[FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

[uǝlƃ ☣]

If I read this post with a little empathy, it seems very provocative, indeed. Good job.

You start by striking a posture of checking your "in your own words" with Nick's. But you end with the suggestion that Pierce's work has nothing to offer in understanding what knowledge is, etc. And you obviously understand that Nick believes Pierce DOES offer at least some assistance in that effort.

If you were in a physical fight, this would be a *feint*, where you pretend to check your own words against Nick with your right hand. But then quickly punch him in the kidney with your left.

An authentic attempt to steel-man why Nick might believe Pierce can contribute to your effort might consist of identifying, for example, how establishing the truth of one's (or many's) conception of an object (which you admit Pierce helps with) might *indirectly* contribute to understanding the existence of those target objects. Personally, it's not clear to me that Pierce's words, themselves, help much in that regard. But his intellectual descendants' words *do* help, John Woods for me. But maybe others for you.

On 2/20/20 12:54 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Thanks for the response. I think you answered my questions but, because your answers seem to confirm a conclusion I came to prior to the answers, I need to check if I have it correct.
> 
> The key issue, for me is in question 4 and your answer ...
> 
>> 4- If we had a "consensus" enumeration of plausible effects does our "conception of the object" have any relation to the ontology of the object?
>>
>> */[NST===>] I don’t think so.  Increasing the number of people who think that “unicorn” means “a horse with a narwhale horn on his forehead” has no implications for the existence or non existence of unicorns./*
>>
> 
>  ... which is the reason that I asked the followup question about naturalized epistemology (NE).
> 
> NE comes from W.V.O. Quine and advocates replacing traditional approaches for understanding knowledge with empirically grounded approaches ala the natural sciences — how knowledge actually forms and is used in the World. A subset would be about what knowledge must an agent form and hold in order to survive; which sounds related to evolutionary epistemology.
> 
> The epistemology of Pierce and traditional philosophers of knowledge is deemed, like mathematics, to be divorced from common sense understandings of meaning and truth. I.e. Pierce's system (logic?) can tell us whether or not we have a truthful conception of an object, but nothing further. It cannot tell us that Donald "is," let alone that he is an "x."
> 
> Alas, I seems I must abandon the hope that Pierce can offer assistance in my quest to understand what knowledge is, means for obtaining it, and how we know if we have it.

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