Edwina, Dan, Jon, List,
Thank you, will do too (look at Koichiro Matsuno). I remember long ago there was a discussion about how to assign the tenses to the categories. You proposed the same like Matsuno does: Present, perfect, progressive, and I proposed the betweens of past-present, present-future, and past-future.
Now I think, that both fits: It depends of whether you are the interpreting system (subjectivity), as you said "notion of time", or you are looking at (observing) an interpreting system (objectivity or wannabe-objectivity).
What is happening in the primisense or the first perception, is present or presence for the subject, but an observer would say, that it has a reason. The altersense is a matter of perfect tense for the subject: memories have come into play, but for an outside observer these memories are entering the mind now and have an effect on the future. The medisense, the thoughts, are pointing into the future for the subject, and for the observer they have a reason in the past, and an effect on the future.
Or something like that, Best!
Helmut
06. März 2020 um 20:56 Uhr
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
wrote:
"Edwina Taborsky" <tabor...@primus.ca>
wrote:
Helmut, Dan, list
Koichiro Matsuno, a bioengineer, and Peircean scholar, has written extensively on the notion of time, which he refers to as present, perfect and progressive [comparable to 1ns,2nd, 3ns]…
I suggest you google his name, and on for example, Researchgate.net, you'll find articles dealing with time in physico-chemical and biological semiosis.
For example.
1]How does Time Flow in Living Systems:
2]Temporality Naturalized [ where "The Schrodinger equation for quantum mechanics, which is approachable in third-person description, takes for granted tenseless time that does not distinguish between different tenses such as past, present and future….
3] Time from Semiosis: E-series Time for Living systems. " We develop a semiotic scheme of time, in which time precipates from the repeated succession of punctuating the progressive tense by the perfect tense. The underling principle is communication among local participants. Time can thus be seen as a meaning-making, semiotic system in which different time codes are delineated....
4] The Quest for a Unified Theory of Information
5] Google: Koichiro Matsuno- AltExploit. 'Abstract Expressions of Time's Modalities
He is a phenomenal scientist and scholar.
Edwina
On Fri 06/03/20 2:31 PM , "Daniel L. Everett" danleveret...@icloud.com sent:
All very intriguing. It is fascinating in light of this to think of the many ways that languages choose to divide/classify time.English, for example, has no morphological future tense (thus one must say “will go”), though it has morphological past (went) and present tenses (go). Other languages have as many as five distinct past tenses, one present and one future (there are many variations, but so far as I know languages will have more past tenses than future tenses if they have multiples). Other languages choose not to mark time at all morphologically (e.g. on the verb) and also have very few words for precise times (e.g. yesterday, today, tomorrow).There are many attempts/theories of how natural language encodes time/temporal relations. Peirce’s concept of time has been underexploited (to put it mildly) in linguistics and clearly the connection of time theory to natural language tense theories could be quite a fecund area of exploration.Admitting the orthogonal nature of these remarks to the mainline of discussion,DanOn Mar 6, 2020, at 2:20 PM, Helmut Raulien wrote:
Jon, List,I think, the question is, whether time is a continuum, like an ether, in which all events and entities sort of swim, or is a produce of the permanence of systems, with its universality provided by the systems´ coupling.The permanence of a system, I think, is provided by the re-entry of thirdness into firstness, like in a semiosis (a semiotic system) the interpretant becomes the new representamen. Or like in consciousness: Peirce´s Primisense- Altersense- Medisense model, where the Medisense, the thinking, re-enters the Primisense, the first iconic perception: We have a picture of our thoughts.I guess it would be hard to assume, that this re-.entry and permanence as such produce time, because a re-entry and a permanence are only then possible, if a time already exists. But maybe it is a bilateral dependency: Time and systems only exist together. In the beginning of the universe (assuming there was a big bang), the "new" born universe was the only system, and "before" the big bang there was no time. I put "new" and "before" in quotation marks, because without a preceding time, these words cannot really be applied.Best,Helmut06. März 2020 um 18:32 Uhr
"Jon Alan Schmidt"
wrote:----------------------------- 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 .Jeff, List:JD: At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in "mathematical, phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries concerning time. Do you have any suggestions about how we might tease out the different threads? Each seems to involve somewhat different methods.I agree that each involves different methods, and I have made several attempts (so far unsuccessful) to start writing a paper (or two) with the goal of teasing out those different threads. Peirce himself seems to think that we can "harmonize" them (his word) by recognizing the continuity of time; in fact, our direct perception of the continuous flow of time in phenomenology is what prompts our retroductive hypothesis of a true continuum in mathematics, which we then explicate deductively and evaluate inductively in other sciences.CSP: One opinion which has been put forward and which seems, at any rate, to be tenable and to harmonize with the modern logico-mathematical conceptions, is that our image of the flow of events receives, in a strictly continuous time, strictly continual accessions on the side of the future, while fading in a gradual manner on the side of the past, and that thus the absolutely immediate present is gradually transformed by an immediately given change into a continuum of the reality of which we are thus assured. The argument is that in this way, and apparently in this way only, our having the idea of a true continuum can be accounted for. (CP 8.123n; c. 1902)Logic then provides a plausible explanation for the so-called "arrow of time." Peirce initially wrote the following in one of his notebooks.CSP: 1. A time is a determination of actuality independent of the identity of individuals, and related to other times as stated below. According to the present proposition we may speak of the state of different things at the same time as well as of the states of the same thing at different times and, of course, of different things at different times and of the same thing at the same time.2. At different times a proposition concerning the same things may be true and false; just as a predicate may at any one time be true and false of different things. Time is therefore a determination of existents. (NEM 2:611; c. 1904-5)A few years later, he offered a correction on the opposite page, which is otherwise blank.CSP: I can hardly now see how time can be called a determination of actuality. It is certainly a law. It is simply a unidimensional continuum of sorts of states of things and that these have an antitypy is shown by the fact that a sort of state of things and a different one cannot both be at the same time. And in consequence of this antitypy a state of things varies in one way and cannot turn round to vary the other way. Or to state it better a variation between state A and state B is limited to occurrence in one direction, just as the form of a body in space is limited to one or other of two perverse positions in space. (NEM 2:611; 1908 Aug 13)Peirce here maintains the mathematical characterization of time as "a unidimensional continuum," but describes its parts as "sorts of states of things" and affirms the phenomenological fact that time flows in only one direction. Turning to metaphysics, one thing that occurred to me just this week is that these different threads at least loosely correspond to the three main theories about time in the current philosophical literature.
- Eternalism - past, present, and future all exist.
- Presentism - only the present exists.
- Growing Block - only the past and present exist.
If we substitute reality for existence, these correspond respectively to Peirce's mathematical, phenomenological, and logical/semeiotic conceptions of time--a one-dimensional continuous whole, isomorphic to a line figure (cf. CP 1.273; 1902); an indefinite moment that involves memory, confrontation, and anticipation (cf. CP 7.653; 1903); and an ongoing process by which the indeterminate becomes determinate (cf. CP 5.459, EP 2:357-358; 1905). I have come to believe that #3 is closest to his overall view and can incorporate the insights of the other two. It is unfortunate that there is not a more formal name for it; one recent dissertation suggests "accretivism," but I doubt that this will catch on. My tentative name for Peirce's version of it is temporal synechism. It seems noteworthy that the basic idea of the "growing block" is that reality itself is getting "larger," which is reminiscent of a passage in Kelly A. Parker's book, The Continuity of Peirce's Thought.KAP: The dynamical object in each successive representation in the process [of semeiosis] is necessarily different from that of its predecessor. The dynamical object of the first representation is the real universe at that time, and the immediate object is an abstraction consisting of some aspects of this reality. The next representation, however, cannot have exactly the same dynamical object. The real universe is at that point populated by at least one additional entity--the first representamen itself. Every successive representation in the semeiotic process thus has as its dynamical object not just the universe which the first representamen represented, but that universe plus the first representamen itself. (p. 148)The object that determines the sign is different from the object that determines the interpretant, because the interpretant's object includes the sign itself. Likewise, the past that determines the present is different from the past that determines the future, because the future's past includes the present itself. Moreover, the object affects the sign and interpretant, but not vice-versa; and likewise, the past affects the present and future, but not vice-versa. As ongoing and continuous processes, both semeiosis and time are irreversible because they conform to Gary R.'s vector of determination (2ns→1ns→3ns, object→sign→interpretant, past→present→future); and once the universe as a vast quasi-mind becomes more determinate, it cannot become less determinate again. This leads us to the passage that you quoted in your second post.CSP: [1] I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years has been to develop my cosmology. This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future. [2] The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity. [3] Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit ... [4] As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries. (CP 8.317; 1891)The cosmological basis for the "arrow of time" is Gary R.'s vector of process (1ns→3ns→2ns). The universe is evolving from an absolutely indeterminate state of things at the hypothetical instant corresponding to "the commencement of all time" (NEM 3:1075; c. 1905), when everything would have been in the future, toward an absolutely determinate state of things at the hypothetical instant corresponding to "the completion of all time" (ibid), when everything would be in the past. As I said at the end of my initial post, what is always realized in the present is an indefinitely gradual state of change, and this terminology conveniently lends itself to another categorial analysis--the present is an indefinitely gradual state of change in its 1ns, an indefinitely gradual state of change in its 2ns, and an indefinitely gradual (i.e., continuous) state of change in its 3ns.Returning to mathematics, in a List post last September I proposed five properties that are jointly necessary and sufficient for a true Peircean continuum. (Incidentally, I am pleased to report that my essay based on that and several related List discussions, "Peirce's Topical Continuum: A 'Thicker' Theory," has been accepted for publication in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society .) The first was regularity, which I now prefer to call rationality--every portion conforms to one general law or Idea, which is the final cause by which the ontologically prior whole calls out its parts (cf. CP 7.535; 1899 and CP 7.535n6; 1908). I now suggest that time is a real Peircean continuum, and that an indefinitely gradual state of change is the one general law or Idea to which every lapse of it conforms; i.e., every moment when it is present .Since this has gotten quite lengthy, I will try to take up your specific questions in a later post.Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran LaymanOn Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 1:56 AM Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> wrote:Jon, List,
Consider what Peirce says about his cosmological conception of time in a letter to Christine Ladd-Franklin. For the sake of clarity, I'll separate and number the points he makes.
1. I may mention that my chief avocation in the last ten years has been to develop my cosmology. This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future.
2. The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity.
3. Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit.
4. As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries. 8.316
Focusing on the points made in 3 and 4, how might we understand the contrast being made between our side of things, and the part of time that is on the further side of eternity?
A helpful approach, I think, is to start with a mathematical diagram. What kind of diagram might we use to clarify the hyperbolic evolution from the infinite past to the infinite future? Using this diagram, what is the contrast between our side of things and the further side of eternity?
--Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard
Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2020 11:37:06 PM
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Reality of TimeHello Jon, List,
At the beginning of the post, you note that Peirce engaged in "mathematical, phenomenological, semeiotic, and metaphysical" inquiries concerning time. Do you have any suggestions about how we might tease out the different threads? Each seems to involve somewhat different methods.
--Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
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