I wanted to raise the topic of the ding an sich as it pertains to Peirce
visavis Kant.
This has been done to death here previously, but I believe I have a reached a
proof (which I need to formalize) of the necessity of Kant's noumenal/thing in
itself. The irony of this proof is that it comes via Peirce (his influence with
respect to contiguity and a whole lot more).
1. Salt-Snail-Poison
2. Salt-Human-Savoury
3. Salt-Human-Poison
A quick sketch.
In (1), the quality produced by the Salt/Snail interaction (with human
perspective implied, but presumed to persist if absent) is Poison. In (2), it
is Savoury. In (3) it is poison again.
Salt to snail and salt to human (2) and (3) all, then, produce different
qualities regarding the value of "salt".
Question: What does this say about salt in itself and the possibility of
knowing the essence of what salt is in itself?
For that has been the contentious area in Peircean discussions regarding Kant's
ding an sich (on this messaging list) for a long time. Peirce - and many here -
maintaining that you can know what a thing is in itself (calling Kant a
"confused realist" iirc).
But if Salt is poison for a snail, and savoury for a human (and then, also,
poisonous to some other humans, or even a different form of savoury), then what
is Salt in itself?
It cannot be what the human makes of it. It is not possible for it to be
whatever the human experiences/defines it as, because it is not a
anthropocentric thing. Which is obvious enough in the
perspectival/anthropological ethnographies which follow a loose or rigid Peirce
schema with respect to ontology (thinking of Kohn and South American studies
with regard to animal perspectives and flat ontoloogies).
Thus, what is salt? It has to exist in itself, for we cannot doubt that it
exist as an individual quality removed from "snail" and "human" and,
simultaneously, it has to exist in contigious relationship with the various
other minerals/subjects/predicates.
It seems very simple, and it is, but in extended diagrams/reasonings (proof,
imo, which I call the value/essence or V{X}) proof, it is not so simple. That
the thing in itself exists - something I had thrown away as I went with
Peircean phaneroscopy (a term I had forgotten) - is now beyond questioning to
me. Which leaves me with many questions - firstlly, what does this mean for
Peircean studies?
Peirce rejects the thing in itself, in Kantian form, twice, in his manuscript,
along the same basis. He views it as an absurdity (I'd have to check again).
But this puts him in the same category of post-Kantians
(Hegelians/neo-Hegelians) whom, to me, seem to take Kant's logic (formulae, as
Peirce does in tabular form with obvious Hegelian influence) but ignore the
primary metaphysical point which underpins everything Kant ever wrote. The
thing in itself. Because it is so hard to accomodate, even the Kantians confuse
it - Schopenhauer called it the "will" (which I am certain it isn't).
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Water
H20
No one doubts there is such a thing as "water" and few doubt the existence of
"hydrogen" and "oxygen". But water is not hydrogen nor oxygen - nor is hydrogen
nor oxygen what what they are, in themselves, to humans for the simple fact
that they predate human existence (taking evolutionary models) and exist
outside human contact of such elements, if you want some other model.
Thus:
Salt-Snail-Poison (value of-Salt/Snail-for-human = Poison) (essence of Salt
remains noumenal/thing in itself X).
The irony, for me, is that you cannot make sense of it without Peirce but have
to disregard Peirce's own disavowal of Kant's noumena/thing in itself to get
there.
What is Water to Fire, for example? Or even ice to a penguin? For ice to a
penguin cannot be what it is to a human but must be ice, all the same.
Peirce said you can "know" the thing in itself, I believe, but cannot represent
it? I went with that for a long time but am now of the opinion, that you cannot
know the thing in itself or represent it (the latter being most obvious).
If we assume that we can know the thing in itself, but cannot represent it, we
move closer to Peirce, I think, if only because his categories of firstness and
secondess as well as general phaneroscopy point in that direction.
Long story rendered short: salt is not the same thing to a human as it is to a
snail. And this isn't the usual perspectivalist deviation. It is rather the
affirmation of the Kantian noumenal. For salt must have its own essence in
absentia of all human existence - unless we become solipsist - and that
essence, therefore, is never what we make of it in our own representational
schemas.
This moves into mathematics/logic insofar as we consider received "arbitrary"
lexicals as mathematical discursivties and then Godel and his incompleteness
theorem as well as Russell's famous paradox. The discursive representation
(value, mathematical/logical, within/between a given system, logical or
mathematical) is never the essence of the thing therein represented [V(X)].
Russell's paradox, to me, is a paradox of received "reason" (the idea that sets
express something universal beyond the logical idiom) which is, in its own way,
highlighted by Godel's incompleteness theorem which I now contend holds not for
only some forms of mathematics/logic but for all.
Which gives way to Chomsky. Chomsky's idea of universal grammar, brought
forward from various contributors but made distinctly new, is that of an innate
(X) preload if you like which goes beyond any given "input/output" logical
categorization of the "essence" of language. Poverty of stimulus, for example,
demonstrates precisely the point I am trying to make: the Kantian metaphysical
apriori, formal, rhymes with Chomsky's universal grammar and poverty of
stimulus (it is the only, logical, way which, given a finite set of "data"
children may produce infinite derivations of said "data" including malapropisms
which are not taught but are logically "sound" if grammatically "incorrect").
That is, in a very long-winded post/message, Chomsky's UG (poverty of stimulus
and recursion) seems, now, to be proven beyond all doubt in its most simplistic
or "weakest" (general) form. It handles the Kantian apriori (metaphysical
essence) and retains Kantian objetivity 1.0 (fire is hot whatever it is in
itself, therefore we have minimal thresholds of objective understanding) whilst
also expressing the disjuncture between whatever the value of a given lexical
is and the essence of language (the first knowable and second, I think, forever
beyond human understanding - by infinite regressive definition, if made
"positive").
tl;dr
in a given series such as salt-snail-poison, the human "value" visavis
perspective/ontological is always presupposed but typically removed (not
present in the series).
Morever, from a position of pure contiguity, the universe itself, we infer a
kind of non-contiguous necessity (that which is beyond the walls of
intelligence, whether human or computational, insofar as intelligence implies
logic/reason for none of the values derives from logic/reason, whether science
or philosophy, are ever the essence of the "thing" which is valued but that
such a thing exists and necessarily has an essence is now beyond all doubt).
That is Peirce's contribution (via indexical-contiguity and general cosmic
outlook) to what I know to be a proof of the noumenal thing in itself (expanded
elsewhere in diagrammatic form).
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