Re: Topic :> Dynamics Of Ontologies -- Discussion

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Topic :> Dynamics Of Ontologies -- Discussion 2

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BM = Bernard Morand
JA = Jon Awbrey

JA: with all the hubbub in the house my attention fades and
    my concentration is scattered, but let me see if we can
    bandy a few less words, and clarify a few more concepts.

JA: maybe i read you wrong, but it seems that this issue of
    conceptuality came up before in our discussion of the
    pragmatic maxim.  is this the same worry as that?

BM: I had not that in mind at the time, but may be it is the case.

JA: there are many words in the "maxim of pragmatism" (MOP),
    and all of them are important.  peirce emphasized some
    of these words in some contexts and others in others.
    why?  what call is there for the differential stress,
    the difference in emphasis?  of course, at one place
    he makes the narratively entertaining statement that
    the young favor action and the old favor intellect,
    and that makes for an amusing nostrum, if not quite
    soppy pablum, but i find so much "loss of nerve" and
    just plain wishy-washiness in the younger folks that
    i e-meet these days that i'm afraid i must turn that
    common coinage over to highlight its other side, that
    many forms of self-styled "action" are all just hot air.

BM: Yes, OK.  Just two comments.  Your observation about
    younger folks is an actual one, time situated and the
    actual time isn't a very pleasant one, to my sense.
    It is probably much more difficult for younger people
    than older ones.  The fact that young people could be
    more turned toward action seems to me correct if we add
    that it is because they are more able to form a project,
    even a fanciful one, which is a condition for action.
    In that sense I think that the whole actions of youth
    make a very good forerunner sign of what is to come
    (for the best or the worst).

rhetorical homilies aside, for i think that even peirce has suffered enough
for having resorted to such shortcuts from time to time, what is important
here is the question whether a person, peirce in particular, has changed
his point of view or just the emphasis that must be placed on the same
message in order to apply it to different accidents of circumstance.
some, as you know, make a big deal of the radical shift in peirce.
others, like me, have never seen that big of a change over time.

JA: no, these transients of age and The Age aside, i think
    that the deeper reason for variable tension in the MOP
    is that it has to mop up many different floors, and so
    the action words may need more elbow grease at one time,
    while the concept words may need more push when it comes
    time to shovel them into the hoppers of particular minds.

JA: in the early years of the MOP, it just so happened that
    airy philosoppy was all the rage, but this gave a false
    view of how and why science works, especially, and thus
    peirce was quite apt to stress the active and experimental
    pieces of the work to clear up meanings, or else to clear
    them away if there was nothing but hyper-heated air to them.

JA: later, when the rage of fashion had raged on to radical, which
    is too say, radically naive empiricism, he found it more needful
    to italicize the conceptual imports of his original purportance.

BM: Wholly agreed here.

JA: now, the question becomes, what sort of time do you think we are having now?
    well, the geist of the zeit seems to vary from place to place, does it not?

BM: Your question is quite enigmatic to me and I don't understand the phrasing
    "geist of the zeit".  For me, to give an opinion about the actual time is
    closely related to social, economical, and political questions.  I think
    that the evolution of ideas or theories (so as people who support them),
    while they dispose of some degree of freedom, are closely related to the
    previous questions.  And with regard to them, my diagnosis is a pessimist
    one:  the world looks to be entering one more time into its barbarian phase,
    something like the end of the 1930 decade, although with new features.  As
    regards to the variety question, I don't think so.  Evidently the prominent
    figure of USA' politics seems to be some absurd extremity of the trend, but
    if we look carefully to what is going on in Europe we can see quite the same
    things at work.  May be if I was, say, a Chinese, I would see things the other
    way but I am not.  Don't know if I am really answering your question but even
    the future of MOP depends on that for me.

to be serious, i am guessing that the very idea that all the world's mind
could be ruled by no more than a single spirit at a time, a zeitgeist, was
probably at all times always a gross oversimplification, if not the sheer
projection of a parochial view that was merely "dominant in its own mind".
but i am finding that the prevailing spirit, or the reigning voices, not
always the most expressly declared, you understand, vary from region to
region of our contemporary spaces of intellect and sites of inquiry.
and that inspires hope, for all the dimmer days of the calendar.

jon awbrey

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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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