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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