Jon, Edwina, and List, If each of us has a connection to the infinite world, in that world, for every one truth there are infinite falsehoods. We have a connection to those falsehoods too. So, given infinity, we search for what's true despite the fact that 1/infinity=zero. If the world isn't infinite, but some astronomical number, the problem of scientific progress isn't that good-luck guesses are impossible but that these guesses would still only yield an exceedingly slower rate of discovery than what we witness.
Here's Peirce on the problem: "It is evident that unless man had some inward light tending to make his guesses on these subjects much more often true than they would be by mere chance, the human race would long ago have been extirpated for its utter incapacity in the struggles for existence; or if some protection had kept it continually multiplying, the time from the tertiary epoch to our own would be altogether too short to expect that the human race could yet have made its first happy guess in any science." He continues with this explanation: "The mind of man has been formed under the action of the laws of nature, and therefore it is not so very surprising to find that its constitution is such that, when we can get rid of caprices, idiosyncrasies, and other perturbations, its thoughts naturally show a tendency to agree with the laws of nature." So, we have an "inward light" due to our minds having been "formed under the action of the laws of nature." Does synechism have a feature, called "inward light", which favors connections to true propositions over false propositions? It must, but how can that be explained? Is this problematic? Some men *seem* to have a brighter light than others: "But it is one thing to say that the human mind has a sufficient magnetic turning toward the truth to cause the right guess to be made in the course of centuries during which a hundred good guesses have been unceasingly occupied in endeavoring to make such a guess, and a far different thing to say that the first guess that may happen to possess Tom, Dick, or Harry has any appreciably greater probability of being true than false." Formation "under the action of the laws of nature" doesn't explain why this light seems brighter in some men than in others. Peirce explains (or suggests?) differences in abductive abilities by the differences of their methods: "It is necessary to remember that even those unparalleled intelligences would certainly not have guessed right if they had not all possessed a great art of so subdividing their guesses as to give to each one almost the character of self-evidence." However, recent research, led by Zach Hambrick, has been showing that people are not equally endowed; method and practice do not explain the ability gap. I find this problematic for Peirce's explanation of "inward light." It still seems like magic to me, especially as compared with how contructivism in a 'robust relative' philosophy explains how discovery of truths is possible, viz., that people discover only what people have created (including artifacts, or spandrels, i.e., consequences of what people created), and each discovery was merely of what is most useful from the lot which was actually searched, rather than each discovery being what is eternally true and found from searching the whole world: the problem for Margolis isn't <1/infinity> or <1/astronomical-number>, but it's <the tolerably best / as big a number as we can tolerate> where Tyche isn't such a devil. All Peirce quotes are from MS 692. Matt On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 2:31 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Matt, List: > > There is nothing "magical" about the power of retroduction in Peirce's > philosophy. It is a direct result of the *continuity *of all things > (synechism), which entails that there is no "correspondence gap" between > Reality and Mind, including human minds. While Reality is indeed > independent of what you or I or any *discrete* collection of *individual > *minds > may think about it, it is not independent of thought *in general*. This > is precisely the basis for the regulative hope that the final opinion at > the end of *infinite *inquiry--the *ultimate *Interpretant of *every * > Sign--*would *perfectly conform to Reality, and thus constitute the > perfect (or absolute) Truth. In the meantime, any or all of our beliefs > may turn out to be mistaken--that is the principle of fallibilism--but we > have no good reason to doubt any one of them in particular, unless and > until we are confronted by the "outward clash" of experience with an > unpleasant surprise that forces us to reconsider it. > > Regards, > > Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA > Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman > www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt > > On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 1:02 PM, Matt Faunce <matthewjohnfau...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Edwina, >> >> In Margolis's philosophy, habits are bound to eventually be overcome by >> the flux of life. So if he's right, everything about Margolis's own >> philosophy will eventually pass into irrelevance except the rule that flux >> > habit. (Flux is greater than habit.) That rule looks to me to be his >> achilles heel, because it needs to stay true; whereas Peirce's achilles >> heel is the magical power of abduction to bridge the correspondence gap >> between a reality that's independent of finite minds and the finite minds >> that inquire into reality. >> >> "Insufferably arrogant" was a bit of an exaggeration, as I'm willing to >> suffer through reading his arrogant comments in order to learn what I can. >> >> Matt >> >> On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 8:41 AM Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> >> wrote: >> >>> Matt, list: >>> >>> You wrote: >>> "He does this many other places too. It's hard to be as insufferably >>> arrogant as Peirce was when one's philosophy, even if it were clearly the >>> truest offered in a given time, is bound to eventually pass into >>> irrelevance." >>> >>> I'm uncertain of your meaning. Are you defining Peirce as 'insufferably >>> arrogant' and declaring that his philosophy was merely relative to the time >>> - and is certain [bound] to become irrelevant? >>> >>> Edwina Taborsky >>> >>
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