with that of James as “a mere
table of contents…a snarl of twine” (or similar words).



Having said that, however, I worry that your comments, Gene, are predicated
on a Romantic view of thought and feeling as mutually undermining
opposites, which is actually the tail-end of modernism. Peirce’s semiotics
on the other hand gives us the means to get past that dichotomy - to be
able to see for the first time the elegant feelings of fine mathematicians
and logicians, and the rigorous critical structure of great art.



I see Terry’s post on sociality as logic driving at this point from a
different direction.



Cathy



*From:* C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] *On
Behalf Of *Tom Gollier
*Sent:* Monday, 26 March 2012 3:47 a.m.
*To:* PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
*Subject:* Re: Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"



Cathy,

I'll have to wait for this discussion to develop further and/or the talk to
get posted, but I thought this quote from Peirce might be pertinent.

The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it
exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in
pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying
that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind. [CP
1.383]


Tom

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Catherine Legg 
wrote:



On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Gary Richmond 
wrote:

I want to conclude this note with a passage near the end of the book
which I very much liked and have been reflecting on since. Forster
writes:

On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic
mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of
transforming the world though the active realization of intelligent
ideals. The ultimate fate of the world is indeterminate and there is
no guarantee that the forces of reasonableness will triumph.
Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he
thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the
pursuit of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual
self-interest, but by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op.
cit., 245).

Cathy, this brought to my mind the discussion of Peirce's esthetics
following Tom Short's fine talk in the Robin session at SAAP. Any
thoughts on that in this connection?

***


Yes that discussion was interesting - I wish we had had the time to pursue
it further. This might not mean so much to people who were not at the talk
(perhaps Tom Short might be persuaded to post a copy of it here). But
anyway, Tom claimed the subject matter of Peirce's aesthetics was not the
beautiful but the *admirable*. To test this, and because I was worried that
the talk had mainly spoken at the general level, I asked about a specific
example - the Mona Lisa, and whether a Peircean aesthetics as described by
Tom might have anything to say about that work, and if so, what.



I was worried it looked like I hadn't really understood the very point Tom
was trying to make, and Tom suggested that a painting of a beautiful woman
is not the sort of thing Peirce has in mind, but Felicia Cruse said she
wanted to hear what Tom had to say about it, and artworks in general.
Then Rosa Mayorga pointed out that Peirce himself describes the subject
matter of aesthetics as 'the growth of concrete reasonableness' (here is
the connection Gary is pointing out) so we should work with that.





So I guess the question is whether a painting by Leonardo da Vinci might
somehow contribute to the growth of human concrete reasonableness. Doesn't
seem to me it couldn't. That painting in particular, apparently people have
been known to stand in front of it for hours and not necessarily be able to
articulate why.



I hope I have captured an accurate enough snapshot of the discussion as
memory of such things is inevitably selective.



Regards to all, Cathy





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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Gary Richmond]

Terry, Gene, Jon, List,

Methinks that you are quite correct, Terry, about reasonableness in
Peirce being centered on the social principle, and not just for
science. Critical commonsense ought play a significant role in all our
endeavors in Peirce's view.

And Gene, while I enjoy the passion of your rants (and passion *is* I
think missing from too much of contemporary philosophizing), and while
Peirce certainly made it clear that philosophy (one of the first
sciences in his classification of the sciences, one should note) ought
only very gradually be brought to bear on "questions of vital
interest" (see the first of his 1898 Lectures), still, he *was* for
all intents and purposes a practicing scientist, and a philosopher and
 logician. While he apparently loved the theater and music, etc., he
did not consider himself to be at all an artist, but always and
predominantly a scientist.

In my view the problem is not science, but the misuse of science (and
technology). Here I'd have to get into political-economic questions
which I'm not prepared to do. Art is important, and science is
important, and political-economy is important--and for all, as Terry
suggested, the 'social principle' could be--should be--be prominently
in play, the ideal of the community ought to be love, and that would
constitute our summum bonum: our ideal. That kind of ideal plays a
significant role in Peirce's pragmatism--it is a very humane idea.

Jon, thanks for the link to the lovely song by Paul Simon.

Best,

Gary

On 3/25/12, Terry Bristol  wrote:
> Methinks that the Peirce's 'reasonableness' is based on what he calls the
> 'social principle' and that it is the reasonableness of evolutionary love.
>
> The ideal of the community is love.
>
> Terry
>
> On Mar 25, 2012, at 11:54 AM, Eugene Halton wrote:
>
> Forster: "On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic
> mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the
> world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate
> of the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of
> reasonableness will triumph.
> Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he
> thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit
> of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but
> by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245).
>
> I could not think of anything worse than a community transforming the world
> through "intelligent ideals," and I do not think the statement accurately
> represents Peirce. This Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated, abstract
> intelligence in the service of ideals would be ruinous to life, just as
> Teilhard de Chardin's concept of a "noosphere" (in the sense of atmosphere,
> stratosphere) is, a film of planetary intelligence in which "life's domain"
> would be ruled by reason. Life from the neck up is ruinous to life: the
> noose sphere. Peirce, it seems to me, understood the limited place of
> science in the practice of life, which is why he thought pragmatically that
> science is impractical. Other people, such as Dostoyevsky and Melville and
> D. H. Lawrence, saw more deeply into the problem of the idealization of life
> than Peirce did, perhaps because they were artists.
>
> Life cannot be lived by ideals for long; life can be lived with ideals,
> never sustainably by them. Our age today, with its ideal religions and ideal
> science and technology, is fast realizing ideal ruination of the biosphere.
>
> We have butchered our spontaneous souls into ether, we have butchered our
> minds into believing that our bodies are machines and the universe is a
> machine, and we have butchered the earth: The poisoned fruit of our science
> and its cultural legacy. Scientific self-correction may be a matter of the
> long run. Hooray for it. The problem is that life is also a matter of once
> for all time. Cut its cord and it's gone.
>
> Creation issues forth as non-ideal spontaneous reasonableness, which may be
> an aspect of Peirce's understanding of the aesthetic as more encompassing
> than the ethical or logical and their concerns with the good and the true.
> "The admirable," literally that which one "wonders at," as an understanding
> of aesthetic (a word which means to perceive or feel), seems to have moved
> from its literal meaning of wonder toward one of idealizing, perhaps as an
> aspect of our idealizing, anesthetic age.
>
> Gene Halton
>
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> You 

Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Terry Bristol]

Methinks that the Peirce's 'reasonableness' is based on what he calls the 
'social principle' and that it is the reasonableness of evolutionary love.

The ideal of the community is love.

Terry

On Mar 25, 2012, at 11:54 AM, Eugene Halton wrote:

Forster: "On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic 
mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the 
world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate of 
the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of 
reasonableness will triumph.
Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he thinks, 
is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit of truth 
and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but by a common 
love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245).

I could not think of anything worse than a community transforming the world 
through "intelligent ideals," and I do not think the statement accurately 
represents Peirce. This Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated, abstract intelligence 
in the service of ideals would be ruinous to life, just as Teilhard de 
Chardin's concept of a "noosphere" (in the sense of atmosphere, stratosphere) 
is, a film of planetary intelligence in which "life's domain" would be ruled by 
reason. Life from the neck up is ruinous to life: the noose sphere. Peirce, it 
seems to me, understood the limited place of science in the practice of life, 
which is why he thought pragmatically that science is impractical. Other 
people, such as Dostoyevsky and Melville and D. H. Lawrence, saw more deeply 
into the problem of the idealization of life than Peirce did, perhaps because 
they were artists. 

Life cannot be lived by ideals for long; life can be lived with ideals, never 
sustainably by them. Our age today, with its ideal religions and ideal science 
and technology, is fast realizing ideal ruination of the biosphere. 

We have butchered our spontaneous souls into ether, we have butchered our minds 
into believing that our bodies are machines and the universe is a machine, and 
we have butchered the earth: The poisoned fruit of our science and its cultural 
legacy. Scientific self-correction may be a matter of the long run. Hooray for 
it. The problem is that life is also a matter of once for all time. Cut its 
cord and it's gone. 

Creation issues forth as non-ideal spontaneous reasonableness, which may be an 
aspect of Peirce's understanding of the aesthetic as more encompassing than the 
ethical or logical and their concerns with the good and the true. "The 
admirable," literally that which one "wonders at," as an understanding of 
aesthetic (a word which means to perceive or feel), seems to have moved from 
its literal meaning of wonder toward one of idealizing, perhaps as an aspect of 
our idealizing, anesthetic age.  

Gene Halton

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[peirce-l] Deacon & Peirce [was "re: Deacon's incompleteness and Peirce's infinity"]

[Adrian Ivakhiv]

This is just an aside to Gary F.'s parenthetical comment about Terrence 
Deacon's knowledge of Peirce:


"In other words, he argues for the reality of Thirdness without calling 
it that – indeed without using Peirce's phaneroscopic categories at all. 
(Personally i doubt that he is familiar enough with them to use them 
fluently, but maybe he decided not to use them for some reason.)"



Deacon has, apparently, been a lifelong student of Peirce's work. One of 
his articles online, accessible from his Teleodynamics blog, is a paper 
from 1976 entitled "Semiotics and Cybernetics: The Relevance of C. S. 
Peirce", which includes an extensive discussion of Peirce's 
phaneroscopy. It can be read here:

http://www.teleodynamics.com/?p=52

It makes me wonder: Has anyone tried to involve Deacon in discussion on 
this list? I've seen him appear on blogs responding to questions about 
his work. Seems he'd be both interested and welcome here...


Cheers,
Adrian Ivakhiv




On 3/11/12 11:24 AM, Gary Fuhrman wrote:


Jon, Gary, Ben and List,

There's another part of the /Minute Logic/ which may be related to the 
connection Jon is making between “objective logic” and “categories”. 
It is definitely related to the argument in Terrence Deacon's 
/Incomplete Nature/, which Gary R. suggested some time ago as worthy 
of study here. We haven't found a way to study it systematically, but 
maybe it's just as well to do it one post at a time. Or one thread at 
a time, if replies ensue.


The central part of Deacon's argument presents “a theory of emergent 
dynamics that shows how dynamical process can become organized around 
and with respect to possibilities not realized” (Deacon, p. 16). 
Depending on the context, he also refers to these “possibilities not 
realized” as “absential” or “ententional”. His argument is explicitly 
anti-nominalistic and acknowledges the reality of a kind of final 
causation in the physical universe (“teleodynamics”). It has a strong 
affinity with Peirce's argument for a mode of being which has its 
reality /in futuro/. In other words, he argues for the reality of 
Thirdness without calling it that – indeed without using Peirce's 
phaneroscopic categories at all. (Personally i doubt that he is 
familiar enough with them to use them fluently, but maybe he decided 
not to use them for some reason.)


“Incompleteness” is a crucial concept of what i might call Deaconian 
realism. In physical terms, it is connected with Prigogine's idea of 
/dissipative structures/ (including organisms) as /far from 
equilibrium/ in a universe where the spontaneous tendency is /toward/ 
equilibrium, as the Second Law of thermodynamics would indicate. 
Teleodynamic processes take incompleteness to a higher level of 
complexity, but i don't propose to go into that now. Instead i'll 
present here a Peircean parallel to Deacon's “incompleteness”. The 
connection lies in the fact that /incompleteness/ is etymologically – 
and perhaps mathematically? – equivalent to /infinity/.


First, we have this passage from Peirce's Minute Logic of 1902:

[[[ I doubt very much whether the Instinctive mind could ever develop 
into a Rational mind. I should expect the reverse process sooner. The 
Rational mind is the Progressive mind, and as such, by its very 
capacity for growth, seems more infantile than the Instinctive mind. 
Still, it would seem that Progressive minds must have, in some 
mysterious way, probably by arrested development, grown from 
Instinctive minds; and they are certainly enormously higher. The Deity 
of the Théodicée of Leibniz is as high an Instinctive mind as can well 
be imagined; but it impresses a scientific reader as distinctly 
inferior to the human mind. It reminds one of the view of the Greeks 
that Infinitude is a defect; for although Leibniz imagines that he is 
making the Divine Mind infinite, by making its knowledge Perfect and 
Complete, he fails to see that in thus refusing it the powers of 
thought and the possibility of improvement he is in fact taking away 
something far higher than knowledge. It is the human mind that is 
infinite. One of the most remarkable distinctions between the 
Instinctive mind of animals and the Rational mind of man is that 
animals rarely make mistakes, while the human mind almost invariably 
blunders at first, and repeatedly, where it is really exercised in the 
manner that is distinctive of it. If you look upon this as a defect, 
you ought to find an Instinctive mind higher than a Rational one, and 
probably, if you cross-examine yourself, you will find you do. The 
greatness of the human mind lies in its ability to discover truth 
notwithstanding its not having Instincts strong enough to exempt it 
from error. ]] CP 7.380 ]


This suggests to me that fallibility – which not even Peirce 
attributes to God – is a highly developed species of incompleteness. 
The connection with infinity, and with Thirdness, is further brought 
out in Peirce's Harvard Lecture of 1903 “On Phe

Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Jon Awbrey]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnzKeA6yxI


On Mar 25, 2012, at 2:54 PM, Eugene Halton  wrote:

> Forster: "On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic 
> mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the 
> world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate 
> of the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of 
> reasonableness will triumph.
> Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he thinks, 
> is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit of truth 
> and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but by a 
> common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245).
> 
> I could not think of anything worse than a community transforming the world 
> through "intelligent ideals," and I do not think the statement accurately 
> represents Peirce. This Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated, abstract intelligence 
> in the service of ideals would be ruinous to life, just as Teilhard de 
> Chardin's concept of a "noosphere" (in the sense of atmosphere, stratosphere) 
> is, a film of planetary intelligence in which "life's domain" would be ruled 
> by reason. Life from the neck up is ruinous to life: the noose sphere. 
> Peirce, it seems to me, understood the limited place of science in the 
> practice of life, which is why he thought pragmatically that science is 
> impractical. Other people, such as Dostoyevsky and Melville and D. H. 
> Lawrence, saw more deeply into the problem of the idealization of life than 
> Peirce did, perhaps because they were artists. 
> 
> Life cannot be lived by ideals for long; life can be lived with ideals, never 
> sustainably by them. Our age today, with its ideal religions and ideal 
> science and technology, is fast realizing ideal ruination of the biosphere. 
> 
> We have butchered our spontaneous souls into ether, we have butchered our 
> minds into believing that our bodies are machines and the universe is a 
> machine, and we have butchered the earth: The poisoned fruit of our science 
> and its cultural legacy. Scientific self-correction may be a matter of the 
> long run. Hooray for it. The problem is that life is also a matter of once 
> for all time. Cut its cord and it's gone. 
> 
> Creation issues forth as non-ideal spontaneous reasonableness, which may be 
> an aspect of Peirce's understanding of the aesthetic as more encompassing 
> than the ethical or logical and their concerns with the good and the true. 
> "The admirable," literally that which one "wonders at," as an understanding 
> of aesthetic (a word which means to perceive or feel), seems to have moved 
> from its literal meaning of wonder toward one of idealizing, perhaps as an 
> aspect of our idealizing, anesthetic age.  
> 
> Gene Halton
> 
> -
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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Eugene Halton]

Forster: "On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic 
mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of transforming the 
world though the active realization of intelligent ideals. The ultimate fate of 
the world is indeterminate and there is no guarantee that the forces of 
reasonableness will triumph.
Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he thinks, 
is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the pursuit of truth 
and goodness, a community united, not by mutual self-interest, but by a common 
love of reasonableness" (Forster, op. cit., 245).

I could not think of anything worse than a community transforming the world 
through "intelligent ideals," and I do not think the statement accurately 
represents Peirce. This Pyrrhic victory of eviscerated, abstract intelligence 
in the service of ideals would be ruinous to life, just as Teilhard de 
Chardin's concept of a "noosphere" (in the sense of atmosphere, stratosphere) 
is, a film of planetary intelligence in which "life's domain" would be ruled by 
reason. Life from the neck up is ruinous to life: the noose sphere. Peirce, it 
seems to me, understood the limited place of science in the practice of life, 
which is why he thought pragmatically that science is impractical. Other 
people, such as Dostoyevsky and Melville and D. H. Lawrence, saw more deeply 
into the problem of the idealization of life than Peirce did, perhaps because 
they were artists. 

Life cannot be lived by ideals for long; life can be lived with ideals, never 
sustainably by them. Our age today, with its ideal religions and ideal science 
and technology, is fast realizing ideal ruination of the biosphere. 

We have butchered our spontaneous souls into ether, we have butchered our minds 
into believing that our bodies are machines and the universe is a machine, and 
we have butchered the earth: The poisoned fruit of our science and its cultural 
legacy. Scientific self-correction may be a matter of the long run. Hooray for 
it. The problem is that life is also a matter of once for all time. Cut its 
cord and it's gone. 

Creation issues forth as non-ideal spontaneous reasonableness, which may be an 
aspect of Peirce's understanding of the aesthetic as more encompassing than the 
ethical or logical and their concerns with the good and the true. "The 
admirable," literally that which one "wonders at," as an understanding of 
aesthetic (a word which means to perceive or feel), seems to have moved from 
its literal meaning of wonder toward one of idealizing, perhaps as an aspect of 
our idealizing, anesthetic age.  

Gene Halton

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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Stephen C. Rose]

Not sure if this got sent. If so, sorry for the duplication.

Flying blind as usual, I think admirable for Peirce means what it would
mean to most. An action or actions that achieve a positive purpose either
for an individual or in relationships. Peirce's modifier of reasonableness
might be an evolutionary sense that the accumulation of such things moves
toward a more reasonable community reality. Mona Lisa is like all creations
a fixed thing and I would assume that Peirce might admire it or any other
work and honor it for its still present effects. I imagine his musements
afforded him a sense of beauty if indeed he felt progress in thinking and
satisfaction at the thought.

*ShortFormContent at Blogger* 



On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 3:44 AM, Catherine Legg  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
>
>> I want to conclude this note with a passage near the end of the book
>> which I very much liked and have been reflecting on since. Forster
>> writes:
>>
>> On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic
>> mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of
>> transforming the world though the active realization of intelligent
>> ideals. The ultimate fate of the world is indeterminate and there is
>> no guarantee that the forces of reasonableness will triumph.
>> Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he
>> thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the
>> pursuit of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual
>> self-interest, but by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op.
>> cit., 245).
>>
>> Cathy, this brought to my mind the discussion of Peirce's esthetics
>> following Tom Short's fine talk in the Robin session at SAAP. Any
>> thoughts on that in this connection?
>>
> ***
>
>>
>> Yes that discussion was interesting - I wish we had had the time to
>> pursue it further. This might not mean so much to people who were not at
>> the talk (perhaps Tom Short might be persuaded to post a copy of it here).
>> But anyway, Tom claimed the subject matter of Peirce's aesthetics was not
>> the beautiful but the *admirable*. To test this, and because I was worried
>> that the talk had mainly spoken at the general level, I asked about a
>> specific example - the Mona Lisa, and whether a Peircean aesthetics as
>> described by Tom might have anything to say about that work, and if so,
>> what.
>
>
>
>> I was worried it looked like I hadn't really understood the very point
>> Tom was trying to make, and Tom suggested that a painting of a beautiful
>> woman is not the sort of thing Peirce has in mind, but Felicia Cruse said
>> she wanted to hear what Tom had to say about it, and artworks in general.
>> Then Rosa Mayorga pointed out that Peirce himself describes the subject
>> matter of aesthetics as 'the growth of concrete reasonableness' (here is
>> the connection Gary is pointing out) so we should work with that.
>
>
>
>
>> So I guess the question is whether a painting by Leonardo da Vinci might
>> somehow contribute to the growth of human concrete reasonableness. Doesn't
>> seem to me it couldn't. That painting in particular, apparently people have
>> been known to stand in front of it for hours and not necessarily be able to
>> articulate why.
>
>
> I hope I have captured an accurate enough snapshot of the discussion as
> memory of such things is inevitably selective.
>
> Regards to all, Cathy
>
>
>
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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Tom Gollier]

Cathy,

I'll have to wait for this discussion to develop further and/or the talk to
get posted, but I thought this quote from Peirce might be pertinent.

The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it
> exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in
> pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying
> that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind. [CP
> 1.383]
>

Tom

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Catherine Legg wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
>
>> I want to conclude this note with a passage near the end of the book
>> which I very much liked and have been reflecting on since. Forster
>> writes:
>>
>> On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic
>> mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of
>> transforming the world though the active realization of intelligent
>> ideals. The ultimate fate of the world is indeterminate and there is
>> no guarantee that the forces of reasonableness will triumph.
>> Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he
>> thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the
>> pursuit of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual
>> self-interest, but by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op.
>> cit., 245).
>>
>> Cathy, this brought to my mind the discussion of Peirce's esthetics
>> following Tom Short's fine talk in the Robin session at SAAP. Any
>> thoughts on that in this connection?
>>
> ***
>
>>
>> Yes that discussion was interesting - I wish we had had the time to
>> pursue it further. This might not mean so much to people who were not at
>> the talk (perhaps Tom Short might be persuaded to post a copy of it here).
>> But anyway, Tom claimed the subject matter of Peirce's aesthetics was not
>> the beautiful but the *admirable*. To test this, and because I was worried
>> that the talk had mainly spoken at the general level, I asked about a
>> specific example - the Mona Lisa, and whether a Peircean aesthetics as
>> described by Tom might have anything to say about that work, and if so,
>> what.
>
>
>
>> I was worried it looked like I hadn't really understood the very point
>> Tom was trying to make, and Tom suggested that a painting of a beautiful
>> woman is not the sort of thing Peirce has in mind, but Felicia Cruse said
>> she wanted to hear what Tom had to say about it, and artworks in general.
>> Then Rosa Mayorga pointed out that Peirce himself describes the subject
>> matter of aesthetics as 'the growth of concrete reasonableness' (here is
>> the connection Gary is pointing out) so we should work with that.
>
>
>
>
>> So I guess the question is whether a painting by Leonardo da Vinci might
>> somehow contribute to the growth of human concrete reasonableness. Doesn't
>> seem to me it couldn't. That painting in particular, apparently people have
>> been known to stand in front of it for hours and not necessarily be able to
>> articulate why.
>
>
> I hope I have captured an accurate enough snapshot of the discussion as
> memory of such things is inevitably selective.
>
> Regards to all, Cathy
>
>
>
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Re: [peirce-l] Book Review: "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism"

[Catherine Legg]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:

> I want to conclude this note with a passage near the end of the book
> which I very much liked and have been reflecting on since. Forster
> writes:
>
> On [Peirce's] view, human beings are not cogs in a vast cosmic
> mechanism, but rather are free, creative agents capable of
> transforming the world though the active realization of intelligent
> ideals. The ultimate fate of the world is indeterminate and there is
> no guarantee that the forces of reasonableness will triumph.
> Nevertheless, the potential for victory is there. All it requires, he
> thinks, is a community of individuals who devote their energy to the
> pursuit of truth and goodness, a community united, not by mutual
> self-interest, but by a common love of reasonableness" (Forster, op.
> cit., 245).
>
> Cathy, this brought to my mind the discussion of Peirce's esthetics
> following Tom Short's fine talk in the Robin session at SAAP. Any
> thoughts on that in this connection?
>
***

>
> Yes that discussion was interesting - I wish we had had the time to pursue
> it further. This might not mean so much to people who were not at the talk
> (perhaps Tom Short might be persuaded to post a copy of it here). But
> anyway, Tom claimed the subject matter of Peirce's aesthetics was not the
> beautiful but the *admirable*. To test this, and because I was worried that
> the talk had mainly spoken at the general level, I asked about a specific
> example - the Mona Lisa, and whether a Peircean aesthetics as described by
> Tom might have anything to say about that work, and if so, what.



> I was worried it looked like I hadn't really understood the very point Tom
> was trying to make, and Tom suggested that a painting of a beautiful woman
> is not the sort of thing Peirce has in mind, but Felicia Cruse said she
> wanted to hear what Tom had to say about it, and artworks in general.
> Then Rosa Mayorga pointed out that Peirce himself describes the subject
> matter of aesthetics as 'the growth of concrete reasonableness' (here is
> the connection Gary is pointing out) so we should work with that.




> So I guess the question is whether a painting by Leonardo da Vinci might
> somehow contribute to the growth of human concrete reasonableness. Doesn't
> seem to me it couldn't. That painting in particular, apparently people have
> been known to stand in front of it for hours and not necessarily be able to
> articulate why.


I hope I have captured an accurate enough snapshot of the discussion as
memory of such things is inevitably selective.

Regards to all, Cathy

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