SV: [Fis] The Realist's DilemmaSV: [Fis] The Realist's Dilemma
From: Søren Brier <sbr.lpf@cbs.dk>
Date: Thu 06 Jul 2006 - 17:55:13 CEST
Dear Arne
If you insist on calling Peirce a monist then I would like you to give you interpretation of his
triadic philosophy, where he defines his three basic categories Firstness, secondness and Thirdness,
which I think defies you classification. His categories then counts for both inside and outside as
they are connected in a common field. But he does write that is a monist but in a very special way
combined with synechism (everything is connected), Thycism (randomness is real but with a tendency
to take habits) and Agapism (love is real and the core of evolution). Further Peirce is also a
panentheist: the world is the divine, but it is also in the divine, meaning that he operates with a
creative emptiness behind and before time-space geometry. I think you would call that dualistic!? He
is further a conceptual realist. This means that he considers signs and categories as being as real
as stones and natural laws. Again he thinks them to be connected on a deep level, which does not !
This is how far I have come. I am not sure I have understood him to the bottom. I know that John has
another interpretation of him. But this is at least close to the interpretation Joseph Brent reached
in the second version of his Peirce biography and Michael Raposa in his book "Peirce's
Philosophy of Religion". Some years ago we had a conference on Peirce's religious writing in
Denver and we are still waiting for the book to come out.
Best wishes
Søren
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Dear FIS-ers,
I think we should hold or horses a bit and think about the different conceptual frameworks we use
describing this controversy about reality and perceptual realities. As a matter of fact even the
term perceptual reality make reference to something entirely different but the realist's reality.
The realist/objectivist has declared his faith in dualism, as has the anti-realist, the difference
between them is that the realist takes the world for given and real. However the definition of
"real" is very unclear - if there is any? Nevertheless both the realist and anti-realist
can, in this discussion, make a justified use of terms like e.g. real/unreal and outside/inside.
Needless to say then the monist (anti-dualist?), both as a matter of courtesy and understanding,
must use the "language of realism" to address ontological issues or make his position
clear when discussing with the objectivist/realist - at least as long as realism is the mainstream
view among scientists. This is the reason for the frequent use of terms like outside, real and
reality - even from the monist's pen.
The monist also makes a declaration of faith, but he thinks he is better off, because he can pinpoint
an inconsistency in the realist use of these distinctions, which in fact make the realist's
reasoning inconsistent according to the rules of science he has formulated (i.e.,
self-contradictory). This inconsistency arises because he uses distinctions that are undecidable -
and therefore are impossible to falsify - which is forbidden even to a realist philosopher like
Popper.
Popper is was a convinced realist - convinced by faith as he often declared - and he is the only
philosopher read by natural scientists it seems. And why should it be otherwise since the general
philosopher very seldom cares about the conceptual frameworks that are use in natural sciences. In
fact he does not even care about very much about his own modelling framework - the spoken/written
language. In doing so he had been more interested the apparent weakness of language as a modelling
tool he should use the language of logics. But philosophers rarely do. And the interest paid to the
foundations of science and the different paradigms in use here almost absent in all camps - it
seems. So the scandal Rafael is talking about is very much the philosopher's scandal - not being
able to convince the community of natural scientists that their point of departure in their thinking
misleads them. To be honest - most natural scientists find Heidegger unreadable, and I think most
people !
For these reasons I do not think it is possible to convince the natural scientists that they are
heading in a direction that leads nowhere by to more confusion, unless the dualist/monist issue is
addressed in terms of the inconsistencies met with in their realist model of human capacity of
perception - which is a process of great importance also to natural science. To my mind, the realist
subscribe to a model of perception that is misleading and "unrealistic (!)" and this
situation I took up a week ago under the heading of the "realist's dilemma" - but the lack
of response (apart form John's) has been very evident but I cannot find any acceptable reason for
this. I SIMPLY DO NOT THINK THE "REALIST'S DILEMMA" CAN BE SWEPT UNDER THE CARPET IN
ATTEMPTS TO DEFEND REALISM/OBJECTIVISM. IN MY VIEW THE CONVINCED DUALIST MUST JUSTIFY HIMSELF BY
RESOLVING THIS DILEMMA - otherwise he cannot make credit to himself in my view.
As a first step I think the language problem (as being a modelling problem) is of crucial importance
and most often neglected. I think all involved in this debate need to acknowledge that the
mainstream dualist's (realist's) experience, thinks and speaks in and of a dual world - and
therefore uses a language reflecting this very view. As long he is a sworn realist he cannot even
make sense of a statement that make a claim like "there is no inside or outside or real/unreal
distinction" unless he tries to understand the monists way of speaking. But in both camps we
seem to neglect the fact that the other camps uses, and is forced to use, another way of speaking
and therefore language (model).
So when one says that Peirce considered the mind and experience for real, he defined a way of
speaking that is totally different from the traditional realist, and one therefore have to take that
into account. To my mind Peirce is a monist, not a dualist, but for some reason he, as monist,
considered the domain of experience to be REAL (but not even he provided a definition of REAL). Bohr
on the other hand, as SOA, counts experience as abstract - this is a crucial difference - since the
thinking of Piece cannot be moulded in to the thinking of the traditional realist.
Such terminological issues has crucial importance discussing INFORMATION, both in its classical as
quantum aspects, because in the monist situation an "information carrier" having a source
in reality and a sink in the observer - that does not make sense to a monist at all. To the SOA
monist, information arises in the observer and possibly acts a carrier in processes of
inter-subjective communication. "Reality" contains no information at all - reality
"is as it is" - and he claims the forms associated with information are created by the
observer/describer and in his mind reflecting his accumulated experience - and the agreed upon
framework of inter-subjective communication, which is a pure social context of conventions - maybe
needless to say. IN THAT VIEW THE OBSERVER/KNOWER IS THE ONE THAT CREATES THE INFORMATION PASSED ON
TO OTHER KNOWERS. Even if data is received that have a "probable cause in reality" - no
knowable "information" (because of inseparability) can be extrac!
So in the monist view there is no stream of information from "reality" - because we, as
humans, are incapable of featuring a "reality" - and reality is apart form the very notion
of r-e-a-l-i-t-y a transcendent phenomenon (i.e., cannot be captured by experience). However the
monist approach brings along more overthrowing insights, some well-known and others not very well
known.
To my mind the entrance to monist/dualist considerations is exactly the "realist dilemma" -
since it pinpoints a contradiction of classical reasoning. It also highlights the process of
observation/measurement, which is the bridge between the two domains of dualist (realist) science -
reality and experience. The process of observation is, needless to say, of crucial importance to
both the camp of natural scientists and philosophers and I think a thoroughly examination this
process in the only way to bring an end to the vainly processes of word tossing and bring the
discussions towards a possible point of decision. Such a discussion is as important and decisive to
physicist and philosophers - as it is to the information society. Since IS defines itself as the
science of this "very bridge" - maybe the question is even more important to IS?
Best wishes Arne
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