ONT Re: Differential Logic A -- Discussion
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DLOG A. Discussion Note 3
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RM = Richard Martin
Re: DLOG A10. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05373.html
CSP: | 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, "Maxim of Pragmatism",
| 'Collected Papers', CP 5.438.
RM: I've been pondering this maxim again. If I paraphrase it thus,
"My concept of an object's effects is my concept of the object",
am I even close to capturing CSP's intent?
Even simpler,
"My concept of an object is my comprehension of its effects".
Am I missing something more profound? The first sentence of
the maxim seems to ask no more than to cast "effects" in the
broadest of terms.
Richard,
Let me sum up my own rough sense of what I think Peirce is trying to do here.
He is trying to identify the critical difference between methods of inquiry
that work and those that do not, between those that get us somewhere down
the road to greater knowledge and those that just seem to go in circles
forever. Experience and history provide lots of examples of both types,
always provisionally classified, of course, but there has always been
a problem about telling the effective ingredients from the excipients.
The maxim expresses one of Peirce's best guesses about what makes the
difference, stating it in the form of a practical heuristic that is
meant to serve as a guide under all the perplexities of realistic
field conditions.
Part of the utility of a practical heuristic, a rule of thumb,
depends on it implementing a proportionate type of continuity,
where using an approximation to the exact rule on a sample of
the conceivable data will be proportionately satisficing and
not just utterly useless or totally misleading. Robustness,
I think they'd call it today.
I think what you said above makes a good first approximation,
one that I frequently use myself, and one that will serve as
a sufficient guideline in the great majority of applications.
The way I read it, the Pragmatic Maxim describes and recommends
a certain technique for reflecting on, critically examining, and
thereby facilitating the clarification and continuous development
of one's concepts.
At first strike, I see a rule that reminds me of a closure principle.
Ordinarily, a closure operator C satisfies a law like C(C(X)) = C(X).
But here we have a principle that has the rough shape C(E(X)) = C(X).
In words: My conception of the effects of X is my conception of X.
Said so succinctly, though, it leaves out a lot of important details,
and it's almost impossible to figure out what good such a purported
platitude would be unless you look at concrete examples of its use.
I started one, but it got more involved
than I can track this time of the night,
so I will leave it to the morning light.
Jon Awbrey
P.S. I'm posting this series to the Inquiry List also,
but there's some kind of echo in the Ontology channel,
which forced me to isolate it from my other CC lists.
Also, the Ontology server is taking about 12 hours
to distribute posts, so I will copy you directly.
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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