List, This chapter on the philosophy of science breaks with the established pattern of following Peirce's architectonic. Given the centrality of scientific inquiry in his philosophical theory, there is good reason to devote a separate chapter to this topic. When I compare Peirce's view to those developed by other major philosophers, I can't help but wonder if Peirce has drawn the boundaries of philosophical theorizing too narrowly. In his phenomenological theory and in his normative sciences, so much attention has been devoted to the philosophical foundations of the scientific method, that one might wonder if he has paid too little attention to the kinds of questions that figure prominently in the philosophical theories developed by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Heidegger, and others.
With these kinds of concerns in mind, let me try to frame two questions. Peirce is trying to model philosophical inquiry on the scientific method. In turn, the scientific method is itself the main focus of his philosophical inquiries. Has the single minded focus on scientific method come at too high a price? Has it caused him to pay too little attention to other methods: dialectical, genealogical, hermeneutic? Has it caused him to pay too little attention to other kinds of philosophical questions about morality, art, and the like? --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 8:46 AM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] RE: de Waal Seminar: Chapter 6, Philosophy of Science Jeffrey, Sam, Jeff K., list, Jeffrey, you wrote, is this list of three methods for fixing belief only a partial list of the possible alternatives to the scientific method? Joe Ransdell and Jerry Dozoretz transcribed many draft manuscripts that Peirce wrote back in the 1870s. Joe posted the transcriptions to the Papers by Peirce page http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm at Arisbe. Scroll down to "1872-1873" where there are a number of drafts on the inquiry methods. It's been a while since I've read them, maybe somebody can find something on the methods there as to their list's exhaustiveness. I'd say that the method of contest needs to be accounted for somehow. I tend to see the method of authority as a species of it, though maybe one could do it the other way around. In a previous post I said that the method of contest doesn't seem obviously generally infallibilistic, but, as a method of arriving at truth/falsity of the general opinions of the contestants, arguably it is infallibilistic, insofar as it's winner-take-all, never mind who would have won under different circumstances, 'the gods have spoken' and all that. Peirce presents the inquirial methods as tending, for reasons that he describes along the way, to be adopted and (three of them) abandoned in the order in which he presents them. I think that he is trying to bring to light a systematic character that they have collectively. I would guess that Peirce did use the categories as a heuristic in organizing his ideas of three unscientific methods of inquiry in hopes of arriving at an exhaustive list and that nevertheless he was not persuaded that the result, on which he worked for years, was a genuine, categorially-correlated trichotomy. Peirce or a Peircean would hope for a genuine trichotomy there because the distinctions are logical, not natural. I've had the notion that some Peirceans would be inclined to try (and may have done so in some publication) to clarify the trio of unscientific inquiry methods as an exhaustive, categorially-based trichotomy, logically related to other such trichotomies of related issues. The exhaustiveness would be further corroborated if other infallibilistic methods could be classified as subclasses in the trichotomy, or maybe there could be other global trichotomies of classes of the same things, as Peirce did with classes of signs. Likewise, some fallibilistic methods of inquiry, such as inquiry by trial-and-error, could be classified as dimensions or elements or at least rudiments of scientific inquiry. I've generally thought of the three unscientific methods as the bad methods despite Peirce's insistence that one should be, well, scientific about it, anyway, impartial, and give them their due, weigh them carefully, etc. So I'll just call them 'methodologically infallibilistic'. I doubt that I'm the first to entertain following picture, in which the three unscientific methods seem to have the lineaments of a Peircean trichotomy of infallibilistics: 1. Method of tenacity - policy of adherence to FIRST opinion - a methodologically infallibilistic First? 2. Method of authority - deciding opinion by force or threat of force, the knocking of heads - a methodologically infallibilistic Second? 3. Method of the _a priori_ - deciding opinion in a deductive spirit from principles reached through fermentation, some capricious sort of mediation, comparison and conversation, a choosing of or adherence to principles by intellectual taste and fashion, 'agreeability to Reason', - a methodologically infallibilistic Third? In a previous post I connected the idea of the method of tenacity (putatively the 'methodologically infallibilistic First') with the idea of practice and repetition (of one's first opinion), however practice and repetition are not mainly a First. But all three infallibilistic methods involve the idea of conduct of ongoing activity, so maybe that intrusion of a non-First into the method of tenacity doesn't prevent it from being relatively First within the trichotomy. Now, the various more-or-less non-cognitive methods of learning (such as practice and repetition in general) that I mentioned in that post do not seem to me to constitute a Peircean trichotomy, so I'd guess that a Peircean who were to think that there's something to them as correlating with the infallibilistic inquiry methods would be inclined to rework the conceptions of those three non-cognitive methods, perhaps making one of them cognitive, since Peirce tends to divide the mind's powers into those of feeling (sensation, more or less), sense of reaction (including volition), and general conception. Again, there would be an idea of clarifying a genuine trichotomy of the infallibilistic methods by relating that trichotomy (i.e., relating its divisions one-to-one) to (the divisions of) other genuine trichotomies. Best, Ben On 4/11/2014 6:25 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: 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<mailto:samuel.bru...@usm.edu> ] Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 2:03 PM To: Benjamin Udell; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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 addi! tion 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' suc! h that n o t 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 authori! ty 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 lo! ng as th o se 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> <mailto: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> <mailto: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 tim! es in "F ixation," 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> <mailto: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> <mailto: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! fallibi lity 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><mailto: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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