Peircers,
I added a few items to my ledger of loose threads and critical points.
As the fog clears — in my head, not so much out-of-doors — I begin to
see that one of the biggest talking (past-each-other) points turns on
the difference between metaphysical and methodological applications
of maxims like Ockham's Razor and the Pragmatic Maxim. For my part,
I treat them as critical or heuristic maxims for guiding inquiry and
the big question is how to apply them judiciously on an ongoing basis.
This makes for a more modest application than their use as components
of some all-encompassing Weltanschauung. As far as that goes, and as
far as the current state of human wisdom goes, I cannot see that the
human race has evolved far enough to say anything compelling about
Being Its Own Self.
Regards,
Jon
JAS: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00013.html
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00055.html
JA: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Doctrine_Of_Individuals
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00058.html
>
> I've been away and haven't been able to track the entire thread
> but it's ground we've been over many times before and the bits
> I've been able to sample seem to fall into familiar patterns.
>
> Generally speaking I haven't observed that much difficulty with the
> use of these words in logic, math, science, or even to a large extent
> in ordinary language, probably because practical use demands a modicum
> of flexibility and context-sensitivity from the relevant language users.
> It is only when people try to make metaphysical hay out of these simple
> signs that a certain rigidity sets in and disputes of a quasi-religious
> character begin to rule the day.
JR: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00059.html
>
> I imagine Peirce happy and it’s not simply the struggle that was enough
> to fill his heart. Rather, he knew that the harvest has come, at last,
> and to him, that harvest seems a wild one. His discovery was a tool
> to enhance movement.
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00060.html
>
> Indeed, there is a strong resonance from Peirce to Camus —
>
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/03/26/a-determined-soul/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/03/30/pragmatism-meets-absurdity/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/04/11/slip-slidin-away/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/04/22/absurdum-quid/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/04/23/revolt-freedom-passion/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/05/06/rock-on/
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/05/22/strangers-in-paradise/
>
> And Peirce of course has mapped out the mountain —
>
> https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/05/31/definition-and-determination-4/
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00063.html
>
> We've been through the nominalism versus realism question so many times that
> I can't think of anything fresh to say about it. When the use of words like
> Universal, General, Continuous vs. Particular, Singular, Individual comes up
> I find it more useful to focus on the pragmatics of language use relative to
> the context of interpretation, frame of reference, sign relational space, or
> universe of discourse at hand than to go chasing after ontological absolutes.
>
> But I did find this previous comment on Houser on Forster on Peirce while
> I was looking for something else, and it reflects my sense that Peirceans
> have more trouble controlling that slippery slide toward what I've called
> “essentialism” or “ontologism” than they do checking nominalistic drift.
>
>
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/09/21/nominalism-and-essentialism-are-the-scylla-and-charybdis-that-pragmatism-must-navigate-its-middle-way-between/
ET: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00064.html
JR: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00065.html
CG: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00066.html
JR: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00067.html
KM: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00068.html
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00070.html
>
> I'm still looking for better terms than “essentialism” or “ontologism”
> to explain the problem that I'm seeing here. Essentialism is not the
> same thing as Platonism or any realism about supra-individual entities.
> I personally don't have any objection to realism about Platonic Forms
> or Ideas, maybe because I'm doing most of my thinking in mathematical
> forms, where Pythagoras rules.
>
> The problem I'm trying to point out has to do with the excessive or even
> exclusive reliance on monadic predicates applied to putative individuals
> to describe everything. In many ways, then, the kind of essentialism or
> ontologism I'm talking about has the same defects as nominalism, because
> it falls into the same lack of critical reflection about individuals and
> fails to take the reality of supra-individual entities or relations into
> account.
JAS: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00072.html
>
> Would "individualism" perhaps be a more appropriate term for the tendency
> that you have in mind? As I hinted earlier in the discussion, I see Peirce
> as having made an important distinction between "singular" as that which is
> absolutely determinate (including place and time) vs. "individual" as that
> which is determinate in some respects and indeterminate (i.e., general)
> in others (including place and time). Peirce took the singular in this
> complete sense to be an ideal, rather than a reality. By contrast, it
> seems to me that nominalism treats these two concepts as largely
> equivalent.
>
> What is the remedy for "excessive or even exclusive reliance on
> monadic predicates applied to putative individuals to describe
> everything"? Presumably it is necessary, but not sufficient,
> to recognize the reality of the corresponding medads — qualities
> that are what they are independent of anything else. We also
> need to recognize the reality of dyads, triads, and other
> relations, including habits and laws that *govern* individuals.
> Is this your concern, or is there even more to it than that?
JFS: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00074.html
>
> The issues about universals and essences have been with us for a couple
> of millennia, and nobody has a proposed useful definition that everyone
> can accept. Peirce developed his semiotic as a foundation that *avoids*
> those terms.
CG: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00080.html
>
> Do you mean it in more Aristotelean terms? I guess I'm missing something here.
CG: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00100.html
>
> As I think through the dispute I think really what we're getting at is
> Peirce's notion of the Universe of Discourse. The question then becomes
> what distinguishes or differentiates one universe of discourse from an other?
> We recognize that there is not just one universe of discourse. For Peirce to
> denote is to put the sign in relation to the object of common communication.
> That is, a universe of discourse.
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00102.html
>
> I believe this is getting close to the heart of the issue.
> Already by 1870 Peirce introduces a radical departure in
> the status of individuals, and everything based on them.
> Namely, he shifts individuality from a category of being
> to a category of description, relative to a particular
> discourse situation that we may variously conceive as
> a context of interpretation, an extended sign relation,
> a frame of reference, or a universe of discourse.
> Another way of saying it is that individuality
> becomes interpretive and relative rather than
> ontological and absolute.
ET: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00108.html
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00112.html
JA: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Limited_Mark_Universes
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00116.html
JA:
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2017/01/17/survey-of-relation-theory-%e2%80%a2-3/
SRC: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00201.html
>
> Peirce was more than a pingpong ball in a long and repetitive
> exegetical battle involving I suppose the core group of this
> forum. But I have had enough. I simply will not open mail
> from the correspondents until something that is not a binary
> ether-or argument that dwells on "what Peirce thinks" as
> though he has not changed himself in a century. Sorry
> for the rant and if I am alone in my reaction then I
> will willingly confess to having lost patience and
> being somewhat saddened by it all.
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00208.html
JA:
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2014/08/02/%e2%98%af-quantum-mechanics-%e2%98%af/
EC: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00218.html
>
> I must admit that I find much of the recent discussion baffling.
> In part, this is because I have never had anyone explain the
> Nominalism-Realism distinction in a way that made sense to me.
> Don't get me wrong, I think I understand the argument in the
> ancient context. However, one of the biggest appeals of
> American Philosophy, for me, is its ability to eliminate
> (or disarm) longstanding philosophical problems.
>
> With that in mind, I have never been able to make sense of
> the nominalist-realist debate in the context of Peirce (or
> James, etc.). The best I can do is to wonder: If I am, in
> a general sense, a realist, in that I think people respond
> to things (without any a priori dualistic privileging of
> mental things vs. physical things), what difference does
> it make if I think collections-of-responded-to-things are
> "real" as a collection, or just a collection of "reals"?
>
> I know it might be a big ask, but could someone give an attempt
> at explaining it to me? Either the old fashioned way, by explaining
> what issue is at argument here .... or, if someone is feeling even
> more adventurous, by explaining what practical difference it makes
> in my action which side of this debate I am on (i.e., what habit
> will I have formed if I firmly believe one way or the other?).
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00219.html
>
> Looking back over the month and the last couple of decades on the List
> I think the interminable quality of many debates about Nominalism vs.
> Realism are due to the attempts by many to pin Peirce down on a map
> of the Ancient World, philosophically speaking, whereas Peirce was
> one of the leading figures in a movement that reshaped that map
> in radically new ways.
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00224.html
JA:
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/01/20/pragmatism-about-theoretical-entities-1/
JFS: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00237.html
>
> For a nominalist, a function or relation *is* a set of n-tuples.
> For a realist, the _intension_ of a function or relation is a rule,
> law, principle, or axiom. The _extension_ is the set of tuples
> determined by that rule, law, principle, or axiom.
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00238.html
>
> The distinction between nominal thinking and real thinking is distinct from
> the distinction between extensional thinking and intensional thinking, as one
> can see from the fact that extreme nominalists do not admit sets as entities.
> Peirce admitted both extensions and intensions of concepts, as integrated in
> his theory of information. This is just another one of the ways that Peirce
> was able to bypass the whole aporia, boondoggle, debacle, gridlock, whatever
> you want call it that had bedeviled the issue of universals up to that time.
JFS: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00241.html
JA: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00245.html
>
> The following post from about this time 2 years ago pretty well summarizes
> my current view of the whole nominalism vs. realism controversy. To be as
> brief as possible, I do not see the issue as reflecting some cosmic battle
> between good and evil, but simply a matter of what rules are best to adopt
> for the direction of our ingenuities.
>
> We are all nominalists, or Ockhamists, to the extent that we recognize the
> practical sensibility of guiding our inquiries according to one or another
> principle of economy. It is only the extreme nominalist who turns Ockham's
> Razor into Ockham's Chainsaw Massacre, but there the problem lies with the
> extremism, not with the practical utility of the Razor.
>
> We are all realists to the extent that we do not go about kicking everything
> that “looks like a rock” just to see if it “really is a rock”. But not all
> descriptions describe anything and problems arise when we confuse the being
> of a sign for the sign of a being.
>
>
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/01/20/pragmatism-about-theoretical-entities-1/
JC: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00250.html
EC: https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2017-01/msg00270.html
>
> I don't mean to seem obtuse or obstructionist, but this still seems like
> exactly the type of conflict that Pragmatism should be able to render moot,
> rather than have a side on. I note that while no one above has made quite
> so bold a statement, a few people seem to have chimed in to say that they
> think the distinction is of little importance.
> ...
> In that context, once you have Peirce's definition of "real",
> the only coherent thing the philosophical nominalist could be
> arguing is that there will be no end-time-agreement about what
> types of things are worth labeling or what any labels should be.
> Is that what is going on here?
On 3/17/2015 9:16 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
Inquiry Blog
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2015/01/20/pragmatism-about-theoretical-entities-1/
Peirce List
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15467
FS:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15800
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15817
FS:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15818
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15826
JC:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15832
FS:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15857
FS:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15858
JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15860
--
academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
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