Eric, Jon S., list,
I don't think that the nominalist and realist views are symmetrical as
you suggest with regard to generals and individuals. A Peircean realist
will say that individuals have some generality but still can only be in
one place at a time, unlike "more-general" generals, and would never say
that every term designating an individual is a mere _/flatus vocis/_ as
many a nominalist has called every general term. The individual in
Peirce's view is not a mere construct but instead is forced indexically
on a mind by reaction and resistance. Peirce somewhere also says that a
universe of discourse is likewise distinguished indexically. For Peirce,
the individual is the reactive/resistant, and reaction/resistance is
Secondness, a basic phaneroscopic category.
Let's bring into your apple-picker scenario some non-extraneous generals
that would make a difference between the two apple pickers. For example,
they get into an argument about which apples each of them is allowed to
pick. Apple picker Alf says that he's allowed to pick any apples only in
the eastern area and that apple picker Beth is allowed to pick any
apples only in the western area, while Beth says that each of them
should be able to pick any apples anywhere in the area. Alf says that
the rules prescribe the east-west split, while Beth says that those
rules are unfair and should be ignored or evaded. Alf says not that the
rules are fair but instead that there is no such thing as "fair" apart
from what the rules state in individual documents or announcements. Beth
doesn't expound a full-blown doctrine of either natural law or
revolutionary justice, but simply insists, "fair is fair." I won't say
that Alf is a strict nominalist and Beth a strict scholastic realist,
but just that they tend respectively toward nominalism (Alf) and realism
(Beth). At their respective worsts, Alf promotes conformity with a cruel
and unjust regime, while Beth promotes the breakdown of the rule of law.
Alf's attitude is more congenial to the idea that there is no idea of
fairness above that of the state. On the other hand, some nominalists
would argue that nominalism and the more-nominalistic brands of
positivism are at least a good holding action against the militant ideas
that contributed to the vast bloodshed in the 20th Century. My picture
doesn't quite converge with Edwina's picture but I don't mean to deny
her picture either. Nominalism and realism are pretty general ideas that
could get rooted in practice in disparate ways.
I once read a web page where somebody argued that HTML markup that
complies with official, explicit HTML standards is right "by
definition." This was as if the standards themselves had not been
devised according to some more general and probably less definite idea
of what standards should be like and as if there could be no idea of
HTML rightness that would require the revision of the official, explicit
standards promulgated on individual dates in specific documents by the
World Wide Web Consortium. Now, for a while the Mozilla Firefox browser
adhered to the standards in certain cases where the standards were
problematic. I don't think that the Firefox designers denied the need
for revised standards, based on a more general idea of standards, but
they didn't like the idea of rebellion by browser designers (such
rebellion does make it more difficult to design web pages that work in
all browsers). But they took this "letter of the law" attitude to an
extreme. (I'm thinking in particular of how Firefox treated two or more
directly successive hyphens in a hidden comment - IIRC, it treated them
as a hidden comment's closing tag (except the double hyphen in the
opening tag), whereas other browsers and most webpage designers treated
-->, a double hyphen followed directly by a greater-than sign, as the
one and only way to do a hidden comment's closing tag. For a while I
found myself deleting or replacing with equals-signs many strings of
hyphens that Joe Ransdell had placed between hidden-comment tags at
Arisbe. Anyway, Mozilla finally gave in and said something like "We
don't have to change our browser for this, but we will.")
Best, Ben
On 2/6/2017 9:58 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
JS said: In other words, the nominalist says that reality consists
entirely of individuals, so generals are only names we use to
facilitate discourse; while the (Peircean) realist says that reality
consists entirely of generals, so individuals are only names we use to
facilitate discourse. If so, how does this help answer Eric's
original question about the practical differences that one view
manifests relative to the other?
Uh oh.
I was rather satisfied with having decided, aided by the list
discussion, that - from a pragmatist perspective - nominalists were
/just/ people who denied that collective inquiry into categories leads
to convergence of ideas. But now (here and elsewhere) Nominalists are
again being attributed more positive beliefs, and my original question
resurfaces: What difference does it make? That is, what
distinction-of-consequences allows us to consider the ideas to be
different. This seems like the context in which parables are helpful.
-----
Imagine if you will, two apple pickers. They both pick apples, fill
baskets, and deliver the baskets to the back of nearby trucks. At the
end of the day, they get paid based on the number of baskets they
deliver to the truck. "Look at how similar those two are," you say to
yourself one day while watching them.
"Heck no," someone next to you says, and you realize you must have
been speaking your thoughts. You look inquisitively at the
interlocutor, and he continues. "I've known those two my entire life,
and they couldn't be more different. One is a nominalist, and the
other is a Peircian realist." You continue to look inquisitively, and
the stranger goes on.
"You see, Bill, on the left there, he doesn't believe that categories
or generalities like 'apple' exist at all. He conceives of himself as
picking up distinctly individual objects, and collecting them into
baskets, with each basket being distinct in every way from the next
basket. He sometimes points out, for example, that the 'red' color is
not identical between any two picked-objects, and that any two
containers of picked-objects are mind bogglingly different at an
atomic level. The whole notion that he is collecting 'apples' into
'baskets' that have any equivalence at all is /just/ , he insists, a
weird language game we have agreed to play, and doesn't correspond at
all with reality."
After that barrage of ideas, the man settles into silence, watching
the pickers.
"... and?..." you ply.
"Well, you see," he continued, after some thought, "in contrast, Jim,
over there on the right, believes that only generals are real, and the
idea that these apples are individuals is the flaw in our thinking.
After all, what makes 'that apple' any less misleading than any other
label of individuality. What about 'that apple' will be the same when
it gets to the store shelf? Heck, he would even claim that it is odd
to believe that Bill-on-the-left is the same person he was a year ago.
Bill-on-the-left has the properties of being a singular thing, but the
identity label itself is just convenient ways to refer to complex
composite beings, and don't get at any sort of 'essence' at all. Those
individual names are /just/ , he insist, a weird linguistic device to
facilitate discourse. Quite to the contrary, Jim would insist, if
there is anything going on here that honest inquirers would agree
about after the dust settles, it is that 'apples' were put in
'baskets', and that makes those generals real."
"Huh," you insist, "that is all very fascinating, but I can detect no
difference in their behavior that would correspond to such a dramatic
seeming difference in thinking. Do they not both pick, and bucket, and
deliver in the same manner? And wait in the same line, in the same
way, to receive the same pay, with the same sullenness?"
"Well yes," says the stranger, "but trust me, they are very, very
different. As I said, one is a nominalist, and the other a realist in
the pragmatic vein. Men with such contrasting sets of ideas couldn't
be more different."
"Huh," you repeat, "aside from the words and phrases they would invoke
in a conversation about the specific topic you brought up, what
conditions could we arrange so as to see the difference in belief
manifest as clear differences in behavior? (Granting probability, and
all that.) "
"Well, you couldn't," says the stranger, "they are differences in
belief, not differences in habit."
"Ah," you reply confidently, "it is too bad your thinking is not as
clear as mine. Belief is habit. As such, if there is no difference in
habit between the two that would - granted probability, and all that
- manifest itself under some arranged circumstances, then the two
beliefs are equivalent, no matter what the words might mislead you
into thinking. Thus, if you don't mind, I'll continue to think that
the two people are very similar."
Another long pause ensued, and the man offered, sounding less certain,
"Well, I suppose they would relatively-reflexively complain
differently, under circumstances we could arrange, and those
differences-in-verbal-complaint would be logically connected with the
distinction I have pointed out."
"Ah," you reply again, "I suppose that might indeed count as a
habit-of-thought, or something like that. But I already mentioned that
I am concerned with the ideas, not the words used to express the
ideas. And even if I were to allow mere differences in verbal
responses, which I am not sure I am terribly inclined to do, that
would surely be amongst the least of differences worth considering,
and so I will still - thank you very much - view them as quite
similar. Good day."
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps
On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 12:36 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt
<jonalanschm...@gmail.com <mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > wrote:
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