BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; }JAS
You are misinterpreting what I said and writing misleading comments about it. I didn't say that I was against theory: What I said was that I was against their isolation from the real world. You constantly ignore this fact and present a false image of me. Here's the quote from me that you used - you selected only a few phrases and left out the totality. Why did you do so? EDWINA" "As for diagrams and models - formulas and terms - I'm not arguing against them. I'm asking - can they be applied to real situations in the actual world - to explain this real world? As for asking others to provide examples - I've done so repeatedly, and have found that most prefer the isolation and comfort of what I call 'the seminar room' - ie, discussions around terms and models...far, far, far from the real empirical objective world." -------------------- My comments above are very different from your statement that I am against theories and theorizing; My comments do NOT say - as you rewrite them - that I consider that theorizing is "an irrelevant exercise" undertaken only by people who "prefer the isolation and comfort of what [she calls] 'the seminar room' Why do you write that I said this? I said that I am NOT AGAINST theories or theorizing. I did not say that I consider that theorizing is 'undertaken only by people'...etc. ..Read what I wrote - and please stop picking out bits and pieces and making my meaning completely different. I specifically have said that what I am against is when people don't provide us with how these theories can be applied to explain actual situations in the real world. That's a HUGE difference from your assertion that I am against theories or theorizing. It baffles me why you stick so tenaciously to such a misinterpretation - despite my actual words! Edwina On Thu 14/05/20 3:50 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com sent: John, List: JFS: The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author are true. Where have I claimed otherwise? Specific examples, please. JFS: For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote. Different readers can and often do disagree about what constitutes a charitable interpretation of someone else's writings. Naturally, a different interpretation of what Peirce wrote leads to a different conclusion, and the burden is then to support one's own interpretation (or refute someone else's) with arguments. That is one reason why the secondary literature has become so extensive. JAS: We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We (apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing exactly that. JFS: I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce. It is not about me individually, it is about "sweeping judgments" like the following. JFS [1]: You cannot understand anything Peirce wrote unless you repeat the kind of disciplined testing that he did in developing and revising his theories. JFS [2]: As Peirce said, it's indeed wonderful that different people have very different ways of thinking. But in order to understand any of them, we must recognize their background in order to understand how and why they came to their conclusions. While certain kinds of experiences and familiarity with Peirce's biography are certainly helpful for understanding his writings, absolute statements like these set an unreasonably high bar that no one has the authority to impose on others. Rather than dismissing someone else's interpretations because of who is giving them, the appropriate response when there is disagreement is to make a better argument. JFS: A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are inappropriate. Gary R. did [3] exactly that regarding Edwina\'s [4] comments [5] that theorizing is "an irrelevant exercise" undertaken only by people who "prefer the isolation and comfort of what [she calls] 'the seminar room' ... far, far, far from the real empirical objective world." JFS: But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to interpret Peirce without stating a single example where my statement was wrong or inappropriate. He also made a blanket statement that your arguments were superior to mine. Where has Gary R. made any such "blanket statements"? Specific examples, please. JFS: On several occasions, he said that he agreed with you and not with me. But he never explained why any particular point I made was wrong. Presumably he agreed not only with my conclusions, but also with the reasoning behind them, which I had already presented. Merely saying that one agrees with someone else does not impose an obligation to restate that person's arguments. JFS: But Gary R stepped way out of bounds when he made a blanket condemnation of my writings without ever showing a single example that was inappropriate. Again, where has Gary R. made any such "blanket condemnation"? Again, specific examples, please. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [6] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [7] On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 11:09 PM John F. Sowa wrote: Jon, The principle of charity in philosophy does *not* require the listener/reader to assume that the statements by the speaker/author are true. Its only requirement is to assume that other participants in the discussion are rational human beings who are making meaningful statements, which they have some reason to believe are true. But charity does not require the listener to agree that they are true. Note the passage you quoted: Wikipedia> In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies, or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available. According to Simon Blackburn "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings." I have never claimed that any of your statements were meaningless or irrational. What I criticized was the strength and methods of the argument. For the arguments I objected to, I showed that a charitable interpretation of what Peirce wrote led to a conclusion that was different from a charitable interpretation of what you wrote.JAS> We (supposedly) agree that it is inappropriate to make sweeping judgments about who is (or is not) capable of understanding Peirce's writings and discussing them intelligently. We (apparently) disagree about who among us has been guilty of doing exactly that.I never said that you were incapable of understanding Peirce. But I did criticize your method of stringing together multiple quotations from different contexts. I did not claim that was irrational. But I did say that the some of the critical quotations were taken out of contexts where charity toward Peirce would give them a different interpretation.JAS> On the contrary, Gary R. is consistently an exemplary model of the "generosity of attitude" that he advocates as List moderator.No. A list moderator has a right to admonish participants about making inappropriate statements. But a moderator has an obligation to quote the statement(s) explicitly and state exactly why they are inappropriate.But Gary R made a blanket statement about my ability to interpret Peirce without stating a single example where my statement was wrong or inappropriate. He also made a blanket statement that your arguments were superior to mine. On several occasions, he said that he agreed with you and not with me. But he never explained why any particular point I made was wrong.I never complained about anybody who might disagree with me for one reason or another. But Gary R stepped way out of bounds when he made a blanket condemnation of my writings without ever showing a single example that was inappropriate.JAS> Peirce's distaste for "metaphysicians" was prompted by their dogmatism...I checked CP for every occurrence of 'metaphysician'. There are 71 occurrences. I did not check every one of them. But in the great majority of the ones I checked, his complaint was about their methods of reasoning. The first occurrence is typical: "The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine." (CP 1.7)In the second quotation (CP 1.29), he praised two of them because of their methods of reasoning: "These two men, Duns Scotus and William Ockham, are decidedly the greatest speculative minds of the middle ages, as well as two of the profoundest metaphysicians that ever lived."Methods of reasoning were one of Peirce's strongest interests from childhood to the end. In his criticisms of philosophers, his strongest praise and condemnation were about their reasoning. I won't claim that I am as good as Peirce in this respect. But I do admire and try to emulate his way of adapting the methods of reasoning in logic and mathematics to every subject he discussed.I won't claim that everybody must apply formal logic and mathematics to everything. In fact, Peirce himself had a high regard for vagueness. (249 instances of 'vague' in CP, with or without some ending.) In some cases, he criticized vagueness. But more often than not, he recognized that a vague statement was appropriate in the context. In fact, his pioneering work on probability was an attempt to quantify reasoning about statements that are not exactly true or false.John Links: ------ [1] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00125.html [2] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00129.html [3] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00115.html [4] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00110.html [5] https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2020-05/msg00112.html [6] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [7] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [8] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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