Peeking ahead breaks the rules, Peirce says, in the quotation below. The person of true reason experiments in real time. Nowness rules. The result emerges. It is not known in advance. How does this relate to Triadic meditation which is generally an inquiry into a particular matter.
The most salient answer may well be that the actions and expressions to which such meditation leads make no pretense of being reasonable, save that the context of the entire meditation IS deemed reasonable. For example, if the meditation has to do with how to deal with a criticism, it may, after examining the matter under the index of tolerance, democracy, helpfulness and non-idolatry, move to an aesthetic outcome (evoking truth and beauty) that intends a written response and results in the same. The character of that response is regulated by the consideration. In the case of the process referred to, the result could not have been anticipated. It was in fact that after writing this response the criticism was removed by its author. A surprise, but completely reasonable because the removal of the criticism also removed the response. This is but one example of results that emerge daily from Triadic Meditation. I would argue that this is the product of nowness, that it presupposes a context that is finally experimental and that its results are not known in advance. No interactive or social process can be known until it IS known. This leaves Peirce's reasonable person faced with a question. Is there any form of inquiry which is not in some respect or another a quest for an anticipated result? Is there any pure science? Or: Is it ever fully possible to predict any (social) result? QUOTE Men, then, continue to tell themselves they regulate their conduct by reason; but they learn to look forward and see what conclusions a given method will lead to before they give their adhesion to it. In short, it is no longer the reasoning which determines what the conclusion shall be, but it is the conclusion which determines what the reasoning shall be. This is sham reasoning. In short, as morality supposes self-control, men learn that they must not surrender themselves unreservedly to any method, without considering to what conclusions it will lead them. But this is utterly contrary to the single-mindedness that is requisite in science. In order that science may be successful, its votaries must hasten to surrender themselves at discretion to experimental inquiry, in advance of knowing what its decisions may be. There must be no reservations. Peirce: CP 1.58 Cross-Ref:†† END QUOTE
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