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14779 | I reason in order to avoid disappointment and surprise |
Full Idea: I do not reason for the sake of my delight in reasoning, but solely to avoid disappointment and surprise. | |||
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |||
A reaction: Hence Peirce places more emphasis on inductive and abductive reasoning than on deductive reasoning. I have to agree with him. Anyone account of why we reason must have an evolutionary framework. What advantage does reason bestow? It concerns the future. |
14777 | That a judgement is true and that we judge it true are quite different things |
Full Idea: Either J and the judgment 'I say that J is true' are the same for all judgments or for none. But if identical, their denials are identical. These are 'J is not true' and 'I do not say that J is true', which are different. No judgment judges itself true. | |||
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |||
A reaction: If you are going to espouse the Ramseyan redundancy view of truth, you had better make sure you are not guilty of the error which Peirce identifies here. |
14780 | Only study logic if you think your own reasoning is deficient |
Full Idea: It is foolish to study logic unless one is persuaded that one's own reasonings are more or less bad. | |||
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], II) |
14778 | Facts are hard unmoved things, unaffected by what people may think of them |
Full Idea: Facts are hard things which do not consist in my thinking so and so, but stand unmoved by whatever you or I or any man or generations of men may opine about them. | |||
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |||
A reaction: This is my view of facts, with which I am perfectly happy, for all the difficulties involved in individuating facts, and in disentangling them from our own modes of thought and expression. Let us try to establish the facts. |