Jon, List,
Catching up with list posts returning from my trip South I apparently
missed at least your post in response to Gary F.
In my message yesterday I hope I made it clear that I associate
*ur-continuity* (the blackboard metaphor) with 3ns not 1ns. Peirce is quite
explicit about this as I hope the brief quotations from RLT I provided
show. So, I would tend to strongly agree with your argumentation here:
JS: Peirce's statement was not that one of the categories created all three
Universes, but that all three Universes--or at any rate, two of the
three--have a Creator who is independent of them. I take this to mean that
the Creator might not be *entirely *independent of one of the three
Universes. Of course, my basic argument is that Peirce unambiguously
described God as "pure mind" and the Universe that corresponds to Thirdness
as that of "Mind," so the alignment seems pretty clear.
As I see it this ur-continuity represents a kind of aboriginal 3ns, that is
to say one involving the potential of the other categories coming into
being, one *involving* them potentially, which is another way of saying
that the categorial triad is *potentially* always-already *there* in that
ur-continuity. So as chance possibilities (1nses) emerge and eventually
interact (2nses) with others forming habits (3nses) of interaction, that a
universe (say, this universe) *may* come into being. Yet, as I see it,
those 3nses of habit formation are 'later' expressions (were Time, but in
this proto-cosmos there is not yet Time) of that aboriginal continuity. For
this reason I have consistently said (or at least implied) that the
argument that the early cosmos 'begins' with 1ns is, in my thinking,
tantamount to saying that the universe comes out of nothing, while, as I
see it, *nihil fit ex nihilo*.
This brings me to your interesting group of questions regarding "a
continuum of possibilities."
JS: [Peirce] steadfastly associated possibility with Firstness and
continuity/generality with Thirdness, but his mathematical definition of a
continuum evolved toward the notion of an infinite range of indefinite
possibilities. Is a continuum of possibilities more properly considered to
be an example of Thirdness (as a continuum) or Firstness (as possibility)?
This question of whether to consider "a continuum of possibilities" as
expressing 3ns or 1ns is a thorny one which is still being considered, for
example, by Fernando Zalamea and others. It seems to me that the jury is
still out, but that in any case that this is essentially a mathematical
question concrning *this existent universe,* not the early cosmology which
we've been considering. This proto-cosmological 'sporting' of 1ns (those
individiual chalk marks in the blackboard example) may point to a
underlying continuum of possibilities (and qualities, etc.) which *will be*
selected. But while they 'play' within (or upon, or in some way are created
by) that ur-continuity, they do in themselves respresent a continuum (at
least not *yet*).
So when one asks, if the tendency to take habits arose by chance, I think
(1) it is that second kind of 3ns, viz., habit-taking, that so arises from
the original continuity (3ns), and that (2) there would be no possibility
of ours or any actual universe existing were this 'tendency' not to arise,
and that saying it "arose by chance" is just a "manner of speaking" given
the ur-continuity.
So, as I see it, the three categories are irreducible in this universe,
which is to say that no one of them can be said to constitute reality in
itself nor be prior to any of the others in this universe; since once a
universe (and it would seem to me that this would be so for any possible
universe), once, say, our universe is in the semiosic process of forming
itself, all three categories are necessarily required. Yet, again, the
theater of that formation is this ur-continuity, this "pure mind" which in
my last post I called the Mind of God.
I'll conclude by responding to another of your good questions. It seems to
me that there might be good reason to consider this ur-continuity as
representing *pure potential *as 3ns, distinguished from *pure possibility*
as 1ns. But I'm still not completely clear on this.
Best,
Gary R
[image: Gary Richmond]
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690 <718%20482-5690>*
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Gary F., List:
>
> GF: I think it would be less of a stretch to identify the *contents* of
> those Universes as Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, i.e. as subjects or objects
> in which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (respectively) inhere.
>
>
> I have generally been reluctant to talk about Firsts/Seconds/Thirds,
> rather than Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness. I am not sure that the
> former terminology is completely appropriate and consistent with Peirce's
> usage, especially late in his life, although I am open to being convinced
> otherwise. In fact, he seems to have shifted toward discussing "Universes"
> rather than "categories," perhaps in order to emphasize that they are
> objective constituents of reality, not mere labels that we apply to
> organize our experience.
>
> GF: This leaves open the possibility of identifying *one* of the
> categories as *Creator* of all three Universes.
>
>
> Peirce's statement was not that one of the categories created all three
> Universes, but that all three Universes--or at any rate, two of the
> three--have a Creator who is independent of them. I take this to mean that
> the Creator might not be *entirely *independent of one of the three
> Universes. Of course, my basic argument is that Peirce unambiguously
> described God as "pure mind" and the Universe that corresponds to Thirdness
> as that of "Mind," so the alignment seems pretty clear.
>
> GF: To me it seems logical enough to regard this insubstantial Being,
> this *capacity*, as the Creator of all three Universes.
>
>
> Again, it is not that the Creator is *identified *with one Universe or
> its contents, it is that He might not be entirely *independent *of one
> Universe. And "mere capacity for getting fully represented" does not
> strike me as equivalent to "capacity for creation," especially of other
> Universes. In "A Neglected Argument," the only description of a Universe
> that mentions the other two is that of the third.
>
> GF: This would be somewhat analogous to regarding abduction as Creator of
> the hypothesis which, my means of deduction, creates a theory which through
> inductive testing becomes more and more substantial. As we all know,
> abduction is the only source of new ideas; perhaps Firstness is the only
> source of Ideas. Likewise we might regard the dreamer as Creator of the
> dream *and* of the fact of the dream *and* of whatever might be
> predicated of it (i.e. of its meaning, if it has any).
>
>
> But abduction is *not *the creator of the hypothesis, it is the reasoning
> process by which a *person *creates the hypothesis. Reasoning is
> thought, which is Thirdness. Peirce characterized a person as a symbol or
> as a continuum, both of which are Thirdness. Likewise, the dreamer who
> creates the dream, the fact of it, and whatever might be predicated of it
> is a person (again, Thirdness).
>
> GF: But I think you will agree that *possibility* is the logical
> equivalent of Firstness, not Thirdness. Peirce at this stage in his
> thinking often identified continuity with generality, and he wrote c.1905
> that “The generality of the possible” is “the only true generality” (CP
> 5.533). So I don’t think continuity is confined to Thirdness ...
>
>
> This brings up one of the great puzzles for me in Peirce's writings. He
> steadfastly associated possibility with Firstness and continuity/generality
> with Thirdness, but his mathematical definition of a continuum evolved
> toward the notion of an infinite range of indefinite possibilities. Is a
> continuum of possibilities more properly considered to be an example of
> Thirdness (as a continuum) or Firstness (as possibility)? Should we
> perhaps distinguish *possibility *as Firstness from *potentiality *as
> Thirdness? If so, on what basis?
>
> GF: ... and I think Gary Richmond has argued that the ur-continuum or *tohu
> bohu* represented by the blackboard in Peirce’s famous cosmology lecture
> is the first Universe, which comprises “vague possibilities.”
>
>
> From browsing through the List archives, I took Gary R. to be suggesting
> that the blackboard or "ur-continuum" is Thirdness, consistent with my
> initial post in this thread. Perhaps he can weigh in on this himself.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
> Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
> www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
>
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 9:59 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
>
>> Jon, list,
>>
>>
>>
>> On the question of which of the three Universes may *not* “have a
>> Creator independent of it,” I’d like to offer an argument that it could be
>> the Universe of Firstness rather than Thirdness. However I won’t have time
>> this week to construct an argumentation as thoroughgoing as your argument
>> for Thirdness as Creator; so instead, I’ll just insert a few comments into
>> your post, below. I’ll put Peirce’s words in bold.
>>
>>
>>
>> Gary F
>>
>>
>>
>> } God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more
>> divine in the lapse of all the ages. [Thoreau] {
>>
>> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* 9-Oct-16 22:45
>>
>> 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:
>>
>> - "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."
>> - "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."
>> - "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.
>>
>> *[GF: ] *I think it would be less of a stretch to identify the *contents*
>> of those Universes as Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, i.e. as subjects or
>> objects in which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (respectively)
>> inhere. This leaves open the possibility of identifying *one* of the
>> categories as *Creator* of all three Universes. As you have pointed out
>> already, Peirce begins by defining “Idea” as “anything whose Being consists
>> in its mere capacity for getting fully represented, regardless of any
>> person's faculty or impotence to represent it.” These are clearly contents
>> of the *first* Universe, and Peirce certainly asserts their Reality
>> (after defining that term): “*Of the three Universes of Experience
>> familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings
>> to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local
>> habitation and a name within that mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the
>> fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not
>> in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves their Reality.*”
>>
>> *[GF: ] *I think it is worth noticing that Peirce defines the contents
>> of the first Universe by quoting from *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*, Act V
>> – which is largely a dialogue about reality and dreams; and that his
>> definition of Reality (in the previous paragraph) uses a dream as an
>> example of something that is unreal in one sense but real in another: “
>> *“Real”** is a word invented in the thirteenth century to signify having
>> Properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify their subject, and
>> possessing these whether they be anywise attributed to it by any single man
>> or group of men, or not. Thus, the substance of a dream is not Real, since
>> it was such as it was, merely in that a dreamer so dreamed it; but the fact
>> of the dream is Real, if it was dreamed; since if so, its date, the name of
>> the dreamer, etc. make up a set of circumstances sufficient to distinguish
>> it from all other events; and these belong to it, i.e. would be true if
>> predicated of it, whether A, B, or C Actually ascertains them or not.*”
>>
>> *[GF: ] *Peirce is saying that the *substance* of the dream is not Real,
>> although the *fact* of the dream is. But he has just defined “idea” in
>> the *vernacular* sense as “*the substance* of an actual unitary thought
>> or fancy” and contrasted that sense with “Idea,” defined as “*anything
>> whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented,
>> regardless of any person's faculty or impotence to represent it*” –
>> which has the Reality proper to the first Universe, the Reality of a
>> *possibility*. (and *not* the reality of a *substance*. Once this “airy
>> nothing” or “anything” does get fully represented, then it has the Actual
>> (and perhaps substantial) Reality proper to the second Universe, and if it
>> actually represents something *to somebody* (insert sop to Cerberus),
>> then it has the Reality proper to the third Universe. To me it seems
>> logical enough to regard this insubstantial Being, this *capacity*, as
>> the Creator of all three Universes. This would be somewhat analogous to
>> regarding abduction as Creator of the hypothesis which, my means of
>> deduction, creates a theory which through inductive testing becomes more
>> and more substantial. As we all know, abduction is the only source of new
>> ideas; perhaps Firstness is the only source of Ideas. Likewise we might
>> regard the dreamer as Creator of the dream *and* of the fact of the
>> dream *and* of whatever might be predicated of it (i.e. of its meaning,
>> if it has any). Thirdness, on the other hand, has *connective* rather
>> than *creative* power: “*The third Universe** comprises everything whose
>> Being consists in active power to establish connections between different
>> objects, especially between objects in different Universes.*”
>>
>> [resuming JAS:] 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.
>>
>> *[GF: ] *But I think you will agree that *possibility* is the logical
>> equivalent of Firstness, not Thirdness. Peirce at this stage in his
>> thinking often identified continuity with generality, and he wrote c.1905
>> that “The generality of the possible” is “the only true generality” (CP
>> 5.533). So I don’t think continuity is confined to Thirdness; and I think
>> Gary Richmond has argued that the ur-continuum or *tohu bohu*
>> represented by the blackboard in Peirce’s famous cosmology lecture is the
>> first Universe, which comprises “vague possibilities.” —Anyway, that’s
>> all I have time for today, so I’ll leave the rest to you, for now!
>>
>
>
> -----------------------------
> PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON
> PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to
> peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L
> but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the
> BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
