Dear Franklin, List members: I left out a more fundamental part of the argument that I will lay out now. It is basically a very simple argument, though perhaps it is a bit subtle. I left it out because the argument is fairly well known to Peirce scholars It appears in several places in slightly different forms in Peirce’s writings. I would argue that it is very difficult if not impossible to accept many of Peirce’s more systematic ideas without accepting this argument I lay out.
Peirce has a specific view of experience. Meaning has to be referenced to something, and that something cannot be internal (mental in one sense), or we go in circles (which is acceptable to some philosophers, but not to Peirce). Worse, from Peirce’s point of view, is that it fails the objectivity test. Meaning has to have an objective basis or his realism has to be given up. Now that there are experiences, including mental experiences, is objective, but meaning cannot be referred ultimately to mental experiences alone without making it depend on psychology rather than objective conditions. Other than for logic, which has its own grounds for objectivity in things that are external, the experience ultimately referred to has to be of the senses, roughly (I would include emotions, which I see to have a propositional or cognitive component) that also must have an external aspect in order to support objective differences in meaning. Peirce resolves this by setting aside a class of experiences that are of external things. The child, he says, learns to recognize that not all things are under his control, but must be at least in part caused by external influences, so some experience is composed of signs of the external. This is a very early and necessary abduction. Membership in this class of supposed externally based experiences (which Peirce often just identifies as “experience”) is revisable on further evidence (there are illusions, imposed experiences – by a demon in the most extreme case – and dreams, and the rantings of madmen, just to use Descartes’ examples – though Decartes saw their possibility as a reason for scepticism, but Peirce would require an additional reason for doubt over the mere possibility – a “defeater” in terms of contemporary pragmatist epistemology), but the basic way to check membership is whether or not they are at least in part not under our control. This needs to be tested, as we can be wrong about it in specific cases, but in general (or we violate the defeater requirement). Physicalism is rather hard to define, and there are a number of definitions floating around the philosophy and scientific world. Quine defines the physical as that which is accessible through the senses (not what physics tells us is physical). This won’t quite do for Peirce (or me) since there are the afore-mentioned sensory illusions, etc. What physics tells us is physical is a good place to start, but of course physics has been wrong, so this is more of a control than a criterion. I think it is safe to say, though, that everything that science has been able to study effectively so far has a physical basis. I would think that the physical has a number of signs, and that there is a consilience that eventually leads to a clearer idea of what is physical. Peirce was, in fact, a kind of idealist (the objective kind, for one thing), so there is presumably no contradiction between his views about experience, and the physical, and at least one form of idealism. I don’t share Peirce’s idealism, but that is neither here nor there; it is not relevant to Peirce’s argument that I have reconstructed here. All thought is in signs. Some thoughts (or mental experiences, if you want) are of external things. Other than logical, mathematical, and the like, being external is to be physical at the least. In order to make our ideas clear we need to make reference to this external component, on pain of subjectivism, psychologism, and making distinctions in thoughts that have no distinction in their objects. So Peirce’s prope-postivism also takes us back to the Pragmatic Maxim, that thought is all in signs, and his notion of the basis of experience. Obviously there are some assumptions here, and one could reject any one of them (accept subjectivism, or psychologism, or other forms of antirealism, as examples), which many philosophers do. But the assumptions are made deeply in Peirce’s philosophy. I think he was right about this. I could give a bunch of references to Peirce’s writings that support my interpretation, but this is long enough already and I have to go shopping. I hope it is at least close to sufficient to respond to your worry. John Collier Professor Emeritus, UKZN http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Franklin Ransom [mailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 06 December 2015 2:26 PM To: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] signs, correlates, and triadic relations - The union of units unify the unity. John, You said: The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. I've been trying to figure this one out for myself, but am having some trouble, in particular with the "idea that the physical is just what we can experience." Would you be willing to clarify how you mean this? Is physical opposed to mental, and thus the mental is not something we can experience? And/or the spiritual? Or would you include mental and/or spiritual as subdivisions of the physical? My sense of physicalism, aside from your characterization, is that it's the idea that what is real is whatever physics discovers or says is real, which is quite different from what you are suggesting. I hope that you can understand my concern. After all, clearly an idealist could just as easily say that what is mental is whatever we can experience, and I think you can understand that idea. What's the point of calling all of experience one or the other? -- Franklin On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote: Jerry, I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You aren’t talking about Peirce, here when you say things like [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise when we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical perspective. Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views on firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion). Unless you understand this you are going to be asking questions without an answer because the presuppositions are false. It has nothing to do with my physcalism (which is not, actually, materialism I have come to believe). The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. Basically, you err, as I see it, in making a distinction that implies no difference in meaning, however much it might seem to. It violates Peirce’s prope-positivism, which he uses to deflate a lot of metaphysics. Of course you can reject either the Pragmatic Maxim, or the notion of experience Peirce uses, or both, in order to save your distinction. But then you aren’t talking about Peirce’s firsts when you say they have structure. John Collier Professor Emeritus, UKZN http://web.ncf.ca/collier
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