Jon, thanks for this detailed commentary on Peirce’s (equivocal) support for the PSR. It highlights what I consider perhaps the weakest aspect of Peircean philosophy.
CSP was (by his account) a “scholastic realist” in logic and metaphysics, but he also affirmed that (critical) logic is a department of ethics. And Peirce was an ethical idealist, as far as the logic of science is concerned. We can’t do science, he says, without maintaining that “cheerful hope” which is its ethical ideal: we would have no reason to “ask any question.” This is in effect a denial that for any species of embodied being capable of learning by experience, there are limits to knowledge and limits to inquiry, and honesty compels us to humbly acknowledge those limits. Peirce himself acknowledges them in his comments on the “economy of research” (in Cambridge Lecture 2, for instance). But the PSR virtually denies them, in the same sense that classical economics denies the reality of human nature by positing that economic decisions are made by individuals on a basis of reason and adequate information about the consequences. Closely related to this is the currently prevalent denial of limits to growth, and of the ecological overshoot <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot> caused by excessive human domination of the ecosphere (global heating being but one deadly aspect of this overshoot). This is another symptom of the “vaulting ambition” driving the collective behavior of humanity to self-destruction, even as science shows us unequivocally that human activity is exceeding planetary boundaries. I’m not blaming Peirce for all this, of course, just saying that his adherence to the “Enlightenment” faith in never-ending social and scientific “progress” — which some consider his best feature — is for me his greatest weakness. It’s what we have to move beyond if we are to make pragmatic 21st-century use of his deeper semeiotic insights. Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } The messages cease to be messages when nobody can read them. [G. Bateson] { <https://gnusystems.ca/wp/> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 16-Nov-24 18:11 To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) List: As I have discussed previously, Peirce seems to endorse a version of the PSR when offering the hypothesis of a necessary being (Ens necessarium) to explain why there is something rather than nothing (R 288:91[178], 1905)--"I show that logic requires us to postulate of any given phenomenon, that it is capable of rational explanation," including "the Three Universes" as "all the phenomena there are" (R 339:[283r&285r], 1908 Aug 28). How might we reconcile this with his explicit dismissal of the PSR in other contexts? For example ... CSP: In regard to human knowledge, he [Leibniz] put forth many ideas which had great influence, all of them rooted in nominalism, yet at the same time departing widely from the Occamistic spirit. Such were his tests of universality and necessity; and such was his principle of sufficient reason, which he regarded as one of the fundamental principles of logic. This principle is that whatever exists has a reason for existing, not a blind cause, but a reason. A reason is something essentially general, so that this seems to confer reality upon generals. Yet if realism be accepted, there is no need of any principle of sufficient reason. In that case, existing things do not need supporting reasons; for they are reasons, themselves. A great deal of the Leibnizian philosophy consists of attempts to annul the effect of nominalistic hypotheses. (CP 4.36, 1893) Of course, Peirce emphatically rejected nominalism and embraced (scholastic) realism, affirming the reality of some generals, including reasons. He even says here that existing things "are reasons, themselves," and thus "do not need supporting reasons," presumably because they are manifestations of not only 2ns (and 1ns), but also 3ns. In other words, he seems to view the PSR as a nominalist maxim that is, nevertheless, fundamentally incompatible with nominalism. A few years later, in his entry for "sufficient reason" in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (CP 6.393-394, 1902), Peirce quotes one of Leibniz's own definitions of the PSR--"that nothing takes place without reason ... that is to say, that nothing occurs for which one having sufficient knowledge might not be able to give a reason sufficient to determine why it is as it is and not otherwise" (from Monadology, 1714). Here, occurrences instead of existents must have reasons, which require someone with "sufficient knowledge" to formulate them, again suggesting nominalism; specifically, conceptualism--reasons are not real generals, they only exist in individual minds. As Peirce adds, "he [Leibniz] does not say that there really is a sufficient reason, but that anybody favorably situated would be able to render a sufficient reason." On the other hand ... CSP: The principle of sufficient reason may very well be understood to express our natural expectation or hope to find each unexpected phenomenon to be subject to reason and so to be intelligible. But to entertain this hope for each is not necessarily to entertain it for all. This echoes and summarizes the following passage from "A Guess at the Riddle," which comes just a few paragraphs before Peirce's cosmological remarks in that manuscript (CP 1.412). CSP: But every fact of a general or orderly nature calls for an explanation; and logic forbids us to assume in regard to any given fact of that sort that it is of its own nature absolutely inexplicable. This is what Kant calls a regulative principle, that is to say, an intellectual hope. The sole immediate purpose of thinking is to render things intelligible; and to think and yet in that very act to think a thing unintelligible is a self-stultification. ... True, there may be facts that will never get explained; but that any given fact is of the number, is what experience can never give us reason to think; far less can it show that any fact is of its own nature unintelligible. We must therefore be guided by the rule of hope, and consequently we must reject every philosophy or general conception of the universe, which could ever lead to the conclusion that any given general fact is an ultimate one. We must look forward to the explanation, not of all things, but of any given thing whatever. (CP 1.405, EP 1:275-276, 1887-8) Although "there may be facts that will never get explained," Peirce evidently considered "the all of reality" from which every fact is prescinded (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906) to be such that the PSR is applicable to it--not Leibniz's nominalist maxim, but a "regulative principle" or "intellectual hope" in accordance with scholastic realism. It follows directly from "this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think"; specifically, its famous corollary, "Do not block the way of inquiry" (CP 1.135, EP 2:48, 1898). CSP: The third philosophical stratagem for cutting off inquiry consists in maintaining that this, that, or the other element of science is basic, ultimate, independent of aught else, and utterly inexplicable,--not so much from any defect in our knowing as because there is nothing beneath it to know. The only type of reasoning by which such a conclusion could possibly be reached is retroduction. Now nothing justifies a retroductive inference except its affording an explanation of the facts. It is, however, no explanation at all of a fact to pronounce it inexplicable. That therefore is a conclusion which no reasoning can ever justify or excuse. (CP 1.139, EP 2:49) Accordingly, our proper operating assumption is that the entire universe is intelligible--not just all its parts, but also as a whole--and thus "capable of rational explanation." After all, "What is reality? ... As I have repeatedly insisted, it is but a retroduction, a working hypothesis which we try, our one desperate forlorn hope of knowing anything" (NEM 4:343, 1898). The alternative to supposing a necessary being is claiming "that the total real is a consequence of utter nothing," which "is absurd" because "nothing is self-contradictory and impossible" (R 288:91[178]). It amounts to maintaining that "the co-reality of the three universes" is "utterly inexplicable," which is a nominalist position that "no reasoning can ever justify or excuse." Perhaps this is why Peirce eventually suggests that "all Atheists are Nominalists" (SWS:283, 1909). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
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