Phyllis Chiasson: Since language only has meaning within contexts, change the context and you are likely to change meaning altogether. ---- Gary Moore: “Change” yes, sometimes even great “change”. However, one should be aware of this, and, for a varied and many times antagonistic audience that both Peirce and Deely dealt with, one should bend over backwards or nobody simply listens. Something I really do not know but suspect is a great problem with Peirce :: How many Europeans pay any attention to Peirce? Dealing with people like Russell and English linguistic analytics, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida – people highly sensitive to the use and misuse of language – from their very different points of view – who have great problems themselves being understood – Peirce’s approach should have attracted great attention in the 1920s, certainly the 1930s. He was more or less available, talked about by American Pragmatists Europeans did pay some attention too – but that is just it! Peirce had things to say of much more interest than William James. They loved his psychology but that seems to be the limit. --- Gary Moore: So when you say “change meaning altogether”, that is exactly how many Europeans may have found in Peirce – in other words, incomprehensible – when in fact he was dealing with exactly their same problems and many times providing answers to their problems which they did not bother with. There still seems to be a pall over Peirce in Europe. And despite Deely’s own obscurity in the matter of “The Ethics of Terminology”, Deely in his own work has abundantly connected Peirce not only with the Latin scholastics, but to Jacques Maritain [whom I had little respect for before reading Deely] and Martin Heidegger [whom he has written one of the best books about in English]. So making one’s meaning known in the vocabularies of other philosophers dealing with the same problems has been a great accomplishment of Deely’s. However, his very off-hand treatment of other European philosophers is so emotionally tainted and stunted as to be incomprehensible and even logically contradictory when he has to change course in mid-stream when forced to admit they had something key to add to his own and Peirce’s arguments, for instance Kant’s approach to the categories. Phyllis Chiasson: Ambiguity and vagueness are the enemies of clarity; Peirce’s concept of terminological ethics is one of his main contributions to philosophy and the extension (and purpose) of his semeiotic. Torkild Thellefsen discusses meaning from a Peircean perspective in his new book. He points out that the word, X-ray, has a much deeper and more complete meaning to a physician than it does to nonprofessionals, who in their fundamental ignorance may nevertheless think they well know what X-rays mean and do. E. David Ford also explains the need for effective definitions in his book, Scientific Method for Ecological Research. Those who do not engage in so-called “ethical terminology” risk being misunderstood—or worse. ---- Gary Moore: This is true but, in reality, physicians are forced to explain the abilities and limits of x rays to patients and their families. This had been made so because many physicians made it seem as if the patient and their families are too stupid to understand such highly intellectual concepts. This had two wonderful results. They could literally get away with murder. They could take as many x rays as they could get away changing for. And that sort of behavior is now, after so many years of terrible abuse, coming to a stop – but at the expense of everyone in general. Now, when someone comes into the emergency room, an x-ray is taken simply to say, based on some extremely remote possibility, it has been done instead of dealing with the immediate problem immediately. The extravagant rise in the price of healthcare, therefore, is raised directly linked, and abundantly documented, to just such behavior. To supposedly avoid an anticipated problem of explanation, you eliminate the problem by an action that has a physical, expensive, but irrelevant result. So bombastic obscurity is the opposite of being good and noble and is rather nasty and devious and downright treacherous. -------- Gary Moore: You yourself do not make a direct and factual statement of what Peirce “main contributions to philosophy and the extension (and purpose) of his semeiotic” clearly is at all, but just shuffle off explanation by saying it is important and that “ambiguity and vagueness” are bad things. But just saying that or Thellefsen’s saying that or Ford’s saying that does not at all clarify what Peirce actually said that was distinctively, on his own, important – or it is just hum-bug obscurity? He means to say something important, and he has said important things in the past, but on “The Ethics of Terminology” has he really said anything substantially different from what anyone else has already said – or even just taken for granted? --- Gary Moore: Peirce says, “It is good economy for philosophy to provide itself with a vocabulary so outlandish that loose thinkers shall not be tempted to borrow its words.” Now, he goes on to ameliorate this slightly by saying that if someone reads a term they do not understand, they should know they do not know it. But what fool does not know this already? [1] His first ‘rule’ is disavowal of terms of an “arbitrary nature”. Again, what fool does not already know this? [2] His second rule is “to avoid using words of vernacular origin as technical terms of philosophy”. This is absurd. Every word has a “vernacular origin”. [3] His third rule is to use scholastic terms properly. Then one simply needs a good dictionary. [4] His fourth rule says go back to the original use of the term. This is rather obvious, but Heidegger has thoroughly shown that laziness in such understanding destroys meaningful context. This is a good thing, yes, but violate Peirce’s rules above. You do not know that you do not understand the term precisely because you have not gone back to the original vernacular usage of Aristotle or Plato. Even someone who does not know Greek – and I do not – can get a Greek-English dictionary and find out, to their amazement, what the original vernacular meaning was. Usually one can simultaneously find a reflection in English usage, unusual possibly, but in English context and usage that fixes it in memory. In other words, you understand its vernacular meaning instead of hiding in obscure elitist pomposity and hot air. [5] One should anglicize scholastic Latin. Why? Doing so does NOT preserve “its precise orignal sense” precisely because it has been anglicized! [6] Don’t intellectualize your terms for a “distinctly technical appearance”. Not only has this always been obvious from the time of Plato and Aristotle, but the supposed ‘rescue’ has come too late for Peirce and Deely. ---- Gary Moore: One should rather use common sense and a base of ‘ordinary discourse’, show in a plain and straight forward way what one intends and why others should pay attention. Primarily, the existential situation is that specialized vocabulary will always either be misunderstood or twisted into ordinary discourse because, once you exit specialized vocabulary, you are swept up in the absolute and eternal triumph of ordinary discourse outside the book,the classroom, and the front door. This is not all sweetness and light and unproblematic but Umberto Eco has quite successfully done this. It still takes effort but you should know where you are every step of the way – in the real world! If you get confused, reread. It works for Eco but not always for Peirce and Deely. ---- Regards, Gary Moore
From: Phyllis Chiasson <ath...@olympus.net> To: 'Gary Moore' <gottlos752...@yahoo.com>; PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 5:14 PM Subject: RE: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS Dear Gary, Since language only has meaning within contexts, change the context and you are likely to change meaning altogether. Ambiguity and vagueness are the enemies of clarity; Peirce’s concept of terminological ethics is one of his main contributions to philosophy and the extension (and purpose) of his semeiotic. Torkild Thellefsen discusses meaning from a Peircean perspective in his new book. He points out that the word, X-ray, has a much deeper and more complete meaning to a physician than it does to nonprofessionals, who in their fundamental ignorance may nevertheless think they well know what X-rays mean and do. E. David Ford also explains the need for effective definitions in his book, Scientific Method for Ecological Research. Those who do not engage in so-called “ethical terminology” risk being misunderstood—or worse. Regards, Phyllis From:C S Peirce discussion list [mailto:PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU] On Behalf Of Gary Moore Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 8:24 AM To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Subject: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS To whom it may concern: In trying to muddle through the storm tossed flotsam and jetsam of John Deely’s explanation of Peirce’s “The Ethics of Terminology” I have discovered the only slightly less over-involved muddle of Peirce’s original. There is the plea for a special terminology as opposed to popular terminology or language. The justification of this is ‘precision’. But such ‘precision’ needing a special terminology whether to a greater or lesser degree divorced from popular language simply sets up a ‘privileged’ standpoint of using language that is not judged by the actual rough and tumble usage of real language in real usage. This is not ‘precision’, this is mystification. The success or failure of any idea what-so-ever is its usage in ordinary discourse. Once established on that plain where an approximate but real general understanding is achieved, then one can seek precision of precisely those terms as really used in a living language. That is the only viable and workable definition of intellectual clarity. This is primary to the notion of a real ‘teacher’, that is, someone who really transfers understanding in normal language to a student that can actually apply it. I may misunderstand what Peirce and Deely are doing, but the historical attribution of ideas they seem to demand is like incorporating the entire and unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language into one’s discourse just to start with. And then the demand to be able to read the ‘crystal clear’ Latin that is the intellectual ground of our ‘philosophical’ terms instead of the “muddy” English they are always translated into is contradictory and self-defeating. How many of you teach your classes in Latin and have only textbooks in Latin? None. Therefore there has to always be an equivalence given of the Latin term that can be absorbed into normal English usage. What is the point at all of Aquinas’ Latin clarity if it can only be found in Latin, however supposedly easy the language is to learn? I have already discovered the tremendous differences of English understanding of the Latin, and these differences are proposed by people immensely better trained in Latin than I could ever be, but who have tremendous differences in translations from people equally qualified. So knowledge of Latin that stays in Latin is unavailable in English. I find the simple translation of Latin terms with their notable variations can easily absorb the understanding of the Latin term into English. And accreditation of blocks of new and unusual thought, however expressed, is rarely not properly given to their originators. The complete history of each term is a special endeavor for specific purposes, and is called for in obvious circumstances where it can mean different things in popular discourse. But “popular understanding” is the only prize worthwhile, that one always aims for because even for someone coming from Aristotle or Aquinas and stumbling into Peirce is not going to learn anything gross or net from specialized terms that violate common usage in one way or another, requiring a gross relearning of the English or Latin language to obtain a microscopic net award. Maybe this is the bane of all of Peirce’s work. The purpose of language is to communicate. If one is unfamiliar with a word, it can be looked up in a common source, not prized out from a secret, private source. There is no value in the later course. If it is justified by its greater precision, then that ‘precision’ will very soon be lost again if so specialized. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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