Clark, Are you not participating in unhelpful exposition about something about which much can be said, of which you are only talking about a small part? Technically, Peirce's method is not about meaningfulness as it is about clarifying the interpretant at the end of inquiry, which deals with consensus opinion.
Why not bring the discussion to a concrete example? There, you will encounter resistance if you say something controversial because vagueness is reduced. There, certain particular paths forward will be available to settle disagreement. "People say: between two opposed opinions the truth lies in the middle. Not at all! Between them lies the problem, what is unseeable, eternally active life, contemplated [gedacht] in repose." ~Goethe from Sepper Best, Jerry R On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 2:16 PM, CLARK GOBLE <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 10, 2016, at 9:53 AM, John Collier <[email protected]> wrote: > > For example, Newtonian space and time are one way to explain the bucket > thought experiment. But even in Newton's own time it was observed (e.g. > by Leibniz) that the explanation couldn't be tested (it failed the > pragmatic maxim). Mach made the problem even more clear. It was not a good > explanation on those grounds, though it was good enough for Newton and for > most physicists up to Einstein. > > > A couple of pedantic points. > > First we should note that Peirce’s notion of testing is more broad than > mere empirical verification (ala say what one tends to find among the > neo-Kantians such as say the positivists) We can see this in his Neglected > Argument for God which is a use of the maxim but in a very vague creative > fashion. Thus we have to be careful to assume it can’t be applied to > certain theoretical problems (or even to contemporary issues like string > theory even if I think stronger empirical evidence is important). > > Second, again Peirce’s maxim is a verification for meaningfulness. So > while the maxim helps show that the thought experiment can’t do what Newton > wants, it is still meaningful as we think through it in terms of the maxim. > Effectively this is what Mach is doing with his critiques. The question is > poorly posed and Mach’s analysis thus helps illuminate the meaning of the > problem precisely by bringing out these issues. (To be clear, in a certain > way I’m saying more or less what you did - just that I’m emphasizing the > positive rather than negative role the maxim would play in this) > > That Newton’s conception was good enough for physicists up to the early > 20th century shows, I think, that often physics really is captured by bias > and a tendency to accept the judgment of the community. This fits well into > what I understand Feyerabend’s critiques of science to be drawing. Careful > application of the maxim allows us to understand many of these issues > better even if perhaps not allowing us to draw better support for > theory/law. > > Now obviously abduction alone isn’t enough to explain science and I think > we make a category error if we push it too far. There’s a lot going on > socially within science. > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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