Figure: Relational Process Ontologies in AID iterative cycles of conversational storytelling inquiry (see Boje, in press book on Pondy)
What’s Enthinkment, when you
consider Pondy as pragmatist,
or doing not just Dewey (1910)
How to Think or James
(1907) Pragmatism, but what
Peirce calls
'pragmaticism'? What's
the difference? Early
Peirce (1868) held that
pragmatism insists
abstractions give an account
in terms of practical
experience. Later,
Peirce, he want to think
beyond qualities of sensation
of empirical psychology to the
intellectual meanings, and in
pragmaticism, get to something
embodied in a wide variety of
'existents' (Vol. 3, 433) not
just William James' (1907)
which Peirce called 'radical
empiricism', but also Schiller
(Vol. 5, Book II, para 414, p.
276),
and to something to do with
ethics (129ff, 533), and to
inscription of 'purposive'
habits to nature (107, 603).
Peirce (Vol. 5, Book II, para
414, pp. 276-277) defines "The
birth of the word
'pragmaticism,' which is ugly
enough to be safe from
kidnappers." He is taking a
direction that does not stop
with "the first impressions of
sense" or of "cognitive
elaboration" because there are
multiple states of mind
already formed, and asks Mr.
Make Believe" "What! Do you
mean to say that one is to
believe what is not true, or
that what a man does not doubt
is ipso facto true?" (Vol. 5, Book II, para 416, p.
278). In other
words
'pragmaticism'
is
what's untrue (due to
fallibility, 'which Ockham's
razor would clean shave off)
and what's true in habit of
mind meets up with 'some
surprise' that supersedes
habits of consciousness, and
"exert a measure of
self-control over ... future
actions" (Vol. 5, Book II, para 418, p.
279). In other
words "ethical
self-control"
(419, p. 280).
In Boje and
Rosile (2020)
we call this
self-correcting
abduction
and/or
deduction by
doing
inductive
tests
(self-reflection,
interview
others, study
other
paradigms of
explanation,
or do
experiment/intervention).
"When one
reasons, it is
that critical
self that one
is trying to
persuade" (Vol. 5, Book II, para 421, p.
281). What is
pragmaticism
of
self-correction:
"Everything that might give a
dramatic
illusion must
be stripped
off, so that
the result
will be a sort
of cross
between a
dialogue and a
catechism, but
a good deal
liker the
latter --
something
rather
painfully
reminiscent of
Mangnall's Historical
Questions."
(Vol. 5, Book II, para 422, p.
281).
In short,
every
proposition of
ontological
metaphysics by
doing a series
of tests of
abductive and
deductive
assumptions.
In short, not
doing a single
test, but a
series of
them. "... if
pragmaticism
really made
Doing to be
the Be all and
the End-all of
life, that
would be its
death" (Vol. 5, Book II, para 429, p. 286)
'Whatever
exists, ex-ists,
that is,
really acts
upon other
existents, so
obtains a
self-identity,
and is
definitely
individual...
the noun is
not an
existent
thing; it be
spoken or
written..."
(IBID. p.
287). In
short, Peirce
pragmaticism
is not just
about action
it is about
what exist,
and what is
ethical reason
toward
changing a
habit of
thinking
and/or a habit
of action, or
a fixation of
opinions.
"That which any true proposition
asserts is ral,
in the sense
of being as it
is regardless
of what you or
I may think
about it...
Accordingly,
the
pragmaticist
does not make
summum
bonum to
consist in
action, but
makes it to
consist in
that process
of evolution
whereby the
existent comes
more and more
to embody
those generals
which were
just now said
to be destined,
which is what
we strive to
express in
calling them reasonable
... but only
the practical
attitude of
the thinker
toward the two
is different"
(Vol. 5, Book II, para 432-434, p.
290). Peirce said Hegel degraded what is
thinking (p.
291).
What
is Time? A Charles Sanders Peirce
Pragmaticism Answer
Charles Sanders
Pierce put Thirdness as an Existential Mode of
Time in relation to Firstness and Secondness (Vol.
V1, #32, p. 25). This triadic is the basis
of how his pragmaticism differs from other
pragmatisms, such as that of William James, that
grounded a phenomenology of experience in social
psychology. Our Enthinkment Circle is
exploring different theories of time in the work
of Charles Sanders Peirce. The figures in
the image are E1 (Pondy), E2 (Weick), and QS
(Peirce), in Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness
Triadic. Peirce asks "What is Time?" then a much
humbler question "What is meant by Time?" (Vol. V
#458, p. 310).
References to the
Past, Present, Future is irresistible. Each has
lots of fallibility to consider. A linear sequence
of events past that was, present now happening,
and future not yet is according to Peirce not the
only way of considering 'what is meant by Time?
WHAT
IS PAST? Peirce
defines time-past as "a fait accompli... accomplishment is
the Existential Mode of Time" (Vol. 5, #459, p. 311).
Call this the Secondness of enactment of Weickian retrospective
sensemaking narrative that selects a few events to order in
beginning, middle, and end linear sequence, out of the flow of
time that is otherwise continuous enactment. A problem is our
memory of the past is fallible. We forget stuff, and try to
remember by paying attention to what was, and is now forgotten. We
call these 'little wow moments' we might recover from the Before,
in the true storytelling approach (Larsen, Boje, & Bruun,
2021) or 'restorying by embodied reflection (Boje & Rosile,
2020). Since historical narratives can be shallow, Heidegger
advocates digging out deeper histories.
What is
Present? This is not the Thirdness of
Peirce's pragmaticism approach to the question of Time. Peirce
seeks an alternative to the Now approach to the 'living present'
He asks how does the Present bear on conduct? (V, #462). His
answer "Introspection is wholly a matter of inference" (p. 313).
There is no ego and "the self is only inferred" (p.
313). Present has either construed or perception, the former
is attitude and the later is illusion in "Nascent State of the
Actual" (IBID.). Peirce focuses on what is becoming in the
Present. Peirce concludes "There is only one Time: however "Time
is compared with it truth for space" , than challenges,
"But we must go further:(V, #463, p. 313). "I do not think that
man can consistently hold that there is room in time for an event
between the two events separate in time" (V, #2111, p. 129).
WHAT
IS FUTURE? Peirce
says nothing of the sort of a fait accompli is
true in Past, of the Future (p. 311). Call this the Firstness, of
enthinkment inference. This is more about prospective
antenarrative process, 'bets on the future' (Boje, 2001). In
making bets on the future, that process is about inferences of
'opportune moments' to make something happen. To make an
antenarrative bet (Boje, 2001). We make inferences, or bets,
but these are abductive hunches, intuitions, wild guesses, all in
need of inductive testing of both abductions and deductive
theory. "Pragmatism, the conclusion of a Reasoning power
must refer to the Future" (Peirce, V, # 461, p. 313).
What is
Thirdness? Peirce
says Thirdness is Metaphysics of Time. We
look to Quantum Storytelling (QS) in Peirce's writings. "Is
Time a real thin, or if not, what is the nature of the reality
that it represents?" (VI, #6, p. 6). In quantum sense "time,
space, matter, force, gravitation, electricity, ect: (VI, #34, p.
27). After deconstructing the limits of causality in
Newtonian physics, Peirce turns to how the psychical world is
different from the physical world of force. Newton had three
laws of cause and effect, here summarized:
1. The state of things at any one instance of time is completed and exactly determing by the state of things at one other instant of time
2. The cause of the state of things precedes the effect of things.
3. No fact determines a fact preceding it in time.
With regard to Future, Past, and Present:
"Each state of mind, acting under an overruling association,
produces another state of mind. Or if different states of mind
contribute to producing another, they simply act concurrently, and
not in opposite ways, as the two earlier positions of a particle
of matter do, in determining a third position ... furthermore, the
relations of the present to the past and to the future, instead of
being the same, as in the domain of the Law of Energy, are utterly
unlike. I remember the past, but I have absolutely no slightest
approach to such knowledge of the future. On the other hand I have
considerable power i over the future, but nobody except the
Parisian mob imagines that he can change the past by much or by
little" (VI, #70, p. 50). Peirce is aware of Einstein
theory of time relativity, and of Newton's causal laws. For
Thirdness, Peirce takes a metaphysics standpoint, however, he also
uses AID (abduction, induction, deduction) because he is humble
about his own fallibility.
Peirce's three time evolution theories: Tychastic evolution, Anancastic evolution, and Agapistic Evolution (in Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness), allows for Creative Love of the Agape in relation to the Jeremy Bentham (utilitarianism) and Darwin (selection of fittest variations) Tychastic, and in relation to the Anancastic evolution he reads in Creative Love (Agape). In Volume VII, a whole book on Love, going through scriptures, and various interpretations, and centering his own. Peirce's theory of Creative Love (embodied spirituality) is not hampered by Cartesian, Kantian, Newtonian, but ventures into what we now call quantum storytelling, in VII on the Metaphysics of all this (Chapter 2, Evolutionary Love). Peirce comes up with Thirdness as a way to inquiry into processes where cause-effect fails to go (e.g. variation-selection-retention notions of time; VI, #69 & #202, for more).
For more on the 7 antenarrative processes, please see Antenarrative.com
How does all this apply to the 'who' question: who is storytelling to whom? In TS we look at the interplay of four who's:
1) Ego-centric-who Peirce calls 'self-love', which as you know is the basis of most economic theory, that self-greed is efficient market mechanism (or invisible hand).
2) Corporate-centric-who Peirce calls love of a limited class (one class of people, against another class of people), devoted to corporate wealth of shareholders, utilitarianism, survival of the fittest variation approach to entrepreneurship, and so on, rather than to good, just, and betterment of the whole of the social or to ecological;
3) We-centric-who (or social) that is what Peirce calls a 'public-spirit; consciousness, Heidegger calls the 'they-self), that puts the social ahead of Nature, and sometimes ahead of Corporate-who.
4) Eco-centric-who of ecology, which is quite divided over issue of spirituality of nature or nature as just spiritless processes.