The new Peirce list, New PL, is dedicated to the philosophy, logic, and semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce and applications to the cognitive sciences. See the attached diagram cogsci.gif, which shows the relationships among the six cognitive sciences. Peirce made major contributions to those fields, and current researchers have been inspired by his writings.
The primary difference between New PL and Peirce-L is the emphasis on 21st century issues. Scholarship on the details of Peirce's MSS is welcome, but usually with a focus on current developments. The dividing line between the two lists is vague, and subscribers are welcome to participate in both.
The fundamental guideline for any discussion of Peirce's work is his First Rule of Reason: "Do not block the way of inquiry". Three other guidelines are implied by that rule. See below for the four guidelines and some related quotations by Peirce.
New PL is hosted at Kassel University in Germany, and the id is cg(a)lists.iccs-lists.org. The focus of that list had been conceptual graphs, but it had always included discussions of Peirce's philosophy, logic, and semeiotic. For New PL, the letters CG may be considered an abbreviation of 'c ognitive'.
To subscribe to New PL, send a note to cg-join(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
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The archive is https://lists.cs.uni-kassel.de/hyperkitty/list/cg@lists.iccs-conference.org/ and to browse the archive you have to register at https://lists.cs.uni-kassel.de/accounts/signup with your email address.
For other questions, contact the moderator, Tom Hanika at Tom.Hanika(a)cs.uni-kassel.de his web page is https://www.kde.cs.uni-kassel.de/hanika .
John
-----------------------
Guidelines for any discussion of Peirce's writings:
1. First Rule of Reason: Do not block the way of inquiry.
This rule has two corollaries: (1) When in doubt, ask questions. (2) When not in doubt, ask yourself why you are not in doubt. Peirce himself followed this guideline. In R304 (copy below), he wrote "I have been ... always disposed to doubt and criticize my own results."
2. Any claim about Peirce's best and final statement on any subject is always doubtful and open to endless questioning.
This point follows from the fact that many of Peirce's later MSS were lost, misplaced, burned, or not available. Nobody can know for certain whether any MS is his final opinion on any particular subject. In L477, he also admitted that he had been "holding back" ... "many important propositions about reasoning" because he "wanted to establish them more certainly before asserting them."
3. Mathematics (which includes formal logic) is the only subject for which reasoning can be precise. But a translation of any statement in ordinary language to or from any mathematical notation is subject to all the pitfalls, vagueness, and context dependence of ordinary language.
For some of the many comments Peirce wrote on this matter, see the excerpts from R318 copied below.
4. New developments in any branch of science may be used to revise, supplement, or extend anything Peirce wrote on that topic.
This guideline is based on the way Peirce would revise his writings to accommodate new scientific discoveries.
Following are some of the MSS by Peirce that explain these issues.
CSP, R825, 1898: The inductive method springs directly out of dissatisfaction with existing knowledge. The great rule of predesignation which must guide it is as much as to say that an induction to be valid must be prompted by a definite doubt or at least an interrogation; and what is such an interrogation but first, a sense that we do not know something, second, a desire to know it, and third, an effort, -- implying a willingness to labor, -- for the sake of seeing how the truth may really be. If that interrogation inspires you, you will be sure to examine the instances; while if it does not, you will pass them by without attention.
Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy,
Do not block the way of inquiry.
Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations, and to consider the Economics of Research, yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offense in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.
CSP, R304, 1903: in philosophy what a man does not think out for himself he never understands at all. Nothing can be learned out of books or lectures, they have to be treated not as oracles but simply as facts to be studied like any other facts. That, at any rate is the way in which I would have you treat my lectures. Call no man master, or at any rate not me. Only bear in mind that I have been a good many years trying in singleness of heart to find out how these things really are, and always disposed to doubt and criticize my own results.
CSP, R318, 1907: My trichotomy is plainly of the family stock of Hegel's three stages of thought, -- an idea that goes back to Kant, and I know not how much further. But the arbitrariness of Hegel's procedure, utterly unavoidable at the time he lived, -- and presumably, in less degree, unavoidable now, or at any future date, -- is in great measure avoided by my taking care never to miss the solid support of mathematically exact formal logic beneath my feet....
The little that I have contributed to pragmatism (or, for that matter, to any other department of philosophy), has been entirely the fruit of this outgrowth from formal logic, and is worth much more than the small sum total of the rest of my work, as time will show.
CSP, L477, 14 October 2011: there are many important propositions about reasoning which I have been holding back (some of them for near 50 years) because I wanted to establish them more certainly before asserting them, and which I am most anxious to submit to public judgment in the little time that remains to me.
Cf: Genus, Species, Pie Charts, Radio Buttons • Discussion 4
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/11/23/genus-species-pie-charts-radio-bu…
Re: Genus, Species, Pie Charts, Radio Buttons • 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/11/10/genus-species-pie-charts-radio-bu…
Re: Laws of Form
https://groups.io/g/lawsofform/topic/genus_species_pie_charts/86943252
::: John Mingers ( https://groups.io/g/lawsofform/message/1239 )
<QUOTE JM:>
I feel as though you have posted these same diagrams many times,
and it is always portrayed as clearing the ground for something else.
But the something else never arrives! I would be really interested
to know what the next step is in your ideas.
</QUOTE>
Dear John,
Thanks for the question. Bruce Schuman mentioned radio button logic and
I jumped on it “like a duck on a June bug” — as they say in several southern
States I know — because that very thing marks an important first step in the
application of minimal negation operators to represent finite domains of values,
contextual individuals, genus and species, partitions, and so on. But some of
the comments I got next gave me pause and made me feel I should go back and
clarify a few points.
I wasn't sure, but I got the sense Bruce was reading the cactus graphs I posted
as an order of hierarchical, ontological, or taxonomic diagrams. What they really
amount to are the abstract, human-viewable renditions of linked data structures or
“pointer” data structures in computer memory. I explained the transformation from
planar forms of enclosure to their topological dual trees to the pointer structures
in one of the articles on logical graphs I wrote for Wikipedia and later Google's
now-defunct Knol. People can find a version of that on the following page of my blog.
Logical Graphs • Introduction
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/07/29/logical-graphs-1/
Resources
=========
Minimal Negations Operators
https://oeis.org/wiki/Minimal_negation_operator
Survey of Animated Logical Graphs
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/05/01/survey-of-animated-logical-graphs…
Regards,
Jon
Cf: Functional Logic • Inquiry and Analogy • Preliminaries
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/11/14/functional-logic-inquiry-and-anal…
All,
This report discusses C.S. Peirce's treatment of analogy, placing it
in relation to his overall theory of inquiry. We begin by introducing
three basic types of reasoning Peirce adopted from classical logic.
In Peirce's analysis both inquiry and analogy are complex programs of
logical inference which develop through stages of these three types,
though normally in different orders.
Note on notation. The discussion to follow uses logical conjunctions,
expressed in the form of concatenated tuples e₁ … eₖ, and minimal negation
operations, expressed in the form of bracketed tuples (e₁, …, eₖ), as the
principal expression-forming operations of a calculus for boolean-valued
functions, that is, for “propositions”. The expressions of this calculus
parse into data structures whose underlying graphs are called “cacti” by
graph theorists. Hence the name “cactus language” for this dialect of
propositional calculus.
Resources
=========
• Logic Syllabus
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Logic_Syllabus )
• Boolean Function
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Boolean_function )
• Boolean-Valued Function
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Boolean-valued_function )
• Logical Conjunction
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction )
• Minimal Negation Operator
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Minimal_negation_operator )
• Cactus Language
( https://oeis.org/wiki/Cactus_Language_%E2%80%A2_Overview )
Regards,
Jon
BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}No- I don't need three copies; just send posts to the CG list.
As for 'self-corrective control - I consider that the triadic
semiosic process is what enables this action. A dyadic process
excludes MIND-as-mediation. Once you consider that Mind and Matter
are correlates, then, any material action becomes also subject to
mental action.
I'm not terribly interested in the human cognitive process, which
proceeds largely with the use of symbolic mental mediation. I'm
interested in the physico-chemical and biological cognitive processes
- which proceed with the use of indexical mental mediation.
That is, these systems can be considered as 'sentient' which means
that they are capable of feeling/sensing/perceiving their
environment. They do this within the triadic semiosic process, which
sets up a mediating analytic process to understand the input data. I
refer to this whole process as a function, where f[x]=y, with 'f'
understood as mediation. Mediation operates as both a set of evolving
[yes, evolving] habits-of-organization AND also includes a number of
possible habits. The possible follows the logical path of
IF-THEN...ie IF I take this action, THEN, such and such MIGHT occur.
The organism can anticipate results of its behaviour. This cognitive
process of anticipation reduces RISK - where, if an organism took a
certain action without anticipatory thought - it might be disastrous.
Anticipation is a vital semiotic process and my point is that an
organism will have, in its knowledge base, not merely a 'normal
default template' but also, in the more complex organisms, a number
of learned optional possibilities. This organism can therefore react
to input sensate data by CHOOSING to follow, not its normative
habits, but to take one of the optional paths.
I consider that Thirdness-as-Secondness is THE vital cognitive mode
that enables this indexical 'feeling out' of the environment and the
analytic gathering of new possibilities.
Learning is a pragmatic observation of the results of these actions
-
Edwina
On Fri 26/11/21 5:02 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
Edwina, do you want to receive 3 copies?
Good: "All existential entities learn by experience" — and
Peiirce's theory of logic and method are to explain how learning by
experience (intelligence) can be more efficient (which entails
effectiveness).That is, how self-corrective control can improve
learning by experience!
Can we figure out a way to demonstrate this improvement? Here is a
passage from Discovering the Future in the Past (pp. 35-41):
While other pragmatists, like Veblen, seek “a complete accounting
of the socio-historical origins of human conduct” (or an empirical
theory) Peirce is concerned with how inquiry determines the future,
and his pragmatic (or normative) theory of logic explains how our
natural cognitive urge to conceptualize and form habits of thought,
which conveniently "automates behavior" in routines and tools, must
be checked by our discriminating sensory capability, through
pragmatic conduct that continually conceives and tests these ideas
for validity and reliability by observing their implications in
experience, to establish self-critical control ("The highest quality
of mind involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great
readiness to lose them" [CP 6.613 (1893)].) Successful collaboration
requires the conscious commitment of researchers to self-critical
conduct, and creative cooperation is possible only with the stability
provided by progressive coordination of outcomes, representing
improvement. Compare this with Griffin and Veblen’s defense of the
method of tenacity: “the form of group solidarity in any peaceful,
workmanlike community.”
Peirce conceived his theory to explain not a mechanistic
“workmanlike community” but a community of inquiry, where
“one's purpose lies in the line of novelty, invention,
generalization, theory—in a word, improvement of the situation …
instinct and the rule of thumb manifestly cease to be applicable”
[CP 2.178 (1902)]. His pragmatic theory of research defines
“habits of thinking” as beliefs, and distinguishes believing from
reasoning, the self-corrective thinking required in learning to
improve habits of thought. He clarifies the roles of belief and
reasoning:
The best plan, then, on the whole, is to base our conduct as much as
possible on Instinct, but when we do reason to reason with severely
scientific logic. ... Where reasoning of any difficulty is to be done
concerning positive facts, that is to say, not mere mathematical
deduction, the aid that logic affords is most important. [CP 2.178
(1902)] . . .Peirce advanced his theory of logic as semeotic to
explain that capability we so easily take for granted in its routine
and pervasive operation: learning by experience through communication
[see CP 2.227, from a manuscript fragment (c. 1897)]. Especially in
science, we have been able to develop methods that improve (or
economize) the natural trial-and-error procedure of learning by
experience. Peirce formulated his pragmatic method of logic for
refining scientific learning procedures, and he even created a
graphical notation tool, Existential Graphs (EG), as a "topology of
logic" for observing and demonstrating how the improvement of
learning can occur through the process of dialogic reasoning. He
concluded that the essence of successful learning of any sort is due
not primarily to the sophistication of its measuring instruments or
its investigational techniques, although those are essential.
Careful observation and ingenious conceptualization generate
knowledge only to the extent that they are collaboratively validated
by those engaged in learning.
Peirce explains three qualities, "Caution, Breadth, and
Incomplexity," as the economic considerations in the intricate
evaluation among hypotheses.
In respect to caution, the game of twenty questions is instructive.
... The secret of the business lies in the caution which breaks a
hypothesis up into its smallest logical components, and only risks
one of them at a time. What a world of futile controversy and of
confused experimentation might have been saved if this principle had
guided investigations into the theory of light! Correlative to the
quality of caution is that of breadth. For when we break the
hypothesis into elementary parts, we may, and should, inquire how far
the same explanation accounts for the same phenomenon when it appears
in other subjects. [CP 7.220-21 (1901)]
He further explains how an incomplex and even rough hypothesis can
be more robust and do what a more elaborate one would fail to do [see
CP 7.222 (1901)]. And he often identifies incomplexity with the
dialogic purpose of his EG in “the central problem of logic, [which
is] to say whether one given thought is truly, i.e., is adapted to be,
a development of a given other or not" [CP 4.9 (1906)].
To avoid advocacy, inquiry should proceed only from claims that can
be subjected to careful scrutiny of their reasons (as evidence), and
inquirers should rely on a "multitude and variety" of many claims and
reasons that can be conceptually articulated, rather than the apparent
conclusiveness of any one claim. As Peirce explains, reasoning in
inquiry should not form a "chain of inferences" (which is no stronger
than its weakest link) but rather a cable, "whose fibers may be ever
so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately
connected" [CP 5.3 (1902); and see Haack 2009]. The minutest details
formulated as claims and reasons can collectively turn out to be
crucial contributions in constructing strong arguments. Although
this process of inquiry cannot be fully automated, technology
augmentation can perform functions of representation, bookkeeping,
and logical articulation that are tedious and error-prone for humans,
which can be used to clarify and reveal hidden conceptual complexities
in modeling and simulation [see Skagestad].
To grasp or understand a concept is to have practical mastery of
inferences in a network involving that concept—and its evolving
application. Fully grasping complex inferential networks of
conditional relations is a significant challenge for inquirers,
especially in collaborative inquiry. Asserting a responsible claim
requires understanding at least some of its consequences, and
realizing what other claims it relates to and what other evidence
relates to it. As in playing a game, researchers develop strategies
in formulating conjectures that can justify other conjectures, which
can be justified by still other conjectures and preclude alternative
hypotheses. In this complex reasoning, logical argumentation
resembles a game in which researchers economically construct valid
inferential articulation—or conceptual content [see Keeler (2004)
and (2005); and see Appendix G, for a scenario of players].
Randall Dipert concludes that Peirce made “some of the very few
profound contributions in the history of philosophy to the big
picture of what logic is, and of the normative dimension of all
thought” [(1995): 318]. While a “workmanlike community” can be
theoretically represented and analyzed by the usual mechanical
(empirical) theories of science, when logic is understood as a
general theory of the meaning of signs in deliberate thinking, then
pragmaticism as its method should give us the “power of
self-controlled thinking” and “self-observation” for
“strategic thinking and planning” [see Pietarinen (2012): 179].
We can create habits of self-control to serve some objective, but
this capability to predict the future and conduct ourselves toward
that aim (of what we determine could or should be) cannot be
explained by empirical theory (of what is). In his Economics of
Science, James Wible describes, in the broadest sense, Peirce’s
contribution to the economics of science: “Peirce rejected the
mechanism that flourished in physics and other disciplines during his
lifetime. Peirce was an evolutionary indeterminist. Like the
mainstream economists, Peirce saw optimization theory as a useful
tool of economic analysis. For Peirce optimization took place in the
context of a more general evolutionary view of the world, … with an
economy of research as an integral part of the conception of
scientific inference” [(1998): 82]. Wible finds Peirce’s theory
consistent with Michael Polanyi’s “Republic of Science is a
Society of Explorers,” who join to move towards achievements that
are unknown to any of them [143].
. . .And finally (from the Conclusions, p. 60)
Without the socially-conducted, belief-evaluation capability
provided by inquiry, we automatically (or unconsciously) assume our
limited sample of beliefs. And these limited belief-samples can
become even more unconsciously adopted when we use tools that have
automated them as habits of conduct! Any good tools must be carefully
designed to automate effective habits (habits that improve efforts to
reach some goal), and designers of tools to improve inquiry must be
able to evaluate what habits can and should be automated for that
purpose. Arthur Burks explains how mathematics serves as a tool for
clarifying and evaluating deductive reasoning: “When, for example,
a logician tests a sorites, or chains of reasoning, he is doing
essentially what a mathematician does when he deduces a theorem from
some postulates” [188]. Similarly, normative science is conceived
to serve as a tool for evaluating inquiry, giving us the power to
observe, clarify, and test ideas as hypotheses in experiments toward
improvement. As Peirce says: "the entire meaning of a hypothesis lies
in its conditional experiential predictions," to the extent that its
predictions are true, the hypothesis is true [CP 1.29 (1869);
emphasis added]. Normative logic can be used to analyze how to
economize (or optimize) our socially-based inquiry (or learning) by
mapping means-ends relations to keep track of what tools we need in
relation to what purpose or goals we determine they must serve.
Not only must intelligence be social, it must be self-controlled
(critical), to improve learning by experience.Mary
On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 12:08 PM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Mary- yes, I'm receiving three copies - but two are sent to two
different email addresses.
As for 'learning by experience', my view is that ALL existential
entities learn by experience. I include not merely the inorganic but
the full organic realm; that is, I don't accept random mutation as
the basis for adaptation and evolution but consider that both are
semiosic actions within complex adaptive systems.
That is - Mind and Matter are correlates - and as such, a biological
organism has a proto-consciousness and interacts with its environment
in a pragmatic [intelligent] manner.
Edwina
On Fri 26/11/21 1:45 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu [2] sent:
Edwina, thanks for pursuing this significant realm of study.
As complexity grows, coordination and collaboration become more
significant, especially for "intelligence capable of learning by
experience" (as Peirce defines us). You observe:
How does mediation differentiate between valid and invalid
conclusions? Induction is one method....But, entropic rejection of
data as 'noise' is another....Both can lead to problems.
Peirce's theory of inquiry proposes abduction, deduction, and
induction as the stages required for effective inquiry (or learning)
— and these are to be repeated indefinitely. Humans are well
equipped (with perception) for guessing, and we can test those
possibilities by induction. But to resolve many possibilities into a
good guess (worth testing), we need deduction. You might think of this
as "reducing noise." The idea is to find testable hypotheses, and to
test them in order of how easy they are to test (a process of
"reducing noise").
That is just where logical formulation and the deduction of
computers can help. And graphical logic could help humans observe
this process.
But of course I agree with your broader applicability of Peirce's
framework!MaryP.S. Are you receiving 3 copies of the notes I send to
the List?
On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 6:48 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Mary- further to your extension of the concept of CAS [complex
adaptive systems] to CAR [complex adaptive reasoning] - I certainly
agree and consider such a framework to be a basic semiosic triadic
process.
That is, complex systems are self-organized in order to be adaptive
[aka pragmatic], and this requires a method for such pragmatic
activity. This method is the triadic reasoning process, where, given
input sensate data, the System can reference this input to its
mediative analytic system [Peirce's Representamen/sign] wich acts as
an If-Then analytic process. That is, this nodal site holds
generalities and input sensate data is referenced to these
generalities to produce a conclusion.
I think the triadic method is a vital morphology in the development
of CAS ..
On another note, the mediative nodal site holds multiple
possibilities for use to analyze input data. A simple system will
have very few of these possibilities and therefore, a limited
conclusion. This, frankly, provides the larger system with stability
-you can't have atoms and molecules changing their format every two
minutes]. A more complex system provides many more possibilities -
but this can be problematic....How does mediation differentiate
between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one
method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is
another....Both can lead to problems..
Edwina
On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
[Let's see if this goes to the list?]
Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your
conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework.
I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his
CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which
he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of
papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site,
below)?
Complex Adaptive Reasoning:
Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[3]
Games of Inquiry
for Collaborative Concept Structuring
[4]http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [5]
Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive
Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[6]
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that
method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative
Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a
collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate
graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of
effective arguments.
Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea
(selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891)
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of
concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of
analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra
of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what
are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its
principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my
care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years
has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the
evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one
state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things
in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is
chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total
absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of
law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our
side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity
counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is
constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency
to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by
its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its
first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to
obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules
which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also
slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these
destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be
strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became
the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of
time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the
infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by
contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly,
time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it
seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious
objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity
in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted
in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no
continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It
was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer
together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no
relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what
happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the
smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely
distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution
had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is
only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no
real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more
falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity
is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared,
been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency
to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched.
Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce
like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of
contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung
up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings
were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect
time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional
lacunae and derailments.†4
Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate
habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law,
consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited
again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind
involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to
lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893].
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment
expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form
of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to
enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional
sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture
1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)].
CP Vol. 5
What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905]
1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion
. . .
412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here
and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from
becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read
metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and
determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some
philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes
came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of
the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which
has been true of other laboratory-men.
Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate
what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is,
the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively
in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since
obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any
direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the
conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of
a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of
the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this
doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished
him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that
{praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had
learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen
out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy,
had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily,
praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the
former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the
experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his
feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.
Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its
recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined
the preference for the name pragmatism. ---------------------
He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we
think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act
on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences.
Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its
chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of
life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it
had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs
have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended
senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism.
It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic)
that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their
relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this
need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905)
"Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"]
“Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of
thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905).
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
_______________________________________________
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To unsubscribe send an email to cg-leave(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
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[8]
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'taborsky(a)primus.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'mkeeler(a)uw.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[4] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[5] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[6] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[7]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[8]
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BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Mary- yes, I'm receiving three copies - but two are sent to two
different email addresses.
As for 'learning by experience', my view is that ALL existential
entities learn by experience. I include not merely the inorganic but
the full organic realm; that is, I don't accept random mutation as
the basis for adaptation and evolution but consider that both are
semiosic actions within complex adaptive systems.
That is - Mind and Matter are correlates - and as such, a biological
organism has a proto-consciousness and interacts with its environment
in a pragmatic [intelligent] manner.
Edwina
On Fri 26/11/21 1:45 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
Edwina, thanks for pursuing this significant realm of study.
As complexity grows, coordination and collaboration become more
significant, especially for "intelligence capable of learning by
experience" (as Peirce defines us). You observe:
How does mediation differentiate between valid and invalid
conclusions? Induction is one method....But, entropic rejection of
data as 'noise' is another....Both can lead to problems.
Peirce's theory of inquiry proposes abduction, deduction, and
induction as the stages required for effective inquiry (or learning)
— and these are to be repeated indefinitely. Humans are well
equipped (with perception) for guessing, and we can test those
possibilities by induction. But to resolve many possibilities into a
good guess (worth testing), we need deduction. You might think of this
as "reducing noise." The idea is to find testable hypotheses, and to
test them in order of how easy they are to test (a process of
"reducing noise").
That is just where logical formulation and the deduction of
computers can help. And graphical logic could help humans observe
this process.
But of course I agree with your broader applicability of Peirce's
framework!MaryP.S. Are you receiving 3 copies of the notes I send to
the List?
On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 6:48 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Mary- further to your extension of the concept of CAS [complex
adaptive systems] to CAR [complex adaptive reasoning] - I certainly
agree and consider such a framework to be a basic semiosic triadic
process.
That is, complex systems are self-organized in order to be adaptive
[aka pragmatic], and this requires a method for such pragmatic
activity. This method is the triadic reasoning process, where, given
input sensate data, the System can reference this input to its
mediative analytic system [Peirce's Representamen/sign] wich acts as
an If-Then analytic process. That is, this nodal site holds
generalities and input sensate data is referenced to these
generalities to produce a conclusion.
I think the triadic method is a vital morphology in the development
of CAS ..
On another note, the mediative nodal site holds multiple
possibilities for use to analyze input data. A simple system will
have very few of these possibilities and therefore, a limited
conclusion. This, frankly, provides the larger system with stability
-you can't have atoms and molecules changing their format every two
minutes]. A more complex system provides many more possibilities -
but this can be problematic....How does mediation differentiate
between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one
method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is
another....Both can lead to problems..
Edwina
On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu [2] sent:
[Let's see if this goes to the list?]
Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your
conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework.
I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his
CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which
he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of
papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site,
below)?
Complex Adaptive Reasoning:
Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[3]
Games of Inquiry
for Collaborative Concept Structuring
[4]http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [5]
Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive
Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[6]
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that
method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative
Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a
collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate
graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of
effective arguments.
Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea
(selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891)
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of
concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of
analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra
of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what
are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its
principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my
care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years
has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the
evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one
state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things
in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is
chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total
absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of
law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our
side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity
counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is
constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency
to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by
its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its
first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to
obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules
which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also
slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these
destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be
strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became
the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of
time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the
infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by
contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly,
time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it
seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious
objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity
in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted
in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no
continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It
was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer
together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no
relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what
happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the
smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely
distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution
had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is
only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no
real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more
falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity
is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared,
been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency
to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched.
Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce
like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of
contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung
up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings
were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect
time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional
lacunae and derailments.†4
Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate
habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law,
consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited
again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind
involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to
lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893].
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment
expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form
of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to
enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional
sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture
1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)].
CP Vol. 5
What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905]
1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion
. . .
412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here
and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from
becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read
metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and
determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some
philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes
came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of
the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which
has been true of other laboratory-men.
Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate
what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is,
the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively
in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since
obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any
direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the
conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of
a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of
the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this
doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished
him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that
{praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had
learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen
out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy,
had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily,
praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the
former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the
experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his
feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.
Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its
recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined
the preference for the name pragmatism. ---------------------
He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we
think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act
on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences.
Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its
chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of
life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it
had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs
have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended
senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism.
It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic)
that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their
relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this
need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905)
"Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"]
“Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of
thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905).
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
_______________________________________________
CG mailing list -- cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
To unsubscribe send an email to cg-leave(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'taborsky(a)primus.ca\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'mkeeler(a)uw.edu\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[4] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[5] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[6] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Mary- further to your extension of the concept of CAS [complex
adaptive systems] to CAR [complex adaptive reasoning] - I certainly
agree and consider such a framework to be a basic semiosic triadic
process.
That is, complex systems are self-organized in order to be adaptive
[aka pragmatic], and this requires a method for such pragmatic
activity. This method is the triadic reasoning process, where, given
input sensate data, the System can reference this input to its
mediative analytic system [Peirce's Representamen/sign] wich acts as
an If-Then analytic process. That is, this nodal site holds
generalities and input sensate data is referenced to these
generalities to produce a conclusion.
I think the triadic method is a vital morphology in the development
of CAS ..
On another note, the mediative nodal site holds multiple
possibilities for use to analyze input data. A simple system will
have very few of these possibilities and therefore, a limited
conclusion. This, frankly, provides the larger system with stability
-you can't have atoms and molecules changing their format every two
minutes]. A more complex system provides many more possibilities -
but this can be problematic....How does mediation differentiate
between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one
method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is
another....Both can lead to problems..
Edwina
On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
[Let's see if this goes to the list?]
Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your
conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework.
I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his
CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which
he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of
papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site,
below)?
Complex Adaptive Reasoning:
Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[1]
Games of Inquiry
for Collaborative Concept Structuring
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [2]
Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive
Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[3]
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that
method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative
Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a
collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate
graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of
effective arguments.
Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea
(selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891)
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of
concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of
analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra
of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what
are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its
principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my
care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years
has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the
evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one
state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things
in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is
chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total
absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of
law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our
side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity
counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is
constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency
to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by
its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its
first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to
obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules
which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also
slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these
destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be
strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became
the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of
time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the
infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by
contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly,
time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it
seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious
objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity
in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted
in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no
continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It
was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer
together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no
relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what
happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the
smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely
distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution
had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is
only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no
real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more
falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity
is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared,
been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency
to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched.
Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce
like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of
contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung
up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings
were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect
time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional
lacunae and derailments.†4
Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate
habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law,
consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited
again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind
involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to
lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893].
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment
expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form
of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to
enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional
sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture
1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)].
CP Vol. 5
What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905]
1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion
. . .
412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here
and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from
becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read
metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and
determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some
philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes
came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of
the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which
has been true of other laboratory-men.
Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate
what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is,
the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively
in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since
obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any
direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the
conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of
a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of
the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this
doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished
him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that
{praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had
learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen
out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy,
had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily,
praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the
former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the
experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his
feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.
Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its
recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined
the preference for the name pragmatism. ---------------------
He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we
think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act
on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences.
Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its
chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of
life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it
had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs
have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended
senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism.
It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic)
that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their
relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this
need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905)
"Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"]
“Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of
thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905).
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
_______________________________________________
CG mailing list -- cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org [5]
To unsubscribe send an email to cg-leave(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
[6]
Links:
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[2] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[3] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[4]
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Cf: Minimal Negation Operators • 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2017/08/27/minimal-negation-operators-1/
All,
To accommodate moderate levels of complexity in the application of
logical graphs to practical problems our Organon requires a class of
organules called “minimal negation operators”. I outlined the history
of their early development from Peirce’s alpha graphs for propositional
calculus in a previous series of posts. The next order of business is to
sketch their properties in a systematic fashion and to illustrate their uses.
As it turns out, taking minimal negations as primitive operators enables
efficient expressions for many natural constructs and affords a bridge
between boolean domains of two values and domains with finite numbers
of values, for example, finite sets of individuals.
Brief Introduction
==================
A “minimal negation operator” (ν) is a logical connective
which says “just one false” of its logical arguments.
The first four cases are described below.
0. If the list of arguments is empty, as expressed in the form ν(),
then it cannot be true that exactly one of the arguments is false,
so ν() = false.
1. If p is the only argument then ν(p) says p is false,
so ν(p) expresses the logical negation of the proposition p.
Written in several different notations, we have the following
equivalent expressions.
ν(p) = not(p) = ¬p = ~p = p′
2. If p and q are the only two arguments then ν(p, q) says
exactly one of p, q is false, so ν(p, q) says the same
thing as p ≠ q. Expressing ν(p, q) in terms of ands (∙),
ors (∨), and nots (¬) gives the following form.
ν(p, q) = p′∙q ∨ p∙q′
It is permissible to omit the dot (∙) in contexts
where it is understood, giving the following form.
ν(p, q) = p′q ∨ pq′
The venn diagram for ν(p, q) is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. ν(p, q)
https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/venn-diagram-pq.jpg
3. The venn diagram for ν(p, q, r) is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. ν(p, q, r)
https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/venn-diagram-pqr.jpg
The center cell is the region where all three arguments
p, q, r hold true, so ν(p, q, r) holds true in just the
three neighboring cells. In other words:
ν(p, q, r) = p′qr ∨ pq′r ∨ pqr′
Resource
========
Minimal Negation Operators
https://oeis.org/wiki/Minimal_negation_operator
Regards,
Jon
BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Mary- further to your extension of the concept of CAS [complex
adaptive systems] to CAR [complex adaptive reasoning] - I certainly
agree and consider such a framework to be a basic semiosic triadic
process.
That is, complex systems are self-organized in order to be adaptive
[aka pragmatic], and this requires a method for such pragmatic
activity. This method is the triadic reasoning process, where, given
input sensate data, the System can reference this input to its
mediative analytic system [Peirce's Representamen/sign] wich acts as
an If-Then analytic process. That is, this nodal site holds
generalities and input sensate data is referenced to these
generalities to produce a conclusion.
I think the triadic method is a vital morphology in the development
of CAS ..
On another note, the mediative nodal site holds multiple
possibilities for use to analyze input data. A simple system will
have very few of these possibilities and therefore, a limited
conclusion. This, frankly, provides the larger system with stability
-you can't have atoms and molecules changing their format every two
minutes]. A more complex system provides many more possibilities -
but this can be problematic....How does mediation differentiate
between valid and invalid conclusions? Induction is one
method....But, entropic rejection of data as 'noise' is
another....Both can lead to problems..
Edwina
On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
[Let's see if this goes to the list?]
Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your
conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework.
I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his
CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which
he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of
papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site,
below)?
Complex Adaptive Reasoning:
Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[1]
Games of Inquiry
for Collaborative Concept Structuring
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [2]
Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive
Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[3]
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that
method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative
Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a
collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate
graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of
effective arguments.
Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea
(selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891)
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of
concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of
analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra
of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what
are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its
principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my
care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years
has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the
evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one
state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things
in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is
chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total
absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of
law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our
side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity
counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is
constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency
to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by
its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its
first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to
obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules
which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also
slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these
destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be
strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became
the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of
time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the
infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by
contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly,
time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it
seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious
objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity
in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted
in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no
continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It
was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer
together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no
relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what
happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the
smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely
distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution
had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is
only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no
real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more
falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity
is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared,
been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency
to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched.
Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce
like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of
contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung
up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings
were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect
time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional
lacunae and derailments.†4
Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate
habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law,
consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited
again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind
involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to
lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893].
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment
expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form
of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to
enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional
sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture
1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)].
CP Vol. 5
What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905]
1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion
. . .
412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here
and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from
becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read
metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and
determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some
philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes
came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of
the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which
has been true of other laboratory-men.
Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate
what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is,
the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively
in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since
obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any
direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the
conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of
a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of
the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this
doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished
him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that
{praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had
learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen
out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy,
had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily,
praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the
former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the
experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his
feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.
Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its
recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined
the preference for the name pragmatism. ---------------------
He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we
think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act
on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences.
Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its
chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of
life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it
had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs
have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended
senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism.
It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic)
that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their
relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this
need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905)
"Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"]
“Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of
thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905).
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
_______________________________________________
CG mailing list -- cg(a)lists.iccs-conference.org [5]
To unsubscribe send an email to cg-leave(a)lists.iccs-conference.org
[6]
Links:
------
[1] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[2] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[3] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[4] mailto:taborsky@primus.ca
[5] mailto:cg@lists.iccs-conference.org
[6] mailto:cg-leave@lists.iccs-conference.org
BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}Mary- Yes, I did get your post and thanks very much.
I found the selection from 8.318 to be very interesting. His outline
of cosmology [here and see also 6.217] where we find that we start
with zero, with an indeterminate chaos..and then [1.412] 'there is a
flash', which we might view as a flash of frozen energy [aka a unit
of matter] - but as Peirce outlines, these flashes of 'bits of
similitude' appeared, dissolved, reappeared' by chance'. At the same
time - if we can use the notion of time here - habits emerge, which
operate as a 'tendency to generalization .These habits."lighted up
and been quenched. Had reappeared; had strengthened itself. Like had
begun to produce like".[318].
What I think we see here in these several outlines is his analysis
of the emergence of Mind and Matter as co-evolving corelates. That
is, following from his outline in 6.24 of Objective Idealism, Peirce
rejects the independence of these two, Mind and Matter. He rejects
Matter and primordial [materialism] and rejects Mind as primordial
[Idealism] and instead posits "some form of hyolpathy, otherwise
called monism'..or..Objective Idealism, where the two are co-evolving
correlates. Matter cannot last for more than a nanosecond without Mind
- and Mind operates only as a 'tendency to form habits' and as such,
requires Matter to do so.
As we see in his cosmological outlines - Matter emerges 'as a
flash', as an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings'. This means
that they are lacking Mind - for Mind enables not only continuity but
Relations. Pure Feeling is without Relations. And without Mind,
Matter ..dissolved. Instantly. But Mind, as Habits, was working at
the same 'time' - and controlling these 'sparks' or feelings such
that Mind, setting up habits and thus Relations, was strengthening
itself and Matter was able to exist - within continuity and
Relations.
What is interesting is that, if one follows through with Peirce's
cosmological outline we note that both Matter AND Mind are not merely
correlates but that both are continuously evolving. Mind is evolving!
This is, to me, the basis for viewing Peirce as outlining a CAS,
complex adaptive system. If we are studying 'habit-change' then, we
are studying not merely the evolution of Matter but also the
evolution of Mind. After all, if Matter/Mind has a supreme tendency
to 'take habits' - then, it also has a tendency to lose and change
them.
Edwina
On Wed 24/11/21 7:04 PM , Mary Keeler mkeeler(a)uw.edu sent:
[Let's see if this goes to the list?]
Thank you, Edwina, I have similar interests and agree with your
conclusion about the applicability of the Peircean framework.
I met John Holland before he died, and explained my extension of his
CAS to CAR, leading to the idea of the "game of pragmatism" — which
he called "a flight simulator for the mind"!Here are a couple of
papers that might help to explain (see more at the Revelator site,
below)?
Complex Adaptive Reasoning:
Knowledge Emergence in the Revelator Game
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[1]
Games of Inquiry
for Collaborative Concept Structuring
http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf [2]
Revelator: Game of Complex Adaptive
Reasoninghttp://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
[3]
If pragmatism is essentially the scientific method, and we need that
method for experimenting with ideas in order to develop Normative
Science as the study of habit-change, then that game might give us a
collaborative way to proceed? It could (and should) incorporate
graphical logic so that players can keep track of the development of
effective arguments.
Here are just a few paragraphs from Peirce in support of this idea
(selected from many more).MaryCP Vol 8 (1891)
Chapter 6: To Christine Ladd-Franklin, On Cosmology†1
316. My work in philosophy has consisted in an accurate analysis of
concepts, showing what is and what is not essential to the subject of
analysis. Particularly, in logic, my motive for studying the algebra
of the subject, has been the desire to find out with accuracy what
are the essential ingredients of reasoning in general and of its
principal kinds. To make a powerful calculus has not been my
care.317. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years
has been to develop my cosmology.†2 This theory is that the
evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one
state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things
in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is
chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total
absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is
death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of
law and absence of all spontaneity.†3 Between these, we have on our
side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity
counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is
constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency
to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by
its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its
first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to
obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules
which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also
slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these
destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be
strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became
the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of
time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the
infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by
contraries.
318. I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such reversal. Accordingly,
time may have been evolved by the action of habit. At first sight, it
seems absurd or mysterious to speak of time being evolved, for
evolution presupposes time. But after all, this is no serious
objection, and nothing can be simpler. Time consists in a regularity
in the relations of interacting feelings. The first chaos consisted
in an infinite multitude of unrelated feelings. As there was no
continuity about them, it was, as it were, a powder of feelings. It
was worse than that, for of particles of powder some are nearer
together, others farther apart, while these feelings had no
relations, for relations are general. Now you must not ask me what
happened first. This would be as absurd as to ask what is the
smallest finite number. But springing away from the infinitely
distant past to a very very distant past, we find already evolution
had been going on for an infinitely long time. But this "time" is
only our way of saying that something had been going on. There was no
real time so far as there was no regularity, but there is no more
falsity in using the language of time than in saying that a quantity
is zero. In this chaos of feelings, bits of similitude had appeared,
been swallowed up again. Had reappeared by chance. A slight tendency
to generalization had here and there lighted up and been quenched.
Had reappeared, had strengthened itself. Like had begun to produce
like. Then even pairs of unlike feelings had begun to have similars,
and then these had begun to generalize. And thus relations of
contiguity, that is connections other than similarities, had sprung
up. All this went on in ways I cannot now detail till the feelings
were so bound together that a passable approximation to a real time
was established. It is not to be supposed that the ideally perfect
time has even yet been realized. There are no doubt occasional
lacunae and derailments.†4
Supposing matter to be but mind under the slavery of inveterate
habit, the law of mind still applies to it. According to that law,
consciousness subsides as habit becomes established, and is excited
again at the breaking up of habit. But the highest quality of mind
involves a great readiness to take habits, and a great readiness to
lose them [(CP 6.613) 1893].
Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment
expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form
of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to
enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional
sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood [CP 5.18, Lecture
1, “Pragmatism: The Normative Sciences” (1903)].
CP Vol. 5
What Pragmatism Is [First of three Monist articles, 1905]
1. Experimentalist’s View of Assertion
. . .
412. … The laboratory life did not prevent the writer (who here
and in what follows simply exemplifies the experimentalist type) from
becoming interested in methods of thinking; and when he came to read
metaphysics, although much of it seemed to him loosely reasoned and
determined by accidental prepossessions, yet in the writings of some
philosophers, especially Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, he sometimes
came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of
the laboratory, so that he felt he might trust to them; all of which
has been true of other laboratory-men.
Endeavoring, as a man of that type naturally would, to formulate
what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is,
the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively
in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life; so that, since
obviously nothing that might not result from experiment can have any
direct bearing upon conduct, if one can define accurately all the
conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of
a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of
the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. For this
doctrine he invented the name pragmatism. Some of his friends wished
him to call it practicism or practicalism (perhaps on the ground that
{praktikos} is better Greek than {pragmatikos}. But for one who had
learned philosophy out of Kant, as the writer, along with nineteen
out of every twenty experimentalists who have turned to philosophy,
had done, and who still thought in Kantian terms most readily,
praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the
former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the
experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his
feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose.
Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory was its
recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition
and rational purpose; and that consideration it was which determined
the preference for the name pragmatism. ---------------------
He explains pragmatism as a method that helps us to know what we
think, the meaning of which is interpreted as our willingness to act
on that thought—in terms of its conceived consequences.
Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its
chemistry and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of
life, has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it
had transported our race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs
have no application except in extended senses, and in such extended
senses they are sometimes dubitable and subject to just criticism.
It is above all the normative sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic)
that men are in dire need of having severely criticized, in their
relation to the new world created by science. Unfortunately, this
need is as unconscious as it is great. [CP 5.513 (c.1905)
"Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism"]
“Pragmatism is not a system of philosophy. It is only a method of
thinking ...” (CP 8.206, c. 1905).
On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 9:08 AM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
With the opening of this new site for the open and exploratory
discussion of, among other things, the use of Peirce in the analysis
of the modern world, I'd like to outline, briefly, my interests in
this area.
I consider that the triadic semiosis is both a continuous process in
the generation of matter on this planet - and- can also be understood
as the morphological form of discrete entities. That is, a cell is
both a triadic semiosic unit and an active process of the semiosic
processing of matter...connected and networked to other semiosic
units/processes. I consider this outline well-documented within
Peircean texts.
This view also goes along with my understanding that Peirce's
'objective idealism' is a view that neither Mind nor Matter are
primordial but that both are co-evolving correlates. {See 6.24 and
other texts].
And as such - I am interested in examining the world as a Complex
Adaptive System, which means that both variety and stability are
correlates in this generative, adaptive, 'far-from-equilibrium' world
- with no final state.
These are major areas of my interest, which means that I consider
that the Peircean framework is applicable to the physic-chemical,
biological and societal/conceptual realms.
Edwina Taborsky
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Links:
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[1] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/keelerkcap09.pdf
[2] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/papers/iccs05.pdf
[3] http://conceptualgraphs.org/revelator/web/research/Papers.php
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