Jon, List:
1) You have outlined your views on these issues quite often - and I disagree. I
think that your view on Peirce's view of 'God' is dependent on your own theism
- and I continue to consider Peirce a pantheist.
2) First - with regard to the categories, I reject your view that Firstness and
Thirdness are 'real' in the sense that they are 'universals' [which is what
Scholastic Realism is all about]. My reading of Peirce is that Firstness is a
state of experience, a feeling - of what one interacts with. Therefore,
Firstness operates within the existential world of discrete objects. It is the
experience of interaction of one object with another. This can be seen
throughout the many discussions by Peirce of this 'freshness, life, freedom';
it is 'feeling'. And above all, "a feeling is not general, in the sense in
which the law of gravitation is general'. 1.304. This means, that Firstness is
not a Reality since the Reals-are-universals or generals.
Peirce continues: "A true general cannot have any being unless there is to be
some prospect of its sometime having occasion to be embodied in a fact, which
is itself not a law or anything like a law. A quality of feeling can be
imagined to be without any occurrence, as it seems to me". 1.304.
Therefore - my reading of Peirce is that Firstness is a state of feeling that
emerges within an interaction between two existential units. And therefore - it
is NOT, as you outline, an 'idea' an ideal, an ideal possibility. After all, an
idea or ideal possibility is an aspect of Mind - and this has nothing to do
with Firstness..'Feeling as independent of Mind and Change' 1.305. As Peirce
write, a quality 'is not anything which is dependent, in its being, upon mind,
whether in the form of sense or in that of thought" 1.422. Therefore - I reject
your reading of Peirce where you define Firstness as 'ideals', as 'an ideal
possibility'.
I read Peirces 'three universes of Experience' 6.455 [mere Ideas, Brute
Actuality, Active Power of Connections] - as referring to intellectual concepts
of argumentation and not to the three categories.
3) Equally, I reject your reading of Peirce where you define Thirdness as
'real', again, in the sense of a universal. Thirdness, in my reading of Peirce,
is an ongoing process of the development of habits-of-organization which act as
a process of transformative mediation in these interactions between existential
units. That is, all three categories function WITHIN existentiality and none
operate outside of it. I suggest that your view is more akin to Platonism than
the Aristotelianism of Peirce. Thirdness is 'order and legislation' and is
operative within interactions - not as a separate universal. "It is that which
is what it is by virtue of imparting a quality to reactions in the future"
1.343. And 'the third is in its own nature relative' 1.362. ..- because
Thirdness, as with the other two Categories, are actions within existentiality.
Thirdness, which operates within mediation is 'the power of taking habits'
1.390 and as such, is adaptive, evolving, capable of change in these habits.
These habits are uniformities BUT - are not 'real-in-themselves' outside of
their embodiment, but are instead, capable of change. These habits, or
'uniformities in the modes of action of things have come about by their taking
habits' 1.408. That is not the same, in my reading of Peirce, as a 'universal'.
They are 'general' for that time - but, because of the influence of Firstness
and Secondness on them, they are capable of change. [see 1.420]
4) And, I consider that your reading of Peirce, that he is a theist, depends on
your own theism. My own reading of him as a pantheist, rests on his use of the
three categories as embodied within the semiosic triadic process
[Object-Representamen-Interpretant]..which therefore, sees this process as an
action of Mind operating within/as Matter:
"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of
bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely phsycial world"...4.551.
For "all mind is directly or indirectly connected with all matter"...6.268.
Since habit is 'a primary property of mind, it must be equally so of matter'.
6.269 - which I read to mean that habit, or Thirdness, is a property of Mind
and equally, of Matter. Therefore, I again reject your view that Thirdness has
a reality separate from existentiality. And - in addition, view Mind or Thought
as a basic property of Matter.
Again, I read Peirces 'three universes of Experience' 6.455 [mere Ideas, Brute
Actuality, Active Power of Connections] - as referring to intellectual concepts
of argumentation and not to the three categories. That is why I tend to agree
with those who read these pages [NA] as a metaphoric argument about abduction.
That is - the three universes in order would be Abduction, Induction,
Deduction.
So- we each read Peirce in a different way.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2016 10:45 PM
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology
List:
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I started the thread on "Peirce's Theory
of Thinking," there is an intriguing paragraph about cosmology in the first
additament to "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." It did not
actually accompany the article originally, but nevertheless is in the Collected
Papers as CP 6.490. Before discussing it directly, a few preliminaries are in
order.
In the very first sentence of the published article itself, Peirce stated,
"The word 'God,' so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say), is the definable
proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all
three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2.434). In the second additament,
the one that did appear in The Hibbert Journal, he added, "It is that course of
meditation upon the three Universes which gives birth to the hypothesis and
ultimately to the belief that they, or at any rate two of the three, have a
Creator independent of them …" (CP 6.483, EP 2.448). Furthermore, in three
different manuscript drafts of the article that are included in R 843, Peirce
explicitly denied that God is "immanent in" nature or the three Universes,
instead declaring (again) that He is the Creator of them:
a.. "I do not mean, then, a 'soul of the World' or an intelligence is
'immanent' in Nature, but is the Creator of the three Universes of minds, of
matter, and of ideal possibilities, and of everything in them."
b.. "Indeed, meaning by 'God,' as throughout this paper will be meant, the
Being whose Attributes are, in the main, those usually ascribed to Him,
Omniscience, Omnipotence, Infinite Benignity, a Being not 'immanent in' the
Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but the Sole Creator of every content of
them, without exception."
c.. "But I had better add that I do not mean by God a being merely
'immanent in Nature,' but I mean that Being who has created every content of
the world of ideal possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and the world
of all minds, without any exception whatever."
These passages shed light not only on Peirce's concept of God--he was clearly
a theist, not a pantheist or panentheist, at least as I understand those
terms--but also on what exactly he had in mind with his three Universes of
Experience that the article describes as consisting of Ideas, Brute Actuality,
and Signs. These evidently correspond respectively to (1) ideal possibilities,
matter, and minds; (2) Ideas, Matter, and Mind; and (3) ideal possibilities,
physical facts, and minds. Of course, it is barely a stretch, if at all, to
identify these with his categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
What I quoted above from CP 6.483 and EP 2.448 suggests the possibility that
only two of the three Universes have a Creator independent of them, which
raises the question of which one might not. Peirce provided a major clue in CP
6.490:
A full exposition of the pragmaticistic definition of Ens necessarium would
require many pages; but some hints toward it may be given. A disembodied
spirit, or pure mind, has its being out of time, since all that it is destined
to think is fully in its being at any and every previous time. But in endless
time it is destined to think all that it is capable of thinking … Pure mind, as
creative of thought, must, so far as it is manifested in time, appear as having
a character related to the habit-taking capacity, just as super-order is
related to uniformity.
According to Peirce, then, God is "pure mind," and thus in some sense may not
be completely independent of the Universe of Mind (i.e., Thirdness), while
nevertheless being the independent Creator of the other two Universes--of Ideas
and ideal possibilities (i.e., Firstness), and of Matter and physical facts
(i.e., Secondness).
What does all of this have to do with cosmology? By 1908, Peirce apparently
no longer held (if he ever did) that Firstness came first, so to speak; God
created Firstness (and Secondness), but God Himself is Thirdness. Furthermore,
what exactly did God create when He created Firstness? Peirce once again
supplied the answer in CP 6.490:
In that state of absolute nility, in or out of time, that is, before or
after the evolution of time, there must then have been a tohu-bohu of which
nothing whatever affirmative or negative was true universally. There must have
been, therefore, a little of everything conceivable.
In other words, there was an infinite range of vague possibilities,
consistent with Peirce's evolving mathematical definition of a continuum, which
is a paradigmatic manifestation of Thirdness. He continued:
There must have been here and there a little undifferentiated tendency to
take super-habits. But such a state must tend to increase itself. For a
tendency to act in any way, combined with a tendency to take habits, must
increase the tendency to act in that way. Now substitute in this general
statement for "tendency to act in any way" a tendency to take habits, and we
see that that tendency would grow. It would also become differentiated in
various ways.
The tendency to take habits is another paradigmatic manifestation of
Thirdness, and Peirce had suggested thirty years earlier in "A Guess at the
Riddle" (CP 1.414, EP 1.279) that "habits of persistency" were precisely what
enabled substances to achieve permanent existence; i.e., Secondness.
I probably could (and eventually might) say more about CP 6.490, but these
initial observations are reminiscent of and consistent with the famous
"blackboard" passage from the last Cambridge Conferences lecture of 1898, "The
Logic of Continuity" (CP 6.203-209, RLT 261-263). Peirce offered a clean
blackboard as "a sort of Diagram of the original vague potentiality," differing
from it by having only two dimensions rather than "some indefinite multitude of
dimensions." A chalk line drawn on the blackboard--by the hand of God,
perhaps?--represents a brute discontinuity, but it is not really a line itself;
it is a surface, one whose continuity is entirely derived from and dependent on
that of the underlying blackboard. The only true line is the limit between the
white and black areas, "the reaction between two continuous surfaces into which
it is separated."
Peirce acknowledged that all three categories--whiteness or blackness
(Firstness), the boundary between them (Secondness), and the continuity of each
(Thirdness)--are necessary for the reality of the chalk line. However, he
suggested that the continuity of the blackboard (Thirdness) is primordial in
the sense that its reality somehow precedes and sustains that of anything drawn
upon it. A chalk line that persists, rather than being erased, represents the
establishment of a habit--which is also entirely derived from and dependent on
the continuity of the underlying blackboard:
This habit is a generalizing tendency, and as such a generalization, and as
such a general, and as such a continuum or continuity. It must have its origin
in the original continuity which is inherent in potentiality. Continuity, as
generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general.
As additional lines are drawn and persist, they join together under other
habits to constitute a "reacting system." Eventually, "out of one of these
Platonic worlds is differentiated the particular actual universe of existence
in which we happen to be." So Peirce reaffirmed here that the law of mind,
which is the law of habit, is primordial in the sense that all physical laws
are derived from it (cf. CP 6.24-25). Furthermore, according to Peirce, God as
"pure mind," as well as the universal tendency to take habits and the "Platonic
worlds" of Ideas and ideal possibilities, were and are real prior to--and hence
apart from--the world of Matter and physical facts that now exists. His
position was an "extreme scholastic realism," indeed!
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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