Hello Jon, Ben, Lists, Does phenomenology need hypotheses? Let's take one of Peirce's many formulations of what we are doing when we engage in the kind of phenomenological inquiry that he is recommending to us. Here is a description of this science: "Phenomenology ascertains and studies the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon; meaning by the phenomenon, whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way." So, in doing phenomenology, we are asking the following kind of question: are there some elements that are universally present in the phenomena? Here are a series of hypotheses:
1) Yes, there are such universal elements. 2) There are three fundamental elements that are universal and necessary for all possible experience. 3) The matter of these elements can be understood to consist in three categories: quality, brute fact, thought (pick your favorite term for the last of the three) 4) The form of these elements can be understood to consists in three basic kinds of relationships: monadic, dyadic and triadic; or firstness, secondness and thirdness (pick your favorite list) 5) The material categories correspond, in some sense, to the formal categories. What is the purpose of examining these elements more carefully and trying to generate a theory about the character of each and how experience might be composed of relations between these formal relationships? Well, there are several related purposes. Let me point to a few that are prominent in my mind. In a long discussion of the character of the observations we should use for the sake of engaging in philosophical inquiry, where Peirce is trying to explain how we should go about analyzing the phenomena that we need to draw on for the sake of developing better explanations in the normative science of logic, he makes the following point about the method he is using: Our object is to formulate the law of mind. We have to consider all mental action whatsoever and, generalizing it, to say not what all the elements of it are, but what that element of it is which is legislative. "Generalization," is the old answer.... A feeling is an element of consciousness just as it immediately is in the moment when it is there for itself and not as delegate of some other feeling not present. Such a feeling is not a psychological datum. The data are highly complex. That there is a cream colored surface with black characters on it is as near as I can readily describe the datum of my consciousness at this minute, -- but in truth the moment I pick it to pieces, as I must do to describe it, it ceases to be a datum. CP 7.464-5. Let me now emphasize the following points that he makes: "As for the pure feeling, that is a hypothetical entity, and is as completely veiled from me by its own immediacy as a material particle, as it exists in itself, is veiled by the somewhat absurd requirement that it shall be considered in itself. The truth is there are no data. We have a lot of inferences from data, liable to error, and these we have to correct as best we can by putting them together." Having made this point, Peirce draws an analogy between inquiry in the cenoscopic sciences and inquiry in the indioscopic sciencs: "The state of the case is quite similar to that of a physical science, say astronomy. All we have to go upon in astronomy is observations, and all those observations are erroneous. But we collect them and take their means and find a general description of the path of the observed object; and from this we can calculate an ephemeris, and finally, if there is any interest in doing so, ascertain what those observations ought to have been. We can no more start with immediate feelings in psychology than we can start with accurate places of the planets, as affected by parallax, aberration, refraction, etc. in astronomy. We start with mediate data, subject to error, and requiring correction." This is think, articulates some of the main purposes of phenomenology. The data we are working with in philosophy are mediate and highly subject to error. Our aim is to build a theory of the phenomena we observe in common experience for the sake of learning to: 1) analyze the data more carefully, 2) identify possible sources of error, and then 3) correct for the observational errors we might have made. Does phenomenology need hypotheses? Yes. The point of the hypotheses is to show us how to do 1-3 above better. If you have time, I recommend taking a look at what Peirce says next about how he is refining the logical account of the law of mind. Starting from the old answer, which is that the fundamental law is one of generalization, Peirce goes on to analyze the experience of how something, such as a line that is being drawn on a piece of paper, is experienced as something that changes in a continuous manner over time. Without going into the details of the analysis, I think that Peirce is really onto to something about how we might build explanations in the normative science of logic in a better manner than it has been done by the likes of Descartes, Hume, Kant and Mill—and the other philosophers who have tried to answer the same question. One key part of the strategy, I take it, is to develop the logical theory with an improved understanding of how we should work with the data (i.e., the observations) that we're trying to explain. --Jeff Here is what Peirce says next, in case anyone who does not have volume 7 of the CP handy would like to take a look. 466. The mind pronounces that what I see now resembles something I saw yesterday. The whole aspect of things as flowing in time is, it is plain, virtually a theory of the mind's creation. But, for the present, we take that theory as true, that is, as a stable one. Taking it as true, it seems to provide no possible means by which the mind could compare what is present to it now with what is past and gone and done with. This compels us to say that the time idea, -- at least, in its first crude shape, -- needs correction, like an erroneous observation in astronomy. Examining it more carefully, we observe that the idea is that the series of instants of time is continuous. Analyzing this idea of continuity, as we shall do in a future chapter with the most minute accuracy which an improved art of logic puts at our disposition,†30 we find that it implies that there are instants infinitesimally close together; that is that there are durations of time so short, that every one such starting with a given date has a character exactly like the one before it in some respect, without any limitation to this rule, while yet a time a little later does not possess that character. This enables us to suppose that the consciousness is not limited to a single instant but that it immediately and objectively extends over a lapse of time, without thereby extending over any sensible lapse of time. We are thus able to suppose that consciousness is carried along from one time to another, and is able to compare what is present to it at different times. Such we may suppose to be the process of memory; and this is the account of it which best squares with those natural beliefs which are all the data the psychologist can possibly have upon which to found his science, corresponding, as they do, to the observations of the astronomer. 467. But granting that memory is thus justified, -- while errors may, of course, creep in during the process, -- it still remains that when the mind declares that what it sees now, or remembers to have seen yesterday, I seen last week, the likeness, which though accompanied like all mental processess like what it remembers to have with a peculiar and characteristic sensation, is mainly a fact, a mental fact, and the sensation of it is of no consequence except as an advertisement of that fact. That fact is that by virtue of the occult working of the depths within us, those two feelings coalesce into one notion. For the sake of calling this by a familiar name, I call this association by similarity. But the ideas united by virtue of an occult inward power, are not always regarded as similar. Contraries are also so joined. Ideas and feelings are so joined which are neither merely declared by the mind to be similar nor to be contrary. Such, for instance, are length, breadth, and thickness. The mind delights in triads. In general, what the mind pronounces is that the feeling or idea of yesterday and that of today belong to one system, of which it forms a conception. A concept is not a mere jumble of particulars, -- that is only its crudest species. A concept is the living influence upon us of a diagram, or icon, with whose several parts are connected in thought an equal number of feelings or ideas. The law of mind is that feelings and ideas attach themselves in thought so as to form systems. But the icon is not always clearly apprehended. We may not know at all what it is; or we may have learned it by the observation of nature. Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Jon Awbrey [jawb...@att.net] Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 7:36 AM To: Jeffrey Brian Downard; biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L Subject: Re: Peirce's Categories Jeff, List, It seems to me there is something slightly off about looking for the hypotheses that underlie phenomenology. I do not think any number of verbal evasions will fix the problem. The whole point of anyone's version of phenomenology is to “bracket away” all such hypotheses and to “cleanse the doors of perception”, etc. We may be convinced by subsequent reflections: “the myth of the given”, “data are really capta”, all of Peirce's many analyses, and the results of experimental cognitive psychology, to name just a few, that such levels of purity are not really possible for the complex, concrete creatures we appear to be, but that is the project anyway. On the other hand, as far as Peirce's distinctive perspective on mathematics ‘per se’ goes, there is a tempting but unhappy tendency to adulterate it with all the notions of logicism, syntacticism, and other species of nominalism that I think we really ought to try and cleanse from the pons thereto. Regards, Jon On 10/31/2015 4:52 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: > Hello Ben, List, > > I was particularly interested in the prospect of making a comparison between > the hypotheses that we are working with in mathematics and the hypotheses that we are working with phenomenology. There are good reasons to point out, as you have, that the hypotheses in phenomenology are based on something that is, in some sense prior. Call them, if you will, particular discernments. > > Having searched around a bit, I don't see a large number of places where > Peirce uses this kind of language when talking about phenomenology. Having said that, here is one: "Philosophy has three grand divisions. The first is Phenomenology, which simply contemplates the Universal Phenomenon and discerns its ubiquitous elements...." (CP 5.121) > > There are interesting differences between the ways that we arrive at the > hypotheses that serve as "starting points" for mathematical deduction, and ways that we arrive at the hypotheses that are being formulated in phenomenology. One reason I retained the language of "starting points" that was in the original questions that Peirce asked about mathematics is that hypotheses are, at heart, quite closely related to the questions that are guiding inquiry. We normally think of hypotheses as explanations that can serve as possible answers to some questions. In some cases, I think it might be better to think of the formulation of the questions were trying to answer as itself a kind of hypotheses.. > > We can ask the following kinds of questions about hypotheses in math, > phenomenology, normative science and the like. What are we drawing on when we formulate these hypotheses? How should we develop the hypotheses from the "stuff" that we are drawing on so that the hypotheses we form will offer the greatest promise as we proceed in our inquiries. > > With these kinds of issues in mind, let me rephrase the questions about > phenomenology so as to respond to the concern you've raised: > > 1. What are the different kinds of hypotheses that might be fruitful for > phenomenological inquiry? > 2. What are the general characters of these phenomenological hypotheses? > 3. Why are not other phenomenological hypotheses possible, and the like? > > --Jeff > > Jeff Downard > Associate Professor > Department of Philosophy > NAU > (o) 523-8354 -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache
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