Jerry, List,
I find that John Sowa's remarks reflect my own assessment of where things stand. He provides a link to a presentation by Susan Haack, and she offers a nice review of how the philosophical landscape in the U.S. and the British Commonwealth have shifted over the course of the last hundred years. One sign of the relative immaturity of philosophy as a science is how splintered the philosophical community is about really basic questions concerning the kinds of methods and observations we ought to use. Once we figure in the splintered character of the continentally inspired part of the community, things seem even more immature. While the community of philosophical inquirers may have much room for growth, that doesn't mean that really good work hasn't been done in a number of important areas by some philosophers--such as Plato, Aristotle, Scotus, Aquinas, Hume, Mill, Kant, Peirce, etc. In response to your other question, I suspect that the number of philosophers who have read CP 5.189 is quite low. In my estimate, the larger collection of his works are what matter for understanding the development of his ideas and arguments--and not any one passage. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Jerry Rhee <jerryr...@gmail.com> Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2016 2:12 PM To: John F Sowa Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Logical Universes and Categories Hi Jeff, I like what you have to say. Question on what you said: A quick look at the history of philosophy should be enough to confirm anyone's suspicions that, as a scientific form in inquiry, it is still in its relative infancy in working out its methods as compared to say, math or astronomy. Where in infancy is philosophy as a scientific form in inquiry? That is, have the most rigorous philosophers accepted CP 5.189 as a formalized starting point to explain unexplained phenomena? Thanks, Jerry Rhee On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 4:09 PM, John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net<mailto:s...@bestweb.net>> wrote: On 10/22/2016 3:44 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote: both explanations are based on belief; I really don't think either is open to empirical evidence. Peirce encouraged reasoning by hypothesis (abduction), but he insisted that the implications of those hypotheses be evaluated by testing (purposive action) and observation (perception). He was highly skeptical about philosophers who proposed hypotheses that could not be related, directly or indirectly, to perception and action. In an earlier note, I cited the recent lecture by Susan Haack: http://www.jfsowa.com/ikl/Haack16.pdf In slide 6, she included a photo of Peirce and wrote "Peirce urged that philosophy be undertaken in the same spirit as the best work of the sciences, and that it should rely on experience as well as reason." In slide 7, she quoted two phrases by Peirce: "sham reasoning" by theologians and "lawless rovers on the sea of literature." At the end (slide 84), she included a photo of Bertrand Russell sitting in an armchair and wrote "the idea that philosophy can be conducted purely a priori is an illusion ... but a seductive one." I'm sure that Peirce would have been happy to know that people were still reading, analyzing, and debating his writings a century later. But I doubt that he would approve of "lawless rovers" on the sea of what he wrote. Instead, he would want his readers to continue the work he could no longer do: evaluate his hypotheses against their own experience (by phaneroscopy) and by empirical evidence gathered and published by others. The debate in this thread is useful. Speculation about what he meant should be tested against the many versions of his writings, but they should also be compared to the theories and empirical evidence of the past century. I believe that Peirce's writings improve on many of his successors. His writings about indexicals (based on his long analysis of language) are a great improvement on the armchair philosophers: e.g., Russell's hypothesis about definite descriptions, Perry's essential indexical, and most of the speculation about proper names in possible worlds. John ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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