[FRIAM] Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."

[Nick Thompson]

[NST==>EDITOR’S NOTE:  I am trying to accommodate “larding” to my goal of trying to create a coherent text out of an email correspondence.  <==nst] 

GLEN WRITES:  And to fold in a little postmodernism, Peirce says: "Now, just as conduct controlled by ethical reason tends toward fixing certain habits of conduct, the nature of which, (as to illustrate the meaning, peaceable habits and not quarrelsome habits), does not depend upon any accidental circumstances, and in that sense, may be said to be destined; so, thought, controlled by a rational experimental logic, tends to the fixation of certain opinions, equally destined, the nature of which will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation. If this be so, as every man of us virtually assumes that it is, in regard to each matter the truth of which he seriously discusses, then, according to the adopted definition of 'real,' the state of things which will be believed in that ultimate opinion is real."

[NST==>You will notice that in the notes I just sent out, I confessed to not being able to make head or tails out of this and subsequent passages.  <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  But what if the process never settles (either to a fixed point or other attractor)? Further, what if no such process ever settles? Perhaps we will, forever, be subject to paradigm shifts that demonstrate our previous conceptions were false (or at least less accurate than possible)? Does that, then, mean that nothing is real?  Pfft.

[NST==>Peirce would have no trouble with this possibility.  He explicitly states that most events are random. Given that he believes that what is real is that upon which we – the community of human inquiry – will settle on in the very long run, there is no reality in the accidental.  I would put it this way:  all perception involves the identification of  patterns;  that which is not patterned, cannot be perceived.  I think he would site Darwinian Evolution as evidence for believing that some things are real.   <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  It seems more reasonable to, again, allow gradations of the real.  An opinion like Newtonian gravity is just a little less real than an opinion like general relativity.  It doesn't mean Newtonian gravity isn't real.  By the same reasoning, we could say that unicorns are real.  They’re a little more real than a pegasus and less real than a horse.

[NST==>I think Peirce would say that to the extent we can agree on what a Unicorn is, a unicorn is real.  To the extent that we can agree (in the very long run, etc., blah, blah) that unicorns are mythic, their existence is not real.  <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  Along these same lines, Peirce says: "For truths, on the average, have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities have. Were it otherwise, considering that there are myriads of false hypotheses to account for any given phenomenon, against one sole true one (or if you will have it so, against every true one), the first step toward genuine knowledge must have been next door to a miracle."

[NST==>Well, he takes as his model the development of Chemistry in the 19th century where gradually, through the process of experimentation in the broadest sense, false notions are shed and the literature converges.  Those convergences may, of course, be ephemeral  <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  As the recent discussion of "bullshit" and the prevalence of "fake news" and conspiracy theories demonstrate, truth, on average, does not have a greater tendency to get believed than falsities. Cf. Hoffman’s "interface theory of perception" and possible explanations of drift/selection to/of false beliefs.

[NST==>See above.  <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  Perhaps a more philosophically inclined objection arises in response to this comment: Peirce says, "For to say that we live for the mere sake of action, as action, regardless of the thought it carries out, would be to say that there is no such thing as rational purport."

 

GLEN WRITES:  I disagree. To say we live for the sake of action, as action, doesn't say there is no rational purport.  It says that action is composite and multi-scale. Rationality is simply a boundary-crossing causation, a statement about how those things on one side of the boundary match those things on the other side of the boundary. So, we do live for/of action and only action.  But one cannot arbitrarily slice action into parts and consider only one of the parts (e.g. someone thinking of moving their hand versus the moving of the hand).

[NST==>I think there is a problem, here, with the definition of action.  I would agree with you that there is not much to distinguish thought and action and that irrational action is therefore an oxymoron.  Even Trump is rational if you buy his premises.  <==nst] 

 

GLEN WRITES:  Thinking is doing.  And the postmodernist conception that power (or efficacy) is more salient than truth avoids all this persnickety dithering over what's true or real or extant.  There is only what works.

[NST==>Well, it all depends on what “working” means and what your time threshold is. 

 

Thanks, Glen

<==nst] 

 

Nick

 

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