Jeff, list
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in
the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical
world"....not only is thought in the organic world but it develops
there. But as there cannot be a General without Instances embodying
it, so there cannot be thought without Signs"...4.551
Peirce was not a materialist, nor am I am materialist. I am not
saying that there is nothing 'real' outside of the material world. I
am saying that 'reality' - understood as 'a General' only 'exists'
within 'instances embodying it'. This means that
Mind/thought/reason...which is a General, functions within Signs, and
Signs are triadic instances [see his explanation in the rest of
4.551]... A triadic Sign is a 'material' unit, in that it exists in
time and space, even if it is existent only as a word rather than a
bacterium.
Re your first two points - since deduction, induction, abduction,
can be valid in themselves as a format, I presume you are talking
about the true/false nature of their premises....and since the debate
seems to be on the Nature of Truth - then this issue, the truth/false
nature of the premises is relevant. Taking that use of the terms into
account [truth/false nature of the premises] , I agree with your
outline of these three forms of argument..
And I also agree with your other two points.
I don't see that my position, which rests on 4.551 and other similar
outlines by Peirce, rejects or is any different from his analysis.
Edwina
On Mon 16/10/17 12:17 AM , Jeffrey Brian Downard
jeffrey.down...@nau.edu sent:
Edwina, List,
I assume you are articulating your own view--which is shared by a
number of materialist oriented philosophers and scientists including
Hobbes, Boyle and others.
On my reading of the relevant texts, I believe Peirce argued against
such a materialist position--even one that take the material realm to
be an "articulation of Mind." It isn't obvious to me what the latter
clause adds, but I am willing to be enlightened. Here are four such
lines of argument.
1. Arguments for the validity of deduction require at least a verbal
definition of the real, where the character of the real is not
exhausted by individuals of a material character--not even if one
brings a conception of individuals like us with minds into that
realm.
2. Arguments for the validity of induction and abduction require a
real definition of the real, where that account adds yet more to the
character of the real as generals (e.g., general properties, laws of
nature, etc.) that govern the relations between what is possible and
what is actual.
3. Having developed these two lines of argument within the context
of a critical logic, Peirce argues for an account of the real as
having the character of what is truly continuous as a regulative
principle within methodeutic. Such a principle is necessary for the
healthy development and robust communication of scientific theories
of all sorts, including natural and social sciences.
4. With these arguments in hand, Peirce applies the principles of
logic to the study of questions of metaphysics. Here, he forges a
position that unifies elements of both realism and objective
idealism.
These four strands of argument each seem to work against the claim
that there isn't anything 'real' outside of the material world - even
when we take the material world to be an articulation of Mind. One way
of responding is to say that I'm reading Peirce wrong on one or more
of these lines of argument. Another way to respond is to say that
your position is different from Peirce's, and that he is wrong and
you are right where there is disagreement. Or, there might some third
way to respond. Let me know if one of these avenues fits with what
you take yourself to be doing. As things stand, it isn't clear to me
what you are doing in making such assertions, but my assumption that
is fits the second option.
--Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
-------------------------
From: Edwina Taborsky
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 1:41 PM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1: overview
I don't think that there is anything 'real' outside of the material
world - and I understand the material world to be an articulation of
Mind. [Again, I won't repeat 4.551]. I see the reality of Mind as
articulated within/as the material world; Mind doesn't exist 'per
se' outside of these existential instantiations.
Mathematics is an intellectual abstraction of this
reality-as-existential.
I don't think you arrive at necessary reasoning, deduction, without
having gone through the processes of abduction and induction. That
is, since Deduction is operationally triadic, then, in a Necessary
Deduction, don't its premises have to be true?
For example, can I assume that a purely intellectual
opinion/conclusion, 'the universe was created in one day"" - is a
necessary deductive? The premises would be: 'the bible says
so'...etc.
Or is it "Deduction is an argument whose Interpretant represents
that it belongs to a general class of possible arguments precisely
analogous which are such that in the long run of experience the
greater part of those whose premises are true will have true
conclusions" 2.267...Now, a
"Necessary Deductions are those which have nothing to do with any
ratio of frequency but profess [or their interpretants profess for
them] that from true premises they must invariably produce true
conclusions" 2.267
That is - isn't Peirce's Objective Idealism firmly rooted in
phenomenology; i.e., in experience- and these experiences have been
shown, by repetition, to be true, such that one no longer requires
further experience?
Edwina
On Sun 15/10/17 4:02 PM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
Edwina,
Despite the accurate Peirce quotes, your last paragraph still
confuses Truth with the real law that tends toward the truth. Peirce
is clearly saying that this real law operates in any and every
universe (domain, realm) which can be the object of a valid argument
— including the purely imaginary realm of mathematics. It does not
operate only in “the real material world” (as if only the
material world were real). Actually, insofar as we are talking about
the real law governing deduction, or “necessary reasoning,” we
never know whether a conclusion is factual: “Necessary reasoning
can never answer questions of fact. It has to assume its premisses to
be true.” (That’s a quote from Lowell 2).
Gary f.
From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 15-Oct-17 13:39
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1: overview
Gary, list:
Peirce wrote: "I have no objection to saying that in my opinion what
makes a reasoning sound is the real law that the general method which
that reasoning more or less consciously pursues does tend toward the
truth." And,
"The very essence of an argument,— that which distinguishes it
from all other kinds of signs,— is that it professes to be the
representative of a general method of procedure tending toward the
truth. To say that this method tends toward the true is to say that
it is a real law that existences will follow."
An Argument is a semiosic process, and is as valid in the biological
realm as it is in the Seminar Room. The semiosic Argument functions as
a 'real law that existences will follow'. Therefore, the existence
that emerges/exists within this real law is 'the truth of that law'.
That's how I see it. I don't confine 'Truth' to the Seminar Room of
rhetoric and human mental analysis; I think it operates in the real
material world.
Edwina
On Sun 15/10/17 1:27 PM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
Edwina,
Your first sentence introduces a bit of confusion. Peirce does not
say that truth is a is a real law that existences will follow; he
says that the “general method of procedure tending toward the
truth” is a real law that existences will follow. This method, or
law, is what makes a consequent follow from an antecedent. Every
argument implicitly claims to follow that general method, and if it
really does, then the argument is sound. But the “following” is
independent of the factual truth of the premisses. Peirce is
essentially asking us what it means to say that one fact or idea
really follows from another, and in Lecture 2 he will give an answer
that analyzes the “following” (the inference process) into as
many small steps as possible. And he will do this for deductive,
mathematical, “necessary” reasoning, where the “facts” are
about mathematical objects which have no empirical existence in the
usual sense of “empirical.”
In short, this law or method is not itself a fact, nor is it
“truth.” It is general, and its whole mode of being consists in
really governing a reasoning process so that “the conclusions of
that method really will be true, to the extent and in the manner in
which the argument pretends that they will.”
Gary f.
From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 15-Oct-17 10:30
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1: overview
Since truth " is a real law that existences will follow." and that
this is achieved via "the soundness of argument to consist in the
facts of the case and not at all in whether the reasoner feels
confidence in the argument or not" [this is a comment against
subjective opinions]....
AND that this observation of the experienced facts is subject to the
self-criticism of reasoning..AND that this reasoning operates within
the reality of the Three Categories, derived from:
"I undertook to do was to go back to experience, in the sense of
whatever we find to have been forced upon our minds,"
Then, it seems to me that Peirce's analysis is 'rationally
phenomenological' [objective idealism] - in the above sense, that
reason must assure us that our opinions conform to the facts. After
all, he also asserts that we cannot know the unknowable. This, to
me, means that our capacity for sensual observation and our capacity
for reasoning cannot, by us, by surmounted. We can only, ourselves,
know what we can phenomenologically and rationally experience. There
may indeed be 'facts' outside of our human capacities - but - we
cannot Know them.
Edwina
On Sun 15/10/17 6:56 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
[EP2:534] Four days after this lecture (Lowell 1), an anonymous
listener sent Peirce the following question: “If not inconvenient
for you, will you be kind enough to give tonight a summary—
however brief— of your answer to the question ‘What makes a
Reasoning Sound?’” Peirce prepared a response that he read at the
beginning of the third lecture. This response, found in MS 465, is as
follows:
My first duty this evening is to reply to a note which asks me to
give an explanation at my last lecture. The letter did not come to
hand until the following morning. The question asked is what my
answer in the first lecture was to the question “What makes a
Reasoning to be sound?” I had no intention of answering that
question in my first lecture, because I dislike to put forth opinions
until I am ready to prove them; and I had enough to do in the first
lecture to show what does not make reasoning to be sound. Besides in
this short course it seems better to skip such purely theoretical
questions. Yet since I am asked, I have no objection to saying that
in my opinion what makes a reasoning sound is the real law that the
general method which that reasoning more or less consciously pursues
does tend toward the truth. The very essence of an argument,— that
which distinguishes it from all other kinds of signs,— is that it
professes to be the representative of a general method of procedure
tending toward the truth. To say that this method tends toward the
true is to say that it is a real law that existences will follow. Now
if that profession is true, and the conclusions of that method really
will be true, to the extent and in the manner in which the argument
pretends that they will, the argument is sound; if not, it is a false
pretension and is unsound. I thus make the soundness of argument to
consist in the facts of the case and not at all in whether the
reasoner feels confidence in the argument or not. I may further say
that there are three great classes of argument, Deductions,
Inductions, and Abductions; and these profess to tend toward the
truth in very different senses, as we shall see. I suppose this
answers the question intended. However, it is possible that my
correspondent did not intend to ask in what I think the soundness of
reasoning consists, but by the question “What makes reasoning
sound?” he may mean “What causes men to reason right?” That
question I did substantially answer in my first lecture. Namely, to
begin with, when a boy or girl first begins to criticize his
inferences, and until he does that he does not reason, he finds that
he has already strong prejudices in favor of certain ways of arguing.
Those prejudices, whether they be inherited or acquired, were first
formed under the influence of the environing world, so that it is not
surprising that they are largely right or nearly right. He, thus, has
a basis to go upon. But if he has the habit of calling himself to
account for his reasonings, as all of us do more or less, he will
gradually come to reason much better; and this comes about through
his criticism, in the light of experience, of all the factors that
have entered into reasonings that were performed shortly before the
criticism. Occasionally, he goes back to the criticism of habits of
reasoning which have governed him for many years. That is my answer
to the second question.
http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of
1903
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