List - I don't think that all these quotations can really deal with
problems on the list.
After all - the quotation below could be read as supporting a
perspective of someone who 'blows with the wind', I.e, an a priori
mode of 'Fixation of Belief'....just as much as it can show a
situation where a scientist acknowledges that 'the facts aren't
there' and the hypothesis must be dropped.
I still think that many of the problems on this list can be viewed
as based on a sense by some that their reading of Peirce is the
'correct' one - and they belittle other readings, openly defining
them as 'your personal view and not what Peirce meant'. It's this
two-step action that silences discussion. Why bother posting when one
is met with such an arrogant and dismissive attitude?
Edwina
On Thu 07/10/21 8:26 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
“Perfect readiness to assimilate new associations implies perfect
readiness to drop old ones.… To be a philosopher, or a scientific
man, you must be as a little child, with all the sincerity and
simple-mindedness of the child's vision, with all the plasticity of
the child's mental habits.” — C.S. Peirce, RLT 192 (1898)
From: peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu
On Behalf Of Gary Richmond
Sent: 7-Oct-21 05:18
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Abracadabra (was Modeling Humanities : the
case ofPeirce's Semiotics (part B1))
John, List,
"Men seem to themselves to be guided by reason. There is little
doubt that this is largely illusory . . . because their reasonings
are prominent in their consciousness, and are attended to, while
their instincts [and emotions] they are hardly aware of. . . . —
Charles S. Peirce
"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the
most difficult.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first
principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest
person to fool.” — Richard Feynman
Best,
Gary R
“LET EVERYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU
BEAUTY AND TERROR
JUST KEEP GOING
NO FEELING IS FINAL”
― RAINER MARIA RILKE
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
On Thu, Oct 7, 2021 at 12:50 AM sowa @bestweb.net [1] wrote:
Gary R,
I agree that those suggestions are helpful:
GR: [Margaretha's] ideas and suggestive metaphors about how List
discussion might be improved -- along with the suggestions by John
Sowa and Gary Furhman which Jon Alan Schmidt just quoted -- if taken
up in the spirit of collegiality, could help improve communication
here considerably.
I would like to add a few more suggestions.
The first one is that the method of asking questions, as in Plato's
dialogues with Socrates as the discussion leader, is one of the best
ways to promote fruitful discussions. People may be offended by a
direct contradiction of what they just said, but nobody is offended
by an honest question. (A loaded question can be offensive. e.g.
"Have you stopped beating your wife?")
The so-called "Socratic method" can also be annoying when pushed to
an extreme. But an honest question is more likely to generate a
fruitful discussion.
For Peirce, it's especially important to recognize that he had a
very fertile imagination, and his ideas were constantly growing .and
developing over the years. His comment "symbols grow" indicates
that the same words on different occasions may have very different
meanings and implications:
1903: For every symbol is a living thing, in a very strict sense
that
is no mere figure of speech. The body of the symbol changes slowly,
but
the meaning inevitably grows, incorporates new elements and throws
off
old ones. (CP 2.222).
The only statements by Peirce that remain constant are the ones in
mathematics and formal logic A statement in math or logic has a
fixed meaning forever. But Peirce's comments about then may change,
as we have noted in various discussions.
The following point is significant:
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)
The categories of 1-ness, 2-ness, and 3-ness are based on logic, and
they have been central to his thought throughout. But his
applications of those ideas continued to grow. Even in his late
writings of 1913, his ideas continued to grow, and he had hopes of
writing more. Nobody on planet earth can be certain that any ideas
outside of mathematics and logic would remain unchanged.
The recent discussions of comments by De Tienne and Atkins about
phaneroscopy were interesting, but nobody can be certain that their
opinions about the "science egg" are what Peirce intended. On these
issues, good questions are more valuable than definitive answers.
In summary, a good way to improve the level of discourse on Peirce-L
is to ask more questions and to avoid making definitive pronouncements
about what Peirce meant. De Tienne read as much or more than anybody
else, and even he doesn't know. We can state our own opinions, but
we can't claim that our opinions are what Peirce intended.
John
Links:
------
[1] http://bestweb.net
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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