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PEIRCE-L Digest 1321 - March 7-8, 1998
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) The New List (Logic, psychology and AI)
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
2) Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
by Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu (Peter Skagestad)
3) Re: The New List (paragraph 5)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
4) Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
by "Bill J. Harrell"
5) Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
by a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
6) Blind Luck
by Mark Weisz
7) Re: Blind Luck
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
8) Re: Blind Luck
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
9) Re: Blind Luck
by a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
10) Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
by a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 12:37:34 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: The New List (Logic, psychology and AI)
Message-ID: <19980307.123734.9014.0.piat[…]juno.com>
Tom Gollier says:
>>The problem, to my mind, is that induction is not simply a matter of
empirically or synthetically verifying rules regarding experience. Prior
to any act of verification it must be determined that a particular
instance of experience is "a case" of the rule, or more specifically an
instance of the subject of that rule. And, what is a case of that
subject cannot be determined in terms of the truth or falsity of what the
rule then says about it without begging the question verifying it.<<
I quite agree with this. There is something required in logic that goes
on prior to manipulating cases, rules and conclusions. Something Prior.
What's prior is the means by which the cases, rules and conclusions are
known. This of course is both the subject matter of some enlightened
logician's ratiocinations as well as the subject matter of a number of
sciences (including modern psychology) that investigate matters based
upon actual observation.
I believe the psychology of Peirce's time was closer in its methods to
philosophy than is now the case. The method of philosophy is what?
Philosophy relies on what to achieve its explanations? Peirce seemed to
be trying to set philosophy on a course closer to the methods of science
including modern psychology. Peirce was rejecting certain philosophical
positions he found unscientific (by his lights) such as nominalism based
on the view that man had certain faculties such as insight by which the
nature of reality could be uncovered. He correctly identified these as
"psychological" in keeping with the psychological philosophy of his time.
So in rejecting "psychology" he was not rejecting science or modern
psychology but rather a particular brand of philosophizing. He elevates
objectivity at the expense of subjectivity. He does not, however, throw
the baby out with the bath water. He does not deny philosophy or thought
as part of the scientific process. In fact he undertakes a bit of
philosophizing or thoughtful hypothesizing in the New List.
Tom Gollier also says:
>>His delineation of what goes into the unity of a term prior to the
truth and falsity of combining such terms into proportions, then defines
or frames the situations or contexts which propositions can address. In
other words, it seems like a "ground" is the first thing we look for in
our own (human) solutions to the frame problem, then we look for
correlates, and then we look for other interpretants.<<
Uh, excepting my opinion that the New List argues that all terms are
themselves propositions, I would agree that this is more or less what
he seems to be saying about grounds, correlates and interpretants. But I
question whether to consider a ground with something knowable by itself
as for example "a case" A ground is something less than the "case". A
ground is part of the means by which a case is made known. If a ground
(as a component of a case) is fully realized (in itself) as a case, then
we are right back where we started from. Of course given that we
actually can know cases, we can obviously also bootstrap and speak of or
reify a ground as a case. Perhaps someday we can empirically catalog all
of the grounds by which we gain our knowledge of the world and thereby
build an intelligent meaning machine or AI. I'd guess that this will
ultimately depend more on physics than psychology. And moreover, that
these grounds are fewer than one dozen as the physicists seem to be
telling us.
So to construct AI we must according to Peirce somehow build in the
processes of The New List including the capacity to attend to presence
and respond to essence by means of the intermediate irreducible triad
above.
Personally I think a big part of the solution to the AI problem is
recognizing that essence can not be accounted for short of including a
method for achieving meaning which requires that the AI interact with its
environment and experience consequences of these interactions. We need
robotic computers not just computers.
Or so it all seems to me.
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: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 14:00:25 -0800
From: Peter_Skagestad[…]uml.edu (Peter Skagestad)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
Message-ID: <3501C379.766B[…]uml.edu>
Dear Anne:
A. Freadman wrote:
>
> Dear Peirceans:
>
> I have been reading Cheryl Misak's book, Truth and the End of
> Inquiry, which is an elaboration and an uptake of Peirce, with a lot to say
> about this issue. I think it's very good, illuminating about Peirce as
> well as about the debates. (does anyone know of any good reviews of it?)
Whether the review is any good is for others to judge, but I reviewed Misak's
book (which, by the way, I greatly enjoyed reading) in The Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society, Spring 1992, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, pp. 311-321. While
mostly favorable, the review does take issue with Misak on a couple of key
points of interpretation. I think I still have an electronic copy on file, so
if it is awkward for you to lay your hands on the relevant issue of the
Transactions, I'll be happy to e-mail you a copy of my review.
All the best,
Peter
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 21:26:20 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: The New List (paragraph 5)
Message-ID: <3501b129.296085[…]pop3.cris.com>
On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:21:23 -0600 (CST), BugDaddy[…]cris.com
(BugDaddy -- that's me) wrote:
>I would *assume* that the term *a priori* ['from the prior"] refers
>to Aristotle's *Prior Analytics,* while *a posteriori* ['from the
>posterior"]refers to his *Posterior Analytics.* If so, then *a
>priori* would refer to formal logic, while *a posteriori* would
>refer to material logic.
I found the following at "A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and
Names," http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/dy/a.htm#abst
>a posteriori:
>Depending on experience; see a priori / a posteriori.
>a priori / a posteriori:
>Distinction among judgments, propositions, ideas, arguments, or
>kinds of knowledge. In each case, the a priori is taken to be
>independent of experience, which the a posteriori presupposes. An
>a priori argument, then, reasons deductively from general
>premises, while an a posteriori argument relies upon specific
>information derived from experience. The necessary truth of an a
>priori proposition can be determined by reason alone, but the
>contingent truth of an a posteriori proposition can be discovered
>only by reference to a matter of fact. Thus, for example:
>"3+4=7." is known a priori.
>"Chicago is on Lake Michigan." is known a posteriori.
>Rationalists typically emphasize the importance of a priori ideas
>and arguments as the foundation of all knowledge. Kant held that
>synthetic a priori judgments are preconditions of experience and
>form the basis for mathematics and science. Empiricists, on the
>other hand, usually hold that all a priori propositions are merely
>analytic, so that we must rely on a posteriori propositions for
>significant knowledge of the world. Kripke challenges even the
>identification of this distinction with that between the necessary
>and the contingent.
It is not clear to me that "3+4=7" is known a priori.
And I found the following at the "Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy," http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/apriori.htm
>"A priori" is a term used to identify a type of knowledge which is
>obtained independently of experience. A proposition is known a
>priori if when judged true or false one does not refer to
>experience. "A priorism" is a philosophical position maintaining
>that our minds gain knowledge independently of experience through
>innate ideas or mental faculties. The term a priori is
>distinguished from a posteriori, which means knowledge gained
>through the senses and experience. These are the two most common
>ways in which philosophers argue that humans acquire knowledge.
>For Aristotle, "a priori" referred to something which was prior to
>something else. By "prior" he meant that some thing's existence
>was caused by the existence of another. Aristotle argued that to
>have knowledge of a prior thing, then, was to have knowledge of a
>causal relationship. He argued that we can establish a causal
>relationship between things through syllogistic logic. Descartes
>used the term "a priori" in his quest for the foundation of all
>knowledge. For Descartes, knowledge of our own existence was a
>priori because (a) denying it leads to a contradiction, and (b) we
>do not need to rely on our experiences to ponder our existence.
>Kant believed that a priori truths could be found in the two areas;
>mathematics and the categories which organize the material of
>experience and science. Kant divided a priori truths into two
>categories: the synthetic and the analytic. Traditionally,
>mathematical propositions were seen as both analytic and a priori.
>Kant, however, classifies both mathematics and the categories as
>synthetic a priori. Math is synthetic a priori because it depends
>on the pure intuitions of the elements of time and space. Kant
>argued time and space were central intuitions to mathematical
>knowledge, and were thus the reasons for his grouping mathematical
>truths in the synthetic a priori. Our categories are identified as
>synthetic a priori because denying them does not lead to a
>contradiction. On the other hand, these categories are central to
>experience. Kant used the example of causality, in the "Second
>Analogy" of the Critique of Pure Reason, to demonstrate that the
>concept of an "event" having a "cause" must be connected before we
>can give apply either notion. This connection can only be a
>synthetic one, since it is not tautological.
I certainly agree with Kant that both mathematics and knowledge of
the categories is synthetic. On the other hand, considering all
the effort that it takes to learn something like "3+4=7" I do not
think it's all that clear that it is *a priori* in any sense of
being prior to experience.
Perhaps one could say that mathematics and the categories are known
*through* experience, but not *from* experience.
----------------------------------------------------------
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to
dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau, *Walden*
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
Bill Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 16:45:33 -0500
From: "Bill J. Harrell"
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19980307164533.006eda64[…]ntcnet.com>
Peter, Please send me a copy of your review. Thanks
Bill Harrell
bharrell[…]ntcnet.com
At 01:00 PM 3/7/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Dear Anne:
>
>A. Freadman wrote:
>>
>> Dear Peirceans:
>>
>> I have been reading Cheryl Misak's book, Truth and the End of
>> Inquiry, which is an elaboration and an uptake of Peirce, with a lot to say
>> about this issue. I think it's very good, illuminating about Peirce as
>> well as about the debates. (does anyone know of any good reviews of it?)
>
>Whether the review is any good is for others to judge, but I reviewed
Misak's
>book (which, by the way, I greatly enjoyed reading) in The Transactions of
the
>Charles S. Peirce Society, Spring 1992, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, pp. 311-321.
While
>mostly favorable, the review does take issue with Misak on a couple of key
>points of interpretation. I think I still have an electronic copy on file,
so
>if it is awkward for you to lay your hands on the relevant issue of the
>Transactions, I'll be happy to e-mail you a copy of my review.
>
>All the best,
>
>Peter
>
>
Bill J. Harrell
Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
S.U.N.Y. Institute of Technology
Utica, NY 13504
Home: 1917 Holland Ave.
Utica, NY 13501
bharrell[…]ntcnet.com
harrell[…]sunyit.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 11:40:40 +1100
From: a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
Message-ID: <199803080140.LAA18572[…]yowie.cc.uq.edu.au>
Dear Peter,
thank you very much indeed. I'll try to lay my hands on the review (which
should be available to me, on condition that the library, currently under
major renovation, has the relevant no. back on the shelves). I look
forward to reading your views, and may come back to you about them/the
book.
Anne
>Dear Anne:
>
>A. Freadman wrote:
>>
>> Dear Peirceans:
>>
>> I have been reading Cheryl Misak's book, Truth and the End of
>> Inquiry, which is an elaboration and an uptake of Peirce, with a lot to say
>> about this issue. I think it's very good, illuminating about Peirce as
>> well as about the debates. (does anyone know of any good reviews of it?)
>
>Whether the review is any good is for others to judge, but I reviewed Misak's
>book (which, by the way, I greatly enjoyed reading) in The Transactions of the
>Charles S. Peirce Society, Spring 1992, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, pp. 311-321. While
>mostly favorable, the review does take issue with Misak on a couple of key
>points of interpretation. I think I still have an electronic copy on file, so
>if it is awkward for you to lay your hands on the relevant issue of the
>Transactions, I'll be happy to e-mail you a copy of my review.
>
>All the best,
>
>Peter
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 20:48:56 -0500
From: Mark Weisz
To: Peirce List
Subject: Blind Luck
Message-ID: <199803072049_MC2-35EC-C1B3[…]compuserve.com>
----------------------------------------------
Dear Peirce List Members,
I have received some thoughtful and informative messages already from my
recent missive. I particularly appreciate the gentle tone of your replies.
This is easily the most civil, and probably the most intelligent, mailing
list on the Internet. You really have something special here and I am
grateful that you have let me on board. I am also thrilled that my meager
additions has brought Anne out of lurkerdom.
Unfortunately, I'm having a run of bad luck this year. On Januray 15,
1998, I had surgery to repair a bad retinal detachment in my left eye. For
two weeks after the operation I had to lie face down (right cheek to the
mattress, or couch, or whatever) for two weeks while the retina healed.
Then it was another month where I could be up and around for two hours
around mealtime.
It was during the first two weeks that I last saw Tom, who brought me
cookies and two "typically Tom" books on tape: "Of Men and Mules" by Zora
Neale Hurston, and some Jewish folk tails, Ba'al Shem or something by
Martin Buber.
My recovery was going great until yesterday, when I again began
experiencing large areas of blindness again. I saw the surgeon this morning
lala [Erika typed the 'lala'] and she (the surgeon) is trying what amounts
to a Hail Mary pass with our team down by three touchdowns with ten seconds
left in the game, in an effort to salvage the surgery.
The odds are that I will be operated on again within the next few days
(I'm not supp9osed to be reading so I have to type the rest of this blind.
At least I'm a pretty good touch typist. ) I'll be pretty much offlline for
at least two weeks after the surgery.
I will save all of my Peirce List messages and, no doubt stimulated by
your comments, will respond someday.
Best Regards,
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 1998 02:42:19 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Blind Luck
Message-ID: <35050513.9820880[…]pop3.cris.com>
Mark Weisz wrote:
> I will save all of my Peirce List messages and, no doubt stimulated by
>your comments, will respond someday.
>Best Regards,
Good luck -- wishing the best
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
Bill Overcamp
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 00:38:36 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Blind Luck
Message-ID: <19980308.003838.13750.0.piat[…]juno.com>
Mark,
I wish you luck with the surgery, but whatever the outcome I believe your
indomitably positive spirit will prevail. My brother had reasonably
sucessful surgery for a detached retina about 30 plus years ago and went
on to do a bit of surgery himself. Then there's Sugar Ray who went on to
box again... but your's sounds more serious than either. Course I doubt
either of them could type with their eyes closed or read Hurston and
Buber -- and I know my brother found philosophy completely
incomprehensible or so he tells me.
Your comment on the civility of the Peirce-L struck a chord with me. Tom,
as you know was extremely intelligent, passionate and civil. It's a
wonderful thing, civility - especially when the subject is the exchange
of beliefs, viewpoints or ideas. One might suppose, as seems often to be
the case elsewhere, that a free and robust exchange of views permits or
even demands a bit of disregard for the constraints of manners. But I
believe such a notion is mistaken. Civility does not stifle openness but
on the contrary provides the safe context in which truths can be
passionately pursued. Manners do not constrain the full and honest
exchange of views (as I myself believed in my youth) but are, quite the
opposite, the necessary conditions for a free and open exchange. So
those who truly love ideas tend to promote a climate that encourages the
exchange of ideas. Ideas and the people that embody them are too
valuable to be treated with any but the utmost care. Civility is a way
of acknowledging their value and attempting to handle them with care.
While thinking about this I reread Joe Ransdell's Arisbe discussion of
handling cases of offense taken on the Peirce-L. It seems very wisely
put and I think Joe's founding beliefs are in large measure the source of
the civility on the list. In his discussion he mentions something which
I found very uplifting and pertinent which I have quoted below.
Speaking of the problematic excesses that passion sometimes provokes he
states:
>>In general, the solution seems clear enough on the face of it: the
medium itself makes it possible to rectify or attempt to compensate for
mistakes almost immediately, and we should become accustomed to the idea
that what is said is not something that is competed at the moment it is
uttered but is a function of the ongoing communication process in which
it occurs. There is a very real sense in which the future can and does
determine the past, in communication, and because we can reclaim, shape
and rectify what we say so easily here we can afford to take more chances
than would be prudent in a less plastic communicational medium. This can
be liberating in that it makes it easier for us to acknowledge what we
have actually said and done, since what has been done can so easily be
undone or re-done--at times and in part, at least -- and we are not so
strongly compelled to denial and to averting our eyes from our own
behavior in order to preserve our sense for our own integrity. In a
fluid and sufficiently rapid communicational process we can see ourselves
as becoming rather than being simple as being, and we can become more
supple and adaptive in the interest of cultivating a developing integrity
rather than being tempted constantly to falsify ourselves to ourselves to
achieve the illusion of a past -- and increasingly petrified --integrity.
<<
Personally I can only recall one possible instance of serious offense
taken in the year or so or less I have participated. In this case the
person who made the remark (partly in a kind of cranky jest, I came to
realize) promptly apologized. What I found most remarkable was that the
prompt apology was made primarily in the spirit of removing the hurt
rather than primarily by way of explaining how the remark was not
intended as hurtful (which it apparently wasn't) and thereby primarily
attempting to defend the remark makers "petrified" integrity. I thought
this took a lot of courage and character. And as one who, contrary to
Joe's advice, expressed censure of the comment at the time, I have
always regretted that I didn't acknowledge the courage and true
integrity (in the sense Joe speaks of above) of the apology - partly
because I had already butted in once too often. But this seems a good
opportunity. And so it goes... just some reflections inspired by your
comments.
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: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 18:03:25 +1100
From: a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Blind Luck
Message-ID: <199803080803.SAA01865[…]yowie.cc.uq.edu.au>
good luck, Mark! - eyes are dreadfully delicate things, and trouble with
them is frightening as all hell. Be very good and obedient! - Anne
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 18:26:18 +1100
From: a.freadman[…]mailbox.uq.edu.au (A. Freadman)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Of Laws and [Wo]Men
Message-ID: <199803080826.SAA02550[…]yowie.cc.uq.edu.au>
Joe Ransdell writes:
>What I am leading up to is saying that I think the seemingly unending
>problem of getting people to recognize what the Peirce-Dewey type of
>pragmatic stance is is sustantially the same as the problem Socrates had
>of converting people from the idea that questioning or inquiry is a
>symptom of deficiency, a weakness, a character flaw which nobody should
>tolerate in themselves or others to acceptance of it as what human
>strength actually is. The word "fallibilism" is the Peircean word for
>acceptance of this as the proper human condition and means sustantially
>the same as what Socrates tried to convey in saying that he did indeed
>possess wisdom but -- strange though it may seem -- his wisdom actually
>consists in giving up on the idea that wisdom as people ordinarily
>understand it is either possible or desirable, which means adoption of
>the life of inquiry as ultimate, not as a means to an end that can ever
>come to an end. .
This is very interesting Joe. I wanted to think some more before writing
in response to it, but I may not get further than this question for a
while:
What you describe as the Socratic attitude puts wisdom at the base - the
ground - of philosophy and philosophising. This, I take it, is a
particular uptake of ancient philosophy in any case, where ethics, rather
than epistemology, stands as the prima philosophia. It occurs to me that
Peircean pragmatism also does this, and that the "pragmatic attitude" is
struck at the point when he enunciates a *maxim* as the only practical
guide. Maxims, precepts, leading principles, log-lines: practical wisdom,
in other words. As if he takes the Kant of the Practical Reason and puts
it before (so to say) the Pure Reason; and takes this structure in place of
the Cartesian quest for first principles. This goes with the metaphor of
the bog, which he expressly substitutes for the bedrock of philosophy: the
bog is unstable, and I'll stand here while I have nothing better, and until
it begins to shift, and I will hold myself alert to its shiftings, but
there is no bedrock. And that is why I need the pragmatic maxim; it's the
soundest thing I have - Is this an appropriate uptake of what you write?
Anne
------------------------------
|
