Kirsti, I was of course thinking of the pragmatic maxim, which is a regulative principle whose function is to guide the conduct of thought toward the object of its aim, advising the addressee on a way to “attain clearness of apprehension”.
http://knol.google.com/k/pragmatic-maxim That is why Peirce calls it a maxim of logic, in other words, placing it among the norms of the normative science whose objective is truth. As abstractions from the concrete experience of inquiry, descriptive and normative aspects of inquiry are united in the act itself, since the normative rules of inquiry are precepts for clarifying descriptions and concepts. Jon P.S. I don't know if you were signed on for the earlier posts of this slow reading, but I archived most of what I had to say with regard to descriptive and normative faces of semiotics at this site: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2011-November/thread.html Määttänen Kirsti wrote: > > Jon, > > Thanks for bringing into my attention 'maxim', in relation to 'precept'. > > I'm not so sure, though, that 'precept' and 'maxim' are interchangeable. > So-called synonyms seldom, if ever, are. The relation between synonyms > I view as something depicted in Venn's diagrams. There is an overlap, > but always partial. > > To my mind, with precept, the meaning 'rule of conduct' is the dominant one, > while with maxim 'a well-known truth (etc), comes to the fore. - I may be wrong, > of course. > > You are interested in the distinction between 'concept' and 'precept', > as well as in the distinction between descriptive and normative. > I, for my part, am not so much interested in the distinction. > Rather, I'm interested in the nature of the relation between > these. - Which, of course, are interrelated. > > Could you be a bit more explicit with taking this bringing us > to the distinction between descriptive and normative. - > Do you think concepts are descriptive? > > Kirsti > > On 13.11.2011, at 6.00, Jon Awbrey wrote: > >> Kirsti, >> >> Another word for "precept" is "maxim". >> >> The distinction between concept and precept >> brings us again to the distinction between >> descriptive and normative. -- facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey knol profile: http://knol.google.com/k/Jon-Awbrey# oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey polmic: www.policymic.com/profiles/1110/Jon-Awbrey --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
