SUO: Re: Membrance Of Things Peirced
Pat Hayes wrote:
>
> >
> > > He seems to have thought that the associations between relations
> > > and their instances, which he was encoding as arcs in his graphs,
> > > were like valency in chemistry, so that relations (including that
> > > of identity) had a kind of intrinsic associated 'atomic number',
> > > from which it follows that the relation of two things being
> > > identical has to be different from that of three things being
> > > identical. This particular analogy was similar in some ways
> > > to Kepler's idea that the planetary distances from the sun
> > > arose from packing the regular solids into nesting spheres:
> > > neat, ingenious, apparently successful; but wrong.
> >
> > Do you get all your history from Classic Comics, or something?
> > Yeah, this gullible old dodder Peirce, who worked out a version
> > of non-standard analysis that compares favorably in its rigor
> > and its scope with those devised thirty years later, was so
> > easily suckered by this or that half-baked analogy. Really!
>
> Notice I said 'seems to have thought'. The above
> is admittedly something of a guess, but it is one
> that I adduced from reading Peirce's own writings
> on the topic. I have a great deal of respect for
> Peirce, but unlike some folk, I do not worship him,
> and I do not think that to say he made a few mistakes
> is somehow to commit blasphemy. He was very prescient,
> very clever, and wrote (though didnt publish) a great
> deal of interesting stuff. He also wrote some nonsense.
>
> I will refrain from taking the particular debate
> any further on the SUO list.
>
> Pat Hayes
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Pat,
I am not interested in debates about cultural heroes.
I am not interested in belonging to this or that cult
of personality. My interest lies in solving a number
of problems that I have found to be far more difficult
than I ever would have guessed when I began to work on
them, and so I need all the help that I can get from
whatever source can supply me with a few good ideas
or a substantial boost. Therefore, it is of some
interest to me to form accurate estimates of what
sources are troves of fool's gold, what sources
are generally reliable on a recurring basis,
and what sources are unsuspected gold mines
of good ideas. It is simply a matter of
intellectual economics, because life is
too short to start it all from scratch,
mistakes can be painful and wasteful,
no matter how inevitable the mass of
them will be, and futility is just
no fun at all. There are various
types of biases or fallacies that
have worked to interfere with the
fair reception of Peirce's ideas
in the past: the progressivist
fallacy, the "I do not imbibe
the local color" snobbery,
and many others just as
lacking in validity for
the guidance of inquiry.
These are blocks to inquiry,
and I am basically just trying
to do society a service whenever
I work to disabuse particular people
or the populace at large of their adverse
effects. In the end, one has to judge for
oneself, of course. I just think that it is
kind of important that we resolve the problems
that are thrown our way by Nature and the nature
of our Selves, before one of these lobs takes us out.
I am sorry about my occasional rhetorical excesses, though.
There is no sense to that, but I do get frustrated by things.
Jon Awbrey
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