Hi John and List,
I agree with Edwina's questions and I endorse the general sense of your
argument. But I disagree with your statement: "This implies that every
statement of his [Peirce's] philosophy must be evaluated in terms of his
logic." My perspective is that the universal categories are more
foundational, and Peirce believed they were so as well. That does not
make logic inconsistent, but just a bit subsidiary as Peirce's own
classifications affirm.
Best, Mike
On 8/11/2021 9:02 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
Edwina, List
ET> Who will judge whether X-person's reading or Y-person's reading
'represents its author's original intent? Who has this capacity to
make such a judgment?
The author is the only person who has the right to state his or her
intent. Following is one of Peirce's clearest statements of the
ground rules for evaluating anything he wrote:
CSP: The little that I have contributed to pragmatism (or, for that
matter, to any other department of philosophy), has been entirely the
fruit of this outgrowth from formal logic, and is worth much more than
the small sum total of the rest of my work, as time will show. (CP
5.469, R318, 1907)
This implies that every statement of his philosophy must be evaluated
in terms of his logic.
And as Peirce wrote on 8 November 1913, his best and final version of
logic was the one he developed in June 1911. R670 shows the steps in
that development. And L231 is his clearest and best presentation.
For more indications of Peirce's intentions, search CP for every
occurrence of "metaphysician". He is constantly urging them to base
their analyses on logic and mathematics.
As for the importance of mathematics in phaneroscopy, note
CSP: Phaneroscopy... is the science of the different elementary
constituents of all ideas. Its material is, of course, universal
experience, -- experience I mean of the fanciful and the abstract, as
well as of the concrete and real. Yet to suppose that in such
experience the elements were to be found already separate would be to
suppose the unimaginable and self-contradictory. They must be
separated by a process of thought that cannot be summoned up
Hegel-wise on demand. They must be picked out of the fragments that
necessary reasonings scatter; and therefore it is that phaneroscopic
research requires a previous study of mathematics. (R602, after 1903
but before 1908)
The criteria that Peirce used to evaluate his own writings and the
writings of other philosophers are the best guide to the way he would
want anyone (including us) to evaluate his writings.
John
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