> On Sep 28, 2014, at 2:29 PM, Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/28/2014 11:22 AM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
>
>> > [JC] List, Ben, Clark:
>>
>> > I am surprised by the search for such a fine -scale parsing of the concept
>> > of "formal" causality (telos).
>>
> [BU] I'd regard formal causation generally as entelechiac causation, rather
> than as telic causation when _telos_ has the sense of culminal end, a working
> or functioning (once, sometimes, or habitually) as an end or goal. In
> Peirce's view, entelechy is merely more perfect realization or completion of
> the activity, the _energeia_ (which is a _telos_) (_Century Dictionary_ 1889
> and the definition's draft from 1886 in W 5:404
> https://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/terms
> <https://sites.google.com/site/cspmem/terms>), but I haven't thought so.
> Anyway there's parsing because there are various ways to apply the ideas.
>
I think that’s an important point you brought up Ben. This confused me to no
end when first studying Peirce as I kept thinking of teleology in Peirce more
akin to how Aquinas and the medievals took it. However for Peirce it’s very
much wrapped up in the discussion of entelenchy
The discussion of Aristotle’s famous four causes is interesting. I’d posted
this last month but I’ll repost it because I think it rather pertinent.
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)
He distinguishes internal from external causes. Although with regards to the
entelechy there’s some connection since the ideal sign signified the very
matter denoted by it united by the very form signified by it. As I understand
him this gets at both the internal and external.
Every sign that is sufficiently complete refers to sundry real objects. All
these objects, even if we are talking of Hamlet's madness, are parts of one and
the same Universe of being, the “Truth.” But so far as the “Truth” is merely
the object of a sign, it is merely the Aristotelian Matter of it that is so. In
addition however to denoting objects, every sign sufficiently complete
signifies characters, or qualities. We have a direct knowledge of real objects
in every experiential reaction, whether of Perception or of Exertion (the one
theoretical, the other practical). These are directly hic et nunc. But we
extend the category, and speak of numberless real objects with which we are not
in direct reaction. We have also direct knowledge of qualities in feeling,
peripheral and visceral. But we extend this category to numberless characters
of which we have no immediate consciousness. All these characters are elements
of the “Truth.” Every sign signifies the “Truth.” But it is only the
Aristotelian Form of the universe that it signifies. The logician is not
concerned with any metaphysical theory; still less, if possible, is the
mathematician. But it is highly convenient to express ourselves in terms of a
metaphysical theory; and we no more bind ourselves to an acceptance of it than
we do when we use substantives such as “humanity,” “variety,” etc. and speak of
them as if they were substances, in the metaphysical sense. But, in the third
place,every sign is intended to determine a sign of the same object with the
same signification or meaning. Any sign, B, which a sign, A, is fitted so to
determine, without violation of its, A's, purpose, that is, in accordance with
the “Truth,” even though it, B, denotes but a part of the objects of the sign,
A, and signifies but a part of its, A's, characters, I call an interpretant of
A. What we call a “fact” is something having the structure of a proposition,
but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself. The purpose of every
sign is to express “fact,” and by being joined with other signs, to approach as
nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect
Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such (at least, we may use this language)
would be the very Universe. Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or
entelechy, which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to
mean the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect, and
so identical,—in such identity as a sign may have,—with the very matter denoted
united with the very form signified by it. The entelechy of the Universe of
being, then, the Universe qua fact, will be that Universe in its aspect as a
sign, the “Truth” of being. The “Truth,” the fact that is not abstracted but
complete, is the ultimate interpretant of every sign. (EP 2:304)
I should add that this is a place I’m somewhat confused as while I get the idea
of this perfection as a regulative concept in order to make clear what we mean
by truth, it seems something never obtained. (Again Derrida plays a lot with
this idea, undoubtedly confusing more than illuminating by calling it a never
arriving messiah and so forth - but his point is more to criticize certain
trends in philosophy that make this complete entelechy a matter of presence
within arguments. Foundationalism within epistemology along the vein of
Descartes is but one example)
Two more quotes that Joe Ransdell had provided in a previous discussion. (I
don’t think the entelechy entry in Baldwin is Peirce’s but it and the Wallace
quote help contextualize Peirce’s use)
ENTELECHY (en-tel'e-ki), n. [( L. entelechia, (Gr. entelecheia, actuality, ( en
telei echein, be complete (cf. Enteles, complete, full): ev, in; telei, dat. of
telos, end, completion; echein, have, hold, intr. be.] Realization: opposed to
power or potentiality, and nearly the same as energy or act (actuality). The
only difference is that entelechy implies a more perfect realization. The idea
of entelechy is connected with that of form, the idea of power with that of
matter. Thus, iron is potentially in its ore, which to be made iron must be
worked; when this is done, the iron exists in entelechy. The development from
being in posse or in germ to entelechy takes place, according to Aristotle, by
means of a change, the imperfect action or energy, of which the perfected
result is the entelechy. Entelechy is, however, either first or second. First
entelechy is being in working order; second entelechy is being in action. The
soul is said to be the first entelechy of the body, which seems to imply that
it grows out of the body as its germ; but the idea more insisted upon is that
man without the soul would be but a body, while the soul, once developed, is
not lost when the man sleeps. Cudworth terms his plastic nature (which see,
under nature) a first entelechy, and Leibniz calls a monad an entelechy.
(Century Dictionary, 1946)
To express this aspect of the mental functions, Aristotle makes use of the word
entelechy. The word is one which explains itself. Frequently, it is true,
Aristotle fails to draw any strict line of demarcation between entelechy and
energy; but in theory, at least, the two are definitely separated from each
other, and energeia represents merely a stage on the path toward entelecheia.
Entelechy in short is the realization which contains the end of a process: the
complete expression of some function -- the perfection of some phenomenon, the
last stage in that process from potentiality to reality which we have already
noticed. Soul then is not only the realization of the body; it is its perfect
realization or full development. (E. Wallace, Aristotle's Psychology, p. xlii.)
Finally Peirce in the Lowell Lectures is worth quoting here. In contrast to
Aristotle who has the two main types of being Peirce sees three.
The modern philosophers -- one and all, unless Schelling be an exception --
recognize but one mode of being, the being of an individual thing or fact, the
being which consists in the object's crowding out a place for itself in the
universe, so to speak, and reacting by brute force of fact, against all other
things. I call that existence.
Aristotle, on the other hand, whose system, like all the greatest systems, was
evolutionary, recognized besides [existence] an embryonic kind of being, like
the being of a tree in its seed, or like the being of a future contingent
event, depending on how a man shall decide to act. In a few passages Aristotle
seems to have a dim aper¨ue of a third mode of being in the entelechy. The
embryonic being for Aristotle was the being he called matter, which is alike in
all things, and which in the course of its development took on form. Form is an
element having a different mode of being. The whole philosophy of the
scholastic doctors is an attempt to mould this doctrine of Aristotle into
harmony with christian truth. This harmony the different doctors attempted to
bring about in different ways. But all the realists agree in reversing the
order of Aristotle's evolution by making the form come first, and the
individuation of that form come later. Thus, they too recognized two modes of
being; but they were not the two modes of being of Aristotle.
My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly
observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way.
They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual
fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future. (Lowell
Lectures, 1930 CP 1.21-2)
I think that part of his trichotomy here is important since it is a lawlike
relation that governs the future. One could well say that even in possibility
the possibilities excluded are lawlike in that exclusion. (That’s what makes it
a limited possibility)
Clark Goble
Lextek International
cl...@lextek.com <mailto:cl...@lextek.com>
(801) 655-1994
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