Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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Dear all, As you all know, I am trying to arrange some sort of a web discussion group to keep me sane during my exile in the Mosquito Infested Bog (hereafter, MIB) . I have looked into the options offered so kindly by many of you, and none of them seems so much better than the Friam list that I shouldn’t start here. So, I am going to start a discussion here and see what I can do to render it into a coherent text. To help me in this project, I am going to ask those of you who participate to observe a few conventions. (1) Please faithfully retain the subject line. Please! No matter what. Bend the thread how you like but do not change the subject line. (2) Please, when you reply, erase any included prior text from your reply. (3) If you want to quote any prior text, please actually copy the text you are quoting into your own message. Use any means necessary to make it stand out, but I would recommend bolding and indenting. (4) Please end EVERY message with the ending ###. Put it before any “marketing” that automatically appears at the end of your email messages. I will start the discussion by posting the link to Peirce’s What Pragmatism Is. Sometime over the weekend, I will put up or send a lightly annotated Word version which perhaps might help those of you who are new to Peirce. Most of my notes will be to assure you that you are not going crazy and that Piece is actually saying what he appears to be saying. For God’s sake, don’t feel you HAVE to participate. If I get a handful of people to participate, it will generate enough text for me THEN to explore how to move from what we have done to a readable text using macros, or ideas that others of you might offer. I will “ring off” now so I have time to send you the Peirce text. See many of you tomorrow, I hope. Nick ### Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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I anxiously await your annotations regarding this passage: "Suffer me to add one word more on this point—for, if one cares at all to know what the pragmaticist theory consists in, one must understand that there is no other part of it to which the pragmaticist attaches quite as much importance as he does to the recognition in his doctrine of the utter inadequacy of action or volition or even of resolve or actual purpose, as materials out of which to construct a conditional purpose or the concept of conditional purpose."
In the meantime, I'll (again) lodge my main objection to what Peirce seems to be laying out, in my naive understanding, regarding belief and doubt. First, in response to his "But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least", I absolutely reject that. I do doubt everything. But, as he mentions in Note <2>, his discussion here disallows "grades of certainty". By disallowing that, he destroys any purpose or meaning that might otherwise exist in the entire essay. I agree that belief is a habit, but disagree that it ever (completely) dissolves in any real sense. It evolves. Hence, even under this definition of doubt, if doubt is the complement of all the habits one has, then one's doubt is constantly evolving, just as belief is constantly evolving. The set of habits one does not exhibit (one's doubt) would be an immeasurably larger set than one's beliefs. Hence, it's reasonable to say that the evolution of doubt vanishes into obscurity or is, at least, imperceptible. But the set of one's habits (beliefs) is, perhaps, small enough that its evolution is perceptible. And it is this epistemic difference between beliefs and doubts that might cause Peirce to claim that there (always) exist things one does not doubt. But those of us (I'd claim everyone, but can't prove it) who _want_ to change our habits as often and as fast as possible, it is reasonable to claim that we doubt everything, because it is our goal to explore the space of possible (but not yet reified) beliefs. The word "want" is important, because I also do not assume that I have any control over my future actions. It certainly seems like I do. But I believe my actions exhibit the self-doubt one would expect from a tentative belief in one's self-control. And even my belief that my actions may not be self-controllable varies and evolves. I admit that his conception of doubt as the absence of habit, is useful in the context of an experimenter having a sincere "lack of habitualized behavior" relying on the truth of the hypothesis. An experiment conducted as if it will validate the hypothesis is petitio principii, or what BC Smith called "inscription error" or "premature registration". But, again, Peirce's rejection of gradations of belief/habituation prevent it from being very useful. In order to even conceive a hypothesis, one has to "believe it" a little bit ... to entertain its truth ... to suspend disbelief. The ability to ask "what if?", to simulate, seems to destroy Peirce's belief/doubt framework and, hence, everything he builds on top of that infrastructure. ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
And to fold in a little postmodernism, Peirce says: "Now, just as conduct controlled by ethical reason tends toward fixing certain habits of conduct, the nature of which, (as to illustrate the meaning, peaceable habits and not quarrelsome habits), does not depend upon any accidental circumstances, and in that sense, may be said to be destined; so, thought, controlled by a rational experimental logic, tends to the fixation of certain opinions, equally destined, the nature of which will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation. If this be so, as every man of us virtually assumes that it is, in regard to each matter the truth of which he seriously discusses, then, according to the adopted definition of 'real,' the state of things which will be believed in that ultimate opinion is real." But what if the process never settles (either to a fixed point or other attractor)? Further, what if no such process ever settles? Perhaps we will, forever, be subject to paradigm shifts that demonstrate our previous conceptions were false (or at least less accurate than possible)? Does that, then, mean that nothing is real? Pfft. It seems more reasonable to, again, allow gradations of the real. An opinion like Newtonian gravity is just a little less real than an opinion like general relativity. It doesn't mean Newtonian gravity isn't real. By the same reasoning, we could say that unicorns are real. They’re a little more real than a pegasus and less real than a horse. Along these same lines, Peirce says: "For truths, on the average, have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities have. Were it otherwise, considering that there are myriads of false hypotheses to account for any given phenomenon, against one sole true one (or if you will have it so, against every true one), the first step toward genuine knowledge must have been next door to a miracle." As the recent discussion of "bullshit" and the prevalence of "fake news" and conspiracy theories demonstrate, truth, on average, does not have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities. Cf. Hoffman’s "interface theory of perception" and possible explanations of drift/selection to/of false beliefs. Perhaps a more philosophically inclined objection arises in response to this comment: Peirce says, "For to say that we live for the mere sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries out, would be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport." I disagree. To say we live for the sake of action, as action, doesn't say there is no rational purport. It says that action is composite and multi-scale. Rationality is simply a boundary-crossing causation, a statement about how those things on one side of the boundary match those things on the other side of the boundary. So, we do live for/of action and only action. But one cannot arbitrarily slice action into parts and consider only one of the parts (e.g. someone thinking of moving their hand versus the moving of the hand). Thinking is doing. And the postmodernist conception that power (or efficacy) is more salient than truth avoids all this persnickety dithering over what's true or real or extant. There is only what works. ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by gepr
Yeah. Me, too. Whew! Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ? Sent: Friday, March 16, 2018 3:17 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce's "What Pragmatism is." I anxiously await your annotations regarding this passage: "Suffer me to add one word more on this point—for, if one cares at all to know what the pragmaticist theory consists in, one must understand that there is no other part of it to which the pragmaticist attaches quite as much importance as he does to the recognition in his doctrine of the utter inadequacy of action or volition or even of resolve or actual purpose, as materials out of which to construct a conditional purpose or the concept of conditional purpose." In the meantime, I'll (again) lodge my main objection to what Peirce seems to be laying out, in my naive understanding, regarding belief and doubt. First, in response to his "But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least", I absolutely reject that. I do doubt everything. But, as he mentions in Note <2>, his discussion here disallows "grades of certainty". By disallowing that, he destroys any purpose or meaning that might otherwise exist in the entire essay. I agree that belief is a habit, but disagree that it ever (completely) dissolves in any real sense. It evolves. Hence, even under this definition of doubt, if doubt is the complement of all the habits one has, then one's doubt is constantly evolving, just as belief is constantly evolving. The set of habits one does not exhibit (one's doubt) would be an immeasurably larger set than one's beliefs. Hence, it's reasonable to say that the evolution of doubt vanishes into obscurity or is, at least, imperceptible. But the set of one's habits (beliefs) is, perhaps, small enough that its evolution is perceptible. And it is this epistemic difference between beliefs and doubts that might cause Peirce to claim that there (always) exist things one does not doubt. But those of us (I'd claim everyone, but can't prove it) who _want_ to change our habits as often and as fast as possible, it is reasonable to claim that we doubt everything, because it is our goal to explore the space of possible (but not yet reified) beliefs. The word "want" is important, because I also do not assume that I have any control over my future actions. It certainly seems like I do. But I believe my actions exhibit the self-doubt one would expect from a tentative belief in one's self-control. And even my belief that my actions may not be self-controllable varies and evolves. I admit that his conception of doubt as the absence of habit, is useful in the context of an experimenter having a sincere "lack of habitualized behavior" relying on the truth of the hypothesis. An experiment conducted as if it will validate the hypothesis is petitio principii, or what BC Smith called "inscription error" or "premature registration". But, again, Peirce's rejection of gradations of belief/habituation prevent it from being very useful. In order to even conceive a hypothesis, one has to "believe it" a little bit ... to entertain its truth ... to suspend disbelief. The ability to ask "what if?", to simulate, seems to destroy Peirce's belief/doubt framework and, hence, everything he builds on top of that infrastructure. ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Dear Friammers, and a few others, OK, so. If we were going to have a discussion group on Peirce over the summer, we would, from time to time, read a text together and spend some time trying to come to some common view about what the text actually says AND then take some time to relate the text to other texts and give our opinions of it. An example of such a text was provided in an earlier message. Quoting: So, I am going to start a discussion here and see what I can do to render it into a coherent text. To help me in this project, I am going to ask those of you who participate to observe a few conventions. (1) Please faithfully retain the subject line. Please! No matter what. Bend the thread how you like but do not change the subject line. (2) Please, when you reply, erase any included prior text from your reply. (3) If you want to quote any prior text, please actually copy the text you are quoting into your own message. Use any means necessary to make it stand out, but I would recommend bolding and indenting. (4) Please end EVERY message with the ending ###. Put it before any “marketing” that automatically appears at the end of your email messages. I will start the discussion by posting the link to Peirce’s What Pragmatism Is. Please find attached my attempt to provide a little guidance in the reading of that text. My comments aren’t anything special, but if you want to get a brief sense of what Pragmatism is you might look at the highlighted passages. . I am hoping that enough of you respond to give me some text to work with in my project to develop a procedure for turning email correspondence into an intelligible text. All the best, Nick ### ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by gepr
[NST==>EDITOR’S NOTE: I am trying to accommodate “larding” to my goal of trying to create a coherent text out of an email correspondence. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: And to fold in a little postmodernism, Peirce says: "Now, just as conduct controlled by ethical reason tends toward fixing certain habits of conduct, the nature of which, (as to illustrate the meaning, peaceable habits and not quarrelsome habits), does not depend upon any accidental circumstances, and in that sense, may be said to be destined; so, thought, controlled by a rational experimental logic, tends to the fixation of certain opinions, equally destined, the nature of which will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation. If this be so, as every man of us virtually assumes that it is, in regard to each matter the truth of which he seriously discusses, then, according to the adopted definition of 'real,' the state of things which will be believed in that ultimate opinion is real." [NST==>You will notice that in the notes I just sent out, I confessed to not being able to make head or tails out of this and subsequent passages. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: But what if the process never settles (either to a fixed point or other attractor)? Further, what if no such process ever settles? Perhaps we will, forever, be subject to paradigm shifts that demonstrate our previous conceptions were false (or at least less accurate than possible)? Does that, then, mean that nothing is real? Pfft. [NST==>Peirce would have no trouble with this possibility. He explicitly states that most events are random. Given that he believes that what is real is that upon which we – the community of human inquiry – will settle on in the very long run, there is no reality in the accidental. I would put it this way: all perception involves the identification of patterns; that which is not patterned, cannot be perceived. I think he would site Darwinian Evolution as evidence for believing that some things are real. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: It seems more reasonable to, again, allow gradations of the real. An opinion like Newtonian gravity is just a little less real than an opinion like general relativity. It doesn't mean Newtonian gravity isn't real. By the same reasoning, we could say that unicorns are real. They’re a little more real than a pegasus and less real than a horse. [NST==>I think Peirce would say that to the extent we can agree on what a Unicorn is, a unicorn is real. To the extent that we can agree (in the very long run, etc., blah, blah) that unicorns are mythic, their existence is not real. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: Along these same lines, Peirce says: "For truths, on the average, have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities have. Were it otherwise, considering that there are myriads of false hypotheses to account for any given phenomenon, against one sole true one (or if you will have it so, against every true one), the first step toward genuine knowledge must have been next door to a miracle." [NST==>Well, he takes as his model the development of Chemistry in the 19th century where gradually, through the process of experimentation in the broadest sense, false notions are shed and the literature converges. Those convergences may, of course, be ephemeral <==nst] GLEN WRITES: As the recent discussion of "bullshit" and the prevalence of "fake news" and conspiracy theories demonstrate, truth, on average, does not have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities. Cf. Hoffman’s "interface theory of perception" and possible explanations of drift/selection to/of false beliefs. [NST==>See above. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: Perhaps a more philosophically inclined objection arises in response to this comment: Peirce says, "For to say that we live for the mere sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries out, would be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport." GLEN WRITES: I disagree. To say we live for the sake of action, as action, doesn't say there is no rational purport. It says that action is composite and multi-scale. Rationality is simply a boundary-crossing causation, a statement about how those things on one side of the boundary match those things on the other side of the boundary. So, we do live for/of action and only action. But one cannot arbitrarily slice action into parts and consider only one of the parts (e.g. someone thinking of moving their hand versus the moving of the hand). [NST==>I think there is a problem, here, with the definition of action. I would agree with you that there is not much to distinguish thought and action and that irrational action is therefore an oxymoron. Even Trump is rational if you buy his premises. <==nst] GLEN WRITES: Thinking is doing. And the postmodernist conception that power (or efficacy) is more salient than truth avoids all this persnickety dithering over what's true or real or extant. There is only what works. [NST==>Well, it all depends on what “working” means and what your time threshold is. Thanks, Glen <==nst] Nick ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Dear Potential Collaborators, I forgot to attach the annotated text. The advantage of this version is that I have highlighted a few of the crucial passages so that you can read it on the cheap. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University From: Nick Thompson [mailto:[hidden email]] Dear Friammers, and a few others, OK, so. If we were going to have a discussion group on Peirce over the summer, we would, from time to time, read a text together and spend some time trying to come to some common view about what the text actually says AND then take some time to relate the text to other texts and give our opinions of it. An example of such a text was provided in an earlier message. Quoting: So, I am going to start a discussion here and see what I can do to render it into a coherent text. To help me in this project, I am going to ask those of you who participate to observe a few conventions. (1) Please faithfully retain the subject line. Please! No matter what. Bend the thread how you like but do not change the subject line. (2) Please, when you reply, erase any included prior text from your reply. (3) If you want to quote any prior text, please actually copy the text you are quoting into your own message. Use any means necessary to make it stand out, but I would recommend bolding and indenting. (4) Please end EVERY message with the ending ###. Put it before any “marketing” that automatically appears at the end of your email messages. I will start the discussion by posting the link to Peirce’s What Pragmatism Is. Please find attached my attempt to provide a little guidance in the reading of that text. My comments aren’t anything special, but if you want to get a brief sense of what Pragmatism is you might look at the highlighted passages. . I am hoping that enough of you respond to give me some text to work with in my project to develop a procedure for turning email correspondence into an intelligible text. All the best, Nick ### ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
WHAT PRAGMATISM IS-nst.docx (54K)
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen, spot on! Some of this I can hazard some thought on.
In the meantime, I'll (again) lodge my main objection to what Peirce seems to be laying out, in my naive understanding, regarding belief and doubt. First, in response to his "But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least", I absolutely reject that. I do doubt everything. But, as he mentions in Note <2>, his discussion here disallows "grades of certainty". By disallowing that, he destroys any purpose or meaning that might otherwise exist in the entire essay. You might well, as did Descartes, imagine that you doubt everything, as an intellectual exercise. But you cannot actually doubt everything, because to do so would be preemptively dysfunctional in all possible ways. You do not type on your keyboard as if it might disappear at any moment. You do not wonder if the world might be destroyed unless you flick every light switch you pass exactly 24 times. Etc., etc.. As a practical matter, much that in-principle could be doubted is not doubted as you go about your day to day life. Were you actively doubting any significant portion of that stuff on a continuous in-the-moment basis, you would be suffering from a particularly acute variety of what we now call a "mental breakdown." Peirce likely isn't thinking about things that minute, however. Probably his line of thinking flows, to a significant extent, out of the Emersonian tradition of American thought. We find ourselves where we find ourselves, and though we may change quite a bit over a lifetime, at any given moment in our lives, if we assess ourselves with simple honesty, we will find that there are some things we are unable to seriously doubt. Emerson could not find it in himself to doubt that slavery was bad. He also, prior to the Fugitive Slave Act, could not find it in himself to doubt that he had no basis for dictating how people so far away, living in such a different world, should live their lives. The Fugitive Slave Act forced inadvertently slavery into his world as a matter of practical course, and thereafter he could not doubt that he had a firm basis for opposing slavery throughout the country. Could he have imagined doubting those things as an intellectual exercise, yes. Could he actually doubt them and live his life in fundamentally different ways in those moments? No. They were his beliefs, and, as a practical matter, he could not doubt them. As for the "grades of certainty" issue, I don't think Peirce is trying to say that such things do not exist. I think he is merely pointing out that he is not using the term "belief" for the far extreme on a graded scale. He is not contrasting absolute doubt with absolute belief, but rather he is discussing things that are more or less doubted, and whatever the particular context, a "thing less doubted" is a "thing more believed." In this context, a community of scientists is composed of people who believe various things about a subject matter to various extents, and are willing to act upon those beliefs in a research context. (That is, of course, only one of many important qualities.) In one of his earliest major works, "The Fixation of Belief", Peirce lays out many ways that one might fixate beliefs, i.e., cease to doubt. The primary merit of the scientific method of fixating belief, he argues, is that it is the only approach that cares what is true. Combining that with your observations here, we see the interesting tension where the scientist must believe something before they can engage in the scientific process, but she must also be prepared to change that belief fairly readily if the evidence changes. Note the similarity with Emerson and slavery. In Emerson's case the circumstances changed, and his beliefs adjusted to a new world. In the scientists case the available knowledge changes, but the needed adjustment is of identical kind. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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I just borrowed Kwame Anthony Appiah's new book from the library: As If -- Idealization and Ideas Life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. In idealizing we proceed "as if" our representations were true, while knowing they were not. -- rec -- On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 10:37 AM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
I'm not going to try to lard the post-modernism discussion, but want to reply in general: In Peirce's cosmology, it is quite possible that there is very little that stays stable in the very long run. Maybe even nothing! And yet, it is exactly those stabilities that the scientist is searching for, and it is exactly long-term convergence of the evidence that they are trying to get at with words like "true" and "real". What happens when decades of investigation don't find stable relations between categories of things? We change the categories being used and try again. What is an element? There were many things that people thought were "elements" but which were later determined to be "composites" of several "elements." We know "iron ore" is many things, but what about "hematite"? Is hematite one thing, or many things? And we know "iron ore" is composed of many things, one of which is "iron", but is iron one thing or many things? The "truth" of any attempted answer to those questions is a matter of whether, in the long run, actions based on those beliefs stay stable. That "iron" is "an element" is nothing other than a claim regarding what would or would not be found in the very, very long run of scientific investigation, and the vast majority of such claims will be wrong, because they are carving out swaths of the world in which the claimed stability simply does not exist. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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EVERYBODY, I am packing, traveling, or unpacking over the next several days. Looking forward to picking this up next week end. Thanks for pitching in. Eric, Up to your last sentence, I was with you all the way, and very well said! I think you may slip up in your final words. I would have written something like, “èIFç there is a stable belief to be had, we – the human community of inquiry – will converge on it in the very long run.” That, I think, is the only article of faith in Peirce’s philosophy. By the way, I think I finally realized how Pierce came to confuse abduction and induction in his later years. In fact, not sure the distinction passes the pragmatic maxim. Sad day [for me]. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles I'm not going to try to lard the post-modernism discussion, but want to reply in general: In Peirce's cosmology, it is quite possible that there is very little that stays stable in the very long run. Maybe even nothing! And yet, it is exactly those stabilities that the scientist is searching for, and it is exactly long-term convergence of the evidence that they are trying to get at with words like "true" and "real". What happens when decades of investigation don't find stable relations between categories of things? We change the categories being used and try again. What is an element? There were many things that people thought were "elements" but which were later determined to be "composites" of several "elements." If there is one glaring bit of faith in Peirce's philosophy, it is belief that, in the long run, the honest investigators will win out. He believes that reality impinges upon belief, and that, in the long run, the temptation of fixating belief in response to authority, pure stubbornness, or other methods will ultimately give way, and people will come back to seeking out what is true. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
A last thought. [it’s hard not to have last thoughts when one is packing.] When we speak of the truth, we speak not of something that is but that is beyond our reach, but of a hankering. With respect to any matter, we hanker for that conception that will forever still the voices of dissent, the babbling and the squabbling. Truth is the intention of inquiry. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Charles I'm not going to try to lard the post-modernism discussion, but want to reply in general: In Peirce's cosmology, it is quite possible that there is very little that stays stable in the very long run. Maybe even nothing! And yet, it is exactly those stabilities that the scientist is searching for, and it is exactly long-term convergence of the evidence that they are trying to get at with words like "true" and "real". What happens when decades of investigation don't find stable relations between categories of things? We change the categories being used and try again. What is an element? There were many things that people thought were "elements" but which were later determined to be "composites" of several "elements." If there is one glaring bit of faith in Peirce's philosophy, it is belief that, in the long run, the honest investigators will win out. He believes that reality impinges upon belief, and that, in the long run, the temptation of fixating belief in response to authority, pure stubbornness, or other methods will ultimately give way, and people will come back to seeking out what is true. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2
OK. It's interesting that you, Eric, start your post making the same claim (that I cannot doubt everything) and repeating Peirce's criticism that we may pretend to doubt (or doubt some few things, against a system in which we largely believe). Yet you go on to say that you think Peirce is discussing "gradations of certainty", things that are more doubted, less doubted, more believed, less believed. How do I reconcile these two seemingly contradicting suggestions. If we could take the average certainty of the average belief in the average person, we might be able to say that Person X has less overall certainty than Person Y. And if we can establish a partial order like that, then we could posit a Person P who doubts more than any other person. (Or a Person Q who believes more than any other person.) Why not say Person P "doubts everything"? Why make the indefensible assumption that even Person P *must* hold some things with 100% certainty? To make my question clearer, let me cite 2 more examples: 1) saccade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade) and 2) control strategies for an inverted pendulum. Rather than pontificate on how these examples relate, I'll simply skip to the end. 8^) It's difficult to read Peirce's metaphysics charitably, given his cartoonish conception of reality. But if I do so, I would posit that the *tightness* of a given control loop indicates certainty. *Tight* loops imply significant doubt and *loose* loops imply significant belief. And every behavior we have engages control loops of one kind or another. Why would we claim what Peirce claims in "What is Pragmatism?", that there must be some things without a control loop at all? ... or with such a loose control loop that it may never iterate in one's lifetime? Why not simply admit the truth up front and allow that we doubt all things to some extent, even those things we (think we) believe to our core? Another philosopher suggested we turn Peirce's conception of belief on its head: That those of you who *say* you believe some thing are only *pretending* to believe that thing. When pressed, you will admit that you doubt even your most closely held beliefs. Although some of us might be resistant to things like hypnosis, my guess is none of us is completely immune to the evolution (or even hijacking) of our beliefs. And there seems to be plenty of real data to back up this way of thinking (and little data to back up what Peirce seems to be saying, at least in this essay). ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
This isn't intended to be part of the digestion of "What Pragmatism Is". So, I'm using the decades-old, standard, way of citing previous text:
On 03/25/2018 10:22 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > By the way, I think I finally realized how Pierce came to confuse abduction and induction in his later years. In fact, not sure the distinction passes the pragmatic maxim. Sad day [for me]. That's intriguing! Perhaps you'll submit examples of his words where he doesn't confuse them, then where he does confuse them? And when you say maybe the distinction isn't pragmatic, do you mean to say the early Peirce distinction? Or do you mean any of it ... the way the terms are now used in studies of inference (by modern authors)? That last question is important to me both personally and professionally. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: abduction/induction confusion
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Hi Glen,
Thanks for your alert response. All good questions. Briefly, I was rereading his paper on probable inference and realized that the procedure he offered to justify induction (without reference to any assumption of uniformity in the world) was, it appeared, ABDUCTION. In my present state of transcontinental relocation, I can't work out the implications of that. Perhaps you will help me, later. Nik Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of u?l? ? Sent: Monday, March 26, 2018 3:03 PM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: [FRIAM] abduction/induction confusion This isn't intended to be part of the digestion of "What Pragmatism Is". So, I'm using the decades-old, standard, way of citing previous text: On 03/25/2018 10:22 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: > By the way, I think I finally realized how Pierce came to confuse abduction and induction in his later years. In fact, not sure the distinction passes the pragmatic maxim. Sad day [for me]. That's intriguing! Perhaps you'll submit examples of his words where he doesn't confuse them, then where he does confuse them? And when you say maybe the distinction isn't pragmatic, do you mean to say the early Peirce distinction? Or do you mean any of it ... the way the terms are now used in studies of inference (by modern authors)? That last question is important to me both personally and professionally. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen, because I like control-loop metaphors for behavior, and think we are very close on that issue, the more interesting question, to me, is: The answer is, I think, that is what science finds. What of phrenology, or the attempt to measure ether winds, or bodily humours, or to determine the make up of all the substances of the world out of the basic elements of fire, earth, water, and air, or countless other aborted scientific endeavors that serious people worked towards for decades? They found that if you tried to cleave the world by those joints, and determine the relations between the parts, you never got to a consensus about what the heck was going on. The data didn't converge. New categories seemed more promising, and the old categories were abandoned. Many of those new categories were themselves abandoned after additional decades of work by the community. Other new categories have been remarkably stable in their ability to lead us to successful prediction and control. Those remarkably successful categories might themselves be overturned one day - as we find the limits of the success of their implications-in-practice. Even in many of those cases where our knowledge seems most stable, it seems so largely due to our having slowly limited the scope of the claims - X is true under such and such conditions ( X and Y form compound X2Y3, when the PH of the suspension is at least 7, the temperature above 87 degrees, the pressure under 2 atmospheres, etc.). How many asserted "laws" of physics throughout history are still believed to be true EVERYWHERE in the universe, and to have been that way at ALL times? Even inside black holes, or in the first moments after the big bang? "Why would we claim what Peirce claims in "What is Pragmatism?", that there must be some things without a control loop at all?" Or, to more directly answer your question: There are things we can conceive of that do not, in fact, have a control loop at all, because our conceptions are shitty. It may even be that very little we encounter and think we have gotten a mental handle on has anything beyond local stability. That includes both geographical and temporal locality, i.e., happenstance. That, at least, is what I think Peirce is asserting in that context. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Interesting. You've flipped my rhetoric completely around and suggested the opposite of what I posited, and what I think is the only reasonable inference we can take from Peirce's position. I posited that the things we *believe* have loose (or no) control loops, whereas things with tight control loops are the things we doubt. You're suggesting things that turn out to be false have loose (or no) control loops.
Now, it's safe to say that the things you cite (æther, phrenology, etc.) were held as beliefs and have subsequently become doubts. In my terms, that means at one point they had loose control loops, now they have very tight control loops. In your terms, even if they used to have loose control loops, now they have none. So, your position that, say, the æther theory, has no control loops is diametrically opposed to mine, which is that the æther theory has very tight control loops. Evidence for my posit-ion is that if I meet someone who believes in the æther, the loop is so tight, the doubt is so high, that I can immediately invoke arguments against the æther. I doubt that theory SO MUCH, the loop is so tight, that an æther believer can be shot down immediately. So, those falsified theories have tighter controls than unfalsified and validated theories. ### On 03/27/2018 04:27 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > Glen, because I like control-loop metaphors for behavior, and think we are very close on that issue, the more interesting question, to me, is: > "Why would we claim what Peirce claims in "What is Pragmatism?", that there must be some things without a control loop at all?" > > The answer is, I think, that is what science finds. What of phrenology, or the attempt to measure ether winds, or bodily humours, or to determine the make up of all the substances of the world out of the basic elements of fire, earth, water, and air, or countless other aborted scientific endeavors that serious people worked towards for decades? They found that if you tried to cleave the world by those joints, and determine the relations between the parts, you never got to a consensus about what the heck was going on. The data didn't converge. New categories seemed more promising, and the old categories were abandoned. Many of those new categories were themselves abandoned after additional decades of work by the community. Other new categories have been remarkably stable in their ability to lead us to successful prediction and control. Those remarkably successful categories might themselves be overturned one day - as we find the limits of the success of their > implications-in-practice. Even in many of those cases where our knowledge seems most stable, it seems so largely due to our having slowly limited the scope of the claims - X is true under such and such conditions ( X and Y form compound X2Y3, when the PH of the suspension is at least 7, the temperature above 87 degrees, the pressure under 2 atmospheres, etc.). How many asserted "laws" of physics throughout history are still believed to be true EVERYWHERE in the universe, and to have been that way at ALL times? Even inside black holes, or in the first moments after the big bang? > > Or, to more directly answer your question: There are things we can conceive of that do not, in fact, have a control loop at all, because our conceptions are shitty. It may even be that very little we encounter and think we have gotten a mental handle on has anything beyond local stability. That includes both geographical and temporal locality, i.e., happenstance. That, at least, is what I think Peirce is asserting in that context. -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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Glen, Ah! It seems to me you are talking about the thing believed, while I am talking about the thing itself... could that be what is happening? You say that aether theory had a loose control loop when believed, but now has a strong control loop when it is doubted. That would make sense to me if you mean that the tentative belief in aether used to loosly control how people acted regarding aether, but the absolute doubt now tightly controls how they act towards it. (More technically, "is part of a loose/tight control loop".) In contrast, I am talking about the thing itself, or as close as Peirce will let you get to that Kantian notion. People thought that aether was a component of tightly controlled systems, whereas it turns out to be part of no system at all, because it does not exist. Cutting the difference between our use of those terms: The scientific method is, in Peirce's presentation, a community search for long-term-stable beliefs, i.e., beliefs that can serve as part of a sustainable tight control system, in which sustaining is the result of actions predicated upon the belief continuing to work out in the very long term. Did that reconcile anything? On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 11:10 AM, ∄ uǝʃƃ <[hidden email]> wrote: Interesting. You've flipped my rhetoric completely around and suggested the opposite of what I posited, and what I think is the only reasonable inference we can take from Peirce's position. I posited that the things we *believe* have loose (or no) control loops, whereas things with tight control loops are the things we doubt. You're suggesting things that turn out to be false have loose (or no) control loops. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Yes! I've been talking (mostly) about the selection of habits/beliefs by the environment, as opposed to the selection of theories about reality. In the former, the "agent" is reality, whereas in the latter, the agency belongs with the holder of the theories. If we take what Peirce is saying seriously, we have no choice but to limit the agency of the habituated and assign some control of the habits to the context in which the habituated learned her habits.
Part of what Peirce (and you and Nick, in your Peircian modes) seem(s) to claim is that we don't have (complete) control over our habits. So, the only serious flaw in a control theoretic framework for thinking about it is the extent to which we assign the agency. I, personally, prefer the idea that it's a dynamic *play* between the controller and controlled, where some processes show a clear locus of control and others have a more diaphanous, distributed control. But regardless of where the agency lies, we can talk about the tightness or looseness of the coupling. Did reality select for our eyeballs' tendency to saccade? Or did we choose that control method because it helped us identify real things? Who cares? The point is that (e.g.) saccade is a very fast, tight process, thereby (inferring from Peirce) indicating that we only use it under uncertainty, when we haven't yet fixated ... aka when we doubt what we see. If you Peircians *disagree* with my inference, then that means either 1) I have no idea what Peirce meant or 2) his metaphysics is cartoonish and childish. I prefer to think my inference is reasonable. 8^) ### On 03/27/2018 04:46 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > Glen, Ah! It seems to me you are talking about the thing believed, while I am talking about the thing itself... could that be what is happening? > > You say that aether theory had a loose control loop when believed, but now has a strong control loop when it is doubted. That would make sense to me if you mean that the tentative belief in aether used to loosly control how people acted regarding aether, but the absolute doubt now tightly controls how they act towards it. (More technically, "is part of a loose/tight control loop".) > > In contrast, I am talking about the thing itself, or as close as Peirce will let you get to that Kantian notion. People thought that aether was a component of tightly controlled systems, whereas it turns out to be part of no system at all, because it does not exist. > > Cutting the difference between our use of those terms: The scientific method is, in Peirce's presentation, a community search for long-term-stable beliefs, i.e., beliefs that can serve as part of a /sustainable /tight control system, in which sustaining is the result of actions predicated upon the belief continuing to work out in the very long term. > > Did that reconcile anything? > > (Peirce had a very sophisticated understanding of probability and statistics, so "in the long term" does not mean "/exactly /as predicted every time.") -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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Glen,
I am very ambivalent about the notion of "self-control". I think for Peirce it was limited to where we direct our attention. But that seems to concede too much of a dualism. But I am still in transit. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u??? Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2018 6:57 AM To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Peirce's "What Pragmatism is." Yes! I've been talking (mostly) about the selection of habits/beliefs by the environment, as opposed to the selection of theories about reality. In the former, the "agent" is reality, whereas in the latter, the agency belongs with the holder of the theories. If we take what Peirce is saying seriously, we have no choice but to limit the agency of the habituated and assign some control of the habits to the context in which the habituated learned her habits. Part of what Peirce (and you and Nick, in your Peircian modes) seem(s) to claim is that we don't have (complete) control over our habits. So, the only serious flaw in a control theoretic framework for thinking about it is the extent to which we assign the agency. I, personally, prefer the idea that it's a dynamic *play* between the controller and controlled, where some processes show a clear locus of control and others have a more diaphanous, distributed control. But regardless of where the agency lies, we can talk about the tightness or looseness of the coupling. Did reality select for our eyeballs' tendency to saccade? Or did we choose that control method because it helped us identify real things? Who cares? The point is that (e.g.) saccade is a very fast, tight process, thereby (inferring from Peirce) indicating that we only use it under uncertainty, when we haven't yet fixated ... aka when we doubt what we see. If you Peircians *disagree* with my inference, then that means either 1) I have no idea what Peirce meant or 2) his metaphysics is cartoonish and childish. I prefer to think my inference is reasonable. 8^) ### On 03/27/2018 04:46 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > Glen, Ah! It seems to me you are talking about the thing believed, while I am talking about the thing itself... could that be what is happening? > > You say that aether theory had a loose control loop when believed, but > now has a strong control loop when it is doubted. That would make > sense to me if you mean that the tentative belief in aether used to > loosly control how people acted regarding aether, but the absolute > doubt now tightly controls how they act towards it. (More technically, > "is part of a loose/tight control loop".) > > In contrast, I am talking about the thing itself, or as close as Peirce will let you get to that Kantian notion. People thought that aether was a component of tightly controlled systems, whereas it turns out to be part of no system at all, because it does not exist. > > Cutting the difference between our use of those terms: The scientific method is, in Peirce's presentation, a community search for long-term-stable beliefs, i.e., beliefs that can serve as part of a /sustainable /tight control system, in which sustaining is the result of actions predicated upon the belief continuing to work out in the very long term. > > Did that reconcile anything? > > (Peirce had a very sophisticated understanding of probability and > statistics, so "in the long term" does not mean "/exactly /as > predicted every time.") -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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