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Gary R - I agree with your comment re 'chance creates habit'. I
don't see how this could happen. Chance enables the development of
different habits.
But habit-taking is primordial. My only difference is that I think
that the tendency to behave within Firstness, Secondness and
Thirdness - each of which are different behaviours - all three are
primordial. I don't see that Thirdness is privileged in this set;
i.e., First-in-line.
Edwina
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On Fri 07/04/17 1:58 PM , Gary Richmond gary.richm...@gmail.com
sent:
Clark, Jon S, Gary F, Edwina, John S, list,
This is a most interesting discussion, but for now I'd like only to
repeat a point which, as I recall, Jon S recently made in response to
you. You wrote:
It’s also the case that chance creates habit.
But, as I see it, this is not at all the case. Chance may break up
old habits--and this is essential, for example, for evolution to
occur--but I don't see that "chance creates habit" either in Peirce's
early cosmological musings, nor once *this* universe--our universe--is
underway. The habit-taking tendency (3ns) is there from the get-go,
either as primordial (in the sense that all three categories are) or,
to put it somewhat differently and with a different emphasis, in the
sense that one can derive monadic and dyadic relations from triadic
ones, but that stringing together monads and dyads (although properly
speaking monads can't even be strung together) could never produce
triads (nor a fortiori produce all higher -adities according to
Peirce's 'reduction thesis').
While some would disagree, Jon S and I have argued here near the
close of last year that the 'black board' metaphor in the final
lecture of RLT strongly suggests that if one associates continuity
with 3ns (which Peirce in places explicitly does), then continuity
(so 3ns) is primal and the two other categories are either derived
from--or inscribed upon--that ur-continuity or, in some obscure way
contained within it (potentially) from the outset--although this last
matter remains quite unclear to me at present (alathough I think Jon S
might say 'inscribed upon it').
But, again, my present question is, why do you continue to say that
"chance creats habit"?
Best,
Gary R
Gary RichmondPhilosophy and Critical ThinkingCommunication
StudiesLaGuardia College of the City University of New YorkC 745718
482-5690
On Fri, Apr 7, 2017 at 1:00 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
On Apr 5, 2017, at 10:17 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
I would suggest that 1ns is better characterized as spontaneity,
life, and freedom than as pure chance in the sense of randomness,
especially as it relates to mind as 3ns.
I’ve been trying to think the best way to get into this subject. I
recognize it’ll diverge from Edwina’s discussion so I’m changing
the subject. It’ll definitely get into ontology and a careful
analysis of terminology which I know Edwina doesn’t enjoy so
that’ll help keep the discussions separate.
The question ends up being even if we can make a distinction between
the terms what the cash value is. That is if meaning is given by a
careful application of the pragmatic maxim, what does it mean here?
First off I’m not sure there’s as big a divide as you think in
those quoted texts. Particulary this one.
Thus, when I speak of chance, I only employ a mathematical term to
express with accuracy the characteristics of freedom or spontaneity.
(CP 6.201; 1898)
I think that while Peirce may not have been familiar with Gibb’s
development over Boltzmann of statistical mechanics and
thermodynamics, he did have pretty clear and particular views on what
the mathematics of chance was. That is he was a frequentist and
thought the outward aspect mathematically was this frequentist
conception. The inner aspect is feeling.
Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion
feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that
which within itself is feeling.[—]…diversification is the vestige
of chance-spontaneity; and wherever diversity is increasing, there
chance must be operative. On the other hand, wherever uniformity is
increasing, habit must be operative. (“Man’s Glassy Essence”,
CP 6.265-6, 1892)
Chance […] as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a
distribution. That is to say, there is a large collection consisting,
say, of colored things and of white things. Chance is a particular
manner of distribution of color among all the things. But in order
that this phrase should have any meaning, it must refer to some
definite arrangement of all the things. (“Reasoning and the Logic
of Things”, CP 6.74, 1898)
Given this, while I understand the desire to distinguish spontaneity
from chance as Peirce uses it they are synonymous. That means that the
distinction you find in say the free will literature between chance
and libertarian free will (either at an event level or agent level)
It’s also the case that chance creates habit. So habit is a kind of
relationship between determinism and indeterminism (chance).
In terms of meaning, I just don’t see any basis for a distinction
in content between chance, spontaneity or so forth. The only
difference is that Peirce’s ontology sees “feeling” or absolute
firstness as the inner quality of this.
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