When I first started getting acquainted with Peirce's thought, several people warned me that it would take a while - and I have found that to be very much the case. If you would like to read his own words, I think that the best place to start is with the two volumes of The Essential Peirce. If you prefer a fairly comprehensive introduction written by someone else, I suggest The Continuity of Peirce's Thought by Kelly Parker and/or Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism by Paul Forster. If you are looking for something shorter that focuses primarily on metaphysics, I recommend Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle by John K. Sheriff.

Thanks, Un, I agree about the interesting zones of inquiry. 'Social science' in general, as with your example of psychology, seems necessarily limited by an inescapable circularity. If a market is rational, for instance, then all the players in it would theoretically know the theory of the rational market, and adjust accordingly. (My first degree back in prehistory was Economics) This seems to be an occasional cause of machine-led panics in markets.

I've been reading and thinking lately about placebos, because they are at the cusp of medical science where the most physicalist of scientists has to consider the role of 'belief' and 'expectations'. In these areas 'science' could expand its realm by expanding its attempt to understand the first person position. After all, testimony is perfectly reasonably evidence (indeed I sometimes think even facts are only testimony, just very well-supported). Varela in 'The Embodied Mind' made an impassioned plea for scientists to open themselves up to first-person narrative, but it seems to have fallen on stony ground so far.

And then the David Deutsch stuff advocated by Tom intrigued me lately, because one of its rationales was built up from 'decision theory', which I've tended to regard as pseudo-scientific game-playing, claiming as it does to be able to second-guess rational choice, but which I perhaps ought to have taken more seriously. (I don't mean the Deutsch stuff depends on this, it's just one line of support for it) Ah me, so much to misunderstand, so little time.

I go back to your example of a vortex in water. You can't just scoop out a vortex. Similarly I have a hard time visualizing what a constraint is supposed to be independent of a material basis. — darthbarracuda

So are solitons and electron holes material things in your book? We can use them for computing. They obey the quantum rules of particles.

And for the millionth time now, this is not about imagining reality independent of a "material basis". Why do you find a hylomorphic understanding of substance so difficult?

The difference is in the view one takes of the material side of the deal. For you, the material basis is itself substantial. Matter is already matter - which begs every important metaphysical question.

But my view explains materiality as emergent from contextual constraints - formal and final cause. It is the limitation on possibility that crystallises substance as something "physically actual".

Protons and electrons exist because the cooling/expanding Cosmic context freezes them out as expressions of broken gauge symmetries. They have actual mass and move about at less than the speed of light because the further global Goldstone symmetry is broken by the Higgs mechanism.

So modern particle physics says the basic substance of existence - quarks and leptons - are made substantial by material possibility (pure radiation) being trapped into formal regularities (broken symmetries) which they can no longer escape (because the Big Bang has removed that freedom with its cooling and expanding).

If you want to "visualise" a constraint, just think of the symmetries that underlie the standard model of particle physics. As forms, they have a logical necessity.

You can't get simpler than the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetic charge - the symmetry of a circle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_group

So that puts an irreducible limit under Cosmic existence. If you have a reduction of degrees of freedom going on of the kind that produces particles as the minimal possible states of excitation, then EM winds up being the bottom level particle property for the very good reason that nothing could be simpler.

And yet even that simplicity still has a structural complexity - exactly as Peirce's triadic view of relations argues.

So in any form of existence which involves the kind of constraint on action which produces an organised dimensionality (ie: a universe), the realist thing is the fact of mathematical form. Matter can try to do whatever the heck it wants. At the Big Bang, matter fields could fluctuate in ways to contain every kind of symmetry-breaking particle. But as a context develops - as the Universe expands and cools - then only the simplest modes of being can actually survive. And so everything reduces down to whatever mathematical form says is the simplest kind of ... mathematical form.

If I sound frustrated, its only because the first time we corresponded, it was about ontic structural realism. You seemed to love the idea - yet clearly reading the Ladyman/Ross book has left zero impression on your thinking.

Varela in 'The Embodied Mind' made an impassioned plea for scientists to open themselves up to first-person narrative, but it seems to have fallen on stony ground so far. — mcdoodle

You can blame the scientists. But it is the scientists who actually investigate and support the idea of a placebo effect. Its a huge area of research.

Who you really ought to blame are the public who are so susceptible to woolly mystic beliefs - like that antibiotics can fix their viral infections. Or SSRIs can take away their depression.

You could also give big pharma a kicking. It is in their financial interest to foster a mechanistic view of pharmacueticals.

So your fingering of "science" as the problem could hardly be wider of the mark. Science actually pays regards to the evidence in forming its views. You would never have heard of the placebo effect unless it had come to light as a result of research.

Or SSRIs can take away their depression. — apokrisis

mhm, guess we agree on something.

Good luck with your creative mysticism - which you seem to have faith in without even being able to justify it as a method.

Well, I don't have much use for faith, it is a rational inquiry. Also the method can be explained, but cannot be demonstrated as of any use, other, perhaps, than in creative insight. Something which goes presumably beyond the scope of the demonstrable, or the reliable.

Meanwhile scientific reasoning - as defined by Peirce - started producing extraordinarily powerful insights from the moment the ancient Greeks first got going with it.

Yes, I wouldn't be without it, but it is not actually conducting metaphysics as far as I can see. All it is doing is looking at what we are presented with upon birth( I will label this y) and concluding, or declaring, that that is all there is, if not physically, then in terms of existence as a whole.

There can't reasonably be considered anything else ( I will label this x ) other than y, because we can't perceive or detect it, or our rational analysis of y doesn't dictate it. And if one were to consider x as anything other than by definition that which is not y, then you are engaged in some kind of wishful thinking, or worse.

So no surprise that the "two dimensional polarity" of Metaphysical dialectics and hierarchical organisation are what folk stick with. It's success has been "unreasonably" spectacular. We know how and when the Universe began, how and when it will die.

Again, you are describing y, I'm happy with the explanation, it's very pragmatic, why would we conclude anything else? Well apart from the bit about us actually knowing how the universe began and how it will "die". How anything came to exist, how the existence of anything is sustained. Is this existence "y" some kind of projection of, or from myself, or some other self. How do we deal with the philosophical conundrum of regression in cause? How come it seems not to be a problem in things coming to an end equally as in them coming to be? You know, the questions provided by philosophy. I don't see them being addressed.


When I realised this I turned my attention to x and to any other philosophical viewpoint which took an interest in x. It was then that I began to see the limitations of just focussing on the y and the human conditioned interpretations of y. It was all a bit jaded.

So your fingering of "science" as the problem could hardly be wider of the mark. Science actually pays regards to the evidence in forming its views. You would never have heard of the placebo effect unless it had come to light as a result of research. — apokrisis

I keep saying, I'm not fingering science as the problem, I'm only trying to propose a limit to the purview of the scientific view.

All cultures have healers and to me it's common sense knowledge that visits to the healer, with the culture's beliefs and expectations built into the encounter, sometimes make people feel better even if the healer's potions are made of sugar or wood pulp. Science hasn't discovered or revealed this knowledge to anyone. What science does is take such common sense knowledge and systematise the study of it, which I completely agree, is excellent work, and sweeps away many myths.

Medical science for a long time had a physical, physiological bias, and resisted scrutiny of what have become known as placebo effects. Clifton K Meador wrote a lovely book 'Symptoms of unknown origin' detailing his life's journey - from medical trainee ridiculing how older practitioners would give patients vitamins or prescribe a dose of brandy - through an intensive 'physicalist' phase of medical research - to his own later mellow understanding that the nature and mood of the medical encounter was and is profoundly important, especially because so many 'presenting' purported medical problems are seemingly intractable. In his and my lifetime placebo studies have mushroomed, and I'm very glad. Indeed there seems to a new phase of bright young researcher-practitioners who are trying to bring first-person accounts into the frame.

...to me it's common sense knowledge that visits to the healer, with the culture's beliefs and expectations built into the encounter, sometimes make people feel better even if the healer's potions are made of sugar or wood pulp. — mcdoodle

But what is the source of this "commonsense" understanding of magical thinking? It can only be that you are benefiting from a tradition of scientific rationality.

So you are talking about a sense that was decidedly uncommon outside of a scientific metaphysics.

What science does is take such common sense knowledge and systematise the study of it, — mcdoodle

You invert the causality for reason of polemics. It was the systematic study of nature that has resulted in naturalism (rather than supernaturalism) becoming widespread commonsense in modern society.

Medical science for a long time had a physical, physiological bias, and resisted scrutiny of what have become known as placebo effects. — mcdoodle

Doctors are the most mechanical of thinkers. I found it quite horrifying as a biologist to start doing neuroscience and be exposed to what seemed the most primitive thinking about natural causality.

So yes, medical science does have a particular problem. It is after all a discipline that earns it keep by "fixing things". And treating the body or brain like a broken machine is the simple place to start on when you don't really understand the complexity from a deep biological point of view.

However again, even medical science is science in that in the long run it will be pragmatically self-correcting. So paradigm shifts are possible, and will happen if they deliver better outcomes.

Indeed there seems to a new phase of bright young researcher-practitioners who are trying to bring first-person accounts into the frame. — mcdoodle

Yep. A good doctor in the front line knows it is about dealing with people holistically. And modern medical training gets that too.

So your argument boils down to there being a problem with Scientism and an overly-reductionist, overly-mechanical, approach to understanding nature. And it is easy to agree that that mindset has become widespread - especially in popular culture.

But actual scientists are rarely that dogmatic. Even that arch-reductionist, Francis Crick, replied that he pushed his more wacky hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness simply in the spirit of putting up ideas that others could actually knock down.

And my position remains that all phenomena - including ethics and aesthetics - are expressions of natural principles, hence comprehensible by the methods of scientfic reason. Which to be precise, is the triadic cycle of abductive creative guessing, deductive theorising, and inductive confirmation, as outlined in Peircean pragmatist epistemology.

So indeed, one method to rule them all. :)

So your argument boils down to... — apokrisis

Apo, I would enjoy debating things with you more if you gave some sign of being the slightest bit interested in learning from other people here. I'm an old git who's learnt a great deal from this forum and the old one, including from many people I've disagreed with, and now I've gone back to grad school in the hope of learning some more. Your constant disparagement of arguments not your own is very wearing. Every point on which you agree with me is immediately balanced by another disparaging remark. Our metaphysics are different: so be it, that's the way it is with metaphysics. Where you have something evidentially to demonstrate to me, I am happy for you to tell me. But your point-by-point remarks above are rhetorical, merely assertive. I don't see what they demonstrate except the differences in our personalities and points of view.

Hey, you go on a philosophy forum and not just your arguments, but your premises too, get picked apart. Get used to it.

You made the assertion that science just systematises commonsense. I provided a counterargument. Now apparently I'm guilty of not just sitting here nodding in encouraging agreement???

Hey, you go on a philosophy forum and not just your arguments, but your premises too, get picked apart. Get used to it. — apokrisis

Says the guy who's never put his neck out and started a discussion here. >:O

If you want threads on the biophysics of substance or the thermodynamic imperative, I could start providing those again. But be careful what you wish for. ;)

I need to learn! :P

And the honest truth is I need to be pushed.

I'm basically so lazy I need to be made to justify my views by plunging back into the literature to make sure I actually understood what I thought I knew.

So there is a method here - even if it grates on some.

I make dangerously bold statements knowing that I'll really look stupid if I get the basic facts wrong. I make the stakes very high for myself so as to give myself no choice but to go do the homework and make sure I'm right.

But that's enough explaining. Everyone knows this is the internet and that naturally polarises people so they either excessively agree or disagree - and take it all completely personally either way.

I make dangerously bold statements knowing that I'll really look stupid if I get the basic facts wrong. — apokrisis

My personality is not conducive to being quite that "reckless," so to speak; but I do see this as a place where I can try out new ideas as working hypotheses, figure out how well I can articulate them, and see whether they hold up to scrutiny.

Abductive reasoning is always reckless! But as you say, then comes the deduction and induction which justifies it as the right thing to have done.

I make dangerously bold statements knowing that I'll really look stupid if I get the basic facts wrong. — apokrisis

I do the same thing, although clearly from the other side of the "isle".

Very true, and something we all do, but only to a point. No need to hold the various members of this forum, or another forum, or a university as the only arbiters of truth, or scrutiny, as you say. It's a good breeding-ground. :)

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.( I'm not referring to you by the way;).

I won't bark at you then :)

Are "natural principles" all there is? What about the natural principles which fall into category x?



(To recap, I have categorised what we are presented with upon birth as "y". And whatever exists, but we are not presented with at birth as "x").

It doesn't make sense for you to classify x as the unknown unknowns and then start to tell me about all the known unknowns that constitute x. Besides which, even knowing there could be unknown unknowns constitutes the pragmatic beginnings of knowledge.

So in dividing knowledge this way - into y and not-y - you remain completely in the ambit of scientific reasoning as practiced by Peirce.

It doesn't make sense for you to classify x as the unknown unknowns and then start to tell me about all the known unknowns that constitute x. Besides which, even knowing there could be unknown unknowns constitutes the pragmatic beginnings of knowledge.

But I have not done that. What I have done is delineated nature into two areas. The area within the purview of people "y" and the area not within the purview of people "x".

I have done this because there is an implication that the whole of nature is within the purview of people, in scientism, or materials based philosophies.


Yes it could be said that the "unknown unknowns constitutes the pragmatic beginnings of knowledge". But that is not saying much, because those unknown unknowns appear to be an entirely undefined and unconsidered region, reality, of existence.

So in dividing knowledge this way - into y and not-y - you remain completely in the ambit of scientific reasoning as practiced by Peirce.

I have not divided knowledge into y and not y, this is my charge, that scientism etc, does just this and then ignores the not y.

I am dividing what exists (comes to pass), into what we are aware of and what we are not. I'm not commenting on knowledge in this division, that is concerned with the intellectualisation of y and x.

Anyway, presumably metaphysics as a philosophical inquiry is concerned with what exists, rather than knowledge. This being the case, presumably it makes the same distinction that I am making.
If it claims that epistemology is ontology as you do, then it is, as I say, susceptible to solipsism and appears to be making an assumption about the actual ontology we are sustained by, subject to our minds. Something which we cannot do due to our limitations

Anyway, presumably metaphysics as a philosophical inquiry is concerned with what exists, rather than knowledge. — Punshhh

Metaphysics includes both epistemology and ontology usually.

I have not divided knowledge into y and not y, this is my charge, that scientism etc, does just this and then ignores the not y. — Punshhh

Yeah. But ever since Kant....

I have done this because there is an implication that the whole of nature is within the purview of people, in scientism, or materials based philosophies. — Punshhh

So your beef is against Scientism and not science. Cool.

Quite I'm critical of scientism and pseudo philosophies along the same lines. Science does include the philosophy of science, which may on occasion result in statements restricting existence to "y". Indeed you yourself said that, "We know how and when the Universe began, how and when it will die". I would agree that science and the accompanying philosophy of science has enabled us to say this of y and only y. So in reality we have no idea how and when the universe began, or how and when it will die, if atall. Because we are not in the full possession of the facts, or the extent to which we are in ignorance of them.

For example in a world in which there is a fascination with the moustache, all might to viewed as intrinsic and contingent on moustaches. It might all make perfect sense even mathematically. But those people would be wrong if they said the universe began as a moustache and will become a moustache again at the end of time.

Likewise the bacteria living on the surface of your eye, might not be aware of what information passes by, indeed it might say, if told, how absurd it would be to suggest such a thing.

So in reality we have no idea how and when the universe began, or how and when it will die, if atall. Because we are not in the full possession of the facts, or the extent to which we are in ignorance of them. — Punshhh

It is silly to claim we have "no idea" when patently we have very a clear and empirically supported set of ideas. There are many things we can speak with definiteness about because they have been established by counterfactual inquiry.

And yes, there are always the unknown unknowns. We even know that too - if you accept Kant and Peirce's approach to knowledge. Inquiry is epistemically open ended and can only indeed target nature in light of actual concerns.

It is not just that there is no complete knowledge of the thing in itself. We don't even really care. What matters is the intellectual relation we form with the world - which itself is a two-way street in that discovering what matters to "us" is how "we" are formed.

So the epistemology of Kant and Peirce is extremely sophisticated. We construct ourselves via our concerns - our modelling relation with reality.

I'm not here to defend the naive realism of Scientism or Reductionism any more that I'm here to defend the naive idealism of Romanticism or Theism.

It would be nice if you finally realised that.

Yes I realise that and value the philosophies you propose here. However I return to my original observation, that there doesn't appear to be much metaphysics going on. I know that pragmatically this is irrelevant, but I will usually point out our degree of ignorance when either claims are made that we know anything fundamental. Or that conceptual knowledge which is not pragmatically relevant ( relevant to what I wonder), or have some utility (likewise) is meaningless, fanciful, or of no interest to the intellect. In favour of a science led hard pragmatism.

The problem with the appeal us not really knowing anything is its intent. What are we aiming for in making such an argument? Some sort of perfect knowledge which gives us all the answers. The limited scope of any instance of knowledge is considered a problem we must get past if we want to understand existence-- it's still aiming for an account of everything, the impossible one, given the uncertainty of the world.

Knowledge is still understood to be some exhaustive account we are meant to obtain, rather than being realised as necessarily limited and incapable of giving a full account. If we are making the demand of an exaustive account, we have failed to understand stand the limit of knowledge and what that means.

Apo's argument doesn't specifically point out a metaphysicsl point, but there is plenty going on. The understanding that knowledge is necessarily limited is a metaphysical point.

To set aside the question of an exaustive account, as it's realised as impossible, and point out that knowledge is only ever limited, is a metaphysical culling-- any postion which appeals to an exaustive account is revealed to be incohrent. Logically, we can only have limited knowledge. Not only is our knowledge limited, but there's no exaustive account to aim for.

The problem with the appeal us not really knowing anything is its intent.

Actually its more about a realisation of our limitations, if it is then found that knowing nothing is the consequence, this is a side issue, to be considered separately.

What are we aiming for in making such an argument?

To realise our position.

Some sort of perfect knowledge which gives us all the answers. The limited scope of any instance of knowledge is considered a problem we must get past if we want to understand existence-- it's still aiming for an account of everything, the impossible one, given the uncertainty of the world.

No, as I pointed out, I am not discussing knowledge, this is because knowledge is an intellectual abstraction, taking the form of a linguistic (in the broadest sense) concept. As such it is only an interpretation, an interpretation in and of my category "y". So my point in making these categories is to consider "x", rather than y( I know that intellect and knowledge are required to perform this task, but this can be achieved, by putting epistemology to side for the purposes of the enquiry).

Knowledge is still understood to be some exhaustive account we are meant to obtain, rather than being realised as necessarily limited and incapable of giving a full account. If we are making the demand of an exaustive account, we have failed to understand stand the limit of knowledge and what that means.

As I said above, I am not refering to or appealing to an exhaustive account at all. But rather considering both x and our limited understanding, of our metaphysical, or ontological predicament.

Apo's argument doesn't specifically point out a metaphysicsl point, but there is plenty going on. The understanding that knowledge is necessarily limited is a metaphysical point.

Yes I agree on both points. However I am specifically considering Ontology and as I said, I would expect x to be considered equally as y in such an inquiry.

To set aside the question of an exaustive account, as it's realised as impossible, and point out that knowledge is only ever limited, is a metaphysical culling-- any postion which appeals to an exaustive account is revealed to be incohrent. Logically, we can only have limited knowledge. Not only is our knowledge limited, but there's no exaustive account to aim for.

I don't see that we can say that an exhaustive account is impossible, please explain? Yes I agree that human knowledge is only ever limited, but this does not mean that an exhaustive account cannot be considered, if required. Also you will have to provide an explanation of why you say that there is no exhaustive account out there?