Dear Franklin, lists -
Sorry for having rattled Franklin's empiricist sentiments with references to
the a priori!
Empiricists seem to have an a priori fear of the a priori … but no philosophy
of science has, as yet, been able to completely abolish the a priori - even
logical positvism had to admit logic as a remaining a priori field
(reinterpreting that as tautologies, that is true).
I should probably have given a note here to my own stance on the a priori - for
the interested, I wrote a bit about it in ch. 8 of Diagrammatology (2007). My
take on it there comes more from the early Husserl than from Peirce: the a
priori has nothing to do with Kantian subjectivity, rather, it consists in
dependence structures of objectivity - this makes it subject to fallibilism -
the a priori charts necessities - these come in two classes, formal ontology
and material ontology - the former holds for all possible objects, the latter
for special regions of reality (like physics, biology, society) - no discipline
can function without more or less explicit conceptual networks defining their
basic ideas - being fallibilist, a priori claims develop with the single
scientific disciplines …
I happen to think this Husserlian picture (for a present-day version, see Barry
Smith) is compatible with Peirce's classification of the sciences where, as it
is well known, the upper echelon is taken to be a priori in the sense of not at
all containing empirical knowledge while the lower, positive levels inherit
structures from those higher ones, co-determining the way they organize and
prioritize their empirical material.
So, it is in this sense of material ontology that I speak of biogeographical
ontology and and the ontology of human culture development involved in
Diamond's argument. Given these assumptions, Diamond's argument, so I argue, is
a priori. His conclusion that Eurasia privileges the spread of domesticated
animals does not depend on the empirical investigation of early cultural
contacts, human migrations or trade routes across the continent - but only on
the general knowledge that climate is (largely) invariant along latitudes and
that the spead of human cultures involves that of domesticated animals (the two
ontologies I claim are involved).
As you can see my concept of ontology is deflated - which is also in concert
with the ontological commitment in some Peircean ideas (cf. the idea that what
exists is what must be there for true propositions to be true, 5.312) - so I do
not participate in the analytical quest for the most meagre ontology possible …
I would rather say that ontology should comprise general concepts necessary for
the sciences at all levels (from elementary particles and genes to empires,
wars, media and real estate …)
Best
F
Den 20/04/2015 kl. 04.07 skrev Franklin Ransom
pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.commailto:pragmaticist.lo...@gmail.com:
Ben, lists,
The connection you drew between the first and the fourth definitions of
theorematic reasoning is quite interesting; I had not thought of conceptual
analysis in quite that way. At least, though, the complexity of the diagram or
icon is likely more complicated in the case of theorematic reasoning than in
corollarial reasoning. I suppose I somehow think that a theorematic reasoning
is often a previous corollarial reasoning but with something novel introduced,
which would make the theorematic reasoning straightforwardly more complicated
than the corollarial reasoning.
Part of my concern about the relationship between theorematic reasoning and
abductive inference is that Frederik isn't just attempting to discuss
mathematics when treating of theorematic diagrammatic reasoning. Rather, the
significance is for all knowledge. Because the mathematical-diagrams are
ubiquitous, and because Frederik takes the mathematical diagrams to be a
priori, this means that all knowledge includes the a priori as a constituent
element. This is a very Kantian move, repeated by C.I. Lewis in his Mind and
the World-Order. I am quite wary of this move.
I think it very important the way you put the following: The conclusions are
aprioristically true only given the hypotheses, but the hypotheses themselves
are not aprioristically true nor asserted to be true except hypothetically, and
this hypotheticality is what allows such assurance of the conclusions, although
even the hypothesis is upended if it leads to such contradictions as render the
work futile. And then part of your quote from Peirce: Mathematics merely
traces out the consequences of hypotheses without caring whether they
correspond to anything real or not. It is purely deductive, and all necessary
inference is mathematics, pure or applied. Its hypotheses are suggested by any
of the other sciences, but its assumption of them is not a scientific act.
There are two things to be said about this. The first is that the hypotheses
are originally suggested by experience. The
