Supplement: I want to correct my last question: Is the aim the thing that is aimed at now, or is it the thing that will be hit or failed to hit in the future? Eg., if a hunter mistakes a tree-stump for a hare, and points his gun at it, is his aim the tree-stump or the imagined hare?
Jon, list,
I very much agree with your "real as a would-be". This is how I can understand the final interpretant concept. But the quotes in the Commens dictionary of the catchword "final interpretant" seem to undermine this understanding. To show what I am meaning, I try to construct an either-or-question:
1. Is the final interpretant the existence of a reality of a would-be truth, or
2. Is there a reality of a would-be true final interpretant, which itself is not the FI?
The above mentioned quotes seem to corrobate No. 2. But I could better understand it, if it was like No.1. That is, because the FI is existing as a part of the sign here and now, in my understanding.
Language is inaccurate, I suspect: What is Telos or an aim? I aim the point you are aiming at, or is aim the act of aiming?
Best,
Helmut
24. Juli 2019 um 18:41 Uhr
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
"Jon Alan Schmidt" <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
John, List:
JFS: But the word 'final' is ambiguous. It could mean a completed end, or it could mean a limit that can be approximated but never reached.
Or it could have the sense of "final cause," which is how I understand it in this context. Then it would not mean a completed end, or even a limit that is necessarily approximated, but simply the telos--or as Peirce sometimes called it, the entelechy--toward which something tends. It is not actual, but nevertheless real as a would-be.
JFS: Peirce never rejected Cantor's construction. By calling it a pseudo=continuum, he accepted it as a legitimate mathematical construction. But he went farther by claiming that a geometrical line has a superinfinity of possible points.
He rejected Cantor's mathematical construction as an inadequate conceptualization of a true continuum, and he ultimately also abandoned (or at least adjusted) his "supermultitudinous" definition of the latter. See, for example, Jerome Havenel's 2008 paper, "Peirce's Clarifications of Continuity." This is what I have in mind by contrasting a "bottom-up" approach with a "top-down" one--for any discrete collection, including the infinite pseudo-continuum, the parts are real and the whole is an ens rationis; but for any true continuum, the whole is real and the parts are entia rationis.
JFS: The phrase "permanently settled" implies a completed endpoint. That is consistent with God "resting on the seventh day", but it is inconsistent with "infinite inquiry by an infinite community".
No, it just implies a real would-be--if an infinite community were to engage in infinite inquiry, then the Truth is what it would permanently come to believe.
JFS: [Hartshorne] used the term 'panentheism', which may be translated as "all in God". In other words, God isn't in the universes, but the universes are in God.
As I have noted before, Peirce clearly ruled this out by asserting emphatically, in four different manuscript drafts for "A Neglected Argument," that God is not immanent in Nature or the three Universes; especially once we take into account his definition of "immanent" for the Century Dictionary, which among other things states, "The doctrine of an immanent deity does not necessarily imply that the world, or the soul of the world, is God, but only that it either is or is in God." Peirce's denial of an immanent deity thus entails the denial that the world is in God (panentheism) just as much as the denial that the world is God (pantheism).
JFS: Karl Krause, a 19th c philosopher who was a student of Schelling, coined the term 'panentheism' for a kind of pantheism with a personal God who created and contained the observable universe(s).
In that case, given Peirce's affinity for Schelling, he surely would have used that term to describe his own views, had he considered them to be consistent with it. Instead, he explicitly identified his position as theism at least twice.
CSP: I look upon creation as going on and I believe that such vague idea as we can have of the power of creation is best identified with the idea of theism. So then the ideal would be to be fulfilling our appropriate offices in the work of creation. Or to come down to the practical, every man sees some task cut out for him. Let him do it, and feel that he is doing what God made him in order that he should do. (CP 8.138n; 1905 July 14)
CSP: To Schiller's anthropomorphism I subscribe in the main. And in particular if it implies theism, I am an anthropomorphist. But the God of my theism is not finite. That won't do at all. (CP 8.262; 1905 July 23)
He also endorsed theism (without using that word) and Schiller's anthropomorphism (explicitly) in conjunction with one of his late definitions of continuity that I have quoted before, calling its rational nature a revelation of God.
CSP: I conceive that a Continuum has, IN ITSELF, no definite parts, although to endow it with definite parts of no matter what multitude, and even parts of lesser dimensionality down to absolute simplicity, it is only necessary that these should be marked off, and although even the operation of thought suffices to impart an approach to definiteness of parts of any multitude we please.**This indubitably proves that the possession of parts by a continuum is not a real character of it. For the real is that whose being one way or another does not depend upon how individual persons may imagine it to be. It shows, too, that Continuity is of a Rational nature. But it conveys no gleam of evidence that Continuity itself is Unreal, an opinion against which there rise Alps, and Andes, and heaven-touching Atlases of insuperable objection. To my humble intelligence, the Rationality of Continuity, the chief character of the foundation stones of the real universe, adds another to the hundred already interpretable revelations of our Super-august and Gracious Father. (By "super-august" I mean having the majesty of that silent voice, sibilus aurae tenuis [a gentle whisper], that Elijah (I Kings xix.12) heard, too sublimely august for any admixture of the belittling insistence upon recognition that clings to the humanly august, with its comical Majestäts-beleidigung [offense against the monarchy].) As for my Anthropomorphism, after what F. C. S. Schiller has written, it is needless for me to say that it belongs to the essence of Pragmatism. (S30 [Copy T:6-7]; c. 1906)
JFS: The passages Jon quoted (copied below) are closer to Whitehead and Hartshorne than they are to traditional Christian theology.
I obviously disagree, or at least see no conflict between those passages and traditional Christian theology. Acknowledging that creation is ongoing does not entail endorsement of modern process theology. Again, Peirce affirmed many of the traditional attributes of God, including omniscience and being outside of time. I am not aware of any text of his that supports Whitehead's claim "that God created the universe in order to understand what would happen."
JFS: Peirce emphasized fallibilism about physics. He would be more cautious about metaphysics, even his own.
Indeed, we are discussing hypotheses rather than dogmas; and I acknowledge that Peirce characterized the hypothesis of God, in particular, "as vague yet as true so far as it is definite, and as continually tending to define itself more and more, and without limit" (CP 6.466, EP 2:439; 1908).
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 1:29 PM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote:
Edwina and Jon,
> ET
> This, to me, is the complex semiosic process - and is continuous, open,
> adaptive, evolving...and there is no 'final truth'.
>
> JAS
> On the contrary ...
> CSP: You certainly opine that there is such a thing as Truth.
> Otherwise, reasoning and thought would be without a purpose.
> (CP 2.135; 1902).
But the word 'final' is ambiguous. It could mean a completed end,
or it could mean a limit that can be approximated but never reached.
For example, mathematicians talk about π as a real number. But π is
a limit that can only be approximated, never actually written down
or computed: 3.14, 22/7, 3.1416, 3.14159265...
That means there is no contradiction between Edwina and Jon: there
exists a final interpretant as a limit, but because of the complexity,
it's impossible to state it as a completed assertion.
In fact, RLT 162-163 (copied below) gives more support for Edwina's
claim than Jon's. As Peirce believes, "all the arbitrary arrangements
which mark actuality ... spring out on every hand and all the time, as
the act of creation goes on, their only value is to be shaped into a
continuous delineation under the creative hand, and at any rate their
only use for us is to hold us down to learning one lesson at a time."
> JFS: I used an argument based on Cantor's set theory, which Peirce
> knew very well: as the number of elements in a set grows, the number
> of ways of combining them grows exponentially.
>
> JAS: Yes, but Peirce ultimately rejected Cantor's "pseudo-continuum"
> (CP 6.176; 1908). I have been suggesting recently that the entire
> Universe as a vast Argument is instead a "true continuum" (CP 6.170;
> 1902) and a "perfect continuum" (CP 4.642 & 7.535n6; both 1908)
Peirce never rejected Cantor's construction. By calling it a
pseudo=continuum, he accepted it as a legitimate mathematical
construction. But he went farther by claiming that a geometrical
line has a superinfinity of possible points.
This adds even more support for Edwina's claim.
JAS
> As discussed at length by Lane in his book, Peirce's considered view
> was that "ultimate Truth" is whatever would become permanently settled
> belief upon infinite inquiry by an infinite community--a regulative
> hope, the telos of all semeiosis (Final Interpretant), which may or
> may not correspond to any actual effect (Dynamic Interpretant).
The phrase "permanently settled" implies a completed endpoint.
That is consistent with God "resting on the seventh day", but it
is inconsistent with "infinite inquiry by an infinite community".
JAS
> if, as Peirce professed to believe, God is "Really creator of all three
> Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434; 1908), then He is not
> "any intelligent being in that universe."
Before saying anything else, I want to emphasize that Hartshorne,
who was the primary editor of CP vol. 6, developed his own version
of process theology that was close to Whitehead than to Peirce.
He used the term 'panentheism', which may be translated as
"all in God". In other words, God isn't in the universes, but
the universes are in God.
Karl Krause, a 19th c philosopher who was a student of Schelling,
coined the term 'panentheism' for a kind of pantheism with a personal
God who created and contained the observable universe(s).
The passages Jon quoted (copied below) are closer to Whitehead and
Hartshorne than they are to traditional Christian theology. Peirce
emphasized fallibilism about physics. He would be more cautious
about metaphysics, even his own.
John
______________________________________________________________________
CSP: The zero collection is bare, abstract, germinal possibility.
The continuum is concrete, developed possibility. The whole universe of
true and real possibilities forms a continuum, upon which this Universe
of Actual Existence is, by virtue of the essential Secondness of
Existence, a discontinuous mark--like a line figure drawn on the area of
the blackboard. There is room in the world of possibility for any
multitude of such universes of Existence. Even in this transitory life,
the only value of all the arbitrary arrangements which mark actuality,
whether they were introduced once for all "at the end of the sixth day
of creation" or whether as I believe, they spring out on every hand and
all the time, as the act of creation goes on, their only value is to be
shaped into a continuous delineation under the creative hand, and at any
rate their only use for us is to hold us down to learning one lesson at
a time, so that we may make generalizations of intellect and the more
important generalizations of sentiment which make the value of this
world. (RLT 162-163; 1898)
CSP: The generalization of sentiment can take place on different
sides. Poetry is one sort of generalization of sentiment, and in so far
is the regenerative metamorphosis of sentiment. But poetry remains on
one side ungeneralized, and to that is due its emptiness. The complete
generalization, the complete regeneration of sentiment is religion,
which is poetry, but poetry completed. (CP 1.676; 1898)
CSP: I hear you say: "All that is not fact; it is poetry."
Nonsense! Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true
poetry ... the universe is a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's
purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities … The Universe
as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a great poem,--for
every fine argument is a poem and a symphony,--just as every true poem
is a sound argument. (CP 1.315 & 5.119, EP 2:193-194; 1903)
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