SUO: Re: The Sound Of Fundering Behooves
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JA = Jon Awbrey
JM = Jean-Marc Orliaguet
JA, quoting CSP:
| Now, Gentlemen, it behooves me, at the outset of this course,
| to confess to you that in this respect I stand before you an
| Aristotelian and a scientific man, condemning with the whole
| strength of conviction the Hellenic tendency to mingle
| Philosophy and Practice.
|
| There are sciences, of course, many of whose results are almost immediately
| applicable to human life, such as physiology and chemistry. But the true
| scientific investigator completely loses sight of the utility of what he
| is about. It never enters his mind. Do you think that the physiologist
| who cuts up a dog reflects while doing so, that he may be saving a human
| life? Nonsense. If he did, it would spoil him for a scientific man;
| and 'then' the vivisection would become a crime. However, in physiology
| and in chemistry, the man whose brain is occupied with utilities, though
| he will not do much for science, may do a great deal for human life.
| But in philosophy, touching as it does upon matterswhich are, and
| ought to be, sacred to us, the investigator who does not stand
| aloof from all intent to make practical applications, will not
| only obstruct the advance of the pure science, but what is
| infinitely worse, he will endanger his own moral integrity
| and that of his readers.
|
| CSP, RATLOT, page 107.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|'Reasoning and the Logic of Things',
|'The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898',
| Edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, Introduction
| by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Hilary Putnam,
| Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
JA, in his own write:
| How does one convey an idealization?
| One strikes a pose, one acts it out
| on the appropriate stage, one draws
| down on a muse of fire and declaims
| it in a prologue that is blissfully
| free of all subtle admixtures, that
| displacid concreteness of real life.
|
| Works for me.
JM: Does the Aristotelian scientific man, by fear of mingling Philosophy and Practice,
also refrain from comparing a posteriori conceptions with those found a priori?
JM, quoting CSP:
| DIVISION OF TRIADIC RELATIONS [= CP 2.233]
|
| The principles and analogies of Phenomenology enable us to describe,
| in a distant way, what the divisions of triadic relations must be.
| But until we have met with the different kinds 'a posteriori',
| and have in that way been led to recognize their importance,
| the 'a priori' descriptions mean little; not nothing at
| all, but little. Even after we seem to identify the
| varieties called for 'a priori' with varieties which
| the experience of reflexion leads us to think important,
| no slight labour is required to make sure that the divisions
| we have found 'a posteriori' are precisely those that have been
| predicted 'a priori'. In most cases, we find that they are not
| precisely identical, owing to the narrowness of our reflexional
| experience. It is only after much further arduous analysis
| that we are able finally to place in the system the
| conceptions to which experience has led us.
JA, finishing out the Paragraph:
| In the case of triadic relations, no part of this work has,
| as yet, been satisfactorily performed, except in some measure
| for the most important class of triadic relations, those of signs,
| or representamens, to their objects and interpretants.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 2.233
Let me try to start afresh, and say what I am hoping to achieve here.
I aveiled myself of the opportunity provided by John Sowa's paper on
"Signs, Processes, and Language Games" to return once again to the
problems of abductive reasoning in the carrying out of inquiry.
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm
The pertinence of the topic of inquiry itself to this Ontogoogly Working Group --
where we strive to bring Logos to bear on Ontos, and mostly discover how little
we really know about the bonds among the borne on, the bearing, and the bearer,
is that inquiry is the short name for the process by which ontologies, that is,
systems of concepts and symbols regarding "what is, what may be, what must be",
come into being, change, develop, grow, thrive, and either evolve or pass away,
as the case may be.
I am just trying to make some progress on these questions.
In order to make any headway in this direction I have to reign in my aims a bit.
Take mathematics, for instance. Mathematics is a vast field of human endeavor,
but a 4-function e-calculator is an extremely handy tool to have, and it has
its place in the enterprise. Looking back, I can remember a time when we
had no such devices, and I think with a certain fondness on my first,
that revived my childhood interest in number theory and allowed me
to pick up mathematics as an experimental craft once again.
When it comes to inquiry, my current intentions are very similar,
if not a bit of 1-downsmanship -- I would be happy to construct
a 3-function e-calculator, so long as the functions are the
least bit able to carry out the 3 ductions: ab-, de-, in-.
In order to do that, it is necessary to put aside
the lion's share of our capacity for subtlety and
see if we can pick out "routine" or "routinizable"
factors of the larger ductions in all their glory.
So that is what I am trying to do.
Jon Awbrey
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