I think this is a clear outline of the nature of Reason as the
causal Force of the Universe.
With the description of Mind in 4.551, we can see that Reason/Mind
is:
-a universal Force; it is not a thing-in-itself, i.e., it is a
Generality rather than an existential particular
- it is articulated in the particular, but as a General, can never
be fully made 'existential'; I.e., it can't transform from the
General to the Particular
- embodies the forces of both Firstness and Secondness in its
capacities - as well, of course, of Thirdness
- the 2nd paragraph is against the notion of subjective
interpretation; that is, the nature of a General is universal [hard]
and cannot be defined as 'existentially soft' [except within the
subjective and Peirce rejects the truth of the subjective'.
Edwina
On Sun 08/10/17 7:29 AM , g...@gnusystems.ca sent:
Continuing from Lowell 1.7 (CP 1.614, EP2:254):
615 . Consider, for a moment, what Reason, as well as we can today
conceive it, really is. I do not mean man's faculty which is so
called from its embodying in some measure Reason, or Νοῦς, as a
something manifesting itself in the mind, in the history of mind's
development, and in nature. What is this Reason? In the first place,
it is something that never can have been completely embodied. The
most insignificant of general ideas always involves conditional
predictions or requires for its fulfillment that events should come
to pass, and all that ever can have come to pass must fall short of
completely fulfilling its requirements. A little example will serve
to illustrate what I am saying. Take any general term whatever. I say
of a stone that it is hard. That means that so long as the stone
remains hard, every essay to scratch it by the moderate pressure of a
knife will surely fail. To call the stone hard is to predict that no
matter how often you try the experiment, it will fail every time.
That innumerable series of conditional predictions is involved in the
meaning of this lowly adjective. Whatever may have been done will not
begin to exhaust its meaning. At the same time, the very being of the
General, of Reason, is of such a mode that this being consists in the
Reason's actually governing events. Suppose a piece of carborundum has
been made and has subsequently been dissolved in aqua regia without
anybody at any time, so far as I know, ever having tried to scratch
it with a knife. Undoubtedly, I may have good reason, nevertheless,
to call it hard; because some actual fact has occurred such that
Reason compels me to call it so, and a general idea of all the facts
of the case can only be formed if I do call it so. In this case, my
calling it hard is an actual event which is governed by that law of
hardness of the piece of carborundum. But if there were no actual
fact whatsoever which was meant by saying that the piece of
carborundum was hard, there would be not the slightest meaning in the
word hard as applied to it. The very being of the General, of Reason,
consists in its governing individual events. So, then, the essence of
Reason is such that its being never can have been completely
perfected. It always must be in a state of incipiency, of growth. It
is like the character of a man which consists in the ideas that he
will conceive and in the efforts that he will make, and which only
develops as the occasions actually arise. Yet in all his life long no
son of Adam has ever fully manifested what there was in him. So, then,
the development of Reason requires as a part of it the occurrence of
more individual events than ever can occur. It requires, too, all the
coloring of all qualities of feeling, including pleasure in its proper
place among the rest. This development of Reason consists, you will
observe, in embodiment, that is, in manifestation. The creation of
the universe, which did not take place during a certain busy week, in
the year 4004 B.C., but is going on today and never will be done, is
this very development of Reason. I do not see how one can have a more
satisfying ideal of the admirable than the development of Reason so
understood. The one thing whose admirableness is not due to an
ulterior reason is Reason itself comprehended in all its fullness, so
far as we can comprehend it. Under this conception, the ideal of
conduct will be to execute our little function in the operation of
the creation by giving a hand toward rendering the world more
reasonable whenever, as the slang is, it is “up to us” to do so.
In logic, it will be observed that knowledge is reasonableness; and
the ideal of reasoning will be to follow such methods as must develop
knowledge the most speedily.
[CP 1.615 ends here; the rest of this paragraph is from EP2:255.]
The logicality of the judgment that a stone cannot be at once hard
and not hard does not consist, as Sigwart and other German logicians
say it does, in its satisfying our feeling of logicality , but
consists in its being true; for everything that is true is logical,
whether we know it or not. But this we know to be true, not at all by
means of any peculiar feeling it excites in us,— we might argue from
that feeling, it is true, but any feeling may be deranged,— and we
know it much more certainly from this, that when we say that it is
true that “a stone cannot be at once hard and not hard,” what we
are talking of is not what interpretation somebody might put upon
that assertion, but what we mean by it. Now what we mean by
“not” is “every proposition would be true if it were.” By
“not hard” we mean “every proposition would be true if it were
hard.” So to say that “a stone is at once hard and not hard” is
to say that if it is hard every proposition is true, and it is hard.
Accordingly this would be to assert that every proposition is
true,— a super­Hegelian position that directly denies the
distinction of truth and falsity, which, we are fully satisfied,
exists.
http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm [1] }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures
of 1903
Links:
------
[1] http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
