Jeff Kasser says:
JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
REPLY:
JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular.
I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when he says
"… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?"
This involves reiteration of effort with anticipation of it having a result in consequence of it , and thus implicitly makes reference to a possible sequential regularity of a lawlike nature. The two psychological laws might then be idioscopic rather than coenoscopic laws, having to do with the responsiveness of neural tissue to repeated stimulation and the like, which Peirce would know something about. It doesn't make any difference that it is not cenoscopic or properly philosophical since he is referring to it as something the devotee of tenacity exploits, not as something logic is based upon. This means that in referring to the two laws he is NOT referring to the basic principle that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as constituted by what would be logically described as a formal contradiction.
Now, as regards that principle, the idea that inquiry -- thinking in the sense of "I just can't seem to think today" or "he is a competent thinker" -- is driven by doubt in the form of an exerienced contradiction is not a modern idea but has its origins at the very beginning of philosophy in the West in the practice of the dialectical craft of Socrates. Let me quote myself, from a paper I wrote a few years back, on the Socratic tradition in philosophy, which I claim to be the proper logical tradition to which we should be putting Peirce in relation
In its origins Socratic dialectic probably developed as a
modification of practices of eristic dispute that made use
of the reductio techniques of the mathematicians, perhaps
as especially modified by the Parmenidean formalists.
Socratic dialectic differs importantly from the earlier
argumentation, though, in at least two major respects,
first, by conceiving of the elenchic or refutational aspect of
the argumentation not as a basis from which one could then
derive a positive conclusion either as the contradictory of
the proposition refuted, as in reductio argumentation, or
by affirming the alternative because it was the sole
alternative available, but rather as inducing an aporia or
awareness of an impasse in thought: subjectively, a
bewilderment or puzzlement. Second, it differs also by using
the conflicting energies held in suspense in the aporia as the
motivation of inquiry. (Ransdell, "Peirce and the Socratic
Tradition in Philosophy", Proceedings of the Peirce Society, 2000)
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/socratic.htm
Peirce could take this for granted not because of some well known psychological laws but because of the adoption (in a modified form) of the basic dialectical principle by Hegel and others, following upon the use of it in the Kantian philosophy in the transcendental dialectic of pure reason in the First Critique. I do not say that this should also satisfy us today as sufficient to persuade us to the acceptance of the thesis that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as a "dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions". But it is possible that Peirce did, at the time of composition of the Fixation article, think that this would be regarded as being something no one would be likely to dispute, or at least as something which no reader of the Popular Science Monthly would be likely to dispute. (That Journal was, as I understand it, a rough equivalent of the present day Nature as regards its targeted audience, whereas the Scientific American at that time was oriented more towards applications and inventions than theoretical science.) It is not obvious that logic should be based in a theory of inquiry, but it is not clear to me that Peirce regarded that as something which had to be argued for. In any case, none of this affects your thesis about Peirce not regarding the Fixation as suffering from psychologism.
I have a couple of other comments to make, Jeff, but I will put them in another message which I probably won't write before tomorrow.
Joe Ransdell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
JK: First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
REPLY:
JR: The more I think about it the less plausible it seems to me that either of these is what he meant by the two "psychological laws". What would the second one be: If x is a belief then x is a habit? That doesn't even sound like a law. And as regards the first, what exactly would it be? If a belief is arrived at then inquiry ends? Or: If inquiry has ended then a belief has been arrived at? But nothing like either of these seems much like something he might want to call a psychological law. Moreover, why would he single out the method of tenacity as based on these when they are equally pertinent to all four methods? He does say earlier that "the FEELING of believing is a more or less sure indication of there being established in our nature some habit which will determine our actions". That is more like a law, in the sense he might have in mind, but that has to do with a correlation between a feeling and an occurrence of a belief establishment and, again, there is no special relationship there to the method of tenacity in particular.
I suggest that the place to look is rather at the simple description of the method of tenacity he gives at the very beginning of his discussion of it when he says
"… why should we not attain the desired end by taking as answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it?"
This involves reiteration of effort with anticipation of it having a result in consequence of it , and thus implicitly makes reference to a possible sequential regularity of a lawlike nature. The two psychological laws might then be idioscopic rather than coenoscopic laws, having to do with the responsiveness of neural tissue to repeated stimulation and the like, which Peirce would know something about. It doesn't make any difference that it is not cenoscopic or properly philosophical since he is referring to it as something the devotee of tenacity exploits, not as something logic is based upon. This means that in referring to the two laws he is NOT referring to the basic principle that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as constituted by what would be logically described as a formal contradiction.
Now, as regards that principle, the idea that inquiry -- thinking in the sense of "I just can't seem to think today" or "he is a competent thinker" -- is driven by doubt in the form of an exerienced contradiction is not a modern idea but has its origins at the very beginning of philosophy in the West in the practice of the dialectical craft of Socrates. Let me quote myself, from a paper I wrote a few years back, on the Socratic tradition in philosophy, which I claim to be the proper logical tradition to which we should be putting Peirce in relation
In its origins Socratic dialectic probably developed as a
modification of practices of eristic dispute that made use
of the reductio techniques of the mathematicians, perhaps
as especially modified by the Parmenidean formalists.
Socratic dialectic differs importantly from the earlier
argumentation, though, in at least two major respects,
first, by conceiving of the elenchic or refutational aspect of
the argumentation not as a basis from which one could then
derive a positive conclusion either as the contradictory of
the proposition refuted, as in reductio argumentation, or
by affirming the alternative because it was the sole
alternative available, but rather as inducing an aporia or
awareness of an impasse in thought: subjectively, a
bewilderment or puzzlement. Second, it differs also by using
the conflicting energies held in suspense in the aporia as the
motivation of inquiry. (Ransdell, "Peirce and the Socratic
Tradition in Philosophy", Proceedings of the Peirce Society, 2000)
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/socratic.htm
Peirce could take this for granted not because of some well known psychological laws but because of the adoption (in a modified form) of the basic dialectical principle by Hegel and others, following upon the use of it in the Kantian philosophy in the transcendental dialectic of pure reason in the First Critique. I do not say that this should also satisfy us today as sufficient to persuade us to the acceptance of the thesis that inquiry is driven by doubt, construed as a "dissatisfaction at two repugnant propositions". But it is possible that Peirce did, at the time of composition of the Fixation article, think that this would be regarded as being something no one would be likely to dispute, or at least as something which no reader of the Popular Science Monthly would be likely to dispute. (That Journal was, as I understand it, a rough equivalent of the present day Nature as regards its targeted audience, whereas the Scientific American at that time was oriented more towards applications and inventions than theoretical science.) It is not obvious that logic should be based in a theory of inquiry, but it is not clear to me that Peirce regarded that as something which had to be argued for. In any case, none of this affects your thesis about Peirce not regarding the Fixation as suffering from psychologism.
I have a couple of other comments to make, Jeff, but I will put them in another message which I probably won't write before tomorrow.
Joe Ransdell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2006 3:04:13 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Joe and other listers,
Thanks, Joe, for your kind words about my paper. I fear that you make the paper sound a bit more interesting than it is, and you certainly do a better job of establishing its importance than I did. It's something of a cut-and paste job from my dissertation, and I'm afraid the prose is sometimes rather "dissertationy," which is almost never a good thing.
First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
This interpretation does have two disadvantages, however. If my paper is at all close to right, then Peirce considered these laws "psychical" rather than "psychological," in the 1870's as well as in the 1860's and in the latter half of his career (I don't mean that he had the term "psychical" available in 1877, however). But this is one of those places where the fact that Peirce was writing for *Popular Science Monthly* can perhaps be invoked to account for some terminological sloppiness. A second consideration is a bit more troublesome, however. It's not easy to see how Peirce could have considered "the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry" a psychical or a psychological law. It seems charitable here to see Peirce as writing a bit casually once again and to construe him as meaning that the statement in question is a normative truth more or less forced on us by psychological (i.e. psychical) facts. But, as the following quote from another of your messages indicates, Peirce was pretty quick to close the is/ought gap with respect to this issue:
So perhaps he really meant that a statement about the aim of iqnuiry could be a (coenscopic) psychological law. This raises an issue you mention in yet another message, viz. what exactly makes doubts "paper" or otherwise inappropriate. There's been some good work done on this issue, but I think Peirce's confidence that the coenscopic data rather directly warrants his methodological conclusions is puzzling and I'm trying to wrestle with this problem these days.
I'd like to add to remarks about your message concerning my 1999 paper, neither of which amounts to a disagreement. First, I'm inclined to supplement your valuable considerations about the coenscopic sense of "mind." You focus on some of our locutions concerning minds like ours, and I'd just add the Peircean thought that the coenscopic notion of "mindedness" extends to cases at some remove from the human exemplar. Even something as simple as a sensor is going to, as Peirce sees matters, need belief-like states (ways of storing information, assumptions about what the world is like, etc.) and doubt-like states (ways in which the world can get the sensor's attention). This needs some working out, but Peirce seems to think that the doubt-belief theory will hold of anything that can play a certain role (perhaps picked out communicatively) in inquiry.
Finally, I should note that I'm perhaps less confident than you are, Joe, that Peirce's apparent complaints about the "psychological" basis of "Fixation" and "How To" are primarily admissions of a rhetorical failure in allowing those who don't understand psychologism to accuse Peirce thereof. That may account for some such passages, but I suspect that in some cases Peirce had in mind his preferred (at the time) notion of a philosophical grounding (in phenomenology or semiotics or the normative sciences, etc.) and was faulting himself for not providing a sufficiently "deep" argument for some of his methodological claims, especially the pragmatic maxim. But you and I are in agreement on the central point, which is that Peirce was not accusing himself of anything worth calling psychologism.
Best to all,
Jeff
From: Jeff Kasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Peirce Discussion Forum <peirce-l@lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, October 1, 2006 3:04:13 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?
Joe and other listers,
Thanks, Joe, for your kind words about my paper. I fear that you make the paper sound a bit more interesting than it is, and you certainly do a better job of establishing its importance than I did. It's something of a cut-and paste job from my dissertation, and I'm afraid the prose is sometimes rather "dissertationy," which is almost never a good thing.
First, as to the question in the heading of your initial message, it seems to me that Peirce can only be referring to the antecedents of the two conditional statements that motivate the method of tenacity in the first place. These are stated in the first sentence of Section V of "Fixation." "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking any answer to a question which we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything which might disturb it." In the context of the paper, this would seem to make fairly straightforward sense of the idea that tenacity rests on "two fundamental psychological laws." Peirce sure seems to think that it should be apparent to the reader on which "laws" tenacity rests, and so I don't think we're to wander too far afield from the paper itself in determining which the laws are.
This interpretation does have two disadvantages, however. If my paper is at all close to right, then Peirce considered these laws "psychical" rather than "psychological," in the 1870's as well as in the 1860's and in the latter half of his career (I don't mean that he had the term "psychical" available in 1877, however). But this is one of those places where the fact that Peirce was writing for *Popular Science Monthly* can perhaps be invoked to account for some terminological sloppiness. A second consideration is a bit more troublesome, however. It's not easy to see how Peirce could have considered "the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry" a psychical or a psychological law. It seems charitable here to see Peirce as writing a bit casually once again and to construe him as meaning that the statement in question is a normative truth more or less forced on us by psychological (i.e. psychical) facts. But, as the following quote from another of your messages indicates, Peirce was pretty quick to close the is/ought gap with respect to this issue:
The following axiom requires no comment, beyond the remark that it seems often to be forgotten. Where there is no real doubt or disagreement there is no question and can be no real investigation.
So perhaps he really meant that a statement about the aim of iqnuiry could be a (coenscopic) psychological law. This raises an issue you mention in yet another message, viz. what exactly makes doubts "paper" or otherwise inappropriate. There's been some good work done on this issue, but I think Peirce's confidence that the coenscopic data rather directly warrants his methodological conclusions is puzzling and I'm trying to wrestle with this problem these days.
I'd like to add to remarks about your message concerning my 1999 paper, neither of which amounts to a disagreement. First, I'm inclined to supplement your valuable considerations about the coenscopic sense of "mind." You focus on some of our locutions concerning minds like ours, and I'd just add the Peircean thought that the coenscopic notion of "mindedness" extends to cases at some remove from the human exemplar. Even something as simple as a sensor is going to, as Peirce sees matters, need belief-like states (ways of storing information, assumptions about what the world is like, etc.) and doubt-like states (ways in which the world can get the sensor's attention). This needs some working out, but Peirce seems to think that the doubt-belief theory will hold of anything that can play a certain role (perhaps picked out communicatively) in inquiry.
Finally, I should note that I'm perhaps less confident than you are, Joe, that Peirce's apparent complaints about the "psychological" basis of "Fixation" and "How To" are primarily admissions of a rhetorical failure in allowing those who don't understand psychologism to accuse Peirce thereof. That may account for some such passages, but I suspect that in some cases Peirce had in mind his preferred (at the time) notion of a philosophical grounding (in phenomenology or semiotics or the normative sciences, etc.) and was faulting himself for not providing a sufficiently "deep" argument for some of his methodological claims, especially the pragmatic maxim. But you and I are in agreement on the central point, which is that Peirce was not accusing himself of anything worth calling psychologism.
Best to all,
Jeff
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
