ONT Pragmatic Maxim -- Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Pragmatic Maxim -- Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Note 1
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Perseans, Ontologists, Semioticians, ...
Here is a forward of some material that I recently posted to
the list for Mary Keeler's "Peirce Online Resource Testbed":
To: PORT-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@OAKLAND.EDU>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 10:16:22 -0400
Message-id: <3CCD55B6.A15D788C@oakland.edu>
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There was a call for different versions of the Pragmatic Maxim
a few weeks ago. As it happens, I had collected a number of
variations on this theme for discussion in my dissertation,
so I sent them in, along with my own commentary, but it
appears that the message did not get through, so here
is another try -- I have broken it into a couple of
pieces this time for the benefit of listservers
and listreaders alike. (02)
Jon Awbrey (03)
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| Document History
|
| Subject: Inquiry Driven Systems: An Inquiry Into Inquiry
| Contact: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
| Version: Draft 8.73
| Created: 23 Jun 1996
| Revised: 24 Apr 2002
| Advisor: M.A. Zohdy
| Setting: Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
| Excerpt: Subdivision 3.3 (Reflection on Reflection)
|
| http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm (05)
3.3 Reflection on Reflection (06)
Before this discussion can proceed any further I need to introduce a
technical vocabulary that is specifically designed to articulate the
relation of thought to action and the relation of conduct to purpose.
This terminology makes use of a classical distinction between "action",
as simply taken, and "conduct", as fully considered in the light of its
means, its ways, and its ends. To the extent that affects, motivations,
and purposes are bound up with one another, the objects that lie within
the reach of this language that are able to be grasped by means of its
concepts provide a form of cognitive handle on the complex arrays of
affective impulsions and the unruly masses of emotional obstructions
that serve both to drive and to block the effective performance of
inquiry. (07)
Once the differentiation between sheer activity and deliberate conduct is
understood on informal grounds and motivated by intuitive illustrations,
the formal capabilities of their logical distinction can be sharpened up
and turned to instrumental advantage in achieving two further tasks: (08)
1. To elucidate the precise nature of the
relation between action and conduct. (09)
2. To facilitate a study of the whole variety
of contingent relations that are possible
and maintained between action and conduct. (010)
When the relations among these categories are described and analyzed in
greater detail, it becomes possible forge their separate links together,
and thus to integrate their several lines of information into a fuller
comprehension of the relations among thought, the purposes of thought,
and the purposes of action in general. (011)
It is possible to introduce the needed vocabulary, while at the same time
advancing a number of concurrent goals of this project, by resorting to the
following strategy. I inject into this discussion a selected set of passages
from the work of C.S. Peirce, chosen with a certain multiplicity of aims in mind. (012)
1. These excerpts are taken from Peirce's most thoughtful definitions
and discussions of pragmatism. Thus, the general tenor of their
advice is pertinent to the long-term guidance of this project. (013)
2. With regard to the target vocabulary, these texts are especially
acute in their ability to make all the right distinctions in all
the right places, and so they serve to illustrate the requisite
concepts in the context of their most appropriate uses. (014)
3. Aside from their content being crucial to the scope of the present
inquiry, their form, manner, sequence, and interrelations supply
the kind of material needed to illustrate an important array
of issues involved in the topic of reflection. (015)
4. Finally, my reflections on these passages are designed to
illustrate the variety of relations that occur between the
POV of a writer, especially as it develops through time, and
the POV of a reader, in the light of the ways that it deflects
its own echoes through a text in order to detect the POV of the
writer that led to its being formed in that manner. (016)
The first excerpt appears in the form of a dictionary entry,
intended as a definition of "pragmatism". (017)
| Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up
| by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of
| apprehension: "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."
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.2, 1878/1902). (018)
The second excerpt presents another version of the "pragmatic maxim",
a recommendation about a way of clarifying meaning that can be taken
to stake out the general POV of pragmatism. (019)
| Pragmaticism was originally enounced in the form of a maxim, as follows:
| Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you
| conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception
| of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.438, 1878/1905). (020)
Over time, Peirce attempted to express the basic idea
contained in the "pragmatic maxim" (PM) in numerous
different ways. In the remainder of this work, the
gist of the pragmatic maxim, the logical content that
appropriates its general intention over a variety of
particular contexts, or the common denominator of all
its versionary approximations, can be referred to with
maximal simplicity as "PM". Otherwise, subscripts can
be used in contexts where it is necessary to mention a
particular form, for instance, referring to the versions
just given as "PM_1" and "PM_2", respectively. (021)
Considered side by side like this, the differences between PM_1 and PM_2
appear to be trivial and insignificant, lacking in every conceivable
practical consequence, as indeed would be the case if both statements
were properly understood. One would like to say that both variants
belong to the same "pragmatic equivalence class" (PEC), where all of
the peculiarities of their individual expressions are absorbed into the
effective synonymy of a single operational principle. Unfortunately, no
matter how well this represents the ideal, it does not describe the present
state of understanding with respect to the pragmatic maxim, and this is the
situation that my work is given to address. (022)
I am taking the trouble to recite both of these very close variants
of the pragmatic maxim because I want to examine how their subsequent
interpretations tend to diverge and to analyze why the traditions of
interpretation that stem from them are likely to develop in such a way
that they eventually come to be at cross-purposes with each other. (023)
There is a version of the pragmatic maxim, more commonly cited,
that uses "we" and "our" instead of "you" and "your". At first
sight, this appears to confer a number of clear advantages on the
expression of the maxim. The second person is ambiguous with regard
to number, and it can be read as both singular and plural, since the ... (024)
Unfortunately, people have a tendency to translate "our concept of the object"
into "the meaning of a concept". This displacement of the genuine article from
"the object" to "the meaning" obliterates the contingently indefinite commonality
of "our" manner of thinking and replaces it with the absolutely definite pretension
to "the" unique truth of the matter // changing the emphasis from common conception
to unique intention. This apparently causes them to read "the whole of our conception"
as "the whole meaning of a conception" ... // from 'thee' and 'thy' to 'the' and 'our'// (025)
The pragmatic maxim, taking the form of an injunctive prescription, a piece
of advice, or a practical recommendation, provides an operational description
of a certain philosophical outlook or "frame of reference". This is the general
POV that is called "pragmatism", or "pragmaticism", as Peirce later renamed it
when he wanted more pointedly to emphasize the principles that distingush his
own particular POV from the general run of its appropriations, interpretations,
and common misconstruals. Thus the pragmatic maxim, in a way that is deliberately
consistent with the principles of the POV to which it leads, enunciates a practical
idea and provides a truly pragmatic definition of that very same POV. (026)
I am quoting a version of the pragmatic maxim whose form of address to
the reader exemplifies a "second person" POV on the part of the writer.
In spite of the fact that this particular variation does not appear in
print until a later date, my own sense of the matter leads me to think
that it actually reacaptures the original form of the pragmatic insight.
My reasons for believing this are connected with Peirce's early notion
of "tuity", the second person character of the mind's dialogue with
nature and with other minds, and a topic to be addressed in detail
at a later point in this discussion. (027)
By way of a piece of evidence for this impression, one that is internal
to the texts, both versions begin with the second person POV that is
implied by their imperative mood. (028)
Just as the sign in a sign relation addresses the interpretant intended
in the mind of its interpreter, PM_2 is addressed to an interpretant or
effect intended in the mind of its reader. (029)
The third excerpt puts a gloss on the meaning of a "practical bearing"
and provides an alternative statement of the pragmatic maxim (PM_3). (030)
| Such reasonings and all reasonings turn upon the idea that if one exerts
| certain kinds of volition, one will undergo in return certain compulsory
| perceptions. Now this sort of consideration, namely, that certain lines
| of conduct will entail certain kinds of inevitable experiences is what
| is called a "practical consideration". Hence is justified the maxim,
| belief in which constitutes pragmatism; namely,
|
| In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should
| consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity
| from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will
| constitute the entire meaning of the conception.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.9, 1905). (031)
The fourth excerpt illustrates one of Peirce's many attempts to get the sense
of the pragmatic POV across by rephrasing the pragmatic maxim in an alternative
way (PM_4). In introducing this version, he addresses an order of prospective
critics who do not deem a simple heuristic maxim, much less one that concerns
itself with a routine matter of logical procedure, as forming a sufficient
basis for a whole philosophy. (032)
| On their side, one of the faults that I think they might find with me is that
| I make pragmatism to be a mere maxim of logic instead of a sublime principle
| of speculative philosophy. In order to be admitted to better philosophical
| standing I have endeavored to put pragmatism as I understand it into the
| same form of a philosophical theorem. I have not succeeded any better
| than this:
|
| Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible
| in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose
| only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding
| practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in
| the imperative mood.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.18, 1903). (033)
I am including Peirce's preamble to his restatement of the principle
because I think that the note of irony and the foreshadowing of comedy
intimated by it are important to understanding the gist of what follows.
In this rendition the statement of the principle of pragmatism is recast
in a partially self-referent fashion, and since it is itself delivered as
a "theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood"
the full content of its own deeper meaning is something that remains to
be unwrapped, precisely through a self-application to its own expression
of the very principle it expresses. To wit, this statement, the form of
whose phrasing is forced by conventional biases to take on the style of
a declarative judgment, describes itself as a "confused form of thought",
in need of being amended, converted, and translated into its operational
interpretant, that is to say, its viable pragmatic equivalent. (034)
The fifth excerpt, PM_5, is useful by way of additional clarification,
and was aimed to correct a variety of historical misunderstandings that
arose over time with regard to the intended meaning of the pragmatic POV. (035)
| The doctrine appears to assume that the end of man is action —-
| a stoical axiom which, to the present writer at the age of
| sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at
| thirty. If it be admitted, on the contrary, that action
| wants an end, and that that end must be something of a
| general description, then the spirit of the maxim itself,
| which is that we must look to the upshot of our concepts
| in order rightly to apprehend them, would direct us towards
| something different from practical facts, namely, to general
| ideas, as the true interpreters of our thought.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.3, 1902). (036)
If anyone thinks that an explanation on this order, whatever
degree of directness and explicitness one perceives it to have,
ought to be enough to correct any amount of residual confusion,
then one is failing to take into consideration the persistence
of a "particulate" interpretation, that is, a favored, isolated,
and partial interpretation, once it has taken or mistaken its
moment. (037)
A sixth excerpt, PM_6, is useful in stating the bearing of
the pragmatic maxim on the topic of reflection, namely, that
it makes all of pragmatism boil down to nothing more or less
than a method of reflection. (038)
| The study of philosophy consists, therefore, in reflexion, and pragmatism
| is that method of reflexion which is guided by constantly holding in view
| its purpose and the purpose of the ideas it analyzes, whether these ends
| be of the nature and uses of action or of thought. ...
|
| It will be seen that pragmatism is not a Weltanschauung but is a
| method of reflexion having for its purpose to render ideas clear.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.13 note 1, 1902). (039)
The seventh excerpt is a late reflection on the reception of pragmatism.
With a sense of exasperation that is almost palpable, this comment tries
to justify the maxim of pragmatism and to reconstruct its misreadings by
pinpointing a number of false impressions that the intervening years have
piled on it, and it attempts once more to correct the deleterious effects
of these mistakes. Recalling the very conception and birth of pragmatism,
it reviews its initial promise and its intended lot in the light of its
subsequent vicissitudes and its apparent fate. Adopting the style of
a "post mortem" analysis, it presents a veritable autopsy of the ways
that the main truth of pragmatism, for all its practicality, can be
murdered by a host of misdissecting disciplinarians, by its most
devoted followers. This doleful but dutiful undertaking is
presented next. (040)
| This employment five times over of derivates of 'concipere' must then have
| had a purpose. In point of fact it had two. One was to show that I was
| speaking of meaning in no other sense than that of intellectual purport.
| The other was to avoid all danger of being understood as attempting to
| explain a concept by percepts, images, schemata, or by anything but
| concepts. I did not, therefore, mean to say that acts, which are
| more strictly singular than anything, could constitute the purport,
| or adequate proper interpretation, of any symbol. I compared action
| to the finale of the symphony of thought, belief being a demicadence.
| Nobody conceives that the few bars at the end of a musical movement
| are the purpose of the movement. They may be called its upshot.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.402 note 3, 1906). (041)
There are notes of emotion ranging from apology to pique to be detected
in this eulogy of pragmatism, and all the manner of a pensive elegy that
affects the tone of its contemplation. It recounts the various ways that
the good of the best among our maxims is "oft interrèd with their bones",
how the aim of the pragmatic maxim to clarify thought gets clouded over
with the dust of recalcitrant prepossessions, drowned in the drift of
antediluvian predilections, lost in the clamor of prevailing trends
and the shuffle of assorted novelties, and even buried with the
fractious contentions that it can tend on occasion to inspire.
It details the evils that are apt to be done in the name of
this précis of pragmatism if ever it is construed beyond
its ambition, and sought to be elevated from a working
POV to the imperial status of a Weltanshauung. (042)
The next three elaborations of this POV are bound to sound mysterious
at this point, but they are necessary to the integrity of the whole work.
In any case, it is a good thing to assemble all these pieces in one place,
for future reference if nothing else. (043)
| When we come to study the great principle of continuity
| and see how all is fluid and every point directly partakes
| the being of every other, it will appear that individualism
| and falsity are one and the same. Meantime, we know that man
| is not whole as long as he is single, that he is essentially a
| possible member of society. Especially, one man's experience is
| nothing, if it stands alone. If he sees what others cannot, we
| call it hallucination. It is not "my" experience, but "our"
| experience that has to be thought of; and this "us" has
| indefinite possibilities.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.402 note 2, 1893). (044)
| Nevertheless, the maxim has approved itself to the writer, after
| many years of trial, as of great utility in leading to a relatively
| high grade of clearness of thought. He would venture to suggest that
| it should always be put into practice with conscientious thoroughness,
| but that, when that has been done, and not before, a still higher grade
| of clearness of thought can be attained by remembering that the only
| ultimate good which the practical facts to which it directs attention
| can subserve is to further the development of concrete reasonableness;
| so that the meaning of the concept does not lie in any individual
| reactions at all, but in the manner in which those reactions
| contribute to that development. ...
|
| Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good
| lies in the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it
| is not in individual reactions in their segregation, but
| in something general or continuous. Synechism is founded
| on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous,
| the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with
| general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process
| of the growth of reasonableness.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.3, 1902). (045)
| No doubt, Pragmaticism makes thought ultimately apply to action exclusively -—
| to conceived action. But between admitting that and either saying that it
| makes thought, in the sense of the purport of symbols, to consist in acts, or
| saying that the true ultimate purpose of thinking is action, there is much the
| same difference as there is between saying that the artist-painter's living art
| is applied to dabbing paint upon canvas, and saying that that art-life consists
| in dabbing paint, or that its ultimate aim is dabbing paint. Pragmaticism makes
| thinking to consist in the living inferential metaboly of symbols whose purport
| lies in conditional general resolutions to act.
|
|(Peirce, CP 5.402 note 3, 1906). (046)
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