I have written a small philosophical paragraph as contribution for the
forum in the hope that it may help me have a fulfilling philosophical
discussion with other like minds.
While reading Bernard Bolzano's "wissenschaftslehre" in its
english translation, I was bewildered by a certain remark made
there.Bolzano says that there are entities like "ideas in themselves", "
propositions in themselves" that have reality but do not actually exist !
What could he possibly mean by that ? How can a non-existent thing be real
? I found its answer in the writings of charles s. peirce. It is important
to understand what these two philosophers have in mind when they speak of
the real and the existent. By real, Peirce means that which exists
independently of thought or imagination and hence anything which can be
objectively discovered or determined. What is existent on the other hand,
is what enters into relations with other things. It is related by way of
spatial location and temporal relation to various other things. With this
definition, it becomes easy to make sense of Bolzano's remark.
"Propositions in themselves" such as 'the gravitational force between two
masses varies inversely with the square of their distance' are real. They
can be discovered objectively but it would be absurd to say that the law of
gravitation exists at a particular location and time or in a certain
relation to other physical things.
Peirce's three categories make this distinction clearer. By
firstness, peirce means quality, by secondness relation and by thirdness
representation. A quality like redness is real. It can be objectively
discovered. Does redness have relation to other objects? No. So it does not
exist in the sense just discussed. Take a relation now. A relation such as
'being taller than' is impossible without two or more relata. Indeed space
and time are simply the discovery of relations between things determined by
various forms of measurement. So relations are real and exist. Finally, a
representation may be either real or unreal. For example, the facade of a
house in the form of a rectangular face serves as a representation in our
minds of an object which we know to have a pentagonal cross-section. If by
the rectangular aspect we are deceived into thinking that the house is
cuboidal then our representation is unreal. It cannot be discovered
independently by another observer standing at some other location with
respect to our house.
We can now also see why peirce seems to represent seemingly different
things by the terms firstness, secondness and thirdness. Other things
designated by these terms include possibility, reality and law. A quality
does not exist inspite of being real. So it is a possibility, waiting to be
exemplified in a specific object. Relations occur only in the outside world
where the relata exist. Finally a representation whether real or unreal is
something that will determine the future course of our actions and hence
become a law or habit depending on whether it is real or unreal
respectively. Similiarly firstness is said to be associated with feeling
(that is detecting qualities of things), secondness with action (changing
the relations of things) and thirdness with thought (as per peirce all
thought proceeds via using signs). Some authors (like the distinguished
philosopher of science - ernest nagel) have taken peirce to task in their
writings, arguing that what peirce exactly means by his three categories is
hopelessly vague. That peirce seems to divide everything un-necessarily
into threes. But there is method to this seeming madness. The great
philosopher of the twentieth century, alfred north whitehead distinguished
three modes of thought. The mode of presentational immediacy or feeling,
the mode of causal efficacy or action and the mixed mode of sign-reference
or thought. If one applies these three modes of thought to every possible
subject matter then one naturally ends up dividing things into threes. For
example signs which resemble their objects work by communicating a thing's
qualities to us, apealing to feeling and are called icons, signs which work
by being interlocked in a close relation with their objects, appealing to
action and are called indices and symbols which work by representing their
objects by convention or in other words by appealing to thought.
Ok, now why should we be interested in this discussion? Or in
Peirce's words, what are the practical consequences of this small bit of
philosophy? Let us start with morality. Moral values are real (objectively
discoverable) but non-existent (because they transcend the particularities
of a location or an age). This means that a person's fundamental rights,
his right to life, property and liberty can be discovered and defended
independently of whether they have been granted by one's rulers or not.
This (the discoverability of justice) is the basis of the judiciary system
of our modern day democracies. Moving over to science, there was great
perplexity in the 19th century regarding the nature of light. For a long
time, scientists sought to explain electromagnetic waves as the oscillation
of an electric ether that was massless. People just refused to believe that
there could exist firstness or in other words, pure possibilities like
lines of electromagnetic force in a vacuum. They could not understand that
undulations in electromagnetic force could exist independently of whether
there is or is not an object affected by the force.They were two-category
metaphysicians. One can at this point also see why Peirce supported realism
as opposed to nominalism. He realised that scientific laws for example, are
real but non-existent. Hence universals or abstractions must be real. But
what about people who are not scientists or moral philosophers ? Let us
turn now to pedagogy. Mrs. phyllis chiasson has ably written an article for
the relevance of peirce's metaphysics to educational theory in the commens
encyclopedia. Self education and inquiry employ the same modes of thought
as enunciated by Peirce. First we are made aware of our ignorance by an
unexpected event. This makes us curious. We have a feeling of doubt. To
quench this doubt we come up with a hypothesis, checking it by our actions
except in mathematics although if we count construction of models and
performance of algebraic operations as actions then we have no exceptions.
Finally we think and modify the firmness of our beliefs accordingly along
with our future habits as well. Economics- economists of the keynesian
school vs economists of the austrian school have contrasting views on the
effects of mild inflation on economic growth. One side contends that mild
inflation has been found to be strongly associated statistically, with
economic growth. The other contends that the 'growth' triggered by mild
inflation is made up of malinvestments which when they become liquidated
result in a cycle of boom and bust in stock markets. Who is right ?
Economic laws are an example of thirdness. If we agree that the laws of
economics are due to the tendency of man to take up habits with each action
taken by a person then what actions drive the growth seen in association
with mild inflation ? It so happens that human beings are fond of their
earnings. So when they find their savings pool deteriorating in value, they
seek to augment their wealth to compensate the decline in value of their
savings. The most common way to do this is via investments. The threshold
for making unsafe investments gets lowered when people face inflation. It
also triggers people to consume their savings faster before they
deteriorate in value. When these malinvestments at the micro level
liquidate, we face a recession at the macro level. Thus we explain economic
laws by action and action by feelings of human beings, employing the three
different modes of the mind as stated by peirce and whitehead all the while
checking our results by observing reality.
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