Rafael Alvarado's List: Digital Humanities Reading List

• A clear idea is defined as one which is so apprehended that it will be recognized wherever it is met with, and so that no other will be mistaken for it.

  • Clarity defined in terms of recognizability across contexts.
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• since it is clearness that they were defining, I wish the logicians had made their definition a little more plain
• the machinery of the mind can only transform knowledge, but never originate it, unless it be fed with facts of observation

  • Application of the principle of transduction
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• to accept propositions which seem perfectly evident to us is a thing which, whether it be logical or illogical, we cannot help doing
• Nothing new can ever be learned by analyzing definitions.
• That much-admired "ornament of logic" -- the doctrine of clearness and distinctness -- may be pretty enough, but it is high time to relegate to our cabinet of curiosities the antique bijou, and to wear about us something better adapted to modern uses.
• To know what we think, to be masters of our own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great and weighty thought. It is most easily learned by those whose ideas are meagre and restricted; and far happier they than such as wallow helplessly in a rich mud of conceptions.

  • "A rich mud of conceptions"
• there can be no question that a few clear ideas are worth more than many confused ones
• clearness is of less use to a man settled in life, whose errors have in great measure had their effect, than it would be to one whose path lay before him
• a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty
• Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false; he has, nevertheless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, and in short has lived with it and for it, until it has become, as it were, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; and then he has waked up some bright morning to find it gone, clean vanished away like the beautiful Melusina of the fable, and the essence of his life gone with it.
• Feigned hesitancy, whether feigned for mere amusement or with a lofty purpose, plays a great part in the production of scientific inquiry.
• In other words, we have attained belief.

  • "Belief" = a decision
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• These two sorts of objects, what we are immediately conscious of and what we are mediately conscious of, are found in all consciousness.
• Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations.
• Thought is only one such system, for its sole motive, idea, and function is to produce belief,
• Thought in action has for its only possible motive the attainment of thought at rest; and whatever does not refer to belief is no part of the thought itself
• And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.
• belief is a rule for action
• it is also a new starting-place for thought
• thought at rest
• The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.
• The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
• the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action; and that whatever there is connected with a thought, but irrelevant to its purpose, is an accretion to it, but no part of it
• what a thing means is simply what habits it involves

  • This is strong pragramatism.
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• What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act.

  • When + how = situated action?
• there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice

  • This iis the crux of it.
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• Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief

  • action -> senses
    habit -> action
    belief -> habit
    conception -> belief
    
    Thought -> Belief -> Habit -> Action -> Senses
• Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself.

  • So much for the thing-in-itself?
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• Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

  • Peirce's pragmatism, expressed as a rule: Meaning of an idea is its effects; meaning = (latent) causality
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• the question of free-will and fate in its simplest form, stripped of verbiage, is something like this: I have done something of which I am ashamed; could I, by an effort of the will, have resisted the temptation, and done otherwise?
• the above single question was the origin of the whole doubt; that, had it not been for this question, the controversy would never have arisen
• this question is perfectly solved in the manner which I have indicated

  • Not clear what the solution is ... to deny the question?
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• To say that a body is heavy means simply that, in the absence of opposing force, it will fall.

  • Or perhaps that it requires some exertion of muscle to lift.
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• This is the great conception which, developed in the early part of the seventeenth century from the rude idea of a cause, and constantly improved upon since, has shown us how to explain all the changes of motion which bodies experience, and how to think about all physical phenomena; which has given birth to modern science, and changed the face of the globe; and which, aside from its more special uses, has played a principal part in directing the course of modern thought, and in furthering modern social development. It is, therefore, worth some pains to comprehend it.
• According to our rule, we must begin by asking what is the immediate use of thinking about force; and the answer is, that we thus account for changes of motion.
• This is the only fact which the idea of force represents, and whoever will take the trouble clearly to apprehend what this fact is, perfectly comprehends what force is.

  • Sounds like positivism now.
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• In a recent admired work on Analytic Mechanics it is stated that we understand precisely the effect of force, but what force itself is we do not understand! This is simply a self-contradiction.

  • And here is what you end up with when you commit to pragmatism -- these things no longer make sense.
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• The idea which the word force excites in our minds has no other function than to affect our actions, and these actions can have no reference to force otherwise than through its effects. Consequently, if we know what the effects of force are, we are acquainted with every fact which is implied in saying that a force exists, and there is nothing more to know.

  • There is something very New England about all ot this, now that it is stated so baldly. It seems that Perice begs that question about his pragmatist principle.
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• we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be
• the truth is simply his particular stronghold
• When the method of authority prevailed, the truth meant little more than the Catholic faith
• All the efforts of the scholastic doctors are directed toward harmonizing their faith in Aristotle and their faith in the Church, and one may search their ponderous folios through without finding an argument which goes any further
• it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system
• In contenting themselves with fixing their own opinions by a method which would lead another man to a different result, they betray their feeble hold of the conception of what truth is.
• all the followers of science are animated by a cheerful hope that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they apply it
• I will not trouble the reader with any more Ontology at this moment
• Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion.

  • So, for Peirce to believee *this,* he must be a realist (in the Platonic sense). There must be a thing-in-itself. Or, should we ask, what is the effect of believing in convergence? Then we find ourselves in a sociology of science that characterizes science as scholasticism.
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• the operation of destiny
• No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.
• There is no royal road to logic, and really valuable ideas can only be had at the price of close attention.
• the reality of that which is real does depend on the real fact that investigation is destined to lead, at last, if continued long enough, to a belief in it

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