> On Sep 26, 2016, at 10:11 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> > wrote: > > I, too, assume we're discussing what Peirce thought, rather than what we > variously may think for our own parts.
I do think it’s worth asking how the argument itself fares given the social changes in the intervening century or so. As I mentioned a few weeks ago I think that most thinkers in the academy were they to conduct the experiment might come to somewhat different results. Since what counts is the community of inquirers and not just Peirce, it does seem that is a fruitful avenue to consider. That’s not to deny the utility of focusing in on Peirce’s beliefs. It’s just that I think we can and must separate the arguments somewhat from the person proposing them. One danger I see in Peircean studies is that it falls into the trap of becoming purely about exegesis of Peirce’s thought. That’s an important step - especially given that many aspects of Peirce’s thought were so poorly understood for so many years. But when his thought isn’t extended beyond that, when a quote of Peirce becomes like a Bible verse quoted by a fundamentalist religious believer, I think we’re missing something fundamental about Peirce’s aims. (Not saying anyone here is doing that mind you - just that I think it’s an ever present danger I myself fall into occasionally) In Peircean terms we confuse the dynamic object with the immediate object. > On Sep 25, 2016, at 1:15 PM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Moreover, pragmatism is the logic of abductive inference to the extent that > rules need to be specified for abductive inference at all. Peirce does not > offer rules for instinct. Ben, do you think that Peirce distinguishes between those good at guesses or hypothesis formation and those who are not? For instance in a more contemporary context we’d distinguish between the hypothesis of a scientist working in their area of knowledge and someone not with that background. It seems to me that while Peirce usually discusses critical common sensism in the context of regular broad social common sense that it applies even better to subgroups. That is subgroups develop a common sense based upon their experience over years. It seems to me that if we distinguish the initial application of abduction towards a hypothesis with repeated community testing of the concept then things do get a bit trickier. I recognize that the discussion the past few days has primarily been on this initial application of abduction. The question then becomes to what degree continued inquiry upon what we might call metaphysical remains abductive and to what degree it goes beyond this. Again science offers many examples here. Ideas often are not falsified by continued inquiry and experimentation. Rather they simply fall out of favor slowly as alternative hypothesis seems more persuasive. That is the normal idea of verification or falsification never happens simply because our experiments are themselves so theory laden. (As Quine pointed out long ago although which I think one can find within Peirce as well) In turn this lines up with his critical common sensism. Allow me a quote from the archives. In this case from Teresa Calvet from way back in Feb 2006. The bare definition of pragmaticism, writes Peirce (in "What Pragmatism Is "), "could convey no satisfactory comprehension of it to the most apprehensive of minds" of the doctrines "without the previous acceptance (or virtual acceptance) of which pragmaticism itself would be a nullity" (CP 5.416). Peirce says here that these preliminary propositions "might all be included under the vague maxim, 'Dismiss make-believes'", a maxim that could also be called, "the adoption of the general philosophy of common sense". This normative exhortation "do not make believe; (...) recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least" (CP 5.416) was enounced before by Peirce, in 1868, in "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities" (W2, p. 212). Instead of presenting Peirce simply as anti-Cartesian, I prefer to follow what he himself said: "Although pragmaticism is not a philosophy, yet (...) it best comports with the English philosophy, and more particularly with the Scotch doctrine of common sense" (CP 8.207) and to insist that pragmaticism "involves a complete rupture with nominalism" (CP 8.208). To illustrate Peirce's position, William Davis suggests (already in 1972) the analogy of a jig-saw puzzle, "where each new bit adds significance to the whole, although each bit is incomplete in itself and there is no real foundation piece upon which all else is based. Any piece will do to start with, where nothing is infallible in principle, though much does not fail in practice" (Peirce's Epistemology, p. 20). Ten years later Susan Haack also uses that image (in the last section, "The Jigsaw of Knowledge", of her paper "Descartes, Peirce and the Cognitive Community"). But we could also cite here the following paragraph of "Some consequences of four incapacities": "Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected" (W2, p. 213). One could then open Peirce's 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism (and present his conception of philosophy). It is also in these conferences that Peirce formulates three propositions which appear to him to put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism (or three cotary propositions): 1) there are no conceptions that are not given in perceptual judgments [or: all conceptions are given in perceptual judgments] (this is Peirce's interpretation of the slogan Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu); 2) perceptual judgments contain general elements; and 3) abductive inference "shades into perceptual judgments without any sharp demarcation between them" and states that "the maxim of pragmatism, if true, fully covers the entire logic of abduction" (CP 5.196). It’s that last point I wish to emphasize. Abduction "shades into perceptual judgments without any sharp demarcation between them.” This is very much akin to what philosophers of science since at least the middle of the 20th century have noted about competing theories that can explain data.
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