Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 19:45:35 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg <cathy who-is-at coombs.anu.edu.au>
To: peirce-l who-is-at unicorn.acs.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Reply on Ellul ... Elementary Pragmatism -- reprise.
I'm moved to post by Daniel's extremely thoughtful piece. What you
said, Daniel, about "temperamental nominalism" as the unwillingness
to subject one's ideas to the icy winds of scrutiny, (and hence taking
refuge in inexplicability) struck me as an original extension of the term
(with many consequences).
I have a lot of questions, now, though. Daniel wrote that pragmatism
provides "no new work" - it speaks only with regard for clarity about
*the way things are* and remains dumb about *the way things ought to be*.
This ties in, I think, with Joe's suggestion that the scientific method
may not be extendable to settling questions in morality, politics, and other
such human forms of life (?)
I agree that Peirce quotes can be found to support this. But in other
places he writes with much passion of the so-called "normative sciences",
and goes so far as to make logic subordinate to ethics and aesthetics
in his architectonic (his description of how logic is a practice human
beings engage in because we all *die*, which I can't think of the ref. for
off the top of my head, but could dig up, is for me a model of Peircian
combined startlingness and rightness).
If there's a strict separation between the scientific method, where all
belief is bracketed and one is purely guessing at the riddle, and
everyday life, where one needs to act with assurance, and therefore on
beliefs that are hidebound into hard habit - how can truth be a *value* and
not just a *job* (carried out primarily in laboratories)? Are scientists
the only ones who can work towards truth? How can philosophers be said to
do the same?
I can't pull together these strands in Peirce's thought, and would concur
with Joe's diagnosis of aporia (personally), but am sure I only have a small
part of the picture.
Cathy Legg.
Monash University.