> On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I am not sure exactly how this bears on your entropy conversation, except > that entropy is often described as disorder; so from that standpoint, > uniformity and habit-taking both seem to be negentropic in nature. >
The question really is of chance. For Peirce chance both forms habits but also allows breaks from habit. Mind is the capacity to form habits but habits can be long term habits or short term habits. Again for Peirce the universe as a whole can be considered mind and the universe is thus a kind of argument that is preceding by thinking itself. However that means the universe is at odds with thermodynamics, which Peirce thought applied only to mechanistic deterministic systems. What Edwina is more or less saying (if I have her right) is that thinking of all this in the idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should appropriate Peirce more in a materialistic way. I don’t have any problem with that, I should add. I think Peirce’s cosmology has always been problematic. Both in terms of his arguments for his cosmology but also it’s simply a view I think few people are comfortable with. There’s a reason why platonism is often used disparagingly. I think appropriating Peirce and his semiotics in a more narrow way is completely fine. We can talk about signs quite well without buying into his objective idealism. Although there will be places where this will cause problem precisely because Peirce saw an unity to his own thought. I suspect the differences between you and Edwina in other contexts ultimately is a manifestation of to what degree are we using Peirce and to what degree are we attempting to understand Peirce on his own terms. I think Edwina (and correct me if I’m wrong Edwina) gets frustrated in the list is because there’s often been so much focus on Peirce’s ontology and terminology related to that ontology rather than on application (where the ontology matters far less). So for example if I’m talking about semiotics within chemistry Peirce’s cosmology likely rarely matters. Ditto if I’m talking about systems programming or AI. My guess is that Edwina wants to talk about firstness as entropy because she’s limiting the discussion to a more narrow area.
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