Edwina, list,
If there are limitless possibilities in the beginning, and then evolve things, matter, laws, due to habit-taking, one might ask, on which grounds and basis does this selection takes place? One might say, that for instance mathematics is the basis for physics. But what is mathematics? A Platonian idea? No, it is an elaboration of tautology, I guess. If somebody would claim that "1+1=2" is only true in this universe, but in another universe "1+1=3", he would be wrong, because "2" is defined as "1+1". So maybe the one and only law that selects possibilities due to their viability, and thus is responsible for habits, is the law of truth, which is nothing but accordance to tautology. So maybe it is not even a law. But it is the only A-Priori: Truth is tautology, or it is what it is. Maybe even the categorical imperative is based on this not-law of identity. Maybe identity, tautology, truth are (universal) thirdness concepts which are there in the instant, secondness (something) is there? "Something", evolved secondness, sticks out of the Tohuvabohu by adressing itself "I am like I am, and remain so", permanent for some time in contrast to the brew of possibilities, which are not permanent, but just a turbulent mess. What I want to say, is, I agree with you that no God is necessary. But the self-explaining concept of Truth is, which is very simple: Tautology. But do religions say that God is not simple, or do they rather talk about almightiness, so may we just say that it is ok. to call Truth/Tautology, which obviously is almighty, and perhaps the only almighty thing/law, "God"? Ok, I guess that would be too simple and silly. It was just a "gedankenexperiment" of mine, having been gotten carried away somehow.
Best,
Helmut
24. Januar 2017 um 20:11 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
Yes, I suppose the Nothing of Peirce is akin to the biblican 'tohuvabohu 'formless chaos', but my point is that it does not include any direction. And certainly there is no metaphysical agent to introduce a direction.
This nothing is limitless possibilities BUT, after those first two 'flashes' outlined by Peirce, these flashes which introduce particular matter also introduce Thirdness or habits of formation, and these then start to limit and constrain the possibilities. So, I don't consider that the 'Nothing' is like Firstness, since my reading of Peirce posits that Firstness operates as a mode of organization of matter...and this requires matter to exist! That is, my reading of Peirce is that the three modal categories only develop when matter develops. So, before there was matter, this 'Nothing' is not Firstness. As Peirce outlines it - it is 'nothing'. Firstness is a powerful mode of organization of matter, rejecting closure, limits, borders. And certainly, since matter at this pretemporal phase hasn't developed any laws of modal organization, it doesn't yet function within Thirdness.
Edwina
----------------------------- 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 .----- Original Message -----From: Helmut RaulienCc: Peirce ListSent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 1:55 PMSubject: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] nominalismEdwina,I agree, by adopting Peirce´s definition of "Nothing", which is only a no-thing, meaning no things, no secondnesses, but possibilities there are, even limitless. So Peirces "Nothing" is not the absence of possibilities. Maybe this Peircean "Nothing" is the same like the Thoran/Biblical "Tohuvabohu"? In contrast to a nihilistic "Nothing", in which there is nothing, not even possibilities, unless whoever plants some ideas into it. What I wanted to say, is, I think I agree with you, there just has been or is an unclarity about the term "nothing".Best,Helmut24. Januar 2017 um 19:30 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
Helmut - I'll try to reply in points below:----------------------------- 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 .1) HR: I understood that Nominalism means to reduce (or upduce?) everything to a symbol of a secondness, a language that adresses brute facts. So bio- and physicochemical semiotics are ignored, as there is no symbolic language. Only humans have languages, so now Nominalism for me appears to be human hybris. Is the linguistic turn also nominalistic? I guess so.Edwina: Agreed2) HR: Maybe my tentative attempt to rescue Nominalism by extending the "mind"-concept towards the universe´s mind is anthropocentric:EDWINA: But according to Peirce, the universe IS an evolving Mind. Don't worry about the 'anthropocentrism'.3) HR: It would mean, that possibility, firstness, is not real by itself, but consists of symbols of secondnesses:EDWINA: The categories are modes of being; that is, they are modes of how a 'being' or individual unit is organized. The question then is: Is 'possibility' a real force in nature, and I think we have to acknowledge that the force in matter organized in a mode of Firstness, is objectively real. A symbol is in a mode of Thirdness not Secondness.4) HR: That would be Platonism, I guess: To say, that something, an organism, a repeated situation, whatever, does not occur because it was possible (firstness), and then became a habit (thirdness), but is only a copy or token of a divine or super-divine (in polytheism) idea.EDWINA: I'm not sure what you mean by the above. Are you saying that the FORM of Platonism is in a mode of Firstness? I don't accept the notion of a divine idea....I think you are moving into Platonism!5) HR: To me it boils down to the question we have had, what was in the beginning: Tohuvabohu, everything was possible, then possibility was not ideas, but everything (in a pre-world in which "everything is possible" possibility is everything). Or was there "nothing" in the beginning: In this case possibilities are ideas, planted into the nothing (by whom or what, Mr. Plato?), like in Platonism. I tend towards the Tohuvabohu-Hypothesis, and against Nominalism. My tentative attempt (to rescue Nominalism on the basis of universal mind) has failed, and I am happy about that.EDWINA: I tend to agree with Peirce - that in the beginning, there was nothing. .."a state of mere indeterminancy in which nothing existed or really happened" 1.411. Then, "Out of the womb of indeeterminacy we must say that there would have come something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by the principle of habit there would have been a second flash. Though time would not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first, because resulting from it. Then there would have come other successions ever more and more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them every strengthening themselves". 1.412. He continues on outlining the development of habits within space and time...You can read from this that there was no a priori Agent [God]; no necessary determinism. "We start then, with nothing, pure zero....But this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility - boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom". 6.217.You can read from this that Thirdness or Laws did not exist prior to Secondness or the appearance of particular matter. In this phase, there were only - the tendency to the three modal categories of the organization of matter. Thirdness, as a modal category, can be understood as akin to Mind, and emerges with matter. Peirce was quite open about his view that Mind exists and is operative in all forms of matter:"Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, or crystals, and throught the purely physical world" 4.551.This does then raise the question of 'what is Mind'? My answer, which i derive from Peirce, is that it is a process of all three modal categories where "Mind is a propositional function of the widest possible universe, such that its values are the meanings of all signs whose actual effects are in effective intercommunication'. [Note. 4.550]. That is, Mind is not just Thirdness nor is it a metaphysical agent but is a semiosic action of all three categorical modes.EdwinaBest,Helmut24. Januar 2017 um 16:07 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
Helmut - further to your post, where you write"if you believe that the universe itself is an organism (pantheism) or part of an organism (panentheism), then nominalism would make sense?"I'd say 'no' to that. I, myself, consider that the universe is an organism, a massive operation of 'Mind', but that's not nominalism.Again, as Peirce pointed out in 1.16 - the question is, 'whether laws and general types are figments of the mind or real". As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Saussurian semiology is an example of a perspective that considers that general types are mental concepts. That is, since nominalism is expressed in symbols/words, then, information becomes almost entirely operative in the human realm. Plants, animals, cells, molecules..become inanimate or dumb matter.And further, as Peirce noted, the great era of nominalism emerged in the 14th century, with the rise of the battle against the control of thought by the Church. That is, with the emergence of a market economy and middle class, the civic individual, i.e., the non-clerical working man, began to require the political and economic right to individually and personally 'handle' the environment. This 'handling' was all about 'the being of individual thing or fact' [1.21]. This new age man was not interested in the amorphousness of general laws outside of his direct actual grasp and personal perception.Thus, the world of nominalism reduces everything to only one mode of being; that of Secondness, or existent particular objects. It ignores Firstness, that mode of being of isolate free possibility - or, if it acknowledges it, it is to transform this mode into an 'unconscious' psychological feeling within that new age man..which can then be brought into the consciousness by ..guess what...by words.And most certainly, nominalism rejects Thirdness, the mode of being made up of general laws - since, for the nominalist, laws are not real in themselves but are intellectual constructs of the human mind...."this general rule is nothing but a mere word or couple of words" [1.26].When we reject nominalism for its obvious limitations, I think that we have to be careful with analyzing the two modal categories absent in nominalism; Firstness and Thirdness. These are modes of being, actual means of organizing matter, and can't be reduced to terms or words.Edwina----------------------------- 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 .
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