Frances to Chris... Your points below are well taken, and your invitation to respond to them will give me an opportunity here to vent a little pragmatism. The meaning of some terms you use like "theory" and "convention" and "real" may however be the actual source of much disagreement among us.
CHRIS asks... When it becomes conventional to dismiss the conventional, then what does the pragmatist do? FRANCES says... When it becomes a conventional agreement to "dismiss" a conventional ground, rather than convene its alternative replacement, the pragmatist must then revert to the causal, and then even to the formal if needs must. In any event, the conventional after all is simply applied causation, which causation is a normal habit of regular conduct. The root source of convention is causation. The use by human collectives of symbolic verbal languages as spoken or written for example is a convention, and the form of such lingual signs in relation to their referred objects can be quite arbitrary, but all languages are naturally caused by and indicative of only normal human organisms, because langue or lingua is an act that humans are disposed and compelled to do. Normal maturing humans will at least speak in spite of themselves, because the neurons and synapses and genes in their brains are naturally set to do it. CHRIS asks... Sullivan (and Loos) were certainly neither the first, nor last, architects to attack the conventions of their profession -- and isn't it now conventional to celebrate such an attack as one mark of an important artist? FRANCES says... Conventions are one of three grounds that relate any signifiers to their signified objects, but conventions can be of three kinds, those being convictions and covenants and contentions. All these kinds of convention, in necessarily using a common repertory of signs, will however require some degree of contact and exchange and concord among signers in the group. CHRIS asks... Sullivan's attacks on the conventions and institutions of his day could not have been more vicious: "Anyone who will take the trouble to investigate the architecture schools will shortly discover that, as institutions of learning, so-called, they are bankrupt, if by solvency, we mean what makes for the good of the people. Not only are they useless to our democratic aspirations, they are actively pernicious, and their theory of operation is a fraud upon the commonwealth which supports them. Their teachings are one long, continuous imbecility. They are essentially parasitic -- sucking the juices of healthy tissues and breeding more parasites" (hmmmm... sounds like my opinion of contemporary art schools) If an institution whatsoever were to receive healthy lads, and after four years of "care" return them mentally and physically crippled, broken-winded, weak hearted and infected, there would be a hue and cry... but when precisely such young men are taken in by an institution, so-called of learning, a so-called school of architecture, and in four years are turned out mentally dislocated, with vision obscured, hearts atrophied, and perverted sensibilities - who cares! And why? Because it is not so easily seen? FRANCES says... Any trained or skilled or learned architect who sets about to "attack" their field on sound theoretical grounds, whether "viciously" or otherwise, is to be celebrated and respected. Their task and goal after all is to correct some perceived wrong. For the correction to be accepted as sound, it must however be made prone to good peer review. Under pragmatism, this process of accepting theories from the theoretical and practical sciences falls within the science of review. CHRIS asks... And still my question remains, Frances: if the pragmatist has no faith in hers, or anybody's, judgment, what is she trying to pragmatically accomplish by writing a philosophy of architecture? To help the conventional become even more so? FRANCES says... The theory of the individual must entail the theory of the communal. If a sound theory is accepted by a group of experts, then a convention may very well be maintained and advanced, but it will remain tentative nonetheless and will be subject to eventual correction, because all things grow by the process of evolution. The theory to be a law must be based on a found fact, so that the convention of any theory must be derived from its causation in nature. CHRIS asks... Rather than just making pretty theories, aren't pragmatists supposed to be primarily concerned with practical consequences and real effects? FRANCES says... My understanding is that the pragmatist is presumably concerned with the "conceivable" practical consequences of signs, such as the truth signified by theories. It is the "concept" of likely effects that is made concrete in experience by theories that are made from facts. Whether a theory is nice and "pretty" in its formal presentation would be irrelevant to its probable outcome as determined by the normative means of logics. If however the form of even an obsolete and obscure theory is the primary concern in addressing it, then any pretty nicety found like say its admirable beauty would be determined by the normative means of aesthetics. Incidentally, while sound theories are realized as valid laws derived from found facts, it is hypotheses that are realized as speculative conjectures or good guesses based on common sense. In any event, both abductive hypotheses and inductive or deductive theories require some communal agreement as to their soundness and validity. Furthermore, under pragmatism all stuff felt and found "seems" to be phenomenal, due to the bridging indirect moderation of mind, and if the stuff is felt and found it is hence given uncontrolled to sense, but if any property of an object that is given uncontrolled to sense is in fact sensed, then that object will be real, so that factuality is an objective material construct and reality is a subjective mental construct; thus stuff is only as real as sense, and if a fact is not given to sense, then it may exist but it will not be real. Frances wrote previously... The science and theory of review, on the empirical research and inquiry into architecture, would be the main start for me in sifting through the agreed opinions of learned experts in their respective groups. For any individual expert to personally select a good sample of architecture as an exemplar to stand for all of architecture is to use a token with a tone as a type. The individual solely alone in judging a work is however unreliable, because they could be deluded and not even realize it. The institutional and industrial and international standards for conferring the status of architectural accreditation and certification and authorization are not merely arbitrary social inventions without any basis in natural causes or laws. Any sound theory of architecture that may emerge from experts is a cultural law that must be derived from natural facts, such as a selected sampling of works that are admired on site by sight, and made prone to examination or investigation. Such a law is derived from a factual habit of conduct, and its truth will exist regardless of whether it is merely agreed to by a sheer convention. The conventional ground can be as good and true a fact as the causal ground or the formal ground, because they are all culled from dispositional tendencies. In concrete fact and in actual deed, the formal is preparatory to the causal, and the causal is contributory to the conventional, and the conventional is consummatory of them both, so that there is necessarily a combinatory progression at work here. The pragmatist principles at work here that impact on truth and law are fallibility and probability.
