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Subject: Re: Peirce, Leibniz and neoPlatonism
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 03:25:51 EST
X-Message-Number: 1

Martin,

I am less aware of the debates in semiotics. What I know better is something
of the history of icons and iconoclasm --viewed in their social and political
consequences and context. I suspect, though, that if we imagine historical
religious practices and attitudes toward icons secularized, these might be
employed to interprete various contemporary social and political developments
or threads of such developments.
It has always been the iconoclast's basic complaint, I would say, that
excessive emphasis on the power of images tends toward manipulation. Too much
gets hidden behind them. Thus it is that relative simplicity and transparency
of activities and expression belong to both the enlightenment and later
developments of modernity.

Something of this can been seen, I think, in the various styles of written
expression,
styles of architecture, and also in styles of clothing. Few contrasts of this
sort are more striking than the differences before and after WWI. Think of
women's fashions, for instance: the bulging high Victorian ladies vs. the
stright-line flappers with bobbed hair.

Or again, one might go back to consider Victorian neo-Gothic architecture vs.
the functionalism which followed. Elaborate decoration and embellishments, I
take it, have something of the character of icons --images of wealth and
power in the first place. Or consider, in philosophical writing, say, the
stark contrast in style we find between F.H. Bradley and Russell. Whatever
one might say by way of criticism of Russell's philosophy, he did chiefly
practice clarity and simplicity of rhetoric. This is a large part of the
reason why much of his work is still admired.

The philosophy of Peirce, as man of science, one might think of as
representing a struggle against the predominant trend toward the high
Victorian, which certainly set in, in the U.S., after the Civil War
--continuing to the Progressive era. (Basically, the industrialists and
commercial interests of the North had everything just about their own way,
after the political power of the agricultural South was broken and
subor-dinated.) One might think of Peirce's criticism of the "gospel of
wealth," for instance, or his empiricist criticisms of hegelianisms. (These
both find parallels in Wm. James and in Dewey.) From this perspective
pragmatism, generally is an early and distinc-tively American (in origin)
element of the revolt against Absolutism in its late 19th century forms. In
this way, it has kinships with neo-Kantianisms, early 20th century realisms
and even 20th analytic philosophy. There was a breaking of images involved.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

you wrote:

I couldn't agree more with you regarding iconophilia and iconoclasm.
To my mind, this is one of the most important debates in semiotics
(as well as religion, for that matter).

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Subject: Re: McGinn on Popper
From: "Peter Brawley" <peter.brawley[…]artfulsoftware.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 00:33:13 -0800
X-Message-Number: 2

[repost of msg posted 27 Nov 11:48am, first copy did not show up on the
list]

Charles,

I enjoyed your excellent survey of Popper, and your analysis of McGinn's
paper, and in the latter I find just two trouble spots.

One concerns Popper's account of positive and negative facts. Apart from the
problem that distinctions between facts and theories can't be complete (eg
Duhem, Quine, methodologic underdetermination &c), Popper's treatment of
logical relations between theories and what he called "basic statements" had
problems. For example in section 28 of "The Logic of Scientific Discovery"
(LScD) he held that "a basic statement must have a logical form such that
its negation cannot be a basic statement in its turn" and that "basic
statements have the form of singular existential statements...", not of
singular non-existence statements, thus disallowing statements like "there
was no raven in spacetime region k'. Disallowing negative facts makes for
many problems in any account of how evidence bears on theories. IMO it is
part of a much larger problem in Popper--his accounts of theory testing were
too often pre-modern in their emphasis on confrontations between theories
and instances, and too often failed to take into account modern methods of
experimental verification and falsification (methods his LScD had helped
propel forward, eg through its influence on Fisher).

The second trouble I have is your remark that McGinn ...

distorts the role of conjectures or guesses in
Popper's thesis when he says that "it is absurd to
suggest that basic high school science consists
of mere guesses that no one has managed to refute."

You go on to say that Popper acknowledged that facts have a role in theory
building. Yes, but Popper is also on record that knowledge is guesswork, eg
in the introduction to "Conjectures and Refutations":

"The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many
authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the
origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may
legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the
racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the
knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if
possible from God: these are the (often unconscious)
metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified
question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said
to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and
certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin
or of purity should not be confounded with questions of
validity, or of truth. This view may be said to be as old
as Xenophanes. Xenophanes knew that our knowledge is
guesswork, opinion - doxa rather than episteme - as shown
by his verses [quoted on p. 31 above]. Yet the traditional
question of the authoritative sources of knowledge is
repeated even today - and very often by positivists and by
other philosophers who believe themselves to be in revolt
against authority."

This view does not quite allow for what McGinn described in the sentences
leading up to his remark about high school science:

"...two other questionable Popperian theses. One is
that science does not consist of established facts but
of tentative conjectures. This is exaggerated and partial
at best: some of science is as solid as the plainest
statement of fact, such as that London is the capital of
England. It is not a tentative conjecture that water
consists of H2O molecules or that, at sea level, it boils
at 100 degrees centigrade: these are hard facts, if
anything is."

I agree that Peirce's account of these & related issues was stronger than
Popper's.

PB



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Subject: Re: McGinn on Popper
From: "Rafe Champion" <rchamp[…]bigpond.net.au>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 21:48:12 +1100
X-Message-Number: 3

Peter Brawley wrote:
>Disallowing negative facts makes for
> many problems in any account of how evidence bears on theories. IMO it is
> part of a much larger problem in Popper--his accounts of theory testing
were
> too often pre-modern in their emphasis on confrontations between theories
> and instances, and too often failed to take into account modern methods of
> experimental verification and falsification (methods his LScD had helped
> propel forward, eg through its influence on Fisher).

Peter and I have conducted a long debate on this matter on another site and
I do not propose to repeat that exchange. It is simply absurd to suggest
hat the logic of testing is undemined by developments in the statistical
techniques used in the analysis of experiments.

Rafe Champion
http://www.the-rathouse.com



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Subject: Re: Intelligence Amp/Aug & Communicational Norms
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey[…]oakland.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 07:56:19 -0500
X-Message-Number: 4

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

thanks for the augmentation of details and references, joe,
i think that is really the heart, and, well, gizzard, too,
of the question. another metaphor in the ai foklore has
been the "intelliscope", after telescopes and microscopes,
and cat and other pet scans, and so on. and of course,
dewey early on had some poignant things to say about
the use of "instrumentation" in inquiry. well, just
free associating now, so i will get back to your
paper in the more quiet hours. ~~ jon

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

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Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 10:06:46 EST
X-Message-Number: 5

Peirceans,

Have a look at William Pfaff's Op. Ed. in today's International Herald
Tribune, which is available on line at
<http://www.iht.com/articles/78370.html>.

Pfaff seems to think that dualistic thinking is very much in the saddle,
riding the good old U.S. of A. There are the good and elect and then there is
evil.

Here's a short quote:

----quote Pfaff--------------
...
Its dualism was of eternal war between God and Satan, light and darkness. It
held that evil was physical, not a moral thing. Believers fell into two
classes: the elect, or perfect, bearers of light, and their followers, who
could hope to merit rebirth as elect. All others were sinners, destined to
hell.
.
Manichaeism itself had largely disappeared in Europe by the 6th century,
although it influenced the medieval heresies of the Cathars, Albigenses and
Bogomils. Its dual-ism is an interpretation of existence that has proved
persistent and seductive. In the United States its religious expression has
weakened, but its larger influence on the American mind, as it addresses
foreign affairs, is stronger than ever.
----end quote----------

(From the International Herald Tribune Tribune Media Services International.)

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

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Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: William Thomas Sherman <gunjones1[…]earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 07:55:12 -0800
X-Message-Number: 6

Howard,

While there is no apparent disagreement that we would frown upon unjust
accusations or false blame, who will deny that a given act or policy is not good
or that a given act or policy is not evil? Not infrequently one encounters this
hypocritical argument that those who say there is evil in the world are dogmatic
dualists, when by making such criticism they seem to have no qualm about dividing
the world the same way, only using a somewhat different approach: non dualists
are good, dualists are bad.

Is this flagrant hypocrisy or what?

Now if one wants to take a view, such as that of Spinoza, or taken from a
different perspective Plotinus, about the ultimate goodness in "all," that is
fine. It is a view I myself agree to. But to suggest that in the short (i.e.
mortal) term or practical course of our lives there is no evil or no wrong doing
is a view no one believes in practice, not even Spinoza. While it is a gross
distortion to say the world is divided between good and evil, there is nothing
false in saying that there is good and evil anymore than there is to say that
that there is correct judgment and error.


William




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Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: HGCALLAWAY[…]aol.com
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 11:30:39 EST
X-Message-Number: 7

William & list,

You replied, William, sounding quite non-Manichaean, as follows:

----quote-------
....
Now if one wants to take a view, such as that of Spinoza, or taken from a
different perspective Plotinus, about the ultimate goodness in "all," that is
fine. It is a view I myself agree to. But to suggest that in the short (i.e.
mortal) term or practical course of our lives there is no evil or no wrong
doing
is a view no one believes in practice, not even Spinoza. While it is a gross
distortion to say the world is divided between good and evil, there is nothing
false in saying that there is good and evil anymore than there is to say that
that there is correct judgment and error.
--- End quote-------

I can't agree about the "ultimate goodness of all," William. That sounds a
bit like Leibniz --"This is the best of all possible worlds." I basically
only see room for improvements on occasion. Nor would I say, certainly, that
there is no evil in the world. On the contrary, there are lots of them,
though some may be subject to improvements we might help to make. I think
that Pfaff's view is closer in emphasis to this latter point.

As I see it, then, you have not succeeded in identifying the point you want
to dis-pute. Instead you criticize something that no one seems to claim
--while making an opposite claim (seemingly quite dogmatic, BTW), which, I
take it, few want to hold.
But I do think it is worth thinking through some of the related points, and I
had hoped that some of what Pfaff has to say would stimulate further
discussions along the lines of the thread on Peirce, Leibniz and
neo-Platonism. Peirce does, after all, have a position on the problem of
evil. Let's see if we can get back to that theme.

It is a very philosophical piece for the Op. Ed. page.

Howard

H.G. Callaway
(hgcallaway[…]aol.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: "Joseph Ransdell" <joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 12:19:15 -0600
X-Message-Number: 8

I think you miss the point, William, which is that the use of the language
of good and evil is the device used whenever one wants to depict a situation
in which there is to be no question of adjudication of competing interests
which looks for what is legitimate in the opposing view that could be
accommodated. The evil character of the opposition precludes that. It is,
after all, foolish to make deals with the devil. it is foolish, indeed, to
do anything with the devil other than to eliminate he/she/it if the chance
arises; failing that, one does one's worst towards it since failing to try
to eliminate evil as far as possible, given the opportunity to do so, would
be the moral failure; for this would be to tolerate evil, and thereby to act
to preserve it in existence, which is an evil thing to do.

The language of good and evil should not be used lightly, and certainly not
in the casual fashion you adopt of equating it with talking about good and
bad, which at least leaves open the possibility of coping with disagreement
reasonably.

This sort of oppositional thinking is part and parcel of the wartime
mentality. All wars are religious wars, in that sense, inasmuch as it is not
possible to mobilize millions of people for the purpose without inciting in
them the kinds of passions, both idealistic and self-serving, which defense
against evil can generate. It is not easy to annihilate people in the way
one does in the conduct of war since many of those one kills will inevitably
be quite innocent of any wrongdoing by any stretch of the imagination. Now,
intentionally and premeditatively killing an innocent person is murder.
Does it cease to be that because one was in process of killing someone else
who was not innocent? I don't propose a solution to that moral dilemma
because there may be none. But such unthinkable situations as nevertheless
do force themselves upon us at times are taken care of in wartime by the
experts in war under the reassuring general heading of "collateral damage",
which is simply taken for granted as an unfortunate aspect of wartime
operations -- a coefficient of all military action in fact -- and treated as
if it were not what it actually is, namely, premeditated killing of the
innocent as a means to another end. Such is the wartime mentality, which
is the same as the good vs. evil mentality.

It is not a question of whether or not war is or is not necessary at times.
There is not always a convenient way out for those who would like to have no
blood on their hands. The question is whether the wartime mentality is to
be the dominant mentality in politics or, as far as that goes, in personal
life, whether it be in wartime or peacetime. There is no doubt what the
present presidential regime has decided in that respect. But I don't want
to talk politics here. Philosophers interest me more, and in this
connection there is William James' proposal to find a "Moral Equivalent of
War", which has been, in my opinion, a most unfortunate part of James'
legacy. Oh, yes, one understands what he was wanting to do, but the
trouble is that James himself was really beyond his competence in attempting
to deal with it philosophically. It shows throughout the essay in his
assumption that wars are fought because of pugnacity or bellicosity, so that
if we can only find a sublimation of the pugnacious instinct we can move
human beings beyond war. But wars are not fought because people are
naturally pugnacious but because somebody wants something somebody else has
or believes that somebody else wants something they have and one goes to war
because of such conflicts of interest. There seems to be no trace of
awareness on James' part that the causes of war have been a topic of
discussion for thousands of years and that he ought to have done some
research on the topic.

The result is that instead of providing a moral equivalent of war, he
succeeded in making it a part of the American ideology to convert what is
not war into war, wherever possible, as for example in the war on drugs --
another name for prohibition, as in alcohol prohibition -- which has shown
itself again and again to be a greater scourge to humanity than the drugs
are because it turns citizen against citizen as if the are wartime enemies
while creating incentives in the form of great wealth for entrepreneurs in
the production, import, and sales of drugs who are capable of and constantly
in process of corrupting legitimate government. In the U.S. our prisons are
jammed beyond capacity by the evil enemy in that war -- citizens many of
whom would probably just be smalltime business entrepreneurs otherwise -- in
the form of smalltime "drug dealers" who are packed into the prisons daily.
The big guys occasionally get murdered or slain but rarely spend time in
prison. Moreover, whole countries are treated as, in effect, collateral
damage, as in the case of Colombia, which has for decades now been under
nonstop siege in the war on drugs, with reason to think that Mexico may be
the next national casualty of that war on evil. The extension of that same
jamesian conception in the War on Poverty might also provide a further
object lesson in how important it is in philosophy not to talk about
something you really know nothing about, as James mistakenly did in that
instance.

But back to your view: the truth is, William, that people who become
obsessed with evil become evil by becoming incapable of treating people as
people. Has that possibility occurred to you? It is an obvious hazard of
the life devoted to combating evil.

Joe




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: Charles F Rudder <cf_rudder[…]juno.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 12:27:29 -0600
X-Message-Number: 9

Very interesting Howard. Thanks. I have a long standing and completely
(well not completely, I am impressed by Norbert Wiener's "Augustinian --
Manichean" distinction) idiosyncratic interest in the Manichaean dualism
which in its pristine form, as I understand it, is eternal--light and
darkness are forever in an irresolvable conflict that transcends human
destiny--a conflict in which human beings are mere pawns. It seems to me
that I recall seeing a reference to C. S. Lewis's having said something
to the effect that next to Christianity he found the Manichean doctrine
most appealing. I will take a look at Pfaff's article when I have more
time.

Charles


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: PAPER ON IA AND COMMUNICATIONAL NORMS
From: "cthorne/Creath Thorn" <csthorne[…]ultra.ccp.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 00:14:23 GMT
X-Message-Number: 10

Joe: Thanks for posting this provocative and interesting draft. I have the
following comments/questions:
1. You speak of IA as "complementary in application" to AI. But isn't the
program of AI so ambitious that it subsumes IA and, if successful, renders
IA unnecessary?
2. Peirce indeed might agree that all thought is materially embodied, but
special attention needs to be given to the term "materially." the inkpot qua
inkpot is a necessary but hardly sufficient means of thinking. But in
Peirce's universe everything is suffused with habit, thus mind, thus
thinking. It is, thus, misleading to attribute to Peirce "exosomatic" mind.
3. Peirce clearly looks upon thought as dialogical. Where is the passage
where he roots thought in an internal dialogue: "I says to myself, says I"?
But what I find interesting in the later Peirce is the way in which he looks
not only at the constraints of a community of serious inquirers but also at
the requirement of self-control in thinking: an activity deeply ethical at
heart. This ethics of inquiry is inplicit throughout your paper.
4.Your discussion of research traditions seems to have strong affinities
to the work of Michael Polanyi. I believe there is still more work to be
done on the convergence of the thought of both of these thinkers in regards
to the social contexts and constraints on inquiry.
C. Thorne




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Thinking with a Manichaean Bent?
From: "R. Jeffrey Grace" <rjgrace[…]yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 20:41:47 -0800
X-Message-Number: 11


Yet another sad example of the widespread belief amongst some quarters
of American journalism that it's a good idea to write opinion pieces
after sucking down a few bowls of ganja...

---
R. Jeffrey Grace
rjgrace[…]pobox.com
http://www.rjgrace.com



---

END OF DIGEST 11-28-02