Jean-Marc says: Of course, not to restart an old debate... I am curious about how the following lines are going to be interpreted:
"We have a direct knowledge of real objects in every experiential reaction, whether of /Perception/ or of /Exertion/ (the one theoretical, the other practical). These are directly /hic et nunc/. But we extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling, peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters of which we have no immediate consciousness." REPLY: As I recall it, Jean-Marc, the main bone of contention in that earlier discussion had to do with whether or not direct knowledge is to be construed as unmediated and thus with the relation of the distinction direct/indirect and the distinction immediate/mediate, and this in the context of questions about his analysis of perception generally. I see no reason not to raise that "old debate" once again in hopes of coming to a better understanding of it than we could agree upon then. I think, though, that I would prefer to get into that only after we get ourselves better situated in respect to what is going on in general in the New Elements. Overall, I find the rationale of it baffling. It is not a complete paper of course, but even considered as only an intended preface to a book on the logic of mathematics, it is seems puzzlingly incomplete, at the least. Why does he start off with the theory vs. practice distinction? What does that have to do with the logic of math? And what exactly does he have in mind in distinguishing the theoretical from the practical? Is this the same as what we would now identify as the distinction between theoretical science and engineering? Or what he elsewhere calls practical sciences? Or is it rather the distinction between the normative science of logic and the normative science of ethics? (A certain parallel with something in John Locke suggests this possibility to me.) Assuming this was written in 1904, he has been doing the classification of the sciences stuff for some time, but how does this distinction fit in with the distinctions he draws there? Maybe I'm missing the obvious, and it may turn out not to be important, anyway, but it seems worth raising a question about initially. I intended to get a bit further into this, taking up the three connections of the sign with truth in the first part of Part III, which seems to me to parallel the three references (to the ground, to the correlate, and to the interpretant) in the New List, but I'm under siege from something flu-like or maybe a bad cold and getting so groggy I had best stop with this much for the moment. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.21/236 - Release Date: 1/20/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
