I had a few comments to the logic discussion that got a bit long. So I thought I'd put them here. In "The Three Normative Science" Peirce does say "logic is coeval with reasoning. Whoever reasons ipso facto virtually holds a logical doctrine, his logica utens. This classification is not a mere qualification of the argument. It essentially involves an approval of it, - a qualitative approval." (EP 2:200)
Peirce's tying logic to ethics means that logic's aim is the logically good. And this logically good must be external to the particular individual.
. . . in order to correct or to vindicate the maxim of pragmatism, we must find out precisely what the logically good consists in; and it would appear from what has been said that in order to analyze the nature of the estheitcally good and especially that of the morally good. (EP 2:201)
Peirce goes on for a while discussing aesthetics and "the good." (Lots of Platonic overtones obviously, but Peirce is trying to avoid I think the Platonism that I think Frege and Husserl head into. A few pages later he makes these comments that are worth reading. (Especially in connection to the comments relative to Derrida.)
Let me say to you that this reasoning needs to be scrutinized with the severest and minutest logical criticism, because pragmatism largely depends upon it.
It appears, then, that logical goodness is simply the excellence of argument;-its negative, and more fundamental, goodness being its soundness and weight, its really having the force that it pretends to have and that force being great while its quantitative goodness consists in the degree in which it advances our knowledge. In what then does the soundness of argument consist?
In order to answer that question it is necessary to recognize three radically different kinds of arguments which I signalized in 1867 and which had been recognized by the logicians of the eighteenth century; although those logicians quite pardonably failed to recognize the inferential character of one of them. Indeed, I suppose that the three were given by Aristotle in the Prior Analytics, although the unfortunate illegibility of a single word in his manuscript and its replacement by a wrong word by his first editor, the stupid [Apellicon]," has completely altered the sense of the chapter on Abduction. At any rate, even if my conjecture is wrong, and the text must stand as it is, still Aristotle, in that chapter on Abduction, was even in that case evidently groping for that mode of inference which I call by the otherwise quite useless name of Abduction,-a word which is only employed in logic to translate the [ckirayoyi] of that chapter.
These three kinds of reasoning are Abduction, Induction, and Deduction. Deduction is the only necessary reasoning. It is the reasoning of mathematics. It starts from a hypothesis, the truth or falsity of which has nothing to do with the reasoning; and of course its conclusions are equally ideal. The ordinary use of the doctrine of chances is necessary reasoning, although it is reasoning concerning probabilities. Induction is the experimental testing of a theory.
The justification of it is that, although the conclusion at any stage of the investigation may be more or less erroneous, yet the further application of the same method must correct the error. The only thing that induction accomplishes is to determine the value of a quantity. It sets out with a theory and it measures the degree of concordance of that theory with fact. It never can originate any idea whatever. No more can deduction. All the ideas of science come to it by the way of abduction. Abduction consists in studying facts and devising a theory to explain them. Its only justification is that if we are ever to understand things at all, it must be in that way.
Now I should point you to the place where Peirce explicitly notes that deductive logic is ideal. The last few sentences are fairly key to what Peirce is arguing. Our knowledge about things is through abductive reasoning. And abductive reasoning is very un-ideal and ends up partaking of the same points Derrida invokes with his "notion" of deconstruction.
I should add that this statement is perhaps key for Peirce's view of logic:
Deduction is only of value in tracing out the consequences of hypotheses, which it regards as pure, or unfounded, hypotheses.
There seems to be three separate entities associated with PeirceÕs view of logic. First there is pure reason. The laws governing semiotics are a priori laws. We are born with them. We can use logic to study them and find out what they are but we cannot change them. Then there is reasoning. Reasoning is not to be confused with pure reason. Reasoning is something the individual does to solve a problem. As such it is posterior. Finally, this reasoning should be conducted through the principles of logical deduction if truth is to be discovered. Thus we have three entities: pure reason, reasoning and logic. Whether in relation to pure reason or reasoning, logic is a tool used to insure the finding of truth.
Except that I think the ultimate issue is that we have only abductive methods to learn the laws of deductive logic. I'd have to check to see if Peirce engages this issue. But I think it is important. One could point to the problems of set theory to see how fallibilism enters in to learning laws. But beyond that deductive logic can only apply to ideal entities. That is to our imagination as we make an hypothesis in abductive reasoning. While deductive laws are part of the a priori in the sense of dealing with pure possibilities (firstness) one has to be careful. Obviously one must consider the kinds of possibilities one deals with. Then there is, as I noted, the relationship of these idealizations with the empirical world.
Thus we end up, in Peircean terms, with the relationship between thirdness as representation and firstness as pure possibility.
What I see Derrida arguing is that we never can speak or reason about pure firstness. Our reasoning is always mediated and thus a kind of thirdness. Clearly Peirce agrees and thus his three main categories of representations. But I think the critique Derrida makes is that the fundamental difference between firstness and a firstness of representation are different. Further the inherent nature of the sign as offering only a hint of the object means in reasoning we never escape abduction about empirical entities. Even our discussion about ideal entities are matters of thirdness.
So logical deduction is used. But it seems to me to be different from ideal logical deduction simply because of the limitations of signs. I also think this is where the ethical that I discussed comes in. Reasoning to do deductive logic entails great self-control as one seeks after the "logically good" and the ideals that one grasps in only a finite fallible fashion. That is one must strive to achieve an ideal.
Even acknowledging the inherent problems of saying we know logical laws (although I think one can presume for most logic we have a stability in our belief) there is then the problem of conducting the reasoning where the inherent nature of signs makes things more open than I think some philosophers are willing to acknowledge.
First of all I think that Peirce has given about as accurate a description of the nature of logical argument as anyone. Far too many miss the enormous amount of metaphysical hypothesizing that goes on in the process of abduction, long before deduction can be applied at all.
Secondly, it is no big deal whether logic is self-existent or not. Logic is contructed and modified to be perfectly consistent, when dealing with objects or ideals of the proper type. Slam dunk, no doubt about it.
The problem is all in the metaphysics, which are determined by abduction, and which have nothing to do with logic per se. Aristotle just assumed a ridiculously simple metaphysics as incorporated it into his logical system, and we have been suffering for the equivocation of metaphysics and logic ever since.
Many do not understand the distinction, and improperly criticize logic, when they should be criticizing naive metaphysics. Logic is like mathematics, it works when the assumptions are correct, and all the terms are characterized properly. If that groundwork is not done, which it is not in very many cases, the application of logic is relatively fallible - not that the mechanism is wrong, but rather the inputs. Garbage in, garbage out.
That is an interesting trick Peirce does, defining three types of goodness, normally we consider logical goodness Truth, aesthetic goodness Beauty, and moral goodness Goodness. I can't complain, however.
Clark, I think I see what you mean. The laws of logic are a priory as such we donÕt create the laws of logic so much as discover them in more of a Platonic sense.
But with regards to Firstness, wouldnÕt Peirce say that we do have access to Firstness when Thirdness unites it with Secondness? Firstness doesnÕt disappear. We donÕt have direct access so much as we have mediated access. But Derrida would say you canÕt get there at all because you canÕt go outside the text. And, text since it containes differance denies access to Firstness.
We always have access to firstness, secondness and thirdness in any phenomena. Those categories are the Hegelian or Kantian categories of phenomena as Peirce sees it. But to think one engages in thirdness. But the three categories are all primitive and irreducible.
Derrida doesn't deny this from what I can see. He's fairly explicit that he is always concerned with the "Other" of the text. That is (depending upon context) either existence itself, reality itself (in the case of quasi-universals like Justice) or firstness.
With respect to firstness in Peirce what we have is the phenomena itself. Derrida like many (say Sellars) denies the myth of the given. But even if there isn't an absolute presence in phenomena is not to deny phenomena as given. It is just that things are more complex than it first appears.
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