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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 3 Jun 2007 20:30
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RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs

Dear Ben, list,

It is in the nature of quotes that they are isolated :-)

I think it is misleading to refer to "physical metaphysics" here,  
that volume of the CP is appropriately named "scientific metaphysics"  
- and that title seems to me to be consistent with what I have  
observed. The definition of physicalism came after Peirce. I think it  
is less ambiguous to simply say Peirce, at core, was predisposed to -  
and further, actively sought - a *natural* basis. I guess I am  
arguing simply that, in the end, he is more a scientist than he is a  
philosopher. His proposal that matter is effete mind seems to me to  
be a clear indication that he sought a natural and constructive basis.

I do not believe that it would be correct to interpret "effete mind"  
as a transcendental notion but if anyone can identify a reference  
that might suggest otherwise then please forward it.

True, Peirce's statements on logical construction are not as clearly  
stated or as well-formed as Carnap.

Now the problem with categorization - to which you are predisposed -  
is that you introduce harder divisions than exist in fact.  I am not  
denying epistemology - I am simply observing that it has a natural  
basis and I have a particular model that proposes how it is  
engineered in the world. This does not deny that there are things  
that can be apprehended that have no ontological status other than  
that of their apprehension (recall televisions and irrational  
numbers). So, I agree, meaning is one thing, basis is another - but  
meaning necessarily lies upon a natural construction from basis, a
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Benjamin Udell | 4 Jun 2007 23:22
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RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs

Steven, list,
 
>[Steven] It is in the nature of quotes that they are isolated :-)
 
Actually the specifically relevant text can be quoted along with some context.
 
>[Steven] I think it is misleading to refer to "physical metaphysics" here, that volume of the CP is appropriately named "scientific metaphysics" - and that title seems to me to be consistent with what I have observed.
 
Observed in what and as pertaining to what?
 
It could hardly be misleading to refer to "physical metaphysics" since the phrase is Peirce's own and he specified it as one of the three divisions of that which he called metaphysics. The titles of the volumes of the Collected Peirce were, on the other hand, not chosen by Peirce himself but presumably by the editors Hartshorne and Weiss working on the papers after Peirce's decease. Hartshorne and Weiss probably chose the phrase "Scientific Metaphysics" in order to suggest to the reader that the volume did not consist of supernaturalism or the like. Peirce would have regarded the phrase "Scientific Metaphysics" as technically redundant though perhaps justifiable in view of the anti-metaphysics spirit of philosophy in the first half of the 20th Century.
 
>[Steven] The definition of physicalism came after Peirce.
 
What definition of physicalism?
 
>[Steven] I think it is less ambiguous to simply say Peirce, at core, was predisposed to - and further, actively sought - a *natural* basis.
 
Less ambiguous than what? I was the one who referred to Peirce's physical metaphysics and I've been quite unambiguously saying that Peirce did not seek to base everything in nature. But, at this point, I realize that I should not take for granted that you mean anything obvious by the word "nature." Now I'm guessing that by "nature" you mean all the stuff -- both physical and psychical -- which, in Peirce's view, is studied in Idiscopy and is studied in Metaphysics without resort to special observations in order to settle questions. In any case for the purpose of this discussion you need to define your term "nature" with respect to Peirce's terms and his classifications of the sciences.
 
Bolding the word "natural" doesn't clarify it. At this point I'm unsure what you mean by "natural" and what you mean by basing things on "naturalistic solutions."   I've asked you the following questions, most of them twice, and now a third time --
- What, in pragmatic clarity,would it mean to base generals, universals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
-- Would it be simply something that one says in philosophy? Would it have any consequences in research outside philosophy?
-- Do you see a path to where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for - themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects?
-- Or do you hold that mathematical studies should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
-- Are you uncertain about the pragmatic meaning of basing generals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
 
>[Steven] I guess I am arguing simply that, in the end, he is more a scientist than he is a philosopher. His proposal that matter is effete mind seems to me to be a clear indication that he sought a natural and constructive basis.
 
CLASSES SUBCLASSES ORDERS FAMILIES etc.
I. Mathematics. A. Mathematics of Logic.
B. Mathematics of Discrete Series.
C. Mathematics of Continua and Pseudocontinua.
II. Cenoscopy
a.k.a. Philosophy.		 Episteme
(1902
classific.
only)		 A. Phenomenology a.k.a. Phaneroscopy.
B. Normative Science. i. Esthetics.
ii. Ethics.
iii. Logic / Semiotics.
C. Metaphysics i. Ontology or General.
ii. Psychical or Religious.
iii. Physical.
Theoric (1902 classific. only) Chronotheory & Topotheory (1902 only)
III. Idioscopy
a.k.a.
The Special Sciences.		 [?]. Physical i. Nomological. (3 subdivisions)
ii. Classificatory. (3 subdivisions)
iii. Descriptive. (3 subdivisions)
[?]. Psychical i. Nomological. (4 subdivisions)
ii. Classificatory. (3 subdivisions)
iii. Descriptive. (3 subdivisions)
A natural and constructive basis for what? Everything? (And what do you mean by "constructive" in that context?) That's exactly where you needed to be explicit about the terms of the alternative. A natural and constructive basis for everything? Or for only those phenomena which Peirce regarded as idioscopic subject matters in the first place?
 
If he's looking for idioscopic solutions to things which he already explicitly regarded as idioscopic problems, it seems quite -- natural. You don't address why it should be taken to mean that he was looking for naturalistic solutions to problems which he explictly regarded as prior and more general in principle than idioscopic problems about psycho-physical nature. It can most simply and clearly be taken to indicate that, _within_ the idioscopic a.k.a. special-scientific level, Peirce hoped for a psychical basis for the physical. That is the simplest explanation, given:
(1) his placement of "Religious or Psychical Metaphysics" as decidedly prior to "Physical Metaphysics"; and
(2) his earlier having placed Psychical Idioscopy as prior to Physical Idioscopy and his stated reluctance to place Physical Idioscopy as decidedly prior to Psychical Idioscopy, and
(3) his decidedly placing both Mathematics and Philosophy (Cenoscopy) as decidedly prior to Idioscopy a.k.a. the Special Sciences.
 
>[Steven] I do not believe that it would be correct to interpret "effete mind" as a transcendental notion but if anyone can identify a reference that might suggest otherwise then please forward it. True, Peirce's statements on logical construction are not as clearly stated or as well-formed as Carnap.
 
What do you mean by "transcendental"? 
What do you mean by logical "construction"? Do you mean, like constructing a logical proof? Constructing a logical diagram? Are you talking about nature as constructing things logically? Considering the way you use words like "engineering," that's a real possibility.
 
>[Steven] Now the problem with categorization - to which you are predisposed - is that you introduce harder divisions than exist in fact.
 
If divisions exist at all, then divisions exist in fact. They can always be "Quined" or, really, "Peircified," afterward -- gradualized, fractalized, synechized, whatever. But I take the second "you" in your sentence, the "you" in "you introduce harder division than exist in fact," to be the general "you," meaning "one" or "a person," since you float any number of hard divisions into the discussion -- first-order a priori laws, second-order a posteriori principles, primitive of experience, marks, signs, etc.

I am predisposed to making structures of divisions which make a logical pattern that's not too monotonous, fluffy, and inquiry-obstructive (monisms, monochotomies), stark, chasmic, and boring (dichotomies), or hard to make work (trichotomies). Divisions with insufficient logical pattern don't interest me much and as a practical matter that means most of them. I salute the Dewey Decimal System for its practicality but it's not the kind of conception that I get excited about.
 
>[Steven] I am not denying epistemology - I am simply observing that it has a natural basis and I have a particular model that proposes how it is engineered in the world. This does not deny that there are things that can be apprehended that have no ontological status other than that of their apprehension (recall televisions and irrational numbers).
 
Televisions seem quite real and actual to me. Their images often correspond quite well to aspects of actual remote events.
 
As for irrational numbers, there's a world of difference between their apprehension and their apprehendability. This is kind of the issue, isn't it?
 
Do you think that nature engineers it to be the case that e^(pi*i ) = -1? Or that nature engineers it that there is no largest prime number? Do you think that nature engineers the distribution of primes and other classes of factorizable numbers? Now, I don't think that you really believe such things, -- though please say so clearly if in fact you do believe them -- but I'm highlighting the questions because I want to understand why they don't enter into the balance for you on the question of whether mathematics is "based" on nature, whatever such basis could possibly mean, -- a meaning about which I've tried repeatedly to get you to say something. Peirce places math before idioscopy on the grounds that idioscopy appeals to mathematical principles but mathematics does not appeal to idioscopic principles. He ranks them as "classes" of science because the kinds of observations needed in each are not afforded by the other. That's what Peirce said. He said them in his 1902 and 1903 Classifications of the Sciences. If you persist in basing your views on Peirce on a putative personal insight into his secret wishes, and don't _engage_ Peirce's stated views in argument, then your views on Peirce's private wishes must remain quite personal as well.
 
Factorizations: Nature's Engineering? Notice the odd mirror-like quasi-symmetry centered on 30.
 
 
 
           
                 
 
                                     
       
                                 
 
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60


>[Steven] So, I agree, meaning is one thing, basis is another - but meaning necessarily lies upon a natural construction from basis, a natural engineering - otherwise you advocate the supernatural.
 
You cherry-pick a pejorative opposite to nature. "Supernatural" means religious and mythic miracles at best, and ghosts, goblins, paranormality, and seedy-looking operations at worst.  Since you hold pan-psychical views, but have no apparent interest in claimed miracles or claimed paranormal phenomena, you wish to distinguish yourself from supernaturalists, but you're a bit hair-trigger in seeing them around you, in Scholastic Realists for instance, especially ones who don't even assert that God actually exists.
 
I shouldn't put it down ghost stories too much, Poe and Blackwood make beautiful tone poems of such things. However, the supernatural is not the only idea opposed to the idea of nature. There's natural vs. artificial. There's natural vs. forced. There's physical vs. mental. There's concrete vs. abstract. More recently a distinction gained currency between "natural sciences" (physical and chemical sciences) and "life sciences" (biological and human/social sciences).
 
Your use of words like "construction" and "engineering" borders on suggesting supernatural agencies. Yet let the question be, do you think nature engineers mathematics? Do you think that nature engineers the fact that pi  and e are transcendental numbers?
 
>[Steven] I don't disagree that Peirce had not eliminated his ghosts entirely in this matter and that his range of consideration is broad and open minded - he wrestled with it and made statements that apparently contradict. But when he was in his scientific mind, his purpose was naturalistic, constructive and sought to eliminate the supernatural.
 
You seem to think that Peirce's idea of thirdness is an idea about ghosts. Peirce regarded such an idea as self-refuting, the idea that one should restrict one's opinons to what one actually perceives, self-refuting because the idea itself relates to more than is actually in the field of momentary perception.
 
Peirce: CP 5.198 
 
66~~~
Let me point out to you the different opinions which we actually find men holding today-- perhaps not consistently, but thinking that they hold them -- upon this subject [of induction]. In the first place, we find men who maintain that no hypothesis ought to be admitted, even as a hypothesis, any further than its truth or its falsity is capable of being directly perceived. This, as well as I can make out, is what was in the mind of Auguste Comte, who is generally assumed to have first formulated this maxim. Of course, this maxim of abduction supposes that, as people say, we "are to believe only what we actually see"; and there are well-known writers, and writers of no little intellectual force, who maintain that it is unscientific to make predictions -- unscientific, therefore, to expect anything. One ought to restrict one's opinions to what one actually perceives. I need hardly say that that position cannot be consistently maintained. It refutes itself, for it is itself an opinion relating to more than is actually in the field of momentary perception.
~~~99
 
Now, when Peirce was discussing idioscopic questions, he sought idioscopic answers. When he discussed general questions about psycho-physical nature, he sought general answers in terms of psycho-physical nature. By your reasoning, his general discussions of phenomenology would have to be taken as evidence that he wanted to base math and everything else on philosophical phenomenological solutions. By your reasoning, his discussions of lattice theory would have to be taken as evidence that he sought to base absolutely everything on lattice-theoretical solutions. And so forth. Peirce appreciated and respected the differences between the subject matters of idioscopy and those of more general classes of science.  The divisions which he made are not just to "keep things apart" but instead so that the forest will not be missed for the trees.
 
>[Steven] His entire triadic, constructive, semeiotic model is most pragmatically interpreted in this way. If thirdness is to be interpreted as some supernatural phenomenon then this is where his confusion and tendency to dualism lay. My contention is merely that had he been able to resolve the conflict and identify a natural basis and construction that his writings (and esp. his suggestion that matter is effete mind) indicate that he was predisposed to follow it. Just as one might argue that Galileo was predisposed to appreciated the work of Newton.
 
It would be trivial, unless some interlocutor had actually called Galileo's reasonableness and intelligence into question, to argue that Galileo was predisposed to appreciate Newton's work just because Newton's work was so good. You say that you don't think that these questions should be personalized to questions of Peirce's having the "talent" to appreciate _your_ views. Yet you turn it all into a question of whether any given person is reasonable and intelligent enough to eventually appreciate something which it happens that you controversially claim, that there are natural solutions to everything including mathematics.
 
Once again you're asserting that Peirce, being reasonable and intelligent, is predisposed to naturalistic solutions to everything including mathematics. That claim depends on the far-from-established idea that truth consists in naturalistic solutions to everything.
 
And then, on top of that, you ascribe to Peirce a frustrated but still operative wish for naturalistic solutions, and you point to his identification of matter with effete mind, and ignore the breadth of that which he called idioscopy, embracing special-scientific questions both of the physical and of the psychical. You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.
 
>[Steven] You also appear to continue to associate physicalism and materialism - and, as previously noted, these are not at all the same. Physicalism allows for new discovery and proposals of the kind I have made, whereas materialism does not.
 
As I have not mentioned materialism, and as I have not suggested that physicalism forbids discoveries and proposals like yours, I don't know what you're talking about.
 
Best, Ben
 
>[Steven] To quote Carnap:
 
"This thesis [physicalism] does not refer to the laws known to us at present, but to those laws which hold in nature and which our knowledge can only more or les approximate. The thesis may therefore be understood as the hypothesis that in the future it will become possible to an ever greater extent to derive known extra-physical 
laws from known physical laws." [P883, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, in his response to Feigl on Physicalism]

Sincerely,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info


On Jun 3, 2007, at 7:33 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Steven, list,
 
What you've quoted is Peirce on the subject of that which he calls physical metaphysics in the course of a discussion in which he ranges more widely. There's nothing there about trying to construct everything on the basis of physical metaphysics. Insofar as the conceptions of freedom and destiny are developed in his psychical/religious metaphysics, he is then applying the conceptions in physical metaphysics. Peirce thinks that there are general, philosophical questions about physical nature and that they are worth discussing. (See the table below.) It just doesn't follow that, deep inside, he wished to base all the rest of philosophy on answers to questions about physical nature.
 
The isolate quote which you offer does not confirm but is merely compatible with your views of Peirce; it is also compatible with various views of Peirce contrary to your views of Peirce, including especially Peirce's views of himself as he persistently expressed them. You can't expect Peirce to be flying all his flags in every single sentence. 
 
The most that you can reasonably say is that you can see from such quotes how Peirce could have built his philosophy on his physical metaphysics if he had wished to do so. However, you have presented no evidence that he wished to do so at any time from 1866 to 1914. And there's plenty of evidence that he wished to do otherwise.
 
Peirce saw chance, law, and habit-taking, all three, operative in the concrete world, the place where practical consequences pre-eminently work themselves out. He saw mathematical and philosophical ideas as operative in the practical world. He had to look at it that way, otherwise they would have no practical meaning in his view. And meaning is one thing, basis is another.
 
Meaning is one thing, basis is another.  Yet, you could argue that, since the Pragmatic Maxim says that one's conception of an object consists entirely in one's conception of the object's conceivable practically relevant consequences, Peirce's conception of the world must, by his Maxim, consist ultimately in a conception of the concrete world (a world which he regarded as a psycho-physical world of general individuals which, by generality and continuity, have extension, motion, and duration, not merely a purely physical world of singular pointlike individuals). That argument, if it stands up, shows Peirce having difficulty avoiding a one-sided basis in -- not naturalistic, technically, but let's say psycho-physicalist -- conceptions. Peirce did wish to have at least one foot in the concrete psycho-physical world. But the argument would not show that he wished to have "all three" feet in the concrete psycho-physical world. Instead, for instance, he discussed three universes of experience -- the universe of Platonic ideas, the universe of brute events, and the universe of habit-taking. What would be the problem with a more entirely concrete psycho-physicalist solution?
 
Now, the problem of a concrete psycho-physicalist solution is not just that it may not be to one's taste. A further problem is, what if it has no practical meaning?  One would have to think that maybe there's something wrong with it after all.
 
Now, what, in pragmatic clarity, it would mean to base generals, universals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
 
Would it be simply something that one says in philosophy?
 
Would it have any consequences in research outside philosophy?
 
Do you see a path to where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects?
 
Or do you hold that mathematical studies should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
 
Are you uncertain about the pragmatic meaning of basing generals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?  For my part, I think it's okay to be uncertain about it. Anyway I myself am uncertain on the question of whether nature will be shown to offer answers to highly abstract mathematical questions.  (I wouldn't in that case see mathematics as based monolithically on nature; instead I would be inclined to see a snake eating its own tail; I've talked in the past about seeing various things as basic in various terms -- _ordo cognoscendi_, _ordo essendi_ etc.)
 
Your last extensive discussion of the dualism into which you see Peirce continually falling was quite a while ago. Could you restate the dualism itself and point to where you see him falling into it?
 
II. Philosophy, cenoscopy.  About positive phenomena in general (not special classes) as available to anybody in any waking moment. Does not use special experiences or experiments in order to settle questions. A. Phenomenology (a.k.a. phaneroscopy)
(includes study of the CATEGORIES firstness, secondness, thirdness).
B. Normative Science.
  i. Esthetics (study of the _admirable_;
Peirce reserved the spelling "aesthetics" for the more particular study of artistic beauty). 		 ii. Ethics. iii. Logic / Semiotics. 
 1. Speculative Grammar (includes SIGN CLASSIFICATION).
 2. Critic (a.k.a. Logic Proper, includes study of modes of inference: ABDUCTION, DEDUCTION, INDUCTION).
 3. Methodeutic (a.k.a. Rhetoric, includes study of scientific method and is a locus of the PRAGMATIC MAXIM).
C. Metaphysics.
i. Ontology or General. ii. Psychical or Religious.
 1. God.
 2. freedom (& destiny).
 3. immortality.		 iii. Physical (space, time, matter, etc.).
 
Best, Ben
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith" <steven <at> semeiosis.org>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l <at> lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 12:57 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs

Dear Ben,

So perhaps we should take a step back and look at the disagreement here - because CP Vol 6, it seems to me, so clearly demonstrates the pursuit of a naturalistic foundation that there is obviously some other misunderstanding between us.

It really does not matter, for example, that Peirce proposes "Objective Idealism" or "Tychistic Idealism" and "effete mind" [$4 CP6.24] as the basis of his naturalistic view, he is still looking for a physical basis of a natural construction. He attempted to resolve the problem by arguing that matter is "effete mind" - but he never did more than hint at how this was a basis for a construction of the world.

He explores this, in particular, in the article "Man's Glassy Essence" CP6.265 and CP 6.266.

"Thus we see that the idealist has no need to dread a mechanical theory of life. On the contrary, such a theory, fully developed, is bound to call in tychistic idealism as its indispensable adjunct." CP. 265

This confirms two of my claims about Peirce. First, that he never actually escaped dualism (all his paths seem to lead him, reluctantly, back there), second that, despite this, he was predisposed to, and actively sought, a naturalistic and constructive solution.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On May 31, 2007, at 7:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Steven, list,

I can certainly understand tending to read Peirce's views as generally similar to one's own through identifying strongly with some of his views. I recall having done that a few years ago here on peirce-l, I wish I could remember on what issue. The ruin of my old hard drive makes it hard for me to dig it up.

I wasn't saying that you were being self-righteous, I was saying that you weren't providing an argument for why, beyond Peirce's deserving "credit," Peirce should be considered to have been predisposed to naturalistic views and solutions. In a persistent absence of an argument, the "default setting" to naturalistic views for Peirce will come across as a presumption which is contrary to extensive textual evidence and which the presumer introduces into the discussion, so of course it becomes a "sez you" kind of thing.

Anyway, you need to provide some textual evidence for the idea that it was because of failure and frustration in the effort to find natural solutions, that Peirce kept logic in philosophy, kept both philosophy and mathematics outside of the natural sciences, became a Scholastic Realist at an early time, and became eventually a modal realist.

After all, Peirce said that nature is likely responsible for abductive-inferential instincts in us. So Peirce evidently saw a role for special-scientific studies in understanding the character of abductive inference in humans. Yet that, and his vew that generals are operative in nature, are quite consistent with his view that general questions belong to a general level of which the study does not appeal to special experiences in order to settle questions. I mean, he talks often enough about how special experiences don't settle questions of philosophy or mathematics. If there's something tending to the contrary in Vol. 6 of the Collected Papers on natural foundations which you mention, please do quote it.

For instance, it's quite arguable and, I think, correct to say, that Quine was not a nominalist but very much a would-be, "wannabe" nominalist. For instance, he made very clear that the reason that he was not a nominalist was that he took seriously the ontological commitments made in mathematical existence statements about abstract nonlinguistic objects. (I bring up nominalism again mainly in order to use Quine as example, and not in order to argue that your naturalistic views are similar to nominalism.)

Quine's is a anti-nominalism wistful for nominalism. However, there's nothing wistful about Peirce's opposition to naturalistic solutions for logical, philosophical, and mathematical questions.

Questions about Peirce's views aside, I can see identifying mathematics generally with nature in at least three speculative ways. (1) If the physicist Mark Tegmark is right, then the study of mathematics is equivalent to the study of the "Omniverse" at its broadest level, Level IV. (2) If one can consider a phase in which the universe is entirely "quantum" and not even the least bit quasi-classical, a universe entirely in potentiality, then perhaps the most abstract and theoretical study of the universe in that phase is equivalent to the study of mathematics. (3) If the Hilbert-Polya conjecture about Riemann's Hypothesis is correct, then maybe it will lead to ways to gain information about abstract mathematical structures from nature. What is your path to a view where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects? Or do you hold that mathematics should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?

Best, Ben

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 2:43 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs

Dear Ben,

Additional note.

Scholastic Realism, BTW, is defined by Peirce to mean that "general principles are really operative in nature." CP 5.101. I do not take this to imply that these general principles are without a natural basis.

Naturalistic solutions are not nominalist, as far as I am concerned. Materialism is nominalist, but natural physicalism is not. This goes back to an earlier discussion with Gary Richmond. Materialism assumes we know all the essential things of the world, but constructive physicalism (defined by the logical positivists) does not make that assumption - and this position is in broad terms consistent both with my approach - and that pursued by Peirce.

I think it is a mistake to argue in the case of both Peirce and Carnap that their preoccupation with matters of a transcendental nature, matters of representation, actually made them transcendentalists - there is clear evidence in their writings that they fully expected their epistemological considerations to be founded upon a natural basis that would ultimately be accessible to the exact sciences. More specifically, they expected experience and inference - the basis of anthropogenic knowledge in their models - to ultimately have a natural explanation.

In that light I am reminded by a brief perusal of Volume 6 of the Collected Papers, in which Peirce explores natural foundations, of just why I have taken the stance that I have on this matter.

With respect,

Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info

On May 29, 2007, at 7:08 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

Dear Ben,

Ok, so I take the dualist tendency in Peirce to be merely be frustration because he could not identify a naturalistic solution and that such dualism is inevitably eliminated when a natural solution is identified. But I see that dualism as being reluctantly accepted by Peirce. As I said, "he wrestled with it."

I don't think I am being as self-righteous as you suggest. There is an affinity, and that comes from the fact that Peirce was a major early influence on my work. Is it really not the case that Peirce seeks to make logic and inference questions of natural science? This seems to me to be, perhaps, the view of philosophers but it does not seem to me to be consistent with the facts of his inquiry.

With respect,
Steven

On May 29, 2007, at 4:50 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Steven,

To the contrary, you said,

"I then argue that had he found such a solution he would have pursued it vigorously and necessarily have diverged from his views - and in particular, he would have abandoned the dualist tendencies you describe. IOW, he was predisposed to throw out philosophy in favor of science - perhaps I am giving Peirce more credit than he is due, but I think not."

Abandon his "dualist" tendencies to Scholastic Realism and modal realism? And altogether throw out philosophy in favor of science? Make logic and inference into questions of natural science? Those are _your_ views. And whether one calls them "your" views or "naturalistic" views, your argument is essentially that, since they're right, Peirce would have arrived at some form of them. Well, sure, if they're right, than Peirce would have eventually arrived at some form of them. But again, it's just not much of an argument.

Best, Ben

----- Original Message -----

Dear Ben,

I did not say that Peirce was predisposed to *my views* - I said that Peirce was predisposed to natural solutions, which I take to be a much broader category.

With respect,
Steven
---
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Benjamin Udell | 4 Jun 2007 23:41
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Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

With corrections, sorry - Ben
 
Steven, list,
 
>[Steven] It is in the nature of quotes that they are isolated :-)
 
Actually a piece of specifically relevant text can be quoted along with some context which adds little except to clarify and corroborate the apparent sense of the portion quoted for its relevance.
 
>[Steven] I think it is misleading to refer to "physical metaphysics" here, that volume of the CP is appropriately named "scientific metaphysics" - and that title seems to me to be consistent with what I have observed.
 
Observed in what and as pertaining to what?
 
It could hardly be misleading to refer to "physical metaphysics" since the phrase is Peirce's own and he specified it as one of the three divisions of that which he called metaphysics. The titles of the volumes of the Collected Peirce were, on the other hand, not chosen by Peirce himself but presumably by the editors Hartshorne and Weiss working on the papers after Peirce's decease. Hartshorne and Weiss probably chose the phrase "Scientific Metaphysics" in order to suggest to the reader that the volume did not consist of supernaturalism or the like. Peirce would have regarded the phrase "Scientific Metaphysics" as technically redundant though perhaps justifiable in view of the anti-metaphysics spirit of philosophy in the first half of the 20th Century.
 
>[Steven] The definition of physicalism came after Peirce.
 
What definition of physicalism?
 
>[Steven] I think it is less ambiguous to simply say Peirce, at core, was predisposed to - and further, actively sought - a *natural* basis.
 
Less ambiguous than what? I was the one who referred to Peirce's physical metaphysics and I've been quite unambiguously saying that Peirce did not seek to base everything in nature. But, at this point, I realize that I should not take for granted that you mean anything obvious by the word "nature." Now I'm guessing that by "nature" you mean all the stuff -- both physical and psychical -- which, in Peirce's view, is studied in Idiscopy and is studied in Metaphysics without resort to special observations in order to settle questions. In any case for the purpose of this discussion you need to define your term "nature" with respect to Peirce's terms and his classifications of the sciences.
 
Bolding the word "natural" doesn't clarify it. At this point I'm unsure what you mean by "natural" and what you mean by basing things on "naturalistic solutions."   I've asked you the following questions, most of them twice, and now a third time --
- What, in pragmatic clarity,would it mean to base generals, universals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
-- Would it be simply something that one says in philosophy? Would it have any consequences in research outside philosophy?
-- Do you see a path to where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for - themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects?
-- Or do you hold that mathematical studies should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
-- Are you uncertain about the pragmatic meaning of basing generals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
 
>[Steven] I guess I am arguing simply that, in the end, he is more a scientist than he is a philosopher. His proposal that matter is effete mind seems to me to be a clear indication that he sought a natural and constructive basis.
 
CLASSES SUBCLASSES ORDERS FAMILIES etc.
I. Mathematics. A. Mathematics of Logic.
B. Mathematics of Discrete Series.
C. Mathematics of Continua and Pseudocontinua.
II. Cenoscopy
a.k.a. Philosophy.		 Episteme
(1902
classific.
only)		 A. Phenomenology a.k.a. Phaneroscopy.
B. Normative Science. i. Esthetics.
ii. Ethics.
iii. Logic / Semiotics.
C. Metaphysics i. Ontology or General.
ii. Psychical or Religious.
iii. Physical.
Theoric (1902 classific. only) Chronotheory & Topotheory (1902 only)
III. Idioscopy
a.k.a.
The Special Sciences.		 [?]. Physical i. Nomological. (3 subdivisions)
ii. Classificatory. (3 subdivisions)
iii. Descriptive. (3 subdivisions)
[?]. Psychical i. Nomological. (4 subdivisions)
ii. Classificatory. (3 subdivisions)
iii. Descriptive. (3 subdivisions)
A natural and constructive basis for what? Everything? (And what do you mean by "constructive" in that context?) That's exactly where you needed to be explicit about the terms of the alternative. A natural and constructive basis for everything? Or for only those phenomena which Peirce regarded as idioscopic subject matters in the first place?
 
If he's looking for idioscopic solutions to things which he already explicitly regarded as idioscopic problems, it seems quite -- natural. You don't address why it should be taken to mean that he was looking for naturalistic solutions to problems which he explictly regarded as prior and more general in principle than idioscopic problems about psycho-physical nature. It can most simply and clearly be taken to indicate that, _within_ the idioscopic a.k.a. special-scientific level, Peirce hoped for a psychical basis for the physical. That is the simplest explanation, given:
(1) his placement of "Religious or Psychical Metaphysics" as decidedly prior to "Physical Metaphysics"; and
(2) his earlier having placed Psychical Idioscopy as prior to Physical Idioscopy and his stated reluctance to place Physical Idioscopy as decidedly prior to Psychical Idioscopy, and
(3) his decidedly placing both Mathematics and Philosophy (Cenoscopy) as decidedly prior to Idioscopy a.k.a. the Special Sciences.
 
>[Steven] I do not believe that it would be correct to interpret "effete mind" as a transcendental notion but if anyone can identify a reference that might suggest otherwise then please forward it. True, Peirce's statements on logical construction are not as clearly stated or as well-formed as Carnap.
 
What do you mean by "transcendental"? 
What do you mean by logical "construction"? Do you mean, like constructing a logical proof? Constructing a logical diagram? Are you talking about nature as constructing things logically? Considering the way you use words like "engineering," that's a real possibility.
 
>[Steven] Now the problem with categorization - to which you are predisposed - is that you introduce harder divisions than exist in fact.
 
If divisions exist at all, then divisions exist in fact. They can always be "Quined" or, really, "Peircified," afterward -- gradualized, fractalized, synechized, whatever. But I take the second "you" in your sentence, the "you" in "you introduce harder division than exist in fact," to be the general "you," meaning "one" or "a person," since you float any number of hard divisions into the discussion -- first-order a priori laws, second-order a posteriori principles, primitive of experience, marks, signs, etc.

I am predisposed to making structures of divisions which make a logical pattern that's not too monotonous, fluffy, and inquiry-obstructive (monisms, monochotomies), stark, chasmic, and boring (dichotomies), or hard to make work (trichotomies). Divisions with insufficient logical pattern don't interest me much and as a practical matter that means most of them. I salute the Dewey Decimal System for its practicality but it's not the kind of conception that I get excited about.
 
>[Steven] I am not denying epistemology - I am simply observing that it has a natural basis and I have a particular model that proposes how it is engineered in the world. This does not deny that there are things that can be apprehended that have no ontological status other than that of their apprehension (recall televisions and irrational numbers).
 
Televisions seem quite real and actual to me. Their images often correspond quite well to aspects of actual remote events.
 
As for irrational numbers, there's a world of difference between their apprehension and their apprehendability. This is kind of the issue, isn't it?
 
Do you think that nature engineers it to be the case that e^(pi*i ) = -1? Or that nature engineers it that there is no largest prime number? Do you think that nature engineers the distribution of primes and other classes of factorizable numbers? Now, I don't think that you really believe such things, -- though please say so clearly if in fact you do believe them -- but I'm highlighting the questions because I want to understand why they don't enter into the balance for you on the question of whether mathematics is "based" on nature, whatever such basis could possibly mean, -- a meaning about which I've tried repeatedly to get you to say something. Peirce places math before idioscopy on the grounds that idioscopy appeals to mathematical principles but mathematics does not appeal to idioscopic principles. He ranks them as "classes" of science because the kinds of observations needed in each are not afforded by the other. That's what Peirce said. He said them in his 1902 and 1903 Classifications of the Sciences. If you persist in basing your views on Peirce on a putative personal insight into his secret wishes, and don't _engage_ Peirce's stated views in argument, then your views on Peirce's private wishes must remain quite personal as well.
 
Factorizations: Nature's Engineering? Notice the odd mirror-like quasi-symmetry centered on 30.
12  
11
10  
9  
8            
7
6                  
5  
4                                      
3        
2                                  
1
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
 
>[Steven] So, I agree, meaning is one thing, basis is another - but meaning necessarily lies upon a natural construction from basis, a natural engineering - otherwise you advocate the supernatural.
 
You cherry-pick a pejorative opposite to nature. "Supernatural" means religious and mythic miracles at best, and ghosts, goblins, paranormality, and seedy-looking operations at worst.  Since you hold pan-psychical views, but have no apparent interest in claimed miracles or claimed paranormal phenomena, you wish to distinguish yourself from supernaturalists, but you're a bit hair-trigger in seeing them around you, in Scholastic Realists for instance, especially ones who don't even assert that God actually exists.
 
I shouldn't put it down ghost stories too much, Poe and Blackwood make beautiful tone poems of such things. However, the supernatural is not the only idea opposed to the idea of nature. There's natural vs. artificial. There's natural vs. forced. There's physical vs. mental. There's concrete vs. abstract. More recently a distinction gained currency between "natural sciences" (physical and chemical sciences) and "life sciences" (biological and human/social sciences).
 
Your use of words like "construction" and "engineering" borders on suggesting supernatural agencies. Yet let the question be, do you think nature engineers mathematics? Do you think that nature engineers the fact that pi  and e are transcendental numbers?
 
>[Steven] I don't disagree that Peirce had not eliminated his ghosts entirely in this matter and that his range of consideration is broad and open minded - he wrestled with it and made statements that apparently contradict. But when he was in his scientific mind, his purpose was naturalistic, constructive and sought to eliminate the supernatural.
 
You seem to think that Peirce's idea of thirdness is an idea about ghosts. Peirce regarded such an idea as self-refuting, the idea that one should restrict one's opinons to what one actually perceives, self-refuting because the idea itself relates to more than is actually in the field of momentary perception.
 
Peirce: CP 5.198 
 
66~~~
Let me point out to you the different opinions which we actually find men holding today-- perhaps not consistently, but thinking that they hold them -- upon this subject [of induction]. In the first place, we find men who maintain that no hypothesis ought to be admitted, even as a hypothesis, any further than its truth or its falsity is capable of being directly perceived. This, as well as I can make out, is what was in the mind of Auguste Comte, who is generally assumed to have first formulated this maxim. Of course, this maxim of abduction supposes that, as people say, we "are to believe only what we actually see"; and there are well-known writers, and writers of no little intellectual force, who maintain that it is unscientific to make predictions -- unscientific, therefore, to expect anything. One ought to restrict one's opinions to what one actually perceives. I need hardly say that that position cannot be consistently maintained. It refutes itself, for it is itself an opinion relating to more than is actually in the field of momentary perception.
~~~99
 
Now, when Peirce was discussing idioscopic questions, he sought idioscopic answers. When he discussed general questions about psycho-physical nature, he sought general answers in terms of psycho-physical nature. By your reasoning, his general discussions of phenomenology would have to be taken as evidence that he wanted to base math and everything else on philosophical phenomenological solutions. By your reasoning, his discussions of lattice theory would have to be taken as evidence that he sought to base absolutely everything on lattice-theoretical solutions. And so forth. Peirce appreciated and respected the differences between the subject matters of idioscopy and those of more general classes of science.  The divisions which he made are not just to "keep things apart" but instead so that the forest will not be missed for the trees.
 
>[Steven] His entire triadic, constructive, semeiotic model is most pragmatically interpreted in this way. If thirdness is to be interpreted as some supernatural phenomenon then this is where his confusion and tendency to dualism lay. My contention is merely that had he been able to resolve the conflict and identify a natural basis and construction that his writings (and esp. his suggestion that matter is effete mind) indicate that he was predisposed to follow it. Just as one might argue that Galileo was predisposed to appreciated the work of Newton.
 
It would be trivial, unless some interlocutor had actually called Galileo's reasonableness and intelligence into question, to argue that Galileo was predisposed to appreciate Newton's work just because Newton's work was so good. You say that you don't think that these questions should be personalized to questions of Peirce's having the "talent" to appreciate _your_ views. Yet you turn it all into a question of whether any given person is reasonable and intelligent enough to eventually appreciate something which it happens that you controversially claim, that there are natural solutions to everything including mathematics.
 
Once again you're asserting that Peirce, being reasonable and intelligent, is predisposed to naturalistic solutions to everything including mathematics. That claim depends on the far-from-established idea that truth consists in naturalistic solutions to everything.
 
And then, on top of that, you ascribe to Peirce a frustrated but still operative wish for naturalistic solutions, and you point to his identification of matter with effete mind, and ignore the breadth of that which he called idioscopy, embracing special-scientific questions both of the physical and of the psychical. You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.
 
>[Steven] You also appear to continue to associate physicalism and materialism - and, as previously noted, these are not at all the same. Physicalism allows for new discovery and proposals of the kind I have made, whereas materialism does not.
 
As I have not mentioned materialism, and as I have not suggested that physicalism forbids discoveries and proposals like yours, I don't know what you're talking about.
 
Best, Ben
 
>[Steven] To quote Carnap:
 
"This thesis [physicalism] does not refer to the laws known to us at present, but to those laws which hold in nature and which our knowledge can only more or les approximate. The thesis may therefore be understood as the hypothesis that in the future it will become possible to an ever greater extent to derive known extra-physical 
laws from known physical laws." [P883, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, in his response to Feigl on Physicalism]
 
Sincerely,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
 
On Jun 3, 2007, at 7:33 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
 
Steven, list,
 
What you've quoted is Peirce on the subject of that which he calls physical metaphysics in the course of a discussion in which he ranges more widely. There's nothing there about trying to construct everything on the basis of physical metaphysics. Insofar as the conceptions of freedom and destiny are developed in his psychical/religious metaphysics, he is then applying the conceptions in physical metaphysics. Peirce thinks that there are general, philosophical questions about physical nature and that they are worth discussing. (See the table below.) It just doesn't follow that, deep inside, he wished to base all the rest of philosophy on answers to questions about physical nature.
 
The isolate quote which you offer does not confirm but is merely compatible with your views of Peirce; it is also compatible with various views of Peirce contrary to your views of Peirce, including especially Peirce's views of himself as he persistently expressed them. You can't expect Peirce to be flying all his flags in every single sentence. 
 
The most that you can reasonably say is that you can see from such quotes how Peirce could have built his philosophy on his physical metaphysics if he had wished to do so. However, you have presented no evidence that he wished to do so at any time from 1866 to 1914. And there's plenty of evidence that he wished to do otherwise.
 
Peirce saw chance, law, and habit-taking, all three, operative in the concrete world, the place where practical consequences pre-eminently work themselves out. He saw mathematical and philosophical ideas as operative in the practical world. He had to look at it that way, otherwise they would have no practical meaning in his view. And meaning is one thing, basis is another.
 
Meaning is one thing, basis is another.  Yet, you could argue that, since the Pragmatic Maxim says that one's conception of an object consists entirely in one's conception of the object's conceivable practically relevant consequences, Peirce's conception of the world must, by his Maxim, consist ultimately in a conception of the concrete world (a world which he regarded as a psycho-physical world of general individuals which, by generality and continuity, have extension, motion, and duration, not merely a purely physical world of singular pointlike individuals). That argument, if it stands up, shows Peirce having difficulty avoiding a one-sided basis in -- not naturalistic, technically, but let's say psycho-physicalist -- conceptions. Peirce did wish to have at least one foot in the concrete psycho-physical world. But the argument would not show that he wished to have "all three" feet in the concrete psycho-physical world. Instead, for instance, he discussed three universes of experience -- the universe of Platonic ideas, the universe of brute events, and the universe of habit-taking. What would be the problem with a more entirely concrete psycho-physicalist solution?
 
Now, the problem of a concrete psycho-physicalist solution is not just that it may not be to one's taste. A further problem is, what if it has no practical meaning?  One would have to think that maybe there's something wrong with it after all.
 
Now, what, in pragmatic clarity, it would mean to base generals, universals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
 
Would it be simply something that one says in philosophy?
 
Would it have any consequences in research outside philosophy?
 
Do you see a path to where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects?
 
Or do you hold that mathematical studies should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
 
Are you uncertain about the pragmatic meaning of basing generals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?  For my part, I think it's okay to be uncertain about it. Anyway I myself am uncertain on the question of whether nature will be shown to offer answers to highly abstract mathematical questions.  (I wouldn't in that case see mathematics as based monolithically on nature; instead I would be inclined to see a snake eating its own tail; I've talked in the past about seeing various things as basic in various terms -- _ordo cognoscendi_, _ordo essendi_ etc.)
 
Your last extensive discussion of the dualism into which you see Peirce continually falling was quite a while ago. Could you restate the dualism itself and point to where you see him falling into it?
 
II. Philosophy, cenoscopy.  About positive phenomena in general (not special classes) as available to anybody in any waking moment. Does not use special experiences or experiments in order to settle questions. A. Phenomenology (a.k.a. phaneroscopy)
(includes study of the CATEGORIES firstness, secondness, thirdness).
B. Normative Science.
  i. Esthetics (study of the _admirable_;
Peirce reserved the spelling "aesthetics" for the more particular study of artistic beauty). 		 ii. Ethics. iii. Logic / Semiotics. 
 1. Speculative Grammar (includes SIGN CLASSIFICATION).
 2. Critic (a.k.a. Logic Proper, includes study of modes of inference: ABDUCTION, DEDUCTION, INDUCTION).
 3. Methodeutic (a.k.a. Rhetoric, includes study of scientific method and is a locus of the PRAGMATIC MAXIM).
C. Metaphysics.
i. Ontology or General. ii. Psychical or Religious.
 1. God.
 2. freedom (& destiny).
 3. immortality.		 iii. Physical (space, time, matter, etc.).
 
Best, Ben
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 12:57 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs
 
Dear Ben,
 
So perhaps we should take a step back and look at the disagreement here - because CP Vol 6, it seems to me, so clearly demonstrates the pursuit of a naturalistic foundation that there is obviously some other misunderstanding between us.
 
It really does not matter, for example, that Peirce proposes "Objective Idealism" or "Tychistic Idealism" and "effete mind" [$4 CP6.24] as the basis of his naturalistic view, he is still looking for a physical basis of a natural construction. He attempted to resolve the problem by arguing that matter is "effete mind" - but he never did more than hint at how this was a basis for a construction of the world.
 
He explores this, in particular, in the article "Man's Glassy Essence" CP6.265 and CP 6.266.
 
"Thus we see that the idealist has no need to dread a mechanical theory of life. On the contrary, such a theory, fully developed, is bound to call in tychistic idealism as its indispensable adjunct." CP. 265
 
This confirms two of my claims about Peirce. First, that he never actually escaped dualism (all his paths seem to lead him, reluctantly, back there), second that, despite this, he was predisposed to, and actively sought, a naturalistic and constructive solution.
 
With respect,
Steven
 
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
 
On May 31, 2007, at 7:32 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
 
Steven, list,
 
I can certainly understand tending to read Peirce's views as generally similar to one's own through identifying strongly with some of his views. I recall having done that a few years ago here on peirce-l, I wish I could remember on what issue. The ruin of my old hard drive makes it hard for me to dig it up.
 
I wasn't saying that you were being self-righteous, I was saying that you weren't providing an argument for why, beyond Peirce's deserving "credit," Peirce should be considered to have been predisposed to naturalistic views and solutions. In a persistent absence of an argument, the "default setting" to naturalistic views for Peirce will come across as a presumption which is contrary to extensive textual evidence and which the presumer introduces into the discussion, so of course it becomes a "sez you" kind of thing.
 
Anyway, you need to provide some textual evidence for the idea that it was because of failure and frustration in the effort to find natural solutions, that Peirce kept logic in philosophy, kept both philosophy and mathematics outside of the natural sciences, became a Scholastic Realist at an early time, and became eventually a modal realist.
 
After all, Peirce said that nature is likely responsible for abductive-inferential instincts in us. So Peirce evidently saw a role for special-scientific studies in understanding the character of abductive inference in humans. Yet that, and his vew that generals are operative in nature, are quite consistent with his view that general questions belong to a general level of which the study does not appeal to special experiences in order to settle questions. I mean, he talks often enough about how special experiences don't settle questions of philosophy or mathematics. If there's something tending to the contrary in Vol. 6 of the Collected Papers on natural foundations which you mention, please do quote it.
 
For instance, it's quite arguable and, I think, correct to say, that Quine was not a nominalist but very much a would-be, "wannabe" nominalist. For instance, he made very clear that the reason that he was not a nominalist was that he took seriously the ontological commitments made in mathematical existence statements about abstract nonlinguistic objects. (I bring up nominalism again mainly in order to use Quine as example, and not in order to argue that your naturalistic views are similar to nominalism.)
 
Quine's is a anti-nominalism wistful for nominalism. However, there's nothing wistful about Peirce's opposition to naturalistic solutions for logical, philosophical, and mathematical questions.
 
Questions about Peirce's views aside, I can see identifying mathematics generally with nature in at least three speculative ways. (1) If the physicist Mark Tegmark is right, then the study of mathematics is equivalent to the study of the "Omniverse" at its broadest level, Level IV. (2) If one can consider a phase in which the universe is entirely "quantum" and not even the least bit quasi-classical, a universe entirely in potentiality, then perhaps the most abstract and theoretical study of the universe in that phase is equivalent to the study of mathematics. (3) If the Hilbert-Polya conjecture about Riemann's Hypothesis is correct, then maybe it will lead to ways to gain information about abstract mathematical structures from nature. What is your path to a view where nature answers questions about mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very specially arrange for themselves to be determined and influenced by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects? Or do you hold that mathematics should change in order to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
 
Best, Ben
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven Ericsson-Zenith"
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum"
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 2:43 AM
Subject: [peirce-l] RE: Inquiry and the categories, was, RE: resources on Existential Graphs
 
Dear Ben,
 
Additional note.
 
Scholastic Realism, BTW, is defined by Peirce to mean that "general principles are really operative in nature." CP 5.101. I do not take this to imply that these general principles are without a natural basis.
 
Naturalistic solutions are not nominalist, as far as I am concerned. Materialism is nominalist, but natural physicalism is not. This goes back to an earlier discussion with Gary Richmond. Materialism assumes we know all the essential things of the world, but constructive physicalism (defined by the logical positivists) does not make that assumption - and this position is in broad terms consistent both with my approach - and that pursued by Peirce.
 
I think it is a mistake to argue in the case of both Peirce and Carnap that their preoccupation with matters of a transcendental nature, matters of representation, actually made them transcendentalists - there is clear evidence in their writings that they fully expected their epistemological considerations to be founded upon a natural basis that would ultimately be accessible to the exact sciences. More specifically, they expected experience and inference - the basis of anthropogenic knowledge in their models - to ultimately have a natural explanation.
 
In that light I am reminded by a brief perusal of Volume 6 of the Collected Papers, in which Peirce explores natural foundations, of just why I have taken the stance that I have on this matter.
 
With respect,
 
Steven
 
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
 
On May 29, 2007, at 7:08 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
 
Dear Ben,
 
Ok, so I take the dualist tendency in Peirce to be merely be frustration because he could not identify a naturalistic solution and that such dualism is inevitably eliminated when a natural solution is identified. But I see that dualism as being reluctantly accepted by Peirce. As I said, "he wrestled with it."
 
I don't think I am being as self-righteous as you suggest. There is an affinity, and that comes from the fact that Peirce was a major early influence on my work. Is it really not the case that Peirce seeks to make logic and inference questions of natural science? This seems to me to be, perhaps, the view of philosophers but it does not seem to me to be consistent with the facts of his inquiry.
 
With respect,
Steven
 
On May 29, 2007, at 4:50 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
 
Steven,
 
To the contrary, you said,
 
"I then argue that had he found such a solution he would have pursued it vigorously and necessarily have diverged from his views - and in particular, he would have abandoned the dualist tendencies you describe. IOW, he was predisposed to throw out philosophy in favor of science - perhaps I am giving Peirce more credit than he is due, but I think not."
 
Abandon his "dualist" tendencies to Scholastic Realism and modal realism? And altogether throw out philosophy in favor of science? Make logic and inference into questions of natural science? Those are _your_ views. And whether one calls them "your" views or "naturalistic" views, your argument is essentially that, since they're right, Peirce would have arrived at some form of them. Well, sure, if they're right, than Peirce would have eventually arrived at some form of them. But again, it's just not much of an argument.
 
Best, Ben
 
----- Original Message -----
 
Dear Ben,
 
I did not say that Peirce was predisposed to *my views* - I said that Peirce was predisposed to natural solutions, which I take to be a much broader category.
 
With respect,
Steven
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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 5 Jun 2007 01:17
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Ben,

I did answer your questions, but perhaps too tersely.

When I speak of "nature" I refer to that which arises from primitive  
aspects of the world - I take energy-mass, space-time, and the  
primitive of experience to be those primitive aspects. The general  
principles that shape the world, and are operative in it, include  
gravity, the engineering of sentience, and natural selection.

When I speak of "constructive" I am referring to natural construction  
of the world AND to our approximation of that construction in our  
constructive scientific knowledge. When I refer to "naturalistic  
solutions" I am referring to the rejection of the supernatural  
(anything unfounded in natural solutions), our historical, perhaps  
inevitable, refinement of that approximation so that it better  
approximate the true workings of nature.

I have already indicated that in my view epistemology has a natural  
basis - and, in particular, that anthorpogenic knowledge is the  
product of the engineering of sentience. Included in that category is  
philosophy and mathematics.

In terms of apprehension I have made reference to those things that  
can be known, but do not have ontological status in the world beyond  
their apprehension - and I deliberately refer to televisions and  
irrational numbers as examples of this. Televisions, incidently, are  
mere assemblies of parts apprehended as "televisions" - a television  
is a thing that can be "known" (apprehended) but that does not exist  
in the world. The same is true of irrational numbers and other  
infinities.

This observation I extend to all relations, relations are things that  
can be known, but they are not things that exist in the world. For me  
they are products of the engineering of sentience - manifest in the  
mechanics of biophysics (according to my model). Hence, our  
development of mathematics is founded upon this engineering. This  
view could, perhaps, be called the view of strict ontological  
independence - that is, things that have ontological status are  
strictly independent and relations are subjects of apprehension alone.

As to the properties of mathematics - such as the distribution of  
primes you mention - these are valuable and interesting self  
indulgences whose exploration is part and parcel of our refinement of  
our apprehension of the world and the development of our  
understanding of nature through the biophysical process that is  
semeiosis.

I think you are confused about the definition of idioscopy - you  
appear to be giving it some poetic properties Peirce did not intend.

Sincerely,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

> ...

> Bolding the word "natural" doesn't clarify it. At this point I'm  
> unsure what you mean by "natural" and what you mean by basing  
> things on "naturalistic solutions."   I've asked you the following  
> questions, most of them twice, and now a third time --
> - What, in pragmatic clarity,would it mean to base generals,  
> universals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
> -- Would it be simply something that one says in philosophy? Would  
> it have any consequences in research outside philosophy?
> -- Do you see a path to where nature answers questions about  
> mathematics other than though human brains or the like which very  
> specially arrange for - themselves to be determined and influenced  
> by considerations about highly abstract nonlinguistic objects?
> -- Or do you hold that mathematical studies should change in order  
> to be more pertinent to natural questions in the first place?
> -- Are you uncertain about the pragmatic meaning of basing  
> generals, mathematics, etc., on naturalistic solutions?
>
> ...

>
> Now, when Peirce was discussing idioscopic questions, he sought  
> idioscopic answers. When he discussed general questions about  
> psycho-physical nature, he sought general answers in terms of  
> psycho-physical nature. By your reasoning, his general discussions  
> of phenomenology would have to be taken as evidence that he wanted  
> to base math and everything else on philosophical phenomenological  
> solutions.

> ...

> you point to his identification of matter with effete mind, and  
> ignore the breadth of that which he called idioscopy, embracing  
> special-scientific questions both of the physical and of the  
> psychical. You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating  
> in mind.
>

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 5 Jun 2007 02:26
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Additional note.

> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>
>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.

Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."

I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized  
basis of mind.

With respect,
Steven

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 5 Jun 2007 03:08
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Ben, list,

This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as  
no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:

"Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's  
philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's  
ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character  
is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this  
opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both  
naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in  
mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a  
philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews  
speculation and system-building. Transcendentalism, on the other  
hand, discounts logical analysis in favor of metaphysical  
construction, embracing both speculation and architectonic. Peirce  
the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the  
transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who  
was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to  
intuitionism. Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger  
tendency, which guided him in his researches in formal logic,  
semiotic, scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics,  
while the weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on  
cosmology, ethics, and theology." (20)"

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm

So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed  
here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or  
transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he  
could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also  
note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

> Additional note.
>
>
>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>
>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.
>
>
> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>
> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized  
> basis of mind.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Gary Richmond | 7 Jun 2007 00:34
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Steven, Ben, list,

Immediately following the quotation from the EP Introduction giving Goudge's take on Peirce is this remark:
Goudge has indeed uncovered what may appear [emphasis in the print edition but not in the online version GR] to be two Peirces, but the finding of most recent scholarship is that the tension is not as great as he thought. Peirce's philosophy is broad and subtle and appears to be able to accommodate results that would be incompatible in narrower systems of thought. It is not possible here to argue for the coherence of the various claims and doctrines that Goudge and others have found to be in conflict. The best that can be done is to outline the basic architecture of Peirce's philosophy and to give a glimpse of its overall unity[emphasis added by GR].
It seems to me that many if not most (although certainly not all) contemporary Peirce scholars would agree with Nathan Houser's assessment above and have moved beyond Goudge's notion of "two Peirces" to a sense of the unity of his work, a point which I believe Joe Ransdell has also made here in an historical context. Indeed one could provide a rather lengthy list of contemporary scholars who have argued explicitly for that unity and integrity and whole books have been written based on that assumption, for example, Kelly Parker's The Continuity of Peirce's Thought..

And even some of Goudge's generation of scholars argued the "overall unity" of Peirce's work, especially as more of it became available to them. So, for example, in a Festschrift to Goudge titled Pragmatism and Purpose: Essays Presented to Thomas A. Goudge the lead article by David Savan is titled "The Unity of Peirce's Thought" and several other articles there assume this unified position.

It would seem to me helpful to this discussion if you would more fully answer Ben Udell's rather good questions put to you, his own position in this matter having been supported with textual material from a number of Peirce documents at various periods of his scientific and philosophical work ('philosophical' being actually redundant as Peirce considers philosophy to be cenoscopic science, a point Ben never tires of reminding the list of--and apparently for good reason!).

Best,

Gary R.


Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
Dear Ben, list,

This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as  no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:

"Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's  philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's  ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character  is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this  opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both  naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in  mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a  philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews  speculation and system-building. Transcendentalism, on the other  hand, discounts logical analysis in favor of metaphysical  construction, embracing both speculation and architectonic. Peirce  the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the  transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who  was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to  intuitionism. Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger  tendency, which guided him in his researches in formal logic,  semiotic, scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics,  while the weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on  cosmology, ethics, and theology." (20)"

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm

So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed  here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or  transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he  could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also  note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.

With respect,
Steven


--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info



On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

Additional note.


On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.


Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."

I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized  basis of mind.

With respect,
Steven


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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 7 Jun 2007 02:11
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.


Ben clearly has more time available for this than I (and probably a  
digital version of the CP). And I have answered his questions. I also  
provided the reference to the full EP quote in which the remarks you  
quote appear.

In any case, I don't think the duality is in dispute - I think that  
among contemporary scholars the issue is rather whether that  
recognized duality constitutes a single coherent model and that if it  
does just how it does so - independently I do not see how that can be  
argued unless there is a later text of which I am unaware that does  
the synthesis that Soren claims - to I tend to support Goudge (with  
the qualification that I need to research it further).

Whatever the case, I see little to support Ben's argument that Peirce  
was not predisposed to naturalistic solutions - on the contrary, I  
see only confirmation that, indeed, he was. Savan is not arguing  
Ben's position - the dispute is rather over the unity of Peirce's two  
sides.

To show that Peirce presented a consistent unified theory requires  
that either you acknowledge that Peirce accepted the duality or that  
he truly saw a naturalist basis for epistemology (his  
"transcendental" considerations) - a claim that he was a  
transcendentalist and not predisposed to naturalistic solutions does  
not hold water.

With respect,
Steven

On Jun 6, 2007, at 3:34 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:

> Steven, Ben, list,
>
> Immediately following the quotation from the EP Introduction giving  
> Goudge's take on Peirce is this remark:
>> Goudge has indeed uncovered what may appear [emphasis in the print  
>> edition but not in the online version GR] to be two Peirces, but  
>> the finding of most recent scholarship is that the tension is not  
>> as great as he thought. Peirce's philosophy is broad and subtle  
>> and appears to be able to accommodate results that would be  
>> incompatible in narrower systems of thought. It is not possible  
>> here to argue for the coherence of the various claims and  
>> doctrines that Goudge and others have found to be in conflict. The  
>> best that can be done is to outline the basic architecture of  
>> Peirce's philosophy and to give a glimpse of its overall unity 
>> [emphasis added by GR].
> It seems to me that many if not most (although certainly not all)  
> contemporary Peirce scholars would agree with Nathan Houser's  
> assessment above and have moved beyond Goudge's notion of "two  
> Peirces" to a sense of the unity of his work, a point which I  
> believe Joe Ransdell has also made here in an historical context.  
> Indeed one could provide a rather lengthy list of contemporary  
> scholars who have argued explicitly for that unity and integrity  
> and whole books have been written based on that assumption, for  
> example, Kelly Parker's The Continuity of Peirce's Thought..
>
> And even some of Goudge's generation of scholars argued the  
> "overall unity" of Peirce's work, especially as more of it became  
> available to them. So, for example, in a Festschrift to Goudge  
> titled Pragmatism and Purpose: Essays Presented to Thomas A. Goudge  
> the lead article by David Savan is titled "The Unity of Peirce's  
> Thought" and several other articles there assume this unified  
> position.
>
> It would seem to me helpful to this discussion if you would more  
> fully answer Ben Udell's rather good questions put to you, his own  
> position in this matter having been supported with textual material  
> from a number of Peirce documents at various periods of his  
> scientific and philosophical work ('philosophical' being actually  
> redundant as Peirce considers philosophy to be cenoscopic science,  
> a point Ben never tires of reminding the list of--and apparently  
> for good reason!).
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R.
>
>
> Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>> Dear Ben, list,
>>
>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come  
>> as  no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available  
>> online:
>>
>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of  
>> Peirce's  philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued  
>> that "Peirce's  ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose  
>> opposite character  is a reflection of a deep conflict in his  
>> thinking" and that this  opposition is the result of his  
>> conflicting commitment to both  naturalism and transcendentalism.  
>> (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in  mind scientific philosophy  
>> more or less in the positivist sense, a  philosophy that puts  
>> logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews  speculation and system- 
>> building. Transcendentalism, on the other  hand, discounts logical  
>> analysis in favor of metaphysical  construction, embracing both  
>> speculation and architectonic. Peirce  the naturalist tended to  
>> nominalism, while Peirce the  transcendentalist tended to realism.  
>> It was Peirce the naturalist who  was the pragmatist, while Peirce  
>> the transcendentalist tended to  intuitionism. Goudge finds that  
>> Peirce's naturalism was the stronger  tendency, which guided him  
>> in his researches in formal logic,  semiotic, scientific method,  
>> phenomenology, and critical metaphysics,  while the weaker  
>> transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on  cosmology,  
>> ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>
>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>
>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case  
>> attributed  here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or   
>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because  
>> he  could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I  
>> also  note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical  
>> positivism.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
>> http://iase.info
>> http://senses.info
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>
>>> Additional note.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in  
>>>>> mind.
>>>
>>>
>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>
>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the  
>>> uncharacterized  basis of mind.
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber garyrichmond <at> rcn.com
>>
> ---
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Søren Brier | 6 Jun 2007 10:20
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SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Steven

In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss the
fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level that he
made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique contribution of
Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much contrary
to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole reason of my aspiration to
become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis into
our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.

Venlig hilsen/best wishes
Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710

Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
step=4
Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/cyber.htm

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org] 
Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE:
Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Ben, list,

This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as no
surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:

"Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's ideas
fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character is a
reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this opposition is
the result of his conflicting commitment to both naturalism and
transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in mind scientific
philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a philosophy that puts
logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews speculation and system-building.
Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in favor of
metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and architectonic.
Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who was
the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to intuitionism.
Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency, which
guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, scientific method,
phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while the weaker transcendentalism
"is most apparent in his views on cosmology, ethics, and theology." (20)"

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm

So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed here to
Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or transcendentalism in his
writing but that this was only because he could not satisfy his strong
predisposition to naturalism. I also note that Goudge also observes the
relation to logical positivism.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

> Additional note.
>
>
>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>
>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in mind.
>
>
> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>
> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized 
> basis of mind.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Clark Goble | 7 Jun 2007 23:44

Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.


On Jun 6, 2007, at 2:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

Dear Steven

In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss the
fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level that he
made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique contribution of
Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much contrary
to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole reason of my aspiration to
become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis into
our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.  I'd argue that even if Peirce's later conception of the sign isn't exactly like one finds in deconstruction it is very close.  So his breaking up of the object into the dynamic and immediate object with a "hint" as index between the two goes a long way towards that notion of transcendence.

Having said that I've gotten to the point where the word "postmodernism" makes me cringe.  Primarily because it says so much that it, in effect, says far too little.  That is it encompasses so many incompatible movements not to mention all the misreadings of these figures and movements that it confuses more than it illuminates.

Certainly Peirce's conception of the sign, even in his early work, avoids some of the mistakes the structuralists, follow Saussure, encountered.  In that sense it can be seen as an "anticipation" (if that's the right word) of post-structuralism.  Likewise his approach to belief and reaching points of stability can be seen as similar to the Continental appropriation of Nietzsche and the selection of greater forces as applied to epistemological problems.

None of this is to reduce Peirce to a Continental philosopher.  The differing focus, if nothing else, would prevent that.  Peirce's focus is that of a physicist and logician whereas many (most?) Continental figures are dealing with the spectres of Marx and seem quite focused on politics and the social.  That's not to say Peirce doesn't discuss such matters (and they've been the topic of threads here).  Just that the focus and emphasis seems quite different.

Regarding the "two Peirces" or Peirce against himself.  I think sometimes it is justified.  Peirce worked out a lot of ideas and the collections we have are sometimes him in the midsts of that working things out.  Sometimes he just doesn't notice problems.  (This might be the case with early treatments of the pragmatic maxim and attempting to relate it to his scholastic realism)  Often though the latter work has already resolved these issues or contradictions.  So while one can quote Peirce against himself, I think one has to always consider his latter thought as trumping his early or middle thought.  And of course one has to deal with the arguments or at least hypothetic structures he puts forth.  There's a danger that Peirce becomes treated not as a philosopher but as a prophet whose decrees are examined from the CP the way an Evangelical proof-texter searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as he saw himself, one engaged in inquiry but rather as a kind of quasi-law giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve of that use of him.

Clark
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Gary Richmond | 8 Jun 2007 02:56
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Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Søren,

I fully concur with the sentiment of your comment that

Søren Brier wrote:
to have this understanding of Peirce's work [that he had a predisposition to "naturalism" in the sense of the logical positivists]is to miss the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view.
And I would also fully agree with you that Peirce brought about a "new synthesis," as you phrased it, and that it is most worthy philosophical/scientific work to take that as far as one can in our own time in the interest of resolving the destructive dualism yet so prevalent. You wrote:
[SB]This is the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.
But this can be seen--although I know it certainly is not--as some sort of 'hero-worship' of Peirce, or some such thing as Clark Goble seems to suggest in writing:
[CG] There's a danger that Peirce becomes treated not as a philosopher but as a prophet whose decrees are examined from the CP the way an Evangelical proof-texter searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as he saw himself, one engaged in inquiry but rather as a kind of quasi-law giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve of that use of him
Of course Peirce never did any such thing himself in regard to other thinkers (although it seems clear to me that he learned well, critiqued, then synthesized the thought of all the strongest thinkers down even to those of his own time); and as for his antipathy to uncritical thinking about any ones work, and most especially his own, there has probably been no one who expressed this more clearly and forcefully (Nietzsche possibly rivaling him in this single matter), while he was his own severest and best critic (not to mention that hardly anyone even to this day can claim to have fully grasped the import of his work, nor in his own lifetime--although even then there were numerous "thieves of Peirce" (some of whom were able to profit richly from his insights. [ [BTW, I must admit that "postmodern" tends to make me cringe also as is its effect on Clark. Perhaps it finally means so many--too many--different (and sometimes incompatible) things to so many individuals and schools of thought: it seems vague in the worst sense of being nearly meaningless (except in the literal sense of following the 'modern').] I look forward to reading your forthcoming book as I benefited from so many of your (and other contributors) articles in CYBERNETICS & HUMAN KNOWING: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics. Btw, when I last visited cyber-semiotics there was talk of a possible third order cybernetics, something which made great good sense to me at the time as a kind of meta-reflection on second order cybernetics. Has there been any progress in that direction? Best, Gary Richmond City University of New York

Clark Goble wrote:

On Jun 6, 2007, at 2:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

Dear Steven

In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss the
fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level that he
made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique contribution of
Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much contrary
to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole reason of my aspiration to
become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis into
our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.  I'd argue that even if Peirce's later conception of the sign isn't exactly like one finds in deconstruction it is very close.  So his breaking up of the object into the dynamic and immediate object with a "hint" as index between the two goes a long way towards that notion of transcendence.

Having said that I've gotten to the point where the word "postmodernism" makes me cringe.  Primarily because it says so much that it, in effect, says far too little.  That is it encompasses so many incompatible movements not to mention all the misreadings of these figures and movements that it confuses more than it illuminates.

Certainly Peirce's conception of the sign, even in his early work, avoids some of the mistakes the structuralists, follow Saussure, encountered.  In that sense it can be seen as an "anticipation" (if that's the right word) of post-structuralism.  Likewise his approach to belief and reaching points of stability can be seen as similar to the Continental appropriation of Nietzsche and the selection of greater forces as applied to epistemological problems.

None of this is to reduce Peirce to a Continental philosopher.  The differing focus, if nothing else, would prevent that.  Peirce's focus is that of a physicist and logician whereas many (most?) Continental figures are dealing with the spectres of Marx and seem quite focused on politics and the social.  That's not to say Peirce doesn't discuss such matters (and they've been the topic of threads here).  Just that the focus and emphasis seems quite different.

Regarding the "two Peirces" or Peirce against himself.  I think sometimes it is justified.  Peirce worked out a lot of ideas and the collections we have are sometimes him in the midsts of that working things out.  Sometimes he just doesn't notice problems.  (This might be the case with early treatments of the pragmatic maxim and attempting to relate it to his scholastic realism)  Often though the latter work has already resolved these issues or contradictions.  So while one can quote Peirce against himself, I think one has to always consider his latter thought as trumping his early or middle thought.  And of course one has to deal with the arguments or at least hypothetic structures he puts forth.  There's a danger that Peirce becomes treated not as a philosopher but as a prophet whose decrees are examined from the CP the way an Evangelical proof-texter searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as he saw himself, one engaged in inquiry but rather as a kind of quasi-law giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve of that use of him.

Clark
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Søren Brier | 8 Jun 2007 23:15
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SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Gary

I always admire the present philosopher or transdisciplinarian I am working
with. Usually until I get to the bottom of their theory and develop a good
understanding of it. Then you see what is missing . I have done this with
Konrad Lorenz, Bateson, Maturana and Varela, Luhmann and Spencer Brown (Next
issue of CHK). When I find theory faults and shortcomings still admire them
and try to use all the good thing they have made in a productive way. You
will see that in my book when I have finished the proofing. But I admit that
presently Peirce is the one that I admire most. I  am working towards a
post-modern and scientific understand of his synthesis. I am comparing him
and Luhmann, and I try to put them together in that framework I call
Cybersemiotics.

Thanks for the nice words on CHK.  We are still opening more and more for
the dialogue between cybernetics information science and semiotics. As we
speak we are planning to make an issue on the existential graphs. I invite
you all to participate.

Venlig hilsen/best wishes
Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710

Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
step=4
Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/cyber.htm

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Gary Richmond [mailto:garyrichmond <at> rcn.com] 
Sendt: 8. juni 2007 02:57
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Søren, 

I fully concur with the sentiment of your comment that 

Søren Brier wrote:

	to have this understanding of Peirce's work [that he had a
predisposition to "naturalism" in the sense of the logical positivists]is to
miss the 
	fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level
that he
	made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique
contribution of
	Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much
contrary
	to Peirce's own declared view. 

And I would also fully agree with you that Peirce brought about a "new
synthesis," as you phrased it, and that it is most worthy
philosophical/scientific work to take that as far as one can in our own time
in the interest of resolving the destructive dualism yet so prevalent. You
wrote:

	[SB]This is the sole reason of my aspiration to
	become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis
into
	our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.

But this can be seen--although I know it certainly is not--as some sort of
'hero-worship' of Peirce, or some such thing as Clark Goble seems to suggest
in writing: 

	[CG] There's a danger that Peirce becomes treated not as a
philosopher but
	as a prophet whose decrees are examined from the CP the way an
	Evangelical proof-texter searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as
he
	saw himself, one engaged in inquiry but rather as a kind of
quasi-law
	giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve of that use of him

Of course Peirce never did any such thing himself in regard to other
thinkers (although it seems clear to me that he learned well, critiqued,
then synthesized the thought of all the strongest thinkers down even to
those of his own time); and as for his antipathy to uncritical thinking
about any ones work, and most especially his own, there has probably been no
one who expressed this more clearly and forcefully (Nietzsche possibly
rivaling him in this single matter), while he was his own severest and best
critic (not to mention that hardly anyone even to this day can claim to have
fully grasped the import of his work, nor in his own lifetime--although even
then there were numerous "thieves of Peirce" (some of whom were able to
profit richly from his insights. [ [BTW, I must admit that "postmodern"
tends to make me cringe also as is its effect on Clark. Perhaps it finally
means so many--too many--different (and sometimes incompatible) things to so
many individuals and schools of thought: it seems vague in the worst sense
of being nearly meaningless (except in the literal sense of following the
'modern').] I look forward to reading your forthcoming book as I benefited
from so many of your (and other contributors) articles in CYBERNETICS &
HUMAN KNOWING: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics. Btw,
when I last visited cyber-semiotics there was talk of a possible third order
cybernetics, something which made great good sense to me at the time as a
kind of meta-reflection on second order cybernetics. Has there been any
progress in that direction? Best, Gary Richmond City University of New York 

Clark Goble wrote:

	On Jun 6, 2007, at 2:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

		Dear Steven

		In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is
to miss the
		fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a
new level that he
		made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique
contribution of
		Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very
much contrary
		to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole reason of my
aspiration to
		become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new
synthesis into
		our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.

	I think there's a lot of truth in this.  I'd argue that even if
Peirce's later conception of the sign isn't exactly like one finds in
deconstruction it is very close.  So his breaking up of the object into the
dynamic and immediate object with a "hint" as index between the two goes a
long way towards that notion of transcendence.

	Having said that I've gotten to the point where the word
"postmodernism" makes me cringe.  Primarily because it says so much that it,
in effect, says far too little.  That is it encompasses so many incompatible
movements not to mention all the misreadings of these figures and movements
that it confuses more than it illuminates.

	Certainly Peirce's conception of the sign, even in his early work,
avoids some of the mistakes the structuralists, follow Saussure,
encountered.  In that sense it can be seen as an "anticipation" (if that's
the right word) of post-structuralism.  Likewise his approach to belief and
reaching points of stability can be seen as similar to the Continental
appropriation of Nietzsche and the selection of greater forces as applied to
epistemological problems.

	None of this is to reduce Peirce to a Continental philosopher.  The
differing focus, if nothing else, would prevent that.  Peirce's focus is
that of a physicist and logician whereas many (most?) Continental figures
are dealing with the spectres of Marx and seem quite focused on politics and
the social.  That's not to say Peirce doesn't discuss such matters (and
they've been the topic of threads here).  Just that the focus and emphasis
seems quite different.

	Regarding the "two Peirces" or Peirce against himself.  I think
sometimes it is justified.  Peirce worked out a lot of ideas and the
collections we have are sometimes him in the midsts of that working things
out.  Sometimes he just doesn't notice problems.  (This might be the case
with early treatments of the pragmatic maxim and attempting to relate it to
his scholastic realism)  Often though the latter work has already resolved
these issues or contradictions.  So while one can quote Peirce against
himself, I think one has to always consider his latter thought as trumping
his early or middle thought.  And of course one has to deal with the
arguments or at least hypothetic structures he puts forth.  There's a danger
that Peirce becomes treated not as a philosopher but as a prophet whose
decrees are examined from the CP the way an Evangelical proof-texter
searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as he saw himself, one engaged in
inquiry but rather as a kind of quasi-law giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve
of that use of him.

	Clark
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Gary Richmond | 9 Jun 2007 01:36
Favicon

Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Søren Brier wrote:

>I always admire the present philosopher or transdisciplinarian I am working
>with. Usually until I get to the bottom of their theory and develop a good
>understanding of it. Then you see what is missing . I have done this with
>Konrad Lorenz, Bateson, Maturana and Varela, Luhmann and Spencer Brown (Next
>issue of CHK). When I find theory faults and shortcomings still admire them
>and try to use all the good thing they have made in a productive way. You
>will see that in my book when I have finished the proofing. 
>
Yet another reason to want to read it. Certainly I agree with your (and 
this seems exactly to be Peirce's approach as well) that first one 
admires the individual's work which strikes one as important, next 
studies in order to learn it well, critiques it in the light of, for 
example, other strong work which one knows well, then finally attempts 
to bring all that reflection to a deeper synthesis. This seems to be 
your approach with Peirce in relation to Luhmann as you wrote:

>[SB}But I admit that presently Peirce is the one that I admire most. I  am working towards a
>post-modern and scientific understand of his synthesis. I am comparing him
>and Luhmann, and I try to put them together in that framework I call
>Cybersemiotics.
>  
>
I'll look forward to reading the fruits of that synthesis appearing in 
your on-going work.

>Thanks for the nice words on CHK.  We are still opening more and more for
>the dialogue between cybernetics information science and semiotics. As we
>speak we are planning to make an issue on the existential graphs. I invite
>you all to participate.
>  
>
I will extend this invitation as well to the ICCS and ICOS folk, if I 
may. Joe Ransdell recently gave a link to Frithjof Dau's extraordinary 
study of EGs and I am sure that he, for one, would be most keenly  
interested in possibly contributing to the EG issue.

Best,

Gary Richmond

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John Welch | 11 Jun 2007 05:32
Picon

Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75

(As if we haven't already read it...)

NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/obituaries/11rorty.html?hp

June 11, 2007
Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75
By PATRICIA COHEN

Richard Rorty, whose inventive work on philosophy, politics, literary theory
and more made him one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers,
died Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 75.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Mary
Varney Rorty.

Raised in a home where “The Case for Leon Trotsky” was viewed with the same
reverence as the Bible might be elsewhere, Mr. Rorty pondered the nature of
reality as well as its everyday struggles. “At 12, I knew that the point of
being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice,” he wrote in
an autobiographical sketch.

Russell A. Berman, the chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature
at Stanford University, who worked with Mr. Rorty for more than a decade,
said, “He rescued philosophy from its analytic constraints” and returned it
“to core concerns of how we as a people, a country and humanity live in a
political community.”

Mr. Rorty’s enormous body of work, which ranged from academic tomes to
magazine and newspaper articles, provoked fervent praise, hostility and
confusion. But no matter what even his severest critics thought of it, they
could not ignore it. When his 1979 book “Philosophy and the Mirror of
 Nature” came out, it upended conventional views about the very purpose and
goals of philosophy. The widespread notion that the philosopher’s primary
duty was to figure out what we can and cannot know was poppycock, Mr. Rorty
argued. Human beings should focus on what they do to cope with daily life
and not on what they discover by theorizing.

To accomplish this, he relied primarily on the only authentic American
philosophy, pragmatism, which was developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce,
William James and others more than 100 years ago. “There is no basis for
deciding what counts as knowledge and truth other than what one’s peers will
let one get away with in the open exchange of claims, counterclaims and
reasons,” Mr. Rorty wrote. In other words, “truth is not out there,”
separate from our own beliefs and language. And those beliefs and words
evolved, just as opposable thumbs evolved, to help human beings “cope with
the environment” and “enable them to enjoy more pleasure and less pain.”

Mr. Rorty drew on the works of Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein,
Quine and others. Although he argued that “no area of culture, and no period
of history gets reality more right than any other,” he did maintain that a
liberal democratic society was by far the best because it was the only one
that permits competing beliefs to exist while also creating a public
community.

His views were attacked by critics on the left and the right. The failure to
recognize science’s particular powers to depict reality, Daniel Dennett
wrote, shows “flatfooted ignorance of the proven methods of scientific
truth-seeking and their power.”

Simon Blackburn, a philosopher at Cambridge University, has written of Mr.
Rorty’s “extraordinary gift for ducking and weaving and laying smoke.”

Mr. Rorty was engaged with and amused by his critics. In a 1992
autobiographical essay, “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids,” he wrote that he was
considered to be one of the “smirking intellectuals whose writings are
weakening the moral fiber of the young”; “cynical and nihilistic”;
“complacent”; and “irresponsible.”

Yet he confounded critics as well, by speaking up for patriotism, an
academic canon and the idea that one can make meaningful moral judgments.

His reason for writing the 1992 essay, he said, was to show how he came by
his particular views. Richard McKay Rorty was born in 1931 to James and
Winifred Rorty, anti-Stalinist lefties who let their home in Flatbrookville,
N.J., a small town on the Delaware river, be used as a hideout for wayward
Trotskyites. He describes himself as having “weird, snobbish, incommunicable
interests” that as a boy led him to send congratulations to the newly named
Dalai Lama, a “fellow 8-year-old who had made good.”

Later, orchids became another obsession, and his love of the outdoors
continued throughout his life. An avid birder for the last 30 years, Mr.
Rorty liked to “head over to open spaces and walk around,” his wife Mary
said yesterday from their home in Palo Alto. His last bird sighting was of a
condor at the Grand Canyon in February. In addition to his wife, Mr. Rorty
is survived by three children and two grandchildren.

When he was 15, Mr. Rorty wrote, he “escaped from the bullies who regularly
beat me up on the playground of my high school” to attend the Hutchins
School at the University of Chicago, a place A. J. Liebling described as the
“biggest collection of juvenile neurotics since the Children’s Crusade.”

In his early career, at Wellesley and Princeton, he worked on analytic
philosophy, smack in the mainstream. As for the surrounding 1960s
counterculture, he said in a 2003 interview, “I smoked a little pot and let
my hair grow long,” but “I soon decided that the radical students who wanted
to trash the university were people with whom I would never have much
sympathy.”

By the 1970s, it became clear that he did not have much sympathy for
analytic philosophy either, not to mention the entire Cartesian
philosophical tradition that held there was a world independent of thought.

Later frustrated by the narrowness of philosophy departments, he became a
professor of humanities at the University of Virginia in 1982, before
joining the comparative literature department at Stanford in 1998.

Over time, he became increasingly occupied by politics. In “Achieving Our
Country” in 1998, he despaired that the genuine social-democratic left that
helped shape the politics of the Democratic Party from 1910 through 1965 had
collapsed. In an interview, he said that since the ’60s, the left “has done
a lot for the rights of blacks, women and gays, but it never attempted to
develop a political position that might find the support of an electoral
majority.”

In recent years, Mr. Rorty fiercely criticized the Bush administration, the
religious right, Congressional Democrats and anti-American intellectuals.
Though deeply pessimistic about the dangers of nuclear confrontation and the
gap between rich nations and poor, Mr. Rorty retained something of Dewey’s
hopefulness about America. It is important, he said in 2003, to take pride
“in the heritage of figures like Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt,
Martin Luther King, and so on,” he said, and “to use this pride as a means
of generating sympathy” for a country’s political aims.

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Benjamin Udell | 11 Jun 2007 06:05
Picon

Re: Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75

Id non legeram!

Requisescat in pace.

Somewhere on his Website, "The Buggy Professor," alias Michael Gordon, says that Rorty in correspondence
(email, I think) did assert that the conception of truth remained rightly important in places like
courtrooms. Nunc VERITATEM quamcumque scit.

Cum Ovido super astris volare non necessarium est. Ad astra per aspera.

Best regards.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Welch" <john-w-welch <at> nyc.rr.com>
To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <peirce-l <at> lyris.ttu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 11:32 PM
Subject: [peirce-l] Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75

(As if we haven't already read it...)

NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/obituaries/11rorty.html?hp

June 11, 2007
Richard Rorty, Philosopher, Dies at 75
By PATRICIA COHEN

Richard Rorty, whose inventive work on philosophy, politics, literary theory and more made him one of the
world's most influential contemporary thinkers, died Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 75.

The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Mary Varney Rorty.

Raised in a home where "The Case for Leon Trotsky" was viewed with the same reverence as the Bible might be
elsewhere, Mr. Rorty pondered the nature of reality as well as its everyday struggles. "At 12, I knew that
the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice," he wrote in an
autobiographical sketch.

Russell A. Berman, the chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, who
worked with Mr. Rorty for more than a decade, said, "He rescued philosophy from its analytic constraints"
and returned it "to core concerns of how we as a people, a country and humanity live in a political community."

Mr. Rorty's enormous body of work, which ranged from academic tomes to magazine and newspaper articles,
provoked fervent praise, hostility and confusion. But no matter what even his severest critics thought
of it, they could no ignore it. When his 1979 book "Philosophy and the Mirror of  Nature" came out, it upended
conventional views about the very purpose and goals of philosophy. The widespread notion that the
philosopher's primary duty was to figure out what we can and cannot know was poppycock, Mr. Rorty argued.
Human beings should focus on what they do to cope with daily life and not on what they discover by theorizing.

To accomplish this, he relied primarily on the only authentic American philosophy, pragmatism, which was
developed by John Dewey, Charles Peirce, William James and others more than 100 years ago. "There is no
basis for deciding what counts as knowledge and truth other than what one's peers will let one get away with
in the open exchange of claims, counterclaims and reasons," Mr. Rorty wrote. In other words, "truth is not
out there," separate from our own beliefs and language. And those beliefs and words evolved, just as
opposable thumbs evolved, to help human beings "cope with the environment" and "enable them to enjoy more
pleasure and less pain."

Mr. Rorty drew on the works of Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Quine and others. Although he
argued that "no area of culture, and no period of history gets reality more right than any other," he did
maintain that a liberal democratic society was by far the best because it was the only one that permits
competing beliefs to exist while also creating a public community.

His views were attacked by critics on the left and the right. The failure to recognize science's particular
powers to depict reality, Daniel Dennett wrote, shows "flatfooted ignorance of the proven methods of
scientific truth-seeking and their power."

Simon Blackburn, a philosopher at Cambridge University, has written of Mr. Rorty's "extraordinary gift
for ducking and weaving and laying smoke."

Mr. Rorty was engaged with and amused by his critics. In a 1992 autobiographical essay, "Trotsky and the
Wild Orchids," he wrote that he was considered to be one of the "smirking intellectuals whose writings are
weakening the moral fiber of the young"; "cynical and nihilistic"; "complacent"; and "irresponsible."

Yet he confounded critics as well, by speaking up for patriotism, an academic canon and the idea that one can
make meaningful moral judgments.

His reason for writing the 1992 essay, he said, was to show how he came by his particular views. Richard McKay
Rorty was born in 1931 to James and Winifred Rorty, anti-Stalinist lefties who let their home in
Flatbrookville, N.J., a small town on the Delaware river, be used as a hideout for wayward Trotskyites. He
describes himself as having "weird, snobbish, incommunicable interests" that as a boy led him to send
congratulations to the newly named Dalai Lama, a "fellow 8-year-old who had made good."

Later, orchids became another obsession, and his love of the outdoors continued throughout his life. An
avid birder for the last 30 years, Mr. Rorty liked to "head over to open spaces and walk around," his wife
Mary said yesterday from their home in Palo Alto. His last bird sighting was of a condor at the Grand Canyon
in February. In addition to his wife, Mr. Rorty is survived by three children and two grandchildren.

When he was 15, Mr. Rorty wrote, he "escaped from the bullies who regularly beat me up on the playground of my
high school" to attend the Hutchins School at the University of Chicago, a place A. J. Liebling described
as the "biggest collection of juvenile neurotics since the Children's Crusade."

In his early career, at Wellesley and Princeton, he worked on analytic philosophy, smack in the
mainstream. As for the surrounding 1960s counterculture, he said in a 2003 interview, "I smoked a little
pot and let my hair grow long," but "I soon decided that the radical students who wanted to trash the
university were people with whom I would never have much sympathy."

By the 1970s, it became clear that he did not have much sympathy for analytic philosophy either, not to
mention the entire Cartesian philosophical tradition that held there was a world independent of thought.

Later frustrated by the narrowness of philosophy departments, he became a professor of humanities at the
University of Virginia in 1982, before joining the comparative literature department at Stanford in 1998.

Over time, he became increasingly occupied by politics. In "Achieving Our Country" in 1998, he despaired
that the genuine social-democratic left that helped shape the politics of the Democratic Party from 1910
through 1965 had collapsed. In an interview, he said that since the '60s, the left "has done a lot for the
rights of blacks, women and gays, but it never attempted to develop a political position that might find
the support of an electoral majority."

In recent years, Mr. Rorty fiercely criticized the Bush administration, the religious right,
Congressional Democrats and anti-American intellectuals. Though deeply pessimistic about the
dangers of nuclear confrontation and the gap between rich nations and poor, Mr. Rorty retained something
of Dewey's hopefulness about America. It is important, he said in 2003, to take pride "in the heritage of
figures like Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and so on," he said, and "to use
this pride as a means of generating sympathy" for a country's political aims.

---
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Clark Goble | 8 Jun 2007 20:20

Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?


On Jun 7, 2007, at 6:56 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
[SB]This is the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.
But this can be seen--although I know it certainly is not--as some sort of 'hero-worship' of Peirce, or some such thing as Clark Goble seems to suggest in writing:
[CG] There's a danger that Peirce becomes treated not as a philosopher but as a prophet whose decrees are examined from the CP the way an Evangelical proof-texter searches the Bible.  Peirce becomes not, as he saw himself, one engaged in inquiry but rather as a kind of quasi-law giver.  I'm not sure he'd approve of that use of him
Note that I wasn't speaking of anyone in particular.  However I definitely have seen this approach.  Often critics of Peirce do it as well.  That is those who ignore the development of Peirce's thought sometimes end up portraying Peirce as law-giver and then attack this presentation of him.  Of course this is a common error in the treatment of any philosopher who's thought develops.  With some who undergo major changes (say Wittgenstein or Putnam) the changes are obvious enough that one can't neglect them.  With other figures often both proponents and opponents don't do the philosophers justice as thinkers.

Of course the other danger, also found with Peirce, is in neglecting the unity of his thought.  That is that while his ideas underwent revision typically the revision wasn't as massive as some portray.  (I think this true of figures like Heidegger as well)  Rather it's a change of emphasis or a working out of subtle issues with the general idea remaining the same.

Clark
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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 6 Jun 2007 19:44
Gravatar

Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Søren,

Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, I  
share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in  
his time.

Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you refer  
in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is  
that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent  
support many differing views of it by selective emphasis (something  
that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly  
willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later years he  
succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - I'd  
certainly like to see references to it.

Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?

With respect,
Steven

On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss the
> fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level  
> that he
> made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique  
> contribution of
> Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it is very much  
> contrary
> to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole reason of my  
> aspiration to
> become a Peirce scholar in time in order to bring this new  
> synthesis into
> our current bad (dualistic) state and help solving it.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml? 
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,  
> was RE:
> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
> Dear Ben, list,
>
> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come  
> as no
> surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:
>
> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's  
> ideas
> fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character is a
> reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this  
> opposition is
> the result of his conflicting commitment to both naturalism and
> transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in mind scientific
> philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a philosophy that  
> puts
> logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews speculation and system- 
> building.
> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in  
> favor of
> metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and  
> architectonic.
> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist  
> who was
> the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to  
> intuitionism.
> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency, which
> guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, scientific  
> method,
> phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while the weaker  
> transcendentalism
> "is most apparent in his views on cosmology, ethics, and  
> theology." (20)"
>
> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>
> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case  
> attributed here to
> Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or transcendentalism in his
> writing but that this was only because he could not satisfy his strong
> predisposition to naturalism. I also note that Goudge also observes  
> the
> relation to logical positivism.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>
>> Additional note.
>>
>>
>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in  
>>>> mind.
>>
>>
>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>
>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized
>> basis of mind.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:  
> 23-05-2007
> 15:59
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:  
> 23-05-2007
> 15:59
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Søren Brier | 8 Jun 2007 23:15
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Favicon

SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Steven

The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K. (1994).
Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6 USD.

Venlig hilsen/best wishes
Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710

Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
step=4
Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/cyber.htm

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org] 
Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Søren,

Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, I share
your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in his time.

Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you refer in
words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is that his
writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent support many
differing views of it by selective emphasis (something that we are all,
perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly willing to hear an
alternative analysis. If in his later years he succeeded in a synthesis - or
took one side or the other - I'd certainly like to see references to it.

Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?

With respect,
Steven

On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss the 
> fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level 
> that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique 
> contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it 
> is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole 
> reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time in order to 
> bring this new synthesis into our current bad (dualistic) state and 
> help solving it.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, 
> was RE:
> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
> Dear Ben, list,
>
> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as 
> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:
>
> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's 
> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's 
> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character is 
> a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this 
> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both 
> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in 
> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a 
> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews 
> speculation and system- building.
> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in 
> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and 
> architectonic.
> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the 
> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who 
> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to 
> intuitionism.
> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency, which 
> guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, scientific 
> method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while the weaker 
> transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on cosmology, ethics, 
> and theology." (20)"
>
> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>
> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed 
> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or 
> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he 
> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also note 
> that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info 
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>
>> Additional note.
>>
>>
>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in 
>>>> mind.
>>
>>
>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>
>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized 
>> basis of mind.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:  
> 23-05-2007
> 15:59
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:  
> 23-05-2007
> 15:59
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

---
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Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
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11:40

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 9 Jun 2007 01:07
Gravatar

Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.


Dear Søren,

Thanks for the reference.

Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of  
Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his  
predisposition toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the  
transcendental stance?

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K. (1994).
> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana  
> University Press.
> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6  
> USD.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml? 
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic  
> solutions?,
> was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know,  
> I share
> your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in his  
> time.
>
> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you  
> refer in
> words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is  
> that his
> writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent  
> support many
> differing views of it by selective emphasis (something that we are  
> all,
> perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly willing to hear an
> alternative analysis. If in his later years he succeeded in a  
> synthesis - or
> took one side or the other - I'd certainly like to see references  
> to it.
>
> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss  
>> the
>> fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new level
>> that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the unique
>> contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also think it
>> is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view. This is the sole
>> reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time in  
>> order to
>> bring this new synthesis into our current bad (dualistic) state and
>> help solving it.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
>> was RE:
>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>> Dear Ben, list,
>>
>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as
>> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:
>>
>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's
>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite  
>> character is
>> a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this
>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both
>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in
>> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a
>> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews
>> speculation and system- building.
>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in
>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and
>> architectonic.
>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who
>> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to
>> intuitionism.
>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency,  
>> which
>> guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, scientific
>> method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while the weaker
>> transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on cosmology,  
>> ethics,
>> and theology." (20)"
>>
>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>
>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed
>> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or
>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he
>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also  
>> note
>> that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
>> http://senses.info
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>
>>> Additional note.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in
>>>>> mind.
>>>
>>>
>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>
>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized
>>> basis of mind.
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>>
>>
>> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
>> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:
>> 23-05-2007
>> 15:59
>>
>>
>> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
>> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>> Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.7/816 - Release Date:
>> 23-05-2007
>> 15:59
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.1/822 - Release Date:  
> 28-05-2007
> 11:40
>
>
> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.1/822 - Release Date:  
> 28-05-2007
> 11:40
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Søren Brier | 10 Jun 2007 22:39
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SV: Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Steven

I am not sure what you mean as I think Peirce is a pan-en -theist
(panentheist) , which means that he has both a transcendental as well as an
immanence view of the Divine. On top of that he has an evolutionary
Thychastic view looking at beginnings as vague plus he has as a hylozoic
view of matter. This is his unique blend.

Venlig hilsen/best wishes
Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710

Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
step=4
Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/cyber.htm

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org] 
Sendt: 9. juni 2007 01:08
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic
solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

Dear Søren,

Thanks for the reference.

Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of
Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his predisposition
toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the transcendental stance?

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K. (1994).
> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University 
> Press.
> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6 
> USD.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic 
> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, I 
> share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in 
> his time.
>
> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you refer 
> in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is 
> that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent 
> support many differing views of it by selective emphasis (something 
> that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly 
> willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later years he 
> succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - I'd 
> certainly like to see references to it.
>
> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss 
>> the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new 
>> level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the 
>> unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also 
>> think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view. This is 
>> the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time 
>> in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad (dualistic) 
>> state and help solving it.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, 
>> was RE:
>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>> Dear Ben, list,
>>
>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as 
>> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available online:
>>
>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's 
>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's 
>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character 
>> is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this 
>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both 
>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in 
>> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a 
>> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews 
>> speculation and system- building.
>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in 
>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and 
>> architectonic.
>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the 
>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist who 
>> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to 
>> intuitionism.
>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency, 
>> which guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, 
>> scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while the 
>> weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on cosmology, 
>> ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>
>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>
>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed 
>> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or 
>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he 
>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also 
>> note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info 
>> http://senses.info
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>
>>> Additional note.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in 
>>>>> mind.
>>>
>>>
>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>
>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized 
>>> basis of mind.
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>>>
>>
>>
>> ---
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Søren Brier | 12 Jun 2007 10:58
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SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Steven

It is a very different view as he consciously work with that metaphysics
that Carnap abhores:

"A disembodied spirit, or pure mind, has its being out of time, since all
that it is destined to think is fully in its being at any and every previous
time. But in endless time it is destined to think all that it is capable of
thinking. Order is simply thought embodied in arrangement; and thought
embodied in any other way appears objectively as a character that is a
generalization of order, and that, in the lack of any word for it, we may
call for the nounce, "Super-order." It is something like uniformity. Pure
mind, as creative of thought, must, so far as it is manifested in time,
appear as having a character related to the habit-taking capacity, just as
super-order is related to uniformity. … perfect cosmology must …show that
the whole history of the three universes, as it has been and is to be, would
follow from a premiss which would not suppose them to exist at all. …But
that premiss must represent a state of things in which the three universes
were completely nil. Consequently, whether in time or not, the three
universes must actually be absolutely necessary results of a state of utter
nothingness. We cannot ourselves conceive of such a state of nility; but we
can easily conceive that there should be a mind that could conceive it,
since, after all, no contradiction can be involved in mere non-existence."
(Peirce, CP: 6.490)

Best wishes

                       Søren 

-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org] 
Sendt: 11. juni 2007 20:25
Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Søren,

I find the idea that "there was no compulsion and no law" a difficult one,
to be honest. TANSTAFFL. I prefer that there be a primordial law. Be that as
it may.

This article - written in 1898 - is an example of his "wrestling"  
with the issues. Immediately he feels guilty about his proposal and compares
the verity of religious beliefs and science. He says "not being a prophet or
magician, I cannot say yet" [which of the two will hold].

And this is the problem with Peirce, and why it is easily argued that he
does not present a single coherent model without plain contradictions. He
has sharp and lucid insights but wanders, rambling thorough his doubts and
imagination. Now I think that this, in fact, has much to do with how we
access Peirce. Unlike Carnap, for example, where there are clear milestones
in the books that he published.

On a side note, this is the issue of immediacy that has concerned me for
sometime in the digital realm. Carnap is well crafted and his doubts and
workings out are either well considered or hidden, they are less immediate.
Peirce was less disciplined, he is more informal and open, he shares his
thoughts more intimately, he is more immediate. Carnap is easier to tackle
than Peirce for this reason.  
Carnap took the time to gather his thoughts as published work that brought
his ideas together in a single volume.  Peirce would have been a blogger,
for sure, I doubt that Carnap would have been.

These dynamics reflect a difficulty in our digital society where we have a
world full of Peirce's sharing their partial workings and random thoughts
(and in that great experiment that is the Internet, I am a guilty
participant). In essence, it is the immediacy of Peirce that makes him
difficult to grasp as the advocate of a single coherent view.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 11, 2007, at 3:19 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> Peirce inserted mind into nature through the pure feeling of firstness 
> and chance. Therefore naturalistic solutions came to mean semiotic 
> ones. Further there is a nothingness behind and before the immanence:
>
> "If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in 
> order to account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition 
> in which the whole universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of 
> absolute nothing.
> . . .
> But this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of negation 
> is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything.
> But this
> pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no 
> individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the 
> germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or 
> foreshadowed.
> As such,
> it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless 
> possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless 
> freedom.
> Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of 
> things? But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless 
> nothing in particular necessarily resulted.
> . . .
> I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless 
> freedom. That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is 
> not the logic of freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or 
> potentiality, is that it shall annul itself. For if it does not annul 
> itself, it remains a completely idle and do-nothing potentiality; and 
> a completely idle potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness. 
> (CP 6.215-219)
>
> Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
> Søren Brier
>
> Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and Philosophy, 
> Porcelænshaven 18 A , DK-2000 Frederiksberg.
> Office-phone +45 3815 2208   Cell  28494162
> www.cbs.dk/staff/soeren_brier
> Home page with full text documents http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/ 
> full/9710
> Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough (forthcoming) 
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
> pid=8894&lastcatid=159&
> step=4
> Ed. in Chief of  Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page:
> http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 1:52 AM
> To: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> So I think that, in fact, we are in agreement except to the degree 
> that these elements in Peirce present a single coherent theory that is 
> without contradiction. We do appear to agree that Peirce advocated 
> naturalistic solutions - our disagreement may be by degree only on my 
> claim that he was "predisposed" to naturalistic solutions.
> Specifically, I claim that presented a choice between a natural 
> solution and a transcendental one, he prefers the natural solution.
>
> I do not entirely reject transcendental phenomena incidently. I view 
> intelligence and compassion as ready examples of transcendent 
> phenomena within the universe. However, for me they are the product of 
> my constructive model of sentience. They are functionally dependent 
> natural consequences. They do not stand outside the universe. The 
> model you outline below - the elements of which, I agree, do appear in 
> Peirce - wants to "have its cake and eat it too."
>
> I take any claim of transcendental distinction beyond the universe to 
> be a contradiction of terms.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info 
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 10, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> I am not sure what you mean as I think Peirce is a pan-en -theist
>> (panentheist) , which means that he has both a transcendental as well 
>> as an immanence view of the Divine. On top of that he has an 
>> evolutionary Thychastic view looking at beginnings as vague plus he 
>> has as a hylozoic view of matter. This is his unique blend.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 9. juni 2007 01:08
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to 
>> naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>>
>> Dear Søren,
>>
>> Thanks for the reference.
>>
>> Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of 
>> Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his 
>> predisposition toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the 
>> transcendental stance?
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info 
>> http://senses.info
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Steven
>>>
>>> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K.  
>>> (1994).
>>> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana 
>>> University Press.
>>> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6 
>>> USD.
>>>
>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>
>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>> step=4
>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
>>> cyber.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic 
>>> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>
>>> Dear Søren,
>>>
>>> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, 
>>> I share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern 
>>> in his time.
>>>
>>> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you 
>>> refer in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with 
>>> Peirce is that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to 
>>> some extent support many differing views of it by selective emphasis 
>>> (something that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am 
>>> certainly willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later 
>>> years he succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - 
>>> I'd certainly like to see references to it.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Steven
>>>>
>>>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss 
>>>> the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new 
>>>> level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the 
>>>> unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also 
>>>> think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view.
>>>> This is
>>>> the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time 
>>>> in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad
>>>> (dualistic)
>>>> state and help solving it.
>>>>
>>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>>
>>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP 
>>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>>> step=4
>>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
>>>> cyber.htm
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, 
>>>> was RE:
>>>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>>
>>>> Dear Ben, list,
>>>>
>>>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come 
>>>> as no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available
>>>> online:
>>>>
>>>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's 
>>>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's 
>>>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character 
>>>> is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this 
>>>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both 
>>>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has 
>>>> in mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, 
>>>> a philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews 
>>>> speculation and system- building.
>>>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in 
>>>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and 
>>>> architectonic.
>>>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the 
>>>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist 
>>>> who was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended 
>>>> to intuitionism.
>>>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency, 
>>>> which guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic, 
>>>> scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while 
>>>> the weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on 
>>>> cosmology, ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>>>
>>>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>>>
>>>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case 
>>>> attributed here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or 
>>>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he 
>>>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also 
>>>> note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>>>
>>>> With respect,
>>>> Steven
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>>>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info 
>>>> http://senses.info
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Additional note.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in 
>>>>>>> mind.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>>>
>>>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized 
>>>>> basis of mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> With respect,
>>>>> Steven
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Søren Brier | 11 Jun 2007 12:19
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Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Steven

Peirce inserted mind into nature through the pure feeling of firstness and
chance. Therefore naturalistic solutions came to mean semiotic ones. Further
there is a nothingness behind and before the immanence:

"If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in order
to account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in which the
whole universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute nothing.
. . .
But this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of negation is
the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this
pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual
thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal
nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such,
it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless
possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.
Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of
things? But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing
in particular necessarily resulted.
. . .
I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless
freedom. That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is not the
logic of freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is
that it shall annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a
completely idle and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle
potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness. (CP 6.215-219)

Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
Søren Brier  

Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Porcelænshaven 18 A , DK-2000 Frederiksberg. 
Office-phone +45 3815 2208   Cell  28494162
www.cbs.dk/staff/soeren_brier 
Home page with full text documents http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough (forthcoming)
http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?pid=8894&lastcatid=159&
step=4
Ed. in Chief of  Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page: 
http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org] 
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 1:52 AM
To: Peirce Discussion Forum
Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Søren,

So I think that, in fact, we are in agreement except to the degree  
that these elements in Peirce present a single coherent theory that  
is without contradiction. We do appear to agree that Peirce advocated  
naturalistic solutions - our disagreement may be by degree only on my  
claim that he was "predisposed" to naturalistic solutions.  
Specifically, I claim that presented a choice between a natural  
solution and a transcendental one, he prefers the natural solution.

I do not entirely reject transcendental phenomena incidently. I view  
intelligence and compassion as ready examples of transcendent  
phenomena within the universe. However, for me they are the product  
of my constructive model of sentience. They are functionally  
dependent natural consequences. They do not stand outside the  
universe. The model you outline below - the elements of which, I  
agree, do appear in Peirce - wants to "have its cake and eat it too."

I take any claim of transcendental distinction beyond the universe to  
be a contradiction of terms.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 10, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> I am not sure what you mean as I think Peirce is a pan-en -theist
> (panentheist) , which means that he has both a transcendental as  
> well as an
> immanence view of the Divine. On top of that he has an evolutionary
> Thychastic view looking at beginnings as vague plus he has as a  
> hylozoic
> view of matter. This is his unique blend.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml? 
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 9. juni 2007 01:08
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to  
> naturalistic
> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> Thanks for the reference.
>
> Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of
> Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his predisposition
> toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the transcendental  
> stance?
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K. (1994).
>> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University
>> Press.
>> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6
>> USD.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic
>> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>> Dear Søren,
>>
>> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, I
>> share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in
>> his time.
>>
>> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you refer
>> in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is
>> that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent
>> support many differing views of it by selective emphasis (something
>> that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly
>> willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later years he
>> succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - I'd
>> certainly like to see references to it.
>>
>> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Steven
>>>
>>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss
>>> the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new
>>> level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the
>>> unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also
>>> think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view.  
>>> This is
>>> the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time
>>> in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad  
>>> (dualistic)
>>> state and help solving it.
>>>
>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>
>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>> step=4
>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>>> cyber.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
>>> was RE:
>>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>
>>> Dear Ben, list,
>>>
>>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as
>>> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available  
>>> online:
>>>
>>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
>>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's
>>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character
>>> is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this
>>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both
>>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in
>>> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a
>>> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews
>>> speculation and system- building.
>>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in
>>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and
>>> architectonic.
>>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
>>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist  
>>> who
>>> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to
>>> intuitionism.
>>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency,
>>> which guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic,
>>> scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while  
>>> the
>>> weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on  
>>> cosmology,
>>> ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>>
>>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>>
>>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed
>>> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or
>>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he
>>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also
>>> note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
>>> http://senses.info
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>>
>>>> Additional note.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in
>>>>>> mind.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>>
>>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized
>>>> basis of mind.
>>>>
>>>> With respect,
>>>> Steven

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 11 Jun 2007 20:24
Gravatar

Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Søren,

I find the idea that "there was no compulsion and no law" a difficult  
one, to be honest. TANSTAFFL. I prefer that there be a primordial  
law. Be that as it may.

This article - written in 1898 - is an example of his "wrestling"  
with the issues. Immediately he feels guilty about his proposal and  
compares the verity of religious beliefs and science. He says "not  
being a prophet or magician, I cannot say yet" [which of the two will  
hold].

And this is the problem with Peirce, and why it is easily argued that  
he does not present a single coherent model without plain  
contradictions. He has sharp and lucid insights but wanders, rambling  
thorough his doubts and imagination. Now I think that this, in fact,  
has much to do with how we access Peirce. Unlike Carnap, for example,  
where there are clear milestones in the books that he published.

On a side note, this is the issue of immediacy that has concerned me  
for sometime in the digital realm. Carnap is well crafted and his  
doubts and workings out are either well considered or hidden, they  
are less immediate. Peirce was less disciplined, he is more informal  
and open, he shares his thoughts more intimately, he is more  
immediate. Carnap is easier to tackle than Peirce for this reason.  
Carnap took the time to gather his thoughts as published work that  
brought his ideas together in a single volume.  Peirce would have  
been a blogger, for sure, I doubt that Carnap would have been.

These dynamics reflect a difficulty in our digital society where we  
have a world full of Peirce's sharing their partial workings and  
random thoughts (and in that great experiment that is the Internet, I  
am a guilty participant). In essence, it is the immediacy of Peirce  
that makes him difficult to grasp as the advocate of a single  
coherent view.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 11, 2007, at 3:19 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> Peirce inserted mind into nature through the pure feeling of  
> firstness and
> chance. Therefore naturalistic solutions came to mean semiotic  
> ones. Further
> there is a nothingness behind and before the immanence:
>
> "If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must,  
> in order
> to account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in  
> which the
> whole universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute  
> nothing.
> . . .
> But this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of  
> negation is
> the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything.  
> But this
> pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no  
> individual
> thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal
> nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed.  
> As such,
> it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless
> possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless  
> freedom.
> Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of
> things? But the only sane answer is that where freedom was  
> boundless nothing
> in particular necessarily resulted.
> . . .
> I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless
> freedom. That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is  
> not the
> logic of freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or  
> potentiality, is
> that it shall annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it  
> remains a
> completely idle and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle
> potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness. (CP 6.215-219)
>
> Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
> Søren Brier
>
> Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and Philosophy,
> Porcelænshaven 18 A , DK-2000 Frederiksberg.
> Office-phone +45 3815 2208   Cell  28494162
> www.cbs.dk/staff/soeren_brier
> Home page with full text documents http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/ 
> full/9710
> Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough (forthcoming)
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml? 
> pid=8894&lastcatid=159&
> step=4
> Ed. in Chief of  Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page:
> http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 1:52 AM
> To: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> So I think that, in fact, we are in agreement except to the degree
> that these elements in Peirce present a single coherent theory that
> is without contradiction. We do appear to agree that Peirce advocated
> naturalistic solutions - our disagreement may be by degree only on my
> claim that he was "predisposed" to naturalistic solutions.
> Specifically, I claim that presented a choice between a natural
> solution and a transcendental one, he prefers the natural solution.
>
> I do not entirely reject transcendental phenomena incidently. I view
> intelligence and compassion as ready examples of transcendent
> phenomena within the universe. However, for me they are the product
> of my constructive model of sentience. They are functionally
> dependent natural consequences. They do not stand outside the
> universe. The model you outline below - the elements of which, I
> agree, do appear in Peirce - wants to "have its cake and eat it too."
>
> I take any claim of transcendental distinction beyond the universe to
> be a contradiction of terms.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
> http://iase.info
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 10, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> I am not sure what you mean as I think Peirce is a pan-en -theist
>> (panentheist) , which means that he has both a transcendental as
>> well as an
>> immanence view of the Divine. On top of that he has an evolutionary
>> Thychastic view looking at beginnings as vague plus he has as a
>> hylozoic
>> view of matter. This is his unique blend.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 9. juni 2007 01:08
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to
>> naturalistic
>> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>>
>> Dear Søren,
>>
>> Thanks for the reference.
>>
>> Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of
>> Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his  
>> predisposition
>> toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the transcendental
>> stance?
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
>> http://senses.info
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Steven
>>>
>>> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K.  
>>> (1994).
>>> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana  
>>> University
>>> Press.
>>> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6
>>> USD.
>>>
>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>
>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>> step=4
>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>>> cyber.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic
>>> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>
>>> Dear Søren,
>>>
>>> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you  
>>> know, I
>>> share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in
>>> his time.
>>>
>>> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you  
>>> refer
>>> in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is
>>> that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some  
>>> extent
>>> support many differing views of it by selective emphasis (something
>>> that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly
>>> willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later years he
>>> succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - I'd
>>> certainly like to see references to it.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Steven
>>>>
>>>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss
>>>> the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new
>>>> level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the
>>>> unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also
>>>> think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view.
>>>> This is
>>>> the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time
>>>> in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad
>>>> (dualistic)
>>>> state and help solving it.
>>>>
>>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>>
>>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>>> step=4
>>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>>>> cyber.htm
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
>>>> was RE:
>>>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>>
>>>> Dear Ben, list,
>>>>
>>>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should  
>>>> come as
>>>> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available
>>>> online:
>>>>
>>>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
>>>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's
>>>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character
>>>> is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this
>>>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both
>>>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge  
>>>> has in
>>>> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a
>>>> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews
>>>> speculation and system- building.
>>>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in
>>>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and
>>>> architectonic.
>>>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
>>>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist
>>>> who
>>>> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to
>>>> intuitionism.
>>>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency,
>>>> which guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic,
>>>> scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while
>>>> the
>>>> weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on
>>>> cosmology,
>>>> ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>>>
>>>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>>>
>>>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case  
>>>> attributed
>>>> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or
>>>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he
>>>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also
>>>> note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>>>
>>>> With respect,
>>>> Steven
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>>>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
>>>> http://senses.info
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Additional note.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in
>>>>>>> mind.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>>>
>>>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized
>>>>> basis of mind.
>>>>>
>>>>> With respect,
>>>>> Steven
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber sbr.lpf <at> cbs.dk
>
>
>
> ---
> Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber steven <at> semeiosis.org
>

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 11 Jun 2007 01:51
Gravatar

Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

Dear Søren,

So I think that, in fact, we are in agreement except to the degree  
that these elements in Peirce present a single coherent theory that  
is without contradiction. We do appear to agree that Peirce advocated  
naturalistic solutions - our disagreement may be by degree only on my  
claim that he was "predisposed" to naturalistic solutions.  
Specifically, I claim that presented a choice between a natural  
solution and a transcendental one, he prefers the natural solution.

I do not entirely reject transcendental phenomena incidently. I view  
intelligence and compassion as ready examples of transcendent  
phenomena within the universe. However, for me they are the product  
of my constructive model of sentience. They are functionally  
dependent natural consequences. They do not stand outside the  
universe. The model you outline below - the elements of which, I  
agree, do appear in Peirce - wants to "have its cake and eat it too."

I take any claim of transcendental distinction beyond the universe to  
be a contradiction of terms.

With respect,
Steven

--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info

On Jun 10, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Søren Brier wrote:

> Dear Steven
>
> I am not sure what you mean as I think Peirce is a pan-en -theist
> (panentheist) , which means that he has both a transcendental as  
> well as an
> immanence view of the Divine. On top of that he has an evolutionary
> Thychastic view looking at beginnings as vague plus he has as a  
> hylozoic
> view of matter. This is his unique blend.
>
> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>
> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml? 
> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
> step=4
> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/ 
> cyber.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
> Sendt: 9. juni 2007 01:08
> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to  
> naturalistic
> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>
>
> Dear Søren,
>
> Thanks for the reference.
>
> Just so that we are clear, your argument is directed at the unity of
> Peirce's thought, rather than at any dispute toward his predisposition
> toward naturalistic solutions. Or are you taking the transcendental  
> stance?
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
> http://senses.info
>
>
>
> On Jun 8, 2007, at 2:15 PM, Søren Brier wrote:
>
>> Dear Steven
>>
>> The book that does this in the shortest way is Sheriff, J. K. (1994).
>> Charles Peirce's Guess at the riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University
>> Press.
>> It is a book build up on Peirce quotes. You can get it used for 5-6
>> USD.
>>
>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>
>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>> step=4
>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>> cyber.htm
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>> Sendt: 6. juni 2007 19:45
>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: SV: Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic
>> solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>
>> Dear Søren,
>>
>> Good to hear from you and hope to see you in December. As you know, I
>> share your admiration of Peirce - and he certainly was postmodern in
>> his time.
>>
>> Can you point to the synthesis and "declared view" to which you refer
>> in words written by Peirce? The problem, in general, with Peirce is
>> that his writing is a little biblical - it is possible to some extent
>> support many differing views of it by selective emphasis (something
>> that we are all, perhaps, a little guilty of here). I am certainly
>> willing to hear an alternative analysis. If in his later years he
>> succeeded in a synthesis - or took one side or the other - I'd
>> certainly like to see references to it.
>>
>> Does anyone have references to the arguments made by Thomas Goudge?
>>
>> With respect,
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Søren Brier wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Steven
>>>
>>> In my view, to have this understanding of Peirce's work is to miss
>>> the fundamental point in it. It is to miss the synthesis on a new
>>> level that he made in his 4th stage of pragmaticism, which is the
>>> unique contribution of Peirce as the first real postmodern. I also
>>> think it is very much contrary to Peirce's own declared view.  
>>> This is
>>> the sole reason of my aspiration to become a Peirce scholar in time
>>> in order to bring this new synthesis into our current bad  
>>> (dualistic)
>>> state and help solving it.
>>>
>>> Venlig hilsen/best wishes
>>> Søren Brier,  http://uk.cbs.dk/content/view/full/9710
>>>
>>> Cybersemiotics book forthcoming at UTP
>>> http://www.utppublishing.com/pubstore/merchant.ihtml?
>>> pid=8894&lastcatid=116&
>>> step=4
>>> Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing http://www.imprint.co.uk/C&HK/
>>> cyber.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
>>> Fra: Steven Ericsson-Zenith [mailto:steven <at> semeiosis.org]
>>> Sendt: 5. juni 2007 03:09
>>> Til: Peirce Discussion Forum
>>> Emne: [peirce-l] Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?,
>>> was RE:
>>> Inquiry and the categories etc.
>>>
>>> Dear Ben, list,
>>>
>>> This is ground that has been gone over before - which should come as
>>> no surprise. Let me quote the intro in EP, which is available  
>>> online:
>>>
>>> "Some scholars have not accepted the one-system account of Peirce's
>>> philosophy. Thomas Goudge, in particular, has argued that "Peirce's
>>> ideas fall naturally into two broad groups whose opposite character
>>> is a reflection of a deep conflict in his thinking" and that this
>>> opposition is the result of his conflicting commitment to both
>>> naturalism and transcendentalism. (19) By "naturalism" Goudge has in
>>> mind scientific philosophy more or less in the positivist sense, a
>>> philosophy that puts logical analysis on a pedestal and eschews
>>> speculation and system- building.
>>> Transcendentalism, on the other hand, discounts logical analysis in
>>> favor of metaphysical construction, embracing both speculation and
>>> architectonic.
>>> Peirce the naturalist tended to nominalism, while Peirce the
>>> transcendentalist tended to realism. It was Peirce the naturalist  
>>> who
>>> was the pragmatist, while Peirce the transcendentalist tended to
>>> intuitionism.
>>> Goudge finds that Peirce's naturalism was the stronger tendency,
>>> which guided him in his researches in formal logic, semiotic,
>>> scientific method, phenomenology, and critical metaphysics, while  
>>> the
>>> weaker transcendentalism "is most apparent in his views on  
>>> cosmology,
>>> ethics, and theology." (20)"
>>>
>>> http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep1/intro/ep1intro.htm
>>>
>>> So, I think that I have essentially been stating the case attributed
>>> here to Goudge. That is, Peirce returns to dualism or
>>> transcendentalism in his writing but that this was only because he
>>> could not satisfy his strong predisposition to naturalism. I also
>>> note that Goudge also observes the relation to logical positivism.
>>>
>>> With respect,
>>> Steven
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
>>> Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering http://iase.info
>>> http://senses.info
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:
>>>
>>>> Additional note.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 4, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ... You also ignore the fact that he has matter originating in
>>>>>> mind.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Effete mind does not mean that matter is "originating in mind."
>>>>
>>>> I take "effete mind" to mean, in modern terms, the uncharacterized
>>>> basis of mind.
>>>>
>>>> With respect,
>>>> Steven

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 6 Jun 2007 20:22
Gravatar

Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?

To answer my own question, the Goudge reference appears to be:

	Goudge, T. 1950. The Thought of C.S. Peirce. (Toronto: University of  
Toronto Press)

With respect,
Steven

On Jun 6, 2007, at 10:44 AM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith wrote:

> Thomas Goudge

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Steven Ericsson-Zenith | 5 Jun 2007 01:35
Gravatar

Re: Peirce predisposed to naturalistic solutions?, was RE: Inquiry and the categories etc.

A point of clarification. When I say:

> ... The general principles that shape the world, and are operative  
> in it, include gravity, the engineering of sentience, and natural  
> selection.

It should be clear that these general principles are the natural  
product of combining the primitive aspects of the world. Hence,  
gravity is the combination of mass-energy and space-time, the  
engineering of sentience is the product of combining mass-energy and  
space-time with the primitive of experience, natural selection is the  
product of the environment created by the engineering of sentience.

With respect,
Steven

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