Dear Suteerth Vajpeyi, List,
I like the categorical imperative by Kant better than the pragmatic maxim. Kant´s imperative is about volition, and the volition is that of the person who acts, and who is the interpreter too. "Act in a way, like you can want the maxim of your action to be a general law" (quote merely from my memory). Peirce always tries to abstract everything from the individual. He tries to explain things, without mentioning the interpreter. So he doesn´t speak of volition, but of meaning and truth. Meaning and truth are more general than volition, but I think, more vague too: As I have understood you, these concepts e.g. lead to abduction. This to me seems the price to pay, if you exclude the interpreter. I suppose, the motivation for this exclusion might be to circumvent the naturalistic fallacy, as volition might be seen as the core of deontology: "Should" is someone wanting something to be some way. But I think, you cannot circumvent it, without losing clarity or accuracy, without going into the mist of abduction. This my opinion is not a refutation of Peirce, but I think, it would be best, to take Peirce, plus to reinstall the interpreter and her:his volition.
Best regards, Helmut
This is my third post so far. The second question (why did Peirce attempt to prove the truth of the pragmatic maxim?) troubles me more. The pragmatic maxim is a regulative (or in other words normative) principle for attaining greater clearness of apprehension or in other words clarifying the meaning of a sign. "Speak the truth !" one may say to one's kids. But it would be absurd to try to prove the truth of a regulative principle from factual premises. So why did peirce attempt to do it for his pragmatism? Especially why do it late in his life when his understanding of logic was getting clearer by the day. He had earlier remarked that pragmatism is a principle of logic. Logic according to him is a normative science for attaining truth.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.One thing that immediately strikes one is that since logic and pragmatism are regulative principles for attaining knowledge, we can expect that the pragmatic maxim must be a part of logic. But at which stage of the inquiry process ? We try to resolve the problem by trial and error. All thinking is semiosis according to peirce. Semiosis (sign-use to gain increased knowledge) has three components: the object, the sign and finally the interpretant. Similiarly there are three stages of inquiry- abduction, deduction and induction. Can we connect the components of semiosis to the process of inquiry ?
The various possible relations are sign & object, sign & interpretant, object & interpretant. What is the order in which they occur ? Firstly one chooses a sign to stand for an object. Secondly one determines the interpretant of the sign. Thirdly by interpreting the sign, a knowledge of the object is attained. The order of logical processes on the other hand is abduction, deduction and induction. Abduction then, corresponds to the sign object relation. The allotment of a sign to stand for an object is just another way of saying that we attribute meaning to a sign. The first attachment of meaning to a sign and the first explanation of a surprizing fact by a hypothesis requires that the meaning of a hypothesis be apprehended first. As outlined in my previous post, pragmatism is just another way of apprehending the meaning of any sign, whether it be a term or a proposition. A hypothesis is just a proposition. So we can now come to understand why peirce may have called pragmatism as the logic of abduction.
But the first question (why he attempted to prove pragmatism to be true) still eludes me...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY is now at https://cspeirce.com and, just as well, at https://www.cspeirce.com . It'll take a while to repair / update all the links! ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
