Edwina, Jon S.,
As John has already pointed out, the key idea in the Peirce quote I supplied is “that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous.” If all thought is in signs, all reasoning and all knowledge is in signs. If we ask what kind of sign the laws of nature are analogous to, those laws are dynamic objects of the signs we are now using to describe them. If we agree that those objects are themselves signs, that the real Universe is a vast representamen, “precisely an argument,” any knowledge we can have of them must be both in signs and of signs which are real. It follows that the real signs we are talking about are analogous to the signs we are using to talk about them, which are propositions (symbolic dicisigns as well as legisigns). But one thing we know about the symbols we use is that they cannot supply acquaintance with their dynamic objects. Only by collateral experience can we know anything about those objects, the signs we call “the laws of nature.” If you assert that they are symbols, your assertion is meaningless unless you call upon your collateral experience of symbols to indicate the dynamic object of the symbols we are using. Your collateral experience consists of having done the sort of thing we are doing right now, participating in an ongoing argument. Our hypothesis that the “laws of nature” are symbols participating in an argument is empty of content unless those laws, those signs, are analogous to the signs in which our thought about them is expressed. Our thought is thus metaphorical insofar as it deploys that analogy. In short, my claim was not “that our primary experience of these natural laws is metaphorical.” My claim was that our primary experience of symbols and of propositions is our own use of them to participate in arguments. Unless your use of the word “symbol” differs from the conventional use well formulated by Peirce, our acquaintance with its dynamic object can only be drawn from the commens, and only by analogy with that can we mean something definite by asking whether the laws of nature are symbols. Gary f. From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: 7-Apr-17 12:04 Subject: Re: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs Gary F - Thanks for the quotation. I have only part of the EP2 - and those pages weren't included. I do prefer the CP collection. No- I am not assuming that the object of a metaphorical sign isn't real. I am sure that it can be/IS real. That's not my point. - which was to question first, the nature of these natural laws, which are symbolic but not in the human sense of symbolic. And second, to question that our primary experience of these natural laws is metaphorical. I'd say that our primary experience of these natural laws is indexical, in that we physically connect with the RESULTS of these laws. Intellectually analyzing them and developing symbolic constructs - is a secondary step. As Peirce said - "every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon". I'm talking about prior to the scientific explanation which, since it suggests Reason functioning within the natural world - can be 'anthropomorphic' [if we define Reason as particularly human]. But I consider our analysis of these laws irrelevant. My focus is on the natural laws themselves, in themselves, and how they operate. Edwina -- This message is virus free, protected by Primus - Canada's largest alternative telecommunications provider. http://www.primus.ca On Fri 07/04/17 10:53 AM , <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> g...@gnusystems.ca sent: Edwina, you appear to be assuming that the object of a metaphorical sign cannot be real. I don’t subscribe to that assumption. For Peirce’s explanation of this point, see the passage I cited from Peirce’s Harvard Lecture 4, EP2:193-4. Since you don’t seem to use EP2, and this passage was apparently omitted from CP, I’ll copy it here: [[ I hear you say: “This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception.” I reply that every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous; and that it really is so all the successes of science in its applications to human convenience are witnesses. They proclaim that truth over the length and breadth of the modern world. In the light of the successes of science to my mind there is a degree of baseness in denying our birthright as children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe. Therefore, if you ask me what part Qualities can play in the economy of the Universe, I shall reply that the Universe is a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities. Now every symbol must have, organically attached to it, its Indices of Reactions and its Icons of Qualities; and such part as these reactions and these qualities play in an argument that, they of course, play in the universe,—that Universe being precisely an argument. In the little bit that you or I can make out of this huge demonstration, our perceptual judgments are the premisses for us and these perceptual judgments have icons as their predicates, in which icons Qualities are immediately presented. But what is first for us is not first in nature. The premisses of Nature's own process are all the independent uncaused elements of facts that go to make up the variety of nature which the necessitarian supposes to have been all in existence from the foundation of the world, but which the Tychist supposes are continually receiving new accretions. Those premisses of nature, however, though they are not the perceptual facts that are premisses to us, nevertheless must resemble them in being premisses. We can only imagine what they are by comparing them with the premisses for us. As premisses they must involve Qualities. ]] Gary F.
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