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You need to send it again, this time to the CURRENT peirce-l server
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Best, Ben
On 8/18/2014 3:01 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
On Aug 18, 2014, at 8:53 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Is quality material? - You write interesting mails to the list, but
the formal/material distinction does not do the job you seem to think
it does.
It seems one place he uses the distinction he is discussing causes,
attempting to clarify Aristotle’s famous four categories. There he
seems to use form/matter more in the sense of external vs. internal
cause. That’s obviously a distinction entirely relative to the object
and scale one is investigating.
It may be added that a part of a cause, if a part in that respect
in which the cause is a cause, is also called a cause. In other
respects, too, the scope of the word will be somewhat widened in
the sequel. If the cause so defined is a part of the /causatum/,
in the sense that the /causatum/ could not logically be without
the cause, it is called an /internal cause/; otherwise, it is
called an /external cause/. If the cause is of the nature of an
individual thing or fact, and the other factor requisite to the
necessitation of the /causatum/ is a general principle, I would
call the cause a /minor/, or /individuating/, or perhaps a
/physical cause/. If, on the other hand, it is the general
principle which is regarded as the cause and the individual fact
to which it is applied is taken as the understood factor, I would
call the cause a /major/, or /defining/, or perhaps a /psychical
cause/. The individuating internal cause is called the /material
cause/. Thus the integrant parts of a subject or fact form its
/matter/, or /material cause/. The individuating external cause is
called the /efficient/, or /efficient cause/; and the /causatum/
is called the effect. The defining internal cause is called the
/formal cause/, or /form/. All these facts which constitute the
definition of a subject or fact make up its form. The defining
external cause is called the /final cause/, or /end/. It is hoped
that these statements will be found to hit a little more squarely
than did those of Aristotle and the scholastics the same bull’s
eye at which they aimed. From scholasticism and the medieval
universities, these conceptions passed in vaguer form into the
common mind and vernacular of Western Europe, and especially so in
England. Consequently, by the aid of these definitions I think I
can make out what it is that the writer mentioned has in mind in
saying that it is not the law which influences, or is the final
cause of, the facts, but the facts that make up the cause of the
law. (EP 315-316)
(Excerpted from one of the longest paragraphs I’ve seen this side of
Ayn Rand)
It seems to me that there’s a bit of ambiguity over “form” and Peirce
distinguishes teleology or final cause which is external from the
defining internal cause or form. Although if I recall the scholastics
well enough they might use form for this final cause.
Hopefully this helps. I’m not sure he uses these oppositions of
form/matter that often. Interestingly it’s closely related to the
type/token relationship as well and he sometimes adds a third, tone.
Later he changes this to mark, token and type. This is from his The
Ten Main Trichotomies of Signs from Dec 24, 1908. (EP 2:488) That
probably represents his most mature thought on the subject although
one could argue that type, token and tone are quite different from the
fourfold taxonomy of Aristotle on causation.
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