Yes - I saw your second post after I had replied...
You wrote, with regard to habits:
"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. "
My view on the above is that habits cannot exist except as
substance; that is, I am not a Platonist and the habits or laws don't
exist 'per se'. Peirce was Aristotelian, therefore, that habits exist
as rules that form substance. I don't think a situation exists where
habits = substance [Thirdness=Secondness].
You wrote: "That is substance/matter is simply a reflection of a
lack of variation from the habit". I don't see this; my view is that
substance/matter is an expression of habit. So, the habits-that-form
an insect enable that insect TYPE to continue on reproducing as that
type of insect. This doesn't mean that substance/matter is a 'lack of
variation from the habit'; it means that the habits enable the
continuity of this type of matter and prevent its dissipation into
random chaos.
Habits are stabilizing and therefore anti-entropic. But there are
THREE basic universal modes: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. So,
habits [Thirdness] promotes stability of morphological type but
Firstness [chance] introduces minute deviations from the norm. That's
entropy. And that's Peirce.
So- I don't see how Peirce's view is incompatible with the current
view - but I might be missing what you are trying to explain.
Edwina
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On Wed 05/04/17 2:43 PM , Clark Goble cl...@lextek.com sent:
On Apr 5, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky 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)
Links:
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