BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list
1] As NG writes - NG: It is useful to think of the "idealism" half
of Peirce’s philosophy of objective idealism as pointing to a
theory of metaphysics, and the "objective" half, pointing to a theory
of epistemology ... We can say that objective idealism includes
epistemological realism and idealist metaphysics. (pp. 192-193)
And this has been my point all along - that you cannot separate
objective idealism from epistemological realism; i.e., mind is
articulated as matter; matter is instantiated via mind. Therefore -
there is no 'a priori' or separate MIND.
2] As I understand you, JAS, you do set up a linear path, beginning
with an omniscient God, followed by a primordial Mind which you
define as pure Thirdness, on its own - - which is then followed by
1ns and 2ns. I have disagreed with such a separate linearity. My view
is that all three categorical modes operate together, within the
semiosic process.
3] John Sowa provided an addendum to his post, outlining multiple
versions of idealism; that is - there are not 'just the two' -
subjective and objective idealism. My reading of Peirce in 6.24, is
that, in his outline of [c] - with "the physical law as derived and
special; , the psychical law alone as primordial, which is idealism'
- my view is that this refers to pure idealism. Not subjective and
not objective - but to the pure 'Platonic' style which separates mind
and matter. Peirce then rejects this - and offers his own outline of
objective idealism, where the two ; mind and matter - are not
separated from each other.
As you, JAS, quote: "Nevertheless, he likewise goes on to describe
objective idealism as the doctrine "that every instance of matter is
also an instance of mind/feeling" (p. 78). And that is exactly what
I've been saying!
However - I disagree with this comment [not sure to whom it
belongs]. " in other words, there is a sense in which mind
encompasses both 1ns (feeling) and 3ns (thought), while matter
primarily corresponds to 2ns (action)."
Mind encompasses all three modes; matter couldn't exist without the
laws organizing its matter. As Peirce writes; "All mind is directly
or indirectly connected with all matter...all mind more of less
partakes of the nature of matter' 6.268
And 'if habit be a primary property of mind, it must be equally so
of matter, as a kind of mind" 6.269
That is Peirce does not separate mind and matter.
4] And, as I outlined Peirce's cosmogeny -[see 1.412 and 6.348] with
an original - AFTER the Nothing - phase of pure feeling or 1ns.
..which then produced individual instances of matter [which would
entropically dissipate] except that 3ns developed
habits-of-association and formation to maintain this matter/mind
actuality.
5]JAS wrote: " I suggest that this accords with the "topological"
conception of continuity, in which a true continuum as a whole (3ns)
has only indefinite parts (1ns) unless and until some are "marked
off" as singularities (2ns). Specifically, the entire universe is
just such a continuum (mind) governed by psychical law, whose
indefinite parts (feelings) still exhibit considerable freedom, but
whose actual parts (matter) are constrained by "inveterate habits
becoming physical law."
ET - I have no problem with the above. I've been saying the same
thing - that the universe is rational and logical, and is articulated
as organized matter - along with the freedom of chance. All three
modes are necessary.
6] NG writes: ", mind is primordial, not because it is first in a
time series, but because it has (phenomeno-)logical priority. (p.
196)"
Again - I have a quibble with this - to say that Mind, as the
organizing principle of the universe, has logical priority- makes
sense only because Mind is logical - but, I think that ALL three
modes have 'priority'. In other words - a universe without 1ns would
be unable to adapt and evolve and change; it would be reduced to
'dead matter'. A universe without 2ns wouldn't exist since
particulate matter wouldn't exist. And a universe without 3ns would
be without organizing laws and would dissipate, entropically, into
Nothing.
So- how can one conclude which one has priority? All three modes are
required- and can we privilege any one of them???
7] Therefore - I disagree with:
NG: " mind must be primordial to matter, since it is a necessary
condition of such facts. (p. 198)"
I think that the above contradicts the assertion "that every
instance of matter is also an instance of mind/feeling" (p. 78).
-------------------------------
8] Now - I know, JAS, that you will continue to disagree with my
interpretation of Peirce - but - that's just the way it is. It's NOT
a 'misreading' or wrong, as you inform me'; it's my interpretation
and has, I think, as I've pointed out in previous posts, enough
backing from Peirce's texts, to substantiate as a 'reasonable
interpretation'. Now - whether others accept it or not - is up to
others.
Edwina
On Wed 07/08/19 2:30 PM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
sent:
John, List:
As a follow-up, I noticed that upon characterizing Peirce's
objective idealism as "his theory of the Reality of Thought in the
universe," Dilworth states in a footnote, "Here I should like to
acknowledge my debt to Nicholas Guardiano’s incisive paper,
‘Peirce’s Metaphysics of Objective Idealism’, which was the
William James Prize paper presented at the APA Eastern Division
meeting in Boston, December 29, 2010" (p. 56). It appears that
Guardiano's paper was subsequently published in Cognitio as "The
Intelligibility of Peirce's Metaphysics of Objective Idealism"
(https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d2ab/569f4d087b1729d1b93413f5efa669f105a1.pdf).
Consistent with what I have been maintaining all along, the abstract
describes Peirce's objective idealism as "an idealist metaphysics ...
that conceives mind as the primordial or fundamental reality of
nature." Moreover, Guardiano offers a helpful explanation of what is
objective about this particular form of idealism in the body of the
paper.
NG: It is useful to think of the "idealism" half of Peirce’s
philosophy of objective idealism as pointing to a theory of
metaphysics, and the "objective" half, pointing to a theory of
epistemology ... We can say that objective idealism includes
epistemological realism and idealist metaphysics. (pp. 192-193)
In an earlier footnote, he also describes how it differs from
subjective idealism.
NG: I take subjective idealism as the position that the real is
dependent on its being known. One version of it is Berkeley’s,
which claims that “to be is to be perceived.” Peirce’s
objective idealism, however, holds to a position of metaphysical
realism about the mind; the real is mind, whether it is known or not.
(p. 191 n. 14)
Guardiano goes on to echo what we have already said about the
different meanings of "primordial."
NG: Primordiality is in fact the concept Peirce employs to relate
mind and matter in each of the three versions of monism. Neutralism
conceives mind and matter as both primordial; materialism conceives
matter as primordial; and idealism conceives mind as primordial. The
three possible configurations are clear enough, but the word
“primordial” is an ambiguous term. It can mean first in a time
series, logical priority, or convey some other sense of being
fundamental or basic. (p. 195)
Quoting EP 1:297 (CP 6.33; 1891), he then links the concept to
Peirce's cosmogony, initially associating mind with 1ns rather than
3ns.
NG: The primordial soup of Peircean cosmogony, although so remote
as to be on the fringe of existence and comprehensibility, is best
understood as a pure state of feeling, that is, of psychic firstness,
spontaneously sporting in random chaos. For Peirce, such spontaneity
is the essence of mind, which is the principle of life or catalyst of
cosmic development and order as we know it. (p. 196)
The key concept here is psychic 1ns, as Guardiano later elaborates.
NG: Recall that the cosmogony story explicitly characterizes the
"pure arbitrariness” of the cosmic starting conditions as "a chaos
of unpersonalized feeling" (my emphasis), that is, of psychic
firstness. The specification is crucial, for it furthers the meaning
of "mind" as the metaphysical basis of reality. It is one thing for a
theory of metaphysics to argue for a vague unqualified spontaneity in
the world, and another thing to argue for a spontaneity of feeling.
(pp. 198-199)
In Peirce on Realism and Idealism, Robert Lane also quotes CP 6.33,
noting the "unpersonalized" nature of feeling "in the beginning,"
such that it "was not experienced by any individual person or other
conscious being" (p. 71, emphasis mine). Nevertheless, he likewise
goes on to describe objective idealism as the doctrine "that every
instance of matter is also an instance of mind/feeling" (p. 78); in
other words, there is a sense in which mind encompasses both 1ns
(feeling) and 3ns (thought), while matter primarily corresponds to
2ns (action). Moreover, Guardiano states the following immediately
after the excerpt above about "primordial soup."
NG: The complete narrative of the cosmogony appears to follow the
logic of a particular trichotomy Peirce provides in the previous
paragraph: by a process of evolution (thirdness) the spontaneity of
mind (firstness) grows into matter and other regularities
(secondness) of the universe. In cosmic logic, thus, mind is
primordial, not because it is first in a time series, but because it
has (phenomeno-)logical priority. (p. 196)
I suggest that this accords with the "topological" conception of
continuity, in which a true continuum as a whole (3ns) has only
indefinite parts (1ns) unless and until some are "marked off" as
singularities (2ns). Specifically, the entire universe is just such
a continuum (mind) governed by psychical law, whose indefinite parts
(feelings) still exhibit considerable freedom, but whose actual parts
(matter) are constrained by "inveterate habits becoming physical law."
In Lane's words ...
RL: Eventually, as the universe became even more orderly and habit
became more habitual, stricter laws took hold, and there came to be
instances of mind/feeling that behaved in less spontaneous, more
deterministic ways. Those feelings, "effete" and "partially
deadened," were matter, subject to "absolute," physical laws. Mental
law is primordial, and physical law emerged from it as the universe
evolved; ergo, what the mental law governs--mind/feeling--is
primordial, and matter emerged from it. But matter is not totally
free of the spontaneity that is the hallmark of feeling ... (pp.
73-74)
As Guardiano summarizes ...
NG: ... Peirce’s justification for postulating his metaphysical
theory of objective idealism appears to come down to the following
reasoning: taking evolution, growth, novelty, variety, and
specificity as facts about the world, mind must be primordial to
matter, since it is a necessary condition of such facts. (p. 198)
All of this led me to revisit another, more recent paper by
Guardiano--"The Categorial Logic of Peirce's Metaphysical Cosmology"
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/pluralist.10.3.0313), which we
discussed on the List in late 2016 and I reference in an endnote of
my online essay. There he proposes three accounts, each associated
with one of the Categories and addressing a different aspect of the
overall scheme.
*The perspective of 1ns describes the constitution of being--an
inexhaustible continuum (blackboard) underlies indefinite
possibilities (whiteboards), some of which are actualized
(discontinuous mark).
*The perspective of 2ns describes the sequence of events in each
case of such actualization--spontaneity, then reaction, then
habit-taking.
*The perspective of 3ns describes the evolution of states--chaos
in the infinite past, ongoing sequences of events at any assignable
date, and complete regularity in the infinite future.
As described in Gary R.'s "Outline of trikonic: Diagrammatic
Trichotomic"
(http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/richmond/trikonic.htm),
these correspond respectively to the vectors of representation
(3ns→1ns→2ns), order (1ns→2ns→3ns), and process
(1ns→3ns→2ns). 3ns is thus logically primordial relative to both
1ns and 2ns, while 1ns is both logically and temporally primordial
relative to 2ns. 3ns comes last in the sequence of events, but as
Peirce himself eventually noted--crediting Ogden Rood with bringing
it to his attention--"there must have been some original tendency to
take habits which did not arise according to my hypothesis [of
1891-1893]" (R 842:114[128]; 1908, emphases mine). 1ns also precedes
3ns in the evolution of states, but only as an ideal limit. Hence
this analysis confirms the "really commanding function" of 3ns, which
is why Peirce preferred the name "synechism" for his overall system,
rather than "tychism" (CP 6.202; 1898).
Regards,
Jon S.
On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 3:19 PM Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
John, List:
JFS: But in order to understand the issues, it's essential to
relate what Peirce wrote to his sources and to his successors.
It is also essential, as you have emphasized before, to read
carefully and interpret faithfully what Peirce actually wrote--and
not attribute positions to him that he never said, meant, implied, or
intended.
JFS: For a discussion of Schelling's influence on Peirce's
objective idealism, I recommend two articles by David Dilworth:
Thank you for those links. What Dilworth says about T. L. Short in
the first paper is exactly what I have been saying about Edwina.
DD: Short of course is free to develop a positive alternative to
Peirce’s system. It would be in the spirit of Peirce’s philosophy
to welcome and cherish his endeavor. Be that as it may. But as a
bottom line, Short’s article plays fast and loose with Peirce’s
own text. It does not adequately represents [sic] Peirce’s
“completely developed system” of “Schelling-fashioned objective
idealism” ... (p. 70)
This should put to rest once and for all the complaint that it is
somehow illegitimate to deem someone else's "reading" or
"interpretation" of Peirce as inaccurate, and therefore invalid. It
happens all the time in the secondary literature.
JFS: The similarities of Logos, Tao, and Dharma is recognized by
many philosophers and theologians.
I have not disputed this. Again, equating any two (or three) of the
terms within a particular context and for a particular purpose is a
very different proposition from equating all of them without
qualification. The latter assertion is neither vague nor certain.
JFS: The word 'primordial' is another vague term.
Google's online dictionary suggests two potentially relevant
definitions--"existing at or from the beginning of time" and
"(especially of a state or quality) basic and fundamental." Peirce's
summary of objective idealism--"that matter is effete mind, inveterate
habits becoming physical laws"--clearly asserts that mind is "basic
and fundamental," such that matter is derived from it; and that
habits (psychical laws) existed "from the beginning of time," while
physical laws evolved later. In other words, in both senses of the
word "primordial," Peirce's view was that "the physical law [is]
derived and special, the psychical law alone [is] primordial, which
is idealism" (CP 6.24; 1891).
JFS: Since Peirce claimed that matter is effete mind, that implies
that matter is a kind of mind. It does not come after mind. That
would support Edwina's point.
The implication that "matter is a kind of mind" entails that mind is
more "basic and fundamental" than matter; i.e., that mind is
logically primordial (second definition) relative to matter. The
description of "inveterate habits becoming physical laws" implies
that physical laws come about after habits; i.e., that psychical laws
are temporally primordial (first definition) relative to physical
laws. That refutes Edwina's point.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Laymanwww.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [2] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [3]
On Mon, Aug 5, 2019 at 1:56 PM John F Sowa < s...@bestweb.net [4]>
wrote:
Gary, Jon, and Edwina,
GR
> It should be obvious from my own previous messages in this thread
> on the topic that I fully concur with Jon's conclusion in general
> and in the particulars he outlined. Indeed, we have both been
making
> the same points based on many of the same quotations
Yes, that's obvious. It's always the same quotations. But in order
to understand the issues, it's essential to relate what Peirce wrote
to his sources and to his successors.
> JFS: Many philosophers and theologians of various persuasions
> agree with that equation at a "sufficiently vague" level.
>
> JAS: but your claim was that it is vague enough to be certain,
> which I continue to deny.
The starting equation is Theos = Logos. The criterion for certainty
is Peirce's: "It is easy to be certain. One has only to be
sufficiently vague."
For the definitions of the terms, we can use the ones that Peirce
wrote
for _The Century Dictionary_. See the attached idealism.jpg, which
contains his definitions for 'idealism', 'objective idealism', etc.
CSP, Century Dictionary
> idealism 1. The metaphysical doctrine that the real is of the
nature
> of thought; the doctrine that all reality is in its nature
psychical.
> ...
> Objective idealism. the doctrine of F. W. J. von Schelling
(1775-1854)
> that the relation between the subject and object of thought is one
of
> absolute identity. It supposes that all things exist in the
absolute
> reason, that matter is extinct mind, and that the laws of physics
are
> the same as those of mental representations.
For more detail, see idealism.jpg. It also includes Peirce's
definitions of other varieties of idealism, including Kant's
transcendental idealism. An interesting example is ideal-realism,
which C. S. Peirce attributes to B. Peirce. That was probably
a version that he discussed with his father while they were both
studying Kant.
For a discussion of Schelling's influence on Peirce's objective
idealism, I recommend two articles by David Dilworth:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db5f/2d660a8ee2f64eeef4d85033922ca38f6cc8.pdf
[5]
http://www.commens.org/sites/default/files/biblio_attachments/peirces_schelling-fashioned_critique_of_hegel.pdf
[6]
For more background, I recommend _On the History of Modern
Philosophy_
by Schelling (152 pages) with a 40-page intro by the translator.
Schelling begins with Descartes's dualism and Spinoza's monism.
Spinoza had a huge influence on German idealism, which led many
religious and political leaders to denounce pantheism as a version
of atheism. Any philosopher in Germany who was accused of atheism
could be ousted from any university. Even Kant felt the danger.
Schelling's history is based on lectures he presented in 1833 and
1834, which were attended by many leading philosophers of the day.
He was very careful to develop a version of monism that supported
the development of science while avoiding an accusation of atheism.
Peirce would find that quite congenial.
The similarities of Logos, Tao, and Dharma is recognized by many
philosophers and theologians. I mentioned that 'Tao' is the
translation of 'Logos' in Chinese versions of the New Testament.
In any case, Peirce's definition of 'idealism' is sufficiently
broad (or vague) to include them.
If anyone needs more evidence, consider the writings of the Catholic
monk, Thomas Merton. He wrote extensively about varieties of
mystical
experience, East and West. And he observed that the descriptions of
their mystical experiences were very similar. Merton also wrote his
own translation of Lao Zi's book of the Tao.
Peirce also had a mystical experience at the church of St. Thomas
in New York. That could have affected his feelings, as expressed
in various writings, especially the Neglected Argument. Merton's
analyses would support a similarity of Peirce's experience with
others around the world.
For an equation of Peirce's Objective Idealism with Whitehead's
process philosophy, Hartshorne's process theology is good evidence.
Gary R said that the details of the writings by Peirce, Whitehead,
and Hartshorne are very different. I agree. But at the level of
the definitions in idealism.jpg, the equation stands.
For more evidence on that point, I recommend the article "From Kant
to Schelling to process metaphysics" by Arran Gare:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282232558_From_Kant_to_Schelling_to_Process_Metaphysics_On_the_Way_to_Ecological_Civilization
[7]
Gare calls both Peirce and Whitehead "process metaphysicians", and
he discusses their similarities to Schelling.
ET
> My reading of Peirce is that 'objective idealism' means that Mind
is not
> primordial but emerges with Matter as Matter emerges after the
first
> chaos. Mind emerges as evolving habits within 'the material
Object' .
The word 'primordial' is another vague term. If it is taken in the
sense of "prior in time", it cannot be defined in the absence of
matter, since the laws of physics define time in terms of the
motions of matter. If it is defined in terms of logical dependence,
it is based on the laws or Logos.
Since Peirce claimed that matter is effete mind, that implies
that matter is a kind of mind. It does not come after mind.
That would support Edwina's point.
In any case, all the terminology is "sufficiently vague" to comply
with Peirce's criterion for certainty. Therefore, I repeat:
Theos = Logos = Tao = Dharma = Natura = God of Spinoza, Einstein...
John
Links:
------
[1]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jonalanschm...@gmail.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[2] http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt
[3] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[4]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[5]
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db5f/2d660a8ee2f64eeef4d85033922ca38f6cc8.pdf
[6]
http://www.commens.org/sites/default/files/biblio_attachments/peirces_schelling-fashioned_critique_of_hegel.pdf
[7]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282232558_From_Kant_to_Schelling_to_Process_Metaphysics_On_the_Way_to_Ecological_Civilization
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