[FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

Fri Feb 21 19:58:15 EST 2020

Oh gawd.  How did I confuse YOU!

n

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 4:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

Well, gosh, now Nick has me all confused... 

Dave, when you say that Peirce can't help with "knowledge", are you invoking some continental-philosophy notion of "definitively-correct, fully-justified true belief"? Or are you instead talking about whatever people are talking about when they claim to know things (or feel like they know things)? Peirce can, I think, help with the latter. He can't help with the former, because he doesn't think it exists. In Peirce-land there is no denying that we are messy systems engaged in messy activities, including in regards to our cognitions. 

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 3:08 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, Dave, 

See Larding below: 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 1:55 AM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

Nick,

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."

[NST===>] Ok, you’ve got my head spinning here.  I think you have it exactly backwards.  Leaving the Donald out of it for a moment, because I think he confuses us, I think discriminating the LIKELY truth of an assertion of fact is EXACTLY what pragmatism is about.  Mathematical statements, by themselves, are neither true nor false but meaningless.  Just a matter, as Peirce would say, of what language you chose to speak.  And yes, in a broad sense Peirce is engaged in a vague form of evolutionary epistemology since he vaguely attributes the predictive power of habit formation to natural selection.  

If you asked me, a purported pragmatist, where knowledge comes from and what knowledge is ‘about’, I would say that knowledge comes from past experience and it is about future experience.  This includes historical knowledge.  If I am told that Indians camp, fished, and hunted on a low hill at the bend of the river near the Mosquito Infested Bog (hereafrer, MIB), then that information MEANS, among many other things, that I should be able to find some nice arrowheads down there.  

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.

[NST===>] I didn’t see the kidney punch (until Glen pointed it out); all I knew, before that, was that my lower back was sore.  I agree with Glen that if ever crocodile tears were shed, you shed them when you wrote the word “alas”. 

N

davew

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020, at 1:35 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

David,

I immediately got snarled up in writing you a long, turgid response, so figured I better write you a short one first, lest I never respond at all.  See larding below.

n

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/D

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

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 8:48 AM

To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 

Subject: [FRIAM] question for pragmatists and Piercians among us

Politically charged question to follow. Unlike my usual wont, I am not trying to be provocative. I pick a difficult example for my question in the hope that it will generate enough heat to produce light with the hope that the light will illuminate clarity.

Pierce said:

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

The Donald is our object

[NST===>] It might be argued that the whole project is ill-founded because “the Donald” is an individual, and therefore, by definition, not a general.  Abduction is to generals.  I think this is a cheap response, because, while The Donald is not a general in the same way “cat” is a general, it is still a lower level general.  “Is it true that The Donald is over 6’ tall” is a reasonable question to ask in the same way that “how many angels….pin?” is not a reasonable question to ask. So, then, by definition, The Donald is a real  

1- Can we enumerate the "effects with conceivably practical bearings" we expect our object to have?[NST===>]  Eric might help us here, but basically, I have to agree with you the Maxim is faulty at this point.  It seems to me a monstrous category error.  Objects are just not the sorts of things that have effects.  Events have effects.  Actions have effects.  Thanks reminding me of this problem.  I always supply words when I read the maxim, such as effects… of conceiving of the object in the way we do, as opposed to some other way. The effects under consideration are the expectations that would arise from conceiving of the object way.  So, if we conceive of DT as  a liar, then many effects follow from that conception, and those effects are the meaning of the conception, and it has no other meaning. 

2- Must the enumeration include both "positive" and "negative" effects?

  2a- does the answer to #2 depend on the definition of "our?" If 'our' is defined inclusively the answer to #2 would seem to be yes, but if 'our' is exclusive or restricted to only those with pro or anti perspectives/convictions, maybe not.[NST===>]  

[NST===>] well, we have to remember that the Maxim is a thesis about meaning, and so I think the maxim can be applied relatively—i.e., If [to me] a unicorn is a white horse with a narwhale horn in the middle of his forehead, then that is [to me] the meaning of unicorn.  

3- Must the effects we conceive have some threshold measure of a quality we might call 'truthiness', 'likelihood', 'believe-ability', reality'? [T becoming a dictator.][NST===>]  The question is not about the meaning of “trump”; as a proper name, “Trump” has no meaning in that sense.  The question is about the assignment of trump to the general, “dictator”, and so concerns the meaning of that general.  If we were to test by observation the proposition that Trump is a dictator,  what tests would we employ.  These tests, according to the maxim, are the meaning of the attribution. 

 is a conceivable effect, but, I for one, see no possibility of that effectuating [NST===>] I don’t think so.  What “unicorn” means to me has no implications for the existence of unicorns.  

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. 

5- If we have myriad enumerations does that mean "we" cannot possess a conception of the object, merely multiple conceptions of caricatures of the object?

I'm working on a paper with an epistemological focus and that brought me to Pierce and prompted the above questions.

Another question for the evolutionists who are also pragmatists: why pragmatism over "naturalized epistemology?"

[NST===>] I am not sure what a naturalized epistemology is.  Evolutionary epistemology is the known that all knowledge arises through selection mechanisms.  People will say, for instance, that both a bird’s wing and a jumbo jet’s constitute knowledge about flight.  Well, I suppose.  

davew

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