Peter,
I don't think Jon is attempting to do anything beyond
explicating the normative sciences as Peirce uses that
expression. Certainly I wouldn't attempt a defense of
Peircean pragmatism here--I sure it it would all be in
vain, anyhow. As John Sowa frequently suggests, one has
to read Peirce if you want to understand him in order to
criticize him in order to correct and develop and advance
his approach to inquiry in order to. . .
Nevertheless, for those responsive to Peirce's semeiotic,
Jon advances an understanding of the complex relationship
of the three normative sciences by introducing exactly
this unique perspective (this impressed both Jack and I this
morning):
[JA] This way of viewing the
situation
brings into focus the two independent or orthogonal order relations
that exist among the normative sciences. In regard to their bases,
logic is a special case of ethics and aesthetics, and ethics is a
special case of aesthetics, understanding these concepts in their
broadest senses. In respect of their altitudes, logic exercises a
critical perspective on ethics and aesthetics, and ethics takes up
a critical perspective on aesthetics.
Also, within the context of pragmatism, this has to be seen as an
aesthetics, an ethics, and a logic of inquiry, not the practical
versions of those sciences (actually, made practical, they become
arts or applied sciences).
And, finally, for Peirce, logic is logic as triadic semeiotic and so
entails a GREAT deal more than "the validity of entailment."
But this is all as I feared, that without a broader context,
discussions of Jon's posts are going to tend to be at least. . .
unproductive.
Gary
Peter P. Jones wrote:
Bearing in mind that I haven't read Jon's other parts to this...
(In critique mode - )
I disagree with Jon on several counts.
I think the presence of the Other, as person, in an aesthetic
experience is contingent. Admiring a painting does not involve
ethical decision. So an ethics that also includes those actions
whose ends do not in some way concern other people strikes me as a
redefinition of the sense of the word 'ethics' to its detriment.
I'm also deeply suspicious of approaches to the grounds of the
moral that reduce it to a single cognitive dimension, like
aesthetics, or contract, or categorical imperative. It strikes me
as too simplistic. We use all of those aspects mixed in (often with
heaps of intuition) depending on circumstance. It is harder to
provide a comprehensive theory of humans that would show that the
study of those signs in ethics therefore is _not_ _just_ logic, but
that alone does not make the suggestion incorrect.
And I am concerned that Jon appears to think that logic is about
more than validity of entailment. Rationality might be, and
rationality might make use of a logical approach in deciding
between options, but (as I understood the term 'logic') nothing in
logical form dictates the references of the terms.
--
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