In summary, Kant's claim is true for most of the things we encounter in our daily lives. Our descriptions cover only the parts we can detect with our senses and any scientific instruments at our disposal. As science progresses, people keep inventing more precise instruments. But there is still a huge amount that is unknowable in nearly every object we encounter.
John, I tend to agree with you regarding Kant and Peirce. That Kant's claim is true (I would say categorically). I have been reading Kant through Peirce and Peirce through Kant, as is proper at the moment and have already had a few eureka moments regarding what is the nature of the ambiguity - incredibly nuanced as JAS and some private correspondence has alluded to - between the two. This I wish to keep for my thesis/article as and when it moves to publication (soon, I expect), but it has been a fruitful interchange with many here already. Will have reply to JAS, hopefully, within a few days which most here should find of interest. Best Jack ________________________________ From: John F Sowa <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2023 6:16 AM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>; JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [EXTERNAL] Re: The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again). (Assemblage Formalisms - inference). Jon, Jack, et al., As I wrote in my previous note (excerpt copied below), both Kant and Peirce presented positions that neither one had fully proved. Although I prefer Peirce's position, I must admit that his proof in CP 5.525 is flawed, and your version does not correct the flaw. JAS> By contrast, Peirce offers a very straightforward proof that the Ding an sich is nonsensical, which I have quoted before. CSP: It has been shown that in the formal analysis of a proposition, after all that words can convey has been thrown into the predicate, there remains a subject that is indescribable and that can only be pointed at or otherwise indicated, unless a way, of finding what is referred to, be prescribed. The Ding an sich, however, can neither be indicated nor found. Consequently, no proposition can refer to it, and nothing true or false can be predicated of it. Therefore, all references to it must be thrown out as meaningless surplusage. (CP 5.525, c. 1905) The flaw in this paragraph is in the phrase "after all that words can convey has been thrown into the predicate". Question: What words are being considered? Do we consider all the words that have been defined in the current state of Engllish (or some other languages)? If Peirce meant 1905, that would rule out the huge number of new concepts of quantum mechanics and other innovations in the physics of the 20th and later centuries. It's quite certain that no words could be found in 1905 that could adequately explain the life of a snail. In fact, nobody has proposed a precise definition of the word 'life' today. Physicians cannot reliably detect the precise moment when a patient dies. And quantum mechanics makes many issues impossible to detect or measure precisely. There is a huge amount that is unknown. In summary, Kant's claim is true for most of the things we encounter in our daily lives. Our descriptions cover only the parts we can detect with our senses and any scientific instruments at our disposal. As science progresses, people keep inventing more precise instruments. But there is still a huge amount that is unknowable in nearly every object we encounter. John ________________________________ Excerpt from: "John F Sowa" <[email protected]> Sent: 6/7/23 1:24 AM The quotation below summarizes Peirce's theory of science in the first paragraph, where the final opinion is a goal that might never be reached. One way to explain the difference between Kant and Peirce is that (1) they both understood the difficulty of analyzing every detail of the full complexity of the things we experience. (2) Kant was a pessimist who did not believe that anybody could ever really understand all those details. (3) Peirce was an optimist who believed that any question about the things we experience could eventually be answered if given enough scientists enough time to study the question and test it with all possible experiments. As a pessimist, Kant was correct in saying that the overwhelming majority of the details of the things we perceive are unknowable by us, But as an optimist, Peirce was correct in claiming that scientific methodology, as pursued by an untold number of scientists, could ultimately discover any of those details that may be needed to answer any questions we might ask. ________. "There is a definite opinion to which the mind of man is, on the whole and in the long run tending. On many questions the final agreement is already reached, on all it will be reached if time enough is given... This final opinion, then, is independent, not indeed of thought, in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I or any number of men think. Everything, therefore, which will be thought to exist in the final opinion is real, and nothing else... This theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of a thing in itself, - a thing existing independent of all relation to the mind's conception of it. Yet it would by no means forbid, but rather encourage us, to regard the appearances of sense as only signs of the realities. Only, the realities which they represent, would not be the unknowable cause of sensation, but noumena or intelligible conceptions which are the last products of the mental action which is set in motion by sensation". [CP 8.12-13, emphasis Peirce's]
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