That was indeed Popper's view, but not Peirce's. The latter suggested - long before Popper wrote anything - that the logical form of abduction looks s...
Peirce evidently believed that the realism vs. nominalism debate was very consequential, because he waged that battle quite vigorously over the course...
The Popper who wrote Conjectures and Refutations? Conjectures result from what Peirce called abduction (or retroduction), and refutations (or corrobor...
Right - Peirce once described pragmatism as "scarce more than a corollary" of Alexander Bain's definition of a belief as "that upon which a man is pre...
I would probably not go quite that far. However, I do think that Peirce's characterization of inquiry as the struggle prompted by doubt, which has the...
Abduction is not another name for induction, and induction can and does happen in reality. The scientific method employs both of them routinely. It se...
I fully agree with this, and my own primary philosophical interest is "thinking about thinking." For example, I have been working for a while on adapt...
No, I would not say that at all; but I am not only interested in philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom. I see this as primarily a matter of cultivating ...
That is not what we mean by "realism" in this thread. We are talking about whether universals are real, not whether anything is real. You might want t...
I read this book (the link is to a review of it) over the long holiday weekend and found it very illuminating. Thanks again for bringing it to my atte...
Are you claiming that only propositions that can be demonstrated may be true? If so, how would you propose this could be demonstrated? In any case, ag...
What does "ordinary life" have to do with philosophy? I say that only slightly tongue-in-cheek. "Ordinary life" is a matter of employing habits based ...
I had in mind this notion from Peirce: "A compulsion is 'Brute' whose immediate efficacy nowise consists in conformity to rule or reason." However, I ...
A tautology (e.g., "all nominalists are nominalists") cannot be falsified, and yet is trivially true - in fact, necessarily true. Therefore, it is not...
I lean toward realism myself, but the usefulness of our models is not sufficient by itself to demonstrate that realism is true and nominalism is false...
How have we observed that the earth is not at the center of the universe? Heliocentrism ultimately prevailed because it facilitated better predictions...
No, the model of geocentrism was that the earth was at the center of the universe. Its usefulness was that it facilitated accurate (enough) prediction...
I referred to when the sun rises and sets - i.e., the time of each event - which varies each day. That was a prediction, and it was quite accurate und...
In other words, the mere fact that we can think about unicorns does not (by itself) entail that unicorns can exist in some world other than our own, l...
It provided very accurate predictions, especially as various ad hoc adjustments were incorporated over the centuries. For example, the sun rose and se...
No; you are ignoring the distinction between "real" and "actual," and instead treating them as synonyms. Realism regarding universals/generals is the ...
I think that Peirce would disagree. He categorized all brute facts of existence under 2ns, but all generals under 1ns (qualities) and especially 3ns (...
And my point is simply that the usefulness of our models does not, by itself, guarantee that they are of something real. Geocentrism was a useful mode...
Right, and the "breaking down" is what happens when reality confronts us with its independence from our thoughts about it. We maintain our current bel...
Right - we create our models with some goal or end in mind, and that is what guides us in ascertaining which parts of reality and which relations amon...
Yes, I know; you seem to have misunderstood my comment. I was asking @"apokrisis" to confirm that the reason why universals or generals are real is no...
To clarify - universals or generals are not real because they themselves are brute or objective facts of nature, but because they govern the brute or ...
Getting back to the question posed by the thread title, it depends on what we mean by "thing" and "real." If "thing" refers only to an individual and ...
That which is real does not necessarily turn out to be useful, and that which is useful does not necessarily turn out to be real; hence the notion of ...
Blasphemy! :-O I do often wonder how Mozart's music might have evolved, had he lived beyond the age of 35. Presumably he would have interacted further...
, Can we say that facts are the objects of true propositions - i.e., that which they represent? I guess this gets tricky on the view that truth is a s...
What would it mean to affirm that conceptual abstractions are not mental phenomena? I was under the impression that the whole debate between realists ...
You changed the statement. We agree that "there are no truths" is self-refuting. The statement was, "If there were no minds, then there would be no tr...
That would indeed be self-refuting ... but it is not what I said. My statement did not assert anything about what actually is the case, but rather abo...
Seriously? This statement: If there were no minds in our actual world, then there would be no truths in our actual world. NOT self-contradictory, righ...
NO ONE IS CLAIMING THIS! That is irrelevant. Do you agree that the following statement is NOT self-contradictory? Note that I am NOT asking you whethe...
Maybe we should try formulating a straightforward counterfactual claim, rather than talking about possible worlds. This is what I understand @"Terrapi...
No one is saying this. You are now claiming that any propositions about world x can only be asserted in a world that contains world x. This is not how...
And according to @"Terrapin Station", at that point in time in this world, there were no truths. But he is asserting that now, when there are minds an...
I do not understand this sentence. Let P = "there are no truths in world x." What you seem to be saying is, "If you claim it is true that P, that is a...
Only if I claim that it is true in world y that there are no truths. There is no contradiction when I claim (within world y) that it is true in world ...
Why would that be a contradiction? P = In world x there are no truths. not-P = In world x there are some truths. @"Terrapin Station" is asserting P. H...
There is no logic in world x. There is logic in our actual world, and thus we can assert in our actual world that nothing is true in world x. The only...
There is no contradiction whatsoever in my last post. We are talking about world x within world y (our actual world), where there are minds, truths, l...
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