Inquiry Into Inquiry

Re: Peirce List • Clark Goble • Jon Awbrey • Clark Goble • Jon Awbrey • Clark Goble

To put things more plainly, it’s a routine observation we have no need for moods and tenses in actually doing mathematics, that is, in developing the consequences of given axioms, constructing formal models, or applying models and theories to the applicable phenomena.  Theories of change, intention, and possibility can all be stated in present tense indicative mood.  Regarding change, intention, and possibilities as real or not is independent of the linguistic forms we happen to use in their description.

Audiences, interpreters, receivers are neither right nor wrong.  It simply happens that one audience may require us to articulate what goes without saying, what is taken for granted, “understood” in another context.  It may be useful exercise to unfold the implicatures and presuppositions taken for granted in a particular discourse situation, but giving a name to one’s habitual position is not the same thing as a change of address.

So, yes, I’d say Peirce is a realist about possibilities, and patterns of possibilities, from the start.  That much is simply implicit in his mathematical approach to logic, probability, and information.

Resources

• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List • Clark Goble • Jon Awbrey • Clark Goble • Jon Awbrey

With respect to the issues surrounding “modal realism” — what stance Peirce took and when he took it — let me refer to a figure I constantly have in mind, one I drew to map the first few principalities in Peirce’s classification of sciences.

Normative science rests largely on phenomenology and on mathematics;
metaphysics on phenomenology and on normative science.

❧ Charles Sanders Peirce • Collected Papers, CP 1.186 (1903)
Syllabus • Classification of Sciences (CP 1.180–202, G-1903-2b)

There is more discussion of the figure and its legend here.

The picture reminds us of both the analogy and the disparity between phenomenology and mathematics, between our observation of actual appearances in phenomenology and our observation of possible existence in mathematics, with “possible” in this case meaning no more than not inconsistent.  The disparity is something we come to know as the fallibility, partiality, or subjectivity of all our models, representations, and theories of reality.

The most astute physicists appreciate the significance of this disparity or gap, and there is a famous quip by Einstein that testifies to it, but more often than not they tend to get by like the rest of us, with a variety of naive realism.

In contrast, doing mathematics requires a more constant awareness of the distance between the two footings, the terra firma of actuality and Plato’s heaven of possibilities.  This means that the standpoint known as “modal realism” is really the modus operandi or standard operating philosophy within the realm of mathematics, so taken for granted that its marching orders need no banners or fanfare in the ordinary course of work.

Being one who sees more continuity of development than radical reconstruction in Peirce’s thought over his lifetime, what I do see changing through the years is the greater diversity of his audiences as the river of his work flows from its constant sources to the alluvial delta he left later generations to sift.  The greatest share of emphatic variance in what he writes is explained more by variations in whom he addresses than what he is trying to communicate.

Drawing the conclusion for the present case, my initial guess would be that any apparent conversion to modal realism is more likely explained by an increasing need to underscore attitudes of mind that are simply tacit in the scientific application of formal logic, mathematics, probability, and statistics.

Resources

• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List Discussion • Val Daniel

Viewing the normative science of logic and its object, truth, in the medium of a triadic sign relation, the first cut among notions of truth divides those that take the object domain into account in a fundamental way from those that regard truth as a predicate of signs alone.

At first sight, then, it appears we can usefully contrast the pragmatic and correspondence conceptions of truth from the motley crew of intuitions about truth based on coherence, consensus, and truth by logical consistency alone.

That is the perspective Susan Awbrey and I adopted in our work on “Universities as Learning Organizations” and “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrated Universities”, where we applied a sign-relational framework to the problem of integrating knowledge across the walls of intellectual silos that have come to shape the disciplinary architectures of our modern universities.

References

• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 269–284.  Abstract.
• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (1999), “Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century”, Second International Conference of the Journal ‘Organization’, Re-Organizing Knowledge, Trans-Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.  Online.
• Haack, Susan (1993), Evidence and Inquiry : Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK.
• Misak, Cheryl J. (1991), Truth and the End of Inquiry : A Peircean Account of Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Resources

• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List Discussion • CG • JA • JA • JA • JAS • JA • CG • JA • JBD • JA

Working on what is worth saving in old Wikipedia articles requires me to rummage through their edit histories, which raises a host of annoying ghosts from bygone days.  In this review I’d like to avoid rehashing old skirmishes and use what I’ve learned in the mean time to give a better account of pragmatic truth.

Resources

• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

I’ve begun reworking the InterSciWiki article on the Pragmatic Theory of Truth and I think it will be useful to develop it further.  The plan that usually works best for me is to revise the content on the wiki and serialize it on my blog.

The ISW article derives from the last Wikipedia version I edited:

• English Wikipedia • Pragmatic Theory of Truth • 14 Feb 2007

I copied that content to several other wikis around the web from 2007 on and a subsequent version of it eventually ended up at ISW, my main working wiki these days.

Here is the lead-in to the ISW article as it currently stands:

Pragmatic theory of truth refers to those accounts, definitions, and theories of the concept truth that distinguish the philosophies of pragmatism and pragmaticism.  The conception of truth in question varies along lines that reflect the influence of several thinkers, initially and notably, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, but a number of common features can be identified.  The most characteristic features are (1) a reliance on the pragmatic maxim as a means of clarifying the meanings of difficult concepts, truth in particular, and (2) an emphasis on the fact that the product variously branded as belief, certainty, knowledge, or truth is the result of a process, namely, inquiry.

Resources

• Truth Theory
• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List • Jerry Rhee (quoting Peirce)

The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to
by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth,
and the object represented in this opinion is the real. 
(CP 5.407, JR’s emphasis).

The key word here is “investigate”.  We can read that loosely as any method of fixing belief, but we know that Peirce ranked methods of fixing belief in order of their malleability to the impressions of reality, their aptness to let what is permanent, persistent, “something upon which our thinking has no effect” (CP 5.384) settle the matter once and for all.

• Tenacity, Authority, Plausibility, Inquiry

This is the question of “convergence”, a question that mathematicians, physicists, systems theorists, etc. have investigated in great detail.  As a rule we find that some methods of procedure, of stepping through a sequence of states, will eventually converge on a settled or stable state while others will not.  All that is relative, of course, to the mathematical model or theory we have in hand for describing states of information in time.  So we never quite escape the question of how to tell whether a model is good and succeeds in its purpose of giving us information about its object or whether it falls short of that object.

References

• Peirce, C.S. (1877), “The Fixation Of Belief”, Popular Science Monthly 12 (Nov 1877), pp. 1–15.  Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.358–387.  Online.
• Peirce, C.S. (1878), “How To Make Our Ideas Clear”, Popular Science Monthly 12 (Jan 1878), pp. 286–302.  Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.388–410.  Online.

Resources

• Truth Theory
• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List • Val Daniel

I propose that we complete the customary (incomplete/dyadic) theories of truth, viz., by consensus and by correspondence, by adding, Truth by “concordance” (what you, Jon, call “triple correspondence”).

Proposal accepted!  Actually, I feel like I’ve been working along these lines ever since I first met up with Peirce.  I’m currently fighting some emotional resistance — it makes me a little sad to look on those old wiki-scraps — the dreams we dreamed about what Wikipedia could be!  a true community of learning and inquiry!  but it was neither designed nor destined to become that.

At any rate, I would begin by poring over the relics I saved and trying to see what sense we could make of them.  By way of secondary literature, I remember Susan Haack’s Evidence and Inquiry and Cheryl Misak’s Truth and the End of Inquiry helping to frame the issues.  The papers Susan Awbrey and I wrote in the 90s and 00s attempted to tackle pieces of the puzzle, namely, how to integrate the object-facing and inter-sign aspects of semiosis, the first implied by correspondence theories and the second implied by consensus theories of truth.

References

• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 269–284.  Abstract.
• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (1999), “Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century”, Second International Conference of the Journal ‘Organization’, Re-Organizing Knowledge, Trans-Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.  Online.
• Haack, Susan (1993), Evidence and Inquiry : Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK.
• Misak, Cheryl J. (1991), Truth and the End of Inquiry : A Peircean Account of Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Resources

• Truth Theory
• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List | Truth As Regulative Or Real • CG • JFS • JLRC

I’ve been reviewing the old articles mentioned in my last post and the more I look at them the more I think they might be worth salvaging.

John Sowa’s comment about the “major failures caused by ignoring [Peirce]” and Jerry Chandler’s remark about later readings serving as a “Procrustian bed for CSP’s concepts” are very much to the point in this context and I will have a few things to say along those lines in due time.

Resources

• Truth Theory
• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Re: Peirce List | Truth As Regulative Or Real • CG • JLRC • JAS • JBD • JA • JFS
Cf: Peirce List | Pragmatic Theory Of Truth • JA

Comment 1

Folks who were around a dozen years ago will remember all the fun and fuss we had when some rather absurd things about Peirce’s theory of truth or the lack thereof popped up in various Wikipedious articles.  Some of us eventually hashed out a fairly useful account of a Pragmatic Theory of Truth, at least, in my humble opinion.

Incidental Musement

Busy watching Goblet of Fire 🔥 for about the dozenth time now, where I am finding Rita Skeeter’s theory of Alternative Truth especially poignant in view of current events, but I will dig up some old scraps of text later.

Comment 2

I haven’t looked at these articles since the days I wasted trying to justify the ways of Peirce to Wikipediots, other than to reformat them a little here and there, but some of their material may be instructive for ongoing discussions, especially the quotes from Peirce and Kant on the nominal character of truth definitions in terms of correspondence.  To make the shortest possible shrift, we need to keep in mind that “correspondence” for Peirce can mean “triple correspondence”, in other words, just another name for a triadic relation.

Resources

• Truth Theory
• Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• Correspondence Theory Of Truth

Note.  The document histories of the latter two article forks tell me those drafts derive from Wikipedia revisions of 14 Feb 2007 and 29 Jun 2006, respectively.