Gary, Cathy, list,
So, slightly modifying Cathy's list in consideration of Gary F's comments
we get (and, personally, with an eye to introducing these methods to
students):
*Method of Tenacity: private, randomMethod of Authority: public,
randomMethod of Consensus: public, reasonedMethod of Science: public,
reasoned and tested*
Best,
Gary R.
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 9:18 AM, Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Welcome back, Cathy!
>
> Your classification of the four methods of fixing belief describes the "A
> Priori Method" as "private, reasoned". But as Peirce describes it
> (EP1:118-19), it is no more "private" than the method of Authority; indeed
> it is more public, in that it recognizes a broader range of other people's
> ideas as being worthy of consideration. Actually I don't like to call it
> the "A Priori Method" because that does make it sound private, when
> actually it's quite social in practice. I think it might better be called
> the method of Consensus, where beliefs are fixed by agreement rather than
> tested against experience. It is reasoning prior to experiment, not prior
> to dialogue and debate with other reasoners. (Though of course a dialogue
> *can* be internal.)
>
> gary f.
>
> } A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest. [Havelock Ellis]
> { www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Catherine Legg [mailto:cl...@waikato.ac.nz]
> Sent: 2-May-14 5:59 AM
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Having not been able to wrest open my peirce-l inbox for some time, I was
> able to peruse the chapter 6 thread pretty much in one reading last night.
> It was very nice to see the various themes unfold and develop before my
> eyes.
>
> Thank you Jeff K for your rich account of Peircean epistemology - informed
> by your own research career in this area - that you used to put a very
> lucid context around Kees' treatment. Thank you Jeffrey D for the
> sophisticated Kantian scholarly framework you brought to bear, and the many
> probing questions you asked to try to push the discussion deeper.
> Here are some thoughts I had:
>
> Ben pointed out how ethics and aesthetics might be seen to be in the
> background even of Peirce's remarks at the end of his very early paper FoB.
> It was possibly even unrecognised by Peirce at that point that these prior
> sciences were already 'growing there'. This was really interesting to me -
> thanks, Ben.
>
> Jeff K (and others) drew this out by distinguishing between an 'efficiency
> argument' and an 'ethical argument' in FoB for the method of science over
> the other three methods, suggesting that Peirce might have vacillated
> between the two. I wonder if we might put the two back together, though,
> via the discussion of 'ultimate ends' and 'the only evil is not to have an
> ultimate end', that took place at the tail-end of Chapter 4 between Stefan,
> Phyllis, Gary, Matt and others.
>
> Sam said we should distinguish between the claim that the 4th method is
> the only one for which it makes sense to say there is a right and wrong way
> of applying it, and the claim that science is self-correcting. Jeff D
> conceded this point, but I'm not sure I agree. What is it to self-correct
> other than to recognise that one is going about one's chosen task wrongly?
>
> This led into a very interesting discussion of whether the 4th method
> really is the only one that allows self-correction, as Peirce claims. I was
> thinking perhaps the method of authority also allows for *some* kind of
> right or wrong way of applying it. For instance we might imagine a group of
> scholastic philosophers realising that they had 'got Aristotle all wrong'.
> Peirce may try to get out of this by arguing that in that case the medieval
> scholars have begun scientific inquiry into the views of Aristotle, but
> this sounds a bit too easy of a solution, which broadens the concept of
> scientific inquiry merely to solve the problem. I was thinking that it
> would be the method of authority that would allow self-correction if any of
> the other 3 methods did, since that is the other 'public' method. I
> subscribe to a characterisation of the 4 methods that I can't remember
> where I picked up, but it goes like this:
>
> Method of Tenacity: private, random
> Method of Authority: public, random
> A Priori Method: private, reasoned
> Method of Science: public, reasoned
>
> Using this taxonomy I considered Jeff D's fascinating question of whether
> these 4 methods are the only possible. I was initially inclined to answer
> yes, because the taxonomy considered this way might be said to cover all of
> logical space. However, the examples Jeff D gave were very intriguing.
> With the dialectical method I agreed with Ben that it probably collapsed
> into the a priori method. The hermeneutic method I think is what the
> scholastic philosophers are doing with Aristotle above. But the
> genealogical method.............????? Maybe this breaks the mold? And
> Peirce seems to be relying on it more and more in his later philosophy
> insofar as he invokes an evolutionarily developing instinct, rather than
> ratiocination, as a guiding principle in inquiry.... I don't know.
>
> Cathy
>
>
>
>
>
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