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PEIRCE_REALITY
February 15, 2010
August 12, 2011
May 11, 2022
"Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are
independent of what anybody may think them to be."
C.S. Peirce, "How to Make our Ideas Clear" (1878)
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/ideas/id-main.htm#CP5.405
Peirce insists that the character of
things must be limited to their
practically observable nature.
Peirce takes reality to be that which is
independant of our ideas of it...
THE_TRUE_PEIRCE
I think more precisely: reality is that
which reasonable, determined people will
all agree on after thorough investigation.
In other words: science is a social Interesting that
process for converging on the truth. he doesn't use the
same resolution of
his "problem" with
individual reliance
on probable expectations.
Maybe he thinks
he did, and it's
all the same.
((Huh? What was I
talking about here?))
Going over Pierce in more detail:
"... reality, like every other quality, consists
in the peculiar sensible effects which things
partaking of it produce. The only effect which
real things have is to cause belief ..."
An unusual opinon. The knife's blade may indeed encourage
you to believe in it's existence, but the damage it does
in your gut would not usually be taken as a minor side-effect.
I *think* what Pierce was trying to say is that there's no
point in thinking of sense data produced by the real as
seperate from belief in the reality of the object:
"for all the sensations which they excite emerge into
(W3.272) consciousness in the form of beliefs"
Pierce is going for the conventional
correspondence theory of truth: when
your ideas of what's there line up
with what's there, then you've got it:
"The question therefore is, how is
true belief (or belief in the real)
distinguished from false belief (or
belief in fiction)." Let us quietly slink away
from Pierce resorting to
"fiction" as a short-hand
for falsity.
FICTIONAL_MANIFESTO
When you're going for
rhetorical parallism
you need to work the
synonyms, or else the
reader may suspect
redundant tautological
repetition.
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/ideas/id-main.htm#CP5.407
"... all the followers of science are animated by a
cheerful hope that the processes of investigation, if
only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution
to each question to which they can be applied."
Pierce goes to town on the idea that scientific progress
can work as a model for the pursuit of truth in general:
"So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out
with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of
investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves
to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by
which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a
fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No
modification of the point of view taken, no selection of
other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can
enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great
law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. 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. That is the
way I would explain reality."
http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/ideas/id-main.htm#CP5.408
It doesn't take him long to back off on this optimism somewhat:
"Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone
the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause
an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long
as the human race should last. Yet even that would not
change the nature of the belief, which alone could be the
result of investigation carried sufficiently far; ..."
This is a peculiar sort of "pragmatism"-- an insistence that this
truth critereon is still the right one (the true truth?) even
in the absence of any possible observation confirming that this
is so.
" ... and if, after the extinction of our race,
another should arise with faculties and disposition Pierce didn't
for investigation, that true opinion must be the one need to wait
which they would ultimately come to. 'Truth crushed to around for
earth shall rise again,' and the opinion which would "Last and first
finally result from investigation does not depend on Men."
how anybody may actually think. But the reality of
that which is real does depend on the real fact that
investigation is destined to lead, at last, if
continued long enough, to a belief in it."
Dude, what was that you were saying about learning to
dodge the metaphysical? This deep abiding faith... SUNKEN_REEFS
I have an old note about how this
might be compared to the "reasonable
man" standard-- Legal decisions
sometimes invoke a fictional
point-of-view that's similarly shaky
if you think about it in any detail:
In point of face, reasonable men
don't always agree, and what seems
reasonable often changes over time.
In practice this is an
insistance on looking
at things in a
normal/moderate way...
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