List,
I am asking myself, how is inquiry blocked, and how not. In the empirism- thread I had asked:
"Anyways, do inquiry blocks follow a certain pattern, like, declaring one aspect of philosophy for the main one, and others for epiphenomena or even irrelevant ones?".
I think, this is one way of blocking inquiry: taking an "-ism", or an "-istic turn" not for emphasis-putting, or starting point, but for a dogma of exclusivity.
But I think, apart from this crude and easy-to-uncover method, there are other, more subtle methods, such as:
Defining a phenomenon for principle.
A principle may be used for ground of explanation, a phenomenon may not. To simply say that some phenomenon is a principle makes explanation easy. Like to say that opium puts people at sleep because it contains a dormative principle.
The tricky thing about principles is, that they are hard to be defined as suchs, because they are starting points that cannot be deduced.
So you can never say: "This is a principle", but you can say "This is not a principle", if it can be deduced from other things.
Though sometimes deduction goes circular, then nobody knows exactly anything, at which point usually ideologies set in.
Anyway, to state a principle as part of metaphysics is a challenge. It has to be immunized against objections, which it usually can´t.
Example: Peirce´s "Habit". For him it is the principle of thirdness, but I don´t think so:
Habit is a mere phenomenon. It is a matter of learning. Learning requires a memory. A memory requires a solid network with changeable parts. That is, why water cannot have a memory.
I think, to define "habit" for principle, though it merely is a special phenmenon, is blocking inquiry. But maybe it isn´t, in case we have a circular deduction here, but I think it is justified to doubt that, because it is not immune to objection.
Best, helmut
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