Hi Sam, Ben, Jeffrey, et al. I won't here address Jeffrey's valuable
reconstruction of Smyth's argument and his questions following up thereupon,
though I hope that we'll circle back to those. I write first and foremost to
apologize to Ben and to Sam for raising a question in a flat-footed way that
somehow encouraged each of you to think that you were "missing something."
Perhaps you were, but only in a way that reflects poorly on me, not on y'all.
When I raised my too-compressed question about the role of ethics in
"Fixation," I had in mind commentators who recognize the clear moral language
at the end of the essay, but regard it as a cheat or a change of subject or an
admission that the efficiency argument that dominates the paper has failed. It
sounds to me as if Ben and Sam share my sense that the contrast between moral
considerations and efficiency considerations is often overdrawn in discussions
of "Fixation," and that's all I was trying to indicate the other day when I was
last able to weigh in here. Smyth, as Jeffrey has pointed out in detail, has a
very particular and rather sophisticated way of bringing those considerations
together. I'll try to refresh my memory of his chapter soon. I had something
broader in mind.
There's a common sort of reading of "Fixation" that makes it come out
psychologistic and mechanical in addition to efficiency-centered. Without
pretending to be really fair or nuanced, the picture is that the world
generates itches in us via surprising experiences and Peirce rather lamely
tries to show that only the method of science can provide a really satisfying
scratch. Many problems arise for such a reading, but the main one I have in
mind is the extent to which it misrepresents the efficiency argument. Such a
reading would lead you to expect that what dooms the method of authority, for
instance, is that the powers that be make predictions that shockingly fail and
that this generates genuine doubts in the minds of the subjects of that
authority. But that's not how Peirce's argument goes. He says that *reflection*
about how the method works and about possible sources of disagreement makes the
deliverances of authority seem arbitrary and capricious, and that is how
genuine doubt arises. Reflection provides a kind of widely and cheaply
available experience that is crucial to the efficiency argument, since a belief
can be settled only if it is resistant to reasonably foreseeable disturbing
influences. So the efficiency argument is concerned with efficiency at
generating something normatively ambitious, namely beliefs with which the
believer can be reflectively satisfied. And so something in the neighborhood of
moral considerations was present in the efficiency argument all along, since
Peirce was never just talking about making an itch go away.
There's clearly a lot more to be said about this, but it was about time I got
around to explaining what my original cryptic formulation was trying to
indicate.
Best,
Jeff K.
________________________________________
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [jeffrey.down...@nau.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 4:25 PM
To: Sam Bruton; Benjamin Udell; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: RE: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of
Science
Sam, Ben, Jeff K., List,
You point out that "An interesting interpretation of the moral dimension of FoB
is to be found in the 5th Chapter of Richard Smyth’s <Reading Peirce Reading>,
where Smyth draws an extended comparison between Peirce’s argumentative
strategy in FoB and the argumentative strategy Kant uses in his ethics,
particularly the second Critique." A nice way to test this reconstruction of
Peirce's argument is to ask if the list of methods is meant to be a complete of
the major classes of methods, or if there is a larger list of possible methods
for fixing belief--some of which he does not consider in this essay.
The basic gist of Smyth's reconstruction of the argument is that Peirce is
employing a Kantian strategy, and that the target of his argument is any
philosophical position to tries to ground the methods of inquiry on material
practical principles. As such, he thinks that Peirce is borrowing the strategy
Kant uses in his ethics and is putting it to work in his theory of logic. As
such, Peirce is arguing that the scientific method is the only one that is
grounded on an understanding of the requirements of logical inquiry as *formal*
constraints on our conduct. As you suggest, the defect of all material
practical principles is that, in one way or another, they are all based on a
principle of self-love. That is, they all rely on a pattern of justification
that is based on the idea that the fact that someone has a desire for X is a
good enough reason to adopt X as an end. Kant points out that this kind of
principle does not function as an imperative. As such, it is does not function
as a rational constraint on deliberation. When Peirce claims that we should
adopt those ends that can be consistently pursued, it certainly has echoes of
Kant's claims that moral duties are grounded on rational constraints of
consistency.
Here is a follow up question that is designed to see who agrees and who
disagrees with this reconstruction of the argument in "Fixation": Do you think
Peirce's list of tenacity, authority and the a priori methods is exhaustive of
the major classes of material principles that one might claim are fundamental
in a normative theory of logic? Or, is this list of three methods for fixing
belief only a partial list of the possible alternatives to the scientific
method?
I think it is worth noting that, if it is a partial list, it would be hard to
see how Peirce could argue that the scientific method is the only method that
admits of any distinction of a right and a wrong way of fixing beliefs. At
most, he could argue that the scientific method is the only one of the four
that he considers that admits of such a difference, but that others methods he
has not considered might admit of the same difference.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Sam Bruton [samuel.bru...@usm.edu]
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 2:03 PM
To: Benjamin Udell; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: RE: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of
Science
Ben, Jeff, Jeffrey, List,
I appreciate Ben’s reconstruction and interpretive remarks – thanks.
With regards to Jeff’s question about the role of ethics in FoB, and at the
risk of stating the obvious, paragraph 5.387 seems to me simply shot through
with ethical claims that are clearly distinct from the various
efficiency-related points that also run through the essay, e.g., “what is more
wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid
looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten
is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous.” And at the end of the para.,
“one who dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of
mind indeed.”
So perhaps I’m missing the point at issue, but my simple-minded
reconstruction is that Peirce is arguing that anyone who experiences doubts
(i.e., virtually all of us) is committed to an interest in arriving at the
truth, or caring about the truth, or something like that. For all such people,
there is an essentially moral obligation not to avoid looking at the truth,
i.e., an obligation not to adopt one of the failed three methods described in
the essay. It’s an assertion of the moral status of epistemic responsibility.
Or at least that’s how I take it.
An interesting interpretation of the moral dimension of FoB is to be
found in the 5th Chapter of Richard Smyth’s Reading Peirce Reading, where Smyth
draws an extended comparison between Peirce’s argumentative strategy in FoB and
the argumentative strategy Kant uses in his ethics, particularly the second
Critique. Hints of that strategy can be seen in Peirce’s passing reference to
the “costs” of the method of science, and his praise of the advantages of the
other three methods. Like a commitment to morality, the method of science may
require sacrifice of personal interests.
Hopefully someone else can take these thoughts further. – Sam
From: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 2:12 PM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of
Science
Jeff, Jeffrey, Sam, list,
Jeff, I have trouble making more of Peirce's esthetic and ethical frames of
inquiry in "The Fixation of Belief." When the inquirially good is the
inquirially efficient (apart from countervailing moral concerns such as
involuntary tests of people), it seems a simple Peircean genus-species relation
of the good to the true. Insofar as theoretical inquiry is subject to
extra-inquirial ends, the ethical and esthetic issues get more complex, and
this happens inevitably. A lot may be implicit, but the explicit statements
toward the end of "Fixation" seem to sum up pretty well the esthetic and
ethical frames as conceived of in that article. But I think that the problem is
probably just me, in need of an IQ boost.
Anyway, in "Fixation" he is trying to get away from, or perhaps to _precede_,
metaphysical nominalist-realist arguments over truth, the real, etc., so he
pursues the issues in terms of belief, belief's security, a hypothesis that
there are reals, etc., and even denies that anybody cares about truth _per se_.
In later years he embraces the inquirial importance of a hearty will to truth,
and even disparages the idea of beliefs (in some sense) in genuine science. But
in those later years it is still essentially truth as eventually distinguished
from falsehood and defined in "Fixation" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" -
e.g., that opinion which, unlike a false opinion, will not steer one wrong in
what one aims at, and the final opinion that _would_ be reached by sufficient
inquiry - it is truth so distinguished and presuppositionally defined that he
embraces as inquiry's end. He does not come to drop the idea that belief and
doubt are important terms in which to understand the ideas of truth and inquiry
- for example in the 1902 Carnegie application. Thus truth is a belief's ideal
security or 'stability' as some put it - but it's a stability not only in
actual situations but across would-be situations as well. I think that Peirce
is quite right to see modal realism as a necessary implication of his kind of
pragmatism.
Peirce in later years allows of practical certainty, as opposed to theoretical
certainty. A practical general certainty would still in principle be
'falsifiable', i.e., testable for falsity, at least by critical discussion.
Otherwise it would be a belief that makes no practical difference, and thus, as
you put it, not to be prized, not worth having. One might say that an
in-principle untestable belief lacks all intellectual _vividness_, at least at
heart. It's interesting how you link this with how we don't value that which
comes to us inevitably and free of cost, risk, etc. I wish that I had thought
of that; you've traced a connection from logic back through ethics to esthetics.
There's another point that I can make, however. In "Fixation", Peirce argues
that the scientific method is, _among the four methods that he outlines_, the
only one that leaves room for its own misapplication.
Peirce's big picture of inquiry methods is part of an even bigger picture of
methods of learning and development cognitive and otherwise, which beckons when
one starts to consider esthetic and ethical frames of inquiry, a bigger picture
that people like me, who are far less encyclopedic than Peirce, find it helpful
to thematize and explore now and then.
>From here onward, my post becomes something of a ramble. Those who continue
>should not worry too much about what I'm 'driving at'.
One could outline further methods - e.g., the method of struggle, trial as
combat - which could be seen as a not-generally-obviously-infallibilistic genus
of which the method of (despotic) authority is an infallibilistic species, a
species such that one side in combat has become dominant and seemingly
infallible. Then there is the method of trial-and-error, which is
fallibilistic, and is the method of 'men of experience', whom Aristotle rated
below artisans and scientists, because the 'men of experience' are least able
to give an account of their supposed knowledge. Yet Peirce defines a scientific
intelligence as an intelligence capable of learning from experience. One could
argue that the method of trial-and-error is a rudiment of scientific method, in
a way trial-and-error, especially as involving personal stakes (even if 'only'
those of one's time, energy, reputation, etc.), is the struggle-level of
scientific inquiry. However, struggle as trial-and-error is also, in addition
to that, a way of learning not so much cognitively as volitionally, i.e., some
sort of strengthening or unshackling of virtues or character strengths,
particularly in areas, arenas so to speak, where the struggle element is
predominant - conflicts for power and freedom, competition for means and
wealth, more-or-less cultural rivalries for glory, glamour, and at least
non-eclipse, and more-or-less societal disputes for standing, honor,
legitimacy. From these one could derive conceptions of (infallibilistic)
inquirial methods of authority - authority of power, authority of wealth,
authority of glamour (obviously related to the method of the _a priori_), and
authority of status (like the traditional 'argument from authority', known in
Latin as _argumentum ad verecundiam_ (respect, reverence, etc.)), which settle
opinions by the wrongs of coercion, corruption, emotional manipulation, and
delusion. Anyway, while all inquiry involves learning, there is a broad sense
of 'learning' such that not all learning is cognitive (and even cognitive
learning is not always particularly inquirial or opinion-fixative even when it
is a bit of struggle, e.g., rote memorization).
Among the methods of authority, perhaps the biggest temptation in discovery
research is the method of status, especially when it is a method of
_self_-deception, such that one grants oneself a status of greater
knowledgeability, etc., than one fairly has; it's a temptation of the
intelligent; magicians find it easier to bewilder or beguile 'smart' people
than to do so with 'stupid' people, by whom magicians mean, the people who are
unimpressed and chuckle, "well, you did it somehow" (but those people are
obviously smart enough in another way). As Feynman said, the person whom it is
easiest for one to fool is oneself. Peirce focuses, near the end of "Fixation,"
on the closing of one's eyes or ears to the information or evidence that might
bring one the truth particularly when one should know better. This closing of
one's perception, in sometimes less guilty ways, plays a particularly
vulnerable role in the method of tenacity because it is there unprotected by
folds of authority or of aprioristic emulation of some fermented paradigm;
instead there is to keep practicing and repeating one's initial opinion, it
seems a bit like the gambler's fallacy, boosted sometimes by some initial luck.
Well, practice and repetition of something that has shown _some_ success is the
core practical-learning method, not inevitably infallibilistic, of artisans and
more generally practitioners productive and otherwise; to which method they add
the appreciational method of devotees (including the religious) -
identification (appreciation) and imitation (emulation) and, these days, the
methods of reflective disciplines as well (sciences, fine arts, etc.). What I'm
getting at is that some infallibilistic methods of inquiry can be seen as
misapplications, or at least as echoes, of methods that have some validity
outside of inquiry as the struggle to settle opinion, and thus have validity in
applications in inquiry (e.g., one needs to keep _in practice_ in doing math,
etc.), as long as those applications are not confused with inquiry itself.
Anyway, one's barring of one's own way to truth inhabits the core of all
infallibilistic inquiry. Perhaps one can reduce all logical sins to this, as
long as one remembers the difference between logical sin and other logical
errors, errors sometimes imposed on one.
Best, Ben
On 4/9/2014 1:09 AM, Kasser,Jeff wrote:
Sorry. I originally sent this only to Ben.
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Kasser,Jeff"
<jeff.kas...@colostate.edu<mailto:jeff.kas...@colostate.edu> >
Date: April 8, 2014 at 10:54:58 PM MDT
To: Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com> >
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science
Hi Ben, Sam, Jeffrey, et al.
I like Jeffrey's question about the status in Peirce's argument of the claim
that the scientific method is the only method that leaves room for its own
misapplication. And I like the answer Ben gave below. Peirce rightly prefers
overlapping strands of argumentation to a single line of reasoning, but it's
hard to resist raising questions about what in "Fixation" depends on what.
I tend to trace his argumentative resources back to the doubt-belief theory. I
think Peirce wants to come as close as he can to deriving such things as
fallibility and openness to improvement from those resources centered on
Section III of the paper. For belief to be worth wanting, it has to be
something that can go wrong. Any game that makes it trivially true that I win
every time isn't worth playing, and if there's no prospect at all of going
wrong, there's no real sense in which one can claim to be right. So belief
couldn't be satisfactory unless it were, in principle at least, open to
correction. I can use a method that as a matter of fact guarantees that I
can't go wrong, but I can't think of myself as doing that w/o undercutting the
very notion of success. So such methods as authority can be used but can't be
voluntarily and clear-headedly adopted. This comes close to building the
hypothesis of reality into the notion of belief, but Peirce does that a couple
of times in "Fixation," so far as I can tell.
I'd like to hear and talk more about how you see the role of ethics and
esthetics in the argument of "Fixation," Ben. I think you and I agree that the
contrast between the efficiency aspects of the argument and the normative
appeals involved isn't as clear as it's often been taken to be.
Best to all,
Jeff
________________________________________
From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com> ]
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 11:10 AM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science
Jeffrey, Jeff,
Off to an excellent start!
Jeffrey, you wrote,
[Peirce] says: “This is the only one of the four methods which presents any
distinction of a right and a wrong way.” (EP, vol. 1, 121)
What is Peirce saying here? Let us try to clarify the bases of this claim. In
a number of places, including the lectures in Reasoning and the Logic of
Things, he stresses and develops the idea that the scientific method is
self-correcting. I’d like to ask a question about the relationship between
these two claims.
Peirce means that, of the four methods, the scientific method is the only one
whereby inquiry, according to the method's own account, can go wrong as well as
right; scientific method alone among them presupposes, or hypothesizes, that
there are real things that are what they are independently of the opinion of
particular minds or communities - hence the scientific method's fallibilism.
According to each of the other three methods' own accounts, inquiry by the
method in the account cannot go wrong. On the other hand, scientific method is
like the other methods in that, according its own account, inquiry by it can go
right - hence, the scientific method's rejection of radical skepticism, a
rejection also expressed in the opposition to merely quarrelsome or verbal
doubt. The scientific method's supposition of real things, external permanency,
to be cognized albeit fallibly, is what gives it hope of inquiry's not
floundering in opinion's vicissitudes. The scientific method takes fallibility
as well as the possibility of success into account by having inquiry genuinely
address genuine doubts. By this it can improve the security of beliefs,
sometimes by changing them. It lets such doubts in, instead of leaving them to
accrue against overall scientific method itself.
It seems to me that the claim that the inquirer is fallible but has the
potential for success is the basis for the scientific method's claim that
inquiry should be self-critical and self-corrective. The argument does not seem
to me to run in the opposite direction.
Near the end of "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce does frame inquiry in terms of
ethical and esthetic issues, even though he did not at that time regard the
studies of esthetics and ethics as preceding the study of logic.
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html
But, above all, let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any
particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into the
support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as
immoral as it is disadvantageous. The person who confesses that there is such a
thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that if
acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the point we aim at and
not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and
seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed.
Yes, the other methods do have their merits: a clear logical conscience does
cost something -- just as any virtue, just as all that we cherish, costs us
dear. [....]
"...immoral...", "Just as any virtue..." - those words point to ethics.
"...just as all that we cherish..." - those words point to esthetics (in
Peirce's sense of 'esthetics').
Now, in ethics there is usually the idea of a struggle, e.g., in virtue ethics,
courage is due boldness (or at least due confident behavior) despite pressure
to do otherwise; prudence is due caution despite contrary pressure; and so on.
In the above-quoted passage, Peirce sees issues of struggle, costs, and
trade-offs reaching into issues of one's most general values, i.e., the
esthetic level. "The Fixation of Belief" starts with the idea of inquiry as
struggle, and this struggle is also a case of ethical right and wrong and of
esthetic good and bad, in Peirce's view at that time, even though he didn't yet
see the studies of esthetics and ethics as preceding that of logic.
As regards your last paragraph, the scientific method's fallibilism about
opinion seems quite thoroughgoing enough to apply to premisses, conclusions,
methods, etc., since all premisses, conclusions, and methods that are actually
adopted are adopted on the basis of actual opinions. The infallibilism of the
other three methods seems likewise.
Best, Ben
On 4/7/2014 3:12 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
List,
In addition to joining Jeff K. in looking forward to the prospect of bouncing
ideas off each other as we explore this chapter of the ’ <Guide for the
Perplexed>, I’d like t0o start by saying that I found his introductory remarks
about “The Fixation of Belief” clear and to the point.
For the sake of getting the discussion started, I’d like raise a question about
a claim Peirce makes in part V of the essay. He says: “This is the only one
of the four methods which presents any distinction of a right and a wrong way.”
(EP, vol. 1, 121)
What is Peirce saying here? Let us try to clarify the bases of this claim. In
a number of places, including the lectures in Reasoning and the Logic of
Things, he stresses and develops the idea that the scientific method is
self-correcting. I’d like to ask a question about the relationship between
these two claims.
Peirce seems to suggest that the self-correcting character of the scientific
method is quite remarkable because it is able to correct for three kinds of
errors:
1) in the premises (i.e., the observations) we’ve used as starting points,
2) in the conclusions we’ve drawn (i.e., the beliefs we’ve formed) in our
scientific reasoning,
3) and in the method itself.
I want ask a question about these three different kinds of error. Call them,
if you will, observational errors, errors in our conclusions, and
methodological errors. How might the claim that the scientific method is the
only one that admits of any distinction of a right and wrong way be used in
arguments to support each of these three claims about the self-correcting
character of scientific inquiry? My hunch is that the other three methods he
is considering—tenacity, authority and the a priori methods--fail on each of
these three fronts.
Yours,
Jeffrey D.
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Kasser,Jeff [jeff.kas...@colostate.edu<mailto:jeff.kas...@colostate.edu>
<mailto:jeff.kas...@colostate.edu > ]
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 10:55 AM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
Cc: Peirce List
Subject: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science
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