Atila, List: I changed the subject line this time because I am shifting back to a focus on Peirce's expressed views instead of applying his ideas to modern scientific theories. Specifically, I would like to respond to these brief remarks.
AB: Now my point (for another time) is that lecture 2 left me unsatisfied about 1ns. It seemed the most defective and inadequate of the categories, dangling apart from 3ns ... Peirce recognizes that of his three categories, 1ns is the most difficult to grasp conceptually and explain accurately. "It cannot be articulately thought ... Stop to think of it, and it has flown! ... every description of it must be false to it" (CP 1.357, EP 1:248, 1887-8). Personally, I have found it helpful to distinguish an *individual *possibility or quality in itself (1ns) from a continuous *range *of possibilities or *spectrum *of qualities (3ns); it is the latter, not the former, that Peirce ultimately posits as the initial state of things. An example of someone failing to recognize this distinction, and thus misunderstanding his categories and cosmology, is Philip Rose's 2016 paper, "C.S. Peirce's Cosmogonic Philosophy of Emergent Evolution: Deriving Something from Nothing" ( https://www.unav.es/gep/RoseScio2016.pdf). Here is the last paragraph of its introduction. PR: Peirce rejects the mechanistic metaphysics against which emergentism develops and proposes a radically new ontological system whose base condition is not mechanism per se but *tychasm* or chance. Focusing on the work produced during Peirce’s so-called 'Monist' period, we will see that Peirce’s attempt to explain the origins of the laws of nature is in fact the groundwork for what amounts to *a theory of emergent evolution*. Much of the discussion will revolve around the cosmogonic hypothesis outlined in Peirce’s unpublished work, "A Guess at the Riddle," for it is here that the kernel of his cosmogonic philosophy is most clearly articulated and laid out. Once Peirce’s cosmogonic hypothesis has been made clear I will end by outlining my own speculative metaphysical account of how the Categories themselves might have come about, with 3ns and 2ns standing in an emergent relation to 1ns. (p. 125) I see at least three problematic issues here. First, Rose seems to think that *tychasm*--"evolution by fortuitous variation" (CP 6.302, EP 1:362, 1893), i.e., in accordance with *tychism *as "the doctrine that absolute chance is a factor of the universe" (CP 6.201, 1898)--is the central tenet of Peirce's metaphysics. However, already in 1892 (CP 6.163, EP 1:333), he refers to his overall system as "the synechistic philosophy" and says that "it carries along with it" not only "tychism, with its consequent thorough-going evolutionism," but also "a logical realism of the most pronounced type," the doctrine that some generals are real; and "objective idealism," the doctrine that mind is primordial and becomes matter by developing inveterate habits. In the blackboard lecture, he states even more directly, "I object to having my metaphysical system as a whole called Tychism. For although tychism does enter into it, it only enters as subsidiary to that which is really, as I regard it, the characteristic of my doctrine, namely, that I chiefly insist upon continuity, or 3ns ... Accordingly, I like to call my theory Synechism" (CP 6.202). Second, Rose relies exclusively on Peirce's early (1887-93) cosmological writings, especially "A Guess at the Riddle," instead of *also *taking into account his later texts. In fact, he makes an especially egregious interpretive error when commenting on the one and only late quotation that he includes, from "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), when he mentions "Peirce's later claim that at least two of the three Universes 'have a creator independent of them' (CP 6.483, EP 2:449), with 1ns as presented here standing as the ground or 'creator' of the other two" (p. 140). Anyone acquainted with that famous article knows that the "creator" being referenced is not *any *of the three categories, but God as *Ens necessarium*; and it is unambiguous in Peirce's still-unpublished manuscript drafts for it that the one universe of which he suspects that God might not be *completely* independent is the third one, because "He is so much like a mind [3ns], and so little like a singular Existent [2ns] ... and so opposed in His Nature to an ideal possibility [1ns]" (R 843). Third, Rose's account claims that 3ns and 2ns somehow emerged from 1ns as "a state of absolute possibility, a state where there was nothing actual or potential, no limit or limiting power whatsoever, just a state of absolute, indeterminate possibility" (p. 139). By contrast, Peirce's starting point in the blackboard lecture is "vague potentiality ... a continuum of forms ... potentiality of everything in general, but of nothing in particular" (CP 6.196); "general indefinite potentiality" (CP 6.199); "the original vague potentiality, or at any rate of some early stage of its determination ... for after all continuity is generality" (CP 6.203); "the original generality ... the original continuity which is inherent in potentiality. Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general" (CP 6.204). Again, he repeatedly maintains that 2ns and 3ns cannot *come from* 1ns; on the contrary, 1ns and 2ns cannot be *without *3ns. "Not only does 3ns suppose and involve the ideas of 2ns and 1ns, but never will it be possible to find any 2ns or 1ns in the phenomenon that is not accompanied by 3ns" (CP 5.90, EP 2:177, 1903). To be clear, I am not suggesting that Rose is wrong because Peirce is right; I am only pointing out that Rose *disagrees *with Peirce about these matters, apparently without recognizing it. Varying interpretations of his writings are to be expected, especially since many of them from the last two decades of his life--including some that shed valuable light on both earlier and better-known texts, on cosmology as well as many other subjects--remain unpublished except as online manuscript images. Wherever there are such differences, readers must decide for themselves which scholars have made the most persuasive cases for their positions, but some claims about Peirce's *own *views are objectively falsified by their inconsistency with what his words plainly state. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 10:42 AM Atila Bayat <[email protected]> wrote: > List, +Robert Marty > > I must concur that this is a serious analysis of cosmology. Yet what are > we talking about when we talk cosmology for Peirce? It’s a normative > science and metaphysical discourse, a physical metaphysics, a bridge > between general metaphysics and psychical metaphysics, and in the 1898 > lecture 8 (p. 267), “mathematical metaphysics.” > > His cosmology is construed as an “evolutionary” metaphysics; Peirce will > invoke the categories to render that bridge explicit. Cf. Lectures 2-3 in > Turrisi’s Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, which I often consider my leading > resource of explication. See her initial commentary, Peirce’s 3 drafts of > Lecture 2 published there, and 1 full complete Lecture 3. Turrisi well > observes that there were 5 extant manuscripts for Lecture 2, and 3 printed > in her book. Let me drop this a moment. Lecture 3, which I call the Kempe > lecture, for me is mostly about mathematical form. Peirce writes, in the > course of examining Kempe’s system; > > “…I found the three Categories copiously illustrated in the system. But > what was still more interesting, a certain fault in the system, by no means > of the fatal kind but still a vexatious inelegance which I had often > remarked but could see no way of remedying, now when looked upon from the > point of view of the categories, appeared in a new and stronger light than > ever before, showing me not only how to remedy the defect that I had seen, > but opening my eyes to *new* *possibilities of perfectionment* that I had > never dreamed of. I wish I could *present all this to you,* for it is > very beautiful and interesting as well as very instructive, but it would > require several lectures and lead me quite away from Pragmatism.” > (Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking, 1997, SUNY, p.186). > > Now we are left on our heels by Peirce, “it would require several lectures > and lead me quite a way from Pragmatism.” Thus no explication from Peirce > that I know of since. It thwarted me, perhaps as if one were in that > lecture room with Peirce, how would we react? > > Now my point (for another time) is that lecture 2 left me unsatisfied > about 1ns. It seemed the most defective and inadequate of the categories, > dangling apart from 3ns; perhaps a kind of quantum logic might render it > more intelligible. Notice that Hartshorne and Weiss themselves, back to the > 1940s-50s, noted that Peirce didn’t have the advantage of quantum mechanics > (which Edwina hints as well). Particularly, Hartshorne found there were > some matters of inconsistency in Peirce on continuity, and others have > perhaps noted. Not sure we want to go there yet. I just want to raise > consciousness at this stage, something rather imperfect here, yet > fascinating. > > I will pick this up further in a reply to Robert Marty’s earlier and > noteworthy post, which is overdue, in which I take up quantum logic and > lattices. > > Atila >
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