Thread:
JA:http://web.archive.org/web/20140630220000/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13446
SR:http://web.archive.org/web/20140701002000/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13447
Stephen,
If I read you correctly, you have doubts about Peirce's description of inquiry.
I don't believe there can be much doubt that doubts about a specific theory of
a given subject X, if they are serious enough, would move us to seek relief in
a state of belief about the theory in question, whether it is worth the candle
or not. There may be other trajectories of mind, conscious or otherwise, that
would lead us the same state of calm certainty as one that began in irritating
uncertainties, who can say, better yet, what sort of process would it take for
us to be able to say, yea or nay, up or down? At any rate, as far as my study
of Peirce goes, I do not read him saying that doubt is the impetus of the mind
in all its manifestations. It is always possible that I missed something, but
I read him as describing a specific order of process under the head of inquiry.
That is the order of process that I have as my subject here.
Jon
Stephen C. Rose wrote:
I've puzzled over this because CSP seems almost dogmatic on the point of
doubt being the aegis not merely of inquiry but thought itself. First, can
there not be other prods to thought that are at least as effective?
Secondly, how much does our own mental process affect our thinking. I would
hazard a guess that we are all editors and snippers and pasters of squibs
of thought and memory that are welling up near the surface of
consciousness. If we consciously think, devoting time to do so, we have
already eliminated doubt as the sole cause of it. All manner if
initiations. All manner of resolutions. Somehow I infer that CSP is close
to a sort of brain mechanism notion. I have no sense that much can be
gained from assuming that doubt is the sole origin of what takes place to
give birth to belief. Finally belief and doubt are not opposites, sometimes
they walk hand in hand within our minds. Simultaneously.
*@stephencrose <https://twitter.com/stephencrose>*
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Thread:
JA:http://web.archive.org/web/20140630184801/http://
permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/13445
Peircers,
Correcting a few typos and continuing ...
Just a note to anchor a series of recurring thoughts that come to mind
incidental to the thread on entropy, etc., but I won't have to much to say
on the bio-chemico-physico-thermo-dynamic side of things, so I'll spin
this off under a separate heading. My interest in this topic arises mainly
from my long-time work on inquiry driven systems, where understanding the
intertwined measures of uncertainty and information is critical to
comprehending the dynamics of inquiry.
In a famous passage, Peirce says that inquiry begins with the "irritation
of doubt" and ends when the irritation is soothed. Here we find the same
compound of affective and cognitive ingredients that we find in Aristotle's
original recipe for the sign relation.
When we view inquiry as a process taking place in a system the first thing
we have to ask is what are the properties or variables that we need to
consider in describing the state of the system at any given time. Taking a
Peircean perspective on a system capable of undergoing anything like an
inquiry process, we are led to ask what are the conditions for the
possibility of a system having "states of uncertainty" and "states of
information" as state variables.
Saved by the Belle, and time for dinner ...
Jon
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