ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
John Collier wrote (JC):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
JC: I don't think so. Psychologism usually means exactly the social kind.
The individual kind isn't of much consequence. Certainly the proposals
Frege and Husserl were against were the social kinds, so presumably
Peirce fails to avoid the problem unless there is something else
going on in his thinking.
JA: Peirce spoke of his "unpsychological" or "non-psychological"
conception of logic. His arguments on its behalf do not
involve the sibilant clashes of isms and antis, but are
simply marking the distinction between a descriptive
special science like physics, chemistry, biology,
neuroscience, psychology, sociology, or whatever,
and a "formal" (= "quasi-necessary") and thus
normative science like logic. The matrix of
the "social" here refers to the community of
deliberations and the continuity of pragmata
that are involved in culturally embodied norms
of conduct, and not to any pretension of positing
a "value-free" anthropological or sociological standpoint.
JC: So it is culture dependent, and hence empirical?
It is time to speak of many things, all too many things,
but first to inquire: "What do you mean by 'dependent'?"
JA: Remember that the "pragmatically ordered normative sciences" (PONS)
have their bases on concentric discs, with logic being a special case
of ethics and ethics being dependent on a very broad sense of aesthetics,
the sense of what is good for creatures such as ourselves.
JC: This is basically the view that Michael Stingl and I proposed
in "Evolutionary Naturalism and the Objectivity of Morality",
John Collier and Michael Stingl, Biology and Philosophy 8 (1993):
47-60, reprinted in Paul Thompson, ed., Issues in Evolutionary Ethics,
SUNY Press, Albany, 1995, pp. 409-429. I could hardly forget it.
I regard this as an empirical and psychologistic approach.
JA: Then you fail to understand the meaning of the word "normative".
JC: Well, I doubt this, but others have accused me of that, but
only with regards to ethics, not normativity in general.
Sorry, I mean of course that you fail to understand what I mean by "normative",
a much more venial sin, and no doubt a delinquency to which I have contributed.
JC: I'm sorry, but this appears to be inconsistent with what you said above.
What? Where?
JC: The more you say, the more convinced I am that my original
complaint about your position is right, and that Russell's
jabs at Peirce were on target.
JA: Russell's jabs at Peirce are like a 2-dimensional target
trying to jab the arrows that the archer has aimed at it.
JC: Well, I already have good evidence that you grossly
oversimplify Russell, so I shouldn't be surprised that
you grossly exaggerate Peirce's depth.
JA: My current guess, based on a recent reading of Russell's early trials,
is that folks who restrict themselves to 2-adic thinking, as Russell
tried and, with Wittgenstein's deflationary help, failed to escape,
just cannot grasp subjects like meaning, belief, purpose, norms,
ethics, logic, beauty, ..., or anything else of significance.
JC: I agree, but I also think that 3-adic thinking necessarily takes us
into the empirical realm, or else into some otherworldly rationalism,
which echoes some of Howard's early concerns. I would, however, drop
logic from this list, since I think you have already shown that you
give a defective reading of the logicists.
Man! I just can't seem to do anything right today!
JA: But this is beginning to remind me of all those years that I wasted
arguing with behaviorists. One fine day all their funding dried up --
and the next day they had already changed the name of their subfield
to "animal cognition" -- such is the relative force of the rational
versus the economic form of argument.
JC: Actually, they became functionalists, and now dominate cognitive science.
That way they save their rationalist ass and eat their economic cake.
And in so doing they once again ex-inhibited their
consummated cargo-culture clubbishness by stealing
a perfectly good word from the anthropologists and
malfeasantly converting it to its opposite meaning.
Did I correctly hear a "vice-versa" at the end there?
Jon Awbrey
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