Edwina,
When I was talking about model-relative theories of reality, I
was definitely *not* advocating a kind of cognitive relativism. 

> we have to consider that some models more accurately represent this
external reality than others - and also, Peirce did feel that we could,
among the 'community of scholars', over time - reach a more and more
accurate representation of this reality...
Yes.  When I listed those
many different models in my previous note, I was not claiming that they
were contradictory.  All I said is that each one emphasized aspects of
reality that the others did not consider
The results of chemical
experiments, as they were described in 19th c. books, are just as valid
today as they were then:  Na + CL -> NaCl + Heat.  The fact that
physicists today can calculate the amount of heat by quantum mechanics
does not invalidate the old results.  For most purposes, the amount of
heat is easier to measure that to calculate.
Similarly, Newtonian
mechanics is just as reliable as relativity and quantum mechanics for the
motions of common objects on the earth's surface.  And engineers continue
to use it because the calculations are simpler.
>       we must not
move into 'cognitive relativism' so to speak, where we simply accept a
diversity of models and their cognitive interpretations without evaluating
them for their realism.
Certainly.  But the most accurate model of
physics -- quantum electrodynamics -- is so complex, that engineers almost
never use it -- except for extreme cases, such as computing what happens
in a nuclear explosion.
See the attached file -- CP8_187.txt for
some quotations.  Note the passage that begins "Now the different
sciences deal with different kinds of truth ;
mathematical truth is
one thing, ethical truth is another, the actually
existing state of
the universe is a third..."
John

CP 8.187.  Confining ourselves to science, inference, in the broadest sense,
is coextensive with the deliberate adoption, in any measure, of an
assertion as true.  For deliberation implies that the adoption is
voluntary; and consequently, the observation of perceptual facts that
are forced upon us in experience is excluded.  General principles, on
the other hand, if deliberately adopted, must have been subjected to
criticism; and any criticism of them that can be called scientific and
that results in their acceptance must involve an argument in favor of
their truth.  My statement was that an inference, in the broadest sense,
is a deliberate adoption, in any measure, of an assertion as true.  The
phrase "in any measure" is not as clear as might be wished.  "Measure,"
here translates modus.  The modes of acceptance of an assertion that are
traditionally recognized are the necessary, the possible, and the
contingent.  But we shall learn more accurately, as our inquiry
proceeds, how the different measures of acceptance are to be enumerated
and defined.  Then, as to the word "true," I may be asked what this
means.  Now the different sciences deal with different kinds of truth ;
mathematical truth is one thing, ethical truth is another, the actually
existing state of the universe is a third; but all those different
conceptions have in common something very marked and clear.  We all hope
that the different scientific inquiries in which we are severally
engaged are going ultimately to lead to some definitely established
conclusion, which conclusion we endeavor to anticipate in some measure.
Agreement with that ultimate proposition that we look forward to, —
agreement with that, whatever it may turn out to be, is the scientific
truth.

CP 8.188.  Perhaps there will here be no harm in indulging in a little
diagrammatic psychology after the manner of the old writers' discussions
concerning the primum cognitum; for however worthless it may be as
psychology, it is not a bad way to get orientated in our logic.  No man
can recall the time when he had not yet begun a theory of the universe,
when any particular course of things was so little expected that nothing
could surprise him, even though it startled him.  The first surprise
would naturally be the first thing that would offer sufficient handle
for memory to draw it forth from the general background.  It was
something new.  Of course, nothing can appear as definitely new without
being contrasted with a background of the old.  At this, the infantile
scientific impulse, — what becomes developed later into various kinds of
intelligence, but we will call it the scientific impulse because it is
science that we are now endeavoring to get a general notion of, — this
infantile scientific impulse must strive to reconcile the new to the
old.  The first new feature of this first surprise is, for example, that
it is a surprise; and the only way of accounting for that is that there
had been before an expectation.  Thus it is that all knowledge begins by
the discovery that there has been an erroneous expectation of which we
had before hardly been conscious.  Each branch of science begins with a
new phenomenon which violates a sort of negative subconscious
expectation, like the frog's legs of Signore Galvani.

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