Ben, Lists, Let me a add a piece to what you've said to see if we are on the same track. I add this point in order to highlight some features of what Peirce is trying to accomplish in thinking architectonically about inquiry. Many philosophers in the 20th century, especially those who are more analytic in their orientation, reject certain propositions that Peirce affirms about the value of working in an architectonic manner (that is, with a plan in hand) for the purposes of doing philosophy, so I'd like to make these points a bit more explicit.
Remarks that have been made by a number of contributors to the List about what philosophy might or might not contribute to questions about the origins of order in the cosmos, or the evolution of living beings from material systems, or the real character of the law and force of such things as gravity remind me of the dangers of not keeping things in a clearer order when it comes to setting up our explanations in both the cenoscopic science of philosophy and the idioscopic sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and the like. I can't help but think that Peirce has pretty darned good reasons for insisting that doing philosophy well requires that we reflect on matters architectonic. The main thing I want to add to what you've said is prompted by a remark that Kant makes about philosophical methodology. In the Preface of the Grounding, he puts a sharp edge on the claim. He says: "That philosophy which mixes pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of philosophy...." (G, 390) Later in Section 2, Kant makes the following point about any procedure which does not clearly separate between different kinds of questions (e.g., about questions concerning the justification of the primary principles of valid reasoning from questions about how we human beings often do in fact think). He says: "such a procedure turns out a disgusting mishmash of patchwork observations and half-reasoned principles in which shallowpates revel because all this is something quite useful for the chitchat of everyday life." (G, 410) Drawing on the arguments that Kant is making about the how we ought to inquire about in normative questions, Peirce insists that it is essential that we refine our methods for the sake of inquiring into the following kinds of questions: 1) What ideals should we aspire to? 2) What principles determine whether an action is right or wrong? 3) What principles should govern the conduct of my thought so that my reasoning will be valid an my inquiries will really lead me to truth? One of the main reasons Peirce has for making a clear plan for his inquiries into the normative sciences is that these kinds of questions require that we employ the appropriate methods. For better or worse, the methods that have been developed up to this point in the history of thought are not quite what we need if we hope to develop better answers to the questions. As such, we need to refine and develop the appropriate methods. One of the main purposes of formulating an architectonic plan for philosophical inquiry into these kinds of questions is that we are constantly in danger of 1) perpetuating longstanding confusions about the phenomena that we are trying to explain, 2) failing to understand what is special about the subject matter of our inquiries, 3) failing to clarify the goals that are guiding us and 4) failing to understand how we should use the methods we've got to improve upon our understanding of 1-4. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 1:11 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion Clark, list, I think that the relevance of the classification of research is in the light shed on the logical supports among fields in the build-up of knowledge. Physics doesn't decide which math is mathematically right, which combined mathematical postulates are consistent and nontrivial, and so on, instead it decides which maths are applicable to, and illuminating in, physics. How far can one trace such structures of logical dependence and independence? Sometimes physical research leads to mathematical discovery. Conical refraction was simultaneously a discovery in physics and in mathematics. But even if it hadn't proved applicable in physics, it still would have been mathematically valuable. If one thinks that mathematics depends logically on biology or psychology, one will start asking mathematicians to study biology or psychology to really get to the bottom of their subject. While they might find some inspiration and deep examples of math there, it still seems like a more refined and polite version of sending the mathematicians out to work in the collective farms. I think that mathematicians would already be studying a lot more biology or psychology if they thought that such studies could support their mathematical findings. Moreover, one may suppose (as Peirce did) that the most general classifications will bear out logical structure, and that the layout of the city of research will come to reflect the collective structure of the subject matters like constellations above. One likes to see what that 'total population' of subject matters shapes up to look like in terms of parameters. I imagine that Peirce liked that. It seems philosophical enough. Peirce put such classification into 'Science of Review', which he also called 'Synthetic Philosophy'. At any rate such classification applies cenoscopic philosophy. If one extends parameters from a number of sample cases, one may even predict that there ought to be, or come to be, a certain field of study. *** It's true, 'impatience' and 'suspense' seem strong words for the emotion belonging to the occasion of (attenuative) deduction. I'm thinking of a feeling of curiosity about the future such that one wishes to shorten by deduction the wait till discovery. You suggest the word 'dissatisfaction'. One could think of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the facts known or hypothesized so far, as if they seemed coy, or insufficient for a worthwhile conclusion, to which one responds by managing to deduce a worthwhile conclusion. Yet "dissatisfaction" as the occasion of deduction seems too vague. Surprise and perplexity could also be taken as kinds of dissatisfaction. If we take seriously Peirce's idea that deduction _predicts_, then the idea of at least some mild feeling of suspense or impatience seems to follow logically enough as belonging to deduction's occasion. If one has abduced a hypothesis about which one cares, and can't think of a deductive, distinctive testable prediction, one is left to feel impatient for time's eventual confirmation or overturning of one's hypothesis in the natural course of events. Note also the nice opposition between surprise, perplexity, etc., and suspense. Well, I guess there's to brood on the question some more. Best, Ben On 10/21/2015 2:28 PM, Clark Goble wrote: On Oct 21, 2015, at 11:25 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote: The positivists divided sciences into formal (i.e., mathematics and deductive logic) and factual. I never got clear on where they put philosophy, I suspect they hoped to make it into a formal science. I think they differed among themselves on this, although I’m not an expert on the Vienna circle. (And especially not the 19th century positivists) It seemed that the spirit of the mid-20th century was to attempt to reduce philosophy to other matters. Either becoming clear on our semantics that would dissolve most problems or to reduce it to a kind of foundationalist epistemology of judgments with the rest being clear formalism. It was in most ways a rather bad dead end for philosophy IMO. Fortunately people drug themselves out of it while (hopefully) taking what was useful from both critiques. I’ll confess that I’ve never quite understood the drive to taxonomy on these matters. (This is one Peircean drive I’ve never been able to quite embrace) If for only the reason that any practical analysis seems such a mix of different taxonomies. I just never quite was clear what the point was. Certainly keeping clear what one is doing (semantics vs. ontology) and so forth is important. But one can become clear on the parts one is doing while acknowledging that the item under analysis is usually a mix. Perhaps I’m wrong in this though. As to my question, I think I was getting myself into some contortions about deduction because in some half-conscious way I was still introducing the idea of conflict. Now, Peirce said that deduction is for prediction. That by itself is enough to suggest that an emotion of impatience belongs to the occasion of deduction — an impatience with the vagueness of the future, or the coyness of the present in telling us it — one doesn't want to wait for nature to take its course, one wants to find out ahead of time, on the basis of accumulated data, what is the fate, for example of the Milky Way. (It turns out to be on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.) I think you’re right although I’m not sure impatience gets at the feeling quite right. I think dissatisfaction is perhaps more apt since impatience implies a time component that’s not always present.
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