Clark, list,
[BU] On averageness as a background needed to make communication (and
informative difference) possible, you wrote,
>[CG] At which point the term “average” has become rather distorted.
[BU] I think that you're getting to the point where you might as well be
talking simply about generality.
>[CG] 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)
[BU] Note that at one point he calls the immediate object a kind of
"image or notion." Peirce had already come to define an image as kind of
hypoicon, an icon without an attached index, or as considered apart from
an attached index. I think that Peirce is saying in your quote of him
not that the immediate object needs an indexical _/component/_ but
instead that the experience of blueness cannot be conveyed by *any* sign
or signs alone without an experience of blueness, and also that the
experience of the Sun's actuality cannot be conveyed by *any* sign or
signs alone without an experience of the Sun's actuality. All the icons,
indices, and symbols will not experientially acquaint you with the Sun,
which you yourself need to pick out and acquaint yourself with; the
signs can help you do that but they can't do it for you.
>[CG] 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.
[BU] I suspect that Peirce grasped the potential amount of complication
in the process, but he was doing a phaneroscopic analysis (that's why,
for example, he calls the immediate object an object rather than a
sign). But he's also focusing on the phaneroscopy of a theorist's
viewpoint in explaining semiosis, wherein the immediate object seems a
consequence of an interaction between the mind and something beyond, so
I think that you're right there.
>[CG] 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"
[BU] That reminds me that Peirce finds all three inference modes in the
operations of the senses, filling gaps in and so one, except that the
best case of deduction that he can find he ends up classing as "on the
borderline between deduction and hypothesis." (The term "hypothesis" for
abductive inference suggests pre-1900). It is from pages 19-29 of the
undated manuscript MS 831, of which I've quoted the Robin Catalogue
description a number of times in the past at peirce-l (lamenting that MS
831's text was unavailable):
[Robin Catalog] The fine gradations between subconscious or
instinctive mind and conscious, controlled reason. Logical machines
are not strictly reasoning machines because they lack the ability of
self-criticism and the ability to correct defects which may crop up.
Three kinds of reasoning: inductive, deductive, hypothetical.
Quasi-inferences.
[BU] But then Harvard put MS 831 online, and almost a year ago I
transcribed it and posted the transcription at Arisbe
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/ms831/ms831.htm .
Best, Ben
On 6/29/2016 2:00 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
On Jun 29, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com
<mailto:baud...@gmail.com> > wrote:
Immediate objects may have averageness but the averageness seems not
definitive of them, and Peirce never makes it so.
>[CG] 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.
>>[BU] 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.
>[CG] 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.
>>[BU] Also, immediate objects may be both simplified, e.g., a
practical "essence" consisting in a rule for mentally re-constructing
the object, and complicated
>[CG] 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.
[CSP] 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)
>[CG] 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.
[CSP] 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)
>[CG] 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.
>>[BU] 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.
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.
>[CG] 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)
>[CG] 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.
>[CG] 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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