Dear Kirsti::
I'm short on time today and can't really answer you until
tomorrow, but I ran across a llater passage in Peirce in wihch he
describes what he was doing earlier, in the Fixation article, as
follows. (I'm just quotting it, for what \it's worth , at
the moment and will get back with you tomorrow, when I have
some free time again.
In a manuscript c. 1906 which was printed in the Collected Papers at 5.564,
Peirce describes "The Fixation of Bellief" (1877) as starting out from
the proposition that "the agitation of a question" ceases only when
satisfaction is attaned with the settlement of belief, and then goes on
to consider how:
"...the conception of truth gradually develops from that
principle under the action of experience; beginning with willful
belief, or self-mendacity [i.e. the method of tenacity], the most
degraded of all intellectual cnditions; thence rising to the imposition
of beliefs by the authority of organized society [the method of
authority]; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result
of a fermentation of ideas [the a priori method]; and finally reaching
the idea of truth as overwelmingly forced upon the mind in experience
as the effect of an independent reality [the method of reason or
science, or, as he also calls it,in How to Make Our Ideas Clear, the
method of experience]."
My words are in brackets
Joe Ransdell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Original Message From: Kirsti Määttänen [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: Peirce Discussion Forum peirce-l@lyris.ttu.eduSent: Sunday, September 24, 2006 8:50:46 AMSubject: [peirce-l] Re: What "fundamenal psychological laws" is Peirce referring to?Joe Bill,Joe, I agree with Bill in that I do not see any reason why the order of the methods of tenacity and that of authority should be reversed. But that wasn't the impulse which caused me to start writing this response :). It was "the two fundamental psychological laws" on the title you gave, which caught my attention. Anyway, you wrote: JR: "...exactly what accounts for the transition from the first to the second method. One might wonder, too,whether Peirce might not have the order wrong: might it not be argued that
method #1 should be authority and method #2 tenacity? I wonder if anyone has ever tried to justify his ordering of the methods in the way he does? I don't recall anyone ever trying to do that, but then I don't trust my memory on this since it has not always been a topic in which I had much interest until fairly recently. That he has somehow got hold of something right in distinguishing the methods can be argued, I believe, but can the ordering really be argued for as plausible?And later in the discussion you wrote:JR:Well, I was thinking of the argument one might make that social consciousness is prior to consciousness of self, and the method of tenacity seems to me to be motivated by the value of self-integrity, the instinctive tendency not to give up on any part of oneself, and one's beliefs are an important aspect of what one tends to think of
when one thinks of one's identity.To my mind the logic in the order Peirce is here following is based on the degree of 'goodness' of methods, not on motives, or order in evolution, or any other kind of (logical) order. And the goodness has to do with 'summum bonum", the ultimate aim and purpose, which is not necessarily an aim or a purpose held by any (one) individual person.So, the method of tenacity, in spite of being the lowest in degree of goodness,IS STILL A CONSISTENT METHOD. Which, if persisted in, will, in the long run (if the person persisting will live long enough), show to the person its truth or falsity.If false, it will be some kind of a nasty surprise to the person. If still persisted in, more nasty surprised are to follow.- Well, it might as well be a pleasant surprise. For example with the (common) belief that humans beings are by nature evil and egoistic. Being
surprised in this way, according to my somewhat systematic observations, follows a different course. But Peirce does not give examples of this kind.But I do not see any justification given in this particular paper to:CSP: In judging this method of fixing belief, which may be called the method of authority, we must, in the first place, allow its immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity.It can only be the 'summum bonum', which could act as an (ultimate) justification in considering the method of authority as far superior to the method of tenacity. But Peirce does not take that up here.Anyway, the IF's in the following may be worth considering:CSP: "If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit"How I find, is, that these are the premisses from which Peirce proceeds in this chapter. So these give the
perspective Peirce is here taking in view of the answers he offers, pertaining as well to the logic of the order of the methods in presenting them.As to the "two
