That's right, Stefan! It's a Peirce list - and I, and you, have no right to
take it over for a discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with Peirce. I
suggested going off-line but you, yourself, chose to keep it online and in
addition, to insult and sneer at me. That was your choice.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: sb
To: Edwina Taborsky ; Gary Richmond ; Peirce-L
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2016 12:53 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina,
oh, this is a Peirce list, that's interesting, isn't it? What kind of red
hering is this? You keep writing this stuff on this list for years over and
over again. Now, when someone asks you for some evidence of your "theory" you
say you can't provide it because this is a Peirce list? Why the heck do state
that stuff in the first place on this list over and over again?
Asking for evidence is quite a natural thing for scientists - not willing to
provide it for Thaideologists.
Got nothing more to say and ask.
Best,
Stefan
Am 20. November 2016 03:36:35 MEZ, schrieb Edwina Taborsky
<tabor...@primus.ca>:
Stefan - I can't deal with your questions on this list, as it is a site
devoted to Peirce - and Peirce has nothing to do with ecological analysis of
societal adaptation.
i may deal with it off-list - but your questions are, to me, rather
strange, for you seem to be approaching societal adaptation as if it were some
kind of chemical formula carried out in a laboratory. There are plenty of books
on 'cultural ecology' [look up the term]- which is basically what I'm talking
about [R. Netting, E. Moran.] And plenty of books dealing with non-industrial
societies, their physical environments, their societal systems, their
economies, their populations sizes..etc.
There are all kinds of data on population dynamics among various groups..
As for technological change - there are equally well-documented works on
the development of technology, the development of sources of energy [manpower,
animal, wind, water, fossil fuels, etc]. The development of towns, of currency,
roads, ...literacy etc...And there are plenty of books on societal organization
and the development of the middle class market economy in the West. [J.D.
Bernal, Ferdinand Braudel..]
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: sb
To: Gary Richmond ; Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2016 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina,
where can we find these descriptive data? Did you use archival data? Did
you do any fieldwork? Has it been published? What sources do you draw on? How
did you conduct your qualitative research? What hypotheses guided your
qualitative research? Have documented how you get to your conclusions? Could
you provide us your analytical framework? What are the exact cases you did
study? What are the dimensions of comparison between the cases? Where are they
similar? Where are they different? What is your ecological analysis based on?
Where did you get the ecological data? How did you link it with the cases you
have studied? Have your heard of Qualitative Comparative Analysis?
In short: Could you please provide us information on what data you did
use, where to find these data, how you analyzed the data and where to find the
documentation of your analysis to back up any of your claims?
"Looking" at "the West", "late industrialism" and "climate", is a bit
abstract, isn't it? I would really appreciate if you could elaborate a bit more
on data and how you arrived at your conclusions, than on the conclusions
themselfes.
Best,
Stefan
Am 20. November 2016 01:35:38 MEZ, schrieb Edwina Taborsky
<tabor...@primus.ca>:
Stefan - the analysis is based on descriptive data of the ecological
anthropological analyses of various socioeconomic peoples - hunting/gathering;
the different types of agriculturalism - wet and dry horticulture, pastoral
nomadic, rainfall agriculture...and early and late industrialism. It includes
first a consideration of the ecological realities in the area; second the
socioeconomic descriptions of the way [kinship, political, legal] that people
have adapted to those ecological realities..and third, the history and
technological developments ...particularly of the West. Why the West? Because
it has the richest most fertile biome on the planet - which is why its
population kept increasing and why it eventually had to, with difficulty,
change its technology to support that increased population.
Data would be based around ecological factors: arable land and soil,
water type and availability [ie, desert, tundra, seasonal, irrigation,
rainfall, rainforest..] ; climate and temperatures; plant and animal types and
the domestication capacities of both; carrying capacity of the land; carrying
capacity of the technology to extract food/sustenance;
Then, you'd look at population size. And then societal systems - such
as kinship systems, and political systems.
There is no lab test possible; there are no falsifying assumptions.
It's pure description of 'the ecological realities and the societal forms of
actual peoples. Then, one can generalize. And it's interesting to see how
peoples - completely out of touch with each other - have nevertheless developed
the SAME societal structures if they are in similar ecological realities.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: sb
To: Edwina Taborsky ; Gary Richmond ; Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2016 6:35 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina,
i would be really interested how you tackled such a complex
theoretical concept empirically.
Which historic datasets of demography and economics did you use? To
build up such a database must have been quite labourious!
I would also be really interested in how you operationalized your
theory? What constructs and variables did you use? In which datasets are they
found? How did you model your assumptions statistically?
In testing your theory, what were your initial hypotheses? Where have
you been able to falsify or verify your assumptions? Where did you struggle
empirically because of data quality?
Best,
Stefan
Am 19. November 2016 22:48:20 MEZ, schrieb Edwina Taborsky
<tabor...@primus.ca>:
Yes - I've taught this relationship between economics, population
size and political infrastructure for about 20 years. No- it's not really in
the Architectonics book. It IS in a graphic book, The Graphic Guide to
Socioeconomics - which a retired CEO banker and myself have just finished
[about 170 slides]....which deals with the pragmatic relations between
population size and economic modes and political modes. I am not sure if I
should attach it since is has nothing to do with Peirce. It's a powerpoint
presentation which we are planning to promote as a 'graphic guide for dummies'
on the topic, so to speak.
That is - we tried to make it clear that democracy, which means
'political power of the majority decision' is suitable only in large
population, flexible-risktaking- growth economies, and unsuitable in small
population no-growth steady-state economies which must ensure their economic
continuity by focusing on retaining the capacity-to-make-wealth by stable
measures [control of the land, control of the cattle, control of fishing
rights, etc].
And we've been very surprised in our test runs with various people
- how many people don't understand the basic issues of growth/no growth
economies, carrying capacity of the economy; growth vs steady-state
populations; what is a middle class; what is capitalism; the role of risk; the
role of individuals..etc. etc.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Richmond
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2016 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
Edwina, list,
You've clearly given this a lot of prior thought, Edwina. I want
to reflect on wht you wrote and see what others think before commenting
further. Btw, would looking again at your book, Architectonics of Semiosis, for
example, Chapter 2, "Purity and Power," be of any value in this discussion (as
I initially began reading it I recall that in an off-list message you commented
that in some ways you were now seeing things quite differently than you did in
1998)?
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Edwina Taborsky
<tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
Gary R- that's an interesting topic.
1) I'd like to first comment that democracy, as a political
system for arriving at authoritative government decisions, is the 'right'
method but ONLY in a very large population with a growth economy and a growth
population. That is, political systems have FUNCTIONS; the function is: who has
the societal right to make decisions among this population?
In economies which are no-growth, such as all the
pre-industrial agricultural and horticultural economies which dominated the
planet until the industrial age, democracy is dysfunctional. That is, all
political systems must privilege the wealth-producing sectors of the
population. If your economy is agricultural/horticultural - which can only
produce enough wealth to support a steady-state or no-growth population, then,
the political system must put the authority to make decisions in the control of
the owners of wealth production; i.e., the landowners. This control over the
land must be hereditary [you can't have fights over ownership], and limited
[you can't split up the land into minuscule small farms]. Democracy, which
puts decision-making into the hands of the majority, doesn't work in such an
economy.
When the economy moves to a growth mode [and enables a growth
population], the political system must empower those sectors of the population
which make an economy grow. This is the middle class - a non-hereditary set of
the population, made up of private individual/small group businesses. This
economic mode is highly flexible [new business can start, succeed, fail];
extremely adaptable and enables rapid population growth. As such an economic
mode, political decision-making must fall into the control of this middle class
- and we have the emergence of elected legislatures and the disappearance of
hereditary authority.
For a growth economy to work, it must support individual rights
[to invent, differ from the norm, to succeed AND fail] so that failure, for
example, will only affect those few individuals and not a whole
village/collective. Therefore, individualism must be stressed and empowered; a
growth economy must enable novelty, innovation, freedom of the periphery....as
well as success, which is measured by the adoption by the collective of that
product/service. FOR A WHILE.
2) But - it seems that the definition and function of democracy
in Dewey does not deal with the economy and the questions of the production of
wealth and size of population. Instead, it deals with social issues - Talisse
writes:
"The core of Deweyan democracy can be stated as follows.
Deweyan democracy is substantive rather than proceduralist, communicative
rather than aggregative,and deep rather than statist. I shall take these
contrasts in order.Deweyan democracy is substantive insofar as it rejects any
attempt to separate politics and deeper normative concerns. More precisely,
Dewey held that the democratic political order is essentially a moral order,
and, further, he held that democratic participation is an essential constituent
ofthe good life and a necessary constituent for a “truly human way of
living”.... Dewey rejects the idea thatit consists simply in processes of
voting, campaigning, canvassing, lobbying, and petitioning in service of one’s
individual preferences; that is, Dewey held democratic participation is
essentially communicative, it consists in the willingness of citizens to engage
in activity by which they may “convince and be convinced by reason” (MW 10:404)
and come to realize“values prized in common” (LW 13:71).
The above seems to me, to be a social relations account - and
doesn't deal with the fact that democracy as a political system, empowers a
particular segment of the population - the middle class, in an economy based
around individual private sector small businesses. It has nothing to do with
'the good life' or a 'truly human way of living'. Nomadic pastoralists, and
land-based feudal agriculture were also 'human ways of living.
3) From the Stanford Encyclopaedia, I found the following on
Dewey:
"As Dewey puts it, ‘men are not isolated non-social atoms, but
are men only when in intrinsic relations’ to one another, and the state in turn
only represents them ‘so far as they have become organically related to one
another, or are possessed of unity of purpose and interest’ (‘The Ethics of
Democracy’,EW1, 231-2).
Dewey is anti-elitist, and argues that the capacity of the wise
few to discern the public interest tends to be distorted by their position.
Democratic participation is not only viewed as a bulwark against government by
elites, but also as an aspect of individual freedom– humanity cannot rest
content with a good ‘procured from without.’ Furthermore, democracy is not
‘simply and solely a form of government’, but a social and personal ideal; in
other words, it is not only a property of political institutions but of a wide
range of social relationships.
The above, seems to me, at this first glimpse, to totally
ignore the economic mode - and again, some economies whose wealth production
rests in stable, no-growth methods [land food production] MUST ensure the
stability of this economy by confining it to the few, i.e., those elites'...the
wise few if you want to call them that'.
That is - the to put power in the majority/commonality rests
with the economic mode. Certainly, Peirce's community of scholars was a method
of slowly, gradually, arriving at 'the truth'. But this has nothing, absolutely
nothing, to do with governance and the question of who in a collective has the
ultimate authority to make political decisions. That is, political decisions
are not really, I suggest, the same as scientific or 'truth-based' inquiries.
There is no ultimate 'best way' for much is dependent on resources, population
size, environment..
And, I don't see a focus on the required capacity of a growth
economy for rapid flexible adaptation - which HAS to be focused around the
individual. That is, risk-taking shouldn't involve the WHOLE collective, but
only a few individuals.
4) As for Peirce's philosophy of democracy - again, Talisse
writes:
"the Peircean view relies upon no substantive
moral vision. The Peircean justifies democratic institutions
and norms strictly in terms of a set of substantive epistemic commitments. It
says that no matter what one believes about the good life, the nature of the
self, the meaning of human existence, or the value of community, one has reason
to support a robust democratic political order of the sort described above
simply in virtue of the fact that one holds beliefs. Since the Peircean
conception of democracy does not contain a doctrine about “the one, ultimate,
ethical ideal of humanity” (EW 1:248), it can duly acknowledge the fact of
reasonable pluralism. p 112
This seems to suggest that a societal system that enables
exploratory actions by individuals is a 'robust democracy'. And, since a growth
economic mode, that can support growth populations, requires risk-taking by
flexible individuals to deal with current pragmatic problems - then, this seems
to be a stronger political system.
My key point is that the political system, economic mode and
population size are intimately related.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Richmond
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2016 2:59 PM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Democracy
List,
I read Robert B. Talisse's A Pragmatist Philosophy of
Democracy (2007) a few year ago and was thinking of it again today, in part
prompted by an op-ed piece in The New York Times by Roger Cohen which quotes H.
L. Mencken (see below). At the time of my reading PPD, I was not at all
convinced that Talisee had demonstrated his principal thesis, namely, that we
ought replace the inadequate, in his opinion, Dewyan approach to thinking about
democracy with a Peircean based approach. This is how David Hildebrand (U. of
Colorado) outlined Talisse's argument in a review in The Notre Dame
Philosophical Review.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23707-a-pragmatist-philosophy-of-democracy/
[Hildebrand] As I read PPD, I kept returning to two
fundamental propellants powering Talisse's argument for a Peircean-based
democratic theory. The first is constructive: his quest for a lean,
non-normative pragmatist inquiry to provide just enough of a philosophical
basis for a broadly effective conception of democracy. The second is
destructive: the argument that political theorists should reject Dewey's
self-refuting philosophy of democracy. Taken together, the insight is this: get
over Dewey and accept this particular Peirce and we get just what we need from
pragmatism for the purposes of democracy.
Hildebrand's review is a good introduction to the PPD. While
I'm not much of a Deweyan, and I wouldn't presume to argue for or against his
ideas, yet I don't think Talisse makes a strong case for a Peircean approach to
political theory on democracy,.
I should add, however, that Talisse is, in my opinion, a very
good thinker and an excellent writer. Besides this book, over the years I've
read a number of his scholarly articles and heard him speak in NYC and
elsewhere. PPD is definitely worth reading, while those with a Deweyan
democracy bent will probably find themselves arguing with him nearly point for
point (as Hildebrand pretty much does). On the other hand, the concluding
chapter on Sidney Hook is valuable in its own right. As Talisse writes:
Hook's life stands as an inspiring image of democratic
success; for success consists precisely in the activity of political engagement
by means of public inquiry.
I haven't got my e-CP available, so I can't locate
references, but it seems to me that Peirce's view of democracy as I recall it
is, if not nearly anti-democratic (I vaguely recall some passages in a letter
to Lady Welby), it may at least be closer to H. L. Mencken's:
As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On
some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their
heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
I doubt that a discussion of PPD would be very valuable, but
it might be interesting to at least briefly reflect on Peirce's views of
democracy. As I recall,he hasn't much to say about democracy in what's
published in the CP and the other writings which have been made available to
us. Perhaps more will be uncovered in years to come as his complete
correspondence is published in W (I probably won't be alive for that as I
understand that it will probably be the last or near last volume in W, and at
the snail's pace the W is moving. . .)
Meanwhile, can anyone on the list offer some Peirce
quotations which might help quickly clarify his views on democracy? I would, of
course, hope that if there is some discussion here that we keep to a strictly
theoretical discussion, especially in light of the strong feelings generated by
the recent American presidential election.
Best,
Gary R
st Philosophy of Democracy
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690
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