Eric, none of the statements that you quoted in your 2/14/2017 message
originate with Peirce.
Peirce held that logic generally involves icons (including diagrams and
not only graphic-looking ones), indices, and symbols, and he saw all
three kinds of signs as needed. Remember also that Peirce so defined
'symbol' that plenty of symbols are not words and some words are not
symbols.
You wrote in your subsequent message:
One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by all
evidence) have lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e.,
they cannot /do/ language), and yet those people otherwise seem to
think perfectly well.
I remember a course on Merleau-Ponty decades ago in which the professor
discussed patients who could no longer think about absent things. He
said that they had lost their "symbolic function" - taking "symbol" in
an old traditional sense as sign of something not perceived, especially
something not perceivable, picturable, etc. I can't say off-hand whether
those patients had completely lost their ability to think in symbols in
Peirce's sense.
I don't know whether Peirce held that actual people usually think in
words or in any particular kind of signs, and what basis he would have
offered for the claim; anyway it wouldn't be a philosophical statement,
but a psychological statement, and Peirce was as adverse to basing
cenoscopic philosophy (including philosophical logic) on psychology as
he was to to basing pure mathematics on psychology. When he discusses
semiotics and logic, he is discussing how one ought to think, not how
people actually do think.
Peirce said of himself:
I do not think that I ever _/reflect/_ in words. I employ visual
diagrams, firstly because this way of thinking is my natural
language of self-communication, and secondly, because I am convinced
that it is the best system for the purpose
[MS 629, p. 8, quoted in _The Existential Graphs of Charles S.
Peirce_, p. 126, by Don D. Roberts]
Google preview:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4K30wCAf-gC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=%22I+do+not+think+I+ever+reflect+in+words:+I+employ+visual+diagrams%22
Peirce described corollarial deduction as verbal and philosophical, and
theorematic deduction as diagrammatic and mathematical. He seemed to
have a higher opinion of the latter, which is not unusual for a
mathematician.
Peirce left innumerable drawings among his papers. I somewhere read that
a considerable percentage of his papers consisted in drawings, I seem to
remember "60%" but I'm not sure. A project involving those drawings (and
accumulating an archive of reproductions ofthem) resulted in the
publication of a book:
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/newbooks.htm#engel_queisner_viola
<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/newbooks.htm#engel_queisner_viola>
Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. [Visual Thinking:
Charles S. Peirce].Actus et Imago Volume 5. Editors: Franz Engel,
Moritz Queisner, Tullio Viola. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, March 21,
2012. Hardcover http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/224194
346 pages., 82 illustrations in black & white, 31 illustrations in
color.
Peirce, as you say, often focuses on clear thought, but he sometimes
discusses vague thought, and says that vagueness is often needed for
thought. For example in his critical common-sensism.
Peirce thought that there are logical conceptions of mind based not on
empirical science of psychology nor even on metaphysics. See for example
Memoir 11 "On the Logical Conception of Mind" in the 1902 Carnegie
Application:
http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-05.htm
<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-05.htm>
As to how linguistic people actually are or how linguistic one needs or
ought to be, that will depend at least partly on the definition of
language. In the quote of him above, Peirce uses the word "language"
more loosely than some would.
Best, Ben
On 2/15/2017 11:16 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
Jerry, Clark,
Thank you for the thoughtful replies.
I have great love for Peirce and his work. But there are parts that I
love less, particularly where Peirce ... seems to me to.... forget the
parameters of his own argument. Peirce tells us what clear thinking
is, while fully and responsibly acknowledging that most people do not
think clearly most of the time. On that basis, if anyone thinks of
anyone else's thoughts as entailing at all times the third degree of
clarity, something is seriously amiss. Further, when Peirce elsewhere
starts making broad pronouncements about "thought" it oftentimes seems
that he is referring solely to those rare instances of clear thinking,
but other times is referring to the typical thinking, or all thinking?
The later is particularly suspicious. Assertions regarding the nature
of /all/ thinking would presumably be subject to extreme empirical
scrutiny. As we have rejected traditional metaphysics, and denied any
special powers of introspection, one would expect "thought" to be
examined in the same way Peirce's exemplars, the early bench chemists,
examined their subject matter. All the same challenges and
limitations, and the same potential for novel triumph. Thus when
Peirce talks about clear thinking he seems on steady ground, and when
he talks about how a scientist-qua-scientists thinks about the world
he seems on steady ground, but when there are no caveats regarding
what "thinking" he is referring to, I get nervous.
To Clark's question: While one could certainly find people who would
find those assertions uncontroversial, there are problems. One can
readily, for example, find individuals who (by all evidence) seem to
think more readily and more commonly in words than in "images and
diagrams". One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by
all evidence) have lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e.,
they cannot /do/ language), and yet those people otherwise seem to
think perfectly well.
On 2/14/2017 10:41 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
Yikes! My inner William James just raised an eyebrow. This is probably
a separate thread... but how did we suddenly start making claims about
the nature of other people's thoughts?
People think, not so much in words, but in images and diagrams..."
They do? How many people's thoughts have we interrogated to determine
that?
"Consciousness is inherently linguistic." It is? How much have we
studied altered states of consciousness, or even typical consciousness?
Sorry, these parts of Peirce always make me a bit twitchy. I'm quite
comfortable when he is talking about how scientists-qua-scientists
think or act, but then he makes more general statements and I get
worried.
Best,
Eric
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps
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