Just to add to that last post, it’s also worth considering in terms of causation and Aristotle’s taxonomy Peirce’s own conception of inside/outside of the sign. Typically Peirce is interpreted to consider habit formation as something that occurs within the sign. This “within” is often seen as the psychic aspect whereas externally it’s considered chance. (Bringing in some of Perice’s metaphysics now) This gets at the interesting ontology of creation Peirce gives in 1891 that I’d quoted here a few weeks ago.
in the beginning -- infinitely remote -- there was a chaos of unpersonalized Feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without existence. This Feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started the germ of a generalizing tendency. Its other sportings would be evanescent, but this would have a growing virtue. Thus, the tendency to habit would be started; and from this, with the other principles of evolution, all the regularities of the universe would be evolved. At any time, however, an element of pure chance survives and will remain until the world becomes anabsolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, in which mind is at last crystallized in the infinitely distant future. (CP 6.33) Again I think some parallels to neoPlatonism of late antiquity, especially Plotinus, are relevant here for thinking through how Peirce regards Aristotle. But again, I also recognize that Peirce’s ontology is extremely controversial. Many who love Peirce still balk at much of his metaphysics. While I think Peirce’s thought tends to hinge all together, one can probably separate his notion of signs without adopting his metaphysics of signs, mind, and matter. I confess that it’s an implication of Peirce’s thought it seems to me that the universe is losing mind as it becomes more regular. Which seems an odd thing to have in his metaphysics. Peirce often refers to it as crystallization of mind.
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