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The American Aristotle

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Re: The American Aristotle

#21

Post by newbamboo »

User23 wrote: post #6

As HN’s self-described #1 Peirce fan, the second I saw the title I knew who this was about. The reason most of us have never heard of Peirce was the unflagging devotion of his childhood “friend” Simon Newcomb to utterly destroying his legacy out of envy and spite. Not only was Peirce a genius logician who discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independent of Frege, he also formalized pragmatism and semi…

Can you point me to references to help me learn about Peirce the phenomenologist? As in “modern development of phenomenology (independently of and arguably superior to Edmund Husserl)”

Re: The American Aristotle

#22

Post by newbamboo »

watwut wrote: post #16
phantomtype wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. How did you come to the conclusion that he's a white supremacist? This is the syllogism: All Men are equal in their political rights. Negroes are Men. Therefore, negroes are equal in political rights to whites. If you're talking about his use of the word "Negro", I disagree. Negro was a term commonly used, at the time, to refer to people of African origin. I don't associate any negativity with the wor…

I remember reading Fredrik Douglass taking insult on reading word negro. So while common, not universally considered non-insulting.

Hmmm. Didn’t he often use the word himself? https://www.nytimes.com/1863/05/16/archives/what-shall-be-do...

Re: The American Aristotle

#23

Post by [deleted] »

glenstein wrote: post #20
slibhb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the syllogism is that it yields a supposedly faulty conclusion ("Therefore, negroes are equal in political rights to whites"). This is confusing to us because, unlike Peirce, we consider the conclusion to be obviously true. I don't consider Peirce's racism relevant and I find it irriating that it always comes up.

>I don't consider Peirce's racism relevant Relevant to what? The subject, so far as I can tell, is Pierce's intellectual legacy. Is discussion of his views on race allowed or not allowed? I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that whenever people try to calvinball into existence a special rule that we're not allowed, in a comment section of all places, those rules tend to grate me the wrong way.

[deleted]

Re: The American Aristotle

#25

Post by sonotathrowaway »

RNCTX wrote: post #14

I don't claim any higher knowledge of Pierce than what came up in passing as a humanities grad, but having some knowledge of the others mentioned, some points: > When people discuss the connections between language and cognition such as the possible existence of language in nonhuman species, communication in nature, language acquisition, thinking and human language more generally, cognitive scientists and evolutionar…

> I don't think it a coincidence that the rise of linguistics coincides with a decline in cognition that we can all observe today as reaching a sort of critical mass, in which the mention of a thing is gauged to be a judgment of a thing, particularly in social media contexts.

I don’t think this is true at all, or supported by any examination of history.

Re: The American Aristotle

#26

Post by User23 »

isaacimagine wrote: post #17

My grandfather (a linguist) introduced me to Pierce at a young age, only now am I starting to read Pierce's work and beginning to understand why he was so excited to share it with me. He was especially fascinated by the recurring theme of triples on which Pierce's philosophy was based; I'm glad to see them explored in this article. Mind, heart, and hand.

Another very important triple to Peirce is what he called the three normative sciences[1][2]: Logic, the science of what is true; ethics, the science of what is good; and aesthetic, the science of what is beautiful.

Coincidentally China has been using "真善美"[3] as a motto since at least 2014. I know very little about scholarship in China, does anyone know if Peirce is studied there more than he is in the west?

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40319516.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences...

[3] Truth, Goodness and Beauty

Re: The American Aristotle

#27

Post by User23 »

newbamboo wrote: post #21
User23 wrote: post #6

As HN’s self-described #1 Peirce fan, the second I saw the title I knew who this was about. The reason most of us have never heard of Peirce was the unflagging devotion of his childhood “friend” Simon Newcomb to utterly destroying his legacy out of envy and spite. Not only was Peirce a genius logician who discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independent of Frege, he also formalized pragmatism and semi…

Can you point me to references to help me learn about Peirce the phenomenologist? As in “modern development of phenomenology (independently of and arguably superior to Edmund Husserl)”

I haven't participated in academic philosophy for a very long time, so apologies if this isn't what you're looking for. On a New List of Categories[1] is his work that I'm most familiar with that I imagine might be considered phenomenology. Have a look and if you like please let me know if it's along the lines you're looking for or not and if you have the time, why.

Edit: Some of the language is archaic, so as someone who is merely curious and of a pragmatic bent, I had to use care reading it. For example it was the first time I ever saw the word "prescision," which means the withdrawal of attention.

[1] https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/bycsp/newlist/nl...

Re: The American Aristotle

#28

Post by specialist »

User23 wrote: post #6

As HN’s self-described #1 Peirce fan, the second I saw the title I knew who this was about. The reason most of us have never heard of Peirce was the unflagging devotion of his childhood “friend” Simon Newcomb to utterly destroying his legacy out of envy and spite. Not only was Peirce a genius logician who discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independent of Frege, he also formalized pragmatism and semi…

A boss/friend and I locked horns on pretty much everything. He could see that my designs and efforts were good. But because I couldn't fully explain how I attained them, to his satisfaction, my work was somehow invalid.

Years later, he grudgingly acknowledged, by way of an olive branch, that my abductive reasoning was also a valid strategy. And that'd he'd just let it me do my thing. (Even more years later, he had recreated one of my products, and wanted me to know, after trying a lot of alternatives, my design proved best.)

I was actually grateful for this outcome. My intuition and crazy ideas have been a source of conflict with most other geeks my entire career. I get along great with other types of nerds, like marketing and graphic designers.

I don't know if deductive reasoners can get along with abductive. But I strongly believe most efforts benefit from a mixed strategy.

Deductives are great maximizers.

Abductives are great for busting out of local maximums.

Heh. It just now occurs to me we have a common enemy: the inductives. The purveyors of "well actually" pendantry, FUD, and other forms of bureaucratic sabotage. We'd all be happier if inductives stuck to QA/Test.

Re: The American Aristotle

#29

Post by slibhb »

glenstein wrote: post #20
slibhb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the syllogism is that it yields a supposedly faulty conclusion ("Therefore, negroes are equal in political rights to whites"). This is confusing to us because, unlike Peirce, we consider the conclusion to be obviously true. I don't consider Peirce's racism relevant and I find it irriating that it always comes up.

>I don't consider Peirce's racism relevant Relevant to what? The subject, so far as I can tell, is Pierce's intellectual legacy. Is discussion of his views on race allowed or not allowed? I honestly don't know. But what I do know is that whenever people try to calvinball into existence a special rule that we're not allowed, in a comment section of all places, those rules tend to grate me the wrong way.

I didn't say it's not allowed, I said I don't consider it relevant. Are you "calvinballing into existence" a rule that says I am not allowed to consider certain things irrelevant?

Re: The American Aristotle

#30

Post by yesenadam »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #18
yesenadam wrote: post #4

Very good article summarising some achievements of Charles S. Peirce. This is impressive: > The importance and range of Peirce’s contributions to science, mathematics and philosophy can be appreciated partially by recognising that many of the most important advances in philosophy and science over the past 150 years originated with Peirce: the development of mathematical logic (before and arguably better eventually th…

>> (...) the development of mathematical logic (before and arguably better eventually than Gottlob Frege) (...) Frege and Peirce worked out similar aspects of mathematical logic in around the same years. Peirce's work was better known for a while through the work of Ernst Schröder, but then Frege's work became equally known through the work of Bertrand Russel. It's difficult to say which of the two influenced their c…

> then Frege's work became equally known through the work of Bertrand Russel

I'm no expert, but you missed the part where Peirce was written out of the history of logic entirely for most of the 20th C[0], I guess due to the centrality of Frege/Russell in the Anglo/analytic tradition.

The article doesn't seem to me to claim that "one person fully deserves the credit". "What is the point of that"? I guess to be able to give readers new to Peirce, in a couple of paragraphs, an idea of the breadth and importance of his work. I'm not sure how the article "ultimately demeans the value of its subject", if you mean Peirce. It's not a technical journal article, but a "learn how awesome Peirce was!" article, and begrudging Peirce such articles seems a little, well, more goblyny than queennely.

Thanks for the interesting article!

[0] in English, at least, I mean.

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