http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8207 <pre>"Signs for us are sensible objects because human knowledge as discursive originates from the senses. It can be said more generally that a sign is anything generally known in which something other than itself is presented, and this is the case with an intellectual concept in presenting the intelligibility of any object, or with a percept presenting the desirability or undesirability of any object."   John Deely, THE FOUR AGES OF UNDERSTANDING, PAGE 337 ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-25T07:30:50 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8204 <pre> http://theodoragoss.tumblr.com/post/23717015911/beauty-by-charles-baudelaire </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-25T04:28:10 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8199 <pre>Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O 718 482-5700 *** *** *** *** ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Gary Richmond 2012-05-23T16:08:09 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8197 <pre>The American Style in Philosophy *Two Day International Conference* *June 11th-12th, 2012* *University College Dublin* Supported by: The IRCHSS (“New Ideas” Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences) UCD School of Philosophy UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies International Journal of Philosophical Studies http://www.american-voice.org/Conference Outline In comparing the styles of American and French philosophical writing, James Conant has noted the characteristic “diffidence” of writers like Thoreau when compared to the characteristic “brilliance” of intellectuals like Derrida. Conant provocatively suggests that this Parisian brilliance most typically registers “what is now taken as the sound of philosophy”. “The sound of much of the language in Thoreau’s *Walden*”, he writes, “is apt to strike a reader – at least on a first encounter – as not particularly philosophical at all, as not even trying to sound like philosophy”. (Conant, J., “Cavell and the Concept of America” in Russell Goodman (ed.), *Contending with Stanley Cavell* (Oxford University Press, 2005, 60). In comparing the sound of Emerson, James and Wallace Stevens with that of Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida, Richard Poirier makes a similar point: “it should be apparent by now”, he writes, “that in presenting their case, the Americans simply sound different. They sound altogether less rhetorically embattled, less culturally ambitious, than do any of these European cousins.” (Poirier, J., *Poetry and Pragmatism* (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 155). Taking such soundings of American philosophy as points of departure and provocation, this two-day international conference moves from Emerson, James and Santayana, via Quine and Sellars, to the contemporary writings of Rorty, Putnam, Cavell and Nussbaum. It finds in the diversity of these American voices a surprising unity of philosophical aspiration, where writing style is considered not incidental but central to philosophical achievement. Of course, no stylistic choice can be presumed as impartial, not even the choice to write with supposed transparency. What distinguishes this particular cluster of figures is the inseparability of style from content in the very processes and development of their thought. There is a resulting inclination, as in poetic analysis, to direct quotation in discussion of their work. We propose these figures as supreme stylists of the American tradition who contest the traditionally marginal status of philosophical style in procedures both literary (Emerson and Nussbaum, Santayana and Cavell) and non-literary (Quine and Putnam). That such easy distinctions stand to be re-complicated is evidenced in the writings of James as well as Rorty. What, if anything, is to be gained by juxtaposing Quine’s striking naturalism with Santayana’s quiet composure? How do Cavell’s romantic procedures attune if at all with those of Emerson? How does Putnam’s work fit within the Pragmatist tradition? And most importantly, is there a characteristically American* philosophical style*? The conference attempts to find answers to these questions. Organisers The confernce has been conceived and organised by: Dr Áine Kelly, IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin Dr Sarin Marchetti, Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin Fergal McHugh, IRCHSS Doctoral Fellow, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Khadimir 2012-05-23T15:12:22 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8193 <pre> https://iulist.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2012-05/msg00065.html </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-22T04:38:58 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8191 <pre>A Petition to Require Free Access over the Internet to Scientific Journal Articles Arising from Taxpayer-Funded Research ❝We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research. ❝The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.❞ Register (if not already) and sign on this page: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ Regards, Jon </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-22T04:04:32 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8190 <pre>test 2 ignore/delete Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5700 ``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` IF POSSIBLE PLEASE CC messages to: gary.richmond&lt; at &gt;gmail.com ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Gary Richmond 2012-05-21T22:18:10 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8189 <pre>test: ignore/delete ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Gary Richmond 2012-05-21T22:09:06 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8180 <pre> ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-l&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to peirce-l but to iulist&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe peirce-l" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . </pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-18T11:08:04 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8178 <pre>Peircers, Prompted by observations I had been making over a long period of time about the problems of fragmentation and increasing insularity in web communities, and inspired in part by discussions I had been having with Michel Bauwens of the P2P (Peer2Peer) Foundation, I started a project a few years back that was intended to explore architectural solutions to these problems while developing a body of useful content in the process. As I reflected on the architecture that might be demanded by the task, at least to make a good beginning at organizing the available resources, it took on the shape of an elliptical orbit, with content nodes revolving about two ruling foci, called “Inquiry” and “Logic”, respectively. Still exploring the possibilities of architecture and information in parallel, I created a couple of focal wiki pages called “Inquiry Live” and “Logic Live”. • http://mywikibiz.com/Inquiry_Live • http://mywikibiz.com/Logic_Live The “Live” bit indicated a couple of design goals that I had in mind at the time, inter-activity and the use of animations to illustrate proofs in logical graphs. I ramified the logic focus by developing a syllabus of logical topics and then I mirrored and interlinked the whole structure across a number of wiki sites, regarded as peer installations. Well, you know how it goes, I got pulled away by the exigencies of life and unfinished business in other areas, so it's been Spring of 2010 since I had much chance to work on things there. To make a longueur story short, our recent animadversions on Boole, Frege, and Peirce did have the beneficial side-effect of leading me back to that niche of the web and upgrading the content, formatting, and links. So be invited to take a gander if you're into any of those things. Regards, Jon </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-17T16:32:13 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8176 <pre>May the list prosper! S *ShortFormContent at Blogger* &lt;http://shortformcontent.blogspot.com/&gt; </pre> Stephen C. Rose 2012-05-17T15:23:09 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8175 <pre>The PEIRCE-L list has been migrated to a new environment, the IU List System. This is because the current LISTSERV is being discontinued. 1) Please check your Junk Mail folder to make sure that mail from the migrated list isn't being treated as SPAM. 2) Please use PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu instead of PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;listserv.iupui.edu when sending to the list. 3) We expect that list members' current individual settings will be be preserved. Information will be forthcoming on how to modify settings, view archives, etc. The peirce-l page at Arisbe will be modified accordingly. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Bill Stuckey Network &amp; Information Systems IUPUI School of Liberal Arts Cavanaugh Hall 001C 425 University Blvd. Indianapolis, IN 46202 317-274-2978 wstuckey&lt; at &gt;iupui.edu </pre> Stuckey, William E 2012-05-17T14:39:22 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8174 <pre>From:Benjamin Udell &lt;budell&lt; at &gt;nyc.rr.com&gt; To: owner-peirce-l&lt; at &gt;listserv.iupui.edu Cc: PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:12 PM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Title Corrected: ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE TO ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS ----------------------------- Gary M., list, Benjamin Udell: On solipsism: If you find an "other," unexpected and uncontrolled by you, even in your internal world, then that seems even more reason for rejecting solipsism, whereas it seems to lead you to solipsism as a psychological truth. ------------------------------- Gary Moore: Yes, just as a psychological truth – but a most fundamental one. --------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Yet to find this interior other is to find that there isn't even a part of the appearance-world that is securely 'self' rather than 'other', so how much less likely is it that the whole appearing world is really oneself only, solipse, without other? ------------------------- Gary Moore: Yes, exactly: none! Language is your ‘external’ self yet at the same time it is everybody elses’ also. There is dialogue, but the rules of rhetoric and literature always apply as another level of communication alongside logic and grammar. You are in a situation of “appearance of appearance” as the early Nietzsche would say [I refer to the early Nietzsche because then he is much more technically explicit ABOUT the behavior of language. Then at the time of writing Also Spoke Zarathustra he writes assuming implicitly his own philosophical rules of self-about-self-writing-to-others who have to catch up to him, and which makes him sound like loose literary stylization when that is not at all the case. Only in my old age have I started ‘catching up’ with Neitzsche by colliding with James I Porter ----&gt; http://sites.google.com/site/jamesivanporter/ http://sites.google.com/site/jamesivanporter/books2 http://sites.google.com/site/jamesivanporter/articles Untimely Meditations: Nietzsche’s Zeitatomistik in Context (Journal of Nietzsche Studies 20 (2000) 58-81) The article about almost sounds like Peirce and is ‘metaphysically’ detailed and logical about time, as being more important than space, is the physicist’s primary concern as being more objective and more unmanipulatable intellectually than space, is and is the ground for space. It was a complete surprise to me. ----------------- Benjamin Udell: Likewise, if the world is so vaguely and insecurely defined, lacking clear unity and bounds, how could there be a "world-self" that would be oneself? ---------------------------------------- Gary Moore: Exactly! That is one of the reasons I want to drop “world” as a legitimate logical and philosophical term. However, then one must think about all its synonyms and cognates: If you take away “world”, where, then, is any “totality”? ------------------------------------ Benjamin Udell: Anyway, I was talking about one's totality of personal experience, which involves a brute element opposed to one (and that, says Peirce, is what makes it experience ). ------------------------------------ Gary Moore: When you say “opposed to one” you are admitting that a fundamental part of ‘your’ experience belongs to something or someone ‘other’, or might be said to come from a vague ‘elsewhere’ out of one’s control. ------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Or maybe one should speak of what Peirce called the phaneron, the totality of appearances in any way present to the mind (such appearances are the subject of Peirce's phenomenology). ----------- Gary Moore: I have trouble with the words “total” and “totality”. How is it “total” if in fact there is always a surplus of new information and experience intruding into awareness through sensation and language? ----------------- Benjamin Udell: That world, already there, precedes the distinction into self and other. ------------------------------------------- Gary Moore: I think what I have said so far leads to a real conflict in “the distinction between self and other”. I have never seen, heard, or logically identified any real object as “self”, and, if it is not an object, how can it be distinguished? The “self” is just a myth or mere abstraction as Kant says. One can find better words to express ites function which is entirely emotional. // “That world” I question for the above reasons. But, yes, there is something preceding your ‘self’ [context per se] that one always discovers as ‘always already’ present, and, yes, it raises the distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other’. However, it is never clear and distinct because that is a linguistic distinction, something Kant covered very well in the Critique of Pure Reason using “I” as equivalent to “X” and in turn making the “I” equivalent to the subject of a sentence, the object of which is something ‘other’, the object of intention. ------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Anyway I wasn't speaking of the world in any physical or metaphysical cosmological sense. ----------------------- Gary Moore: It does seem inescapable does it not? I mean I can ‘sort of’ point to it. But then someone hears me and says “You are pointing towards a chair – are you saying ‘world’ is a chair?” And I say, “No, no, I mean the whole that the chair is within.” And they reply, “So you mean the room the chair is in?” and so forth ad infinitum. The literalness is irritating, but ‘they’ are referring to distinct things where ‘I’ refer to nothing distinct at all in any way, no sharp boundaries. -------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: As regards the problem of whether Peirce thought solipsism to be solved by basic phenomenology, or by semiotic ideas of representation, the problem is my ignorance, I just don't know. _______________ Gary Moore: I am in the same position. But if the ‘self’ is destroyed, then is not the importance of “solipsism”? -------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: I doubt that he would demote it to psychology (if that's what you meant by a "mere description of experience"). ----------------------------------- Gary Moore: No, there is NO demotion as experience and a psychological grounding fact. The Phenomenologists like Husserl and Heidegger use “world” extensively, but as an aspect only of what one loosely calls the whole of experience, the identity of ‘self’ and ‘world’ as grammatically divisible  in language but in pure experience indivisible. How could you see if ‘self’ is really divided from ‘world’? One important distinction – that just hit me but comes from them – is the difference between considering the “whole of experience” as “there” - a technical term to them, or at least Heidegger, since the “whole” of everything is just “there”, presented before you, whereas “here”, the ‘self’ meant not as representation but something to point at is wholly impossible. However I put it, the ‘self’ is just an “appearance of appearance. My “I” can never be pointed to [indiced?]. The difference is between “that thing there as a whole of experience” as if seen now in this instant - VERSUS “world” as temporally always in the process of gatheringeverything together. There is always a process of gathering together to make identities, das Ding, in Heidegger. Does anyone know if Peirce says anything like this? It seems to be a conclusion he would naturally come to in his thinking as simply understanding more and more through time. ---------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: There are, though, psychological problems that arise when one makes the wrong kinds of distinction between self and other, and at least a tendency toward solipsism-in-practice, treating all and sundry as if they were merely oneself, with no ends of their own, would be a psychological dysfunction against which I suppose we have some degree of natural and cultural guards. _____________- Gary Moore: I agree. A great deal of the dysfunction comes from the psychology of fanaticism, or ‘ethics’, we are all inescapably raised in as knowing absolutely that “right” is the opposite from wrong despite everyday experience, yet as disinterested philosophers must reject. That is, “I know the truth and I am right and all those who disagree with me are wrong.” This may either be implicit or explicit in teaching morality, but is always considered necessary to establishing firm boundaries that must not be crossed. This is perfectly obvious in the ethical field, but actually reflects the psychological fact of solipse or phaneronas you wrote above as in “Only I can see what I see.” This is absolute, the psychological fact of solipsism in perception or “in practice” as you said. But this creates a God-like view of things that combines with childhood training, that is, a child is taught to know as absolute the difference between right and wrong. This is intended as a legitimate process of habituation simply for teaching morality but how can it not ‘rub off’ epistemologically? And then confusion abounds if we say killing is wrong but we support soldiers who do so by law, that murder is wrong but we lawfully execute murderers. Maybe this artificial habituation of morality is set against the epistemological uncertainty that “Only I can see what I see”, the eye-witness account of myself, especially when a significant other says, “No, you are wrong. You did not see that.” This happens if there is only one right way.¶ ------------------------ Gary Moore: As a thought experiment, I state literally language is God [initially because of its overwhelming objective power over our minds], and THEN work out language as a living thing all its own. This does seem to be, to a certain degree, the facts of the matter. But only people make demands of you, one might say, and never language as such. This makes the person demanding identical with God. And this goes with another thought experiment, “If God does not exist then the universe must be trash.” Jean-Paul Sartre would have been comfortable with that: “Man is a futile passion” and “Man’s project is God”. This also attacks the whole conception and meaning of “importance” – what and where it is and how it is recognized – and that, again, what morality is all about whereas Sartre replied the interviewer’s  question shortly before he died, What is the most important thing you have accomplished in life? And Sartre replied, “Not much” and started hysterically laughing. What a wonderful way to go out of the world! Vastly disturbing to me, this seems to be what Aquinas is saying according to John Deely and the whole import of semiotics: If EVERYTHING is a sign . . . And how can you possibly write or say anything opposed to that without using signs? How can you indicate anything at all without using signs? Peirce is in accord, to my understanding, because he strives to make knowledge habitual just like Aristotle and Aquinas. You learn it, you work with it, and you make it habitual in order to build other knowledge upon it. Both Aristotle and Aquinas seem to have a situational ethics, that is, an ethics that must take account of all context and all circumstances before judgment, and rests on a clear and rational definition of what man is. ------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: On ordinary discourse as the final cause of or to all intellectual endeavors: As to final cause, I did mean the Aristotelian telos, anything from natural terminus of a process, to human purpose. I just can't think of any reason to see ordinary discourse as the final cause of/to all intellectual endeavors and not just as well vice versa, and not just as well see both as having further final causes later in time. Moreover, there are many intellectual endeavors for which ordinary discourse would need to be revolutionized in order to be able to accommodate them. Such intellectual endeavors include any theory seriously dependent on mathematics, for example and, more generally, any intellectual endeavor that requires active experimentation and practice, mental or otherwise, in order to understand it. I also wonder how many important visual 'aids' in chemistry, biology, etc., could be efficiently translated into ordinary discourse. ---------------------------------------- Gary Moore: Final cause cannot be a human purpose. Yes, this is what has been commonly taught, but I do not even think Aquinas believed that. God is the final cause because everything ends up with God, not because of choice but because of the way things are. You can change some things in morals if you have a good teacher who habituates you to the truth of things, but there is no such thing as free willy-nilly ‘choosing’. But even then you had the teacher and the mugger sticking his knife into your ribs did not. Certainly the mind of the mugger is not wondrously illuminated by any clarity of ethics, and if even he really doesnot understand what he is doing, then how ‘much’ can he be blamed by what rational standard?¶ Gary Moore: I originally placed “ordinary discourse” in the same category in Aristotle’s thinking as death, that is, something temporally and factually we must naturally come to. “What is the final cause of your life?” “To die.” “You mean the meaning of your life is simply to die?” “In a materialistic, real, logical manner, the answer is yes. Desire has absolutely nothing to do with “Final Cause”. Now, what you propose is correct in its context. But the context of the classroom ceases to exist at the ring of the bell and you load everything up and go to your car to drive to the grocery store. You completely drop at the end of every work day scientific and philosophical discourse upon going “public”, into society generally or specifically going home to family. These are contexts within which science and philosophy are subordinated even if you bring them up. And like death, as Jacques Derrida made very clear to me, you cannot experience your own death – that is a logical deduction made from other things and events. The same happens with ‘ordinary discourse’ because the final end of language always ends in an overall ‘ordinary’ social purpose. ¶ Gary Moore: But suppose you say that Socrates died discoursing on philosophy mixed in with some mathematics. And yet the reason why he dies at all is that the law decided he introduced “new gods” into society disturbing the absolute norms of right and wrong. We see discoursing on philosophy as normal, maybe even trivial and harmless, but Socrates’ society saw it as a gross and direct attack on the Athenian polity. Socrates may be discoursing on philosophy as he drinks the hemlock, but he drinks the hemlock because of the final cause of ordinary discourse that determined that he is a criminal. ¶ Gary Moore: You do not talk philosophy or mathematics to the cop writing out a traffic ticket. Not only does he take precedence in and through the order of “ordinary discourse” but everything on the street on the way home takes precedence over philosophy. Only if you go before a judge does the discourse become strict, and that is the discourse of law used in adversarial conflict where the conflicting parties present their best not to establish truth but to win the conflict. And the situation of law arose from a conflict in ordinary discourse whether understood correctly or not. Even Plato’s dialogues indicate that Socrates’ prosecutor’s motivations had nothing to do with what was true or false but only with revenge for the embarrassment they thought Socrates had inflicted on him even though, yes, Socrates was trying to teach them the difference between truth and falsehood or even good and evil. But truth does not trump public embarrassment and philosophical discourse in its final results never trumps ordinary discourse. -------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Peirce adopted the common distinction between theorems and corollaries (corollaries follow more or less obviously from their premisses), and developed ideas about theorematic and corollarial reasoning. Here he calls "schemata" that which elsewhere he usually calls "diagrams." [....] Theorematic reasoning invariably depends upon experimentation with individual schemata. We shall find that, in the last analysis, the same thing is true of the corollarial reasoning, too; even the Aristotelian "demonstration why." Only in this case, the very words serve as schemata. Accordingly, we may say that corollarial, or "philosophical" reasoning is reasoning with words; while theorematic, or mathematical reasoning proper, is reasoning with specially constructed schemata." (' Minute Logic', CP 4.233, c. 1902) -------------- Gary Moore: Excellent! The grammar of language actually enforces a logic that we must live by. It can be formally logical even if filled with absurdities. “All men are turtles.” “Socrates is a man.” “Therefore Socrates is a turtle.” The amazing fact is so few conflicts of meaning arise to awareness in daily conversation. It obviously cannot be because of correct or incorrect judgment. Then on what does this general social lacunae survive? For instance, what is money? Everyone says it is important, everyone constantly uses it, and no one just throws it away. Yet the only rational definition of money I know of, since the real objective market value of gold and silver was taken away, is that “Money is what the law says it is.” Obviously we do live in something of a dream world. --------------------------- Benjamin Udell: A longueur [a dull and tedious passage]on volition regarding the past: the rest of my post. This thread already seems chock full of longueurs, so why not? Readers are forewarned! Regarding volition, I was alluding to the scholastic view that there is no volition of the past, since obviously one cannot change the past. ¶ ----------------- Gary Moore: In reality, everyone changes the past all the time. Almost no recounting to the past is ever measurable against an objective standard. The only ‘real’ objective standard there can be is time-travel and the direct comparison of evidence. And that has even much greater logical problems. So no account of the past is ever anything more than a deliberately constructed viewpoint. Every historian is a complete liar. The judgment of being a good or bad historian is the consistency and evidential justification of his conclusions. In effect, a good historian proves Socrates is a turtle every time because, just like signs which they are, “evidence” is what you say it is. The historian defines the context as the theatre where the judgment of truth will occur. He brings up, that is, deliberately selects the evidence “So and so wrote... which is confirmed by what Who and who wrote... and the present day proof of this is that object that stands there.” But all this evidence is, first, determined what is selected for view; second, the truthfulness of the selected reporter and the reporter that confirms that report, and, thirdly, whether the actual history [more reporting] of the objective object is actually relevant. The ‘past’ as the past’ is simply how you tell it. And everyone, in one way or another, tells the past in the way they want it to be. In a court of law evidence is produced. First, most legal prosecutions proceed on amounting evidence until the perp confesses. However, if he does not confess, if he holds out till the jury returns, his simple silence can put a significant question against the mountain of evidence against him. And how is the verdict determined? It is determined by the feelings of the jury. So everyone changes the past.   Benjamin Udell: I was pointing out that we have pastward-oriented volition - e.g., adherence and (volitional) habit - just as we have pastward-oriented cognition - memory, recognition - and pastward-oriented affectivity - e.g., the feeling of attachment. The idea of volition as a power like cognition or affectivity goes back a long way. Aquinas said that, as judgment is related to reasoning , so, in the same manner, choice is related to deliberation . Tetens apparently it was who introduced the idea of the three-way division of the psyche's powers into feeling (including pleasure and pain), understanding, and will. Kant more or less went along with that (but took desire as a sort of will). Peirce made a three-way division into (1st) feeling, (2nd) will, and (3rd) general conception. I'm unsure how Peirce would place or distribute affectivity in that division (Peirce spoke of feelings in terms of qualities such as redness). Pastward-oriented volition no more implies pastward time travel of effects than pastward-oriented cognition implies retrieving or receiving data from the past by some sort of time machine. There isn't cognition OF the past in that sense any more than there is volition OF the past. Memory is not simply cognition of the past, as if one could simply use personal memory to investigate, for example, the solar system's origin; instead it is one's cognition of something _as_ having been previously cognized by one. In parallel to that, one's (volitional) habit and adherence are one's willing of something _as_ having been previously willed by one (also, one may break with the past). What I was getting at with the comparison of pushing against the ground was this: If one wants to think of volition as to the past as volition OF the past and as an effort to transmit effects onto the past, one might think of it in this somewhat metaphorical way: The would-be effect of volition as to the past simply instead "rebounds," as it were, onto the one doing the willing, likewise as pushing on the ground is one's way of pushing oneself along or away from the ground. Only more so, since a person's pushing the Earth moves the Earth by some vanishingly small amount, whereas one's "pushing" on the past presumably affects the past not at all.¶ ----------------- Gary Moore: Excellent! ------------------------------ Benjamin Udell: As to spontaneity, constraint, etc., I didn't happen to be discussing those questions about the will. Of course we can and do question, test for limits, etc., as to the freedom and power of the will, just as we do in regard to the unadulteratedness and aptness of competence, the unmanipulatedness and goodness of affectivity, and the unfooledness and truth of cognition. People can at least sometimes be forced, corrupted, manipulated, or deluded, so, are those what really happen ALL the time to everybody? Is it simply what nature or reality does to us? Socrates would complain that such radical skepticism, taken seriously, makes the thinker lazy, excusing and promoting uninquisitiveness. Logically, such radical skepticism can't survive its own causticity, and anyway few if any behave as though they believed in it. But skeptical puzzles along such lines, especially as regards cognition and knowledge, are quite an industry in philosophy. Whatever the uses of Cartesian doubt and its less totalistic but still radical progeny, I agree with Peirce that it's not the most fruitful thing in philosophy. ------------------------ Gary Moore: In the history of philosophy Socrates’ and Plato’s school, the Academy, became also known as the Skeptical philosophers. And as such they mainly survive in Classical literature in just fragments until Sextus Empiricus who was totally forgotten until his manuscripts were rediscovered in the Renaissance wherein for a while he was a best seller. The main reason for this, I think, is that a skeptic did not propose contradictions of substance to the Catholic Church but just questioned the truth value of any propositions without stating opposing propositions substantially contradicting them. Obviously Socrates did not like “uninquisitiveness” but ultimately all his arguments came down to setting up context [which can be personal history] for a comparison. Tom is taller than Jerrod, and Cassius is taller than Jerrod but shorter than Tom. “Taller” and “shorter” are the logic and judgment, but without the context they are meaningless. And my Tom, Jerrod, and Cassius you know nothing about. It is exactly the same form as the syllogism “All men are turtles”. The form of logic can be correctly preserved although filled with absurdities. Setting up a context of evidence depends on putting signs to non-verbal sensation. The process of defining a specific sensation as a sign renders it as no longer a sensation except in so far as a connection in my memory [that lies] with the unidentified sensation. So in the end the skeptic always wins. He is just not useful. But to be useful you have to know what is important for certain.   Best, Gary Moore --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU</pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-17T10:28:08 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8173 <pre>NECESSARY TO UNENTANGLING PEIRCE’S NEED FOR HISTORICAL RESPONSIBLITY IN THE GORDIAN KNOT IN HIS “THE ETHICS OF TERMINOLOGY” Deely’s THE FOUR AGES OF UNDERSTANDING, a huge book, is an attempt to deal with Peirce’s statement, pg. 263, THE ESSENTIAL PIERCE, “Thirdly, the progress of science cannot gofar except by collaboration; or, to speak more accurately, no mind can take one step without the aid of other minds” which John Deely takes to an even more extreme extent, but justified by Peirce, on pp. 662-667. This abridged section on Aquinas and his sign terminology actually indicates the primary turning point of the doctrine of signs from something merely off-hand in Augustine to actual usage in Aquinas. The question came up for me in Deely’s justification of putting Heidegger in Peirce’s line of thought which I here took time out to make a real ‘first’ to untangle the web of Aquinas’ semiotics which Deely says is necessary to understand the semiotic line of thought through Aquinas to Poinsot to Peirce to Heidegger to Deely. I wish I had completely digested all this – and I have not at all done so yet – before encountering the inscrutable John Poinsot (or John of St. Thomas). ------------------------------------------------------------- [page 667] Although Martin Heidegger’s has neither the scope of Peirce’s thought nor the clarity as to the being of sign as central to the development of human understanding, what Heidegger does contribute at the foundations of the postmodern age is an uncompromising clarity and rigor that exceeds Peirce’s own in focusing on the central problem of human understanding vis-à-vis the notion of Umwelt. This heretofore neglected problem is what is central to the problematic of philosophy in a postmodern age. In Peirce’s terms it is the problem of Firstness; in the language of Aquinas it is the problem of being-as-first-known; in the language of Heidegger it is the problem of the forgotteness of being, “Seinsvergessenheit”. This problem is the ground and soil of the doctrine of signs. That is why I first brought it up in [page 668] treating Aquinas [see below], and why I have focused on it in treating Peirce. As to Heidegger, Vincent Guagliardo (1944-1995), in the time that he had, said enough to establish the historical connections for those with the good sense to look further.” [footnote 166: This is mainly articles hard or impossible for me to locate and read unless he has a website somewhere. Can anyone help me?  The only thing of his I have is the magnificent St. Thomas Aquinas Commentary on the Book of Causes , CUA 1996, which I think is crucial in understanding Aquinas in general.]  [footnote 165: See, in chapter 7 above, 1, “The Problem of Sign in Aquinas”, p. 331ff; and 2] “The Problem of Being as First Known”, p. 341ff.: 1] “Now a sensible effect, being the primary and direct object of man’s knowledge (since all our knowledge springs from the senses), by its very nature leads to the knowledge of something else... But intelligible effects do not have this [Augustine’s] rationale of sign except insofar as insofar as they are manifested by some signs [footnote 176: Deely’s commentary: “By some sensible effects with which they are entangled in human experience”]. And in this way, too, some things which are not sensible are yet said in a certain way to be sacraments, namely, insofar as they are signified by sensible things.” Summa theologiae  III.60.4 adversus 1 (Busa 2, p. 862); 2] “A thing cannot be called a sign, properly speaking, unless it be something which one arrives at an awareness of something else as if by discoursing [footnote 179, p. 333: Deely’s commentary: “That is by passing from the one thing as known first to the other as known after and because of the first”] ¶ First,  Questiones Disputatae de Veritate, question 9, article 4, adversus 4 (Bursa 3, p. 60); 3] “Even though in our experience of material objects whose effects are more known to us than are the causes a sign is something posterior in nature, nevertheless that it be prior or posterior in nature does not belong to the rationale of sign properly understood, but only that it be something logically prior” [page 334] [footnote 181, p.334: Deely’s commentary: “Praecognitum: that is a sign  must be something that precedes the signified in knowledge logically whether or not it so precedes temporally. This point will become crucial, we will see (especially in the discussion of sense qualities in chapter 12, p. 522ff, Four Ages of Understanding), in the semiotic analysis not only of icons within perception and intellection, but also in the analysis of prescissively considered, where common and proper sensibles prove no less related by sign relations than one perceived object to another, or any object perceived or understood to the organism cognizing it; so that the whole of our awareness, from its origins in sense experience to its loftiest constructs of understanding, proves to be a web of sign relations.]¶  ...[Deely] The relation constitutive of any sign as such cannot be reduced to any relation of cause or effect.” ¶ Second, [page 335] [footnote 186: 4] “But a spoken word is a final effect issuing from the understanding. Therefore the rationale of sign belongs more to it than to the concept of the understanding; and likewise too the rationale of word, which is imposed from the manifestation of the concept.”  Questiones Disputatae de Veritate, question 4 in reply to 7th objection; 5] [footnote 188: “The rationale of sign belongs by natural priority to an effect - before it belongs to a cause when the cause is related to the effect as its cause of being, but not when related to the effect as its cause of signifying. But when an effect has from its cause not only the fact of its existence, but also the fact of its existing as signifying, in that case, just as the cause is prior to the effect in being, so it is prior in signifying; and for this reason the interior word possesses a rationale of signification that is naturally prior to that of the exterior word.” Questiones Disputatae de Veritate, question 4, article1, adversus 7 (Bursa 3, p. 25); 6] Deely: Perhaps even more intriguing is the lead Aquinas throws out in passing in the fourth of his Questiones Quodlibetales [footnote 189: Quodlibetun quartum, question 9, article 17 (Bursa 3, p. 461 col. 1: QDL n. 4, question 9, article 2c], when he distinguishes spoken words from what is understood by them: “the spoken word is a sign only and not what is signified; but what is understood is both sign and signified, as is also the thing.”¶ 7] Clearly, over the years, whatever he said in his doctoral dissertation [Deely p. 331, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard [footnote 171: In quattuor libros sententia Petri Lombardi, distinction 1, question 9, article 1, quaestiunc. 2 ¶32 (Bursa 1, p. 417)], Aquinas moved far beyond a simple-minded contrast of a ‘literal’ to a ‘figurative’ or [page 336] ‘metaphorical’ use of the term ‘sign’ as it is applied to psychological states in contrast with overt behavioral manifestations of those states, and as it is applied in some generic, common sense to both. John Poinsot, the only classical Latin author to systematically study the writings of Aquinas from a semiotic point of view and to synthesize the results of that study in a formal Tractatus de Signis, resolved the schizophrenia we have pointed out by pointing out in turn that Aquinas himself never undertook to author a treatise on signs as such but contented himself with commenting on various aspects of the doctrine of signs as they impinged on various other concerns which Aquinas had taken as his thematic focus in this or that discussion. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU</pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-17T08:12:27 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8172 <pre>http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/05/10/modus-dolens/ ;} </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-16T18:48:10 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8169 <pre>PEIRCE-L subscribers, On 17-May-2012, the PEIRCE-L list will be migrating to a new environment, the IU List System. This is because the current LISTSERV is being discontinued. 1) Once the list has been migrated, please check your Junk Mail folder to make sure that mail from the migrated list isn't being treated as SPAM. 2) Once the list has been migrated, please use PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;iulist.iupui.edu instead of PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;listserv.iupui.edu when sending to the list. We'll send a message to the list when it has been migrated, but we wanted you to be prepared for the change. 3) We expect that list members' current individual settings will be be preserved. Information will be forthcoming on how to modify settings, view archives, etc. The peirce-l page at Arisbe will be modified accordingly. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Bill Stuckey Network &amp; Information Systems IUPUI School of Liberal Arts Cavanaugh Hall 001C 425 University Blvd. Indianapolis, IN 46202 317-274-2978 wstuckey&lt; at &gt;iupui.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU </pre> Stuckey, William E 2012-05-15T17:33:01 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8168 <pre> Subject: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS Gary MooreFrom: Benjamin Udell &lt;budell&lt; at &gt;nyc.rr.com&gt; To: "PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU" &lt;PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU&gt; Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:44 AM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS Benjamin Udell: I don't 2:31 AM Monday, May 14, 2012 2:31 AM From:Benjamin Udell &lt;budell&lt; at &gt;nyc.rr.com&gt; To: "PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU" &lt;PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU&gt; Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:44 AM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] ORDINARY DISCOURSE AS THE FINAL CAUSE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL ENDEAVORS Benjamin Udell: I don't find anything on ens ut primum cognitum at Arisbe, and I find very little about it in connection with Peirce on the Internet. ----------------- Gary Moore: This maybe is a Deely ‘thing’ although he makes associations repetitively in his books between the ‘act’ of “Firstness” as being the necessary whole one is within in knowing consciousness as fundamental to linguistic knowing and ens ut primum cognitum which Delly points out comes before the distinction between ens reale and ens rationis, loosely between sensation and abstraction. ------------------ Benjamin Udell: Be sure to put quotes around Peirce's name as well as around the sought phrase (like so: "Peirce" "ens ut primum cognitum"), otherwise Google includes results for "Pierce". Also be sure to type it cognitum, not cogitum, a typo that probably results from associating cognition with cogitation, but the words are not cognate. --------------- Gary Moore: Yes, you are right it is a typo. _________________ Benjamin Udell: I've read little Deely or Kant and no McGrath. ----------------------- Gary Moore: McGrath merely provides us an example of putting two terms together and assuming everyone knows and uses the combination especially as if it were a single logical form. John Deely has written extensively on Peirce – I can provide information or look up Wikipedia – and essentially says he has substantially extended Peirce’s thinking. I question some of this, but I admit he does extensively relate Peirce to both scholasticism, especially John Poinsot, and the context modern philosophy in general. However, his criteria of  what is proper to consider or just summarily dismiss leaves much to be desired. He definitely has a specific program that he wants to implement. ----------------------------------- Benjamin Udell:There are a few passages of Aquinas that I read many times many years ago. Anyway I won't be able to address a good deal of what you've said. I might point out à laMerleau-Pontythat one is in language as one is in one's body. (Also, as Peirce said, as the body is in motion, so one is in thought, all thought is in signs, etc.) One can't get out of one's body but one can self-relate as by thumb against finger, hand against hand, etc., some sort of interplay of external and internal where the circuit is never quite closed. It's one's own body, extended and flexible in space and lingering with one in time, that lets one deal with one's own body from outside. One also finds other bodies that, from the outside, are like one's own. Body and language can access themselves from outside so to speak. Moreover, in or as one's body, one moves in the world. One pushes against the ground and thus moves oneself, and so on; motion is relative but, for example, a center of gravity is not merely perspectival. ¶ --------------------------- Gary Moore: The Merleau-Ponty is great and succinctly put which I find very hard to do for him. My body produces unknowns, like cancer, that are completely from ‘outside’ our consciousness. But “my body” is an ontological distinction or region, if that is legit, and “other bodies that, from the outside, are like one's own” is experiential, objective, phenomena, which, however, if own wants to find out if one has cancer in the sense of communal medical practice must take as analogues for one’s own body but with careful comparison of parameters and specifics, that is, the language used about their bodies compared specifically with the experience of your body and the language you use about it.¶ ---------------------- Benjamin Udell: Something like pushing against or standing upon the past is how one can conceive of volition regarding the past, pace the scholastics. We empower ourselves in one sense with things that our beyond our power in another sense. ¶ -------------------- Gary Moore: Is “volition” the right word to use? Spontaneity, circumstances, and history tend to obliterate that. If you are talking about “free will” then do not both Aristotle and Peirce place voluntary human change whether coming from self or a teacher the repetitive installation of a ‘good’ habit?¶ -------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: One does get to test, and learn about, oneself, one's body, one's language, in their interplay with things over which one has often very little control, and so external perspectives get further into one's awareness. The distinction and indeed struggle, between self and other, seem to appear within a whole of experience (or maybe I should say like Peirce, within the whole phaneron) which is already there. If one thinks of that interface and struggle as 'external', then one can get Peirce's view that knowledge of the internal world comes by surmise from external facts.¶ ------------------------------------------------- Gary Moore: Here we come to the problem that if I examine my internal world it is no longer ‘internal’ but rather becomes objective and ‘external’ to me. However, in turn again, the ‘internal’ world bifurcates between what I ‘know’ is internal and what is internal that empowers, and overpowers, me to speak and write in a context of meaning far beyond what I can consciously objectivize. In a conversation with someone, you follow the thread with general and loose rules of what is appropriate and inappropriate – but you do not specifically pick out the words you are going to say unless you are in a strict role such as actor or lawyer in court where precise replication of the exactly proper word is absolutely necessary. Normally, then, you just respond spontaneously within vague and very broad rules which therefore admit the possible “Freudian slip” of synonyms and homonyms one really would prefer not to use. The point is, that normally there is a very thin line between conscious and unconscious agency. You ‘use’ the unconscious to spout normally expected responses. Yet your mistakes tell you there is more than one thing going on ‘within’ you that is not at all objectivized, presented to yourself. Nietzsche in his The Gay Science says quite technically that all appearance is staging and performance, that is, you establish a model of yourself as you want yourself to be to both primarily yourself and secondarily to others. ¶ -------------------- Gary Moore: Spontaneous speech or writing is therefore literally an ‘other’ speaking or writing, and is not at all an automaton or machine following a pre-set course of response. But – that is how we must trustingly use it. We think we control, but if we examine the matter closely we see we do not. We can see where we hesitated at this turn and at that turn. This is the whole process of being ‘creative’ which, when it goes the way we want we approve of, but when it does not we suppress and condemn. So in a very real sense, there is “more” than what “seems to appear within a whole of experience (or maybe I should say like Peirce, within the whole phaneron)”. It is the same thing with language as a whole and my body which gives us numerous presuppositions we rarely or never question simply because we never objectivize them to ourselves. ¶ -------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: At least from the external as struggled with by oneself. Now, a solipsistic world in which one has little or no control over many things and in which one is often surprised and is often unable, for example, to fully anticipate or emulate another's mind, - such a supposedly solipsistic world seems to lack any conceivable practical difference from the world as we usually think of it. ¶ ------------------ Gary Moore: The word "world", I may have of just now come to think is really a very loose and extremely ambiguous concept because you know from experience it is radically incomplete, it does not at all contain a whole of all things in any sense whatsoever. So literally there is no “world” as specific, identified entity. Such an identified entity presupposes a power holding that unity together. According to what I said above about unconscious agency, it cannot be me or you. Not only do we know there is more within our self than you know about yourself, but in the objective use of language with external others (instead of "internal" others), the fact that you learn new and relatively unexpected things all the time, though sometimes vaguely suspected and anticipated - however sometimes it is a complete surprise whether pleasant or not, shows you that there is always more in the EXTERNAL 'external' world (as opposed to the externalized 'internal' world of the self from above) so that one realizes that the 'world' is a totally unrealized and empty abstraction. It is a 'comforting' word in the sense that it seems to give definite boundaries to the unknown that without faith in the 'known world' totally overwhelms us when we factually realize all the possibilities of 'mere chance'. ¶ ------------- Gary Moore: I have elsewhere - God knows where - written about how this realization of the reality that chance utterly controls everything in our world created the theology of John Calvin who thereupon created predestination, and of course God, as a bulwark and insurance against wholly unknowable chance. He was afraid of everything both external, as one would expect, and internal, which makes the vast majority of people very uncomfortable. You can pretend to prepare for external accidents, but how do you prepare for a completely unexpected response arising in a time of great stress from within oneself? This later actually occurs because one has laid out lines of appropriate behavior as if they bounded everything. Therefore to discover something within yourself wholly unexpected and uncontained utterly terrifies oneself. We are contingent creatures altogether and this was what terrified Calvin. So "solipsism" is simply a fact of perception, and even with that we realize we have many different perceptions of the same thing that, again, we comfort ourselves with the soothing expectation that it is indeed the same thing when we know better. This is in the shadow of Aristotle's terrifying dictum that A equals A only at the same time and same place - literally. There is no abstraction or approximation in real experience, but I know of no one that can really handle that - except maybe a highly combat experienced Special Forces type person who is awake even when they are asleep. Reality is a bitch. And it is not contained by "world". ------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Something like that seems to be Peirce's view of it. Then solipsism seems as superfluous as the idea of the Ptolemaic epicycles, or the idea of the luminiferous ether. However, I don't know whether that view would keep philosophy from continually sliding toward solipsism as Deely describes; it feels above my pay grade to make an assertion about that. ¶ ------------------------ Gary Moore: I would say “solipsism” and “extreme nominalism” should never have been regarded as metaphysics or whole philosophies, but in reality actually describe real aspects of human experience. Perception is always necessarily MY perception and that only as immediate. The field of perception has boundaries of distinctly perceived and vaguely perceived. There is not a firm distinction of what is “in” perception or “out” of it. That is no of the things I like about Peirce’s philosophy, its ragged boundaries, it ‘if-ness’, its “Fallibilism”. ¶ -------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Peirce's view of self-other relations seems to have its locus in his phaneroscopy, or phenomenology, i.e., prior to logic (as formal semiotic). ¶ -------------------- Gary Moore: That would be “Firstness” would it not, and ens ut primum cognitum?¶ -------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell: Now, I'm kind of ignorant here; I'm not sure to what extent he would view the idea of representation as the solution against solipsism; maybe he thought the problem needs to be revisited in semiotic in order to be solved, or maybe he could address representation enough to deal with solipsism in his phaneroscopy since representation and mediation are Thirdness, a topic in phaneroscopy. But in any case representation is how he has one expand beyond one's direct acquaintance with things, in prospective, generalizing, and at least conceivably testable ways.¶ ------------------------ Gary Moore: Would demoting “solipsism from metaphysics or philosophy to a description of experience solve this problem?¶ ---------------------------------------------- Benjamin Udell:  As to ordinary discourse as the final cause of all intellectual endeavor, it's not clear to me why one shouldn't just as well view all intellectual endeavor as at least one of the final causes of ordinary discourse. ¶ ----------------------------------- Gary Moore: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. My mistake. I meant “final cause” in the Aristotelian since as the end towards which we do it. “Ordinary discourse” is the final end for humans just as Aristotle says death is the final end or telos of human life. It is our nature as generation and corruption in time. And ‘my thing’ about time is that, as really experienced, it is one direction only, making the past and the future figments of our imagination yet also our whole motivation in living. ¶ -------------------------- Benjamin Udell:  Among such things it seems to me a two-way street, or a whole concourse, what with endeavors of imagination, sensory and so-called intuitive faculties, and concrete perception. A further final cause of all these things would seem some sort of evolution of humanity, or intelligent life, including the evolution both of ordinary discourse and of cognitive endeavors, among others. I should note for the sake of some readers reading your Deely quote that Deely and a few others use the word "sign" otherwise than how Peirce uses it. For Peirce, "representamen" is a technical term just in case sign as theoretically defined turns out to diverge from sign as commonly understood. See "Representamen" at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms . Peirce eventually stopped using the word "representamen" (except in at least one late manuscript in which he seems to be working anew on a distinction between sign and representamen). But for Deely and some others, _sign_ refers to the whole semiotic triad of the representamen, the object (or the significate, or significate object, as Deely calls it), and the interpretant. Best, Ben ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Best Gary Moore --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU</pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-15T10:30:08 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8146 <pre>To whom it may concern: In trying to muddle through the storm tossed flotsam and jetsam of John Deely’s explanation of Peirce’s “The Ethics of Terminology” I have discovered the only slightly less over-involved muddle of Peirce’s original. There is the plea for a special terminology as opposed to popular terminology or language. The justification of this is ‘precision’. But such ‘precision’ needing a special terminology whether to a greater or lesser degree divorced from popular language simply sets up a ‘privileged’ standpoint of using language that is not judged by the actual rough and tumble usage of real language in real usage. This is not ‘precision’, this is mystification. The success or failure of any idea what-so-ever is its usage in ordinary discourse. Once established on that plain where an approximate but real general understanding is achieved, then one can seek precision of precisely those terms as really used in a living language. That is the only viable and workable definition of intellectual clarity. This is primary to the notion of a real ‘teacher’, that is, someone who really transfers understanding in normal language to a student that can actually apply it. I may misunderstand what Peirce and Deely are doing, but the historical attribution of ideas they seem to demand is like incorporating the entire and unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language into one’s discourse just to start with. And then the demand to be able to read the ‘crystal clear’ Latin that is the intellectual ground of our ‘philosophical’ terms instead of the “muddy” English they are always translated into is contradictory and self-defeating. How many of you teach your classes in Latin and have only textbooks in Latin? None. Therefore there has to always be an equivalence given of the Latin term that can be absorbed into normal English usage. What is the point at all of Aquinas’ Latin clarity if it can only be found in Latin, however supposedly easy the language is to learn? I have already discovered the tremendous differences of English understanding of the Latin, and these differences are proposed by people immensely  better trained in Latin than I could ever be, but who have tremendous differences in translations from people equally qualified. So knowledge of Latin that stays in Latin is unavailable in English. I find the simple translation of Latin terms with their notable variations can easily absorb the understanding of the Latin term into English. And accreditation of blocks of new and unusual thought, however expressed, is rarely not properly given to their originators. The complete history of each term is a special endeavor for specific purposes, and is called for in obvious circumstances where it can mean different things in popular discourse. But “popular understanding” is the only prize worthwhile, that one always aims for because even for someone coming from Aristotle or Aquinas and stumbling into Peirce is not going to learn anything gross or net from specialized terms that violate common usage in one way or another, requiring a  gross relearning of the English or Latin language to obtain a microscopic net award. Maybe this is the bane of all of Peirce’s work. The purpose of language is to communicate. If one is unfamiliar with a word, it can be looked up in a common source, not prized out from a secret, private source. There is no value in the later course. If it is justified by its greater precision, then that ‘precision’ will very soon be lost again if so specialized. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU</pre> Gary Moore 2012-05-11T15:24:23 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8145 <pre>o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o I began to be curious about the recurrence of the following passage from Peirce in internet discussions over the last dozen years or so. Syllabus : Classification of Sciences (1.180-202, G-1903-2b) • http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm o---------------------------------------------------------------------o | | | o Metaphysics | | /| | | / | | | / | | | Normative Science o | | | / \ | | | / \ | | | / \| | | Mathematics o o Phenomenology | | | | Normative science rests largely on phenomenology and on mathematics;| | metaphysics on phenomenology and on normative science. | | | | Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 1.186 (1903) | | | o---------------------------------------------------------------------o Here is just the sample of occurrences that I could find right off hand. Most of these were cross-posted to several different logic and ontology lists: Arisbe, CG, SUO, the list on Peirce topics that Mary Keeler ran, and various incarnations of the Peirce List, but it's usually easier to find the copies that I posted to the Arisbe and Inquiry Lists. • 2000 Nov • Referenced in later posts but no longer live or archived • 2004 Mar • http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-March/001262.html • 2005 Jun • http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-June/002804.html • 2010 May • http://cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2010-May/014789.html • 2010 Jun • http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2010-June/003640.html • 2011 Nov • http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2011-November/003730.html • 2011 Dec • http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/7563 o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU </pre> Jon Awbrey 2012-05-11T14:54:10 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8141 <pre> List, Irving, John et. al., Sluga (Frege against the Booleans; Notre Dame Journal of Formal logic 1987)) places great emphasis upon the priority principle in Frege, which stresses that the judgement is epistemically, ontologically, and methodologically primary. He tries to show that Frege thought that Schroder's view exhibited a bias towards the methodological primacy of concepts by drawing on Schroder's Introductory parts of the Algebra of Logic. I think the central claim of the Sluga paper is that this supposed bias of the Booleans towards abstraction and the treatment of concepts as extensions of classes leads to a confusion over the relation between "abstract" or "pure" logic and predicate logic. How this is, is not always easy to see, but the segmenting of the judgement relation does seem to lead to a problem in seeing the abstract logic as a special case of predicate logic. How serious any of this is I don't know. For instance, Mitchell took issue with a "Mr. Peirce" for speaking of a "universe of relation" instead of a "universe of class terms." (Studies in Logic; Johns Hopkins 1883) Maybe Peirce was vaguely aware of something which the products of analysis would end up obscuring. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU </pre> Jim Willgoose 2012-05-10T21:30:12 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8127 <pre>Not sure what form a party based on a method rather than a set of axioms would look like, but given the current state of foolishness in American politics, we obviously can do worse.   http://newsminer.com/view/full_story/18442942/article-Pragmatism-needed-?instance=home_opinion_letters_to_editor   Robert Eckert --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to LISTSERV&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L&lt; at &gt;LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU</pre> Robert Eckert 2012-05-03T20:43:31 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.science.philosophy.peirce