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Jon, list - again [and I'm stunned] - we agree. I agree with the
arrangement of 1stness-3rdness-2ndness.
Edwina
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On Fri 31/03/17 3:40 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
sent:
Edwina, List:
Understood, and I think we agree that within our existing universe,
all three Categories are involved in every phenomenon. Again,
though, Peirce attributed the "second flash" to "the principle of
habit," which is 3ns rather than 2ns. Interestingly, this
arrangement of the Categories (1ns→3ns→2ns) is consistent with
the next passage that you quoted ...
CSP: The starting-point of the universe, God the Creator, is the
Absolute First; the terminus of the universe, God completely
revealed, is the Absolute Second; every state of the universe at a
measurable point of time is the third. (CP 1.362; 1887-8)
... which also echoes the diagram that Jeff introduced in another
thread, presenting inquiry as a similarly hyperbolic process.
Thanks,
Jon
On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 2:27 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
Jon, list - yes, I know that you view that 'tendency to take habits'
as preceding 1stness and 2ndness. I have no intention of trying to
persuade you otherwise.
However - I view all three as equally primordial. There is no way
that any of them could function without the other. BUT - I do
consider that the first 'flash' was an action of Firstness; the
second was an action of Secondness..and then, habits emerged in
actuality. BUT - all three are necessary and thus primordial. I do
not subscribe to YOUR view that Thirdness has a priority or privilege
in the primordial set. Again - I consider that all three modes are
primordial.
Edwina
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On Fri 31/03/17 1:16 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
[3] sent:
Jeff, List:
What I find interesting about that quote from "A Guess at the
Riddle" (1887-8) is the often-overlooked implication that "the
principle of habit" (3ns) already had to be in place and operative in
order to bring about the "second flash," which "was in some sense
after the first, because resulting from it." Peirce only belatedly
recognized this himself; in one of the early manuscript drafts of "A
Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), he referred to the
notion that the habit-taking tendency brought about the laws of nature
as "my original hypothesis," and then made this comment about it.
CSP: But during the long years which have elapsed since the
hypothesis first suggested itself to me, it may naturally be supposed
that faulty features of the original hypothesis have been brought [to]
my attention by others and have struck me in my own meditations …
Professor Ogden Rood pointed out that there must have been some
original tendency to take habits which did not arise according to my
hypothesis … (R 842)
If the tendency to take habits was truly "original," then it seems
to me that 3ns must have preceded 1ns and 2ns in some sense. This is
consistent with Peirce's remarks about "super-order" in the first
additament to the article (CP 6.490; 1908), as well as the blackboard
diagram in the final RLT lecture (1898); hence the notion of
primordial 3ns or "ur-continuity" that we have discussed on the List
in the past.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [4] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [5]
On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Edwina, Clark, Jon S, List,
Let's make a comparison for the sake of framing a question in the
special science of cosmological physics. Does Peirce's explanatory
principle help to address the kinds of questions that Ilya
Prigogine is trying to answer about the irreversibility of
thermodynamical systems? Once again, here is the quote in which
Peirce describes the principle: “out of the womb of
indeterminacy, 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…..” (CP,
1.412)
See: Prigogine, Ilya (1961). Introduction to Thermodynamics of
Irreversible Processes (Second ed.). New York: Interscience.
If Peirce is addressing the same sort of question, then are the
Prigogine and Peirce explaining the irreversibility of such
thermodynamical processes in the same general way? Or, is Peirce
trying to answer a set of prior questions. For instance, one might
infer from the quote above taken together with Peirce says in the
last of the lectures in Reasoning and the Logic of Things (including
the suggestive draft versions) that Peirce is interested in more
general questions about what makes any sort of process ordered so
that it is irreversible--including, for example, the "unfolding" of
the dimensions of quality as well as those of space and the order of
time.
Prigogine's general strategy is to provide an account of what makes
some complex systems chaotic. Then, he tries to explain how some
chaotic systems can evolve in a manner that is self-organizing. The
explanation draws on the conception of a dissipative structure. As
such, a comparison between the two might help us better understand
how to frame competing hypotheses concerning the evolution of order
in such systems--including forms of order that are irreversible in
one way or another.
--Jeff Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354 [6]
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http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jonalanschm...@gmail.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[4] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[5] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[6] http://webmail.primus.ca/tel:(928)%20523-8354
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