John, Auke, Gary F., List: JFS: In both texts, he is making a claim that young children are in a state where they can't or don't recognize negations.
Peirce makes no claim in the relevant texts about what young children "can't or don't recognize." JFS: He also claims that nonhuman animals can't learn to recognize negations. Peirce makes no claim in the relevant texts about non-human animals at all. JFS: I believe that the 1897 example and the 1911 example are cases where Peirce violated his own principles. This is a serious allegation, and it is utterly baseless since the relevant texts are perfectly consistent with Peirce's overall philosophy of logic. GF: Peirce is using a metaphor to make a point about *logic*. He never approved of basing logical principles on psychology. Exactly, and here are the relevant texts so that we can all see for ourselves what specific point about logic Peirce is making. CSP: Logic in this stage of its development may be called *paradisaical logic*, because it represents the state of Man's cognition before the Fall. For although, with this apparatus, it is easy to write propositions necessarily true, it is absolutely impossible to write any which is necessarily false, or, in any way which that stage of logic affords, to find out that anything is false. The mind has not as yet eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Truth and Falsity. Probably it will not be doubted that every child in its mental development necessarily passes through a stage in which he has some ideas, but yet has never recognised that an idea may be erroneous; and a stage that every child necessarily passes through must have been formerly passed through by the race in its adult development. (CP 3.488, 1897) CSP: [T]here must have been a time when men used language with some syntax, and yet were not fully conscious of it; and as long as they were in that condition, they could hardly have had much notion of falsity, although they might very well have drawn simple inferences, such as the Scroll of Fig. 5 represents; but these would have furnished them no notion of falsity or even of contradiction. (RS 30:20-21[Copy T:14-15], c. 1906) CSP: It was forced upon the logician’s attention that a certain development of reasoning was possible before, or as if before, the concept of *falsity *had ever been framed, or any recognition of such a thing as a false assertion had ever taken place. Probably every human being passes through such a grade of intellectual life, which may be called the state of paradisaical logic, when reasoning takes place but when the idea of falsity, whether in assertion or in inference, has never been recognized. But it will soon be recognized that not every assertion is true; and that once recognized, as soon as one notices that if a certain thing were true, every assertion would be true, one at once rejects the antecedent that leads to that absurd consequence. (R 669:18-19[16-17], LF 1:582, 1911 May 31) CSP: [T]he denial implies recognition of the affirmation, while the affirmation is so far from implying recognition of the denial, that one might imagine a paradisaic state of innocence in which men never had the idea of falsity, and yet might reason ... (RL 376, R 500:12, 1911 Dec 6) We can reason to a limited extent without any notion of falsity, as demonstrated by the "positive fragment" of formal logic that omits the signs for negation and falsity. However, all inferences require the relation of consequence, "a real movement of thought in the mind" (R 300:49[48], 1908) by which we apprehend that one proposition *follows *from another. Without it, young children and non-human animals would never be able to *learn *anything at all, including the meaning of the word "no." As Bellucci and Pietarinen put it, "The idea that material implication is primary because it mirrors inference remains a constant theme throughout his [Peirce's] logical thought." CSP: [O]f all the methods in which propositions *may be* analyzed and analyzed correctly, that one which uses the copula of inclusion *alone* corresponds to the *theory of inference*. And *this* it does, inasmuch as it makes the relation of subject to predicate of a categorical proposition *precisely *the same as the relation of antecedent to consequent of a conditional proposition; for this latter is manifestly no other relation than that of a premise to its conclusion. (NEM 4:174, 1898) My guess is that John finds the quoted passages unacceptable because they conflict with his strong endorsement of Peirce's decision to present shading for negation *as if* it were a logical primitive in several 1911 writings intended for audiences and individuals not previously familiar with Existential Graphs. There is no question that this approach is practically simpler to explain and implement for classical logic, in which a consequence is equivalent to a composite of two negations. There is also no question that this approach is "philosophically inaccurate," as Bellucci and Pietarinen call it, especially since Peirce himself explicitly denies that such equivalence is a correct analysis. CSP: The second failure of Selectives to be as analytical as possible lies in their encouraging the idea that negation, or denial, is a relatively simple concept, and that the concept of Consequence, is a special composite of two negations, so that to say, “If in the actual state of things A is true, then B is true,” is correctly analyzed as the assertion, “It is false to say that A is true while B is false.” I fully acknowledge that, for most purposes and in a preliminary explanation, the error of this analysis is altogether insignificant. But when we come to the first analysis the inaccuracy must not be passed over. ... Indeed, so far is the concept of *Sequence *from being a composite of two Negations, that, on the contrary, the concept of the Negation of any state of things, X, is, precisely, a composite of which one element is the concept of Sequence. Namely, it is the concept of a sequence from X of the essence of falsity. (R 300:48-50[47-51], 1908) For the details on all this, I highly recommend the article by Bellucci and Pietarinen that I have linked in the past and quoted a couple of times in this post ( https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-symbolic-logic/article/existential-graphs-as-an-instrument-of-logical-analysis-part-i-alpha/9C4689940BDC5B17F739C34A87C2B77F ). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 8:19 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > John, are you seriously claiming that an infant’s crying is an instance of > logical negation? > > Peirce is using a metaphor to make a point about *logic*. He never > approved of basing logical principles on psychology. > > > > Gary f. > > > > *From:* [email protected] < > [email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Auke van Breemen > *Sent:* 6-Apr-21 03:58 > *To:* [email protected]; [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [PEIRCE-L] Paradisaical logic (was Phaneroscopy... > > John, > > Peirce: > > "Probably it will not be doubted that every child in its mental > development necessarily passes through a stage in which he has some ideas, > but yet has never recognised that an idea may be erroneous; and a stage > that every child necessarily passes through must have been formerly passed > through by the race in its adult development." > > -- > > For me Pierce here hints at the distiction between a logica utens and a > logica docens. It marks the difference between semiosis subject to the > normative sciences and semiosis which is not. > > As I understand your objection it is mainly a matter of you not accepting > the use of a normal/ideal (Tonnies/Weber) type in order to bring out a > difference. But in law the difference is recognized by the differences > between children and adult law. > > I do think that also if Peirce had experience with small children being > born, he could have written what he had. An example from experience. As > already written, my son started crying at birth as usual. It can easily be > questioned that that is an example of negation, it sooner is an utterance > expressing discomfort, then of a full fledged negation. But if it is > regarded a negation, it is not a contemplated one and may be taken as a > conclusion from an inference drawn by ingrown habits. > > At birth he was fully covered with signs of leaking bloodvessels and > emergency procedures were set in motion. Trombocytopenie was the hypothesis > immediately expressed as highly probable. But it had to be checked of > course, together with finding the source of the problem. So a bloodsample > had to be taken soon after bird. A medic approached my sun in order to draw > a sample. > > Now, in order to follow my response to this act, it is needed to know > something about a previous experience of mine. At an earlier pregnancy a > puncture was set through the placenta, I could witness it on a monitor. I > saw the needle going through te placenta and saw pixels starting to move > around the point at which the needle went through the skin of the placenta > and just had time to say "Do I see a turbulence?" Hartbeat dropped and > signaled the closing down of the bloodsystem to the brain heart cricuit. > People came rushing in. Three days later the embryo proved dead. > > So, at the moment the medic approached my leaking child, I felt the > tension in my muscles rising and sensed an urge to move in order to prevent > the risk of another child loosing to much blood by being punctured. I > didn't intervene because I regognized that idea of my intervention as > possibly erronous. And, at least as not helpful in finding causes and > possible consequences of his situation. > > This, in my opinion is what the quote is about. > > Auke > > Op 6 april 2021 om 6:15 schreef "John F. Sowa" <[email protected]>: > > Jon A, Auke, List, > > Peirce wrote about Paradaisaical logic in connection with entitative > graphs (1897). See the attached file CP3_488.txt. The text is somewhat > longer than the 1911 version (from R669), but it is very similar. > > In both texts, he is making a claim that young children are in a state > where they can't or don't recognize negations. He also claims that > nonhuman animals can't learn to recognize negations. > > AvB> But why couldn't Peirce have written the passage, if he had witnessed > [babies crying]? > > Babies very early and clearly show their approval of some situations (by > making pleasant cooing sounds) and strong disapproval of others (by making > unpleasant crying sounds). They do not begin in some state of paradise > where everything is positive. > > Anybody who has a pet cat or dog also knows that they can quickly learn to > recognize a command such as "No!' And the animals also learn that there > are certain actions that are forbidden (at least when somebody is watching). > > JA> I generally take these sorts of just-so stories with a grain of salt. > > I believe that the 1897 example and the 1911 example are cases where > Peirce violated his own principles. He wanted to make a point about > negations. To justify the point, he created an example that he had never > actually observed. > > Such so-called evidence isn't worth a grain of salt. > > John > >
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