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Moulton
User:Aubrey, a sysop on the Italian Wikisource, interviewed Umberto Eco in Milan on April 24, 2010. The interview was published in the Italian Wikinews on May 11 and is available in English translation.

Here are some selected excerpts...

QUOTE(Umberto Eco)
I am a compulsive user of Wikipedia.

I am a disciple of Peirce, who argues that scientific truths are, ultimately, approved by the community. The slow work of the community, through revisions and errors, as he put it in the nineteenth century, carries out "the torch of truth." The problem is the definition of truth.

Wikipedia has two unrelated functions in my opinion. The first one is to allow fast search of information, and it is just the multiplication of Garzantine [a popular Italian series of compact encyclopedias], period. The other, and this is what we are talking about now, is whether the control from below can be many times more successful than the control from above. Since the world is full of expert idiots, certainly it can be.

Science is cumulative-destructive, it stores what it needs and throw away what it doesn't require. Humanities are totally cumulative, they don't throw away anything: in fact, there is always a return to the past.

With the current speed of renewal of the culture, if an encyclopedia doesn't go online for being updated month by month, is doomed forever.
Jon Awbrey
Frequently Associated Quotation —

QUOTE

At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that is, of cognitions which have been logically derived by induction and hypothesis from previous cognitions which are less general, less distinct, and of which we have a less lively consciousness. These in their turn have been derived from others still less general, less distinct, and less vivid; and so on back to the ideal first, which is quite singular, and quite out of consciousness. This ideal first is the particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist as such. That is, there is no thing which is in-itself in the sense of not being relative to the mind, though things which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from that relation. The cognitions which thus reach us by this infinite series of inductions and hypotheses (which though infinite a parte ante logice, is yet as one continuous process not without a beginning in time) are of two kinds, the true and the untrue, or cognitions whose objects are real and those whose objects are unreal.

And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the long run.

The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. And so those two series of cognition — the real and the unreal — consist of those which, at a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to re-affirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied.

Now, a proposition whose falsity can never be discovered, and the error of which therefore is absolutely incognizable, contains, upon our principle, absolutely no error. Consequently, that which is thought in these cognitions is the real, as it really is. There is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things as they really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless cases, although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any special case. (CP 5.311)

Charles Sanders Peirce, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities Claimed For Man”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 140–157. Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.264–317. Online.


NB. For ease of assimilation — and you will be assimilated … eventually — I have broken Peirce's long paragraph into more easily digestible chunks. —JA
thekohser
Aubrey? Awbrey?

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Moulton
Whereof we cannot explain a theory, we must run a cartoon instead.
Somey
I'm no Peirce scholar, but it seems to me that this is the key passage, though unfortunately it's probably also the least immediately comprehensible:
QUOTE
And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the long run.

In simpler terms, this is stating that you can't properly conceive of what's real/true until you can conceive of what's not-real or isn't true in any given case, at which point you have the notion of wrongness, and if necessary you correct yourself. A properly-designed inquiry-driven system, then, should harness the resources of its participant-community to arrive at the truth - not by negotiation, but by a process that involves the enhancement and expansion of the knowledge base and also the gradual elimination of things like personal/cultural biases or idiosyncratic personal misconceptions. Moreover, the goal is to have the community's conclusions (or rather, version-of-truth) "stand in the long run," i.e., achieve a kind of stability (subject to later correction), rather than have the negotiations go on indefinitely.

I'm probably not interpreting the paragraph quite correctly myself, of course, which is why this post is so ironic.
Moulton
It would be downright unreal if people on Wikipedia ever got real.
Jon Awbrey
QUOTE(Somey @ Thu 5th August 2010, 5:29pm) *

I'm no Peirce scholar, but it seems to me that this is the key passage, though unfortunately it's probably also the least immediately comprehensible:

QUOTE(Charles Sanders Peirce @ CP 5.311)

And what do we mean by the real? It is a conception which we must first have had when we discovered that there was an unreal, an illusion; that is, when we first corrected ourselves. Now the distinction for which alone this fact logically called, was between an ens relative to private inward determinations, to the negations belonging to idiosyncrasy, and an ens such as would stand in the long run.


In simpler terms, this is stating that you can't properly conceive of what's real/true until you can conceive of what's not-real or isn't true in any given case, at which point you have the notion of wrongness, and if necessary you correct yourself. A properly-designed inquiry-driven system, then, should harness the resources of its participant-community to arrive at the truth — not by negotiation, but by a process that involves the enhancement and expansion of the knowledge base and also the gradual elimination of things like personal/cultural biases or idiosyncratic personal misconceptions. Moreover, the goal is to have the community's conclusions (or rather, version-of-truth) "stand in the long run," i.e., achieve a kind of stability (subject to later correction), rather than have the negotiations go on indefinitely.

I'm probably not interpreting the paragraph quite correctly myself, of course, which is why this post is so ironic.


Good catch! — That is one of many key passages in the paper, which appears as the 2nd of 3 in what is usually called Peirce's Journal of Speculative Philosophy Series. The passage you noticed develops a theme that Peirce introduced in the 1st paper of the series, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man”.

Thereby hangs another one of those Frequently Adverted Quotations —

QUOTE

A very young child may always be observed to watch its own body with great attention. There is every reason why this should be so, for from the child's point of view this body is the most important thing in the universe. Only what it touches has any actual and present feeling; only what it faces has any actual color; only what is on its tongue has any actual taste.

No one questions that, when a sound is heard by a child, he thinks, not of himself as hearing, but of the bell or other object as sounding. How when he wills to move a table? Does he then think of himself as desiring, or only of the table as fit to be moved? That he has the latter thought, is beyond question; that he has the former, must, until the existence of an intuitive self-consciousness is proved, remain an arbitrary and baseless supposition. There is no good reason for thinking that he is less ignorant of his own peculiar condition than the angry adult who denies that he is in a passion.

The child, however, must soon discover by observation that things which are thus fit to be changed are apt actually to undergo this change, after a contact with that peculiarly important body called Willy or Johnny. This consideration makes this body still more important and central, since it establishes a connection between the fitness of a thing to be changed and a tendency in this body to touch it before it is changed.

The child learns to understand the language; that is to say, a connection between certain sounds and certain facts becomes established in his mind. He has previously noticed the connection between these sounds and the motions of the lips of bodies somewhat similar to the central one, and has tried the experiment of putting his hand on those lips and has found the sound in that case to be smothered. He thus connects that language with bodies somewhat similar to the central one. By efforts, so unenergetic that they should be called rather instinctive, perhaps, than tentative, he learns to produce those sounds. So he begins to converse.

It must be about this time that he begins to find that what these people about him say is the very best evidence of fact. So much so, that testimony is even a stronger mark of fact than the facts themselves, or rather than what must now be thought of as the appearances themselves. (I may remark, by the way, that this remains so through life; testimony will convince a man that he himself is mad.)

A child hears it said that the stove is hot. But it is not, he says; and, indeed, that central body is not touching it, and only what that touches is hot or cold. But he touches it, and finds the testimony confirmed in a striking way. Thus, he becomes aware of ignorance, and it is necessary to suppose a self in which this ignorance can inhere. So testimony gives the first dawning of self-consciousness.

But, further, although usually appearances are either only confirmed or merely supplemented by testimony, yet there is a certain remarkable class of appearances which are continually contradicted by testimony. These are those predicates which we know to be emotional, but which he distinguishes by their connection with the movements of that central person, himself (that the table wants moving, etc.) These judgments are generally denied by others. Moreover, he has reason to think that others, also, have such judgments which are quite denied by all the rest. Thus, he adds to the conception of appearance as the actualization of fact, the conception of it as something private and valid only for one body. In short, error appears, and it can be explained only by supposing a self which is fallible.

Ignorance and error are all that distinguish our private selves from the absolute ego of pure apperception. (CP 5.229–235)

Charles Sanders Peirce, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 103–114. Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.213–263. Online.

Jon Awbrey
Peirce has a reputation for being difficult to understand. In my own experience, those difficulties arise from two chief sources:
  • Peirce's thinking, as we find it expressed in his writing, tends to be uncompromising, refusing to accept simplistic answers to complex questions just for the sake of mental comfort or social convenience.
  • Readers let what they expect to read on a given subject interfere with their reading of what Peirce actually wrote.
By way of notorious example, see if you can tell the springs from the catches in this key passage:

QUOTE

The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. And so those two series of cognition — the real and the unreal — consist of those which, at a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to re-affirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied. (CP 5.311)

Charles Sanders Peirce, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities Claimed For Man”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), pp. 140–157. Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.264–317. Online.

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