Ben, Gary R, Jon S, Edwina, List,
I won't have a chance for a full reply for a while,
so let me just state some of the basic principles
that I have applied for almost fifty years now in
the matter of “How To Read And Understand Peirce”.
There is a long-running strain of Peirce commentary that
sees radical modifications in his thinking over the years.
I do not belong to that tradition. I see more continuity
than radical re-thinking in his thought through the years.
But seeing things that way is due to a certain perspective.
I apply the same principles of charitable and critical
interpretation to Peirce that I do to any other writer.
Charity entails a search for a consistent interpretation if one
is possible at all. Charity goes only so far with some writers
and some styles of writing, contradictions of a sort that cannot
be glossed over develop almost immediately and about all one can
do is read things emotively/impressionistically after that point.
In Peirce's case I almost always find that a little extra charity
repays itself in the long run. That is not to deny the apparent
inconsistencies that we find in Peirce's work, taken whole cloth,
as many have noted many, but it does imply a particular strategy
for dealing with the wrinkles that do appear.
Out of time ... will continue later ...
Jon
On 5/2/2016 1:27 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Jon A., Jon S., Gary R., Edwina,
Jon A., I see a problem with your criticism, in that it seems precise in itself
yet too vague in application.
It's not apparent to me that Gary R. or Jon S. or I have been treating
categories as non-relational essences, at least
in any way that you would not also be accusing Peirce of doing. If you think
that Peirce went too far in that direction,
please say so.
There is not only the quote from CP 2.711 which I gave recently
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2016-05/msg00002.html but also
another passage, in the third-to-last paragraph
(EP 1:198-9, W 3:337-8, CP 2.643, CLL 151-2) of "Deduction, Induction, and
Hypothesis" (1878)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_13/August_1878/Illustrations_of_the_Logic_of_Science_VI
in
which Peirce associates the three modes of inference with categories on the
basis of the categorial nature of their
respective conclusions. Once again, the deductive conclusion (result) is
volitional (Second), the inductive conclusion
(rule) is habitual (Third), and the abductive conclusion (case) is sensuous
(First). In these discussions, a lot of the
relational aspects are left implicit; Peirce doesn't in those places exposit
the whole theory of the categories complete
with tuples.
As we know, in later years Peirce instead associated deduction with thirdness
and induction with secondness, this time
at least partly because of the modalities of the conclusions that they produce:
"Deduction proves that something _/must
be/_; Induction shows that something _/actually is/_ operative; Abduction merely
suggests that something _/may be/_."
(CP 5.171) http://www.textlog.de/7658.html .
If you think that Peirce went too far in such direction, please say so. It
would clarify at least a little your
criticism of the rest of us here. You're allowed to criticize us and Peirce
too. We know that I don't share Peirce's
view of the categories, and I seem to recall from misty years ago that you
don't regard them as basic, the integers, if
anything, were your basics, and you have been interested first of all in the
tuples and the irreducibility of some
dyads, some triads, and no higher-ads, in which regard you do agree with Peirce.
Best, Ben
On 5/2/2016 11:56 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
Jon A., List:
I gather that you believe this whole discussion to be misguided, but does that
warrant blocking the way of inquiry for
those of us who are still interested in exploring it? Perhaps the outcome will
be a consensus that it is indeed a
mistake to assign categories to rule/case/result at all ... or that it makes no
practical difference what assignments
we make ... or that the "correct" assignments depend on which aspect of the
categories is in focus. Or maybe the
outcome will be no consensus at all; the attempt might still be worthwhile
anyway.
I tend to "default" to the categories as possibility/actuality/necessity, and
that guides where I stand currently on
this particular matter. Others might lean more toward
quality/relation/representation, or feeling/action/thought, or
chance/law/habit. How do we resolve situations when these different
characterizations of Peirce's three categories
suggest different answers? Per your latest message, what exactly is the "critical
question that has to be asked," and
at which "step of analysis" should we be asking it?
Regards,
Jon S.
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net
<mailto:jawb...@att.net> > wrote:
Jon S.,
Most of the old timers on this List have already heard
and ignored this advice more times than I could care to
enumerate but since you and maybe a few other onlookers
may not have heard it before, I will give it another try.
Peirce's categories are best viewed as categories of relations.
To a first approximation, firstness, secondness, thirdness are
simply what all monadic, dyadic, triadic relations, respectively,
have in common. (At a second approximation, we may take up the
issues of generic versus degenerate cases of 1-, 2-, 3-adicity,
but it is critical to take the first approximation first before
attempting to deal with the second.)
In that light, thirdness is a global property of the whole triadic
relation in view and it is a category error to attribute thirdness
to any local domain or any given element that participates in that
relation.
As it happens, we often approach a complex relation by picking one of
its elements, that is, a single tuple as exemplary of the whole set of
tuples that make up the relation, and then we take up the components of
that tuple in one convenient order or another. That method lends itself
to the impression that k-ness abides in the k-th component we happen to
take up, but that impression begs the question of whether that order is
a property of the relation itself, or merely an artifact of our choice.
Failing to examine that question puts us at risk for a type of error
that I've rubricized as the “Fallacy Of Misplaced Abstraction” (FOMA).
As I see it, there is a lot of that going on in the present discussion,
arising from a tendency to assign Peircean categories to everything in
sight, despite the fact that Peirce's categories apply only to certain
levels of structure.
Regards,
Jon
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