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2014年4月9日水曜日

【メモ】 Christopher Hookway / The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism

Introduction

"there is no need to justify current beliefs, only changes in belief" (Isaac Levi, "Pragmatism and Change of View" p.179)

Chapter 1: Peirce and Scepticism

[In the nominalist conception of reality] we know about external things through the mediation of what seem to be intuitions, singular representations ("sensations") which are determined by ("directly influenced by") the transcendental object and which provide the sole basis for our thoughts. (...) This view assigns a fundamental role to intuitions: they are our point of contact with (and only source of information about) reality. The method of doubt can then be seen as a device for identifying what is really given to us in intuition; it helps us to free ourselves from those aspects of our perceptual beliefs that are determined by background substantive assumptions rather than being determined by the transcendental object. (p.31)

"This final opinion, then, is independent, not indeed of thought in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I, or any number of men think." (CP 8.12)

Chapter 3: Truth, Reality, and Convergence

When a proposition is true, "anyone who investigates" is fated to arrive at belief in it. Now "investigates" is a transitive verb. So, anyone who investigates what? When this is spelled out, a variety of distinct theses emerge.

1. If a proposition is true, then anyone who inquires "into the nature of reality" (well enough and long enough) is fated to believe it.

2. If a proposition is true, then anyone who investigates some question to which that proposition provides the answer is fated to believe it.

The "traditional" reading of Peirce, the reading that leads to claim that he is committed to an absolute conception of reality, suggests that he accepts (1): any truth is, in principle, accessible to any inquirer. Position (2) need not lead to such an interpretation of his views. It is compatible with the recognition that a particular inquirer might be fated never to confront a question to which some true proposition provides the answer, perhaps even with the admission that some inquirer could never even understand such a question. (p.56)

Chapter 5: Normative Logic and Psychology

Suppose that I am justified in believing that someone is an extremely successful poker player. When I learn that they make use of a particular strategy of reasoning in the course of their play, then, we might suppose, I have good, albeit defeasible, reason for thinking that the kinds of reasoning they employ are indeed good ones. I would not have an explanation of what their goodness consists in. But I do have strong inductive evidence that the inferences they use can be trusted. It is important that this depends upon the normative premiss that the poker player is successful. The target of Peirce's criticisms is a position where no such normative information is already available. A similar phenomenon occurs when philosophers of science attempt to construct an account of the scientific method through detailed historical studies of scientific practice. We identify norms for scientific practice through (psychological?) descriptions of how science has actually proceeded. Paul Thagard observed that this is not strictly a case of using descriptions of scientific practice in order to determine how scientific inquiry ought to be. The whole inquiry depends upon the selection of examples of good science as subjects of historical inquiry. A crucial normative judgement is already made at the very beginning. (pp.95-96)
→ 「しかし、ある科学がgoodかbadかの判断は、それがevidenceに合致しているかどうかという事実によって決まるのではないか」という疑問に対しては、科学は「evidenceに従うべき」という規範にやはり従っている、と答えることができる。

Chapter 6: "The Form of a Relation"

The major difficulty for the ante rem [structuralist] position is that it needs to explain what the reality of the required structures consists in when there are no systems that exemplify them. (p.125)

Chapter 9: The Principle of Pragmatism

"Pragmatism is the principle that every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood." (EP 2: pp.134-135)
→ 条件付きでない確率はconfusedであるという論点との繋がり。「確率とは、ある行為(推論の条件)に対して、ある事象(推論の帰結)が成立する相対頻度である」という定式化は、確率概念のpragmatic clarificationに相当すると言える(?)

プラグマティズムの格率の二つの定式化:

(i) If the circumstances are C and you have desires D, then (you ought to) perform an action of type A.

(ii) In circumstances C, if you were to do A, then you would experience E.

次の補助命題によって、(ii)から(i)を導出できる:

(iii) If you desire to experience E, then you can do so by doing A.

"The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result." (W3: pp.256-266)
→ 行為の目的とは常に、何らかの感覚可能な結果をもたらすことである。

概念の使用は常に、(たとえ潜在的であれ)その概念に対する何らかの働きかけ(行為)を伴うとすれば、概念使用がpractical bearingsを持たねばならない理由が分かる。(p.177)

"[The end of an explanatory hypothesis] is, through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed." (EP 2: p.235)

[W]hat is required of pragmatic clarifications is that they can be interpreted in this way [in the form of conditional resolutions]; it is not required that they explicitly take this form. (p.180)
→ 実際、定式化(i)を実際のclarificationで適用するのは、想定可能な場面や欲求が多すぎて実質的に不可能。

One of Peirce's strategies for proving pragmatism, was to argue that the pragmatic clarification of a proposition (or concept) would constitute its "ultimate" or "final" logical interpretant. Even if such an interpretant is not useful to us, is not easy to formulate or apply in practice, the fact that the final logical interpretant takes this form is the key to the correctness of pragmatism. So perhaps the final logical interpretant can take the form of a huge set of conditional resolutions, even if our everyday pragmatic clarifications cannot do so. (p.180)

[James's definition of pragmatism] differs from mine only in that he does not restrict the "meaning," as I do, to a habit, but allows percepts, that is, complex feelings endowed with compulsiveness to be such. If he is willing to do this, I do not quite see how he need give any room at all to habit. (CP 5.494)
→ habitでなければindividual reactionsになってしまい、一般的なパターンを確立できない。

Chapter 11: How Peirce Argued for His Pragmatic Maxim

Peirce talks of the logic of judgement and assertion, and compares this with a psychology of belief. We understand judgement as a practice of belief formation which is governed by logical norms; in making a judgement, I commit myself to the correctness of doing so. (p.204)

The mathematician's notations will typically instantiate the abstract structure that she studies. We obtain knowledge of abstract structures by experimenting upon their instantiations. Thus our knowledge of mathematics doesn't provide counterexamples to the pragmatic maxim. (p.218)

"I will say that a sign is anything, of whatsoever mode of being, which mediates between an object and an interpretant; since it is both determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determining the interpretant with reference to the object, in such wise as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of this 'sign'." (EP 2: p.410)

The two italicized phrases can be best understood as follows: the rash is a sign of measles because it has the power to be understood or interpreted in that way; and the sign can be understood as an indication of measles because the object (the measles) has produced the sign. (p.222)

[O]nly a habit can serve as the ultimate interpretant of an intellectual concept. (p.228)

"It can be proved that the only mental effect that can be so produced and that is not a sign but is of a general application is a habit change; meaning by habit change a modification of a person's tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause." (CP 5.475)

"[E]very man exercises more or less control over himself by means of modifying his own habits; and the way in which he goes to work to bring this effect about in those cases in which circumstances will not permit him to practice reiterations of the desired kind of conduct in the outer world shows that he is virtually well-acquainted with the important principle that reiterations in the inner world—fancied reiterations—if well-intensified by direct effort, produce habits, just as do reiterations in the outer world; and these habits will have power to influence actual behaviour in the outer world; especially, if each reiteration be accompanied by a peculiar strong effort that is usually likened to issuing a command to one's future self." (EP 2: p.413)
→ これはnormativityの自然的説明たりうるのではないか。ただし、実際の場面でnormativityを自然的な記述に還元できる、という意味ではない。

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