Mara, list,
I'm sorry that I've gone a little quiet - I've been more than usually
inundated with practical matters. I expect to take this thread up again
tomorrow.
Best, Ben
On 5/5/2014, Mara Woods wrote:
List,
Welcome to the slow read, emceed by Mara Woods and Ben Udell, of Chapter
8, "Truth and reality" in Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed by Cornelis
de Waal.
Let's get started with this introduction provided by Ben Udell:
Kees begins the chapter with an excellent summary of Peirce's views on
the scope of metaphysics, its place in philosophy, its status as a
science, and its being the first science for which (philosophical) logic
supplies principles outside of logic itself.
As Kees points out, much of his metaphysics consists in drawing
implications of logic and pragmatism for reality and the universe. In
the course of this book, metaphysics' coming after logic and, in that
sense, after epistemology, seems so natural that one needs to stop and
note that this comes as a surprise to many readers these days, any
number of whom may think that metaphysics, or at least ontology, is more
basic than logic and mathematics too, or at least is not in some common
structure with those subjects and is not in some ordering involving
them. We may want to keep an eye on these aspects of Peirce that many of
his readers take for granted but which many others do not, especially as
we come to the discussion of nominalism versus realism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below I address some of the questions that arose from my reading of the
first sections of the chapter.
Kees characterizes Peirce's view of metaphysics as the work that
generalizes the experiences of or engagement with the universe. Human
intuitions and instincts about the universe developed from our species'
practical dealings with that universe in our environment. Getting a
general sense of the universe that extends beyond our species' habitual
niche into the continually-being-discovered realms by the special
sciences involves inducing generals in that universe that explain the
variety perceived in particulars. Is this introduction of logic into our
conceptions of the universe really justified here by the assumption that
the universe can be explained? Is the assumption that the universe is
regular enough to afford explanation? Or is it simply an affirmation of
the power of the combination of instinct, intuition, logic, mathematics,
and phaneroscopy to create explanatory patterns out of randomness?
These two assumptions -- that the universe can be subject to general
explanation and that the universe consists in great variety -- seem to
foreshadow Peirce's dynamic cosmology of change and habit-taking as
basic components of the universe.
Kees points out that the purpose of metaphysics, according to Peirce,
is to develop a general account that can form the basis of the special
sciences. Indeed, without this step, scientists rely on their own crude
metaphysics, presumably based on instinctive or intuitive notions. He
divides metaphysics into three categories: general metaphysics, or
questions regarding reality; physical metaphysics, or questions
regarding time, space, natural laws, etc.; and psychical metaphysics, or
questions regarding God and mind. Chapter 8 is devoted to the first
category, also called ontology, and addresses first the issues of truth
and reality.
According to Kees, the concept of truth is derived from the concept of
reality: a statement is true when its immediate object is real. Reality
consists in anything that is independent of what we might call interim
thoughts about it. That is, it is not what a particular person or group
of people think about it now that matters, but what the indefinite
community of inquirers would finally think about it. The real's
independence from individual thought is what enables the inquirers to
eventually have a shared opinion about it.
If we apply the related concepts of reality and truth to the original
metaphysical assumptions, then the regularities the indefinite community
of inquirers would find to be general to our experiences with the
universe are to be considered real and statements that express those
regularities would be true. According to this view, the real is that
which persists and therefore that which affords induction. However,
couldn't another interpretation be that explanation is a type of
regularity-making about the dynamic, ever-changing qualities of the
universe? After all, the concept of a final belief can imply a static or
discrete sign attempting to represent a dynamic or continuous process.
(I'd like to discuss the nature of the sign and its final interpretant
in a later post).
Kees, and Peirce, gets to the connection of reality to being the object
of final beliefs (final interpretant) by applying the pragmatic maxim
to get "reality" to the 3rd grade of clarity (129). Since Peirce limited
the pragmatic maxim to intellectual concepts only (115) and "the only
intellectual effect such objects can have upon us, Peirce claims, is to
produce belief" (de Waal 130), only the (immediate) objects of final
beliefs are real. It seems that the import of the intellectual effect of
intellectual concepts comes from the pragmatic maxim itself, by which
only the consequences for rational conduct is considered (116). Is that
because only the habits of which a person is conscious of, agrees with
the consequences of, and intentionally maintains are rightly considered
beliefs? Or is it because the pragmatic maxim can only be practically
applied to those consequences of the acceptance of the maxim to rational
conduct that can be foreseen (and therefore are based on known habits)?
Kees seems to jump a few steps in the reasoning here, but presumably
because the whole conception of all practical consequences of a belief
must include what the indefinite community settles on, that aspect of
the belief must be included in its definition. Also presumably, just as
the object has to be independent, the community of inquirers must have
empirical and/or logical access to the object, otherwise no shared
belief can come out of it. Can rational conduct simply mean the opinion
or definition about the isolated concept? Or does it require that the
concept fit into a more general theory of how the concept is related to
other concepts?
Mara Woods
M.A., Semiotics -- University of Tartu
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