On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 6:54 PM Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Eugene, Edwina, and list, > > First, Hi to everyone! I've missed a lot of the conversations in the past > year or so, but the concept of 'perfect sign' in the other thread caught my > attention and pulled me in for the moment. Here are my thoughts on what is > an opinion of science and what isn't. > > The state which a belief can, at any given moment, best be justified is > represented by its point on the parabola branch as the branch is > approaching its asymptote. The justification of a proclamation of science > is represented by its place on the parabola branch, and the truth is > represented by the asymptote. Perturbations that move an inquirer or group > of inquirers away from the truth are caused by three things, (1) purposeful > deception, (2) appeasement of a psychological state, and (3) pure bad luck. > I call errors that are due to (3) pure bad luck 'scientific errors', > whereas I don't call errors that are due to (1) and (2) 'errors of science'. > > Is this not reasonable? > > Here's my assessment and opinion of opinions on such overarching and > complex subjects as social order: > > It's my opinion that Peirce's conservative social beliefs, which were > quoted earlier in this thread, were a perturbation, and were not due to bad > luck that can possibly come from random sampling or repeated honest errors > of observation. (By 'honest' I mean that due scientific rigor was > observed.) Peirce's social beliefs, at best (giving him the benefit of the > doubt), logically followed from weakly tested Major Premises which he > inherited from his father and/or got from his environment and/or got from > appeasing a psychological state. It's my opinion that his beliefs were > wrong; but I think I'm well justified in say he's guilty of the rationalism > that he so despised; so I don't believe he was luckily right even though > his methods were exceedingly weak. > > It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for one man or small group of > men (in our current or any past state of biological and social evolution) > to strongly test empirical premises (and assumptions) purportedly > supporting the validity of a given overarching social order. > I meant 'empirically test premises', not "test empirical premises." Here's the corrected sentence, followed by a clearer explanation for one part of my charge of rationalism. It's practically impossible for one man or small group of men (in our current or any past state of biological and social evolution) to strongly test at least one (but maybe both) of the major-premises that purportedly supports the claim that a given overarching social order is better than another proposed social order. Since we can't run parallel social experiments and assess the results of each order, we have to test the character of the proposed (imaginary) social order with analogies which are in turn supported with assumptions. Those analogies, at this relatively early stage in our inquiry, are weak. The conclusion of this stands as the following premise: 'the proposed social order would have the character x'. Then the current social order, whose character was better tested, (although I question the strength of the conclusion by the scientific community's consensus, if there is a consensus), is compared to the imaginary one. In as much as even half of the comparison is based on weak test results is as much as the logic of the comparison is rationalistic. Never mind 'difficult'; it's practically impossible. So, my assessment of > Peirce having come to the wrong conclusions about these matters are also > due to despicable rationalism. And so are everyone else's—despicable > rationalism is all we have to go on. > > I accuse Peirce of dismissing Plato's idea of 'second-best (political) > state' in favor of his (Peirce's) personal conception of 'best state'. And, > I'm sure, he'd accuse me of advocating a third-or-worse-best. C'est la vie; > it's all based on weakly tested hypotheses. > > The following is the Major Premise supporting my belief in universal > democracy. > > Just like a hive of bees has a collective intelligence, humans do too; and > this is the type of intelligence that will lead us toward the right social > order in the long run, that is, if the leveraging of elite individual will > from elite individual intelligence doesn't drive the human race into > extinction. > > Matt > >
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