Matt- see my replies below:
----- Original Message -----
From: Matt Faunce
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2015 5:18 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: A Second-Best Morality
On 10/6/15 4:49 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:
1) Conceptions of physics do too; and it can be argued, using Thomas Kuhn
for example, that sometimes our changing conceptions of physics are, to some
extent, due to changing attitudes regulated by history/culture. As far as I can
see physics and historical/culture affect each other, like when I push against
a tree it pushes against me.
EDWINA: No, I don't agree that physics and culture are 'equal' forces and
affect each other. Physics doesn't affect culture - and again, I repeat that I
wasn't talking about physics but about biomes and ecological realities. An
ecological domain (the water and amount and source; the climate, the soil type,
the plant and animal inhabitants etc)..can't be changed by 'culture' (and that
term needs to be defined).
2) MATT: Think of the evolution or Reality according to Peirce. In the
beginning there was all but utter chaos. According to Peirce's article, The
Order of Nature, in Illustrations of the Logic of Science, we can find order in
randomness. I imagine that near the beginning of this evolution that the order
we found and locked onto was pretty much randomly chosen, like seeing faces and
things in fast moving clouds. The possibilities of what we––we being that
growing inkling of order––could have chosen and locked onto were
mind-bogglingly numerous. Peircean cosmology, in this way, seems to support
constructivist and relativist philosophy: we were pretty much constructing the
laws of reality. Instead of the analogy of me pushing against a tree, imagine
me pushing against a rock: early in our evolution the rock was small and would
move, but now that rock is huge, like the Earth, and according to Newton, when
I push it it does push back but it doesn't seem to budge.
EDWINA: To my memory- in the beginning, there wasn't chaos. There was
Nothing. And, no, I don't think that we find order in randomness. The nature of
randomness is its absolute lack of order. However, what Peirce was suggesting
is that order EMERGES, gradually, where, for example, one atom will bond to
another, and this sets up a normative habit where gradually, all such similar
atoms bond to another...and this becomes a law. This order is not imposed by
us; it is objectively real. The outline that you, Matt, are suggesting, seems
to me to be pure postmodernism and nominalism - where the 'outside world' is
defined by the perceiver. This is decidedly non-Peircean. Your postmodernism
and nominalism would deny science and the scientific method.
No - I disagree. We were NOT constructing the laws of reality - they exist
external to us and quite indifferent to us. Peirce was quite specific about
this - Objective reality exists - and we can find out its nature..."the result
of sufficient experience and reasoning....[and it is] no particular opinion but
is entirely independent of what you, I, or any number of men may thinkg about
it; and therefore it directly satisfies the definition of reality" 7.336 note
11.
Again, Peirce was a realist "the realistic view emphasizes particularly the
permanence and fixity of reality; the nominalist view emphasizes its
externality" 7.339
"There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independnet of our
opinions about them; ;those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws,
and, thought our sensations are as different as are our relations to the
objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain
by reasoning how things really and truly are" 5.384.
Your view, Matt, that values are zeitgeist' fits in with Peirce's
non-scientific method of the 'a priori' where one thinks 'as one is inclined to
think" 5.385. Quite the opposite of Peirce.
Edwina
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