[Inquiry] Re: Actual, Existent, Real -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AER.  Discussion Note 11

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GR = Gary Richmond
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: AER-DIS 9.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/002377.html
In: AER-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/thread.html#2368

JA, amending JA:

    Joe's remarks about the role of re-creative abduction in hermeneutics
    and the recursory need to refresh the screen of one's personal window
    are very apt, but there are persistent wrinkles that are not smoothed
    away by those means alone, if you don't mind my mushwork of metaphors
    too much.  One of these hitches is that of reading a text through the
    not-quite-transparency of a default philosophy that is insufficiently
    reflected on from alternative points of view.  I remember a course in
    comparative religion where we read bits of Frazer and Tyler that were
    used to exemplify a particular brand of ethnocentrism, one which took
    the features of one's favorite religion as the end point of evolution,
    using that outlook as a standard for the ranking of every other faith.
    This is the kind of non-encounter that we keep running into with many
    of the so-called readings of Peirce, most recently where a minor node
    of coincidence with the default doctrine is exalted as a major trophe,
    all the while neglecting the turning points of its genuine revolution.

GR: I would agree that acts of "recreative abduction" are necessary and valuable,
    but I do not think that they are sufficient nor sufficiently creative in terms
    of evolving a field.  This kind of re-creation is indeed an excellent way to
    secure an education, but the next step in confronting a thinker of the breadth
    and depth and power of Peirce is to plunge back into Peirce, not the secondary
    literature (that little piece of pedagogy is my speaking as a college instructor
    here :-)

GR: Of course one need look at the best of the secondary literature to see what
    the contemporary issues are, but I think it has for some been dangerous to
    come under the spell of the opinions of certain scholars.  Much better to
    suffer the inadequacy of ones own thought than to become a disciple of,
    say, Russell or Murphey.  I especially admire scholars who have not
    fallen into this trap.

GR: I would be very interested in your commenting further on the
    "general revolution" you allude to at the end of your post.

Gary,

That was "genuine revolution", and there I am referring to the insights that
Peirce developed between 1865 and 1870 that none of his predecessors -- and
indeed, not all of his expositors -- quite get as far as realizing.  If you
follow the development of those ideas, you see an excavation of the grounds
for the possibility of science lying in the consideration of signs, among
them primarily genuine symbols, and instrumental to reaching that depth,
the need for a powerful logic of relatives in order to deal with the
complexity of 3-adic sign relations.  In comparison to these motifs,
the fine tunings of 1885 are more like a retrograde counterpoint
than the principal theme of his life's work.

Jon Awbrey

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