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

[Matt Faunce]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 9:05 PM Matt Faunce 
wrote:

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

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

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

Matt

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

[Matt Faunce]

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

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

Matt

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 8:20 PM John F Sowa  wrote:

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

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

[John F Sowa]

On 3/17/2018 3:59 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
what anything is, according to Peirce, accords with the final opinion. 
So, the two statements make a paradox or not depending on whether 
alterations of things are ultimately bounded by some overarching law or not.


Your suggestion led me to check the original CP 5.555, and I believe
that Margolis (and many others) misinterpreted what Peirce was trying
to say.  JM thought that Peirce was asserting the following sentence:
"the act of knowing a real object alters it."

But in the complete paragraph, it occurs in a dependent clause,
which I believe Peirce was denying.  Following are the first two
sentences:

CP 5.555

It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it.
They are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them,
it may be amusing to see how I think.


My interpretation:

 1. There are certain mummified pedants.

 2. They have not waked to (become aware of) the so-called "truth"
that the the act of knowing a real object alters it.

 3. I, CSP, am one of those mummified pedants.

 4. I, CSP, am amusingly (ironically) stating the implications
of that so-called truth.

I started to type in the remainder of that paragraph from a paper copy
of Vol 5 & 6.  But I did some googling and found a PDF.  See below.

John


From page 3981 of 
https://colorysemiotica.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/peirce-collectedpapers.pdf


555. It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to this truth is
due to our not having made the acquaintance of a new analysis that the
True is simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory. As to this
doctrine, if it is meant that True and Satisfactory are synonyms, it
strikes me that it is not so much a doctrine of philosophy as it is
a new contribution to English lexicography.

556. But it seems plain that the formula does express a doctrine of
philosophy, although quite vaguely; so that the assertion does not
concern two words of our language but, attaching some other meaning
to the True, makes it to be coextensive with the Satisfactory in
cognition.

557. In that case, it is indispensable to say what is meant by the True:
until this is done the statement has no meaning. I suppose that by the
True is meant that at which inquiry aims.

558. It is equally indispensable to ascertain what is meant by
Satisfactory; but this is by no means so easy. Whatever be meant,
however, if the doctrine is true at all, it must be necessarily true.
For it is the very object, conceived in entertaining the purpose of
the inquiry, that is asserted to have the character of satisfactoriness.

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

[Matt Faunce]

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

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

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

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

Matt


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

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

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

[John F Sowa]

I have been traveling and working on a tight deadline, so I haven't
been able to read, much less comment on the discussions.  But I
fail to understand why people think that CP 5.555 and CP 5.565 are
inconsistent.  (Excerpts below)

In CP 5.555, Peirce is talking about "the act of knowing a real object".

In CP 5.565, he's talking about how "minds may represent it to be".

Those are totally different kinds of actions.  Knowing something
requires some active experiment and observation.  It's a fundamental
principle of quantum mechanics that any method of observing anything
invariably alters the thing in some respect, however small it may be.

Furthermore, representing something as something is independent of
how much we know or think we know about it.  We can know something
without being able to represent it accurately.  And we can represent
something x as y without knowing anything about x (or even y).

Note what I just did.  My choice of letters x and y may be used
to represent anything, but they do not affect anything or depend
on any knowledge of whatever they may or may not represent.

Peirce, of course, did not know modern quantum mechanics.  But
he was very familiar with the experimental methods of his day:
dissecting, measuring, and analyzing plants, animals, rocks,
people, languages, and social institutions.  That activity
would change the things that are being observed.

When Peirce went to some remote location to measure gravity,
his presence had no effect on the value that he could detect.
But just disturbing one grain of sand had some effect on gravity.

As another example, Peirce's act of analyzing how a word is used
and publishing a definition did not change the meaning as intended
by previous speakers.  But it could change the way future readers
and speakers might understand and use it.

John


Joseph Margolis:

Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between
truth and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike
me as required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:



the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)

Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is
as it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection
of minds may represent it to be. (5.565)

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

Have you read my essay on "A Neglected Additament" yet?  It touches on
these kinds of considerations.  Briefly ...

CSP:  But is it a fact that man possesses this magical faculty? Not, I
reply, to the extent of guessing right the first time, nor perhaps the
second; but that the well-prepared mind has wonderfully soon guessed each
secret of nature is historical truth. All the theories of science have been
so obtained ... There is a reason, an interpretation, a logic, in the
course of scientific advance; and this indisputably proves to him who has
perceptions of rational, or significant, relations, that man's mind must
have been attuned to the truth of things in order to discover what he has
discovered. It is the very bedrock of logical truth. (CP 6.476, EP 2:444;
1908)


Spontaneous conjectures that qualify as genuine insights are only likely to
arise "wonderfully soon" in a mind that is "well-prepared."  While I
believe that we can become more and more "attuned to the truth of things"
through deliberate training, especially when we concentrate on a particular
field of inquiry, I readily acknowledge that some people are also simply
more gifted in this way than others.

Regards,

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

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 4:04 PM, Matt Faunce 
wrote:

> Jon, Edwina, and List,
>
> If each of us has a connection to the infinite world, in that world, for
> every one truth there are infinite falsehoods. We have a connection to
> those falsehoods too. So, given infinity, we search for what's true despite
> the fact that 1/infinity=zero. If the world isn't infinite, but some
> astronomical number, the problem of scientific progress isn't that
> good-luck guesses are impossible but that these guesses would still only
> yield an exceedingly slower rate of discovery than what we witness.
>
> Here's Peirce on the problem:
>
> "It is evident that unless man had some inward light tending to make his
> guesses on these subjects much more often true than they would be by mere
> chance, the human race would long ago have been extirpated for its utter
> incapacity in the struggles for existence; or if some protection had kept
> it continually multiplying, the time from the tertiary epoch to our own
> would be altogether too short to expect that the human race could yet have
> made its first happy guess in any science."
>
> He continues with this explanation:
>
> "The mind of man has been formed under the action of the laws of nature,
> and therefore it is not so very surprising to find that its constitution is
> such that, when we can get rid of caprices, idiosyncrasies, and other
> perturbations, its thoughts naturally show a tendency to agree with the
> laws of nature."
>
> So, we have an "inward light" due to our minds having been "formed under
> the action of the laws of nature."
>
> Does synechism have a feature, called "inward light", which favors
> connections to true propositions over false propositions? It must, but how
> can that be explained?
>
> Is this problematic? Some men *seem* to have a brighter light than others:
>
> "But it is one thing to say that the human mind has a sufficient magnetic
> turning toward the truth to cause the right guess to be made in the course
> of centuries during which a hundred good guesses have been unceasingly
> occupied in endeavoring to make such a guess, and a far different thing to
> say that the first guess that may happen to possess Tom, Dick, or Harry has
> any appreciably greater probability of being true than false."
>
> Formation "under the action of the laws of nature" doesn't explain why
> this light seems brighter in some men than in others. Peirce explains (or
> suggests?) differences in abductive abilities by the differences of their
> methods:
>
> "It is necessary to remember that even those unparalleled intelligences
> would certainly not have guessed right if they had not all possessed a
> great art of so subdividing their guesses as to give to each one almost the
> character of self-evidence."
>
> However, recent research, led by Zach Hambrick, has been showing that
> people are not equally endowed; method and practice do not explain the
> ability gap. I find this problematic for Peirce's explanation of "inward
> light."
>
> It still seems like magic to me, especially as compared with how
> contructivism in a 'robust relative' philosophy explains how discovery of
> truths is possible, viz., that people discover only what people have
> created (including artifacts, or spandrels, i.e., consequences of what
> people created), and each discovery was merely of what is most useful from
> the lot which was actually searched, rather than each discovery being what
> is eternally true and found from searching the whole world: the problem for
> Margolis isn't <1/infinity> or 

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

[Matt Faunce]

Jon, Edwina, and List,

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

Here's Peirce on the problem:

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

He continues with this explanation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Peirce quotes are from MS 692.

Matt


On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 2:31 PM Jon Alan Schmidt 
wrote:

> Matt, List:
>
> There is nothing "magical" about the power of retroduction in Peirce's
> philosophy.  It is a direct result of the *continuity *of all things
> (synechism), which entails that there is no "correspondence gap" between
> Reality and Mind, including human minds.  While Reality is indeed
> independent of what you or I or any *discrete* collection of *individual 
> *minds
> may think about it, it is not independent of thought *in general*.  This
> is precisely the basis for the regulative hope that the final opinion at
> the end of *infinite *inquiry--the *ultimate *Interpretant of *every *
> Sign--*would *perfectly conform to Reality, and thus constitute the
> perfect (or absolute) Truth.  In the meantime, any or all of our beliefs
> may turn out to be mistaken--that is the principle of fallibilism--but we
> have no good reason to doubt any one of them in particular, unless and
> until we are confronted by the "outward clash" of experience with an
> unpleasant surprise that forces us to reconsider it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 1:02 PM, Matt Faunce 
> wrote:
>
>> Edwina,
>>
>> In Margolis's philosophy, habits are bound to eventually be overcome by

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

[Gary Richmond]

Jon, list,

Jon wrote:

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


I know that you like to bring Peircean concepts together in as complete yet
as succinct a way that you can while retaining the complexity of the
relations of the component ideas in your summary synthesis. In this
paragraph you've seemed to outdone yourself in bringing together in a most
cogent manner: *retroduction*, *continuity*, *synechism*, *(independent)*
*Reality*, *Mind*, *regulative hope*, *final opinion*, *infinite inquiry,
ultimate interpretant*, *perfect (absolute) Truth*, and *fallibilism*.

I have put this in my file of thoughts "to be inscribed on every wall of
the city of philosophy"--well, at least on the walls of Arisbe :-)
This is to simply to say that I view it as a very rich summary of certain
essential concepts of Peirce's Realism.

See, also, Susan Haack's *Transactions* paper, "Do not block the way of
inquiry" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2612013 as
your brief comments immediately made me think of it, esp. the section of
its Abstract which capsule content I've put in boldface below.

Abstract

The first goal is to understand why Peirce describes his motto, "Do Not
Block the Way of Inquiry," as a corollary of the "first rule of reason,"
why he believes it deserves to be inscribed on every wall of the city of
philosophy, and what he has in mind when he characterizes the various
barricades philosophers set up, the many obstacles they put in the path of
inquiry. *This soon leads us to important, substantive themes in Peirce's
meta-philosophical, cosmological, metaphysical, logical, and
epistemological work* (§1). However, it also leads us to what might seem to
be a tension in his account of the motives for inquiry. So the second goal
is to track the source of this apparent tension, and to show how Peirce
resolved it (§2). But the ultimate goal is to explain why Peirce's warning
against blocking the way of inquiry is no less important, given the
condition of philosophy today, than it was when he offered it more than a
century ago-perhaps even more so (§3).


I don't know whether there is a *strong* connection here, but that the
"first rule of reason" and its corollary are important precepts in Peirce's
theory of inquiry within pragmaticism, occurring as they do in the third
branch of logic as semeiotic--preceding the possible application of what
has been discovered in semeiotic to considerations in the last of the
cenoscopic sciences, metaphysics--*that* may be what brought Haack's paper
to my mind.

Best,

Gary




*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*718 482-5690*

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 2:31 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt 
wrote:

> Matt, List:
>
> There is nothing "magical" about the power of retroduction in Peirce's
> philosophy.  It is a direct result of the *continuity *of all things
> (synechism), which entails that there is no "correspondence gap" between
> Reality and Mind, including human minds.  While Reality is indeed
> independent of what you or I or any *discrete* collection of *individual 
> *minds
> may think about it, it is not independent of thought *in general*.  This
> is precisely the basis for the regulative hope that the final opinion at
> the end of *infinite *inquiry--the *ultimate *Interpretant of *every *
> Sign--*would *perfectly conform to Reality, and thus constitute the
> perfect (or absolute) Truth.  In the meantime, any or all of our beliefs
> may turn out to be mistaken--that is the principle of fallibilism--but we
> have no good reason to doubt any one of them in particular, unless and
> until we are confronted by the "outward clash" of experience with an
> unpleasant surprise that forces us to reconsider it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 1:02 PM, 

[PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

 BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Matt, list:

I am unaware that 'abuction' provides any 'magical power. And I
don't think that Peirce considers that objective reality is
'independent of finite minds'. That is - what is unknowable by our
minds is unknowable. Peirce's objective reality is that it exists -
regardless of what you or I think about it - but - we can THINK about
it. I  don't understand how you see abduction fitting into this
interaction.

Edwina
 On Fri 16/03/18  2:02 PM , Matt Faunce matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com
sent:
 Edwina,
 In Margolis's philosophy, habits are bound to eventually be overcome
by the flux of life. So if he's right, everything about Margolis's own
philosophy will eventually pass into irrelevance except the rule that
flux > habit. (Flux is greater than habit.) That rule looks to me to
be his achilles heel, because it needs to stay true; whereas Peirce's
achilles heel is the magical power of abduction to bridge the
correspondence gap between a reality that's independent of finite
minds and the finite minds that inquire into reality. 
 "Insufferably arrogant" was a bit of an exaggeration, as I'm willing
to suffer through reading his arrogant comments in order to learn what
I can.
 Matt 
 On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:41 AM Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
Matt, list:

You wrote:
 "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly
the truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
irrelevance."

I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as
'insufferably arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely
relative to the time - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant? 

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

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

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

Regards,

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

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 1:02 PM, Matt Faunce 
wrote:

> Edwina,
>
> In Margolis's philosophy, habits are bound to eventually be overcome by
> the flux of life. So if he's right, everything about Margolis's own
> philosophy will eventually pass into irrelevance except the rule that flux
> > habit. (Flux is greater than habit.) That rule looks to me to be his
> achilles heel, because it needs to stay true; whereas Peirce's achilles
> heel is the magical power of abduction to bridge the correspondence gap
> between a reality that's independent of finite minds and the finite minds
> that inquire into reality.
>
> "Insufferably arrogant" was a bit of an exaggeration, as I'm willing to
> suffer through reading his arrogant comments in order to learn what I can.
>
> Matt
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:41 AM Edwina Taborsky 
> wrote:
>
>> Matt, list:
>>
>> You wrote:
>> "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
>> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
>> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
>> irrelevance."
>>
>> I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as 'insufferably
>> arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely relative to the time
>> - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant?
>>
>> Edwina Taborsky
>>
>

-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Matt Faunce]

Edwina,

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

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

Matt


On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:41 AM Edwina Taborsky  wrote:

> Matt, list:
>
> You wrote:
> "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
> irrelevance."
>
> I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as 'insufferably
> arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely relative to the time
> - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant?
>
> Edwina Taborsky
>
>
> On Thu 15/03/18 9:39 PM , Matt Faunce matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com sent:
>
> Yeah. Apparently Nathan Houser pointed that CP 5.555 mistake, because
> Margolis apologized for it in Rethinking Peirce's Fallibilism. (bottom of
> pg. 243 into the top of pg. 244 of Transactions, vol. 43, no. 2. from 2007.)
>
> Anyway, the only reason I brought up Margolis was as an example of an
> equal competitor to Peirce's realism; and that point was merely to
> highlight that fact that given the fact that empirical support for Peirce's
> realism is so-far very weak, the thing that kept Peirce so passionately
> driven to defending it must have been a belief in some rationalistic
> support for it. The reason I brought that up was because of his quip
> scoffing at rationalism in the same breath as he scoffed political/social
> views that he opposed:
>
> Peirce: "Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
> necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and folly in
> politics can go no further than English liberalism. The people ought to be
> enslaved..."
>
> Although Margolis has his moments of arrogance, e.g., calling Peirce's
> experiment of dropping the stone "comical", Joseph Margolis much more often
> strikes me as more humble than Peirce. For example, at the end a short
> overview of one of his books, an article called "Joseph Margolis on the
> Arts and the Definition of the Human", he writes this:
>
> "I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends in
> some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves, however, if
> the conception of a fluxive world can complete effectively with the usual
> commitments to invariance."
>
> He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
> irrelevance.
>
> I still have yet to read Parker and Hausman. I'll keep in mind your point
> about Savan.
>
> Matt
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:10 PM Jon Alan Schmidt 
> wrote:
>
>> Matt, List:
>>
>> Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to access
>> them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's Fallibilism."  Having
>> just finished reading the latter, I am afraid that it includes yet another
>> clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in fact, a blatant misrepresentation.
>>
>> JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
>> well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between truth
>> and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike me as
>> required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:
>>
>> the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
>>
>> Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it
>> is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may
>> represent it to be. (5.565)
>>
>>
>> It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed Peirce's
>> texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they are, are as
>> characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely incompatible as
>> they seem to be. (p. 549)
>>
>>
>> I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere Peirce
>> consistently makes it very clear that Dynamic Objects are not affected
>> in any way by the Signs that they determine; so I checked the Collected
>> Papers for the context.
>>
>> CSP:  It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
>> waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
>> are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
>> amusing 

[PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

 BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Matt, list:

You wrote:
 "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly
the truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
irrelevance."

I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as
'insufferably arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely
relative to the time - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant?

Edwina Taborsky
 On Thu 15/03/18  9:39 PM , Matt Faunce matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com
sent:
 Yeah. Apparently Nathan Houser pointed that CP 5.555 mistake,
because Margolis apologized for it in Rethinking Peirce's
Fallibilism. (bottom of pg. 243 into the top of pg. 244 of
Transactions, vol. 43, no. 2. from 2007.)
 Anyway, the only reason I brought up Margolis was as an example of
an equal competitor to Peirce's realism; and that point was merely to
highlight that fact that given the fact that empirical support for
Peirce's realism is so-far very weak, the thing that kept Peirce so
passionately driven to defending it must have been a belief in some
rationalistic support for it. The reason I brought that up was
because of his quip scoffing at rationalism in the same breath as he
scoffed political/social views that he opposed: 
 Peirce: "Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and
folly in politics can go no further than English liberalism. The
people ought to be enslaved..." 
 Although Margolis has his moments of arrogance, e.g., calling
Peirce's experiment of dropping the stone "comical", Joseph Margolis
much more often strikes me as more humble than Peirce. For example,
at the end a short overview of one of his books, an article called
"Joseph Margolis on the Arts and the Definition of the Human", he
writes this: 
 "I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends
in some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves,
however, if the conception of a fluxive world can complete
effectively with the usual commitments to invariance." 
 He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly
the truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
irrelevance. 
 I still have yet to read Parker and Hausman. I'll keep in mind your
point about Savan.
 Matt
 On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:10 PM Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
  Matt, List:
 Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to
access them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's
Fallibilism."  Having just finished reading the latter, I am afraid
that it includes yet another clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in
fact, a blatant misrepresentation.
 JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling
but well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship
between truth and reality, Peirce says the following two things,
which strike me as required by his doctrine but incompatible with it
as well: 
 the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
 Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is
as it is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection
of minds may represent it to be. (5.565) 
 It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed
Peirce's texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they
are, are as characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely
incompatible as they seem to be. (p. 549)
 I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere Peirce
consistently makes it very clear that Dynamic Objects are not
affected in any way by the Signs that they determine; so I checked
the Collected Papers for the context. 
 CSP:  It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have
never waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters
it. They are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them,
it may be amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to
this truth is due to our not having made the acquaintance of a new
analysis that the True is simply that in cognition which is
Satisfactory. As to this doctrine, if it is meant that True and
Satisfactory are synonyms, it strikes me that it is not so much a
doctrine of philosophy as it is a new contribution to English
lexicography. (CP 5.555; 1906) 
 The words are taken verbatim from Peirce, but they constitute a
statement that he was actually repudiating in the passage as a whole,
using characteristic sarcasm.  He explicitly identified himself as one
of those "mummified pedants" and "curious specimens of humanity" who
did not hold "that the act of knowing a real object alters it,"
because he denied "that the True is simply that in cognition which is
Satisfactory," derisively calling this "a new contribution to English

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

Thanks for calling to my attention the subsequent admission by Margolis; I
had not worked my way up to that article chronologically yet.  It took
seven years for Houser to point out the error, and another two years after
that for Margolis to acknowledge it; I have to wonder why on earth the
*Transactions* editors allowed it to be published in the first place.

In any case, Margolis apparently was nevertheless unrepentant regarding his
assessment--"On my view, the correction actually strengthens the intended
argument just where it sets out the sense of Peirce's account" (p. 244).
It may indeed be "hard to be as insufferably arrogant as Peirce was," but
it seems to me--at least based on these writings--that Margolis gave it his
best shot. :-)

It sounds like you are seeking "empirical support for Peirce's realism."
In that case, you might be interested in reading Aaron Bruce Wilson's 2016
book, *Peirce's Empiricism:  Its Roots and Its Originality* (
https://books.google.com/books?id=c1k4DQAAQBAJ).

Regards,

Jon S.

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 8:39 PM, Matt Faunce 
wrote:

> Yeah. Apparently Nathan Houser pointed that CP 5.555 mistake, because
> Margolis apologized for it in Rethinking Peirce's Fallibilism. (bottom of
> pg. 243 into the top of pg. 244 of Transactions, vol. 43, no. 2. from 2007.)
>
> Anyway, the only reason I brought up Margolis was as an example of an
> equal competitor to Peirce's realism; and that point was merely to
> highlight that fact that given the fact that empirical support for Peirce's
> realism is so-far very weak, the thing that kept Peirce so passionately
> driven to defending it must have been a belief in some rationalistic
> support for it. The reason I brought that up was because of his quip
> scoffing at rationalism in the same breath as he scoffed political/social
> views that he opposed:
>
> Peirce: "Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
> necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and folly in
> politics can go no further than English liberalism. The people ought to be
> enslaved..."
>
> Although Margolis has his moments of arrogance, e.g., calling Peirce's
> experiment of dropping the stone "comical", Joseph Margolis much more often
> strikes me as more humble than Peirce. For example, at the end a short
> overview of one of his books, an article called "Joseph Margolis on the
> Arts and the Definition of the Human", he writes this:
>
> "I don't pretend to determine whether the world is a flux or depends in
> some ultimate invariance. I think we must decide for ourselves, however, if
> the conception of a fluxive world can complete effectively with the usual
> commitments to invariance."
>
> He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
> irrelevance.
>
> I still have yet to read Parker and Hausman. I'll keep in mind your point
> about Savan.
>
> Matt
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:10 PM Jon Alan Schmidt 
> wrote:
>
>> Matt, List:
>>
>> Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to access
>> them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's Fallibilism."  Having
>> just finished reading the latter, I am afraid that it includes yet another
>> clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in fact, a blatant misrepresentation.
>>
>> JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
>> well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between truth
>> and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike me as
>> required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:
>>
>> the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
>>
>> Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it
>> is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may
>> represent it to be. (5.565)
>>
>>
>> It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed Peirce's
>> texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they are, are as
>> characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely incompatible as
>> they seem to be. (p. 549)
>>
>>
>> I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere Peirce
>> consistently makes it very clear that Dynamic Objects are *not *affected
>> in any way by the Signs that they determine; so I checked the Collected
>> Papers for the context.
>>
>> CSP:  It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
>> waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
>> are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
>> amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to this truth is due
>> to our not having made the acquaintance of a new analysis that the True is
>> simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory. As to this 

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

[Matt Faunce]

Typo correction:

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

"compete"; not 'complete'.

>

-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the 
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at 
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .

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

[Matt Faunce]

Yeah. Apparently Nathan Houser pointed that CP 5.555 mistake, because
Margolis apologized for it in Rethinking Peirce's Fallibilism. (bottom of
pg. 243 into the top of pg. 244 of Transactions, vol. 43, no. 2. from 2007.)

Anyway, the only reason I brought up Margolis was as an example of an equal
competitor to Peirce's realism; and that point was merely to highlight that
fact that given the fact that empirical support for Peirce's realism is
so-far very weak, the thing that kept Peirce so passionately driven to
defending it must have been a belief in some rationalistic support for it.
The reason I brought that up was because of his quip scoffing at
rationalism in the same breath as he scoffed political/social views that he
opposed:

Peirce: "Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and
necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and folly in
politics can go no further than English liberalism. The people ought to be
enslaved..."

Although Margolis has his moments of arrogance, e.g., calling Peirce's
experiment of dropping the stone "comical", Joseph Margolis much more often
strikes me as more humble than Peirce. For example, at the end a short
overview of one of his books, an article called "Joseph Margolis on the
Arts and the Definition of the Human", he writes this:

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

He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably
arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the
truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into
irrelevance.

I still have yet to read Parker and Hausman. I'll keep in mind your point
about Savan.

Matt


On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 7:10 PM Jon Alan Schmidt 
wrote:

> Matt, List:
>
> Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to access
> them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's Fallibilism."  Having
> just finished reading the latter, I am afraid that it includes yet another
> clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in fact, a blatant misrepresentation.
>
> JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
> well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between truth
> and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike me as
> required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:
>
> the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)
>
> Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it
> is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may
> represent it to be. (5.565)
>
>
> It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed Peirce's
> texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they are, are as
> characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely incompatible as
> they seem to be. (p. 549)
>
>
> I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere Peirce
> consistently makes it very clear that Dynamic Objects are *not *affected
> in any way by the Signs that they determine; so I checked the Collected
> Papers for the context.
>
> CSP:  It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
> waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
> are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
> amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to this truth is due
> to our not having made the acquaintance of a new analysis that the True is
> simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory. As to this doctrine, if it
> is meant that True and Satisfactory are synonyms, it strikes me that it is
> not so much a doctrine of philosophy as it is a new contribution to English
> lexicography. (CP 5.555; 1906)
>
>
> The words are taken verbatim from Peirce, but they constitute a statement
> that he was actually *repudiating *in the passage as a whole, using
> characteristic sarcasm.  He explicitly identified *himself *as one of
> those "mummified pedants" and "curious specimens of humanity" who *did
> not* hold "that the act of knowing a real object alters it," because he
> *denied *"that the True is simply that in cognition which is
> Satisfactory," derisively calling this "a new contribution to English
> lexicography."  Consequently, there is no "paradox" or "incompatibility"
> with CP 5.565 (1901) whatsoever.
>
> Margolis repeats this rather egregious error several times throughout the
> rest of the piece, insisting that Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism
> fails--and therefore his realism and concept of 3ns also fail--because his
> metaphysics of inquiry fails.  Incredibly, he even *defines *the latter
> in a way that misleadingly invokes *both *of the quotes.
>
> JM:  Thus:  the "real" is altered by action, in the sense 

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

Those two articles are indeed on JSTOR--that is how I was able to access
them--and so is a 1998 one by Margolis, "Peirce's Fallibilism."  Having
just finished reading the latter, I am afraid that it includes yet another
clear misinterpretation of Peirce--in fact, a blatant misrepresentation.

JM:  Let me put one paradox before you that is particularly baffling but
well worth solving. In discussing the nature and relationship between truth
and reality, Peirce says the following two things, which strike me as
required by his doctrine but incompatible with it as well:

the act of knowing a real object alters it. (5.555)

Reality is that mode of being by virtue of which the real thing is as it
is, irrespectively of what any mind or any definite collection of minds may
represent it to be. (5.565)


It would be hard to find two brief remarks as closely juxtaposed Peirce's
texts as these that are as central to fallibilism as they are, are as
characteristically Peircean, and that are as completely incompatible as
they seem to be. (p. 549)


I was quite startled by the first quote, because elsewhere Peirce
consistently makes it very clear that Dynamic Objects are *not *affected in
any way by the Signs that they determine; so I checked the Collected Papers
for the context.

CSP:  It appears that there are certain mummified pedants who have never
waked to the truth that the act of knowing a real object alters it. They
are curious specimens of humanity, and as I am one of them, it may be
amusing to see how I think. It seems that our oblivion to this truth is due
to our not having made the acquaintance of a new analysis that the True is
simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory. As to this doctrine, if it
is meant that True and Satisfactory are synonyms, it strikes me that it is
not so much a doctrine of philosophy as it is a new contribution to English
lexicography. (CP 5.555; 1906)


The words are taken verbatim from Peirce, but they constitute a statement
that he was actually *repudiating *in the passage as a whole, using
characteristic sarcasm.  He explicitly identified *himself *as one of those
"mummified pedants" and "curious specimens of humanity" who *did not* hold
"that the act of knowing a real object alters it," because he *denied *"that
the True is simply that in cognition which is Satisfactory," derisively
calling this "a new contribution to English lexicography."  Consequently,
there is no "paradox" or "incompatibility" with CP 5.565 (1901) whatsoever.

Margolis repeats this rather egregious error several times throughout the
rest of the piece, insisting that Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism
fails--and therefore his realism and concept of 3ns also fail--because his
metaphysics of inquiry fails.  Incredibly, he even *defines *the latter in
a way that misleadingly invokes *both *of the quotes.

JM:  Thus:  the "real" is altered by action, in the sense of finite human
life; but the "real" is, also, what it is "irrespectively of any
mind," *at* the
ideal limit of infinite inquiry. (p. 554)


Peirce obviously meant any *individual *mind in CP 5.565, since he appended
"any definite collection of minds."  Such a formulation is consistent with
others going all the way back to his review of Fraser on Berkeley (CP 8.12;
1871), "The Logic of 1873" (CP 7.336), and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
(CP 5.408; 1878).  In trying to drive a wedge between truth as the
achievable goal of finite inquiry and Truth as a regulative hope, Margolis
seems to make the same mistake that Kelly Parker attributed to David Savan
in *The Continuity of Peirce's Thought*.

KP:  Savan says that this position (let us call it *extreme semiotic
realism*) "is of no interest to anyone who is in pursuit of understanding.
For such a realist, whatever [apparent] knowledge and understanding human
inquiry may attain, the truth may quite possibly be otherwise.  Such a
possibility can not be the goal or presupposition of science."  I argue
that, unsettling as the position may be, Peirce's logical realism implies
just this form of extreme semiotic realism. (pp. 219-220)

KP:  Peirce insisted that *at* the end of inquiry, all information about
the world would be represented in the perfect and all-encompassing
*entelechy*.  Short of that perfect state of information, though, we may
well be ignorant or mistaken about any given character of existence ...
Savan is correct to say that this ontology leaves the door wide open for
all our present readings of the book of nature to be exposed as mistaken
... This is hardly a position of "no interest" to one who pursues
understanding, however:  it is a direct consequence of the principle of
fallibilism. (pp. 221-222)


Frankly, at this point I am not inclined to put much stock in *anything *that
Margolis has to say about realism in general, or (especially) Peirce's
extreme semiotic realism in particular.

Regards,

Jon S.

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Matt Faunce 

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

[Matt Faunce]

Jon,

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

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

Matt


On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 9:34 AM Jon Alan Schmidt 
wrote:

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

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

I replied to you off-List only because you replied to me off-List
first--you sent the message below that begins, "Thanks for the quote, Jon,"
only to me.  Since you said that you would prefer to have this conversation
on-List, and my approach is the same as yours--"I would welcome, in fact I
hope for, corrections, criticisms, or expansions of what I write"--I am now
posting our entire exchange.

Last night, I read Margolis's 1993 *Transactions* article, "The Passing of
Peirce's Realism," as well as the 1994 replies by Carl Hausman and Douglas
Anderson, "The Telos of Peirce's Realism:  Some Comments on Margolis's 'The
Passing of Peirce's Realism'," and Kelley J. Wells, "Contra Margolis'
Peircean Constructivism:  A Peircean Pragmatic 'Logos'."  I found the
latter two persuasive that Margolis fundamentally misinterprets Peirce, and
it sounds like you may be making the same mistake by imposing on him a
foundationalist criterion for metaphysics that he clearly rejected.

CH:  According to the evolutionism affirmed by Peirce, then, there is no
independent, pre-established structured reality. Thus, what is commonly
said to be the Peircean notion of a convergence of thought toward a final,
true opinion is not toward a pre-fixed structure to be matched, but toward
a reality that is dynamic. And as this reality constrains inquiry, it
suggests the hypothesis that it is developmental. Experience presents
inquiry with laws or regularities, many of which tend to be rigid while at
the same time undergoing divergences sometimes followed by the origination
of new regularities, the general drift seeming to be toward what *would be* a
[*sic*] in final harmony if inquiry were to continue into the infinite
future. (p. 833)


KJW:  Since we cannot escape some sort of ontological commitment either by
doubting or not doubting, Peirce argues that we are *pragmatically
justified* in believing that there exists *independently* "some *active
general principle*" whose discontinuance would be a cause for surprise ...
The nub of the matter is that, for Peirce, scholastic realism is never
justified by an appeal to an indubitable metaphysical insight, but by an
appeal to pragmatic likelihood. Furthermore, Peirce is saying not only
pragmatically speaking we are all realists, but also that the
realism/anti-realism debate should be recast. The dispute between the
realist and the nonrealist must be determined exclusively on a pragmatic
basis. Peirce denies the certainty of *both* positive and negative
metaphysical insights regarding the real. Within the context of pragmatism
and Critical Common-Sensism, he argues that there exists good grounds for a
belief in the independent reality of universal generals. (p. 844)


Of course, Peirce would have no problem acknowledging that both the
hypothesis that reality is developmental and the pragmatically justified
belief in the independent reality of universal generals are eminently
fallible.

Regards,

Jon S.

On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 12:15 AM, Matt Faunce 
wrote:

> Jon,
>
> (I just realized you sent that response just to me. I actually prefer to
> keep all Peirce-related stuff on the list because I would welcome, in fact
> I hope for, corrections, criticisms, or expansions of what I write. But, I
> don't want to post anything you wrote exclusively to me to the list, so
> this is to just you.)
>
> Here's a short definition of 'rationalism' from James's article, Hegel and
> his Method:
>
> "Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the way of thinking that
> methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so Hegel here is rationalistic
> through and through. The only whole by which all contradictions are
> reconciled is for him the absolute whole of wholes, the all-inclusive
> reason to which Hegel gave the name of the absolute Idea…"
>
> Rationalism, which subordinates parts to wholes, is contrasted with
> Empiricism, which subordinates wholes to parts.
>
> In my posts yesterday, instead of saying "major premise" I'm not sure if I
> should have said "general rule which acts as an 'extraneous trans-empirical
> connective support'", since maybe the parts need not be necessary
> consequences of the whole; maybe they just need to be compatible with the
> whole and in harmony with the whole. I think that in extreme rationalism
> the parts would be necessary consequences, but in a philosophy that has a
> balance of rationalism and empiricism...? (I don't know. It's getting late
> here.)
>
>  "Why is it pejorative?"
>
> It's because rationalism rests on an untestable, untested, or a very
> weakly tested major premise, i.e., an overarching visionary rule or
> whatever it should be called.
>
> As far as Margolis's realism, where Peirce explains the correspondence
> between reality and inquiry with abduction, Margolis does it through
> constructivism. Peirce says the real is independent of any number of minds.
> Constructivism entails a form of psychologism.
>
> 

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

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Matt, List:

Your first and last comments (quoted below) tie in with something that
Peirce wrote around the same time as EP 2:304, where he discussed "the
ideal sign which would be quite perfect."

CSP:  There is a science of semeiotics whose results no more afford room
for differences of opinion than do those of mathematics, and one of its
theorems increases the aptness of that simile.  It is that if any signs are
connected, no matter how, the resulting system constitutes one sign; so
that, most connections resulting from successive pairings, a sign
frequently interprets a second in so far as this is "married" to a third.
Thus, the conclusion of a syllogism is the interpretation of either premiss
as married to the other, and of this sort are all the principal
translation-processes of thought.  In the light of the above theorem, we
see that the entire thought-life of any one person is a sign; and a
considerable part of its interpretation will result from marriages with the
thoughts of other persons.  So the thought-life of a social group is a
sign; and the entire body of all thought is a sign, supposing all thought
to be more or less connected.  The entire interpretation of thought must
consist in the results of thought's action outside of thought; either in
all these results or in some of them. (R 1476:36[5-1/2]; c. 1904)


I only discovered this passage within the last couple of days, thanks to
Gary Fuhrman quoting one sentence from it--the statement of the theorem--in
his online book (http://gnusystems.ca/TS/bgn.htm#Aufg), Gary Richmond
sending me an off-List message calling that citation to my attention, and
Jeff Downard making all of the scanned Peirce manuscripts available on the
SPIN Project website (
https://fromthepage.com/collection/show?collection_id=16).  What better
demonstration of its truth could there be than this very chain of events,
which now results in its much wider dissemination?

Regards,

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

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 5:54 PM, Matt Faunce 
wrote:

>
> First, Hi to everyone! I've missed a lot of the conversations in the past
> year or so, but the concept of 'perfect sign' in the other thread caught my
> attention and pulled me in for the moment ...
>
> Just like a hive of bees has a collective intelligence, humans do too; and
> this is the type of intelligence that will lead us toward the right social
> order in the long run, that is, if the leveraging of elite individual will
> from elite individual intelligence doesn't drive the human race into
> extinction.
>
> Matt
>

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

[Matt Faunce]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 6:54 PM Matt Faunce 
wrote:

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

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

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

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


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

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

[Matt Faunce]

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

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

Eugene, Edwina, and list,

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

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

Is this not reasonable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt

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

[Jerry Rhee]

Dear list,

The surprising fact, "*they take things out of context, making
unsubstantiated assertions, relying on the assumption that they won’t be
checked*" is observed.
But if the good man has a good soul, C would be a matter of course.
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.

With best wishes,
Jerry R

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 5:37 PM, Stephen Jarosek <sjaro...@iinet.net.au>
wrote:

> >"As for myself, I have never agreed with anyone else's paraphrase of my
> opinions.  I always ask people to quote my exact words and not attribute
> their interpretations to me.  I would give Peirce the same benefit of the
> doubt."
>
> Excellent. As it should be.
>
> I cannot comment on the truth or otherwise of Eugene’s defamations of
> Peirce. But one thing has to be made absolutely clear... this is the sort
> of thing that extremists in America are resorting to now. They’re getting
> desperate. They deliberately take things out of context, they lie and they
> fabricate. They defame their opposition, and now it looks like they’re even
> defaming historical figures.
>
> If one is to take a defamer seriously, then they need to check the claims
> made... don’t take them as given. What people with an agenda typically
> do... they take things out of context, making unsubstantiated assertions,
> relying on the assumption that they won’t be checked. If anyone is going to
> follow through on this, then please do it properly. Did Peirce say mean
> things once? Maybe. So have I. So have most of you. Did he change later?
> Maybe. So have I. So have most of you. But someone with an agenda is
> unlikely to admit to inconvenient truths... they'll omit inconvenient
> words, or sentences, or paragraphs, or later reports, or updates. The
> safest assumption... it’s just what they do.
>
> Regards
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: John F Sowa [mailto:s...@bestweb.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2018 11:02 PM
> To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters
>
> Gene, Edwina, and Stephen,
>
> I have been traveling and working on some tight deadlines.  So I have not
> been able to read, much less comment on, most of the discussions.
>
> But I am reluctant to make long chains of questionable inferences from
> Peirce's writings and get into heated arguments about the different
> interpretations.
>
> I'd just like to make one observation about Thomas Gradgrind, whom Peirce
> mentioned in a remark that Gene quoted (March 12):
>
> > The Reign of Terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner has
> > been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with an
> > insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon a flash
> > and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their complacency,
> > too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see
> > the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order
> > -- to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has
> > long plunged it into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!”
> > (Evolutionary Love, 1893, 6.292).
> In Dickens' novel _Hard Times_, Gradgrind was, among other things, a
> teacher who summarized his educational philosophy in one phrase:
> "To fill the little pitchers full of facts".
>
> For Peirce, that slogan is extreme nominalism, which was at least as evil
> as the gospel of greed.  But in the novel, Gradgrind was a more complex
> character who had redeeming qualities and a change of heart and life at the
> end.
>
> For a brief summary of Gradgrind's portrayal by Dickens, see
> https://www.shmoop.com/hard-times-dickens/thomas-gradgrind.html
>
> Since Gradgrind is a complex character and Peirce is even more complex, I
> have serious doubts about any attempt to make stronger inferences about
> Peirce's character or opinions than he stated explicitly.
>
> As for myself, I have never agreed with anyone else's paraphrase of my
> opinions.  I always ask people to quote my exact words and not attribute
> their interpretations to me.  I would give Peirce the same benefit of the
> doubt.
>
> John
>
>
>
> -
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
> peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L
> but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the
> BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>

-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Stephen Jarosek]

>"As for myself, I have never agreed with anyone else's paraphrase of my 
>opinions.  I always ask people to quote my exact words and not attribute their 
>interpretations to me.  I would give Peirce the same benefit of the doubt."

Excellent. As it should be.

I cannot comment on the truth or otherwise of Eugene’s defamations of Peirce. 
But one thing has to be made absolutely clear... this is the sort of thing that 
extremists in America are resorting to now. They’re getting desperate. They 
deliberately take things out of context, they lie and they fabricate. They 
defame their opposition, and now it looks like they’re even defaming historical 
figures.

If one is to take a defamer seriously, then they need to check the claims 
made... don’t take them as given. What people with an agenda typically do... 
they take things out of context, making unsubstantiated assertions, relying on 
the assumption that they won’t be checked. If anyone is going to follow through 
on this, then please do it properly. Did Peirce say mean things once? Maybe. So 
have I. So have most of you. Did he change later? Maybe. So have I. So have 
most of you. But someone with an agenda is unlikely to admit to inconvenient 
truths... they'll omit inconvenient words, or sentences, or paragraphs, or 
later reports, or updates. The safest assumption... it’s just what they do.

Regards


-Original Message-
From: John F Sowa [mailto:s...@bestweb.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2018 11:02 PM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

Gene, Edwina, and Stephen,

I have been traveling and working on some tight deadlines.  So I have not been 
able to read, much less comment on, most of the discussions.

But I am reluctant to make long chains of questionable inferences from Peirce's 
writings and get into heated arguments about the different interpretations.

I'd just like to make one observation about Thomas Gradgrind, whom Peirce 
mentioned in a remark that Gene quoted (March 12):

> The Reign of Terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner has 
> been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with an 
> insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon a flash 
> and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their complacency, 
> too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see 
> the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order
> -- to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has 
> long plunged it into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!”
> (Evolutionary Love, 1893, 6.292). 
In Dickens' novel _Hard Times_, Gradgrind was, among other things, a teacher 
who summarized his educational philosophy in one phrase:
"To fill the little pitchers full of facts".

For Peirce, that slogan is extreme nominalism, which was at least as evil as 
the gospel of greed.  But in the novel, Gradgrind was a more complex character 
who had redeeming qualities and a change of heart and life at the end.

For a brief summary of Gradgrind's portrayal by Dickens, see 
https://www.shmoop.com/hard-times-dickens/thomas-gradgrind.html

Since Gradgrind is a complex character and Peirce is even more complex, I have 
serious doubts about any attempt to make stronger inferences about Peirce's 
character or opinions than he stated explicitly.

As for myself, I have never agreed with anyone else's paraphrase of my 
opinions.  I always ask people to quote my exact words and not attribute their 
interpretations to me.  I would give Peirce the same benefit of the doubt.

John


-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .

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

[John F Sowa]

Gene, Edwina, and Stephen,

I have been traveling and working on some tight deadlines.  So I have
not been able to read, much less comment on, most of the discussions.

But I am reluctant to make long chains of questionable inferences
from Peirce's writings and get into heated arguments about the
different interpretations.

I'd just like to make one observation about Thomas Gradgrind,
whom Peirce mentioned in a remark that Gene quoted (March 12):


The Reign of Terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner
has been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with
an insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon
a flash and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their
complacency, too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half,
shall surely see the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order
-- to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has
long plunged it into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!”
(Evolutionary Love, 1893, 6.292). 

In Dickens' novel _Hard Times_, Gradgrind was, among other things,
a teacher who summarized his educational philosophy in one phrase:
"To fill the little pitchers full of facts".

For Peirce, that slogan is extreme nominalism, which was at least
as evil as the gospel of greed.  But in the novel, Gradgrind was
a more complex character who had redeeming qualities and a change
of heart and life at the end.

For a brief summary of Gradgrind's portrayal by Dickens, see
https://www.shmoop.com/hard-times-dickens/thomas-gradgrind.html

Since Gradgrind is a complex character and Peirce is even more complex,
I have serious doubts about any attempt to make stronger inferences
about Peirce's character or opinions than he stated explicitly.

As for myself, I have never agreed with anyone else's paraphrase
of my opinions.  I always ask people to quote my exact words and
not attribute their interpretations to me.  I would give Peirce
the same benefit of the doubt.

John

-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the 
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http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .

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

[Stephen Jarosek]

Edwina, Eugene looks to me like an SJW red flag. What’s an SJW? Social Justice 
Warrior. They often team up with the likes of Antifa, and will go out of their 
way to cause grief with any wrong-think that they don’t agree with. 
Right-vs-Left politics in America is getting ugly. And the far-Left is throwing 
its weight around in Academia. They’re getting desperate. I think that’s what 
we’re seeing here. These SJW/Antifa types… you need to watch them… they dox 
people that they don’t like, and try to get them fired. History repeats, and 
all that.

 

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2018 7:57 PM
To: Peirce List
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

 

Gene, list: 

See my comments below: Overall - I think that your personal antipathy towards 
industrialism and capitalism [an antipathy that I do not share] means that you 
reject any thinker - even if they are focused on issues that have nothing to do 
with these issues - who does not share your personal views. 

 

On Tue 13/03/18 2:10 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu sent:

Dear Gary R., 

Sorry that I misconstrued your criticism earlier, that it was not 
about potential catastrophe but about whether “greed, power, and especially 
crypto-religious reverence for deus-ex-machina goals” are features of actually 
existing science and technology rather than external to them. Yes, we do 
disagree and probably will continue to, though I am grateful for your 
criticism. 

1] When scientists such as Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s bulldog” T. H. 
Huxley and noted for coining the term “the new synthesis” in mid-20th century 
genetics called for “the lower strata” to be denied “too easy access” to 
hospitals to reduce reproduction, and stated that “long unemployment should be 
a ground for sterilization,” it was the voice of actually existing science 
speaking, just as it was when noted ethologist and Nazi Konrad Lorenz made 
similar statements in 1941, after Nazi “medical murders” under the aegis of 
eugenics had begun. Admitting ways in which wrongheaded and potentially evil 
ideas can operate in the practices of science and technology is, to my way of 
thinking, a means of acknowledging the fallibility and potentials of these 
practices for self-correction. 

EDWINA: I consider that you making the critical thinking errors of 
generalization as well as 'post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Because SOME individuals 
involved in science had certain opinions about non-scientific topics, does not 
mean that ALL scientists feel that way nor does it mean that science CAUSES 
these beliefs. These beliefs remain individual and psychological; i.e., 
specific to the individual and have absolutely  nothing to do with science.

---

  2]   You also say, “You will have to offer much more evidence if I’m 
to believe that Peirce’s character and Carnegie's were ‘similar,’ that Peirce 
was ‘hypocritical’ in his condemnation of the Gospel of Greed. And you draw 
some extraordinarily conclusions from a few facts and a single comment to Lady 
Welby by Peirce, while your question as to what side of the civil war Peirce 
would place himself based on his father's views is bogus.” 

Fair enough. I admire Peirce’s criticism of the gospel of greed. I 
simply wanted to indicate that his aristocratic outlook struck me at odds with 
that criticism. I did not compare his character with Carnegie’s, only that 
other comments Peirce made later seemed similar to what Carnegie expressed.  

EDWINA: Could you explain what you mean by 'his aristocratic outlook'? 
Obviously you have a description of 'aristocratic outlook' - and are hostile to 
it. 



 

  3]   Here below is a fuller version of Peirce’s 1908 letter to Lady 
Welby, where he says “The people ought to be enslaved,” that universal suffrage 
is “ruinous,” that labor-organizations are “clamouring today for the ‘right’ to 
persecute and kill people as they please,” that the “lowest class” “insists on 
enslaving the upper class.” 

Peirce is clearly anti-worker, anti-union, anti-lower class, pro-upper-class in 
these statements, with zero empathy for the plight of workers in the face of 
rabid industrial capitalism in America. Consider, Upton Sinclair published his 
novel The Jungle, two years earlier, depicting the sordid conditions of 
slaughterhouse workers in Chicago. Consider that pragmatists John Dewey and 
George Herbert Mead were already actively involved with settlement houses in 
Chicago, with lower class immigrants and workers, seeking a critical 
understanding of democracy in the grip of industrial capitalism.  

EDWINA: What evidence do you have for your description above? The fact that 
books were published by others about work situations has nothing to do with 
Peirce

[PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

 BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Gene, list: 

See my comments below: Overall - I think that your personal
antipathy towards industrialism and capitalism [an antipathy that I
do not share] means that you reject any thinker - even if they are
focused on issues that have nothing to do with these issues - who
does not share your personal views. 
 On Tue 13/03/18  2:10 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu
sent:
Dear Gary R.,  

Sorry that I misconstrued your criticism earlier, that
it was not about potential catastrophe but about whether “greed,
power, and especially crypto-religious reverence for deus-ex-machina
goals” are features of actually existing science and technology
rather than external to them. Yes, we do disagree and probably will
continue to, though I am grateful for your criticism.  

1] When scientists such as Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s
bulldog” T. H. Huxley and noted for coining the term “the new
synthesis” in mid-20th century genetics called for “the lower
strata” to be denied “too easy access” to hospitals to reduce
reproduction, and stated that “long unemployment should be a ground
for sterilization,” it was the voice of actually existing science
speaking, just as it was when noted ethologist and Nazi Konrad Lorenz
made similar statements in 1941, after Nazi “medical murders”
under the aegis of eugenics had begun. Admitting ways in which
wrongheaded and potentially evil ideas can operate in the practices
of science and technology is, to my way of thinking, a means of
acknowledging the fallibility and potentials of these practices for
self-correction. 

EDWINA: I consider that you making the critical thinking errors of
generalization as well as 'post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Because SOME
individuals involved in science had certain opinions about
non-scientific topics, does not mean that ALL scientists feel that
way nor does it mean that science CAUSES these beliefs. These beliefs
remain individual and psychological; i.e., specific to the individual
and have absolutely  nothing to do with science.

--- 

  2]   You also say, “You will have to offer much more
evidence if I’m to believe that Peirce’s character and Carnegie's
were ‘similar,’ that Peirce was ‘hypocritical’ in his
condemnation of the Gospel of Greed. And you draw some
extraordinarily conclusions from a few facts and a single comment to
Lady Welby by Peirce, while your question as to what side of the
civil war Peirce would place himself based on his father's views is
bogus.”  

Fair enough. I admire Peirce’s criticism of the gospel
of greed. I simply wanted to indicate that his aristocratic outlook
struck me at odds with that criticism. I did not compare his
character with Carnegie’s, only that other comments Peirce made
later seemed similar to what Carnegie expressed.  

EDWINA: Could you explain what you mean by 'his aristocratic
outlook'? Obviously you have a description of 'aristocratic outlook'
- and are hostile to it. 




  3]   Here below is a fuller version of Peirce’s 1908
letter to Lady Welby, where he says “The people ought to be
enslaved,” that universal suffrage is “ruinous,” that
labor-organizations are “clamouring today for the ‘right’ to
persecute and kill people as they please,” that the “lowest
class” “insists on enslaving the upper class.”  

Peirce is clearly anti-worker, anti-union, anti-lower class,
pro-upper-class in these statements, with zero empathy for the plight
of workers in the face of rabid industrial capitalism in America.
Consider, Upton Sinclair published his novel The Jungle, two years
earlier, depicting the sordid conditions of slaughterhouse workers in
Chicago. Consider that pragmatists John Dewey and George Herbert Mead
were already actively involved with settlement houses in Chicago,
with lower class immigrants and workers, seeking a critical
understanding of democracy in the grip of industrial capitalism.  

EDWINA: What evidence do you have for your description above? The
fact that books were published by others about work situations has
nothing to do with Peirce.


--


4. Peirce: “Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally
and necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and
folly in politics can go no further than English liberalism. The
people ought to be enslaved; only the slaveholders ought to practice
the virtues that alone can maintain their rule. England will discover
too late that it has sapped the foundations of culture. The most
perfect language that was ever spoken was classical 

[PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

 BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Gene, list:

With regard to your comments, see below:
 On Mon 12/03/18 12:59 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu
sent:
Thanks, Gary R and Kirsti, for your comments, I’m just catching
up. 
 1] Regarding the potential for catastrophe, Gary R. stated, “that
you would, however, find it difficult to find in Peirce very much
support for your thesis.” Perhaps, though Peirce provided support
for that thesis in the same essay, Evolutionary Love, where he
uncharacteristically waxed prophetic on the likely consequences of
the philosophy of greed:  

“The Reign of Terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner
has been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with an
insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon a flash
and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their complacency,
too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see
the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order -- to clear upon a
world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has long plunged it
into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!” (Evolutionary
Love, 1893, 6.292). The deluge-tempest may not have burst in the
latter half of the twentieth century, but the building of the
Anthropocene, beginning in this period (literally 1950 according to
some:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth
[1] ), marks the accelerating warnings of unsustainability we face
today from unbounded expansions of power and profit.

EDWINA; The term 'Anthropocene' gives a term-of-authority to what is
essentially a point-of-view rather than a fact. I happen to disagree
with your apocalyptic geological scenario and I don't think you can
use Peirce, who was talking about the psychology of individuals and
the 'social order', to provide authority to such a point-of-view.
Notice that the very basic nature of semiosis - as we've been
discussing on this list in the past few days - was that there is no
'end-point'. The infrastructural nature of semiosis, with its three
modal categories and triadic process prevents linearity and
'end-points' - whether apocalyptic, imperfect or perfect.

--- 

 2]   Another note on Peirce’s views of
political economy. Also in Evolutionary Love, which I quoted from
previously, Peirce states, “I open a handbook of political economy
-- the most typical and middling one I have at hand…” And he
proceeds to criticize it. That work was, Principles of Political
Economy, by astronomer, mathematician, and master Peirce saboteur
Simon Newcomb. Here was a scientist, Newcomb, who had been a
mathematics student of Peirce’s father, who often devalued or
repressed Peirce’s research, and definitely sabotaged Peirce’s
career. This is an example of corruption within science itself. 

EDWINA: No, this is not a corruption of science. It is an example of
the psychological nature of an individual man, Newcomb. Nothing to do
with science.

-- 

3] Another example, from outside science per se, was Andrew
Carnegie, a ruthless tycoon, oligarch, and social Darwinist who
believed capitalism was evolutionary, rather than, as Marx held, a
revolutionary social construction at odds with human nature.
Carnegie:  

“While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the
individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival
of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore,
as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality
of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and
commercial, in the hands of the few, and the law of competition
between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the
future progress of the race.” p. 655 

“Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one
of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is
indiscriminate charity.” (Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919],
“Wealth,” in the North American Review, June 1889, p. 662). 

The concentration of  money and power “in the hands of the few”
as “not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of
the race” is the Greed Philosophy, and who knows, perhaps Peirce
might have read Carnegie’s piece. Even if he didn’t, that greed
philosophy was put into practice in 1892, the year before
Evolutionary Love was published, when Carnegie’s Pinkerton National
Detective Agency came in with rifles against steel union strikers in
Pittsburgh. 

EDWINA; An example of what?  Social Darwinism has nothing to do with
Peirce. Again, this is an example of the psychological nature of one
man. 

[PEIRCE-L] Scientific inquiry does not involve matters

[Edwina Taborsky]

 

 BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Gene, list:

I think that your switch of what I consider the basic capacity of
mankind to explore the environment, examine its nature, and also, to
develop technologies to more productively interact with the world -
into a psychological need to dominate  - is actually non-Peircean.
After all, Peirce included man in the universe and did not see
mankind as an external Agent, but rather, as an integral part of the
complex universe. 

Another thing Peirce insisted on - was the increasing complexity of
this world - within the operation of the  three modes: Firstness -
which introduces novelty; Secondness, which solidifies or
particularizes it, so to speak ; and Thirdness, which generalizes its
nature to enable the novel and individual to participate in the vast
network of the universe.

I fail to see your view that technology is 'the greatest threat to a
sustainable world'. After all, the fossil fuel energy source which you
reject,[ and yet it has enabled you as well as myself, to use this
technological advancement that is a computer] - has provided clean
water, sanitation, medical advances,  heat, food, shelter for
millions. I presume you do not personally reject the use of any of
these services - nor the use of a car, phone, train, plane and so on.


I am unsure of your goal - is it to return to a pre-industrial
lifestyle, i.e., one without fossil fuels? After all - developing a
non-fossil fuel source of energy can only be achieved using the
current fuel sources to develop the high-technology required to
develop non-fossil fuels. 

I see your view as confining mankind to operating only within the
isolate boundaries of Secondness - which sees matter as interacting
directly, and in a brute manner - with other matter. This would be a
world of both physical  and psychological domination of one vs
another. But Peirce rejected the psychological as an explanation for
action - and he therefore also included two other modes.

There is Firstness - which is the open freshness of curiosity,
novelty and exploration. No boundaries. And there is Thirdness, which
is commonality and interaction rather than individual brute
psychological action. You seem to reject these two modes and focus
only on a type of mankind operative only within Secondness.

But - I think that most Peirceans wouldn't see science and
technology as operating only within one categorical mode - but within
all three. 

Edwina
 On Sat 03/03/18  4:12 PM , Eugene Halton eugene.w.halto...@nd.edu
sent:
 Dear Gary R.,
  Yes, thanks, you understood my critique and likely difference
of opinion. 
  From my point of view your response, like that of many
Peirceans, and sci-tech proponents more generally, takes an ideal of
what science and technology should be as an excuse to deny their
actual complicity in the delusion of limitless development of
human-all-too-human purposes that has brought us to the likelihood of
an emerging collapse. The greed, power, and especially
crypto-religious reverence for deus-ex-machina goals are not simply
external to actually existing science and technology, but are
essential features of the system, despite the many admirable
individuals within it. That is why actually existing science and
technology represent possibly the greatest threat to a sustainable
world with humans still a part of it, and why actually existing
science and technology must be critically confronted as part of the
problem.  
   Gene
 On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 1:27 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
 Gene, list,
  Gary R: "Of course it goes without saying, I'd hope, that the
positive results of scientific inquiry, for example, new
technologies, may be applied to matters of vital importance (for
example, in medicine, etc.)"
  Actually Gary, the jury is still out on that one. Ask the dying,
overpopulated earth.  Such is man's glory! 
 You know, of course, that I agree with the underlying sensibility of
your comment. All​​​ I meant to say in the snippet you quoted,
by writing "positive results of scientific inquiry," was that there
were definite, concrete, incontrovertible results of such inquiry,
not that they were necessarily well applied "to matters of vital
importance." All too often they haven't been, or there have been
unforeseen negative, even tragic results of their application (think
gun powder, fossil fuels, etc.) 
 However, in my opinion, the principal cause of "the dying,
overpopulated earth" is precisely the misuse of the fruits of science
by greedy, power-crazed, unethical, cruel, and thoughtless men and
institutions. Yet, can I say that some of the advances, say, in my
example of medicine, haven't been of value? Well, surely not to many
or even most (but, again, that's because of greed, etc.)  
 Still, I'm glad to have been able to in recent years have had both
hips replaced, cataract surgery on both eyes