> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > I don't see that 'repetition depends on chance'. I think that you are > ignoring that Thirdness [the action of developing and taking habits] is > primordial and not a result of another modal category, i.e., Firstness. [I > think that all three modes are primordial; others see only Thirdness as > primordial] > >
Just to add to this, I probably should add a bit more defense to anticipate some arguments. I’m here thinking of the following quote: Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third (CP: 6.32, 1891) again Three elements are active in the world: first, chance; second, law; and third, habit taking (CP 1.409, 1888) That is we must distinguish law from the tendency to take habits. There is I think some potential inconsistencies here in Peirce over time. So noting the time with our quotes is important. My sense is that Peirce was conflicted from thinking through this from a perspective of human psychology versus his more mathematical and physical drives and experiments. Fundamentally this tendency to acquire habits is learning, love, or aesthetics. Habit formation is the generalization of belief and habit privation is the generalization of doubt to the categories in general. Belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness; it is a habit of mind essentially enduring for some time, and mostly (at least) unconscious; and like other habits, it is (until it meets with some surprise that begins its dissolution) perfectly satisfied. Doubt is of an altogether contrary genus. It is not a habit, but the privation of a habit. Now a privation of a habit, in order to be anything at all, must be a condition of erratic activity that in some way must get superseded by a habit. (CP: 5.417, 1905) But this tendency is the law of mind which makes something more likely to arise, but which Peirce conceives of in some early form of statistical mechanics, perhaps arising out of Boltzmann’s thermodynamics. (As John noted Peirce doesn’t appear to have a full understanding of statistical mechanics, although one shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of reading Gibbs) I think the key text here is “The Architecture of Theories” from 1891. In that thirdness is the mediating between firstness and secondness as end. The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the character of its commands. A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an exact relation. Thus, a physical force introduces into a motion a component motion to be combined with the rest by the parallelogram of forces; but the component motion must actually take place exactly as required by the law of force. On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law. Nay, exact conformity would be in downright conflict with the law ; since it would instantly crystallise thought and prevent all further formation of habit. The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise. It thus resembles the “non-conservative” forces of physics, such as viscosity and the like, which are due to statistical uniformities in the chance encounters of trillions of molecules. So what he wants is something between pure chance and pure law which is the statistical tendency.
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