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PEIRCE-L Digest 1276 -- January 28-29, 1998
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From PEIRCE-L Forum, Jan 5, 1998, [name of author of message],
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: Continuity versus Chance
by Paul Kelly
2) Re: Peirce and the bootstrap
by Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
3) warning - new virus!!
by fpatuzzo[…]bu.edu
4) Re: Peirce and the bootstrap
by Hugo Fjelsted Alroe
5) RE: warning - new virus!!
by Larry Jorgensen
6) Re: "determines"
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
7) Re: The Degeneracy of the Index and the Derivatives of "Determine"
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
8) Re: "determines"
by Howard Callaway
9) Re: warning - new virus!!
by Dennis Bradley Knepp
10) Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
by Dennis Bradley Knepp
11) Re: Hookway's _Peirce_:Chapter I - Logic and Psychology
by Tom Anderson
12) Europhilia in Harper's
by Dennis Bradley Knepp
13) Re: warning - new virus!!
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
14) new at Arisbe website
by joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
15) new at the website Arisbe (corrected version)
by joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
16) Re: Peirce and the bootstrap, et al.
by Everdell[…]aol.com
17) Continuity & Discontinuity
by Howard Callaway
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 13:18:00 -0330 (NST)
From: Paul Kelly
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Continuity versus Chance
Message-ID:
It would appear that Peirce's theories of continuity and chance
play important roles in his metaphysics. Yet these two theories seem
to be at odds with one another. How does Peirce offer a reconciliation of
the two?
Does chance rear its head at indeterminate intervals, playing only
a minor role on the development of continuity? Recognizing that this is
such a loaded question, I would be pleased with any suggestions whatsoever.
Best Regards,
Paul Kelly
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 17:51:11 +0100
From: Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Peirce and the bootstrap
Message-ID:
Dear Joe Ransdell,
if you ask me what the "mathematician" is doing and what the
"nonmathematician" does not do -- that's difficult to say.
I think one of the main problems is that mathematics is not
descriptive of anything in the ordinary sense. If I should compare it
to cooking I would say that the mathematician inspects the receipt,
himself brings in the required ingredients (some shopping may be
necessary) and then _does_ what the receipt says he should do. The
nonmathematician sees: "Let so and so be so and so", says o.k., let's
assume that has been done... and ends up in trying to eat the piece of
paper with the receipt while the mathematician enjoys his cake.
You have enormous liberties in mathematical experiments provided that
you obey the commands of the receipt. There is only one further
restriction: don't talk about your wild psychotic dreams while doing
mathematics. If you notate mathematics you are expected to write down
receipts and not about your subjective experience what a certain
combination of sugar, cinnamon and something else tastes like for you.
In one sense a receipt and a poetic description are very different
though in another sense the mathematician just only leaves much more
liberty (and thus responsibility) to her audience. Whether you build a
metaphysical universe or a physical bridge: your problem! The reader
has to supply the suitable ingredients, the content.
Perhaps Howard Callaway can contribute something about the curious
turn the Romantics had for mathematics (Novalis' extensive
mathematical papers here come to my mind)
If I take Peirce's construction for the proof of Cantor's theorem:
that's at first glance a terrible impasse indeed. I think
psychologists would call that a "double bind" or something like that.
But however this may be: if you begin to experiment with it, try to
bring an element from one side to the other and such things then
suddenly it becomes alive, gets off the ground and what initially
seemed to be a flat impasse now is a 3-D picture you can even walk around in.
It's still a terrible labyrinth, but you can walk around in it, explore it.
It's a question of experimentation first and _then_ you can describe things.
Well, somehow you do wild things and make the experience that this
almost invariably lands you safely, things come out right even if,
considered from the outside, there seems the be an enormous leap. And
then you gain experience and confidence, especially when you see that
what you do agrees with what others found out and particularly if the
connection first is by no means obvious. There seems to be method in
this kind of madness. Don't ask me, I am not a mathematician by
education but a mining engineer;-)
What you said about 'perspective', Joe: the funny thing is that I have
all the time here on my desk before me a copy of Goedel's original
1931 paper on formally undecidable propositions and an excellent book on
projective geometry which I recently studied in relation to each
other.
One of the driving forces for me is the question: what can truth be in
an expanding universe with increasing variety and under the
restrictions Goedel gave?
I can understand the seeming necessity inherent in such conceptual
tendencies as "many-worlds", "pluriverse" up to "constructivism" not
only in metaphysics and philosophy generally, but also e.g. in physics
and psychology. Yet, from another point of view it seems to me to be
nothing but a polarity-response (as psychologists might call this)
from absolute truth to complete relativism, from Dedekind's completely
self-mirroring universe to complete blindness without hope for
universal truth.
But I think the transition from medieval painting to perspectivity
meant an increase in information, though then objects are not rigid
any more and can appear under strange distortions and at times it is
by no means obvious that two objects are the same object. It seems
to me that we then do know _more_ and not less, though I can imagine
what a shock that must have been for a community not used to it. In
one sense this was I think felt as a breakdown of truth (though in some
paintings things fell down from the table and people didn't notice
it).
I think we have to learn to see in logic in 3-D and I think this
is even much more than a mere metaphor -- mathematically.
The strange thing is that the only viable way for a theory of truth
seems to be the seemingly old-fashioned correspondence-theory of
truth.
In logic lines are not exactly parallel (a "similar" one-to-one
correspondence in Dedekind's sense). There is a slight convergence. But
that's exactly why we can have any picture at all and logic is not
simply purely formal. But instead minimally infested with reality, so
to speak;-) Logic of things! We have to turn the screws a bit and we
will be able to get a clear picture again, even a perspective picture!
It is interesting, to compare the above to what Peirce writes in CP
3.133. At least we so land in "topological logic" in a rather natural
way.
I think one key to that all is Peirce's "non-similarity"
correspondence respectively the insight that transitivity can be
expanded by restriction and that then seen on the background of
Dedekind.
What Conway says about definitions, namely that the notion of equality
is a derived relation (that should remind us of Peirce's logical views
concerning the equality relation) and thus apparently different
definitions will produce the same number and that we must distinguish
between the _form_ of a number and the number itself etc. goes into
the same direction, I believe. (And this might give a conclusive
explanation, apparently still missing, why Peirce could say that in
the logic of relatives we can derive different conclusions from the
same set of premisses which are nevertheless not reducible to each
other etc.).
If there should be any truth in my proposals then they will amount to
Peirce's theory of signs, their classification etc. etc. But I think
it doesn't hurt if we might have still another perspective on it
Funny enough, as far as I can see, the only viable way for a theory of
truth seems to be that it is not enough to say the right thing, but we
also really have to do what we say, if we want truth. That's at least
one of my intuitive interpretations of what this theory might be.
Joe, you bring me to say much more than I perhaps safely should and I
am not even now quite sure whether I have got your point!
Heartily,
Thomas.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:28:53 -0500 (EST)
From: fpatuzzo[…]bu.edu
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: warning - new virus!!
Message-ID: <199801281728.MAA130890[…]acs6.bu.edu>
I have been informed (source: IBM team) that a new virus is
devastating the web, and there is no remedy to it. If anyone gets a message
with, as subject, "JOIN THE CREW" or "PENPAL GREETINGS", don't open it!!! The
virus would be auto-produced and would destroy the whole system.
Please forward this information.
:) Fox
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 18:30:49 -0500
From: Hugo Fjelsted Alroe
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Peirce and the bootstrap
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19980128183049.00911c58[…]vip.cybercity.dk>
Joe Ransdell wrote on 27.jan.98, in reply to Thomas Riese:
>My question is, I guess, as to whether you have any idea as to what it is
>that the nonmathematician is thinking when he or she says "this just makes
>no sense to me" whereas the mathematician
>says, as it were,"well, what is the problem about that? I don't get it." I
>think that is what you are already addressing when you speak of number as
>being altogether relational, and in a couple of other remarks, but I can't
>seem to get something into focus here that would illuminate this difference
>in perspective I try to point at above.
First I have to identify myself as a non-mathematician in Joes sense, as
one who says "this just makes no sense to me" when confronted with the case
of zero as a number, or the case of x^0=1, and so forth (x^0 is x raised to
the power of zero). What stops me, or at least slows me considerably down,
is that I want to know why. And the simple answer to Joes question (which
is not much more than a rewording) is that the mathematician is willing and
able to let go of common sense, while the non-mathematician is either not
willing or not able to do this. And with 'common sense' here I mean
something similar to the gedankeneksperiment in science (I dont know quite
the right english word for it, something like Anschauung or Vorstellung).
The history of mathematics shows how at first only a limited range of
natural numbers and fractions were used, then the irrational numbers (like
the squareroot of two), zero and the negative numbers, etc. became part of
the concept of number. In all of these cases the new kinds of numbers were
part of practice, so to speak, before the concept of them as numbers was
formed, and thus there was a basis for the 'Anschauung' of them, for the
understanding of the numbers in common sense terms. Zero was no-thing,
negative numbers were a kind of debt, the irrational numbers could be
envisioned (is this the word I am looking for? Or envisaged?) as
geometrical constructs, and so forth.
The point of all this is that there is a limit somewhere to envisioning
mathematical notions in common sense terms. I have with some difficulty and
the cost of some rearranging of the methods of arithmatics been able to see
why x^0=1 and the way to do that was to pursue a constructional method, a
relational view of 'number' (I shall spare you the details). But my common
sense version made arithmatics much more clumsy, and I guess this is how
mathematics and common sense is related - the power and elegance of
mathematics is achieved at the expense of common sense envisioning, and if
you are not able or willing to make this step mathematics is closed territory.
Do recall that the above is a non-mathematicians view of mathematics :-)
Regards
Hugo Fjelsted Alroe
alroe[…]email.dk
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 13:03:11 -0500
From: Larry Jorgensen
To: "'peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu'"
Subject: RE: warning - new virus!!
Message-ID:
Both of these virus warnings have been documented as hoaxes. Don't
concern yourselves with them (and please don't pass them along).
See the U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability
(CIAC) for more information. (http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html)
Larry Jorgensen
larry[…]ricommunity.com
-----Original Message-----
From: fpatuzzo[…]bu.edu [mailto:fpatuzzo[…]bu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 1998 12:31 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: warning - new virus!!
I have been informed (source: IBM team) that a new virus is
devastating the web, and there is no remedy to it. If anyone gets a
message
with, as subject, "JOIN THE CREW" or "PENPAL GREETINGS", don't open
it!!! The
virus would be auto-produced and would destroy the whole system.
Please forward this information.
:) Fox
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 14:18:19 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: "determines"
Message-ID: <19980128.141821.14558.1.piat[…]juno.com>
Howard,
Thanks for the comments on whether knowing changes the object known.
Your remarks are very much along the lines I was thinking but my
background or philosophical context is so narrow (hell, let's be honest -
narrow and shallow) that I'm never very sure whether or not I'm getting
the real point under discussion. BTW I found some common but interesting
examples of Pierce's usage of "determine" that I'm going to post
shortly. I think it might be fun and instructive to study some examples
of the seemingly different ways in which he actually employed the word.
Thanks again.
Jim Piat
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 14:13:42 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: The Degeneracy of the Index and the Derivatives of "Determine"
Message-ID: <19980128.141820.14558.0.piat[…]juno.com>
John,
Thanks for another interesting walk. My response to your last post was
intended primarily as an expression of my enjoyment of your posts. I had
hoped to make a counter-point but obviously missed. My point (which may
be faulty in itself, and which may have also missed yours) was that to
propose or argue that our awareness of the glory of nature is more
convincing evidence of God than any counter-arguments logic can provide
is itself a logical argument. Maybe my point is not so much wrong as
merely trivial, but I don't think the counter argument (i.e. "isn't it
obvious") is all that compelling either. I just finished reading
_Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man_ in conjunction
with the Hookway book. I though Peirce argued persuasively in this essay
that introspection and intuition where not solid foundations for action.
I hasten to add that I am not contesting your beliefs regarding God and
the glory of nature. I call it faith. John's faith, Jim's faith and
Bertrand's faith. All faiths, as contrasted with "rocks" or mere
seconds. But I'm trying to wax poetic and lack the talent. What I'm
really going to do is study your account of TNRs as I think the approach
provides some clarity on important issues such as the distinction between
error and deceit. Please don't feel obliged to respond specifically to
any of this. In fact I'd almost rather you continued toward wherever you
own line of thinking was developing and I'll listen. Best wishes.
Jim Piat
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 21:18:37 +0100 (MET)
From: Howard Callaway
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: "determines"
Message-ID:
Leon,
I'd advise just biting off a piece and jumping in.
Good to hear from you.
Regards,
Howard
H.G. Callaway
Seminar for Philosophy
University of Mainz
On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Leon Surette wrote:
> Thanks Howard,
> The list seems even busier than heretofore. I can't begin to keep up.
> Leon
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 14:59:15 -0600 (CST)
From: Dennis Bradley Knepp
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: warning - new virus!!
Message-ID:
everyone--
I have received warnings of this type before, passed them on to
grad students in this department, and then been lectured tirelessly by
computer-jocks that such a thing is impossible. Personally, I don't know
if such a thing is possible, but I'm sure not going to forward it to
anyone here so that I can again get labelled computer illeterate.
--Dennis Knepp
On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 fpatuzzo[…]bu.edu wrote:
> I have been informed (source: IBM team) that a new virus is
> devastating the web, and there is no remedy to it. If anyone gets a message
> with, as subject, "JOIN THE CREW" or "PENPAL GREETINGS", don't open it!!! The
> virus would be auto-produced and would destroy the whole system.
> Please forward this information.
>
> :) Fox
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 15:05:43 -0600 (CST)
From: Dennis Bradley Knepp
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: slow reading: New List (paragraph 1)
Message-ID:
everyone--
Many apologies for not participating in the discussion this past
week or so, I've been swamped here and will be swamped for a while more.
I do have one suggestion for people: take a half hour and read
Borges' short story "Funes the Memorious" (spelling?). Funes is the
perfect Humean. He only perceives individual particular things, no
generals, and he remembers each and every one of these individual
particular things. Why do we reduce the multiplicity to unity? Borges'
answer is that it keeps us from literally going crazy!
I promise to have a more serious posting on this question in a few
days. They are currently going through the process of determining who
gets funded next year, and I have to fool them for just a little longer!
--Dennis Knepp, Washington University in St. Louis
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 16:25:30 -0800
From: Tom Anderson
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Hookway's _Peirce_:Chapter I - Logic and Psychology
Message-ID: <34CFCC79.83B6290C[…]ix.netcom.com>
Jim L Piat wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jan 1998 23:55:45 -0600 (CST) Cathy Legg writes:
>
> >I'm excited by all the interesting threads on the list at the moment.
> >I
> >have purchased a copy of the Hookway and am about 30 pp. into it. It
> >seems very fair and comprehensive so far. I liked the way he begins
> >the
> >book by locating Peirce in antipsychologism about logic (with, he
> >says,
> >Frege, and the dominant tide in analytic philosophy) - that is, the
> >view
> >that the study of the way the human mind works has nothing to teach us
> >
> >about what arguments are or are not valid.
> >
> >I think that that is helpful as there is a popular view of pragmatism
> >according to which it is all about taking the opposite point of view.
> >
> >I hope to write in greater detail soon.
>
> Cathy, while looking for some background in Copleston on Mill (whom I
> think Hookway identifies as a source of psychologism in logic) I found:
>
> 1) Mill's claim that first principles of mathematics (logic?) are based
> on experience made sense to me- Tom Anderson is going to straighten me
> out on this.
>
> 2) That Mill's views on the matter were complex and changed over time.
>
> 3) That Mill apparently tended toward nominalism which leads me to ask as
> a layman just what was the real sticking point between Peirce and those
> he called nominalists. Is this at bottom a religious doctrinal issue for
> Peirce? Does he view nominalists as atheist? I think of the similarities
> and contrast between him and Lord Russell. What's the problem here? Will
> somebody please tell me what the religious connection between the
> nominalists and "universalist" is? Seems like much of Peirce's philosophy
> is an apology for his religious convictions. A theme Walker Percy (the
> novelist) whom I greatly admire took over the top as they say. Isn't
> there a Protestant sect called Unitarian Universalists. I believe there
> is a church by that name here in Atlanta. I'm not trying to stir up a
> religious debate here by any means, but I would like to know where Peirce
> was coming from. I don't think we should feign doubt when we have none,
> nor do I think we should eschew psychologisms when they are the rock
> bottom of our whole agenda.
>
> Is this right? (1) Peirce claimed that logic was independent of human
> thought and should be properly studied as such.
>
> Also- in _Fifty Major Philosophers- by Collinson I found this Mills quote
> about the "marriage that is possible":
>
> "...between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of
> powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them - so that each
> can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately
> the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development."
>
> I cut off some off the preface that I didn't like. I thought you might
> enjoy the quote and I also thought its a good model for a community of
> peers (i.e the community of life).
>
> Well I'm off to read the three Peirce essays armed with Hookway's
> introduction and see what I can make of it all. Back in a while, Jim
> Piat
I'm a little reluctant to comment, as I've not yet begun the book. Jim, do
you know Plato's MENO? It's a good treatment of learning mathematics in
relationship to experience. The meat of the argument is that while
experience may be an occasion to think mathematically, unless you already are
thinking that way in some important sense beforehand, you wouldn't be able to
frame your experience in a way that would illustrate the mathematical ideas.
It's a tricky issue, because there's such an interdependence. Do you know
the mathematician Polya? He's got a great little book HOW TO SOLVE IT, and a
bigger book on PLAUSIBLE REASONING. In the appendix to PLAUSIBLE REASONING,
he reprints an article he wrote that uses empirical methods to arrive at the
theorem about the distribution of primes. I love it, partly because it's a
great intellectual mediator between a hoary complicated proof about the
distribution of primes that I can't even begin to follow, and an algorithmic
information theory proof that's very easy to follow and takes about 20 lines
to lay out! I suspect that many mathematicians actually do the playing
around that Polya writes about in his paper -- that is, actually run
experiments about how different kinds of are distributed -- and of course, he
was writing before easy access to computers, so it was far harder for him to
do the kind of thing he talks about than it is for us now. Personally, I'd
be absolutely nowhere without computers to play with to explore mathematical
relationships more or less empirically -- I find I can develop intuitions
that way and know no other way to do that myself. I think experience,
experiment and exploration are way under-rated in mathematics education.
Having said that, I still take a non-experiential view of foundations and
think that bring our mathematical intuitions to experience and use them to
structure our experience. Think of this problem: Count the number of things
in the room you presently in. You can't begin to do it -- it's not a
meaningful question, even. You could think of ways to, for example, count
the number of oxygen atoms within a certain tolerance, or you could count the
books, or the books published after 1987, or the number of pages in books
published after 1987, or the number of computer keyboards or whatever. But
you'd need to have some concept of some category of entity before you could
start counting, and I think that such concepts come along with some
mathematical structure -- or are linked to something like Platonic forms,
part of the identity of which is that they haven't got existence by
themselves but must be instantiated in qualified form to exist -- but they
have a stable reality independent of specific instantiations. I know this
might have a kind of mystical sound to it, but I think it becomes increasing
rational in appearance as you carefully work through the alternatives.
Specifically, with numbers, you never experience them unless you 'cut up'
your experience in ways that express numbers, and this requires having the
notion before using it. Nothing comes to your mind from the outside labelled
with a number -- well, of course, things in supermarkets are marked with
numbers, but people put them there already, didn't they? I mean when you
have three apples in front of you, they aren't labelled one two three -- and
if you ask 'how many' without qualification, you can't answer that, because
you don't know how many what, seeds, stems, atoms, molecules or sets of three
pieces of fruit or even how many elephants are in front of you (zero in most
cases) if you can get my drift.
Mill was a kind of nominalist, and he had a powerful influence on Chauncey
Wright, Peirce's 'sparring partner' -- I find when I read Wright much of the
same kind of spark I find in Peirce, although his conclusions are rather
different, they are struggling with common issues, and I can't help thinking
that Wright had a profound influence on the way Peirce thought -- part of
that was 'technical' in that both Wright and Peirce were very informed about
the mathematics and science of their day, and both were very adept at a kind
of rough and ready combinatorial analysis applied to philosophical problems.
Wright had a good sense of the role of chance and disorder and how such
things could be handled with statistical tools -- but he was a nominalist.
Personally, I think there are three alternatives, realism, nominalism and
reactionary realism -- I'm being way overly crude here and stereotyping, but
I mean to point out that there's a kind of realism that essentially takes the
received science of the day as a pipeline to truth, and doesn't like to hear
criticisms of it. A nominalist critic is likely to point out that our
present day scientific conclusions are based on projections from a finite
number of observations, and that even if we had no further observations
(which won't be true) we could probably find a better model for the
observations we presently have in our stock -- therefore it doesn't make that
much sense to fetishize the conclusions we presently have. And that
nominalist has more truth in his or her camp than does the reactionary
realist in my opinion. Peirce's realism is distinguished by its fallibilism
-- no particular scientific conclusion is 'safe' or sure to be free from
error, and each conclusion is based on a finite number of observations that
could in fact be better modelled and even the best model might be superseded
by new data combined with new models. But Peirce keeps stressing that what
is in fact the case is so independent of what we think about it.
Tom Anderson
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 15:31:14 -0600 (CST)
From: Dennis Bradley Knepp
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Europhilia in Harper's
Message-ID:
everyone--
This month's issue of "Harper's" has an essay that should interest
anyone on the list who is concerned about American culture in the last
hundred years. Michael Lind's essay "Where Have You Gone, Louis Sullivan?
Will American Recover from Its Fifty-Year Bout of Europhilia" is about the
invasion of the U.S. academies by European intellectuals fleeing the
Nazi's. Most importantly, the essay is about how this has affected our
understanding of U.S. intellectual history. Basically, we are all taught
that U.S. intellectual history started with the invasion of the U.S.
academies by European intellectuals fleeing the Nazi's, and we are taught
this because we are taught by either those Europeans or by academics who
were taught by them. As a consequence, anything prior to WWII is
considered bad and merely provincial.
Although I do not have much knowledge in the areas that Lind
discusses, such as architecture, I imagine that he does know what he is
talking about. However, I do know a little about the history of
philosophy in American, at least enough to see where Lind's biases are.
Lind has the view of philosophy shared by everyone associated with a
Humanities department other than Philosophy -- that is, they take it that
the philosophers that literary critics discuss must be the philosophers
that people in Philosophy Departments discuss. As a consequence, Lind
completely fails to mention the fact that the U.S. did have a strong and
vibrant philosophical tradition prior to WWII that got largely swept away
by the invasion of the Logical Positivists. In fact, although he lovingly
discusses U.S. intellectual history in literature, architecture and other
subjects prior to WWII, he fails to mention that there was anyone at all
writing on philosophy at that time.
I have written a letter to the editor that I will be mailing in a
few days. I do not blast Lind in the letter, for I do not feel that Lind
is an enemy, but someone who shares many of my concerns. Lind wants his
readers to explore U.S. intellectual history prior to WWII, in order to
uncover the riches that have been lost. I share this sentiment. Thus, my
letter is written more like a fellow worker in this project than blasting
Lind for not knowing the same stuff that I know. Besides, as I mentioned
above, I know nothing about architecture in the U.S. and most U.S. novels
that I have read were published after WWII -- let he without sin cast the
first stone!
However, I would encourage others on Peirce-l to read this essay
and also write in to the editor, or at least share some thoughts on this
topic here. I hope that no one on the list has now labeled me a
Euro-hater (I can't think of the Greek word for "hate"), for I am not.
Besides, in order to read Peirce, one must be very aware of the European
background! But, I think that a bunch of letters to the editor reminding
the readers of "Harper's" that there was a movement called "Pragmatism"
would be a really good thing.
--Dennis Knepp, Washington University in St. Louis
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 03:47:01 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: warning - new virus!!
Message-ID: <34d3e89a.4529990[…]pop3.cris.com>
Dennis Bradley Knepp wrote:
>everyone--
> I have received warnings of this type before, passed them on to
>grad students in this department, and then been lectured tirelessly by
>computer-jocks that such a thing is impossible. Personally, I don't know
>if such a thing is possible, but I'm sure not going to forward it to
>anyone here so that I can again get labelled computer illeterate.
I don't say it is impossible, but these warnings make their
rounds on the InterNet.
To create a virus that would be able to have such an effect would
take a good bit of smarts. The reason for this is that most
programs make a clear distinction between program instructions
and program data. Data, you see is like Firstness. In fact, for
a computer, data *is* Firstness. Instructions are like
Secondness. The computer architecture is like Thirdness, I
suppose.
One of the interesting things about computer architecture is that
it makes no distinction between instructions and data. Most
computers only execute one instruction at a time. [I suppose
that might surprise people, but it's true. Most computers can
only do one thing at a time: one addition or one comparison, or
one multiplication, etc... Computers are not very smart, but
they are very fast.] In any event, computers really don't know
the difference between my birth date and an instruction to
execute. When it is time to fetch an instruction, the computer
grabs whatever number happens to be in its way and tries to
execute it. Often it is successful -- because programmers work
hard to make sure computers succeed. But occasionally the wrong
number gets in the way and a computer will execute garbage. This
generally is observed by the end user in the form of a nasty
incomprehensible message. At other times, however, a computer
may go into an endless loop executing garbage instructions.
Programmers generally like for their programs to be well behaved.
They don't like it when programs start executing garbage. I use
Forte Agent for my email reader. It seems to be reliable under
most situations. But I suppose an extremely clever programmer
could find the *exact* message to cause it to go bananas. There
may be such a message, for all I know.
But installing a virus is a bit more complex then making a
program execute garbage. One has to go a step further and make
the computer start executing a substitute program.
One of the interesting points about this is that a message to
cause Forte Agent to install a virus probably would not work for
cc:Mail, or Mickey$oft Exchange, or Pine or any other email
reader. In fact, what worked for Forte Agent 1.0 would probably
not work for Forte Agent 1.5. So a diabolical programmer who
wanted to propagate a virus would find email to be a fairly poor
way to do it.
There was, by the way, a popular protocol which had a fatal flaw
that allowed people to create Trojan Horses -- files for people
to download that could damage the computer that received them.
I'm not positive... I think it may have been Q-modem. I know it
was a popular protocol for BBS systems. The fatal flaw in its
design was that it was possible to embed commands in the
datastream. Now that could be a useful feature. One could
download a program and then command the receiving computer to
load that program. But a clever programmer could upload a
seeming harmless file to a BBS. Then anyone who downloaded it
with the *right* protocol would suddenly find his machine doing
strange things, like erasing all the files on the disk.
Still the most common way for viruses to propagate is via
diskettes. People are often careless with diskettes. It is not
at all unusual for someone to forget to remove a diskette from
its drive before booting his system. Most of the time, nothing
happens other than a failed boot. But if the diskette was
infected by a virus on someone else's machine, the virus will be
installed on the *target* system.
I suppose all of this is vaguely relevant to the New List, if
anyone cares to apply the analogy.
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
Bill Overcamp
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 22:41:00 -0600
From: joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
To: peirce-l
Subject: new at Arisbe website
Message-ID: <000c01bd2c70$1a354560$32a432ce[…]ransdell.door.net>
I've put the last seven days "digests" of PEIRCE-L (a "digest" is simply
a copy of all messages posted during that day, present on sing) on the
Arisbe website and will add the latest one, day by day, while dropping
out the oldest one at the same time, so that you can check there to find
out easily whether you are missing any messages, copy any that you
zapped but wish you hadn't, etc. The address for the website home page
is
http://members.door.net/arisbe
and the address for the PEIRCE-L information page on the site, where you
can jump to the digests, is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/people/peirce-l/peirce-l
I also added a jump to the paper by Edward Remler, "Physics,
Metaphysics, and Pedagogy," that I alluded to in a post yesterday. This
can be found on the LINKS page, where I am putting jumps to papers and
websites that I think are likely to be of special interest to Peirce
people for one reason or another, though they are not overtly
Peirce-related.
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/links/links.htm
As time has allowed I have also been working on a clean HTML version of
MS L75, which I am putting up in two versions.
Version 1. This is the version in which the draft materials have been
decomposed into paragraph units and then the whole thing reconstructed
by a sort of shuffle technique, following an overall schema provided by
Peirce himself, which yields some interesting results. At present it is
divided into ten parts, and I have completed (in a rough way) the
formatting of 7 of the 10 parts and hope to get all 10 done in a day or
two. (All ten parts are available but the last three are still in pure
ASCII. The 10-part arrangement is an accident of its history which I
will be rectifying subsequently.)
Version 2 is the same material made available in the order of
composition instead, along with copies of the MS itself so you can check
out the transcription against the original (i.e. against an iconic sign
of the original). It is not open yet but I have a big chunk of that
version done and as soon as I finish Version 1, I will open up Version
2, too, even though it will not be completed for a while after that.
My intro to it is also available there. It is a document of unique
importance and you will want to take a look at it if you haven't already
done so. The website address for MS L75 is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm
Finally, you might want to check out the secondary literature page at
Arisbe as well to see if there is anything new there since you last
visited it. That address is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/aboutcsp.htm
Joe Ransdell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell or <>
Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX 79409
Area Code 806: 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax
ARISBE: Peirce Telecommunity website - http://members.door.net/arisbe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 23:05:09 -0600
From: joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
To: peirce-l
Subject: new at the website Arisbe (corrected version)
Message-ID: <001701bd2c73$79ad3ea0$32a432ce[…]ransdell.door.net>
(This is a corrected copy of the message sent previously.)
I have put the last seven days "digests" of PEIRCE-L (a "digest" is
simply
a copy of all of the messages posted during that day) on the
Arisbe website and will add the latest one, day by day, while dropping
out the oldest one at the same time, so that you can check there to find
out easily whether you are missing any messages, copy any that you
zapped but wish you hadn't, etc. The address for the website home page
is
http://members.door.net/arisbe
and the address for the PEIRCE-L information page on the site, where you
can jump to the digests, is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/people/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
I also added a jump to the paper by Edward Remler, "Physics,
Metaphysics, and Pedagogy," that I alluded to in a post yesterday. This
can be found on the LINKS page, where I am putting jumps to papers and
websites that I think are likely to be of special interest to Peirce
people for one reason or another, though they are not overtly
Peirce-related.
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/links/links.htm
As time has allowed I have also been working on a clean HTML version of
MS L75, which I am putting up in two versions.
Version 1. This is the version in which the draft materials have been
decomposed into paragraph units and then the whole thing reconstructed
by a sort of shuffle technique, following an overall schema provided by
Peirce himself, which yields some interesting results. At present it is
divided into ten parts, and I have completed (in a rough way) the
formatting of 7 of the 10 parts and hope to get all 10 done in a day or
two. (All ten parts are available but the last three are still in pure
ASCII. The 10-part arrangement is an accident of its history which I
will be rectifying subsequently.)
Version 2 is the same material made available in the order of
composition instead, along with copies of the MS itself so you can check
out the transcription against the original (i.e. against an iconic sign
of the original). It is not open yet but I have a big chunk of that
version done and as soon as I finish Version 1, I will open up Version
2, too, even though it will not be completed for a while after that.
My intro to L75 is also available there. L75 is a document of unique
importance and you will want to take a look at it if you haven't already
done so. The website address for MS L75 is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/L75/L75.htm
Finally, you might want to check out the secondary literature page at
Arisbe as well to see if there is anything new there since you last
visited it. That address is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/aboutcsp.htm
Joe Ransdell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell or <>
Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX 79409
Area Code 806: 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax
ARISBE: Peirce Telecommunity website - http://members.door.net/arisbe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell or <>
Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX 79409
Area Code 806: 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax
ARISBE: Peirce Telecommunity website - http://members.door.net/arisbe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 07:44:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Everdell[…]aol.com
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Peirce and the bootstrap, et al.
Message-ID: <980129074430_-1933424686[…]mrin52>
Many thanks to Thomas Riese for the quick look at the explanation of numbers
and arithmetic by John Horton Conway in "On numbers and Games." This
confirms my view that historically when you begin to ask the deeper questions
about the ontology of numbers, you end up in the company of the great
Modernist minds, because you run smack into the continuity/discontinuity
antinomy. Thus, among the founders of modern logic and number theory are
Peirce, Cantor, Dedekind, Frege, Schroeder, Peano and Russell. (And Husserl,
if he had stayed the course.) Dedekind's "Ketten" in _Was sind und was
sollen die Zahlen_ (1888), are the equivalent of the chains of implication in
Peano's _Arithmetices principia nova methoda exposita_ (1889) and his, "Sul
concetto di numero" in _Rivista di Mathematica_ 1(1891) pp 87-102, 256-267
which so impressed Russell in Paris in 1900. Now we have an even simpler
version of this by Conway that I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know existed,
though I certainly knew he was the same Conway who invented "Life" (a graphic
computer algorithm based on Go that is part of the prehistory and early
history of computers).
Peirce's interest in this question and contributions to it are
extraordinarily in advance of his time. Kronecker, the inventor of ideal
numbers, didn't get around to basic definitions of number until 1887, when
Helmholtz also put in his 2 cents. Russell adopted Frege's 1884 definition
of number. Peirce was an early bird.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 15:53:56 +0100 (MET)
From: Howard Callaway
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Continuity & Discontinuity
Message-ID:
Continuity & Discontinuity
--------------------------
I'm posting the following here in answer to the question of
the other day concerning continuity.
Here are some further thoughts on continuity, discontinuity,
forms of sociality, and fallibilism. Discontinuities cannot be
detached from the principle of continuity, since discontinuity
directly expresses the fallibilism in inquiry which is the basis
of the principle of continuity. (Recall that "continuity" is
"fallibilism objectified.") Arriving at fallibilism as a metho-
dological norm requires detection of errors, inexactness, and
inadequacies in the results of inquiry, and generalizing from
them. This generalization essentially modifies what is intended
in assertion or judgment (so that we don't need to keep adding,
"and by the way, I may be wrong about this...").
But identification of errors, like any other judgment, depends
upon a larger context of unproblematic belief. We conclude, as
fallibilists, that the possibility of error cannot be eliminated
from the results of inquiry. --But this is not a reason to doubt
any of the particular results of inquiry--. On the contrary,
when we identify errors we always depend upon some larger con-
text which is not doubted and which makes sense of the doubt.
Now when fallibilism is "objectified" we get something corres-
ponding to the discontinuity of doubt and hesitation, and we
also get something corresponding to the larger context which
makes sense of the doubt. Discontinuity cannot be detached from
continuity.
To objectify fallibilism is to say that the world in general,
can be understood, and best approached, on the assumption that
it is like inquiry and the results of inquiry. The point should
be especially evident concerning cultural matters. Insofar as
distinct cultures "grow" up in accordance with internal tenden-
cies, we will expect them to each have greater internal coher-
ence and consistency. However, it would be very lucky indeed if
such distinct cultures tended to converge without interaction.
So, with the growth of distinct cultures we may well expect that
the divergence will actually increase, and this illustrates
their discontinuity in relationship to each other. The discon-
tinuities may eventuate in varieties of "incommensurability,"
where great efforts will be required to reach mutual
understanding.
Or consider the many varieties of plants which reproduce by
means of shoots or the division of their roots. A single plant
continues to grow until such a point that it is capable of
supporting an off-shoot. At that point, the root bulb splits, or
runners are sent off to establish new plants. Eventually the
connection between the old plant and the new may be broken. Here
the discontinuity of the distinct plants is a direct consequence
of growth of the original "mother" plant. There need be nothing
artificial at all in the growth or appearance of discontinui-
ties.
Correspondingly, understanding others is more than a passive
listening or acceptance. It requires that conflicts and dif-
ferences be explored. But the process of mutual exploration is
often sacrificed to the golden calf of efficiency. We over-
emphasize immediate products, and superficially congenial
relations, to the detriment of processes of creation and deeper
understanding. Neglect of required social processes is part of
this. We need to dwell on how defective social process, or the
absence of significant social process, diminishes the quality of
life. Keep in mind that forced uniformity is also an example of
continuity, and whether it is desirable or not is a very
distinct question.
So, I want to argue that romantic (or uncritical) collectivism
is an antithesis of collective intelligence, dependent on that
neglect of social-epistemic processes which is typical of ex-
treme social duress (which is why its advocates often seem
"radical" forceful, and politically inspired) Thus, when we call
for liberal solidarity, we must specify with whom and for what
purpose. Otherwise there is temptation to emphasize "liberation"
at the expense of liberty, and the continuity of the liberal
tradition is lost from sight. It is traditional to see political
and social rigidities as expressed by epistemic absolutism,
because absolutism has so often represented exclusion of
alternatives. But relativism is equally capable of inducing
social rigidities. Excluding the possibility of mediation, we
also exclude the possibility of seeing the value of what others
have to offer and the human value of those who differ from us.
Just as absolutism forces the alternatives of conformity or
exclusion, so does relativism force the same alternatives, on
the local scale.
Fallibilism is the alternative to both absolutism and relativ-
ism. If we see how a fallibilistic attitude naturally accom-
panies efforts at mutual understanding, then we have also seen,
in outline, how both absolutism and relativism may exacerbate
defects in the social infrastructures needed for the growth of
knowledge and mutual understanding. Just as absolutism expresses
the over-idealized desire for certainty and universal under-
standing, and may cloak a will to domination, relativism in the
form of a cynical disillusion with absolutistic certainties and
universalistic aspirations may equally issue in collective
egoisms, and conflicts among particular groups, cloaking itself
in loyalty to particularities. Relativism is a degenerate
tolerance, just as absolutism is an over-rigidity of the social-
ly situated self. But relativism is often just absolutism for a
particular group. Both block the continuity of inquiry and the
democratic growth and inter-relations of communities.
Howard
H.G. Callaway
Seminar for Philosophy
University of Mainz
------------------------------
|
