> On Apr 5, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Since Mind refers to the 'habit-taking capacity' then, what appears to be the
> ultimate limit, in my view, is not matter but habit. Habits don't move toward
> more differentiation but towards more generality.
>
> What is Firstness? It is the introduction of non-habits and thus, entropic
> dissipation of the force of habits on the formation of matter. Peirce
>
Hopefully you saw that subsequent post where I noted not everyone agreed with
the article I was using. Although I think in terms of Peirce’s conception of
why thermodynamics doesn’t apply it’s pretty on the ball. My sense (perhaps
wrong) is that the differences tend to be tied to terminology.
To the above, I agree habits are introducing more and more generality. However
as they become more and more habitual they come more and more to take the
character of substance. That is substance/matter is simply a reflection of a
lack of variation from the habit. Peirce saw in the long run that these habits
would crystalize in some sense.
Now from the perspective of a habit, any variation is a swerve. Peirce in
various places appears to have since qualia or feeling as firstness as the
inner view of swerve that he picks up (in a somewhat distorted fashion) from
the Epircureans. So to that degree that swerve or chance is a break from habit
I fully agree with you. That’s entropy, formally considered. The problem is
that Peirce’s conception of the in the long run means habits become more set
which is anti-entropic.
The question though is what happens when habits form. Peirce sees that
formation as also occurring out of chance. That’s why I think we can’t only say
that chance/feeling is entropy. What Peirce sees as entropy proper is purely in
terms of deterministic mechanics and the Boltzmann statistical view of entropy.
So here we’re distinguishing between the law of entropy and the measure of
entropy. That’s an important distinction to keep in mind. Chance as a break
from habit increases the measure of entropy. But it does not affect the law of
entropy which is purely a law of physical necessary motion.
The reason this is difficult to wrap our mind around is because we’re all used
to quantum mechanics with it’s notion of randomness of a sort. Even people who
don’t accept ontological chance still talk of randomness. Yet we apply
thermodynamics to quantum mechanics all the time. So to us thermodynamics isn’t
only a law of determinative mechanics.
So when I asked you to unpack what you mean by entropy, more or less what I’m
getting at is whether you are talking about
1. the measure of entropy
2. the law of entropy in general
3. a tendency to increase entropy
The problem is that I think most of us who don’t see thermodynamics in terms
only of Newtonian mechanics just fundamentally see Peirce’s use as wrong. So
please be aware what I’m getting at here is how Peirce saw it, not what the
right way of seeing it is. At a bare minimum Peirce’s use is incompatible with
contemporary use in most cases. (We’ll ignore the Bohmian mechanics proponents
for the moment)
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