[FRIAM] Peirce & Postmordernism

[Prof David West]

Eric,

Thank you for the response, it is useful.

The quantum question, poorly stated, challenges Peirce's definition of an external reality "upon which our thinking has no effect." I assume that Peirce would put things like molecules, atoms, and elementary particles in that category - based upon what was known about them when he was writing. But, if the character of the most fundamental of those things — particle or wave, velocity, spin, location, etc. — is determined by human observation/measurement, then they cannot be Real according to Peirce's definition. This looks like an easy conclusion, but I suspect I am missing a nuance somewhere.

My fourth question, also poorly stated, actually claims that any Truths discovered via use of the method are not Truths about any external reality, but merely Truths about application of the rules (reason, sufficient experience, laws of perception, etc.) of the method. A kind of tautology claim: you (Peirce) define what the Truth must be in the definition of the rules of method.

If I am wrong about the "tautology" aspect of my question (high probability), then my position would become: "you (Peirce) have, with your rules of method, so constrained the problem and solution space that your method applies only to a narrowly defined domain. It is not even close to a general method of problem solving or Truth finding; but you (Peirce) seem to be claiming such generality. My counter claim to Peirce: although "the method" might be useful for math, physics, chemistry, etc. it is useless for questions of psychology, cultural anthropology, politics, consciousness, etc.

Ready to be set straight.

davew


On Sat, May 23, 2020, at 7:20 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Dave, 
> These are very good questions. The Fixation of Belief is one of Peirce's writings that I really like. It is a non-technical piece written very early in his career. If we had serious Peirce scholars amongst us, they would go on for years about how that paper relates to Peirce's later and more precise works. It is a deep rabbit hole. Luckily, we don't have that problem. 
> 
> 1. Is Peirce a dualist? - I think he is trying hard not to be, but he still has some lingering bits that make me wonder if he's fully cut the cord. I suspect that at this stage of his career he would say that beliefs and thoughts are real. Later, in his career, he comes to believe that only "generals" are "real", and that's a whole different can of worms. His work on what we might broadly call "psychology" is probably the weakest part of his work.
> 
> 2. What about quantum physics and the "observer" problem? I'm not sure this intersects with Peirce's work. I suspect Peirce wouldn't like quantum indeterminacy, but he might be fine with it so long as we held the emphasis on how that doesn't really affect interaction with macro objects. 
> 
> 3. Why does Peirce privileged Reason? (weak post-modernism) In the Fixation of Belief, Peirce is pretty honest that the only thing the scientific method has going for it is that it leads to stable beliefs. If you don't care whether or not your beliefs pan out when tested, there are some good reasons to prefer other methods of fixating beliefs. One of my favorite things about that paper is Peirce's honestly that the other methods for fixating beliefs have things in their favor. 
> 
> 4. Why constrain the 'solution space'? (strong post-modernism) Well, Peirce actually thinks there will not be a solution to almost all questions we might think to ask. The question isn't really how to constrain the solution space though, the question is what gets to count as a solution. You can't solve problems that don't exist, so if we are asking questions about things that are not real, we will never find an answer. There might be perfectly good reasons to pretend there are answers to poorly formed questions - to facilitate social cohesion in various ways, to avoid getting killed by fanatics, etc., etc. - but that's a totally different problem. The assertion that some belief is "true" is an assertion about what *_would_ *happen *_if_ *we systematically started examining the consequences of that belief. If you want to talk about some other properties a belief might have, that's fine, just don't pretend you are talking about whether or not it is true. And we may "examine the consequences" of a belief using the full scope of examination methods. There are no preconceived restrictions. "Our senses" is meant in the most generous sense, not a narrow one, and merely acknowledges that we cannot examine anything except via the methods by which humans are capable of examining things. 
> 
> Does that help?
> 
> 
> 
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
> 
 <mailto:echarles at american.edu>
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:47 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> Peirce:
>> 
>>  "To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency—by something upon which our thinking has no effect. ... Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion."
>> 
>>  The above quote is a context from which I am about to take words and ask questions. Those more familiar with the Peirce corpus in toto must admonish me if I am being unfair, i.e. this quote is an outlier or an exception to Peirce in general.
>> 
>>  1- If "There are Real things, upon which our thinking has no effect," and there are"beliefs"" and "doubts" and "reasoning" that are, arguably, affected by our thoughts:
>>  a. Is Peirce a dualist? A Cartesian dualist that distinguishes between an external permanency and internal thought?
>>  b. Are beliefs, doubts, reasoning 'Real things'?
>> 
>>  2- Quantum physics has an "observer problem" that seems to imply that the the "characters of Real things" are, in fact, affected by human thinking, or, at least, human attention."
>>  a. Are there 'Real things'?
>> 
>>  3- Weak postmodern objection: all beliefs and all methods are determined by the human, technically the social, and there is no objective criteria by which to give privilege over one human determined method/belief over another..
>>  a. Does Peirce have grounds to privilege Reason over other methods/beliefs, e.g. 'meditation', 'faith'?
>> 
>>  4- Stronger postmodern objection: "the laws of perception," [the rules of] reasoning," "sufficient experience," and "reason enough," taken together, constrain the possible 'solution space' too severely; the 'one [provisionally] True conclusion" is foregone — a product of the process, not congruence with any "external permanency."
>>  a. What are the "laws" that govern how the Real affects our senses?
>>  b. What are the "laws of perception?"
>>  c. Does "sufficient experience" and "reason enough" mandate a narrow, and intolerant, orthodoxy?
>> 
>>  davew
>> 
>> 
>> 
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