> On Jun 29, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Immediate objects may have averageness but the averageness seems not > definitive of them, and Peirce never makes it so.
It seems to me (perhaps incorrectly) that Peirce raises everydayness for similar reasons to his common sensism. It’s the background of what makes communication possible. He makes an argument somewhere (I can’t find it right now) that most of our beliefs have to be true for communication to work. (Donald Davidson makes a very similar argument in his writing on communication) Yet this averageness or everydayness is always indexed to particular groups with communication codes. But that also means that for us to think in terms of signs/language (as we all do privately) that there must be an averageness tied to just us for our private thoughts. At which point the term “average” has become rather distorted. > They may also have distinctiveness; an unusual characteristic, perhaps > displayed at an unusual moment, might be a prominent part of the immediate > object, as a result of a single prior experience. Signs will often have a distinctive characteristic yet it seems for it to be understood as a distinctive characteristic it must be repeated in some sense so we can make sense of it. This is both a characteristic of thirdness but also just the requirements that thought be in terms of repeated signs. This gets one back to Kelly Parker’s work on Peirce’s ontological cosmology. Even if we reject it as foundational ontology, it seems that something similar must be going on in any originary experience. For the originary experience to be comprehensible we have to give it meaning. In terms of the Pragmatic Maxim that entails a set of practices to verify it. And the very meaning of verification practice again entails repeatability and (for Peirce) generals for scholastic realism. > Also, immediate objects may be both simplified, e.g., a practical "essence" > consisting in a rule for mentally re-constructing the object, and complicated Santayana definitely ties immediate objects to essences. I’m not sure Peirce does although clearly there’s a similarity with Aristotle. The other thing to keep in mind is again that the experience of the immediate object can be broken down into components. The following example by Peirce in his later period is helpful here. Take for example, the sentence the Sun is blue. “Its Objects are “the Sun” and “blueness.” If by “blueness” be meant the Immediate Object, which is the quality of the sensation, it can only be known by Feeling. But if it means that “Real,” existential condition, which causes the emitted light to have short mean wave-length, Langley has already proved that the proposition is true. So the “Sun” may mean the occasion of sundry sensations, and so is Immediate Object, or it may mean our usual interpretation of such sensations in terms of place, of mass, etc., when it is the Dynamical Object. It is true of both Immediate and Dynamical Object that acquaintance cannot be given by a Picture or a Description, nor by any other sign which has the Sun for its Object. (CP 8.183) While averageness in the sense of everydayness is part of what makes the immediate object, there’s also an essential indexical component that goes beyond what icons or symbols can convey. (At least that’s what I take Peirce to be meaning in the experience by what is inexpressible by sign) We should also recognize that Peirce’s primary influence in all this is the scholastics. That the common use of the word “object” to mean a thing, is altogether incorrect. The noun objectum came into use in the XIIIth century, as a term of psychology. It means primarily that creation of the mind in its reaction with a more or less real something, which creation becomes that upon which cognition is directed; and secondarily, an object is that upon which an exertion acts; also that which a purpose seeks to bring about; also, that which is coupled with something else in a relation, and more especially is represented as so coupled; also, that to which any sign corresponds. (MS 693A, 33, 1904) It’s common to see people taking Peirce in terms of Frege (not that anyone here is doing that). But I think the scholastic sense gives us an idea of what he’s grasping at with the distinction. The immediate object is what gets produced by it’s reaction with the dynamic object in an essentially mediated way. As such it’s the result of all those prior indirect encounters. While we can loosely talk about that as a kind of averageness it seems to me that it’s a fairly unpredictable consequence of how individual brains interact with their environment. To talk about average to think of it in terms of the common features of the causes (usually with the arbitrary boundary of “outside the body”) whereas I think Peirce means it more as the consequence of such causes. Peirce of course was largely ignorant of contemporary cognitive science. And the psychology of the era was rudimentary. So I’m not sure he really grasped just how complicated that process was. > Furthermore, if such truth-in-the-main as goal distinctive of cenoscopy is a > kind of _average_, but is not a deductive probability, or even a deductive > fuzzy probability, then it seems to consist in a _verisimilitude_, in > Peirce's sense, a likeness to experience as embodied in premisses of an > inductive inference. http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/verisimilitude > <http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/verisimilitude> . > > 1910 | Note (Notes on Art. III) [R] | ILS 123-4; CP 2.663 > > I will now give an idea of what I mean by _likely_ or _verisimilar_ . [—] I > call that theory _likely_ which is not yet proved but is supported by such > evidence, that if the rest of the conceivably possible evidence _should_ turn > out upon examination to be of a _similar_ character, the theory would be > conclusively proved. Strictly speaking, matters of fact never can be > demonstrably proved, since it will always remain conceivable that there > should be some mistake about it. > > Oh, great quote. And I think you’re onto something with verisimilar. Interestingly I think it does get at a feature of our brains cognitive science does get at. I found the other quote you referred to but didn’t quote (from a post of yours from a few years back). It’s really worth quoting. By verisimilitude I mean that kind of recommendation of a proposition which consists in evidence which is insufficient because there is not enough of it, but which will amount to proof if that evidence which is not yet examined continues to be of the same virtue as that already examined, or if the evidence not at hand and that never will be complete, should be like that which is at hand. (CP 8.224 draft letter to Paul Carus circa 1910 emphasis mine) Think of how the brain handles memories where there are traces of the original experience which the brain fills in the gap. Presumably for any experience what “comes to mind” is already highly processed and tied to other signs in our brain. That is the immediate object to mind is the object in terms of what we’ve already encountered. “Of the same virtue as that already examined" That’s extremely helpful. > Using such an idea of _verisimilitude_ to _distinguish_ cenoscopy rather > suggests that cenoscopy would be the science that draws inductive > conclusions, and that inductive inference in idioscopy would ipso facto be > applied cenoscopy - things that Peirce never (so far as I know) said, and > that I think he would not say, although I would say them. I think part of my problem with the distinction is simply that Peirce sometimes uses idioscopy in terms of what the “folk” do (my word not his). While I agree with all you say about it, perhaps the way to distinguish the “folk” is that there’s more error due to the considerably less evidence.
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