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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
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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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