At 10:20 AM 4/21/2015, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
Howard said: There are no a priori foods as illustrated by the many
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremotroph>extremotrophs.
FS: Haha! But that is not the argument. The argument that the
categories food and poison are a priori, not which substances are
nourishing or poisonous for the single type of organism.
HP: I would say your statement that food and poison are a priori
categories is only a proposition. It is not an argument. I agree that
your realist mental construct of an abstract or universal category
like food is logically irrefutable (except to me it violates parsimony).
So I will only restate the empiricist's concept of food as whatever
organisms actually eat that keeps them alive. In evolutionary terms
survival is the only pragmatic test. How do logic and universal
categories explain anything more?
Howard
FS: As indicated, this is not the Kantian conception of a priori.
For those interested in the competing notion of a priori, see ch.
8 of my Diagrammatology (2007). Or Barry Smith's "In Defense of
Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism" (
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/In-Defense.pdf )
HP: The Smith paper was confusing. Smith concludes: "Certain
pre-empirical synthetic intrinsically plausible propositions thus
require ontological correlates which are their truth-makers. Hence,
there are intelligible structures in the world, which we could also
call 'a priori structures'."
How are these structures distinguished from the concept of natural laws?
I would not say the exact laws which involve empirical matter, like
the size of constants.
Best
F
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY
ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to
PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe
PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
