Interesting controversy regarding the Wikipedia entry for truth. Now as most of you know, the Wikipedia is supposed to be a kind of community encyclopedia. As such different people can contribute. The grave weakness, as anyone who has looked at it much notices, is that many people contributing don't have a clue what they are talking about. Further, sometimes when conflicts arise, it's difficult to reach any kind of consensus. Still, it is an interesting phenomena. I'd honestly never go to the Wikipedia for much and don't advise people use it. But the idea and process fascinates me. Well this week on Peirce-L there has been an interesting debate regarding the Wiki for truth. Specifically whether Peirce advocated a consensus theory. The Wiki at the time of this writing states:
The consensus theory, invented by Charles Sanders Peirce holds that the truth is whatever is (or will come to be) agreed upon by some specified group, such as all competent investigators, or the best scientists of the future. (Links as in the original)
The response by many on Peirce-L can be seen in the comments to the Wiki.
The controversy rests upon what might seem a subtle difference. First Peirce never says that a group will necessarily converge on truth. He says that truth is what an ideal community would arrive at if the inquiry were adequately continued. (My words) That would is significant. Peirce is fairly clear that this need not actually ever happen. Further, and most importantly, Peirce is not saying that this is what makes truth truth. Rather he simply feels that truth "acts" on inquirers so that inquirers would eventually reach it.
Thus Peirce has something much more like a correspondence theory of truth. It isn't a correspondence theory as such, mind you. Peirce doesn't think truth is independent of thought. Merely that it is independent of what any finite number of people think about it. Now I'm basically just saying much the same thing that one can read for oneself in the comments to the Wiki.
I bring this up, merely because it is somewhat interesting that the Wiki is desputing what Peirce thought with a fair number of Peirce scholars - many among the top in the world. Further it seems like Peirce's thought on this matter is fairly straightforward, yet routinely misunderstood. I bring this up because it'll probably touch upon some of the things I'll be writing upon the next week or so. (Despite focusing on Derrida the last week or so, I can't forget Peirce) Allow me to end with one of the better quotes by Peirce relevant to this topic.
A sign is something, 'A', which brings something, 'B', its 'interpretant' sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, 'C', its 'object', as that in which itself stands to 'C'. ("The New Elements of Mathematics" 4:20-1)
I've lots more to say on the correspondence issue, but I'll leave that for future posts.
This post on Peirce and truth from a month and a half ago is probably relevant as well.
Clark,
First, it has been a while since I studied Peirce (and that was in a linguistics class). I am having a hard time placing A, B, and C there is my ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. Can you help?
Second, going over your post from a month ago, do you see Peirce's ideas regarding truth and how to find it as being consistent with Socrates's attempts to get at truth through dialogue?
I think that Peirce sees truth very much as dialogical in nature. Further he saw it as evolutionary in nature as well. Indeed I don't think one can discount the role the then new Darwinistic conceptions had on Peirce's thought. (Although as I believe Kelly Parker has shown, he took them in a fundamental ontological sense that verged upon neoPlatonic cosmology)
It's unfortunate that so few philosophers really embrace dialogs quite the way Plato has Socrates doing. I think it quite important.
Regarding A, B and C - they can be anything. Peirce is just saying that a sign brings about "an effect" in something by standing for something else. He means this in general terms. It might be easier to think of it in a narrower sense. For example a word stands for its meaning in the mind of the reader. That's actually about the extent it is taught in most literature or linguistic classes. But Peirce would expand it quite a bit to include things that most linguists wouldn't. But that gets into a more complex discussion of Peirce's discussion of mind/matter.
As for firstness, secondness and thirdness, the easiest way to think of them is in terms of logic. If the logical expression requires only one term, it is firstness. Two terms, secondness. Three terms, thirdness. Many philosophers try to reject thirdness.
The way it was explained to me, assuming I remember correctly, is that firstness represents the barely formed, intellectual (spiritual?) reality of some thing. Secondness represented it's physical reality. And thirdness represented something like the opportunity for the thing to be reproduced in the future after surviving some sort of test. Does any of that make sense?
This was accompanied by drawings of Peircian triangles demonstrating why come TV shows (Seinfeld, Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, for example) work while others don't.
That's not a good definition for firstness. Depending upon the context it can be pure potential or pure "quality" or the feel of an experience. However one should understand the logical sense before thinking of it in other senses.
The other two explanations arise because pure effect is an example of secondness and representation an example of thirdness.
As for the later, well I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
If you are interested I'd suggest checking out the Peirce Dictionary. They have fairly good explanations from Peirce for the terms. He was a very clear and concise writer and fairly easy to follow.
Interestingly I notice they finally updated the entry on Peirce by simply removing that section. A positive step although one wishes they could have simply put the correct position in.
On the other hand they introduced a new section on the consensus theory of truth that is quite wrong.
I just tried my first hand at wiki editing by fixing what I take to be some of the errors. We'll see how long that lasts.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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