BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; } Jon, list - actually, I agree with everything you have said below EXCEPT for the notion of 'God'.
That is - I certainly agree that: - chance does not form habits but only facilitates breaking them - and since chance/Firstness is primordial, then, breaking habits is so to speak, necessary and normal in the universe. Just as habits are primordial; just as differentiation into discrete instantiations is primordial.. - I do agree that the Universe is a 'vast purpose' but in place of Peirce's and your term of 'God', I use Peirce's other term of 'Mind'. Pure Mind - also known in other circles by the less mythic and semantically heavy term of Reason, Energy or whatever. And - the only purpose I see is the materialization of energy into matter. I admit this removes the nobility of the notion of 'God's Purpose' but - I'm afraid I can't insert anthropomorphic intentionality to Mind. Edwina - -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Wed 05/04/17 10:46 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com sent: Clark, List: CG: For Peirce chance both forms habits but also allows breaks from habit. As I understand him, especially in his late writings, for Peirce chance does not form habits, it only facilitates breaking them; e.g., small deviations from the laws of nature. The habit-taking tendency (3ns) is "original," rather than a spontaneous development brought about by chance (1ns). According to my reading of CP 6.490 in particular, super-order is a prerequisite for being. CG: 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. As I understand him, for Peirce the universe as a whole is indeed an argument, "a vast representamen, a great symbol [3ns] of God's purpose," which (like every symbol) has "organically attached to it, its Indices of Reactions [2ns] and its Icons of Qualities [1ns]" (CP 5.119; 1903). So the one doing the thinking is not the universe itself, but God as "Pure mind, creative of thought" (CP 6.490). God's purpose, which the universe represents, is the summum bonum--the "development of Reason," which is the growth of knowledge about both God and the universe that He has created and continues to create (CP 1.615; 1903). Of course, I acknowledge that Edwina strongly disagrees with me on most or all of this. We have reached significant consensus on interpreting certain aspects of Peirce's semeiotic, but our interpretations of his metaphysics presumably remain very different. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [1] - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [2] On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 3:13 PM, Clark Goble wrote: On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt < jonalanschm...@gmail.com [4]> 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. Links: ------ [1] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [2] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [3] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'cl...@lextek.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\') [4] http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jonalanschm...@gmail.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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