Quick note, just to be clear: 'a revised table of the taxa' refers to my
revising myself to add some lines of division. The only revision to
Peirce is the showing of two cycles, he didn't mention such cycles. Also
I've reinserted in Jeff D.'s response the horizontal line that I put
between the 6th and 7th taxa. The cycle seems to gothrough 1st, 2nd, and
3rd taxa, and again through the 4th, 5th, and 6th taxa. I occurs to me
that this idea of two cycles in the taxa may not be original. I don't
know, I thought of it this morning while writing the post. - Best, Ben
On 10/29/2015 1:52 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Ben, Gary R., Clark, List,
Ben has offered two things that are quite helpful to me for the purposes of
thinking more clearly about the relationships that hold between math,
phenomenology and the normative sciences.
First, he has pointed out that Kant's remark to the effect "That philosophy which
mixes pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of
philosophy...." seems to reflect Peirce's own commitments with respect to
philosophical methodology when are are talking about pure philosophy as opposed to
applied philosophy. As Ben notes, Peirce goes so far as to outline a three-way division
of science in which the second branch is Science of Review which does mix empirical
principles with pure ones. While I am able to remember that applied philosophy combines
the pure and empirical parts, I often lose track of the idea that the Science of Review
also combines the two.
Second, Ben provides a revised table of the taxa for setting up the
architectonic:
Branches:
1. Science of Discovery (Classes: 1. Mathematics, 2. Cenoscopy 3, Idioscopy)
2. Science of Review, a.k.a Synthetic Philosophy, which includes classification
of the sciences.
3. Practical Science, a.k.a. the Arts.
In descending taxical order, one can discern the guiding questions concerning
(1) ideals, (2) conduct, and (3) thought and learning, in two cycles:
________________________________________
First cycle:
1. Each branch has its own distinctive animating motive/purpose common to all
its subdivisions.
2. Each class has its own great subject and kind of observations.
3. Throughout an order, researchers pursue the same general kind of inquiry
(but deal with different kinds of conceptions); orders can differ
hierarchically within a class.
________________________________________
Second cycle:
4. Throughout a family of science, conceptions are shared but skills differ.
5. Throughout a genus of science, skills are shared, but acquaintance with
facts in detail differs.
6. Throughout a species of science, the researchers are all thoroughly well
qualified in all parts of it.
________________________________________
7. In a variety of science, researchers devote lives to it but no so numerously
as to support journals, societies, etc.
So, with this helpful table in hand, I am wondering how we might go about using
it in trying to answer the two sets of questions that are on my mind. First,
we have the questions about the relationship between phenomenology and math.
How can phenomenology (and the normative sciences, for that matter) help us
answer these questions:
1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which mathematical
deduction can set out?
2. What are their general characters?
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?
Drawing on Peirce’s way of framing these questions about the starting points
for mathematical inquiry, I’ve framed an analogous set of questions about
inquiry in the phenomenological branch of cenoscopic science. How might the
normative sciences help us answer the following questions about phenomenology.
1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological
inquiry can set out?
2. What are the general characters of these phenomenological hypotheses?
3. Why are not other phenomenological hypotheses possible, and the like?
As Ben’s table helps us to keep clear, math and phenomenology are two classes
of scientific inquiry under the larger branch of the science of discovery. As
such, they share a common animating purpose that is common to all its
subdivisions, and that common purpose is to discover the truth—regardless of
whether it be the truth about the formal relations that hold between ideal
states of affairs expressed in a given system of mathematical hypotheses or
whether it be the truth about positive matters concerning the formal elements
that are essential for all possible observations concerning the phenomena that
are part of our common experience. While they belong to the same branch of
inquiry, these two classes (i.e., math and cenoscopic science) have their own
great subject and kind of observations.
The same does not hold when it comes to the relations between phenomenology and
the normative sciences. These two areas of inquiry belong to the same class,
so they share the same general subject and kind of observation. Having said
that, they are two different orders of scientific inquiry. As such, they deal
with different kinds of conceptions—and they differ hierarchically within the
class. The normative sciences need to draw their leading conceptions and
principles from phenomenology. At the same time, we must be careful not to
bias or prejudice our inquiries in phenomenology by importing the current
results arrived at in the normative sciences into our examination of the
elements that are essentially part of all the phenomena we might observe.
The temptation of importing conceptions from the normative sciences into our
examination of the elements that are fundamental for analyzing the observations
that are the data for this theory is, I believe, a great danger. Philosophers
like Mill who seek to answers to questions about the highest good and insist
that only empirical evidence can be used as proof about what is inherently good
are all too quick to draw conclusions of the following sort. Mill insists that
the awareness we have that our moral or logical obligations represent necessary
requirements for our actions and the conduct of our thought is based on an
observational error. There is no rational necessity in any kind of
obligation—logical or moral--he wants to argue. One of Mill’s mistakes, I
think, is that he has biased and prejudiced the inquiry concerning the elements
that should guide our analyses of the phenomena we are able to observe.
Am I running the same risk when I suggest that we can “draw” on the normative
sciences for the purposes of framing the questions we need to answer in
phenomenology and also for clarifying our understanding of the different
systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological inquiry can set out? It is
clear that we can draw on our logica utens for this purpose. I would want to
add that we can also draw on our aesthetica utens and our ethica utens. Having
said that, should we also “draw” on our pure theories of ant-aesthetics,
ant-ethics and logic as semiotics? If we should draw on them for the purposes
of framing the questions and the hypotheses, what in particular should or
shouldn’t we draw on for the sake of getting our inquiries in phenomenology off
the ground from a better—perhaps because they are clearer—set of hypotheses?
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
________________________________________
From: Benjamin Udell [bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 8:06 AM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion
Jeff D., all, I think I wasn't clear enough about what I was saying in the list
of taxa, so I've revised a bit.
Jeff D., list,
Sorry for the delayed response. I've rarely been so inundated with practical
matters.
I think that I'd agree with Kant's remark "That philosophy which mixes pure principles with
empirical ones does not deserve the name of philosophy...." if by "philosophy" one
takes him to mean pure philosophy, or pure cenoscopy in Peirce's sense, as opposed to applied
philosophy/cenoscopy, which can get into questions such as that of the evolution of living beings
from material systems as understood by the special sciences (a.k.a. idioscopy), and so on. Peirce
goes so far as to outline a three-way division of science in which the second branch is Science of
Review, which he also called Synthetic Philosophy and _Philosophia Ultima_, and which does mix
empirical principles with pure ones.
Forgive me for citing Wikipedia but I wrote most of the article and it has a
convenient table of taxa; the footnotes have links to Peirce texts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences_%28Peirce%29#Taxa
Branches:
1. Science of Discovery (Classes: 1. Mathematics, 2. Cenoscopy a.k.a. _Philosophia
Prima_, 3, Idioscopy a.k.a. the Special Sciences - Physical & Psychical).
2. Science of Review, a.k.a Synthetic Philosophy, which includes classification
of the sciences.
3. Practical Science, a.k.a. the Arts.
In descending taxical order, one can discern, not too dimly, the guiding
questions that you point out,of (1) ideals, (2) conduct, and (3) thought and
learning, in two cycles:
________________________________
First cycle:
1. Each branch has its own distinctive animating motive/purpose common to all
its subdivisions.
2. Each class has its own great subject and kind of observations.
3. Throughout an order , researchers pursue the same general kind of inquiry
(but deal with different kinds of conceptions); orders can differ
hierarchically within a class.
________________________________
Second cycle:
4. Throughout a family of science, conceptions are shared but skills differ.
5. Throughout a genus of science, skills are shared, but acquaintance with
facts in detail differs.
6. Throughout a species of science, the researchers are all thoroughly well
qualified in all parts of it.
________________________________
7. In a variety of science, researchers devote lives to it but no so numerously
as to support journals, societies, etc.
________________________________
I think that this bears out that Peirce was thinking much as you say he was.
Best, Ben
On 10/21/2015 5:14 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
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