RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[John Collier]

I wrote and Clark replied:



I think that rationalism normally and traditionally means 
accepting that there are truths that can be known a priori that are not merely 
matters of convention.



Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like those are two separate claims and they must 
be broken out separately. Certainly that is where I take Quine to have been 
pushing the more Kantian conceptions. With regards to Peirce it may well be 
they are not convention (or as Peirce puts it not dependent upon a finite 
number of minds) but that we still learn them in a mediated form as they act 
upon us indirectly.



I would agree, but most rationalists would not, I think. I should have made it 
clear that I was restricting to a priori truths. Synthetic a priori truths, 
which rationalists accept the existence of, are typically taken by rationalists 
to have only conventions as an alternative. But even then there is a problem. 
The problem is that naturalist approaches make some a priori truths 
consequences of the discoverable nature of things, and not a result of reason 
alone. We don’t intuit them on this account, in the rationalist sense.



I think it is questionable whether Chomsky was really a rationalist, since he, 
like Pinker, often spoke of syntax as something that evolved, and therefore 
contingent. Mark Bickhard has argued that given a rich enough form of language 
we can derive Chomsky’s syntactic rules. The rules would still be contingent, 
though. It gets a bit muddy from there, since there are various views of 
law-like necessity available.



John

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Clark Goble]

> On Nov 20, 2015, at 9:02 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Taking rational-ism (as rational-doesm) to be a perspective on the care and 
> feeding of rational concepts and not some Apotheosis of Reason with a Capital 
> “R”, one of the forks in the road where Peirce really does diverge (or maybe 
> triverge?) from Descartes is on the issue of dyadic reductionism, the place 
> where three roads or more meet but Descartes tries to take them two at time, 
> as Susan Awbrey and I noted in this paper:

I think this is right. Further I fear the dyadic reductionism affected a lot of 
philosophy for the next few hundred years. (I’d argue it still dominates in 
analytic philosophy)

So much of philosophy ends up resting upon this in various ways - sometimes 
obscured. For instance one could argue that certainty in philosophy really is 
the epistemological manifestation of this. (As it is in Descartes too) Likewise 
even those who throw off foundationalism in epistemology often still adopt a 
basic dyadic mental conception of relating things in the mind to things out of 
the mind in a dyadic scheme. (Non-foundational approaches like coherency models 
really are doing this just as much)

> On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:42 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I think here of Chomsky (who understood Peirce better than most I've read). 
> The brand of rationalism he promoted is essential to the generative aspect of 
> grammar.


I honestly didn’t know Chomsky studied Peirce. That’s quite interesting.


> I think that rationalism normally and traditionally means accepting that 
> there are truths that can be known a priori that are not merely matters of 
> convention. 

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like those are two separate claims and they must 
be broken out separately. Certainly that is where I take Quine to have been 
pushing the more Kantian conceptions. With regards to Peirce it may well be 
they are not convention (or as Peirce puts it not dependent upon a finite 
number of minds) but that we still learn them in a mediated form as they act 
upon us indirectly.

While Peirce wasn’t quite as loose with this as say Dewey and James were I do 
think he thinks we learn of this in experience.

> Some versions of existentialism and of postmodernism fit that bill. They tend 
> to focus on unfortunate and even destructive uses of reason (a useful type of 
> scepticism, I think, when done in what Hume called the academic mode), but 
> less useful I think when the critiques is grounded in a rejection of the 
> association of reason with power, as when some feminists adopt 
> antirationalism (in this sense) as masculine and demeaning to women.

I tend to agree. While overstated and exaggerated in places I’ve long thought 
Pinker’s The Blank Slate a useful critique of these tendencies. That said I do 
think questions of power matter. Often reason ignores consequences either by 
not preparing other ways to counteract undesirable outcomes or by ignoring the 
conditions that reason starts from. It’s just that far too often power is 
conceived of in very simplistic terms and those making these critiques ignore 
or repress the very consequences of their own quests for power. (Honestly 
though I’m just tired of the whole analysis of everything in terms of power 
that’s so common in the softest science or the related humanities - when you’re 
a hammer everything looks like a nail.)

The quote I mentioned yesterday of Peirce while dealing with Philosophical 
rationalism is true enough of reason in general. Often it is very hard to 
distinguish between what reason is leading us to from our subconscious biasing 
the path of reason to justified preconceptions. While deduction has fewer gaps 
to enable this bias, induction and abduction provide plenty for the 
subconscious to work with. That’s why although i tend to hate Foucalt inspired 
power critiques I also tend to try and keep in mind that danger. Power can 
manifest even when we think we’re being objective.

Peirce’s solution of not cutting off inquiry seems the best way to keep such 
problems in cheque. But it’s precisely there that I worry a lot about recent 
political trends in academics which seem designed to cut off unwanted inquiry. 
(Although similar trends are taking place outside academics along the opposite 
political spectrum as people cut off government funding for projects with 
conclusions they dislike or don’t find valuable) Even though power might 
undermine reason, the solution is never to just only focus on exercising power.







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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments (and "The union of units unites the unity.")

[Clark Goble]

> On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:49 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
> 
>>> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Jerry LR Chandler >> > wrote:
>>> 
>>> I find CSP to be rather inconsistent with regard to the deeper 
>>> philosophical structures of mathematics and its origins and the pragmatism 
>>> of applied mathematics as it relates to the conceptualization of the 
>>> exactness of logical terms and propositions. 
>> 
>>> On one hand, he adores the concept of chemical elements as a BOUNDED source 
>>> of the logic of terms and of his description of natural recursive logic 
>>> (the trichotomy). On the other hand, he adores probability and continuity.  
>>> The is a metaphysical tension, not merely a logical tension.  What does one 
>>> believe about the distinction between collections as individuals and 
>>> collections as masses?
>> 
>> Could you expand on this a little more? I confess I don’t see the tension 
>> here.
> 
> Perhaps this is because of your philosophy of mathematics?

Perhaps, but that doesn’t help me determine if it is. I confess to not having 
terribly strong opinions on why physics is so mathematical. To the degree I 
have them it’s something akin to Peirce’s scholastic realism. 


> On Nov 19, 2015, at 9:33 PM, Jerry LR Chandler  
> wrote:
> 
>>> This inconsistency to which I refer is in his failure to denote the 
>>> relationships between the mathematical symbol system(s) for real numbers 
>>> and the chemical symbol system which is based on the identity of natural  
>>> objects and the order of arrangements of parts of the whole (mereology). If 
>>> one is to give serious weight to the extra-ordinary strict argument of 
>>> continuity that CSP offers, then the sciences of biology and chemistry CAN 
>>> NOT exist.  
>> 
>> Again could you expand a little more on this? (Forgive me if it was 
>> discussed when I wasn’t able to read the list for a few weeks)
> 
> Again, I suggest that this is a consequence of a physical view of mathematics 
> and mereology.
> 
> see, for example, "The Applicability of Mathematics in Science."  Sorin 
> Bangu, 2012.
> Or, the earlier book by Mark Stein.

Sadly I won’t have time to pick up those books which aren’t in my local 
library. By the time I did interlibrary loan I’m sure the discussion would be 
long passed.


>> It almost sounds like you’re trying to deal with the conflict between quanta 
>> (integers) and continuum (reals) in chemistry. But isn’t that just a part 
>> and parcel of the quantum mechanics we now typically consider chemistry to 
>> arise out of? 
> 
> This comment is a-historical!  The chemical elements are the starting point 
> for quantum theory (Rutherford, Schrodinger and others). They provide the 
> initial conditions for the study of quantum systems in relation to energy / 
> motion.  And the success or failure of quantum thinking in the sciences rests 
> on approximations consistent with physical measurements on the chemical 
> elements. 

How is this not conflating the genealogy of the development of an idea with the 
idea itself? Why does the starting point historically for quantum theory 
matter? Certainly the results must explain earlier measurements but it appears 
you’re demanding something more radical than that.


>> Maybe it’s just the bias my physics gave me causing me to overlook the 
>> obvious and problematic as not a problem. 
>> 
> How would you develop this argument in terms of logical terms, propositions 
> and arguments?
> 
> I would suggest that you may wish to start with the concepts of mass and 
> electricity and hybrid logic. 
> 
> If you follow this suggestion, will you develop an argument based on the 
> union of units?
> What other alternatives do you have?
> 
> Just some of my quick thoughts that may stimulate deeper explorations.

Well that line was more a throw away joke, although there’s some truth to it. I 
think scientists, especially in the hard sciences, tend to downplay gaps or 
issues. I’m well aware of that instinct in myself due to my background. 
Although I like to think I keep an appreciation that all the models in physics 
have big gaps due to the lack of a true unifying theory (despite string 
theory’s pretenses). Further there are gaps between theory and empirics as we 
don’t yet have explanations for dark matter or dark energy that are 
satisfactory yet. Likewise certain aspect of gravity waves that are predicted 
have not yet been observed. These suggest our understanding is fragmentary and 
that thus realist interpretations leading to ontology should be viewed with a 
skeptical eye.

I confess though I’m not quite sure what to make of your rejoinder. Again, 
could you flesh things out a bit more? I see gestures towards issues but so 
vague that I’m not quite sure what to make of them. For instance are you 
talking of mass in classical physics or in the standard model? I assume you’re 
talking of this integers:real issue, but again I’m still not sure what you 
mean. Are you s

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments (and "The union of units unites the unity.")

[Jerry LR Chandler]

List: 

Some responses are interwoven: 

On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:49 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

> 
>> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Jerry LR Chandler  
>> wrote:
>> 
>> I find CSP to be rather inconsistent with regard to the deeper philosophical 
>> structures of mathematics and its origins and the pragmatism of applied 
>> mathematics as it relates to the conceptualization of the exactness of 
>> logical terms and propositions. 
> 
>> On one hand, he adores the concept of chemical elements as a BOUNDED source 
>> of the logic of terms and of his description of natural recursive logic (the 
>> trichotomy). On the other hand, he adores probability and continuity.  The 
>> is a metaphysical tension, not merely a logical tension.  What does one 
>> believe about the distinction between collections as individuals and 
>> collections as masses?
> 
> Could you expand on this a little more? I confess I don’t see the tension 
> here.

Perhaps this is because of your philosophy of mathematics?
> 
> The process from chaos to substance is itself a continuum though.
 
This assertion is false.
Even if you insist that the antecedent function is continuous, the natural 
consequences of the process is discrete atoms of matter, which are individual 
identities, represented as discrete objects with discrete structures.  
Again, you ought to look at CSP's notion of continuity, it is very very strict. 

> 
>> This inconsistency to which I refer is in his failure to denote the 
>> relationships between the mathematical symbol system(s) for real numbers and 
>> the chemical symbol system which is based on the identity of natural  
>> objects and the order of arrangements of parts of the whole (mereology). If 
>> one is to give serious weight to the extra-ordinary strict argument of 
>> continuity that CSP offers, then the sciences of biology and chemistry CAN 
>> NOT exist.  
> 
> Again could you expand a little more on this? (Forgive me if it was discussed 
> when I wasn’t able to read the list for a few weeks)

Again, I suggest that this is a consequence of a physical view of mathematics 
and mereology.

see, for example, "The Applicability of Mathematics in Science."  Sorin Bangu, 
2012.
Or, the earlier book by Mark Stein.

> 
> It almost sounds like you’re trying to deal with the conflict between quanta 
> (integers) and continuum (reals) in chemistry. But isn’t that just a part and 
> parcel of the quantum mechanics we now typically consider chemistry to arise 
> out of?

This comment is a-historical!  The chemical elements are the starting point for 
quantum theory (Rutherford, Schrodinger and others). They provide the initial 
conditions for the study of quantum systems in relation to energy / motion.  
And the success or failure of quantum thinking in the sciences rests on 
approximations consistent with physical measurements on the chemical elements. 

> Maybe it’s just the bias my physics gave me causing me to overlook the 
> obvious and problematic as not a problem. 
> 
How would you develop this argument in terms of logical terms, propositions and 
arguments?

I would suggest that you may wish to start with the concepts of mass and 
electricity and hybrid logic. 

If you follow this suggestion, will you develop an argument based on the union 
of units?
What other alternatives do you have?

Just some of my quick thoughts that may stimulate deeper explorations.

Cheers

Jerry



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> 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments and "The union of units unites the unity."

[Jerry LR Chandler]

List, Clark:

On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:42 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

> Peirce just doesn’t see the whole universe in those terms unlike Leibniz or 
> Spinoza.

Your judgment is hard for me accept.

I could argue that CSP not only sees the whole universe, but he see's it with 
the exquisite details available only to those that have mastered the chemical 
symbol system, it's logic and its extension to life itself. 

But I will not so argue but such assertions lack... 

(see Steven's book for his analysis of the Peirce family believes about the 
nature of the universe.)

Cheers

jerry



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments (and "The union of units unites the unity.")

[Clark Goble]

> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:19 PM, Jerry LR Chandler  
> wrote:
> 
> I find CSP to be rather inconsistent with regard to the deeper philosophical 
> structures of mathematics and its origins and the pragmatism of applied 
> mathematics as it relates to the conceptualization of the exactness of 
> logical terms and propositions. 

> On one hand, he adores the concept of chemical elements as a BOUNDED source 
> of the logic of terms and of his description of natural recursive logic (the 
> trichotomy). On the other hand, he adores probability and continuity.  The is 
> a metaphysical tension, not merely a logical tension.  What does one believe 
> about the distinction between collections as individuals and collections as 
> masses?

Could you expand on this a little more? I confess I don’t see the tension here.

Certainly if we applied these ideas universally there would be a tension. But 
it seems to me that Peirce solves this issue with his development of Entelechy. 
That is to the degree something becomes self-controlled and thus habit it comes 
to be more like a substance in the sense other philosophers think of it. The 
process from chaos to substance is itself a continuum though.

> This inconsistency to which I refer is in his failure to denote the 
> relationships between the mathematical symbol system(s) for real numbers and 
> the chemical symbol system which is based on the identity of natural  objects 
> and the order of arrangements of parts of the whole (mereology). If one is to 
> give serious weight to the extra-ordinary strict argument of continuity that 
> CSP offers, then the sciences of biology and chemistry CAN NOT exist.  

Again could you expand a little more on this? (Forgive me if it was discussed 
when I wasn’t able to read the list for a few weeks)

It almost sounds like you’re trying to deal with the conflict between quanta 
(integers) and continuum (reals) in chemistry. But isn’t that just a part and 
parcel of the quantum mechanics we now typically consider chemistry to arise 
out of? Maybe it’s just the bias my physics gave me causing me to overlook the 
obvious and problematic as not a problem. 

To the degree this is fundamental (as say in interpretations of quantum 
mechanics involving the collapse of the wave function) it makes me tend to 
suspect we’re just looking at the problem wrong. That is I tend to see the 
conflict more as an error of interpretation. (This puts me in the camp that 
distrusts the very notion of a collapse of a wave function as basic ontology)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments and "The union of units unites the unity."

[Clark Goble]

> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:39 PM, Jerry LR Chandler  
> wrote:
> 
> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:46 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
> 
>> I think it’s probably better to think of Peirce here in terms of his 
>> scholastic realism instead of in terms of the rationalists like Descartes or 
>> Leibniz.
> 
> I disagree.
> 
> CSP's "fill in the blanks" sentences are a direct extension of Leibniz's 
> notion of "let us reason with numbers."
> The chemical sciences must follow Leibniz's maxim in order to establish the 
> initial conditions for observations.

I think once something is self-controlled that we have something like Leibniz. 
It’s that process for chaos to reason metaphysically that’s the difference. 
(Becoming substance) Chemistry for the most part, especially in 19th century 
conceptions, was about ordered substances. In that regard then of course there 
will be a lot of parallels.

Peirce just doesn’t see the whole universe in those terms unlike Leibniz or 
Spinoza.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments and "The union of units unites the unity."

[Jerry LR Chandler]

List, Clark:

On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:46 PM, Clark Goble wrote:

> I think it’s probably better to think of Peirce here in terms of his 
> scholastic realism instead of in terms of the rationalists like Descartes or 
> Leibniz.

I disagree.

CSP's "fill in the blanks" sentences are a direct extension of Leibniz's notion 
of "let us reason with numbers."
The chemical sciences must follow Leibniz's maxim in order to establish the 
initial conditions for observations.

It appears to that CSP finds Leibnizian monads insufficient for chemical 
reasoning with molecular forms from atomic forms and extends the form of logic 
in such a way as to accommodate the root concept of a chemical relation to a 
mathematical relation.  CSP's reasoning appears to include electrical 
relations, such as a pair like Sodium Chloride.  CSP's focus on pairs of 
related symbols is not accident is it?

see:
 3.420 and ff

see also, 
Geraldine Brady, in Studies in the Logic of CSP, p. 173-192.

see also on notation for logics:
3.359-403M

Cheers

jerry
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments (and "The union of units unites the unity.")

[Jerry LR Chandler]

at guides us in the 
> formation of hypotheses that will make the explanations of surprising 
> phenomena fit naturally with our best theories and c) a pragmatic maxim which 
> asks us to look towards the possible tests that we could conduct when we are 
> putting our hypotheses together and sorting through those that are worthy of 
> our attention and those that are not.
> 
> As we try to answer this methodological question, Peirce is arguing that we 
> should avoid making appeals to our favorite metaphysical theories.  Such 
> appeals will tend to bias and prejudice the conduct of our inquiry into this 
> question of logic.
> 
> --Jeff
> 
> 
> 
> Jeff Downard
> Associate Professor
> Department of Philosophy
> NAU
> (o) 523-8354
> 
> From: John Collier [colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 7:09 AM
> To: Jon Awbrey
> Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L
> Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments
> 
> Jon, Lists,
> 
> I agree that starting with Cartesian dualism will give a bad interpretation 
> of Peirce, but I am not sure what you mean by your first distinction.  Could 
> you expand?
> 
> The Cartesian position is a consequence of what I called rationalism if it 
> accepts material substance. Idealism is the result if it does not (what I 
> take to be Russell’s position, though he also argued for what he called 
> neutral monism, which is not technically idealistic in, e.g., the Berkeleyan 
> sense). I am unclear if Peirce was a rationalist, but I suspect that his 
> idealism stems from this. It would be a mistake to understand this more or 
> less as Russell as a world of universals, which Peirce would reject as a form 
> of nominalism (though Russell would shudder at this idea). Peirce’s 
> metaphysics is definitely not a Cartesian world with material substance 
> sliced off, which is pretty much Berkeleyan idealism. The latter effectively 
> makes ideas particulars, and is nominalistic as a result.
> 
> John Collier
> Professor Emeritus, UKZN
> http://web.ncf.ca/collier
> 
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawb...@att.net]
> Sent: Thursday, 19 November 2015 2:46 PM
> To: John Collier
> Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L
> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments
> 
> John, all,
> 
> It is necessary to distinguish non-psychological from anti-psychological and 
> independence from exclusion.
> 
> It is impossible to make sense of Peirce's position if you start by assuming 
> the Cartesian dualism that he rejected.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jon
> 
> http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
> 
> On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:23 AM, John Collier 
> mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
> Lists,
> 
> At the end of the 19th Century there was a reaction against the idea that 
> logic was a human creation and depended on the mind. This view is called 
> psychologism. The founders of modern logic, including in particular Frege and 
> Peirce, were anti-psychologists who argued that logic is independent of human 
> psychology. I won’t give the arguments here, since they are readily available 
> (see, e.g., http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychologism/). Whether logic 
> is independent of thought depends on what you take thought to be. An idealist 
> like Peirce takes a very broad view of propositions (shared by Platonists 
> like Russell, and many rationalists in general) to the effect that thoughts 
> are out there in the world as well as in our heads. This view requires 
> further argument from the arguments against psychologism. A weaker position 
> is that propositions but not thoughts are out there in the world (early 
> Wittgenstein is an example – a view I share, though I don’t share his view 
> that true propositions = facts).
> 
> Personally I find that putting thoughts in the world independently of humans 
> requires a degree of rationalism that I cannot accept: that forms are 
> meaningful independent of their existence (this is where I disagree with 
> Jerry, I think). In this case logic can apply independently of thought, just 
> as can mathematics, to the world. In other words, the world can be both 
> logical and mathematical. I go a bit further and argue that logic and 
> mathematics depend on the nature of the world, and that we must discover them 
> through hypothetical reasoning rather than a priori (for example whether 
> continuity exists, the infinite exists and similar). This allows a version of 
> non-psychologistic naturalism that is somewhat similar to what I take to be 
> Mill’s position, though he is often interpreted as a psychologist. So I don’t 
> see Jerry’s worry that there is a gap between the formal aspec

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hello John, Jon, Lists,

As you might expect, there are quite a number of points of disagreement and 
also agreement between Descartes and Peirce.  Let's pick one, and let's set to 
the side all questions of metaphysics.  Here is a question that both try to 
answer:  for the purposes of engaging in philosophical inquiry, what regulative 
principles should guide us?  This is a methodological question that belongs to 
the theory of logic and, as for the medieval philosophers that Descartes and 
Peirce are both drawing from, this methodological question was traditionally 
handled under the auspices of speculative rhetoric.

Descartes's answer is that, for the purposes of securing first principles, we 
need to separate the good apples from the bad apples in the cart of our 
beliefs.  Out of a fear that any hidden rotten apples might infect others, we 
need a strong principle that will lead us to cast radical forms of doubt on all 
of the different types of beliefs that we hold and all of the different sources 
of those beliefs.  Peirce disagrees.  He claims that we should only operate on 
those doubts that are genuine.  In order to separate between real and paper 
doubts, we need a more basic principle that will guide us in selecting the 
questions that are ripe, and we need a principle that will guide us in forming 
the kinds of hypotheses that will be most productive for further inquiry.  As 
such, the principle of inquiry should put us in the best position to see with 
greater clarity what is and what isn't necessary to explain the phenomena that 
have given rise to real doubts about the adequacy of our current beliefs.  Is a 
principle of sufficient reason the kind of principle that we need?  Peirce is 
saying "no."

So, we have a debate over the question of what regulative principles should 
guide inquiry:

1.  Descartes:  a) Methodological doubt and b) sufficient reason.
or
2.  Peirce:  a) A love of inquiry for its own sake and a realization that we 
should avoid any hypotheses that will tend to shut the door on further inquiry, 
together with b) a principle of continuity that guides us in the formation of 
hypotheses that will make the explanations of surprising phenomena fit 
naturally with our best theories and c) a pragmatic maxim which asks us to look 
towards the possible tests that we could conduct when we are putting our 
hypotheses together and sorting through those that are worthy of our attention 
and those that are not.

As we try to answer this methodological question, Peirce is arguing that we 
should avoid making appeals to our favorite metaphysical theories.  Such 
appeals will tend to bias and prejudice the conduct of our inquiry into this 
question of logic.

--Jeff



Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: John Collier [colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 7:09 AM
To: Jon Awbrey
Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

Jon, Lists,

I agree that starting with Cartesian dualism will give a bad interpretation of 
Peirce, but I am not sure what you mean by your first distinction.  Could you 
expand?

The Cartesian position is a consequence of what I called rationalism if it 
accepts material substance. Idealism is the result if it does not (what I take 
to be Russell’s position, though he also argued for what he called neutral 
monism, which is not technically idealistic in, e.g., the Berkeleyan sense). I 
am unclear if Peirce was a rationalist, but I suspect that his idealism stems 
from this. It would be a mistake to understand this more or less as Russell as 
a world of universals, which Peirce would reject as a form of nominalism 
(though Russell would shudder at this idea). Peirce’s metaphysics is definitely 
not a Cartesian world with material substance sliced off, which is pretty much 
Berkeleyan idealism. The latter effectively makes ideas particulars, and is 
nominalistic as a result.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawb...@att.net]
Sent: Thursday, 19 November 2015 2:46 PM
To: John Collier
Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

John, all,

It is necessary to distinguish non-psychological from anti-psychological and 
independence from exclusion.

It is impossible to make sense of Peirce's position if you start by assuming 
the Cartesian dualism that he rejected.

Regards,

Jon

http://inquiryintoinquiry.com

On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:23 AM, John Collier 
mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
Lists,

At the end of the 19th Century there was a reaction against the idea that logic 
was a human creation and depended on the mind. This view is called 
psychologism. The founders of modern logic, including in particular Frege and 
Peirce, were anti-psychologists who argued that log

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[John Collier]

Jon, Lists,

I agree that starting with Cartesian dualism will give a bad interpretation of 
Peirce, but I am not sure what you mean by your first distinction.  Could you 
expand?

The Cartesian position is a consequence of what I called rationalism if it 
accepts material substance. Idealism is the result if it does not (what I take 
to be Russell’s position, though he also argued for what he called neutral 
monism, which is not technically idealistic in, e.g., the Berkeleyan sense). I 
am unclear if Peirce was a rationalist, but I suspect that his idealism stems 
from this. It would be a mistake to understand this more or less as Russell as 
a world of universals, which Peirce would reject as a form of nominalism 
(though Russell would shudder at this idea). Peirce’s metaphysics is definitely 
not a Cartesian world with material substance sliced off, which is pretty much 
Berkeleyan idealism. The latter effectively makes ideas particulars, and is 
nominalistic as a result.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawb...@att.net]
Sent: Thursday, 19 November 2015 2:46 PM
To: John Collier
Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

John, all,

It is necessary to distinguish non-psychological from anti-psychological and 
independence from exclusion.

It is impossible to make sense of Peirce's position if you start by assuming 
the Cartesian dualism that he rejected.

Regards,

Jon

http://inquiryintoinquiry.com

On Nov 19, 2015, at 2:23 AM, John Collier 
mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote:
Lists,

At the end of the 19th Century there was a reaction against the idea that logic 
was a human creation and depended on the mind. This view is called 
psychologism. The founders of modern logic, including in particular Frege and 
Peirce, were anti-psychologists who argued that logic is independent of human 
psychology. I won’t give the arguments here, since they are readily available 
(see, e.g., http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychologism/). Whether logic is 
independent of thought depends on what you take thought to be. An idealist like 
Peirce takes a very broad view of propositions (shared by Platonists like 
Russell, and many rationalists in general) to the effect that thoughts are out 
there in the world as well as in our heads. This view requires further argument 
from the arguments against psychologism. A weaker position is that propositions 
but not thoughts are out there in the world (early Wittgenstein is an example – 
a view I share, though I don’t share his view that true propositions = facts).

Personally I find that putting thoughts in the world independently of humans 
requires a degree of rationalism that I cannot accept: that forms are 
meaningful independent of their existence (this is where I disagree with Jerry, 
I think). In this case logic can apply independently of thought, just as can 
mathematics, to the world. In other words, the world can be both logical and 
mathematical. I go a bit further and argue that logic and mathematics depend on 
the nature of the world, and that we must discover them through hypothetical 
reasoning rather than a priori (for example whether continuity exists, the 
infinite exists and similar). This allows a version of non-psychologistic 
naturalism that is somewhat similar to what I take to be Mill’s position, 
though he is often interpreted as a psychologist. So I don’t see Jerry’s worry 
that there is a gap between the formal aspects of, say, information theory and 
its manifestation as making sense. It seems to me that this presupposes that 
the formal aspects can exist independently, involving either a rationalism or 
an idealism or both that I cannot accept, as I find it ontological otiose. This 
is my argument against Jerry’s objection. I also deviate from Peirce here, I 
think, and certainly from my philosophical hero, Bertrand Russell.

However my views may be, there is a clear antipsychologist position on logic 
that is associated with the greatest logicians, and I think it very hasty to 
adopt Stan’s classification of logic.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Stanley N Salthe [mailto:ssal...@binghamton.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 18 November 2015 10:34 PM
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
Cc: Ed Dellian; PEIRCE-L; Sergey Petoukhov; Robert E. Ulanowicz; Auletta 
Gennaro; Hans-Ferdinand Angel; Rudiger Seitz
Subject: [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

Sung, all --
Logic is a product of a human culture. The universe (as understood in 
cosmology) is a logical product of that human culture.
{everything {biology {primates {humans {culture {universe }}

STAN

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Sungchul Ji 
mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu>> wrote:
Ed,

Thanks for your response.
You wrote :

"Logic" is a product of the human brain only. "The Universe" is not a product 
of the human b