Sung,
We'll just have to disagree about Sokal. I don't usually suspect that
you're a prankster; it's a passing impression that I've had a few times.
Anyway I'm glad that you seem now to have read "The Fixation of Belief"
and to have upped your game, as the phrase goes.
Nobody expects you to "read and study the enormous amount of Peirce's
writings extending over decades". I haven't by any means read all of
Volumes 1 through 8 of the _Collected Papers_ or all of Volumes 1
through 6 & 8 of _Writings_. Instead I'm talking about reading - over
time - enough essays by Peirce to fill two or three normal-sized books.
Two or three normal-sized books, read over time, is just not a whole
lot, for somebody so active in a Peirce forum. Of course I can't make
you do it. There's never been a 'minimum reading' required at PEIRCE-L.
I started out here before I had read a full two or three books' worth.
Much of the most essential writing is free online. The convenience of
actually possessing the _Essential Peirce_ is that you can cite by page
number and that it contains some important essays not free online.
Below is an improvised list of essential readings, mostly linked at
Arisbe. Not all of them are in _The Essential Peirce_ - Best, Ben
The 6 articles in the series "Illustrations of the Logic of Science",
especially:
"The Fixation of Belief" (1877)
"How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878)
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.HTM#illus
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy series (1868) - three articles,
often densely argued, these take time to read.
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.HTM#jsp
"Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed For Man"
"Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" - the opening paragraphs are
the source of many quotes.
"Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four
Incapacities"
"A Guess at the Riddle" (1887-1888)
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/guess/guess.htm
"On a New List of Categories" (1867) interleaved by Joseph Ransdell with
Peirce's somewhat easier-to-read restatement of it "The Categories" in
MS 403 (1893)
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms403/categories.htm
"What is a Sign?" (MS 404 of 1894) - a continuation of the restatement
in MS 403.
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep2/ep2book/ch02/ep2ch2.htm
"F.R.L. First Rule of Logic" (circa 1899) Quite brief, famous statement
of fallibilism
http://web.archive.org/web/20100628043749/http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/frl_99.htm
<http://web.archive.org/web/20100628043749/http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ebatke/peirce/frl_99.htm>
For Peirce's metaphysics,
"Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution" (circa 1897) - epistemology and
metaphysics - worth reading even if not interested generally in metaphysics
http://www.textlog.de/4248.html
There's also _The Monist_ Metaphysical series (6 articles by Peirce,
1891-1893)
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.HTM#metaphysics
"An Outline Classification of the Sciences" (1903)
http://web.archive.org/web/20100628043749/http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm
"On the Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents, Especially from
Testimonies" (1901) - in the Essential Peirce 2, especially for its
account of abductive inference.
"Logic, Regarded as Semeiotic: MS L75 (Carnegie application of 1902)" -
this is long and one usually doesn't read it all at once. It's a kind of
catalogue of Peirce's thought, so it's good to dip into it, see what's
there.
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/l75.htm
"Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as Far as They Are
Determined" (1903) in the Essential Peirce 2. A key article on his
theory of sign classes; he introduces the ten-class system. Without
saying so, he revises views that he expressed in "Sundry Logical
Conceptions" immediately preceding it.
Various articles on pragmatism (1900s) and various articles through the
years on logic of relatives, algebra of logic, etc., if you're
interested in that area.
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.HTM
"A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908) - a kind of summary
of Peirce's philosophy http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#na0
On 4/1/2015 5:32 PM, Sungchul Ji wrote:
Ben,
(1) I think we should distinguish two types of researchers who are
interested in Peircean scholarship -- (i) 'Peircean experts' such as
yourself who by necessity MUST read and study the enormous amount of
Peirce's writings extending over decades, and (ii) 'non-Peircean
experts' like myself who DO NOT HAVE TO READ much Peirce but CAN still
USE Peirce's work if some of his philosophical conclusions happen to
coincide with their own conclusions reached independently of Peirce --
a case of consilience:
"In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or
concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from
independent, unrelated sources can "converge" to strong conclusions."
[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=consilience
] :
(2) My impression is that for most, if not all, of the Peircean
experts on these lists seem to live in a Peirce-centered universe, but
for me, a natural scientist and not a Peircean philosopher, Peirce
occupies only a small part of my intellectual space. In other words,
for me, there are more to the Universe than the Peircean philosophy.
(3) Unlike you, I disliked the Sokal prank from the beginning, mainly
because of the deceitful tactics he employed to get his likely
'immature' philosophical views on Science Wars published. You asked
whether I am "a prank played on us by Alan Sokal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair (whom I rather admire)?" I
hope the answer to this question is clear in my email to Jon that I
wrote today in response to his "sang-froid" advise that inspired the
formulation of a possible relation between "belief" and "semiosis"
proposed in Figure 1 in that email. Do you detect any sign
of deceitfulness on my part in this figure ? Rutgers
phenomenologist, B. Wilshire, once told me that humans are the only
animals that are smart enough to fool themselves. If so, perhaps I am
fooling myself by believing that Figure 1 is free of a prank.
All the best.
Sung
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 10:35 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com
<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com> > wrote:
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