Gary, List
, I agree with the difference between PS and PP, especially after having been
in the SIAP at Oregon University in EUGENE.
There, in a conference about political philosophy, it was raised that
political philosophy can be considered a vision, or be used as a tool.
Philosophy in general, and pragmatism in particular, can be considered in both
aspects. In first place, philosophy like a vision can be studied from the point
of view of a scholar. But if philosophy must be considered like a science with
functions of the others and the duty of improve the world, so, we should
consider use the different concepts of philosophy in general and the peircean
concepts in particular.
This kind of doubt is own of the philosophy, but it doesn't in physics, in
which the concepts are used like tools by the applied sciences like engineering.
I am very interested in the application of peircean concepts in the hypothesis
generation, so I can be considered like a PP, but I need all the investigation
of the PS to do my work. The ideal would be be PP and PS at the same time. But
this would be very difficult, because it would demand a lot of time.
So, I prefer use the concepts and relations discovered by PS like tools to
solve quotidian problems.
I mean, that the two positions are necessary, philosophy like a vision and
philosophical concepts like tools, PS and PP; and this demonstrate that between
theory and practice there are a continuity, although the human limitation
forces us to break this continuity, which is reestablished in the research
community.
Paul
From: g...@gnusystems.ca
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 09:24:46 -0400
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Invigorating Philosophy with Natural Propositions
List,
Since the Peirce Centennial conference last week, i've been thinking about its
explicit aim, “Invigorating Philosophy for the 21st Century”, and about the
role of peirce-l in doing that.
It seems to me that most subscribers to peirce-l occupy some space on a
spectrum between two poles, which i'll describe here as personified ideals
(meaning that no actual person is absolutely one or the other): the Peircean
scholar, and the peircean Philosopher.
The Ideal Peircean scholar participates in a largely professional community
working toward a fully developed, pragmaticistic and widely shared
understanding of Peirce's work as a whole. The PS regards that work as a single
sign (namely an Argument) and a living system, every part of which is
functional in the context of the whole. It follows that the critical study of
any part contributes to the comprehension of the other parts and of the whole
—so the specialists in this community have good reason to work together.
The peircean Philosopher on the other hand is more philosophical than Peircean
— that is, the PP participates in a community hoping to tell the Whole Truth
(which, were it ever to arrive, would include its confession that it does not
profess to be Exactly True.) The PP regards Peirce as another member of that
philosophical community, one who fortunately has left abundant representations
of his trains of thought in his published and unpublished work. We could say
that PPs are miners of Peirce because in his work they find realizations that
deserve to be replicated in the philosophical community, in many other human
communities, and ultimately in the Earth community. So while the PS is after
the Whole Truth about Peirce, the PP is mining Peirce for functional components
of the Whole Truth (about life, the universe and everything, if we may use this
language).
As someone who gravitates toward the PP pole, i realize that some of those
peircean components may need to be reformulated and revised in order to
function better in other communities; indeed some of them are already
functioning in other communities in formulations that owe nothing to Peirce.
But i also realize that Peirce's work is more a network than a nest of nuggets.
Pull on any of its strands of system hard enough, and you have to either take
the whole thing on board (hoping it doesn't sink you) or be left with a
bleeding chunk of “Peirce” on your hands, feeling like a thief. This should
motivate us to work together with the PS community. Actually peirce-l, as i see
it, is a single community with a common interest in Invigorating Philosophy for
the 21st Century.
Toward that end, it's been suggested that we might conduct a seminar of sorts
to study Frederik Stjernfelt's new book Natural Propositions. I suggested this
to Frederik at the Lowell conference and he’s keen on the idea. It will be
organized in a similar way to our seminar on Kees de Waal’s book, in which each
chapter was assigned a volunteer to start a thread on it and lead the
discussion. We called these volunteers “emcees”, but since that’s a strange
term to many readers who aren’t North Americans (as I learned at the Lowell
conference), I’m going to call them Threadleaders. So this is a call for
volunteers to let me know (offlist if you like) what part(s) of the Stjernfelt
book you’d like to lead a thread on, and perhaps what would be the best time
for you to do that, say between now and December. As before, this seminar can
run concurrently with whatever else is happening on the list.
I’ll assume that anyone interested in doing that probably has a copy of the
book already, so I won’t list the table of contents here. If you haven’t seen
the book yet, I recommend it because it exemplifies the virtues of both the
Peircean scholar and the peircean Philosopher: that is, I think it gets Peirce
right in the context of his system and places a crucial part of that system in
a broader context — one which includes biosemiotics as well as logic, and
develops the concept of iconicity to new levels. I’ll be happy to expand on
this if anyone wishes, and in the meantime you can “look inside” the book at
Amazon.
Please come forward, prospective threadleaders! If you want to message me
privately, just Reply to this and delete the peirce-l address from your “To:”
field before you Send.
gary f.
} In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds. [Tao Te Ching 63
(Feng/English)] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
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