Given the context, although he might have been guilty of the mind projection fallacy (he was a realist when it comes to probabilities), and was pretty much a frequentist, I don’t think it’s reasonable to criticize him very harshly for either position—he was a very early pioneer in statistics (just look over the second paragraph). His embrace of statistical inference was, as far as I can tell, somewhat unusual for the day, and he made several contributions to the use of statistics in psychology and psycho physics (including the use of double blind studies to re-examine previous findings).
I think his Tychism might have been justified. Statistics could make predictions assuming Tychism but it wasn’t obvious that the same results were predicted by determinism. That’s Bayesian evidence in favour of Tychism. His more useful statistical work is also impressive.
This is in addition to his contributions to logic, mathematics and geology—so if his logic is on par with Frege (just look at his contributions to mathematics and logic).
That’s definitely a lot of math and logic.
His semiotics is interesting as well as it seems to yield an early attempt to look at science as a process of improving statistical models. Pierce’s semiotic reflects this, and he uses it in his phenomenological characterizations of the scientific method. I think that this allowed him to view human scientists as statistical learners. When I read some of this it certainly invoked a more machine learning/information theoretic picture of scientific discovery than any other (non-modern) philosophers of science had managed to touch on.
That would be very impressive, but I don’t see that in any of the stuff on his semiotics on Wikipedia. The passage you linked to seems to just be saying that with sufficient study it is possible to understand things. I don’t see anything that anticipates information theory or knowledge as statistical modelling.
Peirce’s fixation on the number three seems to be mainly a side effect of Hegel’s influence
Oh, he seems to have disobeyed endoself’s first law of philosophy: “Have as little to do with Hegel as possible.”
That would be very impressive, but I don’t see that in any of the stuff on his semiotics on Wikipedia.
A caveat: I’m not at all sure how much I’m projecting on Peirce as far as this point goes. I personally think that his writings clarified my views on the scientific method (at the time I originally read them, which was a good while back) and I was concurrently thinking about machine learning—so I might just be having a case of cached apophenia.
However; if you want a condensed version of his semiotic look over this. You might actually need to read some of the rest of that article (which, I admit, is a bit long) to put it in more context. Also, this wikipedia page looks pretty comprehensive. I’m pretty confident that they’re leaving a bit out that might be clearer if you read Peirce, but I’m not sure of how much instrumental value that would be to you. The issue with reading Peirce is that he was a crazy hermit with thousands of unpublished notes who continuously updated his views in significant ways (another point for him, he continued to reconsider/shift his views in a systematic way until he died), so lots of what you read about/by Peirce is compiled from a vast repository of his notes collected from his workspace after his death.
Anyway—I think what attracts me to Peirce the most is his seemingly endless ability to carve reality at the joints in novel (at the time at least) ways, coupled with his nearly superhuman productivity levels—I mean he was highly influential in the realm of statistical theory, his influence on experimental design was impressive, he invented an axiomatization for arithmetic before Peano, he invented a modern characterization of first-order logic on par with Frege’s (but arguably with a more algebraic/model theoretic than syntactic approach), he was a skilled expositor and clear writer, he invented pragmaticism, he had a lifetime of smaller results in logic, earth sciences and mathematics that anyone would be proud of—what more could you want from a single person before you can understand why people admire them?
Oh, he seems to have disobeyed endoself’s first law of philosophy: “Have as little to do with Hegel as possible.”
I think it’s significantly more forgivable for a contemporary of Hegel’s to be influenced by him than someone today being influenced by him. Further, when I say “influenced”—he scavenged a set of ideas that he seems to have reinterpreted in terms of his own philosophy because he saw that they could round out his ideas in a variety of ways—he was still pretty critical of Hegel of some major points. I think just browsing through these excerpts reveals the lines of influence a bit.
A caveat: I’m not at all sure how much I’m projecting on Peirce as far as this point goes.
Well I saw some interesting ideas about science in Piaget, which is at least as tenuous.
if you want a condensed version of his semiotic look over this. You might actually need to read some of the rest of that article (which, I admit, is a bit long) to put it in more context. Also, this wikipedia page looks pretty comprehensive. I’m pretty confident that they’re leaving a bit out that might be clearer if you read Peirce, but I’m not sure of how much instrumental value that would be to you.
Okay, I read most of this, but not in too much detail. I’m guessing that the things like
A rheme (also called sumisign and seme) is a sign that represents its object in respect of quality and so, in its signified interpretant, is represented as a character or mark, though it actually may be icon, index, or symbol. The rheme (seme) stands as its object for some purpose. A proposition with the subject places left blank is a rheme; but subject terms by themselves are also rhemes. A proposition, said Peirce, can be considered a zero-place rheme, a zero-place predicate.
are not the crucial parts.
I’m seeing the idea that one has a partially correct theory explaining one’s observations and that it is continuously refined. Is that the main idea or am I missing something? It’s valid, but I don’t know how it compares to other ideas at the time. Also, the emphasis seems to be on refining one’s ideas by continuing to contemplate the same evidence, which isn’t very empirical, but I could be misunderstanding.
Peirce’s three valued logic predating Post.
That’s interesting. There are a lot of people using three valued logic today as if it is a huge insight that we can have a system that classifies statements as known to be true, known to be false, and unknown, or with three other, slightly different, categories, but in Pierce’s day it was an important insight (well, there were similar ideas before, but they weren’t formalized).
I think his Tychism might have been justified. Statistics could make predictions assuming Tychism but it wasn’t obvious that the same results were predicted by determinism. That’s Bayesian evidence in favour of Tychism. His more useful statistical work is also impressive.
That’s definitely a lot of math and logic.
That would be very impressive, but I don’t see that in any of the stuff on his semiotics on Wikipedia. The passage you linked to seems to just be saying that with sufficient study it is possible to understand things. I don’t see anything that anticipates information theory or knowledge as statistical modelling.
Oh, he seems to have disobeyed endoself’s first law of philosophy: “Have as little to do with Hegel as possible.”
A caveat: I’m not at all sure how much I’m projecting on Peirce as far as this point goes. I personally think that his writings clarified my views on the scientific method (at the time I originally read them, which was a good while back) and I was concurrently thinking about machine learning—so I might just be having a case of cached apophenia.
However; if you want a condensed version of his semiotic look over this. You might actually need to read some of the rest of that article (which, I admit, is a bit long) to put it in more context. Also, this wikipedia page looks pretty comprehensive. I’m pretty confident that they’re leaving a bit out that might be clearer if you read Peirce, but I’m not sure of how much instrumental value that would be to you. The issue with reading Peirce is that he was a crazy hermit with thousands of unpublished notes who continuously updated his views in significant ways (another point for him, he continued to reconsider/shift his views in a systematic way until he died), so lots of what you read about/by Peirce is compiled from a vast repository of his notes collected from his workspace after his death.
Also, something neat I found: Peirce’s three valued logic predating Post. That was among his tens of thousands of unpublished pages of notes. Going further in this direction, I found an interesting article on Peirce’s logic. There is some interesting discussion there about his influence on modern logic.
Points for coolness—Simon Newcomb was quite possibly his evil arch-nemesis.
Anyway—I think what attracts me to Peirce the most is his seemingly endless ability to carve reality at the joints in novel (at the time at least) ways, coupled with his nearly superhuman productivity levels—I mean he was highly influential in the realm of statistical theory, his influence on experimental design was impressive, he invented an axiomatization for arithmetic before Peano, he invented a modern characterization of first-order logic on par with Frege’s (but arguably with a more algebraic/model theoretic than syntactic approach), he was a skilled expositor and clear writer, he invented pragmaticism, he had a lifetime of smaller results in logic, earth sciences and mathematics that anyone would be proud of—what more could you want from a single person before you can understand why people admire them?
I think it’s significantly more forgivable for a contemporary of Hegel’s to be influenced by him than someone today being influenced by him. Further, when I say “influenced”—he scavenged a set of ideas that he seems to have reinterpreted in terms of his own philosophy because he saw that they could round out his ideas in a variety of ways—he was still pretty critical of Hegel of some major points. I think just browsing through these excerpts reveals the lines of influence a bit.
Well I saw some interesting ideas about science in Piaget, which is at least as tenuous.
Okay, I read most of this, but not in too much detail. I’m guessing that the things like
are not the crucial parts.
I’m seeing the idea that one has a partially correct theory explaining one’s observations and that it is continuously refined. Is that the main idea or am I missing something? It’s valid, but I don’t know how it compares to other ideas at the time. Also, the emphasis seems to be on refining one’s ideas by continuing to contemplate the same evidence, which isn’t very empirical, but I could be misunderstanding.
That’s interesting. There are a lot of people using three valued logic today as if it is a huge insight that we can have a system that classifies statements as known to be true, known to be false, and unknown, or with three other, slightly different, categories, but in Pierce’s day it was an important insight (well, there were similar ideas before, but they weren’t formalized).