John, I see your point, but I consider the shift to nominalism far more
important than is suggested by its being a 'weaker hypothesis than Realism'.
My view is that the shift to nominalism was a huge 'tectonic' transformation in
western society, actually admitting, allowing that the 'common man working in
the fields' not only had the societal right but admitting that he had the
capacity-to-see-the truth. All by himself. Without any dictates from a higher
Intelligentsia. That was a monumental shift, rivalling the Magna Carta in its
effects, freeing ALL individuals from subservience to a higher class and
enabling an explosion of diverse perspectives - and - the development of new
technology.
Of course, the downside is that, by denying that there was an 'essential
Reality' beyond individual perception - you are left with postmodern relativism
where Truth doesn't exist; all that 'exists' are subjective opinions. Realism
as you point out, accepts that there is an 'essential Reality', a general
essence common to all individual instantiations [type and token] - even though
it also accepts that we cannot directly connect to it. Realism therefore sets
up a framework that denies relativism and thus sets up the Peircean 'community
of scholars' as vital in exploration, unlike the nominalist view where a
community is almost irrelevant.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: John Collier
To: Jerry LR Chandler ; Eric Charles
Cc: Peirce List ; Helmut Raulien
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2017 5:36 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism
Jerry, List,
Nominalism is a weaker hypothesis than Realism, so if something is consistent
with realism, then it is consistent with nominalism. Locked, for example,
distinguished between the nominal essence and the real essence. The former
tells us what we think something is like, while the latter is what the thing is
really like. According to his semiotic theory we only have access to the
nominal essence, which is constructed from our experience. The real essence we
can never directly know. We can get at it only via other signs, which makes
them, by his account, nominal. He also thought that meaning usually followed
the nominal essence, which is historically questionable, but the difference
between what we take to be the real essence and the nominal essence has to be a
nominal distinction. There are no unmediated signs of reality and, for Locke,
there is no way to get out of this mediated representation. Peirce thought we
could get out of this by abduction, but empiricists don't allow this as part of
logic. Nominalism says nothing else about the real essence of things. Realists
have to add something in order to make their claims. Empiricists typically
claim that we don't need anything more to do science.
So, logically the consistency of realism entails the consistency of
nominalism.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chand...@mac.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2017 9:51:30 PM
To: Eric Charles
Cc: Peirce List; Helmut Raulien
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism
Eric:
On Jan 28, 2017, at 4:23 PM, Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> wrote:
In my view of sytems theory, a system is more than it´s parts, of course,
and what is more, is real and natural. But in my opinion "natural" does not
mean "good for us". A sytem that contains other systems,
Beyond statistics, I am not aware of your scientific background. Indeed, I
am interested in your views as a statistician with regard to part-whole
illations. For several years, in the 1990’s, I taught a course (at the NIH)
entitled “ Health Risk Analysis” that was an inquiry into the logic of
distributions and pragmatic public health assessment of the “realism” of
chemical and radiation exposures.
The questions raised in these lectures was a factor that contributed to my
study of logic and CSP’s writings. In my view, Peirce was first a chemist and
logician, and later added to these belief systems various conjectures about
other philosophies. Again, in my view, Peirce crafted his logical beliefs to
be consistent with the chemical sciences as they stood in his era, an era when
the chemical sciences were undergoing rapid development.
Now, some “leading principles” behind my questions to you. The meta-physical
notion of “nominalism” is simply not consistent with the basic foundational
structures of the chemical sciences as it stood in the late 19 th Century.
Hence, CSP was faced with the logical tension between the empirical evidence
and the structural logic of chemical graph theory with the meta-physical
principle of nominalism.
The consequences of this logical tension are far-reaching. CSP introduces
the ‘leading principles’ to ground the historical developments of CSP’s
numerous attempts to update his philosophical premises of “relationism” to be
consistent with scientific developments during his era - his efforts to
construct a atomic table of elements, chemical bonding, electricity as
particles, thermodynamics, handedness of molecules, the nature of thought, etc.
These scientific developments led directly to his notions of mathematical
“relations" as grammatical objects, and his constructive notion of graph
theory.
With these facts as background, I would venture to say that, in part, CSP
rejected the meta-physical notion of nominalism because of the role that the
concept of “name” in chemical calculations.
The role of a chemical name, in its primary scientific function, expresses a
illation between a collection of properties and an individual object
(singular).
Two or more chemical names, when combined, generate a new name.
Sodium and chlorine combine to form a new name, a new particular, a new
individual, a new concept with new attributes..
Hydrogen and oxygen combine to form a new name, a new particular, a new
individual, a new concept with new attributes.
And so forth for any combination of any number of chemical elements.
These facts manifest themselves concretely. Mathematical calculations for all
chemicals are based on the concepts of atomic weight, atomic valence, molecular
weight, molecular formula, molecular structure, molecular handedness and
molecular forms. Physical measurements are used to determine the parameters
for these calculations.
Although these simple facts are well documented for a huge number of
examples, the logical implications are almost universally rejected in the
philosophies of man and nature - for example the philosophy of mathematics (set
theory and category theory, etc.) and physics.
The relationship between the primary role of chemical names as atomic numbers
and molecule numbers and the mathematical notion of a statistical variable or a
dynamic variable is a secondary role for describing the change in chemical
names. (See, for example, the works of Rene Thom on the birth and death of
forms.)
Today, at least in the scientific world in which I work, it is very rare to
meet a nominalist.
Nevertheless, it appears to me, that many, if not most, bio-semioticians are
nominalists!
May I ask how you view the role of nominalism in the philosophy of
statistics?
More particularly, what would be the role of nominalism in the expression of
an associative law?
And in the expression a distributive law?
Cheers
Jerry
Research Professor
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
George Mason University
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