Clark, List: I agree; I think that Peirce would have the same distaste for rigid political ideologies--regardless of where they fall on the spectrum--that he clearly had for rigid theological dogmas, and for much the same reasons.
Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote: > > On Nov 28, 2016, at 2:57 PM, Gary Richmond <gary.richm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > I prefer to find a value in the 'tension' between bottom-up and top-down > solutions which Clark hinted at. I'm not at all sure what Peirce's > preferences would be in this matter. > > As I said Peirce (especially in his mature phase) lived during the rise of > Bizmarkian progressivism. While that movement suffered from a lack of > humility in terms of what one could control, it also faced a system with > little interstate commerce and relatively low technology. The world we live > in today is simply radically different in terms of how integrated it is. > Peirce may well offer compelling abstract principles. However I’m far from > convinced even if we knew his preferences it’d tell us much about how to > act today. The world changed too much with the inflection point of WWII > decades after Peirce’s death. > > I think keeping the tension between emergent and top down approaches is > important. But far more important is being open to data and testing our > solutions. Neither of which is terribly common among politics or activists > in particular. There’s lots of confirmation bias and outright dismissal of > uncomfortable facts by all sides. That much more than privileging causal > directions seems the problem. Or, to put it in Peirce’s terms, we tend to > block off inquiry especially when it tends to confirm a preference of the > political outgroup. > > This keeping open inquiry seems to be the greatest value Peirce offers > politics and not a popular one (despite a lot of lip service). >
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