[FRIAM] Peirce & Postmordernism

Sun May 24 13:42:44 EDT 2020

*Quantum question,* taking out the implication that there is anything
special about humans: "if the character of the most fundamental of those
things — particle or wave, velocity, spin, location, etc. — is determined
by ... measurement, then they cannot be Real according to Peirce's
definition."

The answer is: Yes, in a sense, and No, in a different sense. There was a
thing that we believed would be real, and we found out that thing is not
real. In finding that out, we came to think some other, higher-level thing
was real, and so far the experiments seem to bear that other thing out. I'm
not an expert in quantum mechanics, so I don't know the currently trendy
terminology, but I understand the new "real" to be something like: *At a
small enough scale, all "objects" exist as probability cloud, and those
clouds collapse partially or fully when they interact with other
probability clouds.*

Of course, like anyone else, Peirce would find that very unintuitive, but I
don't see any reason Peirce would rule it out as a candidate Real, assuming
it could be .

*The question about what Truth means* is a different issue all together, as
Peirce thinks that is simply a matter of clear thinking. This is spelled
out better in "How to Make Your Ideas Clear." All we can ever know about
the things we interact with is what happens when they are interacted with.
Our conceptions are therefore (to use my phrasing) bundles of
anticipated-consequences given different methods of possible interaction.
Some of those bundles prove stable despite intense scrutiny. For example,
"combustible air" proved unstable as a concept, when put under scrutiny,
but "hydrogen" has proven far more stable. The mistake is to think that we
can conceive of the inconceivable, to always want to talk about
that-of-which-we-cannot-speak.

IF it is the case that there ARE stabilities within the domains of
psychology, cultural anthropology, politics, etc., that are every bit as
stable as those in chemistry, then there are truths there to be discovered,
and we will be in a writhing mess until we get our concepts and methods
straightened out much further. That isn't an inherently bad thing in
Peirce's view, it is just the current state of the field. We are like
chemistry before Lavoisier and his cohort, doing perfectly good
systematic work but not yet settled upon the insights we need.

On the other hand, it might be that there ARE NOT such stabilities within
the domains of psychology, cultural anthropology, politics, etc. If so,
then there is no Truth  there to be discovered. In the long run, we will
presumably form a consensus that those fields are too poorly conceived for
their to be truths in them. This would put us in the same situation as the
astrologers, who despite their systematic efforts could find no stable
relationship between the locations of the stars in the sky on a particular
day and the earthly happenings they wished to predict; all apparent
patterns were, at best, temporary stabilities within an ultimately random
relationship.

Of course, people still talk about astrology, some with intense
seriousness, and others as a form of idle entertainment. When you enjoy a
juggling show, you aren't on a quest for truth, and there is no reason you
can't enjoy an astrological reading just because nothing about it is true.
Maybe that is what all of psychology, cultural anthropology, and politics
will be one day? Or maybe not. I don't think psychology as a whole has ever
been given a fair shot to science its subject matter domain, certainly the
current mainstream of the field is mostly smoke and mirrors. I think it can
be done.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>

On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:59 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> 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
>
> <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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