Von: g...@gnusystems.ca
An: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Betreff: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Determination, etc.
List,
Another long post, this time mostly relating the Peircean concepts of determination and causation. The formatting and embedded links will work better in the web version,
http://gnusystems.ca/TS/css.htm#causdetrmn , but here it is anyway.
Gary f.
In the stream of consciousness, how does one idea determine another?
Peirce by 1873 (W3:72-5, CP 7.351-3) had worked out a theory of mental causality based on the concept of consciousness as ‘something which takes up time.’ Since time is conceived as continuous (not as a series of discrete instants), we likewise conceive of consciousness as a continuous process.
It will easily be seen that when this conception is once grasped the process of the determination of one idea by another becomes explicable. What is present to the mind during the whole of an interval of time is something generally consisting of what there was in common in what was present to the mind during the parts of that interval. And this may be the same with what is present to the mind during any interval of time; or if not the same, at least similar — that is, the two may be such that they have much in common. These two thoughts which are similar may be followed by others that are similar and according to a general law by which every thought similar to either of these is followed by another similar to those by which they are followed. …
There is besides this a causation running through our consciousness by which the thought of any one moment determines the thought of the next moment no matter how minute these moments may be. And this causation is necessarily of the nature of a reproduction; because if a thought of a certain kind continues for a certain length of time as it must do to come into consciousness the immediate effect produced by this causality must also be present during the whole time, so that it is a part of that thought. Therefore when this thought ceases, that which continues after it by virtue of this action is a part of the thought itself. In addition to this there must be an effect produced by the following of one idea after a different idea; otherwise there would be no process of inference except that of the reproduction of the premises.
This anticipates Peirce's later statements to the effect that the antecedent-consequent relation is the essential concept for explaining the process of determination. But does this concept at the heart of inference also explain causality in the physical realm? Peirce addressed this question under the rubric of ‘the logic of events’ in his Cambridge Conferences lecture series of 1898.
In his sixth lecture, on ‘Causation and Force’ (RLT 197-217), Peirce took pains to show that in physics as well as philosophy, different and incompatible concepts of causation have prevailed as times have changed. He also argued (RLT 198), in opposition to Mill, that causation must be regarded as a relation between facts, not between events. As he put it in 1904,
That which is caused, the causatum, is, not the entire event, but such abstracted element of an event as is expressible in a proposition, or what we call a “fact.” The cause is another “fact.” —EP2:315
In the Cambridge lecture, Peirce outlined what we might call a “common-sense” concept of causation, as follows:
the grand principle of causation which is generally held to be the most certain of all truths and literally beyond the possibility of doubt … involves three propositions to which I beg your particular attention. The first is, that the state of things at any one instant is completely and exactly determined by the state of things at one other instant. The second is that the cause, or determining state of things, precedes the effect or determined state of things in time. The third is that no fact determines a fact preceding it in time in the same sense in which it determines a fact following it in time. — RLT 198-9
Peirce went on to show that this ‘principle of causation’ is ‘in flat contradiction to the science of mechanics,’ i.e. to ‘the dominant mechanical philosophy,’ which deals only with ‘particles of matter with their masses, their relative positions in space at different instants of time, and the immutable laws of the relations of those three elements of space, time, and matter.’ According to the mathematical models of Newtonian physics, ‘the positions of the masses at any one instant are not determined by their positions at any other single instant, even with the aid of the laws. On the contrary, that which is determined is an acceleration. Now an acceleration is the relation of the position at one instant not to the position at another instant, but to the positions at a second and a third instant’ (RLT 199). This contradicts the first proposition of the three given above by Peirce as ‘the grand principle of causation’; and the ‘mechanical philosophy’ also contradicts the other two, because it represents causation as reversible, so that ‘the future determines the past in precisely the same way in which the past determines the future’ (RLT 201). Thus the principle of causation in the physical domain of the Law of Energy is ‘in flat contradiction’ to ‘the grand principle of causation’ as stated above.
But when from the world of physical force we turn to the psychical world all is entirely different. Here we find no evident trace of any state of mind depending in opposite ways upon two previous states of mind. Every state of mind, acting under an overruling association, produces another state of mind.… I come down in the morning; and the sight of the newspaper makes me think of the Maine, the breakfast is brought in, and the sight of something I like puts me into a state of cheerful appetite; and so it goes all day long. Moreover, the effect is not simultaneous with the cause. I do not think of the explosion of the Maine simultaneously with seeing the newspaper, but after seeing it, though the interval be but a thirtieth of a second. Furthermore, the relations of the present to the past and to the future, instead of being the same, as in the domain of the Law of Energy, are utterly unlike. I remember the past, but I have absolutely no slightest approach to such knowledge of the future. On the other hand I have considerable power over the future, but nobody except the Parisian mob imagines that he can change the past by much or by little. Thus all three propositions of the law of causation are here fully borne out. — RLT 201-2, CP 6.69-70
This account of psychical or mental causation is similar to Peirce's 1873 theory in its focus on the irreversibility of determination in time, and it does bear out the proposition that the state of things (or state of mind) at one time determined by the state of things at one other time (and not two). We might question whether it ‘fully bears out’ the proposition ‘that the state of things at any one instant is completely and exactly determined by the state of things at one other instant,’ because in semiosis, determination is never ‘complete’ or ‘exact.’ But this oversimplification may result from the fact that ‘instants,’ ‘states of things’ and ‘facts’ are abstractions from the flow of experience, which we deploy as ideal entities in our mathematical models of causality – including physical or ‘dynamic’ causality.
A state of things is an abstract constituent part of reality, of such a nature that a proposition is needed to represent it. There is but one individual, or completely determinate, state of things, namely, the all of reality. A fact is so highly a prescissively abstract state of things, that it can be wholly represented in a simple proposition, and the term “simple,” here, has no absolute meaning, but is merely a comparative _expression_. — EP2:378, 1906
Besides, Peirce's ‘logic of events’ (or ‘objective logic’) regarded the present state of the universe as evolving from an original state of things in which there was ‘no compulsion and no law’ (CP 6.217), and thus the rationale of its evolution was not limited to deductive logic, the only kind of inference that can be exact. This, said Peirce, is
the prime difference between my objective logic and that of Hegel. He says, if there is any sense in philosophy at all, the whole universe and every feature of it, however minute, is rational, and was constrained to be as it is by the logic of events, so that there is no principle of action in the universe but reason. But I reply, this line of thought, though it begins rightly, is not exact. A logical slip is committed; and the conclusion reached is manifestly at variance with observation. It is true that the whole universe and every feature of it must be regarded as rational, that is as brought about by the logic of events. But it does not follow that it is constrained to be as it is by the logic of events; for the logic of evolution and of life need not be supposed to be of that wooden kind that absolutely constrains a given conclusion. The logic may be that of the inductive or hypothetic inference. — CP 6.218 (1898)
Even dynamic causation ‘must be regarded as rational’ in order to be intelligible, and ‘exact logical analysis shows dynamic causation (if every element of it be considered) is more than the mere brute force, the dyadic action, that it appears to superficial thinkers to be. For it is governed by law’ (CP 6.329, c.1909) – governed, but not completely determined in every respect.
All our knowledge, all our thought, is in signs – including our knowledge of what happens ‘whenever one thing acts upon another.’ That action may be essentially dyadic, but our cognition of it must be the triadic action of semiosis; only semiotic determination can render physical causation intelligible.
Peirce argues (EP2:392) that the best way of ‘determining the precise sense which we are to attach to the term determination’ is to realize that a sign whose meaning was completely determinate would leave “no latitude of interpretation” at all, ‘either for the interpreter or for the utterer.’ This makes the definition of determination ‘turn upon the interpretation’ (EP2:393). This way of defining determination applies to ‘anything capable of indeterminacy’ (EP2:392) – but if ‘everything indeterminate is of the nature of a sign’ (as Peirce argues, EP2:392 fn), then the processes of determination and semiosis are inseparable from one another.
In 1906, Peirce went on to argue – based on the analysis represented by his Existential Graphs – that semiosis at any level of complexity amounts to a mutual determination of signs, paradigmatically of Antecedent and Consequent:
It thus appears that the difference between the Term, the Proposition, and the Argument, is by no means a difference of complexity, and does not so much consist in structure as in the services they are severally intended to perform.
For that reason, the ways in which Terms and Arguments can be compounded cannot differ greatly from the ways in which Propositions can be compounded. A mystery, or paradox, has always overhung the question of the Composition of Concepts. Namely, if two concepts, A and B, are to be compounded, their composition would seem to be necessarily a third ingredient, Concept C, and the same difficulty will arise as to the Composition of A and C. But the Method of Existential Graphs solves this riddle instantly by showing that, as far as propositions go, and it must evidently be the same with Terms and Arguments, there is but one general way in which their Composition can possibly take place; namely, each component must be indeterminate in some respect or another; and in their composition each determines the other. On the recto this is obvious: “Some man is rich” is composed of “Something is a man” and “something is rich,” and the two somethings merely explain each other's vagueness in a measure. Two simultaneous independent assertions are still connected in the same manner; for each is in itself vague as to the Universe or the “Province” in which its truth lies, and the two somewhat define each other in this respect. The composition of a Conditional Proposition is to be explained in the same way. The Antecedent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Interpretant; the Consequent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Object. They supply each the other's lack. — CP 4.572
But of course the argument does not end here; this is only a set of ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism.’
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