I agree strongly with John Sowa in his last message. In my book, Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious, I discuss points related to these at length. Our bodies are constantly registering experiences in ways that we may not be aware of, “apperceptionally” in William James’s terms. Anything that anyone says overtly must be evaluated in light of our tacit knowledge.
This applies to Peirce. When he uses a term, we can only understand it in terms of his culture, context, previous writings, and overall philosophy. Back in the days when I was religious and was concerned greatly about biblical exegesis, context was debated even then. Many of the wacko doctrines of some denominations are based on the belief that words can be studied apart from the “dark matter” of one’s mind (culture in this sense is dark matter overlap), as that forms values, knowledge structures, and social roles. Peirce must be understood in this larger sense, not merely by taking what some theologians call “proof texts”, verses out of context from a larger body. I take no stand on what role illative had to Peirce after 1911. But the answer can only come from understanding his objectives overall, his context - what was he reading, who was he writing, what was he writing, etc. I am always impressed by the knowledge, however, of technical details of Peirce’s work shown on this list. But we should not forget that for Peirce this was all a means to an end of understanding. He abandoned anything he came to consider a detriment to that understanding. That quest was to me what he meant by the “melody of thought” (such a brilliant phase). I am speaking on dark matter and music at a music understanding conference in Switzerland this summer (I hope) and that phrase will be in the paper. Dan > On Jan 30, 2021, at 10:46 PM, John F. Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: > > > Robert, > > Thanks for finding that quotation: > > > Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our > > sensations” (CP 5.395) > > Now that you mention it, I recall reading that some time ago. It must have > been lurking somewhere in my mind, but well beneath the conscious level. > > In any case, it's very appropriate. The connection to sensations emphasizes > the relation to Bill's term "embodied experience". > > It is also related to my point that the total context is more important than > particular words. That doesn't mean that words are irrelevant, but they can > be highly misleading when taken out of context. > > John > > _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ > ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu > . > ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu > with no subject, and with the sole line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of > the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . > ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and > co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
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