Maybe there is a mental Higgs Boson that no one can quite describe.
*@stephencrose <https://twitter.com/stephencrose>*
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 2:27 AM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 15, 2014, at 9:23 AM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> (He came to regard philosophy as consisting of "so-called" logical
> analysis (intellectual autobiography, 1904, Ketner editor), and to
> regarding such logical analysis as really being phaneroscopic analysis
> (Peirce to James, 1909, CP 8.305); obviously by "logical analysis" in that
> context Peirce did not mean the study of logic _*per se*_.)
>
>
> What do you think he meant by that term broadly speaking? ("so called
> logical analysis") I ask, not because I don't have some vague sense of the
> term, but because that seems to be my limit. Earlier on he seemed to speak
> of three degrees of clarity with the second degree logical analysis and the
> third degree to be the pragmatic maxim. However later on he seems to accord
> "logical analysis" as much more finding accurate definitions for concepts.
> (He suggests this for instance in the letters to Lady Welby but also the
> Neglected Argument)
>
> It's tempting to see it as somewhat akin to what happened to analytic
> philosophy. However I've long found many elements of analytic philosophy
> rather tepid relative to what I find in Peirce. I think his logic of
> vagueness and generals is rather key to a difference with how analytic
> philosophy developed in the 20th century.
>
> In particular his MS 318 is a great example of how he uses this term (I'm
> not sure I could easily define it)
>
> Everybody recognizes that it is no inconsiderable art, this business of
> "phaneroscopic" analysis by which one frames a scientific definition. As I
> practice it, in those cases, like the present, in which I am debarred from
> a direct appeal to the principle of pragmatism, I begin by seizing upon
> that predicate which appears to be most characteristic of the definitum,
> even if it does not quite apply to the entire extension of the definitum.
> If the predicate be too narrow, I afterward seek for some ingredient of it
> which shall be broad enough for an amended definitum and, at the same time,
> be still more scientifically characteristic of it.
>
> Proceeding in that way with our definitum, "sign," we note, as highly
> characteristic, that signs mostly function each between two minds, or
> theatres of consciousness, of which the one is the agent that utters the
> sign (whether acoustically, optically, or otherwise), while the other is
> the patient mind that interprets the sign. Going on with my account of what
> is characteristic of a sign, without taking the least account of
> exceptional cases, for the present, I remark that, before the sign was
> uttered, it already was virtually present to the consciousness of the
> utterer, in the form of a thought. But, as already remarked, a thought is
> itself a sign, and should itself have an utterer (namely , the ego of a
> previous moment), to whose consciousness it must have been already
> virtually present, and so back. Likewise, after a sign has been
> interpreted, it will virtually remain in the consciousness of its
> interpreter, where it will be a sign,-- perhaps, a resolution to apply the
> burden of the communicated sign,-- and, as a sign should, in its turn have
> an interpreter, and so on forward. Now it is undeniably conceivable that a
> beginningless series of successive utterers should all do their work in a
> brief interval of time, and that so should an endless series of
> interpreters. Still, it is not likely to be denied that , in some cases,
> neither the series of utterers nor that of interpreters forms an infinite
> collection. When this is the case, there must be a sign without an utterer
> and a sign without an interpreter. Indeed, there are two pretty conclusive
> arguments on these points that are likely to occur to the reader. But why
> argue, when signs without utterers are often employed? I mean such signs as
> symptoms of disease, signs of the weather, groups of experiences serving as
> premisses, etc . Signs without interpreters less manifestly, but perhaps
> not less certainly, exist. Let the cards for a Jacquard loom be prepared
> and inserted, so that the loom shall weave a picture. Are not those cards
> signs? They convey intelligence,-- intelligence that, considering its spirit
> and pictorial effect, cannot otherwise be conveyed. Yet the woven pictures
> may take fire and be consumed before anybody sees them. A set of those
> models that the designers of vessels drag through the water may have been
> prepared; and with the set a complete series of experiments may have been
> made; and their conditions and results may have been automatically
> recorded. There, then, is a perfect representation of the behavior of a
> certain range of forms. Yet if nobody takes the trouble to study the
> record, there will be no interpreter. So the books of a bank may furnish a
> complete account of the state of the bank. It remains only to draw up a
> balance sheet. But if this be not done, while the sign is complete, the
> human interpreter is wanting.
>
>
> Rather different from what we find in analytic philosophy I think. While
> not quite what Husserl was doing, it is much more hermeneutic an analysis
> than one typically sees among analytic philosophers. The very constructive
> has a strong dialogical nature perhaps more Socrates than Quine.
>
>
>
>
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