Gary F., List: Gf: Are you claiming that everyone has to be aware enough of “the current state of their knowledge” to make such a judgment on it before undertaking any investigation? The fact that curiosity etc. *can be understood* as forms of dissatisfaction doesn’t imply that any feeling of dissatisfaction necessarily enters into the actual process. I doubt that all explorers are so introspective.
My point was that we are unlikely to undertake an investigation of something that we already know, or at least *believe* that we already know. I did not say anything about a particular *feeling* of dissatisfaction, only that we engage in inquiry when we *are* dissatisfied with our current knowledge; i.e., when we experience the irritation of (genuine) doubt. Gf: This is such an essential part of Peirce’s critical common-sensism and pragmaticism that I hardly know where to begin. How can you exercise any control over your actions if you have no idea of their predictable consequences? Where can you get such ideas except by learning from experience about principles of causality in nature, and intentionality in human nature? (Human nature is a part of nature, not apart from it.) Now I see what you meant, thanks for clarifying. Gf: My whole point is that there *is no* definite division between natural and conscious purposes; purposefulness, which Peirce calls Thought (or Thirdness), is a continuum including everything from natural tendencies to conscious decision-making and adoption of ideals of conduct. Manipulation, like all conduct, is always done for *some* purpose; ethics is a matter of becoming conscious of what those purposes are, to the extent that one can judge some end (as well as some means to an end) to be better than another. You said before that "discovery of principles *in nature* ... is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation of any kind." Isn't this a judgment that one particular end is better than *any* other? Is the warrant for this perhaps the notion that achieving this end is a prerequisite to properly evaluating all other possible ends? Even if so, don't we have to know *how* to go about discovering principles in nature before we can proceed with doing so--or else learn how to do so *by* doing so (i.e., trial and error)? If mathematics is the practice of *necessary* reasoning, for which *deductive* logic is the theory, then what is the practice of *creative* reasoning, for which *abductive* logic is the theory? Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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