RE: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Gary, list

Quantum filed theory seems to have arrived at such a foundational 
ur-continuity. What fascinates me with this interpretation is that it changes 
the conception of God from the  person creator  we are used in standard 
Christianity and many other religions to a general process ontology that is 
compatible with  a semiotically informed science og which biosemiotics is one, 
and at the same time it integrates the “normative” sciences  building on 
phenomenology in its metaphysics and thus allows for the qualitative sciences 
in a sort of non-reductive view of all the sciences that is not fundamentally 
opposing as spiritual world view and it makes a lot of theory of meditation 
plausible, which we have not between able to handle physiologically or 
psychologically  so far. Thus it allows a dialog between science and 
spirituality and leaves the theist religions to faith, as I think they should. 
The subjective relation with the divine should in  my view be a personal  
thing. The possibility of it not.

   Best
  Søren

From: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 3. november 2016 05:05
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, Jon, List.

Soren wrote:
​
But if the Logos is logic as semiotics and is emerging as thirdness or the 
tendency to take habits in all nature of Secondness as Stjernfelt argues so 
Well in Natural propositions and feeling is present in all matter (Hylozoism) 
and all three categories arise as universes from pure Zero. . .

Jon and I (and others) have argued that the 3ns which "emerges" following the 
creation of this Universe (that is, after the Big Bang, so to loosely speak) is 
*not* the same as the 3ns which is the ur-continuity represented by the black 
board example in the last of the 1898 lectures. It seems to me that much hinges 
on whether or not one sees our Universe as presupposing this ur-continuity 
(nothing in particular but everything in general, with yet a tendency toward 
habit-taking because of this ur-continuity, otherwise termed the zero of pure 
potential, which is, for Peirce, certainly not "nothing at all").

It has further been noted that Peirce suggests that the Creator is, or in some 
way participates, in this ur-continuity. Once *this* Universe is "in effect," 
then, yes, all that you and Stjernfelt argue may follow (although, I remain, as 
was Peirce, I firmly believe, a theist and not a panentheist, so I tend to 
reject that part of your argumentation, at least in consideration of the early 
cosmos).

Best,

Gary R

[Gary Richmond]

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690>

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 7:41 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon, List

​​
But if the Logos is logic as semiotics and is emerging as thirdness or the 
tendency to take habits in all nature of Secondness as Stjernfelt argues so 
Well in Natural propositions and feeling is present in all matter (Hylozoism) 
and all three categories arise as universes from pure Zero, why should its 
self-organization not match Eckhart’s idea of Jesus consciousness born in every 
man, if  “the father” is pure Zero and the holy spirit or ghost  is thirdness 
as self-organization, meaning that human consciousness as the aware man  is the 
living conscious realization in the flesh of the origin of our  being? Peirce’s 
naturalization encompassed pure Zero as the transcendental a part of nature and 
us. It fits a form of Gnostic panentheism, is my abduction. It fits with his 
mystical experience. It is esoterical  pure mysticism encompassing rationality 
and science without a  conscious personal creator. The basic postulate is that 
we can have access to the Godhead through a developed consciousness. This is 
basically what Bhakti Vedanta and much of Buddhism – and in my view Meister 
Eckhart in Christianity – say, and why he was excommunicated from the Catholic 
church, because he was – as many scholars has pointed out – too close to Adi 
Shankara’s thinking. It is pretty much Suzuki’s point of view too 
http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/d-t-suzuki-mysticism-christian-and-buddhist.pdf 
and he was hired by Paul Carus the editor of the Monist. Of cause we here have 
Emerson and the trandscendentalist’s view too.

  Best
  Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 2. november 2016 22:43
To: John F Sowa
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

John, List:

The question still arises of what to make of the statement in John's Gospel 
that "the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us."  Neither nature nor its laws 
can be substitute

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jon, List

But if the Logos is logic as semiotics and is emerging as thirdness or the 
tendency to take habits in all nature of Secondness as Stjernfelt argues so 
Well in Natural propositions and feeling is present in all matter (Hylozoism) 
and all three categories arise as universes from pure Zero, why should its 
self-organization not match Eckhart’s idea of Jesus consciousness born in every 
man, if  “the father” is pure Zero and the holy spirit or ghost  is thirdness 
as self-organization, meaning that human consciousness as the aware man  is the 
living conscious realization in the flesh of the origin of our  being? Peirce’s 
naturalization encompassed pure Zero as the transcendental a part of nature and 
us. It fits a form of Gnostic panentheism, is my abduction. It fits with his 
mystical experience. It is esoterical  pure mysticism encompassing rationality 
and science without a  conscious personal creator. The basic postulate is that 
we can have access to the Godhead through a developed consciousness. This is 
basically what Bhakti Vedanta and much of Buddhism – and in my view Meister 
Eckhart in Christianity – say, and why he was excommunicated from the Catholic 
church, because he was – as many scholars has pointed out – too close to Adi 
Shankara’s thinking. It is pretty much Suzuki’s point of view too 
http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/d-t-suzuki-mysticism-christian-and-buddhist.pdf 
and he was hired by Paul Carus the editor of the Monist. Of cause we here have 
Emerson and the trandscendentalist’s view too.

  Best
  Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 2. november 2016 22:43
To: John F Sowa
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

John, List:

The question still arises of what to make of the statement in John's Gospel 
that "the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us."  Neither nature nor its laws 
can be substituted for Logos in this case.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 4:02 PM, John F Sowa 
> wrote:
On 11/2/2016 2:01 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
His favorite Gospel was that of John, but did he ever quote its
first chapter?  "In the beginning was the Word [logos] ...

Since his father taught him Greek at a very early age, I'm sure
that New Testament Greek was one of the first texts he studied.

Given his interest in logic, Peirce may have preferred this gospel
because of its use of the word 'logos'.

Around 400 BC, Heraclitus (Fragment 1) wrote
all things come to be according to this logos

In the first century AD, John wrote
In the beginning was the Logos. The Logos was with God.
And God was the Logos. It was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through it, and without it nothing
came to be that has come to be.

They both used 'panta' (all things) and 'gignomai' (come to be).
Heraclitus did not use the word 'Theos' (God), but John equated
Theos with Logos.  Some scholars claim that John was influenced
by Philo of Alexandria, who wrote many volumes (in Greek) to
reconcile the Torah with Greek philosophy.

Other scholars commented on the similarity between Logos as
Heraclitus used it, Dao (or Tao) as Lao Zi used it, and Dharma
as Gautama Buddha used it.  Perhaps that was not a coincidence,
because they were approximate contemporaries, and they lived
near the trade routes (Silk Road) from China to Asia Minor.

In his _Ethica_, Spinoza used the words 'God' (Deus) and 'nature'
(Natura) almost interchangeably.  When asked whether he believed
in God, Einstein replied, "I believe in the God of Spinoza".

The equation of God with the laws of nature by Spinoza and Einstein
should be compared to Logos, Dao, and Dharma.  The Latin 'natura'
is the Scholastic translation of the Greek 'physis'.  The English
word 'physics' is an 18th century synonym for 'natural philosophy'.

Peirce was also familiar with Aristotle's use of 'logos'.  The
first paragraph of _De Interpretatione_ (in Greek and in various
Scholastic commentaries) was likely to be another influence:
First we must determine what are noun (onoma) and verb (rhêma); and
after that, what are negation (apophasis), assertion (kataphasis),
proposition (apophansis), and sentence (logos). Those in speech (phonê)
are symbols (symbola) of affections (pathêmata) in the psyche, and
those written (graphomena) are symbols of those in speech. As letters
(grammata), so are speech sounds not the same for everyone. But they
are signs (sêmeia) primarily of the affections in the psyche, which
are the same for everyone, and so are the objects (pragmata) of which
they are likenesses (homoiômata). On these matters we speak in the
treatise on the psyche, for it is a 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jeff, list

Thanks. That is also my impression, but I was not sure.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 22. oktober 2016 05:29
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

SB:  I can see that Peirce has a kind of Zero field from which both matter and 
mind arises as sort of continuum – difficult to imagine – or inside and 
outside, which I find easier to comprehend and fits with his development of 
Aristotle’s hylomorphism, meaning that all matter is alive “inside”. But does 
that also mean that all mind is matter like inside?

No, because mind is the more fundamental of the two--"the physical law as 
derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial" (CP 6.24).  Peirce 
famously said that "matter is effete mind" (CP 6.25), and also called it "mere 
specialized and partially deadened mind" (CP 6.102); but as far as I know, he 
never described mind as "lively matter."

Regards,

Jon

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon

Yes, I kind of get that, but the transitions from signs to matter is still 
somewhat vague for me. I can see that Peirce has a kind of Zero field from 
which both matter and mind arises as sort of continuum – difficult to imagine – 
or inside and outside, which I  find easier to comprehend and  fits with his 
development of Aristotle’s  hylomorphism, meaning that all matter is alive 
“inside”. But does that also mean that all mind is matter like inside? But 
still it is pretty heavy to encompass with what we know of matter and mind to 
day. The only one who has made an attempt on this is Basarab Nicolescu through 
his theory of the hidden third  
http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_articles/ClujHiddenThird052009Proceedings.pdf 
, levels of reality and logic of the included middle 
http://www.basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_Notice/TJESNo_1_12_2010.pdf  and 
http://www.metanexus.net/archive/conference2005/pdf/nicolescu.pdf  and he is 
pretty Peirce inspired and combines that with his knowledge of quantum physics 
and philosophy.
Best
Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 16:11
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

I am still not sure exactly what you are asking, or what climate change has to 
do with it.  Peirce's cosmogony/cosmology conceives the second Universe of 
Brute Actuality (including physical matter) as a discontinuity that came into 
Being on the underlying continuum of potentiality--a colored mark on the 
whiteboard, in my recent adaptation of his famous diagram.  In semeiotic terms, 
per my suggestion yesterday in the thread on Peirce's Cosmology, it is the 
aggregate of the Dynamic (actual) Interpretants--which, along with the 
Immediate (potential) and Final (habitual) Interpretants, constitute the 
"living realities" that are the Conclusion of the Argument.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 4:05 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jeff. List

My problem – probably arising from my scientific background as a biologist – is 
that I still do not see how Peirce explains in cosmogonical terms how we get 
from Peirce semiotic objective idealism with the universe as a grand argument 
to a physical as well as chemical theory of  matter. How do we get from the 
three universes to the world we are in today, with its physically real problem 
of global warming?

   Best
 Søren

From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com<mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 01:17
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, list:

I don’t see why you’re having problems with seeing how this is possible without 
a recognition of the independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living 
in language and culture.

Could you not simply look to the best example that embodies this integration of 
phaneroscopic metaphysics that is combined with ethics, esthetics, logic; that 
is combined with tychism, ananchism, agapism (together, synechism); which 
supports the triadic process of semiotic through pragmaticism?

Best,
Jerry R

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in its

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jerry

Good but difficult question. I can give my tentative answers from the top of my 
head:


What is the role of efficient causality in your thinking about biology?  I SEE 
IT AS PART OF SELF-ORGANIZING AUTOPOIETIC TENDENCIES PARTLY BASED ON 
NONE-EQULIBRIUM THERMODYNAMICS.

What is the role of final causality in your thinking about biology? I SEE IT AS 
SELF-ORGANIZING AUTOPOIETIC TENDENCY IN THE SPOMTANEOUSLY STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL 
AND PROCREATION.

What is the role of emergent causality in your thinking about biology?  I 
CANNOT IMMAGE EMERGENCY WITHOUT INCLUDING TRIADIC SIGNS TENDENCY TO 
SELF-ORGANIZE AND GROW, ESPECIALLY SYMBOLS. THEN AS PEIRCE AND LEE SMOLIN I SEE 
IT AS RESPONTIBLE FOR NEW STRUCTURES, FUNCTIONS , PROCESSES AND LAWS.

What is the role of electricity in your thinking about emergence (material 
amplicative logic) of life?  ONE POWER AMONG MANY

What is the role of CSP’s notion of “chemical radicals” in the relations 
between icons and rhema in relation to the amplicative logic necessary for 
development of an individual from a fertilized egg? I DO NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT 
THAT.

Do you accept the hegemony of physical philosophy in framing your philosophy of 
bio-cybernetics? NO. I CANNOT SEE HOW WE CAN COME FROM PHYSICS - AS WE KNOW IT 
- TO LIFE AND MIND. IN MY CYBERSEMIOTICS I CLAIM AS A PREREQUSITE FOR THE 
UNDERSTANDING OF KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH FOUR WORLDS: THE PHYSIO-CHEMICAL, THE 
LIVING, THE EXPERIENTIAL AND THE COMMUNICATIVE CONSISTING OG SIGN GAMES AND 
LANGUAGE GAMES. I REALIZE THAT IN A PEIRCEAN ONTOLOGY I ONLY NEED THREE AS 
MATTER IS NOT DEAD IN HIS VIEW IN OPPOSITION TO CLASSICAL PHYSICS. IN QUANTUM 
PHYSICS MATTER HAS SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY, BUT STILL NO BASIC FEELING.

Søren

These are the sorts of questions that interest me from a quantitative 
perspective.
And from a CSP logical perspective.
And from a molecular biological perspective.

No need to iterate arguments based on Ockham’s razor or the procrustean beds of 
physical approximations and computer science or the entropy content of 
information. Such arguments are insufficient to relate the consequences to the 
antecedent causes. In other words and symbols and indexes and icons, the atomic 
numbers are facts and the addition of atomic numbers follow the conservation 
laws of physics.

Cheers

Jerry


On Oct 21, 2016, at 7:32 PM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

Jon

Yes it is both efficient and final causation and how they are related. I do 
know Peirce has several papers on that. But still how does it relate to the 
world as we know it today? Or rather how can we make a postmodern 
transdisciplinary framework that allows us to combine them?

   Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 17:59
To: Jerry LR Chandler
Cc: Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Jerry C., List:

JC:  Would it be fair to say that you seek to understand how CSP’s writings 
relate to scientific causality?

By "scientific causality," do you mean efficient causality (i.e., brute 
reactions), final causality (i.e., laws of nature), both, or something else 
altogether?

JC:  I think it is fair to ask if Jon’s views on engineering wrt CSP writings 
are typical of modern engineering disciplines, such as chemical engineering and 
molecular-biological engineering in which specific causal processes must be 
arranged from the body of scientific information (chemical / biological) 
available.

My discipline is structural engineering, in which most of the relevant causal 
processes and corresponding diagrammatic representational system rules are 
quite well-established.  I would welcome feedback on whether and how my "logic 
of ingenuity" thesis is applicable to other fields of engineering, especially 
those in which this is not (yet) the case.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Jerry LR Chandler 
<jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com<mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com>> wrote:
Soren:

Would it be fair to say that you seek to understand how CSP’s writings relate 
to scientific causality?

I think it is fair to ask if Jon’s views on engineering wrt CSP writings are 
typical of modern engineering disciplines, such as chemical engineering and 
molecular-biological engineering in which specific causal processes must be 
arranged from the body of scientific information (chemical / biological) 
available.  Within the professions, these are referred to a “scale-up” 
problems.  Or, otherwise as “from the lab-bench to production”.

BTW, Soren, on a personal note and in reference to an earlier exchange here 
(2014?) on the role o

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jerry

I think Einstein’s point is mine in Cybersemiotics. It seems impossible to 
reduce one aspect of reality to any of the others.

 Søren

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 20:05
To: John F Sowa
Cc: Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)


On Oct 21, 2016, at 1:55 PM, John F Sowa 
> wrote:

But the modern word
has become specialized to the single sense of efficient cause.

Only among a small minority of philosophers of science who attempt to establish 
the hegemony of the science of physics, this is probably true.

But, medicine, the biomedical sciences, the chemical (material) sciences are 
forced to face reality, the reality of the conservation laws of physics.  The 
role of efficient causality is extremely perplex in life and in the chemical 
sciences.

Einstein put it very nicely:
“In any complete theory, there is an element corresponding to each element of 
reality”.

The correspondence mapping can not be ignored as CSP recognized when he noted 
the relation between sin-sign and index and the mapping from icon to rhema.

IMHO, of course.

Cheers

jerry




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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Dear Clark and list

What I mean is that the outer world - be it matter or other living embodied 
conscious being - is not assumed as a prerequisite in phenomenology as well as 
phaneroscophy. And I do not think proof when we talk about  the possibility of 
an empirically accessible world is possible. Husserl tried to establish  the 
other and language when he worked away from his first idealistic period. I do 
not know how far he got as I have not follow the publication of his Nachlass in 
Husserliana, which seems to be almost without an end. What I do think it is 
possible to show is that in order to explain the possibility of real true and 
meaningful knowledge you need at least one experiential materially embodied 
living being, which we often call a subject. All conceptual knowledge need 
language of some sort and  -as Wittgenstein says – there are no private 
language. Thus you must assume the existence of other embodied experiential 
conscious subject in language, - and you must assume something this language is 
about. All this does not spring alone from the triadic metaphysical process 
philosophical framework. But on the other hand it is very difficult for us to 
explain ourselves from only one other aspect of reality, such as pure zero or 
Tohu va Bohu. I end up with the gnostic feeling that some basic aspect of us 
must have been there form “the beginning”. If it makes any sense at all to talk 
about one beginning. All zeroes, empty sets, vacuum fields and so on are a form 
of logical  backtracking. But as Skt. Augustine says in Book XI of his 
Confessions then the universe is not made in time but with time. It makes no 
sense asking what God was doing before the creation. When we try to determine 
the time of big bang, the physicists do it by backtracking the internal time of 
the universe. There is no universal time  “outside” the universe to place this 
event in, just like the universe is the place for all things, but it does not 
have a place of its own to be. There is nothing “outside”  or “before” the 
universe, because these concepts stop making sense outside. We can only talk 
about emptiness and eternity.

   Best
  Søren

From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 18:18
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)


On Oct 20, 2016, at 10:23 AM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

I can find no easy way from phenomenology alone - not even from Peirce’s 
triadic phaneroscophy - to the reality of an outer world and other embodied 
conscious subjects. I do not think Peirce solves this problem. Do you?

When you say to the reality of the outer world do you mean in terms of proof? 
After all in one sense Peirce’s phaneroscopy handles this well. It appears as 
real and we can not doubt. Which in a certain sense seems completely 
satisfactory. But this is because Peirce rejects the Cartesian tendencies in 
Husserl. (I’d add that Heidegger makes a similar move against Descartes and 
Husserl in Being and Time to deny that denying the real world can even be posed)

If that’s not what you mean (and forgive me - I’ve not had time to read the 
list for a while) then doesn’t Peirce’s notion of continuity solve it?  That is 
how the inside and outside are approached asymptotically letting us move from 
mind like to matter like and back?

Now if we want to say that the outer world aren’t just objects but conscious 
objects then we have to unpack what we mean. Again I think Peirce’s notion of 
growth of signs handles this without all the confusion that I think we 
sometimes get in how Levinas, Derrida, Marion or others. There’s a reason why 
post-Husserlian phenomenology goes in that direction (even among those who 
consider themselves more Husserlian than Heideggarian). While I might be wrong 
I a big part of the problem is in conceiving phenomenology too statically 
rather than as process. Trying to explain process in terms of stasis is 
inherently problematic and creates artificial problems. Peirce avoids most of 
that IMO.

On Oct 20, 2016, at 9:53 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard 
<jeffrey.down...@nau.edu<mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu>> wrote:

Husserl, for example, is working towards the same sort of end in his 
phenomenological theory, but his mathematical reflections are overly guided by 
ideas drawn from arithmetic and metrical geometries--and he misses real 
insights about the character of the continuous and discrete features in our 
observations can be drawn from graph theory and topology. As such, he (and 
Heidegger following him) simply do not provide the kind of phenomenological 
analysis of the elemental formal and material features of experience that is 
really needed.

This seems completely right, although I’d argue Heidegger in his late period is 
trying to do that. It’s just that he adopts a very unhelpful quasi-mystical and 
poetic language to do th

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jon

Yes it is both efficient and final causation and how they are related. I do 
know Peirce has several papers on that. But still how does it relate to the 
world as we know it today? Or rather how can we make a postmodern 
transdisciplinary framework that allows us to combine them?

   Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 17:59
To: Jerry LR Chandler
Cc: Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Jerry C., List:

JC:  Would it be fair to say that you seek to understand how CSP’s writings 
relate to scientific causality?

By "scientific causality," do you mean efficient causality (i.e., brute 
reactions), final causality (i.e., laws of nature), both, or something else 
altogether?

JC:  I think it is fair to ask if Jon’s views on engineering wrt CSP writings 
are typical of modern engineering disciplines, such as chemical engineering and 
molecular-biological engineering in which specific causal processes must be 
arranged from the body of scientific information (chemical / biological) 
available.

My discipline is structural engineering, in which most of the relevant causal 
processes and corresponding diagrammatic representational system rules are 
quite well-established.  I would welcome feedback on whether and how my "logic 
of ingenuity" thesis is applicable to other fields of engineering, especially 
those in which this is not (yet) the case.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Jerry LR Chandler 
> wrote:
Soren:

Would it be fair to say that you seek to understand how CSP’s writings relate 
to scientific causality?

I think it is fair to ask if Jon’s views on engineering wrt CSP writings are 
typical of modern engineering disciplines, such as chemical engineering and 
molecular-biological engineering in which specific causal processes must be 
arranged from the body of scientific information (chemical / biological) 
available.  Within the professions, these are referred to a “scale-up” 
problems.  Or, otherwise as “from the lab-bench to production”.

BTW, Soren, on a personal note and in reference to an earlier exchange here 
(2014?) on the role of  electricity in bio-cybernetics / biosemiotics, I have 
just finished writing a paper -An Introduction to the Foundations of Chemical 
Information Theory. Tarski – Lesniewski Logical Structures and the Organization 
of Natural Sorts and Kinds.

Indirectly, it draws on certain aspects of CSP logic, as well as the views of 
M. Malatesta’s on meta-languages. But, it focuses the meaning of quanta of 
electricity and the relations to symmetry.  It will be submitted for 
publication after colleagues have provided comments.

Cheers

Jerry

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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jerry and list

Yes, how we through Peirce’s theory can reconcile the scientific knowledge we 
have gathered about material and mental causality.

Look forward to read your paper when it is ready.

 Søren


From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 17:20
To: Peirce List
Cc: Søren Brier
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren:

Would it be fair to say that you seek to understand how CSP’s writings relate 
to scientific causality?

I think it is fair to ask if Jon’s views on engineering wrt CSP writings are 
typical of modern engineering disciplines, such as chemical engineering and 
molecular-biological engineering in which specific causal processes must be 
arranged from the body of scientific information (chemical / biological) 
available.  Within the professions, these are referred to a “scale-up” 
problems.  Or, otherwise as “from the lab-bench to production”.

BTW, Soren, on a personal note and in reference to an earlier exchange here 
(2014?) on the role of  electricity in bio-cybernetics / biosemiotics, I have 
just finished writing a paper -An Introduction to the Foundations of Chemical 
Information Theory. Tarski – Lesniewski Logical Structures and the Organization 
of Natural Sorts and Kinds.


Indirectly, it draws on certain aspects of CSP logic, as well as the views of 
M. Malatesta’s on meta-languages. But, it focuses the meaning of quanta of 
electricity and the relations to symmetry.  It will be submitted for 
publication after colleagues have provided comments.

Cheers

Jerry




On Oct 21, 2016, at 5:05 AM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

Jeff. List

My problem – probably arising from my scientific background as a biologist – is 
that I still do not see how Peirce explains in cosmogonical terms how we get 
from Peirce semiotic objective idealism with the universe as a grand argument 
to a physical as well as chemical theory of  matter. How do we get from the 
three universes to the world we are in today, with its physically real problem 
of global warming?

   Best
 Søren


From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 01:17
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, list:

I don’t see why you’re having problems with seeing how this is possible without 
a recognition of the independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living 
in language and culture.

Could you not simply look to the best example that embodies this integration of 
phaneroscopic metaphysics that is combined with ethics, esthetics, logic; that 
is combined with tychism, ananchism, agapism (together, synechism); which 
supports the triadic process of semiotic through pragmaticism?

Best,
Jerry R

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in itself metaphysical. Out of this combination develops 
phaneroscopic metaphysics,  which develop worlds and which is again combined 
with ethic, aesthetics and logic as semiotics. This is again combined with 
Tychism, synechism and agapism, which are partly independent of the three 
categories but supports the development of the triadic process semiotics, and 
his pragmaticism, from which a theory of meaning of a sign is developed. But I 
still have problems in seeing how this is possible without a recognition of the 
independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living in language and 
culture.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 18:22
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

Are you saying that the Categories are phaneroscopic, while the Universes are 
metaphysical?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 15:34
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)
Søren, List:
SB:  I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct 
different universes.
Just to clarify--are you saying that the categories and the universes are the 
same?

Thanks,

Jon


-
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<mailto:peirce-L@list

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jon

Yes, I kind of get that, but the transitions from signs to matter is still 
somewhat vague for me. I can see that Peirce has a kind of Zero field from 
which both matter and mind arises as sort of continuum – difficult to imagine – 
or inside and outside, which I  find easier to comprehend and  fits with his 
development of Aristotle’s  hylomorphism, meaning that all matter is alive 
“inside”. But does that also mean that all mind is matter like inside? But 
still it is pretty heavy to encompass with what we know of matter and mind to 
day. The only one who has made an attempt on this is Basarab Nicolescu through 
his theory of the hidden third  
http://basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_articles/ClujHiddenThird052009Proceedings.pdf 
, levels of reality and logic of the included middle 
http://www.basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_Notice/TJESNo_1_12_2010.pdf  and 
http://www.metanexus.net/archive/conference2005/pdf/nicolescu.pdf  and he is 
pretty Peirce inspired and combines that with his knowledge of quantum physics 
and philosophy.
Best
Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 16:11
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

I am still not sure exactly what you are asking, or what climate change has to 
do with it.  Peirce's cosmogony/cosmology conceives the second Universe of 
Brute Actuality (including physical matter) as a discontinuity that came into 
Being on the underlying continuum of potentiality--a colored mark on the 
whiteboard, in my recent adaptation of his famous diagram.  In semeiotic terms, 
per my suggestion yesterday in the thread on Peirce's Cosmology, it is the 
aggregate of the Dynamic (actual) Interpretants--which, along with the 
Immediate (potential) and Final (habitual) Interpretants, constitute the 
"living realities" that are the Conclusion of the Argument.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 4:05 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jeff. List

My problem – probably arising from my scientific background as a biologist – is 
that I still do not see how Peirce explains in cosmogonical terms how we get 
from Peirce semiotic objective idealism with the universe as a grand argument 
to a physical as well as chemical theory of  matter. How do we get from the 
three universes to the world we are in today, with its physically real problem 
of global warming?

   Best
 Søren

From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com<mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 01:17
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, list:

I don’t see why you’re having problems with seeing how this is possible without 
a recognition of the independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living 
in language and culture.

Could you not simply look to the best example that embodies this integration of 
phaneroscopic metaphysics that is combined with ethics, esthetics, logic; that 
is combined with tychism, ananchism, agapism (together, synechism); which 
supports the triadic process of semiotic through pragmaticism?

Best,
Jerry R

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in itself metaphysical. Out of this combination develops 
phaneroscopic metaphysics,  which develop worlds and which is again combined 
with ethic, aesthetics and logic as semiotics. This is again combined with 
Tychism, synechism and agapism, which are partly independent of the three 
categories but supports the development of the triadic process semiotics, and 
his pragmaticism, from which a theory of meaning of a sign is developed. But I 
still have problems in seeing how this is possible without a recognition of the 
independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living in language and 
culture.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 18:22
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

Are you saying that the Categories are phaneroscopic, while the Universes are 
metaphysical?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From:

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Sorry my last mail was an answer to Jerry not Jeff

  Søren

From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 01:17
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, list:

I don’t see why you’re having problems with seeing how this is possible without 
a recognition of the independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living 
in language and culture.

Could you not simply look to the best example that embodies this integration of 
phaneroscopic metaphysics that is combined with ethics, esthetics, logic; that 
is combined with tychism, ananchism, agapism (together, synechism); which 
supports the triadic process of semiotic through pragmaticism?

Best,
Jerry R

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in itself metaphysical. Out of this combination develops 
phaneroscopic metaphysics,  which develop worlds and which is again combined 
with ethic, aesthetics and logic as semiotics. This is again combined with 
Tychism, synechism and agapism, which are partly independent of the three 
categories but supports the development of the triadic process semiotics, and 
his pragmaticism, from which a theory of meaning of a sign is developed. But I 
still have problems in seeing how this is possible without a recognition of the 
independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living in language and 
culture.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 18:22
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

Are you saying that the Categories are phaneroscopic, while the Universes are 
metaphysical?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 15:34
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)
Søren, List:
SB:  I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct 
different universes.
Just to clarify--are you saying that the categories and the universes are the 
same?

Thanks,

Jon


-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jeff. List

My problem – probably arising from my scientific background as a biologist – is 
that I still do not see how Peirce explains in cosmogonical terms how we get 
from Peirce semiotic objective idealism with the universe as a grand argument 
to a physical as well as chemical theory of  matter. How do we get from the 
three universes to the world we are in today, with its physically real problem 
of global warming?

   Best
 Søren


From: Jerry Rhee [mailto:jerryr...@gmail.com]
Sent: 21. oktober 2016 01:17
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Soren, list:

I don’t see why you’re having problems with seeing how this is possible without 
a recognition of the independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living 
in language and culture.

Could you not simply look to the best example that embodies this integration of 
phaneroscopic metaphysics that is combined with ethics, esthetics, logic; that 
is combined with tychism, ananchism, agapism (together, synechism); which 
supports the triadic process of semiotic through pragmaticism?

Best,
Jerry R

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in itself metaphysical. Out of this combination develops 
phaneroscopic metaphysics,  which develop worlds and which is again combined 
with ethic, aesthetics and logic as semiotics. This is again combined with 
Tychism, synechism and agapism, which are partly independent of the three 
categories but supports the development of the triadic process semiotics, and 
his pragmaticism, from which a theory of meaning of a sign is developed. But I 
still have problems in seeing how this is possible without a recognition of the 
independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living in language and 
culture.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 18:22
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

Are you saying that the Categories are phaneroscopic, while the Universes are 
metaphysical?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 15:34
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)
Søren, List:
SB:  I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct 
different universes.
Just to clarify--are you saying that the categories and the universes are the 
same?

Thanks,

Jon


-
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L 
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to 
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a message not to PEIRCE-L but to 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Jon and list

Difficult question. The choice of phenomenology and to combine it with pure 
mathematics is in itself metaphysical. Out of this combination develops 
phaneroscopic metaphysics,  which develop worlds and which is again combined 
with ethic, aesthetics and logic as semiotics. This is again combined with 
Tychism, synechism and agapism, which are partly independent of the three 
categories but supports the development of the triadic process semiotics, and 
his pragmaticism, from which a theory of meaning of a sign is developed. But I 
still have problems in seeing how this is possible without a recognition of the 
independent reality of embodied conscious subjects living in language and 
culture.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 18:22
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

Are you saying that the Categories are phaneroscopic, while the Universes are 
metaphysical?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 15:34
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)
Søren, List:
SB:  I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct 
different universes.
Just to clarify--are you saying that the categories and the universes are the 
same?

Thanks,

Jon

-
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 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

 theory. Russell and Quine prejudge the answers to these 
questions because they import metaphysical conceptions and commitments for 
nominalism in some places and for idealism in others into theory formal systems 
of logic and into theory philosophical theories of sign relations and logical 
inferences.

--Jeff





Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354


From: Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>>
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 5:56 AM
To: 'Jon Alan Schmidt'; Gary Richmond
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)


Dear Gary, Jon and list



I suggest that  the problem is with a phenomenological foundation of his 
semiotics and Peirce's attempt to build a realistic ontology. In the 
phenomenological view there is no basic difference between experience and the 
outside world because there is no fundamental distinction between inside and 
outside from the start. Peirce establishes in his phaneroscophy his three 
categories from a pure mathematical and epistemological argument as a minimum 
conditions for cognition in the form of semiosis to function. Thus inside the 
ontology of phaneroscophy  I think it is fair to say that the categories do 
form three  distinct different universes.



   Best

 Søren



From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 00:09
To: Gary Richmond
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)



Gary R., List:



GR:  It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical expression of the 
categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you agree?



Yes; I actually see no significant inconsistency between your statement here 
and Jappy's hypothesis that Peirce changed theoretical frameworks from 
phenomenological Categories to ontological Universes.  That is why I began my 
post with the six different characterizations from your PowerPoint file; they 
all reflect common notions of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness.



GR:  To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break in this 
matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue.



Like Ransdell, I tend to view the development of Peirce's thought over time as 
evolutionary, rather than catastrophic (so to speak).  As such, I think that 
the shift from Categories to Universes is not so abrupt as calling it "a 
complete break" makes it sound, and Jappy never uses those words; in fact, he 
recognizes that the transition occurred over several years.  He simply observes 
in a footnote that "after 1906 Peirce never again employed his categories as 
criteria in the classification of signs."



GR:  Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, 
would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories 
in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in 
Categories).



Yes, I think that this is key; I somehow missed it when I read that passage 
right after Gary F. first brought it to my attention in this context.  Am I 
right to think that relations are Predicates, rather than Subjects, and thus 
belong in Categories, rather than Universes?



In light of the above--do we need to come up with a different term that 
encompasses both Universes of Subjects and Categories of Predicates?  
Modalities, perhaps?  Then the three Universes would be Modalities as they 
pertain to Subjects (Ideas/Things-Facts/Habits-Laws-Continua), while the three 
Categories would be Modalities as they pertain to Predicates 
(possibility/actuality/habituality).



Any comments on my hypothesis that the distinctions between the two kinds of 
Objects (Dynamic/Immediate) and among the three kinds of Interpretants 
(Immediate/Dynamic/Final) are based on the phenomenological Categories, while 
the trichotomy of each individual correlate is based on the ontological 
Universes?  What about the feasibility of constructing a 66-sign classification 
with six correlates divided by Universe and four relations divided by Category?



Regards,



Jon



On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Gary Richmond 
<gary.richm...@gmail.com<mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Jon, List,



I'm not sure I can fully agree with Jappy's/Short's analysis, at least when the 
language Jappy uses seems to imply that the three Universes represent a break 
from the categories. It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical 
expression of the categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you 
agree?



One of Short's principal theses in his work of, say, the last decade on 
Peirce's semiotic is that at several points in his career Peirce thoroughly 
rejected whole portions of his previous thinking, replacing them with entirely 
new theories. But scholars

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

I suggest that  in a phaneroscopic process ontology the categories will develop 
into worlds.

Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 15:34
To: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Søren, List:

SB:  I think it is fair to say that the categories do form three distinct 
different universes.

Just to clarify--are you saying that the categories and the universes are the 
same?

Thanks,

Jon

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Dear Gary, Jon and list

I suggest that  the problem is with a phenomenological foundation of his 
semiotics and Peirce’s attempt to build a realistic ontology. In the 
phenomenological view there is no basic difference between experience and the 
outside world because there is no fundamental distinction between inside and 
outside from the start. Peirce establishes in his phaneroscophy his three 
categories from a pure mathematical and epistemological argument as a minimum 
conditions for cognition in the form of semiosis to function. Thus inside the 
ontology of phaneroscophy  I think it is fair to say that the categories do 
form three  distinct different universes.

   Best
 Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt 
[mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 00:09
To: Gary Richmond
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Gary R., List:
GR:  It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical expression of the 
categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you agree?
Yes; I actually see no significant inconsistency between your statement here 
and Jappy's hypothesis that Peirce changed theoretical frameworks from 
phenomenological Categories to ontological Universes.  That is why I began my 
post with the six different characterizations from your PowerPoint file; they 
all reflect common notions of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness.
GR:  To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break in this 
matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue.
Like Ransdell, I tend to view the development of Peirce's thought over time as 
evolutionary, rather than catastrophic (so to speak).  As such, I think that 
the shift from Categories to Universes is not so abrupt as calling it "a 
complete break" makes it sound, and Jappy never uses those words; in fact, he 
recognizes that the transition occurred over several years.  He simply observes 
in a footnote that "after 1906 Peirce never again employed his categories as 
criteria in the classification of signs."
GR:  Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, 
would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories 
in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in 
Categories).
Yes, I think that this is key; I somehow missed it when I read that passage 
right after Gary F. first brought it to my attention in this context.  Am I 
right to think that relations are Predicates, rather than Subjects, and thus 
belong in Categories, rather than Universes?

In light of the above--do we need to come up with a different term that 
encompasses both Universes of Subjects and Categories of Predicates?  
Modalities, perhaps?  Then the three Universes would be Modalities as they 
pertain to Subjects (Ideas/Things-Facts/Habits-Laws-Continua), while the three 
Categories would be Modalities as they pertain to Predicates 
(possibility/actuality/habituality).

Any comments on my hypothesis that the distinctions between the two kinds of 
Objects (Dynamic/Immediate) and among the three kinds of Interpretants 
(Immediate/Dynamic/Final) are based on the phenomenological Categories, while 
the trichotomy of each individual correlate is based on the ontological 
Universes?  What about the feasibility of constructing a 66-sign classification 
with six correlates divided by Universe and four relations divided by Category?

Regards,

Jon

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Gary Richmond 
<gary.richm...@gmail.com<mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Jon, List,

I'm not sure I can fully agree with Jappy's/Short's analysis, at least when the 
language Jappy uses seems to imply that the three Universes represent a break 
from the categories. It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical 
expression of the categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you 
agree?

One of Short's principal theses in his work of, say, the last decade on 
Peirce's semiotic is that at several points in his career Peirce thoroughly 
rejected whole portions of his previous thinking, replacing them with entirely 
new theories. But scholars like Joseph Ransdell were critical of Short in this 
(for example, Ransdell wrote a sea

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Søren Brier]

Dear Gary, Jon and list

I suggest that  the problem is with a phenomenological foundation of his 
semiotics and Peirce’s attempt to build a realistic ontology. In the 
phenomenological view there is no basic difference between experience and the 
outside world because there is no fundamental distinction between inside and 
outside from the start. Peirce establishes in his phaneroscophy his three 
categories from a pure mathematical and epistemological argument as a minimum 
conditions for cognition in the form of semiosis to function. Thus inside the 
ontology of phaneroscophy  I think it is fair to say that the categories do 
form three  distinct different universes.

   Best
 Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 20. oktober 2016 00:09
To: Gary Richmond
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Universes and Categories (was Peirce's Cosmology)

Gary R., List:

GR:  It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical expression of the 
categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you agree?

Yes; I actually see no significant inconsistency between your statement here 
and Jappy's hypothesis that Peirce changed theoretical frameworks from 
phenomenological Categories to ontological Universes.  That is why I began my 
post with the six different characterizations from your PowerPoint file; they 
all reflect common notions of Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness.

GR:  To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break in this 
matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue.

Like Ransdell, I tend to view the development of Peirce's thought over time as 
evolutionary, rather than catastrophic (so to speak).  As such, I think that 
the shift from Categories to Universes is not so abrupt as calling it "a 
complete break" makes it sound, and Jappy never uses those words; in fact, he 
recognizes that the transition occurred over several years.  He simply observes 
in a footnote that "after 1906 Peirce never again employed his categories as 
criteria in the classification of signs."

GR:  Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, 
would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories 
in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in 
Categories).

Yes, I think that this is key; I somehow missed it when I read that passage 
right after Gary F. first brought it to my attention in this context.  Am I 
right to think that relations are Predicates, rather than Subjects, and thus 
belong in Categories, rather than Universes?

In light of the above--do we need to come up with a different term that 
encompasses both Universes of Subjects and Categories of Predicates?  
Modalities, perhaps?  Then the three Universes would be Modalities as they 
pertain to Subjects (Ideas/Things-Facts/Habits-Laws-Continua), while the three 
Categories would be Modalities as they pertain to Predicates 
(possibility/actuality/habituality).

Any comments on my hypothesis that the distinctions between the two kinds of 
Objects (Dynamic/Immediate) and among the three kinds of Interpretants 
(Immediate/Dynamic/Final) are based on the phenomenological Categories, while 
the trichotomy of each individual correlate is based on the ontological 
Universes?  What about the feasibility of constructing a 66-sign classification 
with six correlates divided by Universe and four relations divided by Category?

Regards,

Jon

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 4:34 PM, Gary Richmond 
> wrote:
Jon, List,

I'm not sure I can fully agree with Jappy's/Short's analysis, at least when the 
language Jappy uses seems to imply that the three Universes represent a break 
from the categories. It seems to me that the Universes are a metaphysical 
expression of the categories, and not at all a complete break from them. Do you 
agree?

One of Short's principal theses in his work of, say, the last decade on 
Peirce's semiotic is that at several points in his career Peirce thoroughly 
rejected whole portions of his previous thinking, replacing them with entirely 
new theories. But scholars like Joseph Ransdell were critical of Short in this 
(for example, Ransdell wrote a searingly critical review of Short's Peirce's 
Theory of Signs) for they consider Peirce's thought as essentially evolving 
over his career. To the extent that Jappy's analysis suggests a complete break 
in this matter of Categories and Universes, I believe it confuses the issue.

Nonetheless, Peirce's comments from the Prolegomena which you quoted, Jon, 
would surely seem to suggest the need to distinguish Universes from Categories 
in such ways as you pointed to (e.g., Subjects in Universes, Predicates in 
Categories).

But, in truth, I've only begun to think about these distinctions.

Best,

Gary R

[Gary Richmond]

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication 

RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Søren Brier]

Jon, I believe you  are correct, since he actually adopted the term ‘objective 
idealism’ for his metaphysics and having evolution as fundamental in his 
process philosophy. We also know that he admitted being influences by Hegel and 
Schelling, but criticizing Hegel’s metaphysics for lacking Secondness.

   Best
  Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 12. oktober 2016 04:28
To: Søren Brier
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

Søren, List:

It is interesting that you mentioned Edwina and quoted CP 6.24-25 at length.  
As you may recall, she and I discussed that same passage extensively a couple 
of months ago, in the thread on "Peirce's Objective Idealism."  Unfortunately, 
we were unable to reach agreement on whether he rejected all three forms of 
hylopathy/monism that he described, and then adopted a fourth option (her 
reading); or only rejected two of them--neutralism and materialism--in favor of 
the third, idealism (my reading).

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 6:53 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Dear Jon

I have discussed this with Edwina before. I think the correct label for Peirce 
is a Hylozoism or Hylopathism inspired by Aristotle, which only indicates that 
matter is alive and in combination with his synechism that matter is a living 
field.

Peirce writes: Has Time, or has Space, any limit or node? Is hylozoism an 
opinion, actual or conceivable, rather than a senseless vocable; and if so, 
what is, or would be, that opinion? What is consciousness or mind like; 
meaning, is it a single continuum like Time and Space, which is for different 
purposes variously broken up by that which it contains; or is it composed of 
solid atoms, or is it more like a fluid? Has truth, in Kantian phrase, any 
"material" characteristics in general, by which it can, with any degree of 
probability, be recognized? Is there, for example, any general tendency in the 
course of events, any progress in one direction on the whole? CP6.6) and 
furthermore
The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in 
Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find 
defenders today. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, 
otherwise called monism. Then the question arises whether physical laws on the 
one hand and the psychical law on the other are to be taken --
(a) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I 
would name neutralism; or,
(b) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law 
alone as primordial, which is materialism; or,
(c) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law 
alone as primordial, which is idealism.
The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to 
scientific logic as to common sense; since it requires us to suppose that a 
certain kind of mechanism will feel, which would be a hypothesis absolutely 
irreducible to reason -- an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only 
possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and 
reasonable.
Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known 
as Ockham's razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed 
than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a 
par, it seems to render both primordial.
25. The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of 
objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming 
physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of 
explaining the tri-dimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general 
characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for 
no less should be demanded of every philosophy. (CP 6.24)

Best
 Søren

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RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jon

I admit that some of those quotes spread doubts about the immanence, but I 
think one has to reflect on the Concordia transcendentalist’s influence on 
Peirce. Emmerson for one was a panentheist. There are other quotes that seem to 
support immanence and not a personal creator: Yet we must not assume that the 
qualities arose separate and came into relation afterward. It was just the 
reverse. The general indefinite potentiality became limited and heterogeneous. 
Those who express the idea to themselves by saying that the Divine Creator 
determined so and so may be incautiously clothing the idea in a garb that is 
open to criticism, but it is, after all, substantially the only philosophical 
answer to the problem. Namely, they represent the ideas as springing into a 
preliminary stage of being by their own inherent firstness. But so springing 
up, they do not spring up isolated; for if they did, nothing could unite them. 
They spring up in reaction upon one another, and thus into a kind of existence. 
This reaction and this existence these persons call the mind of God. I really 
think there is no objection to this except that it is wrapped up in figures of 
speech, instead of having the explicitness that we desire in science. For all 
you know of "minds" is from the actions of animals with brains or ganglia like 
yourselves, or at furthest like a cockroach. To apply such a word to God is 
precisely like the old pictures which show him like an aged man leaning over to 
look out from above a cloud. Considering the vague intention of it, as 
conceived by the non-theological artist, it cannot be called false, but rather 
ludicrously figurative. (CP 6. 199.)

Best
  Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 12. oktober 2016 04:09
To: Søren Brier
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

Søren, List:

SB:  I think your problem is solved by Panentheism, which accept the divine to 
be both transcendent and immanent.

Again, I am now leaning against trying to apply any such label to Peirce.  
Granted, one of the three drafts that I quoted from R 843 indicates that God is 
not merely immanent in nature; and this might plausibly be interpreted as 
compatible with panentheism, at least as you have described it here.  However, 
the other two drafts both clearly state that God is not immanent in nature and 
is not immanent in the three Universes.  That being the case, if immanence is 
required for panentheism, then it appears that Peirce was not a panentheist.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 6:43 PM, Søren Brier 
<sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> wrote:
Dear Helmut

I think your problem is solved by Panentheism, which accept the divine to be 
both transcendent and immanent. Thus the Tohu va Bohu or pure Zero is the 
transcendent, which as the first step in creation produces Firstness as real 
possibilities of forms of existence, combined with the tendency to take habits, 
which could be interpreted as The holy Ghost, which when stabilized produces 
real Secondness and goes on to order it through the self-organizing drive of 
thirdness. Now God = the Father in this scenario ,  is not a person because it 
is pure potential. A person or a subject need both Secondness and thirdness to 
manifest with a consciousness and a will. (Peirce writes: Since God, in His 
essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since 
there is strong reason to hold that what we call consciousness is either merely 
the general sensation of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some 
visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no consciousness. CP 6.489) The 
manifestation could be The son, which can both manifest as a person like  
Christ and/or Krishna  and as our inner awareness. As Meister Eckhart says the 
Sons is born again and again in every person and it is only through the birth 
of the son in our consciousness that the way to Gods is possible. This 
interpretation is pretty Gnostic and pure mystical and as such fits with  much 
Cristian mysticism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Rumi’s  Sufism and so on collected 
in what is usually called the Perennial philosophy. This view on the divine has 
been ad odds with most theistic religion that works with a personified creator.

 Best
Søren

-
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 
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RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jon

I have discussed this with Edwina before. I think the correct label for Peirce 
is a Hylozoism or Hylopathism inspired by Aristotle, which only indicates that 
matter is alive and in combination with his synechism that matter is a living 
field.

Peirce writes: Has Time, or has Space, any limit or node? Is hylozoism an 
opinion, actual or conceivable, rather than a senseless vocable; and if so, 
what is, or would be, that opinion? What is consciousness or mind like; 
meaning, is it a single continuum like Time and Space, which is for different 
purposes variously broken up by that which it contains; or is it composed of 
solid atoms, or is it more like a fluid? Has truth, in Kantian phrase, any 
"material" characteristics in general, by which it can, with any degree of 
probability, be recognized? Is there, for example, any general tendency in the 
course of events, any progress in one direction on the whole? CP6.6) and 
furthermore
The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in 
Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find 
defenders today. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, 
otherwise called monism. Then the question arises whether physical laws on the 
one hand and the psychical law on the other are to be taken --
(a) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I 
would name neutralism; or,
(b) the psychical law as derived and special, the physical law 
alone as primordial, which is materialism; or,
(c) the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law 
alone as primordial, which is idealism.
The materialistic doctrine seems to me quite as repugnant to 
scientific logic as to common sense; since it requires us to suppose that a 
certain kind of mechanism will feel, which would be a hypothesis absolutely 
irreducible to reason -- an ultimate, inexplicable regularity; while the only 
possible justification of any theory is that it should make things clear and 
reasonable.
Neutralism is sufficiently condemned by the logical maxim known 
as Ockham's razor, i.e., that not more independent elements are to be supposed 
than necessary. By placing the inward and outward aspects of substance on a 
par, it seems to render both primordial.
25. The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of 
objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming 
physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of 
explaining the tri-dimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general 
characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for 
no less should be demanded of every philosophy. (CP 6.24)

Best
 Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 11. oktober 2016 21:22
To: Helmut Raulien
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

Helmut, List:

My understanding of "pantheism" is that it entails that God is "immanent in 
nature," so Peirce's explicit denial of this in three different drafts of "A 
Neglected Argument" is pretty decisive evidence against deeming him a 
pantheist.  It seems to me that Edwina's adjustment--stating that Mind (rather 
than God) is immanent in nature--is more properly classified as panpsychism, 
and I do not believe that it is terribly controversial to apply that particular 
label to Peirce.  At least some of the other formulations that you offered 
sound to me more like panentheism than pantheism, but my impression is that 
there are a lot of different varieties, and I am not personally familiar with 
the nuances.

Regards,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - 
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 12:26 PM, Helmut Raulien 
> wrote:
List,
Regarding the question, whether Peirce was a pantheist or not, I was thinking 
about the meaning of "immanent". If it means that something is contained 
(nonlocally in this case), like as an epiphenomenon or a trait of something, 
then something "immanent" implies not being the creator of this thing. But if 
God is the creator, and still is present everywhere and everywhen, i.e. 
nonlocally and nontemporally, might this still be pantheism, though without 
immanence? In this case the universe does not contain God, but the other way 
round. And the immanence is also the other way: God is not immanent in the 
universe (or the three of them), but the universe is immanent in God? No, maybe 
one cannot say so, if one believes in creation as a process, because then in 
the beginning there must have been a God without a universe. But on 

RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Søren Brier]

Dear Helmut

I think your problem is solved by Panentheism, which accept the divine to be 
both transcendent and immanent. Thus the Tohu va Bohu or pure Zero is the 
transcendent, which as the first step in creation produces Firstness as real 
possibilities of forms of existence, combined with the tendency to take habits, 
which could be interpreted as The holy Ghost, which when stabilized produces 
real Secondness and goes on to order it through the self-organizing drive of 
thirdness. Now God = the Father in this scenario ,  is not a person because it 
is pure potential. A person or a subject need both Secondness and thirdness to 
manifest with a consciousness and a will. (Peirce writes: Since God, in His 
essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since 
there is strong reason to hold that what we call consciousness is either merely 
the general sensation of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some 
visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no consciousness. CP 6.489) The 
manifestation could be The son, which can both manifest as a person like  
Christ and/or Krishna  and as our inner awareness. As Meister Eckhart says the 
Sons is born again and again in every person and it is only through the birth 
of the son in our consciousness that the way to Gods is possible. This 
interpretation is pretty Gnostic and pure mystical and as such fits with  much 
Cristian mysticism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Rumi’s  Sufism and so on collected 
in what is usually called the Perennial philosophy. This view on the divine has 
been ad odds with most theistic religion that works with a personified creator.

 Best
Søren

From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de]
Sent: 11. oktober 2016 19:26
To: g...@gnusystems.ca
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

List,
Regarding the question, whether Peirce was a pantheist or not, I was thinking 
about the meaning of "immanent". If it means that something is contained 
(nonlocally in this case), like as an epiphenomenon or a trait of something, 
then something "immanent" implies not being the creator of this thing. But if 
God is the creator, and still is present everywhere and everywhen, i.e. 
nonlocally and nontemporally, might this still be pantheism, though without 
immanence? In this case the universe does not contain God, but the other way 
round. And the immanence is also the other way: God is not immanent in the 
universe (or the three of them), but the universe is immanent in God? No, maybe 
one cannot say so, if one believes in creation as a process, because then in 
the beginning there must have been a God without a universe. But on the other 
hand, this might be a too anthropocentric concept of God and of creation: Maybe 
it is not a linear process, like a carpenter making a chair?
About possibilities: Are they creative or privative? Is a possibility an 
invention, or something that remains when a lot of other items in question have 
been identified as, or turned out to be, impossibilities? With God as 
firstness, it should be the first (creative possibility) , I guess. But this 
might be a hen-and-egg-question, which suggests that there was a beginning: 
Either a nothing, or an everything. But maybe there was no beginning (like eg. 
buddhists claim).
Best,
Helmut

 11. Oktober 2016 um 16:59 Uhr
 g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:

Jon, list,

On the question of which of the three Universes may not “have a Creator 
independent of it,” I’d like to offer an argument that it could be the Universe 
of Firstness rather than Thirdness. However I won’t have time this week to 
construct an argumentation as thoroughgoing as your argument for Thirdness as 
Creator; so instead, I’ll just insert a few comments into your post, below. 
I’ll put Peirce’s words in bold.

Gary F

} God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine 
in the lapse of all the ages. [Thoreau] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway


From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 9-Oct-16 22:45

List:
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I started the thread on "Peirce's Theory of 
Thinking," there is an intriguing paragraph about cosmology in the first 
additament to "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God."  It did not 
actually accompany the article originally, but nevertheless is in the Collected 
Papers as CP 6.490.  Before discussing it directly, a few preliminaries are in 
order.
In the very first sentence of the published article itself, Peirce stated, "The 
word 'God,' so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say), is the definable proper 
name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three 
Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2.434).  In the second additament, the 
one that did appear in The Hibbert Journal, he added, "It is that course of 
meditation upon the three Universes which 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] RE: I hope this provokes helpful thought

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jerry

It is the question about what experience is. It is qualitative different from 
matter, information, logic, geometry and mathematics and we have no idea of how 
to explain it from a materialistic ontology. We hope it is produced by the 
brain, but we have no idea how.  “The brain” is a physiological scientific 
model we have created from what we know so far. We do not know much about what 
its role is on creating experience, emotions and all kinds of through, except 
that it is not possible to do it without. So I do not think that a geometrical  
model will explain experience. Rather experience is the prerequisite for 
producing geometrical explanations.

Best
Søren

From: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com]
Sent: 12. september 2016 00:02
To: Søren Brier
Cc: VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL; Peirce List
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] RE: I hope this provokes helpful thought

Soren:


On Sep 11, 2016, at 6:28 AM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

Dear Klee

You completely miss the nature of the experiential consciousness we need in 
order to perceive information and geometry.

Best

   Søren   Brier


Can you extend your message?  I do not understand either the logical or 
scientific or metaphysical nature of its meaning.

Cheers

Jerry










From: 
online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com<mailto:online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com> 
[mailto:online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Klee Irwin
Sent: 10. september 2016 23:29
To: 
online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com<mailto:online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: VINOD KUMAR SEHGAL
Subject: [Sadhu Sanga] I hope this provokes helpful thought

Guys (and gals), I hope this helps. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILUlqd6O0MQ=youtu.be

No need to worry about understanding the physics part of this presentation. The 
salient point for our discussion forum is the notion of what information is. As 
I’ve previously said, if we are to hypothesize that the Vedic and Aborigional, 
etc. view that reality is made of thought or consciousness is true and is 
related to the more materialist oriented view that reality is 
“information-theoretic”, we can play with a thought:

If reality is made of consciousness, then apparently consciousness is behaving 
mathematically – specifically according to some unknown geometric code, since 
every possible measurement you can conceive of has a geometric component.
Accordingly, we may ask as scientists and philosophers, “Can we know that 
geometric code (i.e., language) by which the universe expresses itself?”

As so many here have commented on during the last many months, there are 
definitional discrepancies that sometimes make it appear that we are 
disagreeing when, in fact, we have moved too fast without first synchronizing a 
common set of definitions. For our group of mathematicians and physicists 
working on this general problem, we deduce that consciousness deals in 
information, i.e., awareness or thought. Even the choice of being aware of 
“everything” or “nothingness” is itself an idea or thought or choice of what to 
be aware of. In this way, we may be able to reconcile the terms “consciousness” 
and “information”. One cannot have “information” without consciousness, choice 
and observation (i.e., “measurement”). And so, one may discard the term 
“information” temporarily for sake of clarity or finding connection between 
English terms. That term may be replaced by “choice” or “choice of awareness”.

Now, in the universe of all thought or information, there is a special class of 
symbolism or code with ultra-low subjectivity – geometric symbolism/language. 
Such an abstract code made of thought can form thought itself, even notions of 
emergent “universal consciousness”.

For those interested, this article published in JCR is 
interesting:http://www.quantumgravityresearch.org/portfolio/hard-problem-of-consciousness/

Klee Irwin
www.QuantumGravityResearch.org<http://www.quantumgravityresearch.org/>


--

Fourth International Conference 'Science and Scientist - 2016'
August 26 — 27, 2016, Bangalore University
http://scsiscs.org/conference/scienceandscientist/2016

Sponsorship and Donations for Vedanta and Science Dialogue: 
http://scienceandscientist.org/donate

Reply to Gustavo Caetano-Anollés: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2016.1160191

Why Biology is Beyond Physical Sciences?: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.5923/j.als.20160601.03

Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2015.1085138

Harmonizer: http://scienceandscientist.org/harmonizer

Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture & Science
Princeton, NJ, USA: http://bviscs.org<http://bviscs.org/>

Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute: http://

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

[Søren Brier]

'Semiotic realism' is good - could we extend it to  'triadic semiotic process 
realism' ?
   
Søren

-Original Message-
From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] 
Sent: 23. august 2016 23:27
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation


> On Aug 23, 2016, at 2:31 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> If this is the case, then what accounts for Peirce's consistent assignment of 
> "Dynamic" to the actual Object and Interpretant, rather than the possible 
> (Immediate) Object and Interpretant?

Because the possible objects and interpretants are determined by this original 
object. So the potential is in this original. The possible objects are 
instantiations of possibilities. 

One can debate how platonic Peirce actually is. Or what ontologically these 
original objects are. As I’ve noted it’s here in his basic ontology and 
cosmology he’s most controversial. Although perhaps that’s true of any 
foundational ontology if only because the arguments for it will always be 
exceedingly weak. I don’t think one need adopt that cosmology to deal with 
Peirce’s semiotics. 

As a more practical matter though we must remember that anything can be a 
dynamic object. We aren’t necessarily talking of tangible things. The idea of 
something, like say Sherlock Holmes, can be a dynamic object if that is the 
object of discussion. Again because of our culture’s more nominalistic 
tendencies, we often want some core material entities as dynamic objects. Once 
you reject nominalism though then the types of objects open for dynamic objects 
increases a great deal. Further, for Peirce, material objects are themselves 
thought of only as habits in semiotic processes. i.e. it’s signs all the way 
down.

Without getting into the discussion of “objective idealism” (I’ve not yet had a 
chance to read the thread) I’ll just say that whatever Peirce’s preferences in 
adopting Schelling’s term I much prefer “semiotic realism” as my term.


>> CG:  In this case the dynamic object sets at the start of semiosis but 
>> contains within it virtually all the ways it can be represented. Now the 
>> actual mechanics of that representing are of course unique and tied to 
>> chance. But in terms of potential the original dynamic object determines the 
>> immediate object and then the interpretant through the sign.
>> 
> Would it then be accurate to say that the Dynamic Object virtually contains 
> the Immediate Object, which virtually contains the Sign, which virtually 
> contains the Immediate Intepretant, which virtually contains the Dynamic 
> Interpretant, which virtually contains the Final Interpretant?  I am still 
> getting a handle on what exactly we (and Peirce) mean by "virtual.”

Since the semiotic process is continuous there’s virtuality all the way back.

Again Scotus’ example is worthwhile considering. He noted a circle is virtually 
in the sphere. If one things of the possible ways a sphere could be 
represented, then a circle is an obvious 2D representation. So if you start at 
the object and go forward all the representations are virtually present. 

This is important in phenomenology (especially if one is applying Peirce to 
more traditional phenomenology of the Husserl or Heidegger varieties). It means 
that we have a direct perception of these representations in the encounter with 
the object. This avoids a lot of problems that Husserl ran into when trying to 
deal with how we experience objects. Again, as is so often the case, Peirce’s 
terminology offers a huge degree of clarity. That clarity in turn helps one 
avoid philosophical mistakes. While it may be hyperbole, I like to imagine that 
a lot of the philosophical dead ends of the 20th century could have been 
avoided with that clarity.





-
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 .

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

[Søren Brier]

I do also think that this must be what synechism means. But what then is the 
habit that drives evolution and the growth if mind. I have sometime compared it 
to Schopenhauer’s Will.

  Søren

From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca]
Sent: 22. august 2016 18:40
To: Søren Brier; 'Jon Alan Schmidt'
Cc: Peirce-L; g...@gnusystems.ca; lbr...@pucsp.br; lbr...@pq.cnpq.br
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

Dear Soren:

Thank you for your comments - I agree; I think that the debate on 'which is 
first' rests within our dualism, derived from Cartesianism.

That's why I see Peirce's objective idealism as NOT the same as idealism, which 
does present Mind as primordial/primary. Nor is it materialism for the same 
reason. My view is that, within Peirce's philosophy, Mind cannot exist except 
as matter; and Matter cannot exist except within the organizational habits of 
Mind. Neither is first in either existentiality or, certainly, reality. This, 
to me, is also an Aristotelian analysis.

Edwina


- Original Message -
From: Søren Brier<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>
To: 'Jon Alan Schmidt'<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com> ; Edwina 
Taborsky<mailto:tabor...@primus.ca>
Cc: Peirce-L<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> ; 
g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> ; 
lbr...@pucsp.br<mailto:lbr...@pucsp.br> ; Lucia Santaelle Braga 
(lbr...@pq.cnpq.br)<mailto:lbr...@pq.cnpq.br)>
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2016 12:22 PM
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

Dear Jon and Edwina

In a way I think that you are both right. But I think the focus on if matter or 
mind was first is not very fruitful and may come from our dualistic upbringing. 
I view Peirce as a synechist  triadic process philosopher. He has accepted the 
term objective idealist for his philosophy and accepted that there are some 
similarities with Hegel’s philosophy, but that his own was much more realistic. 
I think his semiotic philosophy makes him produces something for which we may 
not have a concept yet. I discussed it with Lucia Santaella some years ago, who 
told me that she was looking into this problem. But I have never seen anything 
from her in English on the matter so far. But maybe she can enlighten us? Ivo 
Ibri have a chapter on it in  Vinicius and Eliseo’s new book: Peirce and 
Biosemiotics: A guess at the riddle of life, on which I have just finished a 
review to CHK. But I do not think he solved this problem, but developed another 
view. Personally I am still wondering what kind of force it is that a sign (not 
its tokens) is? In a way it neither physical or psychological.

   Best
   Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 22. august 2016 15:19
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Peirce-L; g...@gnusystems.ca<mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

Edwina, List:

I try to be careful to use appropriate disclaimers when I am expressing a 
subjective opinion, but the issue here is an objective fact--in CP 6.24-25, 
Peirce explicitly defines idealism as the view that the psychical law is 
primordial, while the physical law is derived and special, and then declares 
that this is precisely his view.  Other passages in his writings shed further 
light on it, including some important nuances; but unless you can show me one 
where he clearly and definitively refutes this position, I rest my case.  I 
leave it to the judgment of the List community which of us has the more 
persuasive argument.

Regards,

Jon

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 7:53 AM, Edwina Taborsky 
<tabor...@primus.ca<mailto:tabor...@primus.ca>> wrote:
Jon, list

With regard to the reality/fact, that we are BOTH reasonably intelligent 
explorers and analysts of Peircean semiosis - then, I think such an opinion is 
made clear by the liberal use of such phrases as 'in my view', in my opinion, 
in my analysis'...rather than assertions  YOU are misreading etc...

With regard to the objective idealism of Peirce - you are right - I didn't 
explain myself well. I did not mean neutralism, where both materialism and 
idealism are originating forces and thus cancel each other; I meant that both 
co-exist; neither can exist without the other. I simply don't read his 
objective idealism - which i consider as NOT equivalent to idealism [while it 
appears that you do]  - as considering that idealism is primordial.As to which 
is first - his outline of the emergence of the universe is that - before matter 
- there was nothing.  [1.411] That means - no Mind. No matter and no mind- 
instead; just nothing.

And "it would be a mistake to conceive of the psychical and the physical 
aspects of matter as two aspects absolutely distinct" 6.268. Since they are not 
distinct - then, I don't see how idealism is primordial. Objective idealism, on 
the

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jon and Edwina

In a way I think that you are both right. But I think the focus on if matter or 
mind was first is not very fruitful and may come from our dualistic upbringing. 
I view Peirce as a synechist  triadic process philosopher. He has accepted the 
term objective idealist for his philosophy and accepted that there are some 
similarities with Hegel’s philosophy, but that his own was much more realistic. 
I think his semiotic philosophy makes him produces something for which we may 
not have a concept yet. I discussed it with Lucia Santaella some years ago, who 
told me that she was looking into this problem. But I have never seen anything 
from her in English on the matter so far. But maybe she can enlighten us? Ivo 
Ibri have a chapter on it in  Vinicius and Eliseo’s new book: Peirce and 
Biosemiotics: A guess at the riddle of life, on which I have just finished a 
review to CHK. But I do not think he solved this problem, but developed another 
view. Personally I am still wondering what kind of force it is that a sign (not 
its tokens) is? In a way it neither physical or psychological.

   Best
   Søren

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 22. august 2016 15:19
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Peirce-L; g...@gnusystems.ca
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation

Edwina, List:

I try to be careful to use appropriate disclaimers when I am expressing a 
subjective opinion, but the issue here is an objective fact--in CP 6.24-25, 
Peirce explicitly defines idealism as the view that the psychical law is 
primordial, while the physical law is derived and special, and then declares 
that this is precisely his view.  Other passages in his writings shed further 
light on it, including some important nuances; but unless you can show me one 
where he clearly and definitively refutes this position, I rest my case.  I 
leave it to the judgment of the List community which of us has the more 
persuasive argument.

Regards,

Jon

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 7:53 AM, Edwina Taborsky 
> wrote:
Jon, list

With regard to the reality/fact, that we are BOTH reasonably intelligent 
explorers and analysts of Peircean semiosis - then, I think such an opinion is 
made clear by the liberal use of such phrases as 'in my view', in my opinion, 
in my analysis'...rather than assertions  YOU are misreading etc...

With regard to the objective idealism of Peirce - you are right - I didn't 
explain myself well. I did not mean neutralism, where both materialism and 
idealism are originating forces and thus cancel each other; I meant that both 
co-exist; neither can exist without the other. I simply don't read his 
objective idealism - which i consider as NOT equivalent to idealism [while it 
appears that you do]  - as considering that idealism is primordial.As to which 
is first - his outline of the emergence of the universe is that - before matter 
- there was nothing.  [1.411] That means - no Mind. No matter and no mind- 
instead; just nothing.

And "it would be a mistake to conceive of the psychical and the physical 
aspects of matter as two aspects absolutely distinct" 6.268. Since they are not 
distinct - then, I don't see how idealism is primordial. Objective idealism, on 
the other hand, merges the psychical and physical. It doesn't define them as 
ONE force; it acknowledges they are two - but - they were never separate.

Therefore, my reading of Peirce sees his objective idealism as quite different 
from your reading of him as an idealist.

Actually, if one wants to discuss primordial forces, one can consider the Three 
Categories, where 'three elements are active in the world; first, chance; 
second, law; and third, habit-taking' 1.409. Before the forces of matter 
[Secondness] and mind [Thirdness], there was chance/randomness [Firstness]. 
This too suggests that neither the material nor mental forces are primordial.

But - "Out of the womb of indeterminacy, we must say that there would have come 
something, by the Principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by 
the principle of habit there would have been a second flash. Though time would 
not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first, because 
resulting from it. Then thre would have come other successions ever more and 
more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever 
strengthening themselves, until the events would have been bound together into 
something like a continuous flow" 1.412.

My view of the above is that neither the mental nor the material are 
primordial; they co-develop. To me - that is what objective idealism means.

Edwina

- Original Message -
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Peirce-L ; 
g...@gnusystems.ca
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 

SV: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] New Experiences

[Søren Brier]

I think that Peirce and Heidegger has a lot in common: 1. A phenomenological 
foundation in their philosophies, which Peirce calls phaneroscophy and 2. They 
are both process philosophers, an aspect that separates them from the young 
Husserl, with his absolutism. 3.  The dynamical Dasein of Heidegger is close to 
the dynamic symbol of which the human self consist in the pragmaticist 
philosophy of Peirce in a Tychastic, synechistic and agapastic universe.

  Cheers

  Søren

Fra: Stephen Jarosek [mailto:sjaro...@iinet.net.au]
Sendt: 4. juni 2016 11:06
Til: 'Peirce-L'
Cc: online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] New Experiences

>”That said the type of question of being that Heidegger does seems largely 
>absent in Peirce.”

I do not disagree. And after glancing quickly through Joseph’s linked article, 
I take the point being made.  However, people have a limited time on this 
earth, and it would be interesting to see the narrative evolve were it possible 
to bring key thinkers together. In my 2001 Semiotica article, I referenced 
Peirce’s observation “the man is the thought” to make my point “the culture is 
the thought”. There is no reason why, given enough time, Peirce would not have 
come to appreciate the importance of phenomenology au Heidegger.

Ultimately we are all talking about the same thing (might I suggest – knowing 
how to be), and the fact that some people are bringing different lenses to the 
conversation does not mean that they are necessarily wrong to do so. Framed in 
the context of knowing how to be, might that not ultimately be what both 
pragmatism and phenomenology distill to? Phenomenology (Heidegger) concerns 
itself with being, and pragmatism concerns itself with establishing the things 
that matter… I suggest that there necessarily exists a common point of 
intersection between them.

Or to put it another way… There is much more to pragmatism than simply 
exercising mind-body predispositions to establish the things that matter. 
Humans in culture observe what others are doing in order to fast-track the 
learning process, and it is not trivial or incidental. We are not talking just 
“memes”… think of our accents when we speak. Imitation au Dawkinsian memetics 
is simplistic, but imitation in the context of pragmatism and knowing how to be 
plays a very important role. Why would Peirce, given enough time on this earth, 
not come to a similar understanding? I mean, once we go down this path, other 
possibilities with important and practical consequences enter into the 
narrative… for example, gender roles within the context of culture.

And as per the point that I’ve made in other conversations… imitation is 
integral to overcoming entropy. Knowing how to be brings physics and philosophy 
together into a shared narrative.

From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sent: Friday, 3 June 2016 4:46 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] New Experiences


On Jun 2, 2016, at 5:26 AM, Stephen Jarosek 
> wrote:

To cut a long story short… it all revolves around knowing how to be. To those 
familiar with Heidegger, Dasein is the closest analogy to what I have in mind. 
For those familiar with CS Peirce, pragmatism relates.

Yes, Heidegger’s phenomenology engages with a lot of background practices and 
other types of things rather than just what normally goes under consciousness. 
In that regard his phenomenology in some ways is much more like the role 
experience plays in Peirce. People, like the original list originator Joe 
Ransdell, argue against Peirce as a phenomenologist. But most of his critiques 
apply more to Husserl styled phenomenology rather than what comes later. That 
said the type of question of being that Heidegger does seems largely absent in 
Peirce.


http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/PHENOM.HTM

To the point about how different must one be to have a different state of 
being, I think it depends somewhat. The Peircean answer would most likely be in 
terms of continuity. That is the way of being of two twins raised in the same 
how is quite close. The way of being of a person raised in an educated middle 
class home in the 21st century west is quite different from someone raised in 
more primitive conditions thousands of years ago. Yet they’re still similar. To 
borrow Nagel, move towards what it’s like to be a bat and the difference is 
enough that we’d call it a great difference.

-
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 .

SV: Fwd: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: [Sadhu Sanga] Paper Refuting Darwinism Published in Journal 'Communicative & Integrative Biology'

[Søren Brier]

Good. I do not know how I ended up on the Sadhu Sanga list either, but theory 
of consciousness is one of my main interests.
   Søren

Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sendt: 2. februar 2016 18:14
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: Fwd: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: [Sadhu Sanga] Paper Refuting 
Darwinism Published in Journal 'Communicative & Integrative Biology'

Soren, Gary R., Stephen J., list,

The situation seems more complicated than I thought. I find that some of 
Stephen Jarosek's posts to Sadhu Sanga seem as if bcc'd to peirce-l. I doubt 
that both Soren and Stephen J. are doing it either accidentally by their own 
actions or on purpose.

At Sadhu Sanga, a person named Mark Iosim, to whom Stephen J. (in a message 
seemingly bcc'd to peirce-l) was replying at Sadhu Sanga, wrote, "I do not know 
how I ended up on this mailing list," i.e., Sadhu Sanga. Back in Dec 2015 I 
thought (in viewing my online spam folder) that somebody had subscribed me to 
Sadhu Sanga, so I sent an unsubscribe message at that time.

It's as if Sadhu Sanga itself has arranged for messages from peirce-listers on 
Sadhu Sanga to be automatically bcc'd as if by the given peirce-lister to 
peirce-l (it would have to be that way, since Sadhu Sanga itself is not 
subscribed to peirce-l). We may need to take this up with the proprietor of the 
Sadhu Sanga list.

Best, Ben

On 2/2/2016 11:45 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Soren,

Did you see this message from Ben? Are you accidentally Bccing peirce-l? If 
you're not certain, would you check with a tech person to see that you are 
inadvertently copying these posts to peirce-l

Best,

Gary Richmond


Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690

-- Forwarded message --
From: Benjamin Udell <bud...@nyc.rr.com<mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com>>
Date: Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 10:46 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: [Sadhu Sanga] Paper Refuting 
Darwinism Published in Journal 'Communicative & Integrative Biology'
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>


Edwina, list,

IUPUI's technical person told me that Sadhu Sanga is not currently subscribed 
to peirce-l, at least not by its email address 
online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com<mailto:online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com> 
or something like it. I have checked and seen that new messages have appeared 
at Sadhu Sanga that have not appeared at peirce-l. Maybe somebody subscribed 
then unsubscribed Sadhu Sanga to peirce-l.

Your guess that something in the comments from Sadhu Sanga was activating the 
spam filters appears to have worked, since your message got through when you 
re-sent it after removing much of the comments from Sadhu Sanga. I noticed that 
somebody's signature often used there contains image links etc., something 
there must bother the spam filters.

Best, Ben

On 2/2/2016 10:09 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

I don't know if this post will get through; my server notified me that it was 
spam. So, I'm removing much of the comments from sadhu sanga...Again, this post 
didn't come from the Peirce-L site nor from Soren. It came from the Sadhu Sanga 
site  - and I don't think the Peirce-L site should be an appendage of that site.

Edwina

- Original Message -
From: Edwina Taborsky<mailto:tabor...@primus.ca>
To: Søren Brier<mailto:sb@cbs.dk> ; 
peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: [Sadhu Sanga] Paper Refuting 
Darwinism Published in Journal 'Communicative & Integrative Biology'

Soren - I think it's useless to argue with a fundamentalist who is isolated 
from reality. The statements he makes are ungrounded and totally detached from 
the real world and thus, are outside of rational or logical debate: , eg, he 
writes:

1) " There is no evidence for macroevolution presupposition and thus we do not 
accept it. We accept subjective evolution of consciousness and not objective 
evolution of bodies."

There is evidence for macroevolution - but evidence for the 'subjective 
evolution of consciousness'? No, there is no evidence for this. But - Dr. 
Shanta asserts that his faith-based conclusion is valid.

2) Democracy is not based upon a scientific foundation and applying such a 
system is extremely harmful (as we are witnessing at various parts of the 
world) for a society, where unwise individuals form the majority. Will you 
accept, if illiterate people (or individuals from commerce/arts/’political 
science’ background) are given the power to judging by a majority voting system 
‘who is the best scientist?’

The above statement by Dr. Shanta is illogical and irrational. Democracy has 
nothing to do with science but is a method of making decisions based on an 
assum

SV: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture?

[Søren Brier]

Dear Gary

My question was to a Bhakti Vedanta apprentice who believe that the  absolute 
truth was to be found in the Vedas and therefore doubted science, evolution and 
democracy. Although the quotes you have found are interesting I do not quite 
see how they answer the question?

 Best
   Søren

Fra: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sendt: 31. januar 2016 15:50
Til: 'Peirce-L'
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in 
one culture?

List,

My online book Turning Signs is, in part, an attempt to give a positive answer 
to Søren’s question in the subject line. Since my blog post today, 
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/2016/01/bodymind-evolves/, draws heavily upon Peirce 
and has relevant implications, I’m posting it here in full. It is of course 
only a fragment of Turning Signs, but it contains a link to the main text where 
a key term is developed.

Suppose we define ‘self’ as the boundary between internal and external worlds. 
Its social function then is to manifest the individual person in the social 
milieu; but this also means concealing the primal 
person behind the mask of 
individuality. Now suppose that primal person is the deeper self as ‘inner 
world’: how primal is it? In Peirce's evolutionary cosmology, it goes all the 
way back to the beginning:

The distinction between the inner and the outer worlds antedates Time. I do not 
mean by the inner world that human consciousness which Baldwin and Royce have 
lately so forcibly reminded us is a social development and therefore very 
recent, only now in fact in process of taking a shape which has not yet been 
attained. The inner world that I mean is something very primitive. The original 
quality in itself with its immediate unity belonged to that inner world, a 
world of possibilities, Plato's world. The accidental reaction awoke it into a 
consciousness of duality, of struggle and therefore of antagonism between an 
inner and an outer. Thus, the inner world was first, and its unity comes from 
that firstness. The outer world was second. The social world was logically 
developed out of those two and the physiological structure of man was brought 
to forms adapted to that development.
— NEM 4, 141 (probably 1898)

Peirce is here proposing a co-evolution of a ‘the social world’ and the 
physical form of humanity – a more daring and comprehensive hypothesis than the 
co-evolution of language and brain as advanced by Deacon (1997), for instance. 
The logical development of the social world is the continuing evolution of 
Thought in the Peircean sense, of Thirdness mediating between the Firstness and 
Secondness which it involves, for ‘everything is involved which can be evolved’ 
(CP 4.86). Insofar as humanity is engaged in learning from experience, it 
continues to evolve through collective pursuit of the truth we hope to arrive 
at consensually.

This ultimate destiny of opinion is quite independent of how you, I, or any man 
may persist in thinking. It is thought, but it is not my thought or yours, but 
is the thought that will conquer. It is this that every student hopes for. It 
is the Truth; and the reality of this truth lies, not at all in its being 
thought, but in the compulsion with which every thinker will be made to bow to 
it, a compulsion which constitutes it to be exterior to his thought. If this 
hope is altogether vain, if there is no such compulsion, or externality, then 
there is no true Knowledge at all and reasoning is altogether idle. If the hope 
is destined only partially to be realized, then there is an approximate reality 
and truth, which is not exact.

—MS 735, “The Theory of Reasoning,” undated (quoted in Kaag 2014, Kindle 
Locations 2034-2036)



Gary f.

} And one day you get that letter you've been waiting for forever. And 
everything it says is true. And then in the last line it says: Burn this. 
[Laurie Anderson] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway



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SV: Can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture?Re: [PEIRCE-L] Individual universal spirituality and mutual respect.

[Søren Brier]

Thanks Gary, allow me to take care of a few spelling errors and missing words 
corrected in the text below. It was written late at night. Maybe I should have 
brought up the question of  if we could integrate democracy, spirituality and 
science with capitalism too?

  Søren

Fra: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sendt: 30. januar 2016 18:20
Til: Peirce-L
Cc: Søren Brier
Emne: Can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture?Re: 
[PEIRCE-L] Individual universal spirituality and mutual respect.

​Stephen, List,

I have taken the liberty of cutting and pasting Soren's post which, I agree, 
deserves broader distribution. While the post is itself not specifically 
Peirce-related, in the context of Soren's work in this area, one can certainly 
see the deep connections.

I have changed the subject line, using Soren's good, final question in the 
post. Thanks for pointing to it, Stephen.

Best,

Gary R

Dear Dr. Bhakti Niskama Shanta

It is well-known that the dominant form of science in the world today is 
established  in Europe and later in the US and therefore based on the tradition 
from the Greek philosophers, which are famous for starting their Deliberation 
on the Cosmos first and the divine later. This was  developed further with the 
birth of the empirical science from the renaissance and on with Galilei and in 
the Enlightenment science released itself from the philosophical influence and 
political power of the Catholic  church. Modernity is characterized by a spilt 
between religion, science, art, money and politics. Thus we no longer have a 
center in our democratic society based on a divine Pharaoh, Kaiser, sultan, 
king og Rajah that has the religious, political, economic, juridical  and  
violence power concentrated in one person at the center  as  the Dalai Lama had 
before he denounced his political power and encouraged democracy.  Niklas 
Luhmann conceptualized truth, love, power, money as symbolic generalized media 
of communication that are autopoietic self-organized and therefore closed to 
each other but compete about who should have most influence on the cultural and 
social idea of rationality.

Democracy is not a part of the Vedic teaching at all. It is interesting to see 
how Dalai Lama and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dealt with this. Both of them let the 
social organization to the political and economic forces in democracy and 
established the spiritual dimension in its own autocratic organization. They 
also let science develop in its own system. Even the catholic church has 
recognized evolution (and ecology)as the scientific view of the living world as 
well as the big bang cosmogony. Now we know that theories of science do not 
represent the only form of knowledge in society and certainly not the final and 
absolute truth, which  you seem to claim for your philosophical-religious 
system. The spiritual truth you speak about is something else than what true 
science seek. The deep problem is how we deal with these different types of 
knowledge because your idea of truth is not the scientific one.

Anyway the Vedic view of these things has to prove itself and the nation India 
built upon this philosophical-theological culture and being the biggest 
democracy on earth still needs to prove itself as having a superior knowledge 
that can produce a superior culture. But maybe you think this is only possible 
by going back to the pre-democratic structure of culture? We see movement like 
that in Russia and  the orthodox church with Putin as a king or new Czar and in 
Islamic State attempting to establish the old sultan reign. The two attempt  
appear very violent and not very productive and beneficial for the common man. 
So can we encompass spirituality, democracy and science in one culture, do you 
think?
​

Warmest

   Søren Brier​

[Gary Richmond]

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690<tel:718%20482-5690>

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 9:14 AM, Stephen C. Rose 
<stever...@gmail.com<mailto:stever...@gmail.com>> wrote:
This is a reply I wrote to Soren's note to a Google group I do not belong to. I 
hope he posts it here as it is interesting.
Soren Brier wrote“spirituality, democracy and science in one culture,”

These are keywords of an emerging universal and global culture. The binary 
activities of Putin and ISIS and elements within democratic societies are 
gradually doomed to give way to a more reasoned approach. The underlying reason 
for this transition is the accelerating movement toward what Peirce offered as 
the linchpins of an evolutionary agapistic reality: a sense of fallibility and 
a sense of continuity contributing to the gradual decline of religion and its 
replacement by individual universal spirituality and mutual respect.


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PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Re

SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

[Søren Brier]

Dear John

That is a pity, because for me this is such a central question, which so many 
with a background in the science or logic and mathematical philosophy avoids to 
deal with. That maybe why I have so few suggestions to improve my attempt in 
Cybersemiotics.  I would really like to have papers on this to Cybernetics & 
Human Knowing. A special issue if there are several that want to attempt this 
difficult area.

Best
Søren

Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 30. december 2015 19:09
Til: Søren Brier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Yes. We’ve discussed this before here. We disagree on the usefulness of 
phenomenology and hermeneutics for dealing with the problem. I also think that 
he informational approach by itself is insufficient. I think we need to 
understand the dynamics involved as well as using a semiotic perspective to 
explain why the problem seems intractable. Nut I don’t have the time to go into 
this here and now.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus and Senior Rsearcch Associate, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: Wednesday, 30 December 2015 4:33 PM
To: John Collier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Dear John

I agree on the irreducibility of the sign triad. My main point is that we do 
not from the material, energetic or the informational ontology worldview have 
any idea of how it could emerge from that foundation. It only works from 
Peirce’s foundation. That is the geniality of what he created – in my view. 
Everyone who wants to use his concepts has to use his philosophical foundation 
or create a better one. And the so called scientific ones that does not 
integrate phenomenological and hermeneutic views are not able to do the job. 
The informational and the info-computational do not.

   Søren

Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 30. december 2015 11:01
Til: Søren Brier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Søren,

I have argued for some time that if Peircean thirds are irreducible they must 
be emergent. I see no reason to doubt that. I think that Deacon’s views are 
reductionist in some respects, though he is changing that slowly (he quotes me 
on information in his second book, for example, but I don’t think he absorbed 
the significance of the quote). I believe that information is fundamental, and 
that it is physical, but that is not a materialist view.

I don’t see Stjernfelt the same way as you do. He doesn’t talk about 
self-organization or emergence directly, but he does think that thirds are 
irreducible. His arguments about the centrality of dicisigns don’t make a lot 
of sense otherwise. But perhaps he is a more cryptic version of Marcello 
Barbieri. I doubt that, though.

Marcello is indeed very much upfront that he doesn’t see Piece as scientific. I 
have argued that his views imply anti-reductionism, however, in spite of 
himself. He denies that. Howard Pattee disappointed Marcello when he said he 
took a basically antireductionist view on meaning. My views are similar to 
Howard’s but I don’t like his epistemic and other cuts. I see the problem they 
are supposed to address; I don’t think they are a solution. Even if you take a 
non-materialist view (idealist or neutral) there is still a problem of how 
local consciousness emerges. But I think that from our previous discussions we 
might disagree about that last point.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 December 2015 6:50 PM
To: John Collier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Dear John and Stephen

I think there is an ontological difference between your views as Deacon and to 
a certain degree Stjernfelt’ s views are based on ,to me unclear “scientific 
worldviews”, which in the end means physicalism. None of them has taken a clear 
opposition to physicalism. They are not mechanical materialist but believe in 
thermodynamic self-organization through Prigogine’s non-equilibrium 
thermodynamics. Deacon is close to general system theory but does not accept it 
openly probably because Bertalanffy was an organicist and therefore not 
compatible with the physicalist scientific worldview. Never the less he endorse 
a developmental theory combined with evolution theory from matter, over 
objective information to icons. Stuart Kaufmann seems also to attempt to make 
signs emerge from a physicalist worldview.  Stjernfelt seem to run a standard 
scientific ontology parallel with a Peircean semiotic as far as I can read, 
never going into self-organization and theories of emergence.  But in my view a 
Peircean icon does not work without his whole pragmaticist  philosophy with its 
foundation in his hylozoist, thycistic ontology, comb

SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

[Søren Brier]

Dear John

I agree on the irreducibility of the sign triad. My main point is that we do 
not from the material, energetic or the informational ontology worldview have 
any idea of how it could emerge from that foundation. It only works from 
Peirce’s foundation. That is the geniality of what he created – in my view. 
Everyone who wants to use his concepts has to use his philosophical foundation 
or create a better one. And the so called scientific ones that does not 
integrate phenomenological and hermeneutic views are not able to do the job. 
The informational and the info-computational do not.

   Søren

Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 30. december 2015 11:01
Til: Søren Brier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Søren,

I have argued for some time that if Peircean thirds are irreducible they must 
be emergent. I see no reason to doubt that. I think that Deacon’s views are 
reductionist in some respects, though he is changing that slowly (he quotes me 
on information in his second book, for example, but I don’t think he absorbed 
the significance of the quote). I believe that information is fundamental, and 
that it is physical, but that is not a materialist view.

I don’t see Stjernfelt the same way as you do. He doesn’t talk about 
self-organization or emergence directly, but he does think that thirds are 
irreducible. His arguments about the centrality of dicisigns don’t make a lot 
of sense otherwise. But perhaps he is a more cryptic version of Marcello 
Barbieri. I doubt that, though.

Marcello is indeed very much upfront that he doesn’t see Piece as scientific. I 
have argued that his views imply anti-reductionism, however, in spite of 
himself. He denies that. Howard Pattee disappointed Marcello when he said he 
took a basically antireductionist view on meaning. My views are similar to 
Howard’s but I don’t like his epistemic and other cuts. I see the problem they 
are supposed to address; I don’t think they are a solution. Even if you take a 
non-materialist view (idealist or neutral) there is still a problem of how 
local consciousness emerges. But I think that from our previous discussions we 
might disagree about that last point.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: Tuesday, 29 December 2015 6:50 PM
To: John Collier; Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Dear John and Stephen

I think there is an ontological difference between your views as Deacon and to 
a certain degree Stjernfelt’ s views are based on ,to me unclear “scientific 
worldviews”, which in the end means physicalism. None of them has taken a clear 
opposition to physicalism. They are not mechanical materialist but believe in 
thermodynamic self-organization through Prigogine’s non-equilibrium 
thermodynamics. Deacon is close to general system theory but does not accept it 
openly probably because Bertalanffy was an organicist and therefore not 
compatible with the physicalist scientific worldview. Never the less he endorse 
a developmental theory combined with evolution theory from matter, over 
objective information to icons. Stuart Kaufmann seems also to attempt to make 
signs emerge from a physicalist worldview.  Stjernfelt seem to run a standard 
scientific ontology parallel with a Peircean semiotic as far as I can read, 
never going into self-organization and theories of emergence.  But in my view a 
Peircean icon does not work without his whole pragmaticist  philosophy with its 
foundation in his hylozoist, thycistic ontology, combined with his  aesthetics, 
ethics and semiotic logic as the base of his phaneroscopic epistemology. There 
are a lot of attempts to use Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticism on other 
philosophical foundations than the one he painstakingly developed over his 
life. One of the more obvious is Barbieri’s codebiology, but he is so honest 
and explicit in his argumentation that it is possible to discuss it, as I have 
done in the attached article from Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. 
Am I wrong?

Best
  Søren


Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 29. december 2015 04:13
Til: Stephen C. Rose; Peirce List
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy -- Sign

Stephen, List,

That is similar to Terry Deacon’s view in The Symbolic Species (1997), and also 
later in Incomplete Nature (2012). He argues that the evolution of symbols 
starts with icons, icons combine to form indexes, and we end up with, in 
humans, full symbols. Frederick Stjernflelt takes issue with this 
(Diagrammatology, chapter 11, 2007; Natural Propositions, chapter 6, 2014), 
arguing that dicisigns can be found, and are needed, right back to the 
beginning of signs in biology, so that (proto)symbolic symbols and arguments as 
well are original, both factually and as a requirement for understanding how

SV: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Søren Brier]

Dear Clark

I do not know if there is  a connection from Timaeus to Aristotle who ‘s hyle 
has inspired Peirce synechism. It is true that Hyle contains the possibilities 
for making a limited amount of forms (inspired from Plato’s ideas). Pierce – 
inspired by Hegel and Schelling’s objective (German ) idealism- sets the whole 
thing in motion and develops Scotus extreme Scholastic realism. His idea of 
Cosmogony is close to Hegel’s dialectics but in the improved version of the 
three categories interacting much the same way producing signs. But it is not 
clear to me where or how  matter emerges other than as stiffened habits, which 
is pretty close to how we understand elementary particles like bosons and 
fermions. We also see matter as 99,99% emptiness.

Best
Søren


Fra: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sendt: 24. november 2015 17:48
Til: PEIRCE-L
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

(I broke out your responses to make them a little easier)


On Nov 24, 2015, at 6:46 AM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

Which order are you speaking of here? Plotinus, among the neoplatonists has two 
classes of absolute otherness. On the one is the One which is pure potency and 
the origin of all the emanations

I THINK THIS IS WHAT PEIRCE HAD IN MINE KELLY PARKER WROTE A PAPER ON THIS AND 
INCLUDED IN HIS BOOK The Continuity of Peirce's Thought.

Yes I think though Parker deals with both. He points out that in the earliest 
Peirce in his more Kantian rather than Hegelian stage that Being and Substance 
were the unthinkable limits - the start and end. (W 2:49-59)

Yet somewhat following Aristotle he has matter as pure privation which is also 
absolutely Other

THIS I DO NOT KNOW AND DO NOT THINK PEIRCE MENTIONES.

Substance are pure habit is this matter. It’s not quite the same as Aristotle 
since he’s moved in a more neoPlatonic form. But then the neoPlatonist were in 
many ways reconciling the arguments of Aristotle, Plato and the Stoics. Parker 
provides a quote relevant to our other discussion on reversibility and habits.

Pairs of states will also begin to take habits, and thus each state having 
different habits with reference to the different other states will give rise to 
bundles of habits, which will be substances. Some of these states will chance 
to take habits of persistency, and will get to be less and less liable to 
disappear; while those that fail to take such habits will fall out of 
existence. Thus substances will get to be permanent. (CP 1.414)

My sense is that “fall out of existence” simply is due to this being a 
continuum. Those without permanence disappear as a practical interaction. So 
the more permanent something is the more it can act and the less permanent the 
less it can act. I suspect that is what Peirce means in the other quote as well 
(CP 8.318)

Within Hebrew mysticism, especially certain forms of Kabbalism, there’s a 
notion of Tzimtzum. (I tend to follow the traditional interpretation that the 
Jewish mystics got this from gnosticism and neoplatonism but there’s a strain 
that argues for the influence going the other way or at least co-evolution. In 
any case the major form is Lurianic Kabbalism which is a 16th century 
phenomena) This is the idea of God withdrawing to create a space within himself 
that creation can take place. In other words a primal nothing creates a 
secondary nothing.

I HAVE SEEN NOTHING LIKE IN PEIRCE

No. I can’t think of it either. Although it’s something to keep in mind. The 
question is the move from a place of pure possibility to actuality. To be 
actual is to have a place. I think there are parallels to the idea in the 
mature Peirce’s conception of the sign. The sign points to its object by a 
guess. But this guess requires a space or a gap. That gap functions in an 
analogous way. (And in the Continental tradition the various aspects of this 
gap become quite significant and are explicitly tied to the Khora of the 
Timaeus)

The connection of matter and form is significant in Aristotle of course even if 
the creation of the elements in the Timaeus is different. However in Aristotle 
hyle is rich and fertile and open to possibilities. Thus it’s pure potency but 
a pure potency *different* from how form is pure potency. One is giving and one 
is receiving. So if we read Peirce and are connecting to these ideas we have to 
be careful not to assume potency is always the same type of potency. With Duns 
Scotus matter is already determined in a sense in that it’s a material cause of 
individuation. That’s different from Aristotle or most of the neoPlatonist. I 
think Peirce usually is following Duns Scotus in terms of haecceity, quantity 
and individuation. (Although not exactly the same

All that said though people have written on pre-firstness (Being in Peirce’s 
early categories) as being Khora. (Inna Semetsky has according

SV: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Søren Brier]

Dear Clark

I have developed these thought and their relation to Perennial Philosophy more 
in 
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peircean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf
  and in a couple of other articles to the Concordia transcendentalists.

Best
Søren

Fra: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sendt: 20. november 2015 21:27
Til: PEIRCE-L
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments


On Nov 20, 2015, at 1:01 PM, Søren Brier <sb@cbs.dk<mailto:sb@cbs.dk>> 
wrote:

I agree but Peirce is integrating it with an emptiness ontology inspired by 
Buddhism. Hartshorne describes it as his  Buddhisto-Christianism. Bishop writes 
a paper on Peirce and Eastern Thought. See my
Pure  Zero paper attached.


Thank you Soren. I’ll try and read that this evening if I have time.

I should note that emptiness ontology can be found in the neoPlatonic 
tradition. I don’t know enough about the speculations of influence on the 
various neoPlatonists to say how much if at all it originated with them.

My knowledge of Buddhism is far more fragmentary than I’d like. So I’m very 
interested in your insights here. My understanding is that sunya in Buddhism is 
actually fairly close to the neoPlatonic notion of emptiness as pure potency 
(which pops up in Peirce in many places as well as other figures like Heidegger 
who had an odd debate about nothing with Carnap tied to all this)

I hope you don’t mind some questions over the weekend after I’ve read your 
paper.

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SV: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Søren Brier]

Dear Clark

As I understand it Peirce’s God develops according to Agapism or the growth of 
love and reasonability. Here he has some similarity to  Neoplatonism, but it is 
a universal philosophy of a religion of love combining mystical Buddhism and 
Christianity.

Best
Søren

Fra: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sendt: 19. november 2015 21:26
Til: PEIRCE-L
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments


On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:04 PM, John Collier 
> wrote:

Yes, this agrees with my understanding, which has not changed, but has matured 
and become more clear over time.


After I posted that I thought about it some more and there is a way in which 
Peirce is like Leibniz or Spinoza and that is with the place of God.

Admittedly Peirce’s God is a bit odd - real but not actual. But the 
relationship between God and the universe in Peirce is a bit trickier since he 
rejects the kind of determinate metaphysical necessity that is in Leibniz and 
Spinoza. The whole “working it out” aspect in Peirce which is just alien to the 
universe of Spinoza or Leibniz remains a big difference. Again, this is due to 
what Peirce sees as reason versus how the Rationalists conceived of it. That is 
the place of thirdness and most importantly the gap between object and 
interpretant is what makes him so unique.

While I’ve not studied Peirce’s God enough to say much there, it does seem like 
it’s a God that simply isn’t developing according to necessity in the sense of 
Spinoza. For Spinoza ethics are necessary in the way that Euclid’s geometry is. 
For Peirce (if I have him right given the paucity of his writings on ethics) 
ethics arises evolutionarily. Admittedly Peirce changed his views on ethics 
around the turn of the century. But it seems to me even in the later texts 
there’s a weird tension with ethics between evolution and possible worlds. 
(Many have noted this around the turn of the century but to my eyes this pops 
up even in his relatively early texts)

Of course if ethics is primarily about possibilities then we’re in a more 
platonic setting. Still though, even if in a possible worlds ethics I’m not 
sure this world is the best of all possible worlds. Quite the contrary. But 
I’ll admit that I’m not quite sure how to take God in Peirce. If it’s real then 
it’s much like a platonic idea yet it seems tied to ends that the universe is 
developing towards rather than ends determining the universe at any point. God 
acts upon the world but must be seen as separate from the world in a certain 
way. The universe is coming to its summum bonum but simply isn’t lawful or 
reasonable yet.

Again Peirce seems much more neoplatonic here than rationalist. The flawed soul 
seeks union with Mind. Still it is a parallel I’d not really considered. If you 
take the Rationalists and inject fallibilism and incompleteness you probably do 
end up with something rather like Peirce.



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SV: [PEIRCE-L] Aw: [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

[Søren Brier]

I think that that what Piece was looking for was the connection between the 
evolving universe and the rationality of the human way thinking. I have tried 
to explain more here 
https://www.academia.edu/18590495/The_riddle_of_the_Sphinx_answered_On_how_C._S._Peirce_s_transdisciplinary_semiotic_philosophy_of_knowing_links_science_and_spirituality
  on the background for his thinking.

  Best
 Søren

Fra: Helmut Raulien [mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de]
Sendt: 19. november 2015 00:04
Til: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Ed Dellian; PEIRCE-L; Sergey Petoukhov; Robert E. 
Ulanowicz; Auletta Gennaro; Hans-Ferdinand Angel; Rudiger Seitz
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] Aw: [biosemiotics:8949] Re: Terms, Propositions, Arguments

Stan, all,
am I right with guessing, that "logic"  is, what Peirce calls "argumentation", 
and may lead to a cosmological concept of "universe", and what might lead to an 
idea, a guess, or a perception of "everything", might be, what Peirce calls 
"neglected argument", or "humble argument"?  So, two completely different types 
of inference, both started from the focal level "humans" we cannot escape, 
pointing in two different directions, the lowest and the highest level of this 
hierarchy.
Helmut

18. November 2015 um 21:33 Uhr
"Stanley N Salthe" >


Sung, all --

Logic is a product of a human culture. The universe (as understood in 
cosmology) is a logical product of that human culture.

{everything {biology {primates {humans {culture {universe }}



STAN

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Sungchul Ji  wrote:
Ed,

Thanks for your response.
You wrote :

"Logic" is a product of the human brain only. "The Universe" is not a product 
of the human brain,(111815-1)
and therefore it is not logical."

I can't quite agree with (111815-1).  Instead I would assert that

"Logic may be a product of the Universe as is the human brain. Hence it is not 
surprising(111815-2)
that that the logical reasoning of the human mind agrees with what happens in 
the Universe."

All the best.

Sung






On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Ed Dellian  wrote:
Sung,

You say that the Universe is "by and large logical". This is not true. "Logic" 
is a product of the human brain only. "The Universe" is not a product of the 
human brain, and therefore it is not logical, and its language is not the human 
mathematical logic of algebra. The rational language of the Universe is 
Geometry (Plato, 400 BC, Galileo, 1623 AD). Geometry as the art of measuring 
refers to everything "which is really there" and therefore has its distinct 
measure. Mathematical logic, or the art of calculating, refers to "what could 
be there" (cf. my 2012 essay "The language of Nature is not Algebra", on my 
website www.neutonus-reformatus.com, entry 
nr. 40, 201). Logic and algebra is an "anthropocentric" art rooted in the human 
brain only; geometry is "cosmocentric" and refers to the reality and truth of 
Nature (based on the reality and measurability of space and time)

Ed.


Von: sji.confor...@gmail.com [mailto:sji.confor...@gmail.com] Im Auftrag von 
Sungchul Ji
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 18. November 2015 12:29
An: PEIRCE-L
Cc: biosemiotics; Sergey Petoukhov; Robert E. Ulanowicz; Ed Dellian; Auletta 
Gennaro; Hans-Ferdinand Angel; Rudiger Seitz
Betreff: Fwd: [PEIRCE-L] Terms, Propositions, Arguments


Hi,

A correction:

Please replace "nucleotides, A, T, G, and C for DNA and RNA" in (4) with 
"nucleotides, A, T, G, and C for DNA, and A,T, G and U for RNA".

Thanks.

Sung



-- Forwarded message --
From: Sungchul Ji 
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 9:04 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Terms, Propositions, Arguments
To: PEIRCE-L 
Cc: biosemiotics , Sergey Petoukhov 
, Ed Dellian , "Robert E. 
Ulanowicz" 


(The table below may be distorted beyond easy recognition.)

Franklin, Gary R, lists,

In connection with writing my manuscript on the cell language theory to be 
published by Imperial College Press, I am toying with the ideas expressed in 
Table 1 below. If anyone has any suggestions or comments, I would appreciate 
hearing from you.

There are several points that need explanations:

(1) I coined three new words, 'cellese', 'humanese', 'cosmese', to facilitate 
discussions.  I am assuming that 'cosmese' is synonymous with what we call 
logic, since the Universe is by and large 'logical'.

(2)  I imported the concept of "double articulations" from linguistics to 
biology in 1997 [1-6].  (I feel funny to list so many of my own references here 
despite Franklin's recent criticism.  The only justification I have for doing 
so is to assure the members of these lists that most of the 

SV: [PEIRCE-L] Empty space and knowing how to be

[Søren Brier]

Dear Stephen

I have tried to give an interpretation of Peirce's view on what we are immersed 
in here Brier, S. (2014). Pure Zero, pp 207 in Charles Sanders Peirce in His 
Own Words: 100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition. Editors: 
Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sørensen. Series: Semiotics, Communication and 
Cognition [SCC] 14.  Den Haag: Mouton De Gruyter. Which I attach the manuscript 
version of.

Best
 Søren


Fra: Stephen Jarosek [mailto:sjaro...@iinet.net.au]
Sendt: 9. oktober 2015 12:25
Til: 'Peirce-L'
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] Empty space and knowing how to be

List,

There is something very troubling about the nature of "empty" space. The more 
that one looks at this topic, the more troubling accepted wisdoms become.

Albert Einstein's relativity theory derives its inspiration first from the 
famous Michelson-Morley experiment, where it is shown that the speed of light 
does not change relative to the observer. To resolve this paradox, Einstein 
implements a massive category error (imho) that includes time as a dimension of 
space-time. But quantum physics seriously contradicts this interpretation. And 
yet, the mainstream remains devoted to its gospel (e.g., the big bang theory 
continues to be accepted as a given, in spite of other possibilities). We 
continue to be trapped in a "knowing how to be" and no solution appears to be 
in sight.

Indeed, quantum physics, within the context of nonlocality/entanglement, 
provides us with even further cause to question whether empty space is itself 
an illusion. So from TWO opposing frameworks, the nature of "empty" 
3-dimensional space continues to perplex our efforts.

One of the implications of biosemiotics, especially as it relates to 
neuroplasticity, is the idea that every last thing that we know about the 
world, we acquire from experience. Experience wires the brain (the idea brought 
to prominence in the work of Norman Doidge). This experiencing starts with 
conception. Nothing is "determined" in the genes... the skull is better thought 
of as a bucket of independent neurons, like a beehive is a containment for 
independent bees. The skull is NOT a case in which to house a 
genetically-determined brains-as-computer. The implication here is that empty 
space is itself an illusion.

So what are we immersed "in"? This is the ultimate paradox. "In" implies "in 
here" versus "out there" and in this, we remain trapped in the narrative of 
this intractable, frustrating illusion.

sj


Thellefsen_32_Brier.pdf
Description: Thellefsen_32_Brier.pdf

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SV: [PEIRCE-L] book launching: Turning Signs

[Søren Brier]

Congratulations for getting there after all those years and hard work. Look 
forward to read it.

Best
   Søren

Fra: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sendt: 6. september 2015 14:44
Til: 'Peirce-L'
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] book launching: Turning Signs

Hello friends (and all Peirceans),

For some time now I've been threatening to publish a book called Turning Signs, 
and now I've finally done it. You're invited to have a look by visiting the 
online launch site:
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/
That takes you to my newly recreated blog, intimologies, where you'll find 
links to the book itself, which is the fruit of a 15-year inquiry into the 
meaning of life (or as i prefer to call it, the ecology of meaning). You're 
welcome to read as far into it as you like, to bookmark it with your browser or 
add it to your reading list, even to pay for it when and if you feel that step 
is justified.

As you might guess from the title, there’s plenty of Peircean semiotics in it, 
but it’s not intended as a contribution to Peirce scholarship; it’s more a 
cenoscopic essay. But you may find it interesting as a weaving of Peircean 
ideas (and texts) into that broader context.

Anyway i hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your attention!

Gary F.

} Diversity is the health of ecosystems. [Roszak] {
http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ intimologies and Turning Signs



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SV: [PEIRCE-L] A System Of Analytic Mechanics

[Søren Brier]

Dear Steven

Are you aware of the work of Unger and Smolin where they argue for the 
evolution of laws?
The Singular Universe….THE SINGULAR UNIVERSE AND THE REALITY OF TIME
Cambridge University Press, November 30, 2014.
Synopsis
This is a book on the nature of time  and the basic laws of nature. We argue 
for the inclusive reality of time as well as for the mutability of the laws of 
nature.  We seek to breathe new life and meaning into natural philosophy –- a 
form of reasoning that crosses the boundaries between science and philosophy.
The work should appeal to a broad educated readership as well as to scientists 
and philosophers. It is not a popularization, but neither does it use a 
technical vocabulary that would restrict it to specialized readers. The 
subjects that it addresses are of paramount interest to people in many 
disciplines outside cosmology and physics.
In the twentieth century, physics and cosmology overturned the idea of an 
unchanging background of time and space. In so doing, however, they maintained 
the idea of an immutable framework of laws of nature. This second idea must now 
also be attacked and replaced. What results is a new picture of the agenda of 
physics and cosmology as well as of the methods of fundamental science.
The book develops four inter-related themes:
1) There is only one universe at a time. Our universe is not one of many 
worlds. It has no copy or complete model, even in mathematics. The current 
interest in multiverse cosmologies is based on fallacious reasoning.
2) Time is real, and indeed the only aspect of our description of nature which 
is not emergent or approximate. The inclusive reality of time has revolutionary 
implications for many of our conventional beliefs.
3) Everything evolves in this real time including laws of nature.  There is 
only a relative distinction between laws and the states of affairs that they 
govern..
4)  Mathematics deals with the one real world. We need not imagine it to be a 
shortcut to timeless truth about an immaterial reality (Platonism) in order to 
make sense of its “unreasonable effectiveness” in science.
We argue by systematic philosophical and scientific reasoning , as well as by 
detailed examples, that these principles are the only way theoretical cosmology 
can break out of its current crisis in a manner that is scientific, i.e. 
results in falsifiable predictions for doable experiments.

And Smolin’s Time Reborn
“What is time?

It’s the sort of question we rarely ask because it seems so obvious. And yet, 
to a physicist, time is simply a human construct and an illusion. If you could 
somehow get outside the universe and observe it from there, you would see that 
every moment has always existed and always will. Lee Smolin disagrees, and in 
Time Reborn he lays out the case why.

Recent developments in physics and cosmology point toward the reality of time 
and the openness of the future. Smolin’s groundbreaking theory postulates that 
physical laws can evolve over time and the future is not yet determined. 
Newton’s fundamental laws may not remain so fundamental.”
Smolin quotes Peirce several times in this book for the view that different 
laws emerging in the course of the development of the universe over time.

   Søren



Fra: stevenzen...@gmail.com [mailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com] På vegne af Steven 
Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 18. marts 2015 22:54
Til: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Steven Ericsson-Zenith; Jerry LR Chandler; Peirce List
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A System Of Analytic Mechanics

Let's see if I can do better :-)

1. and 2. I understand your point. However, I have argued that the elder 
Peirce's re-conceive religion as science. It is certainly the case that Comte 
rails against religion but Benjamin says wait science needs to explain 
*everything* as one universe including the many of the things traditionally 
considered by religion (esp. the mind, spirituality, and social order), 
so obviously much can go but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. 
Science as a religion is certainly a re-conception in this sense since it 
brings in a new epistemology. This seems to me to be more desirable than 
actually throwing the baby out (per modern atheism).

3. Benjamin Peirce saw universal will as a manifest force, and all force as 
having a spiritual source. So his view was, as I said earlier, one of 
general covariance (although the term was not yet invented) rather like 
gravitation and matter in GR - and he took this view from his own experience. I 
think this is correct in essence but I see the basis as characterized in a 
unity of bound shapes in structure (flexible closed structure). It (feeling) is 
not a distinct force in the sense of electro-magnetism or gravitation (that are 
one with it) sense and response are a binding in structure that enables its 
unified action and across structure decisions (also cell division). There is no 
outside force.

5. I understand 

SV: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Scientific Attitude

[Søren Brier]

Dear Steven

Not quantum mechanics as far as I can see.

  Søren

Fra: stevenzen...@gmail.com [mailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com] På vegne af Steven 
Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 12. marts 2015 03:55
Til: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Steven Ericsson-Zenith; Jon Awbrey; Peirce List
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Scientific Attitude


So it is the infinitesimal departures from law that I disagree with. If 
Charles were referring only to randomness within the laws, then that would be 
fine and he'd have on disagreement from me. But as it stands it undermines the 
whole scientific endeavor.
Regards,Steven

On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Edwina Taborsky 
tabor...@primus.camailto:tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
No, it doesn't undermine everything else. Spontaneity is not anarchy or 
randomness. Spontaneity, as Peirce noted, and I repeat:

by thus admitting pure spontaneity of life as a character of the universe, 
acting always and everywhere though restrained within narrow bounds by law, 
producing infinitesimal departures from law continually, and great ones with 
infinite infrequency, I account for all the variety and diversity of the 
universe 6.59..The ordinary view has to admit the inexhaustible 
multitudinous variety of the world, has to admit that its mechanical law cannot 
account for this in the least, that variety can spring only from 
spontaneity. (ibid)...

Spontaneity is a basic property of life, just as habit-formation is a basic 
property; just as kinetic mechanical action is yet another property (Firstness, 
Thirdness and Secondness in that order)...and they work interactively together.

Edwina

- Original Message -
From: Steven Ericsson-Zenithmailto:ste...@iase.us
To: Edwina Taborskymailto:tabor...@primus.ca
Cc: Steven Ericsson-Zenithmailto:ste...@iase.us ; Jon 
Awbreymailto:jawb...@att.net ; Peirce Listmailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 7:39 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Scientific Attitude

But you understand the epistemic implications of accepting spontaneity as a 
law, it undermines everything else.

Steven

On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Edwina Taborsky 
tabor...@primus.camailto:tabor...@primus.ca wrote:
I continue to differ. Scientific knowledge is not reduced to knowledge about 
necessary actions but must include an acknowledgement of the reality of 
spontaneity. I presume you've read Peirce's 1892 'The Doctrine of Necessity 
Examined'. I provided a brief quote from that in an earlier post. I think his 
argument stands as rational and valid and not, as you suggest, 'off the rails'.

Therefore, to confine scientific knowledge only to the results of law and 
refuse to accept as real, as valid, as anything other than 'random aberration' 
- these spontaneous events, reduces not science but life itself to mere 
mechanical iterations.

I'm saying that spontaneity is, in itself, a 'kind of law' which is to say, it 
is a basic reality, a vital component, of life. Again, I don't define 
spontaneity as 'randomness' which is in itself mechanical and empty; I define 
spontaneity as probability (not possibility) - which means that there is in 
life, a basic capacity to 'be different from the norm'. This capacity is not, 
again, due to randomness which is a mere mechanical result; it is an active 
auto-organized capacity of information gathering by the organism of its 
environment - and within itself, a capacity to deviate from its normative mode 
- and, spontaneously, differ and form an adaptation, an evolved state.

How does your view of 'results only due to necessary laws' - allow for this 
deviation? I would presume that you would consider deviation to be random. I 
reject randomness as a total waste of energy, and suggest that the organism has 
in itself, the capacity to deviate - and this is not and cannot be law-driven 
but must be spontaneous. Again, spontaneity (see also Aristotle on this) is not 
the same as randomness.

Edwina
- Original Message -
From: Steven Ericsson-Zenithmailto:ste...@iase.us
To: Edwina Taborskymailto:tabor...@primus.ca
Cc: Jon Awbreymailto:jawb...@att.net ; Peirce 
Listmailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Scientific Attitude

Edwina says: Scientific knowledge, in my view, has the capacity to acknowledge 
events and situations that are not replicable, i.e., are not within the control 
of an agent or system, but, are random non-controlled events that have  taken 
place (a chance event) and might probably take place (a deviation from the norm 
and the development of a new species).


I would very much like to see an example of, or even to hear an account of, 
such an event or situation, and how you would propose that science deal with it.

This is where Charles goes off the rails later in life from the views of his 
father. If we allowed such spontaneity in necessity then how could science 
state any law?

This is a case where Charles threatens to undermine the entire venture 

[PEIRCE-L] SV: [biosemiotics:7395] Re: Natural Propositions

[Søren Brier]

Howard, Frederik and list

I agree with Ben that Peirce’s philosophy do have something to contribute to 
the understanding of Quantum physics. Peirce’s  idea of Firstness, Secondness 
and thirdness combined with  synechism and Haecceity can deal with a lot of the 
problems in the measurement problem, where the manifest  particles-waves only 
have a certain probability or tendency to exist before measured. But still this 
tendency can lawfully be described with more precision than any other physical 
theory we know. But the actual individual phenomena cannot be explained 
further. Only by measuring on huge ensamples of measurement on specific 
preparations can the law be induced. This haecceity of the individual measured 
particle Peirce would identified as pure Secondness.

What Scotus calls the haecceities of things, the hereness and nowness of them, 
are indeed ultimate. Why this which is here is such as it is; how, for 
instance, if it happens to be a grain of sand, it came to be so small and so 
hard, we can ask; we can also ask how it got carried here; but the explanation 
in this case merely carries us back to the fact that it was once in some other 
place, where similar things might naturally be expected to be. Why IT, 
independently of its general characters, comes to have any definite place in 
the world is not a question to be asked; it is simply an ultimate fact. 
 (CP 1.405)
Thus, Peirce’s view of haecceities as being unexplainable as singular events is 
thus close to the modern understanding of quantum events. Quantum physics 
cannot deduce the singular event, but can only make a probability model from 
thousands of them, but with great precision! This would be Thirdness in 
Peirce’s paradigm. But furthermore  in modern quantum physics, there is an 
undetermined spontaneity of the vacuum filed producing these single event that 
are not explainable in themselves from a scientific point of view. Quantum 
mechanics thereby breaks with classical deterministic mechanicism in a way 
compatible with Peirce’s philosophy. Thus we can view the particle-wave as a 
token controlled by a type (a specific field like the electron or gluon field 
that each has definite general qualities).

  Best
   Søren


Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sendt: 8. november 2014 17:40
Til: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Peirce List
Emne: [biosemiotics:7395] Re: Natural Propositions


Howard, Frederik, lists,

Howard, you wrote:

there is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by Peircean Realism. 
In fact, most teachers of QM  struggle with the intuitively realist 
perspectives of introductory students. In teaching QM, Realism blocks the path 
of inquiry.
[End quote]

It's hard to see how there can be general agreement, at least among physicists, 
about QM's being uninterpretable by Peircean Realism when most physicists are 
not well acquainted with Peircean Realism.

Peircean realism favors real, in-principle uncertainty and vagueness in nature 
itself, by reason of the imperfectibility of measurement, I.e., that which, 
even _in principle_, inquirers could never find, nature itself cannot find. 
Peirce bases tychism and synechism in realism and ultimately in fallibilism.

See Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution http://www.textlog.de/4248.html 
(CP 1.141-175).

It involves an application of his idea that the real is only the object of a 
true proposition. The idea is that, if there is no true proposition to be 
formulated stating the exact quantities in a physical event, then there aren't 
such exact quantities in such physical event. While that idea does not entail 
Heisenberg's rather more specific uncertainty principle, it seems compatible 
with it. Peircean realism is not classical physical realism that assumes that 
every particle has fully determinate mechanical quantities at every instant.

Moreover, Peirce's realism includes the idea that there are real individuals, 
real existences. (So the 'complementarity' of generalism versus individualism 
is already encompassed in Peirce's brand of realism.) In particular, Peirce 
regards individual existence as a matter not merely of location or proximity in 
space and time, but of reaction, resistance, interaction, like so many natural 
measurements. This is congenial to the QM view of things as becoming 
determinate through interaction with the environment, the 'observer', the 
'measurer', etc. If one holds with basicness of reaction/resistance for 
individual existence, and with the indeterminacy of the future, and takes into 
account similar considerations involving a signal speed limit (the light cone 
etc.), then QM starts to seem more a solution than a problem.

Best, Ben

On 11/7/2014 9:17 PM, Howard Pattee wrote:
At 09:08 AM 11/7/2014, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:


I am not sure. Much of the yet unresolved discussion of QM have to do with 
deciding which ontological commitments come with the Schrödinger equation. 

SV: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for

[Søren Brier]

Dear Clark and list

My I add a few thoughts? I agree that sign are reals, but when they manifests 
as tokens their Secondness must enter the world of physics and thermodynamics 
must apply. It is work to make signs emerge in non-verbal communication or as 
language from ones feeling and thoughts. Even to produces thoughts and feeling 
demands work. That would be a biosemiotic view (but one that we have not 
discussed much). But I think you are correct in saying that Peirce did not do 
any work on this aspect of sign production.

Best

Søren

Fra: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com]
Sendt: 31. juli 2014 20:11
Til: Sungchul Ji; Peirce-L
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [biosemiotics:6231] Re: biosemiotics is the basis for


On Jul 31, 2014, at 2:37 AM, Sungchul Ji 
s...@rci.rutgers.edumailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu wrote:

Yes.  That is what I am saying, and I too distinguish between material
process of semiotics and semiotics in general.  My working hypothesis is
that

Physics of words/signs is necessary but (073114-2)
not sufficient for their semiosis.

or that

No equilibrium structures can carry out semiosis (073114-3)
unless and until transformed into dissipative
structures by being activated by input of free
energy. For example, words on a piece of paper
must be lit before they can convey information.

Right, but again that is an ontological assumption of the underlying substrate 
for semiotic process. Those who adopt a more idealist rather than materialist 
ontology will simply not agree with that. And indeed Peirce, in both his early 
and mature phases, would disagree with that conception. (Again, noting that one 
can simply mine Peircean semiotics without taking all his thought)

Thus my point about knowledge of a system and whether that system can be 
conceived of semiotically.



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SV: [PEIRCE-L] The second law of thermodynamics

[Søren Brier]

Jerry

As I understand it, this is where the concept of information in self-organizing 
systems has its relevance in modern physics . But for Peirce it would be 
Thirdness, but where the habits comes from evolutionary in a metaphysics that 
does not believe in Platonic ideas or even Aristotelian forms I do not know.  
And I do not know any relevant Peirce text.
   
Søren

-Oprindelig meddelelse-
Fra: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com] 
Sendt: 28. juni 2014 21:44
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: Evgenii Rudnyi; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The second law of thermodynamics

Soren, List:

Does the concept of heat embody the concept of form?  If so, how?

Entropy, as a component of the logic of thermodynamics, lacks form.

What gives entropy form?

Cheers

jerry






On Jun 28, 2014, at 6:54 AM, Søren Brier wrote:

 Dear Evgenii and list
 
 That fact is - as Schrödinger and Prigogine points out - that more and more 
 complicated self-organized systems develop feeding on the general growth of 
 entropy in the universe. These systems order more and more of their 
 surroundings in order to support and prolong their own existence. We are 
 already influencing the whole of our planet and is beginning to explore other 
 planets in the solar system in order to use them for our own purpose. So, 
 Peirce is right that our rationality is influencing the universe. Who can say 
 if order or chaos will win in the end?
 
 Best
 Søren
 
 -Oprindelig meddelelse-
 Fra: Evgenii Rudnyi [mailto:use...@rudnyi.ru]
 Sendt: 28. juni 2014 09:44
 Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
 Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The second law of thermodynamics
 
 There is a nice historical book
 
 Helge Kragh, Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics 
 and Cosmology, 2008
 
 where the author discusses the heat death debates in 1850-1920. Peirce is 
 mentioned there and a quote from the book is below.
 
 p. 187-188 In 1891 he [Peirce] described his hypothesis as follows:
 
 'The state of things in the infinite past is chaos ... 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. 
 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, ...'
 
 This picture, starting from chaos and ending in an ordered and symmetrical 
 system, turns the ordinary interpretation of the second law on its head. Some 
 years earlier, in a 1884 lecture on 'Design and Chance', he declared that the 
 heat death - in which 'there shall be no force but heat and the temperature 
 everywhere the same' - was unavoidable. Confusingly, the next year he 
 rejected the global heat death scenario, retracting to a position similar to 
 that of many other evolutionary progressivists of the Victorian era: 'But, on 
 the other hand, we may take it as certain that other intellectual races exist 
 on other planets, - if not of our solar system, then of others; and also that 
 innumerable new intellectual races have yet to be developed; so that on the 
 whole, it may be regarded as most certain that intellectual life in the 
 universe will never finally cease.' Perhaps he thought, such as he said in 
 his 'Design and Chance', that the living universe would be saved by what he 
 called 'chance', an influence he considered to be opposite to dissipative 
 forces, of what some later authors referred to as 'entropy'.
 
 Evgenii
 --
 http://blog.rudnyi.ru
 
 On 27.06.2014 17:15 Stephen C. Rose said the following:
 How fixed is the scientific argument for this law? Certainly in this 
 century there have been some who have chipped away at the idea of 
 entropy as a fixed star in an otherwise fallible (subject to
 revision) scientific universe. And I am unaware of where Peirce stood 
 on this matter. Were his notions of continuity and logic uneasy in 
 the shadow of the assertion that everything falls apart?
 
 *@stephencrose https://twitter.com/stephencrose*
 
 
 
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SV: [PEIRCE-L] The second law of thermodynamics

[Søren Brier]

Dear Evgenii and list

That fact is - as Schrödinger and Prigogine points out - that more and more 
complicated self-organized systems develop feeding on the general growth of 
entropy in the universe. These systems order more and more of their 
surroundings in order to support and prolong their own existence. We are 
already influencing the whole of our planet and is beginning to explore other 
planets in the solar system in order to use them for our own purpose. So, 
Peirce is right that our rationality is influencing the universe. Who can say 
if order or chaos will win in the end?

Best
 Søren

-Oprindelig meddelelse-
Fra: Evgenii Rudnyi [mailto:use...@rudnyi.ru] 
Sendt: 28. juni 2014 09:44
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The second law of thermodynamics

There is a nice historical book

Helge Kragh, Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and 
Cosmology, 2008

where the author discusses the heat death debates in 1850-1920. Peirce is 
mentioned there and a quote from the book is below.

p. 187-188 In 1891 he [Peirce] described his hypothesis as follows:

'The state of things in the infinite past is chaos ... 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. 
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, 
...'

This picture, starting from chaos and ending in an ordered and symmetrical 
system, turns the ordinary interpretation of the second law on its head. Some 
years earlier, in a 1884 lecture on 'Design and Chance', he declared that the 
heat death - in which 'there shall be no force but heat and the temperature 
everywhere the same' - was unavoidable. Confusingly, the next year he rejected 
the global heat death scenario, retracting to a position similar to that of 
many other evolutionary progressivists of the Victorian era: 'But, on the other 
hand, we may take it as certain that other intellectual races exist on other 
planets, - if not of our solar system, then of others; and also that 
innumerable new intellectual races have yet to be developed; so that on the 
whole, it may be regarded as most certain that intellectual life in the 
universe will never finally cease.' Perhaps he thought, such as he said in his 
'Design and Chance', that the living universe would be saved by what he called 
'chance', an influence he considered to be opposite to dissipative forces, of 
what some later authors referred to as 'entropy'.

Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

On 27.06.2014 17:15 Stephen C. Rose said the following:
 How fixed is the scientific argument for this law? Certainly in this 
 century there have been some who have chipped away at the idea of 
 entropy as a fixed star in an otherwise fallible (subject to
 revision) scientific universe. And I am unaware of where Peirce stood 
 on this matter. Were his notions of continuity and logic uneasy in the 
 shadow of the assertion that everything falls apart?

 *@stephencrose https://twitter.com/stephencrose*



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SV: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Dear John

This is an extraordinary subject. To see a philosopher like you produce all 
kinds of assumptions of which there is absolute no ground for in what I have 
written is amazing. To use the word God is like pressing a button on a machine 
producing all kind of traditional common sense  assumptions and superstitions. 
It is all coming from you, but you seem to believe that it is my views you are 
talking about. But it is not. It is a very unpleasant discussion method.

It is a lack of respects to assume that I do not know better than what you 
assume. Your assumptions of my stupidity blocks your ability to see what it is 
that I try to accomplish. Try to reach a deeper understanding of what I have 
written. There is 35 years of study and experience behind this view.

Yes the universe is all we have, but the debate is about what the universe is 
and how it is connected to us. Peirce was a very deep philosopher. He believed 
in a very refined version of scientific method as the instrument for us to 
reach reliable knowledge about ourselves and the universe's processes in time. 
Peirce's view is much broader and more refined than the received view of 
science, we have these days, which is leading us into info-computationalism.

Supernatural is by the way a very interesting concept assuming that we know 
for sure all what is natural and from that is able to determine what is not. 
But if something is real, it is also natural even if it is a cultural fashion 
or superstitious ritual. How can you  define  something as existing in a realm 
outside of nature? Well, there is the theory of the many universes that has no 
access to each other and that is exactly why its scientific status questioned.

Best

Søren


Fra: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 17. juni 2014 16:28
Til: Søren Brier; John Collier; Edwina Taborsky; Catherine Legg; Gary Richmond; 
g...@gnusystems.ca
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Well, Søren, I would agree, as implicitly I did with Edwina, that we are here 
talking about Nature, nothing non-natural. I stand by my comparison. I think 
you are very much deluded on this issue. I think you should change your 
terminology, but not necessarily your beliefs. There is no God as found in any 
religion that I know about, which requires a care for humans, one way or the 
other -- some Gods don't like humans, others do. There is nothing supernatural 
that cares about humans, I think; all of these are imaginary friends or 
possibly enemies. We are here to make the best of things we can. Without 
extraordinary help. We have to figure it out. so far we are alone in the 
universe.

John

At 03:06 PM 2014-06-17, Søren Brier wrote:

Dear John

What term other than God would you find better? We are talking about the 
ultimate reality that holds everything else together and is you most intimate 
connection to reality and meaning. I find your example of the  Higgs boson is 
very misleading and a bit offending. Makes me wonder if you have really 
understood me.

   Best

 Søren

Fra: John Collier [ mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za]
Sendt: 17. juni 2014 06:38
Til: Edwina Taborsky; Søren Brier; Catherine Legg; Gary Richmond; 
g...@gnusystems.camailto:g...@gnusystems.ca
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edumailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

I concur with Edwina; I see no reason to call the real here 'god'. I have taken 
a similar line in my classes for decades when looking at what Aquinas' Five 
Ways would imply (Aquinas, of course, does not make Peirce's distinction 
between existence and reality, so his use of 'existence' is misleading at best).

In fact I find this sort of 'god' talk misleading, in much the same way as 
calling the Higgs boson 'the God particle' is misleading.

John


At 07:49 AM 2014-06-16, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

Thanks, Soren, for this outline - very nice. In particular, the brief and 
succinct account:

God is real but does not exists and therefore is not conscious and cannot have 
a will based on a personhood as it is understood by most Theists. Therefore the 
whole creationist concept of a conscious plan in the creation of the world 
would collapses and only Peirce's synechist and thycistic semiotic Agapism 
remains. As in evolutionary epistemology there is a deep connection between the 
process of human cognition , ecology and evolution in the form of semiosis' 
combination of chance, love and logic.

The differentiation between 'reality' and 'the existence' is important, as is 
the location of 'will' within existentiality rather than within reality.

Even though I'm an atheist and don't accept the notion of 'god', I do accept 
the notion of reality - a reality that is rational,  evolving, logical and that 
acknowledges chance and love.

Edwina


- Original

[PEIRCE-L] SV: The edifice of scientismic cosmology is showing some cracks

[Søren Brier]

Dear Stephen

I think it is because the big bang theory combined with thermodynamics is the 
material foundation of the received scientific view and trust in that we are at 
the brink of knowing all the fundamental laws of nature including the laws of 
the DNA, of language and now the brain. This view is deeply connected to our 
view of rationality and the way we develop technology. It is a “view from 
nowhere” that does not include subjectivity, phenomenology and hermeneutical 
concepts of meaning.  It is a disaster for this paradigm if the ground under 
their feet is falling apart. They might even be obliged to integrate semiotics, 
which most of them considers to unscientific!

Cheers

  Søren

Fra: Stephen Jarosek [mailto:sjaro...@iinet.net.au]
Sendt: 4. juni 2014 08:26
Til: Søren Brier; 'Helmut Raulien'; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: The edifice of scientismic cosmology is showing some cracks

Thanks Soren, for the reference to Nicolescu’s work (From modernity to 
cosmodernity) – the outlines on google look interesting. While we are on the 
topic of modern cosmology (“cosmodernity”?) the following link is relevant:
http://www.nature.com/news/big-bang-blunder-bursts-the-multiverse-bubble-1.15346

Some of us from the biosemiotics forum may remember my occasional post 
expressing doubt about the established paradigm as it relates to cosmology. I 
have always found multiverse theory to be particularly cringe-worthy. And the 
Big Bang model is based on assumptions that have not been established to my 
satisfaction. For example, some variation of the “tired light hypothesis” can 
account for the redshift of galaxies.

Yes I am aware that the mainstream has “debunked” the tired light hypothesis... 
or at least believes it to be debunked, but this is the same mainstream that 
entertains multiverse theory – does the mainstream have credibility issues or 
what?

But the edifice continues to crack. February it was Stephen Hawking (see 
below). Now it’s this. May the crumbling of the edifice continue apace... 
though will they listen? Heck no, it’s a religion!

Best,
sj




As per the following excerpt from my email of the biosemiotics forum:

From: Stephen Jarosek [mailto:sjaro...@iinet.net.au]
Sent: Saturday, 1 February 2014 8:46 PM
To: 'biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee'
Subject: RE: [biosemiotics:5060] Re: Peirce's cosmology


2)  [...] I am, however, a sceptic of both relativity theory and big bang 
cosmology, and my scepticism continues to be borne out in contemporary “fixes” 
(dark matter, dark energy, etc, etc) to address a cosmology that is looking 
increasingly broken (to me). Stephen Hawking now tells us that there are no 
black holes... I predicted precisely this outcome years ago, though my surprise 
is that it is Stephen Hawking himself who is now rejecting it! Quantum theory 
is inconsistent with relativity theory, and one of them has got to go... exit 
relativity theory (taking big bang theory with it), methinks. So that leaves 
only quantum theory to contend with.


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[PEIRCE-L] SV: Japan?

[Søren Brier]

Sorry for this mistake. It was supposed to be an internal mail to a Danish 
linguistic specialist.

Søren

Fra: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sendt: 4. juni 2014 17:12
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] Japan?

Hej Per

Jeg fik slet ikke hørt hvordan Japan rejsen gik? Jeg håber at være rask nok til 
at komme tirsdag. Tillykke med at så mange har meldt sig til.

Er det her rigtig, som jeg samlede op på Peirce-listen?

It's apparently true that A child absolutely left on its own will never have 
language beyond Umberto Eco's Latratus canis. But it's not necessarily true 
that It is someone already knowledgeable in communicative human language that 
must teach them. Children who interact mainly with other children their own 
age have been known to develop their own languages 'from scratch' with no 
instruction from adults -- languages sufficient to enable them to communicate 
(with each other) and reason at a high level. This sometimes happens with twins 
in spite of their parents' efforts to teach them the language of the home.

The origin of language is a very deep and still controversial question, but I 
think recent research has emphasized the evolutionary continuity between human 
mentality (including communication and reasoning) and the mentality of other 
animals. One book I'd recommend on this is The Origins of Meaning (Language in 
the Light of Evolution) by James R. Hurford (2007)  KENDER DU DEN?. It's one of 
Stjernfelt's sources in his new book, and it brings together logic, 
linguistics, psychology and evolutionary biology in a remarkable way that 
strikes me as quite Peircean although he doesn't mention Peirce. (Sorry, folks, 
there's that word again ... )


Venlig hilsen

Søren Brier

Professor mso, IBC. CBS
http://cybersemiotics.dk/


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SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

.

@stephencrosehttps://twitter.com/stephencrose

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Steven Ericsson-Zenith 
ste...@iase.usmailto:ste...@iase.us wrote:
Contradictory and I doubt Peircean.

Steven


On Monday, May 19, 2014, Søren Brier sb@cbs.dkmailto:sb@cbs.dk 
wrote:
1. God is real but does not exist: so the best way to worship him is through 
the religion of science



I thought this sums up nicely Section 9.6 in Kees' book and was a good way to 
start the discussion of: God, science and religion. Peirce's theory of the 
relation between science and religion is one of the most controversial aspects 
of his pragmaticist semiotics  only second to his evolutionary objective 
idealism influenced by Schelling (Niemoczynski  and Ejsing) and based on  his 
version of Duns Scotus' extreme scholastic realism, which Kees' did an 
exemplary presentation of as well. Peirce's view of religion and how science is 
deeply connected to it in a way that differs from what any other philosopher 
has suggested except Whitehead's process philosophy, but there are also 
important differences here.



I have no quarrels with Kees' exemplary understandable formulations in the 
short space he has. That leaves opportunity for us to discuss all the 
interesting aspects  he left out like Peirce's Panentheism (Michael Raposa , 
Clayton and Peacock), his almost Neo-Platonist (Kelly Parker 
http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html )  metaphysics of 
emptiness or Tohu va Bohu  (see also Parker) and ongoing  creation in his 
process view, and from this basic idea of  emptiness ( that is also 
foundational to Nargajuna's Buddhism of the middle way ) a connection to 
Buddhism. This was encouraging Peirce to see Buddhism and Christianity in their 
purest mystical forms integrated into an agapistic Buddhisto-Christian process 
view of God. Brent mentions an unsent letter from Peirce's hand describing a 
mystical revelation in the second edition of the biography. This idea of 
Buddhisto-Christianity was taken up by Charles Hartshorne - one of the most 
important philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the twentieth century 
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/  who also wrote about 
Whitehead's process view of the sacred (see references).

I have collected many of the necessary quotes and interpreted them in this 
article 
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peircean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf
 , and in Brier 2012 below.



Even Peirce's evolutionary objective idealism is too much to swallow for most 
scientists who are not fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So even today it is 
considering a violation of rationality to support an evolutionary process 
objective idealism like Peirce's, which include a phenomenological view. Even 
in the biosemiotic group this is dynamite. We have h


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SV: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and person

[Søren Brier]

Charles and list

But section 9.4 is not really about the definition of  how subjects are 
created. But it is clear for me that Peirce saw the creation of the subject as 
a dialogical awareness of the limits of knowing. This creation is connected 
somehow to the development of an individual body (a bodyhood) as mind and 
matter are deeply connected through the semiotic process. In modern term for 
this process is a self-organizing process creating an autopoietic unit, or what 
you could call an autoposemiotic unit, which is what Peirce calls a symbol. 
This symbol is a limited model of the huge argument that the universe is. We 
thus have this deep inner connection to the universe we have evolved from.

  Cheers
   Søren

Fra: charles murray [mailto:charlesmur...@charter.net]
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 14:24
Til: Peirce List
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and 
person

Soren -
In writing you I took the subject to be section 9.4, discussion of which you 
might facilitate as emcee of chapter 9 as a whole.  I apologize for any 
inconvenience or awkwardness, and appreciate your response.
Best,
Charles

On May 29, 2014, at 12:42 PM, Søren Brier wrote:


I did read this long post and in the end I did not find a question for me and 
my subject. So what question did you mean?

  Søren


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SV: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and person

[Søren Brier]

But logic is semiotics? And semiosis is a process of relations and therefore 
quite a lot self-organizing through an evolution of meaning?

 Søren

-Oprindelig meddelelse-
Fra: Gary Richmond [mailto:richmon...@lagcc.cuny.edu] 
Sendt: 1. juni 2014 19:07
Til: Peirce-L@list.iupui.edu; jeffrey.down...@nau.edu
Emne: RE: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and 
person

Jeff, Søren, Charles  list,


I agree with your succinct analysis of this matter of the evolution of the self 
through self-control, Jeff, and especially your very well-stated conclusion 
that there is much to be said for trying to avoid importing assumptions into 
the normative sciences that will tend to bias our inquiry. This point has been 
made any number of times on the list over the years--for recent example, by Ben 
Udell in certain posts related to Peirce's Classification of the Sciences--but 
it bears repeating. However, I'm currently on vacation so I won't say more just 
now.


Best,


Gary

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York E202-O
718 482-5700

*** *** *** ***
 Jeffrey Brian Downard  06/01/14 10:51 AM 
Søren, Charles and list,

The argument Peirce gives about the logical conception of the self in Question 
Concerning Certain Faculties is about the development of the self.  In his 
later works, Peirce makes it clear that the example of a child developing a 
logical conception of self is meant to help us explore what is requisite for 
the evolution of the self and the related capacities for self control more 
generally. (CP, 7.381-4)

The story we might tell in the special sciences of physics, chemistry, biology 
and psychology about the development of self-organizing and autopoietic systems 
shouldn't be used in a normative theory of logic as a basis for developing our 
logical hypotheses.  In time, we'll want to reconcile the account of the self 
developed in our logical theory with the accounts given in the special 
sciences, but we should be wary of getting the cart before the horse.  (CP, 
7.581)

We could, of course, disagree with Peirce on this point, and there are many who 
do.  For my part, however, I think there is much to be said for trying to avoid 
importing assumptions into the normative sciences that will tend to bias our 
inquiry.



--Jeff



Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: Søren Brier [sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2014 5:52 AM
To: charles murray; Peirce List
Subject: SV: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, 
and person

Charles and list

But section 9.4 is not really about the definition of  how subjects are 
created. But it is clear for me that Peirce saw the creation of the subject as 
a dialogical awareness of the limits of knowing. This creation is connected 
somehow to the development of an individual body (a bodyhood) as mind and 
matter are deeply connected through the semiotic process. In modern term for 
this process is a self-organizing process creating an autopoietic unit, or what 
you could call an autoposemiotic unit, which is what Peirce calls a symbol. 
This symbol is a limited model of the huge argument that the universe is. We 
thus have this deep inner connection to the universe we have evolved from.

  Cheers
   Søren

Fra: charles murray [mailto:charlesmur...@charter.net]
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 14:24
Til: Peirce List
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and 
person

Soren -
In writing you I took the subject to be section 9.4, discussion of which you 
might facilitate as emcee of chapter 9 as a whole.  I apologize for any 
inconvenience or awkwardness, and appreciate your response.
Best,
Charles

On May 29, 2014, at 12:42 PM, Søren Brier wrote:


I did read this long post and in the end I did not find a question for me and 
my subject. So what question did you mean?

  Søren




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SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Dear Steven

All I have written is in accordance with what you write here. So I do not feel 
you are arguing with me, but with an interpretation of what I wrote that I 
cannot recognize or support.

I wish you the best of health.

 Søren


Fra: stevenzen...@gmail.com [mailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com] På vegne af Steven 
Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 1. juni 2014 19:57
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: Steven Ericsson-Zenith; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Kathrine Elizabeth Lorena 
Johansson; Claudia Jacques (c...@claudiajacques.org); Elisabeth Sørup; Seth 
Miller; Leslie Combs
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1


Dear Soren,

My apologizes for the delayed response (I am hospitalized currently). My 
comment deserves clarification as Soren suggests.

In brief, Charles' really should not be considered seriously with respect to 
social religion and his relationship with formal religion except through his 
Neglected Agument (yet another advocacy of his semiotic).  God certainly is not 
something he  worships in any traditional sense and his advocacy of worship 
is not at all religious ( but painfully manipulative and social). His father 
and brother are different and more holistic in this regard.  If there is a 
commonreligious thread between  them it is positivism. But Charles, in my view, 
should be dismissed.

At some point Stanford will make my January talk on this subject available.

Steven





On Saturday, May 31, 2014, Søren Brier 
sb@cbs.dkjavascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','sb@cbs.dk'); wrote:
Dear Steven

It is obvious not so to me. So, would you care to explain us why you think so? 
That would be an interesting contribution to our discussion. I have long felt 
that although we in many ways were on the same track, there were also some deep 
disagreement on basic interpretations. But I have not been able to put my 
finger on it. Maybe you can?

Cheers

   Søren

Fra: stevenzen...@gmail.commailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com 
[mailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com] På vegne af Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 01:19
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edumailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Kathrine Elizabeth 
Lorena Johansson; Claudia Jacques 
(c...@claudiajacques.orgmailto:c...@claudiajacques.org); Elisabeth Sørup; 
Seth Miller; Leslie Combs
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Contradictory and I doubt Peircean.

Steven


On Monday, May 19, 2014, Søren Brier sb@cbs.dkmailto:sb@cbs.dk 
wrote:
1. God is real but does not exist: so the best way to worship him is through 
the religion of science



I thought this sums up nicely Section 9.6 in Kees’ book and was a good way to 
start the discussion of: God, science and religion. Peirce’s theory of the 
relation between science and religion is one of the most controversial aspects 
of his pragmaticist semiotics  only second to his evolutionary objective 
idealism influenced by Schelling (Niemoczynski  and Ejsing) and based on  his 
version of Duns Scotus’ extreme scholastic realism, which Kees’ did an 
exemplary presentation of as well. Peirce’s view of religion and how science is 
deeply connected to it in a way that differs from what any other philosopher 
has suggested except Whitehead’s process philosophy, but there are also 
important differences here.



I have no quarrels with Kees’ exemplary understandable formulations in the 
short space he has. That leaves opportunity for us to discuss all the 
interesting aspects  he left out like Peirce’s Panentheism (Michael Raposa , 
Clayton and Peacock), his almost Neo-Platonist (Kelly Parker 
http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html )  metaphysics of 
emptiness or Tohu va Bohu  (see also Parker) and ongoing  creation in his 
process view, and from this basic idea of  emptiness ( that is also 
foundational to Nargajuna’s Buddhism of the middle way ) a connection to 
Buddhism. This was encouraging Peirce to see Buddhism and Christianity in their 
purest mystical forms integrated into an agapistic Buddhisto-Christian process 
view of God. Brent mentions an unsent letter from Peirce’s hand describing a 
mystical revelation in the second edition of the biography. This idea of 
Buddhisto-Christianity was taken up by Charles Hartshorne - one of the most 
important philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the twentieth century 
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/  who also wrote about 
Whitehead’s process view of the sacred (see references).

I have collected many of the necessary quotes and interpreted them in this 
article 
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peircean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf
 , and in Brier 2012 below.



Even Peirce’s evolutionary objective idealism is too much to swallow for most 
scientists who are not fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So even today it is 
considering a violation

SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and person

[Søren Brier]

Dear Jerry

Your statement we need disparately a new conceptualization of philosophical 
and scientific categories to bridge the chasm between science and public laws 
and public polices seems very interesting, but also at the out rim of my 
conceptual universe. In my view it has to go through phaneroscophy and 
pragmaticism.

Your  The ur-category is identity, a concept common to all disciplines, as a 
term for any form/mark. (representamen?) I can comprehend.

But The co-ur-category is quantity. I do not get. With Peirce I would think 
it is quality.

Then  The natural unit selected for bridging the chasm between science and 
policy is electricity. I do not understand either. I would suggest life or 
meaning. Thud you seem to want to start in an empirical objective universe, 
where I want to start in a phaneroscopic, hermeneutical semiotic 
intersubjective realistic pragmaticism.

I do look forward to read your development of these thoughts in an article.

  Cheers

  Søren


Fra: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]
Sendt: 30. maj 2014 20:48
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: Peirce List; charles murray
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and 
person

Dear Soren, List:

On May 30, 2014, at 6:58 AM, Søren Brier wrote:


 I think it is important to distinguish between philosophical and scientific 
categories and your post seem to be on both at the same time. One is principles 
for thinking and another  more practical for  finding natural units for and 
by empirical research.


Yes, my post explicitly uses a single concept of categories.

I think that it is important NOT to distinguish between philosophical and 
scientific categories.

 This is essential to bridging the gap between science and ethics, more 
explicitly, between science and public policy and laws of man  (Legisigns?)

Mathematical category theory is used by Robert Rosen (anticipatory systems 
proponent) to justify his work.

A second mathematician, Andree Ehresmann uses category theory to justify her 
work on the nature of consciousness.

Extensive personal communication with both Robert and Andree strongly indicate 
that we need disparately a new conceptualization of philosophical and 
scientific categories to bridge the chasm between science and public laws and 
public polices.

The current situation is parallel with the situation described by CSP (W2:59) 
in the The Logic of Mathematics with respect to the terms comprehension and 
extension  (which are similar to the pairs (not triad) of breadth / depth 
and connotation / denotation.

I have recently sown together a new set of categories which bridges the 
disciplines (at least from my perspectives.) The ur-category is identity, a 
concept common to all disciplines, as a term for any form/mark. (representamen?)
The co-ur-category is quantity.
The natural unit selected for bridging the chasm between science and policy 
is electricity.
(This paper is a continuation of my work on the mathematics of emergence and 
third order cybernetics, which you have some familiarity with.)

(BTW,Both of these ur-categories were present in the early symbolization of the 
pre-cuniform symbols of Mesopotamia.)

(If you, Soren, are at the Baden-Baden / IIAS conference in August, the paper 
will be presented to the System Scientists there. Should be fun!)

I would note in passing that the Biosemioticians seem to be struggling with the 
conceptualization of categories.  Any comment from your perspectives of 
Cyber-semiotics?

Cheers

Jerry












Fra: Jerry LR Chandler [mailto:jerry_lr_chand...@me.com]
Sendt: 29. maj 2014 21:45
Til: Søren Brier; Peirce List; charles murray
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on Mind, self, and 
person

Dear Soren, Charles, List:

First, your post on your beliefs about the CSP and religion was, indeed, a very 
thoughtful post. We concur on many points of view here.

Next, with regard to Aristotle and the general notion of categorical approaches 
to philosophy and to philosophy of science (not the science of philosophy!)
This fascinating topic originally came to my attention in the 1970's when a 
loud public (and very political) debate on the public health risks from 
exposures to chemical carcinogens, mutagens and other biosemiotic change agents 
raged. The categorical issue how can one decide between the category 
carcinogen and non-carcinogen.  This decision had huge economic inferences. 
 I published a short paper on this in the 1980's in Risk Analysis.

In the intervening decades, I have studied the various philosophers' lists of 
categories and compared their motivation for establishing such lists - 
Aristotle, Scholastics, Kant, Hegel, CSP, Whitehead, Russell, and moderns on 
structural realism, etc.

Clearly, the philosophers' picture of categories is anything but homogenous.  
Comparably, the various disciplines of the natural sciences use a wide range of 
methods to establish

SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Dear Steven

It is obvious not so to me. So, would you care to explain us why you think so? 
That would be an interesting contribution to our discussion. I have long felt 
that although we in many ways were on the same track, there were also some deep 
disagreement on basic interpretations. But I have not been able to put my 
finger on it. Maybe you can?

Cheers

   Søren

Fra: stevenzen...@gmail.com [mailto:stevenzen...@gmail.com] På vegne af Steven 
Ericsson-Zenith
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 01:19
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Kathrine Elizabeth Lorena Johansson; Claudia 
Jacques (c...@claudiajacques.org); Elisabeth Sørup; Seth Miller; Leslie Combs
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Contradictory and I doubt Peircean.

Steven


On Monday, May 19, 2014, Søren Brier sb@cbs.dkmailto:sb@cbs.dk 
wrote:
1. God is real but does not exist: so the best way to worship him is through 
the religion of science



I thought this sums up nicely Section 9.6 in Kees’ book and was a good way to 
start the discussion of: God, science and religion. Peirce’s theory of the 
relation between science and religion is one of the most controversial aspects 
of his pragmaticist semiotics  only second to his evolutionary objective 
idealism influenced by Schelling (Niemoczynski  and Ejsing) and based on  his 
version of Duns Scotus’ extreme scholastic realism, which Kees’ did an 
exemplary presentation of as well. Peirce’s view of religion and how science is 
deeply connected to it in a way that differs from what any other philosopher 
has suggested except Whitehead’s process philosophy, but there are also 
important differences here.



I have no quarrels with Kees’ exemplary understandable formulations in the 
short space he has. That leaves opportunity for us to discuss all the 
interesting aspects  he left out like Peirce’s Panentheism (Michael Raposa , 
Clayton and Peacock), his almost Neo-Platonist (Kelly Parker 
http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html )  metaphysics of 
emptiness or Tohu va Bohu  (see also Parker) and ongoing  creation in his 
process view, and from this basic idea of  emptiness ( that is also 
foundational to Nargajuna’s Buddhism of the middle way ) a connection to 
Buddhism. This was encouraging Peirce to see Buddhism and Christianity in their 
purest mystical forms integrated into an agapistic Buddhisto-Christian process 
view of God. Brent mentions an unsent letter from Peirce’s hand describing a 
mystical revelation in the second edition of the biography. This idea of 
Buddhisto-Christianity was taken up by Charles Hartshorne - one of the most 
important philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the twentieth century 
- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/  who also wrote about 
Whitehead’s process view of the sacred (see references).

I have collected many of the necessary quotes and interpreted them in this 
article 
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peircean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf
 , and in Brier 2012 below.



Even Peirce’s evolutionary objective idealism is too much to swallow for most 
scientists who are not fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So even today it is 
considering a violation of rationality to support an evolutionary process 
objective idealism like Peirce’s, which include a phenomenological view. Even 
in the biosemiotic group this is dynamite. We have h

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SV: [PEIRCE-L] I'm not sure how much this has to do with Peircean triadicity, but...

[Søren Brier]

Dear Ben

Extremely interesting, but very difficult to connect to semiotic pragmaticism 
at the moment.

Cheers

Søren

Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sendt: 31. maj 2014 03:37
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: [PEIRCE-L] I'm not sure how much this has to do with Peircean triadicity, 
but...


Physicists Prove Surprising Rule of Threes, _Wired_, May 29, 2014, by Natalie 
Wolchover (_Quanta Magazine_).

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/physicists-rule-of-threes-efimov-trimers/

Best, Ben

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to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To 
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SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

 
simply because we insist on remaining blind to what is plain, that there can be 
no reality which has not the life of a symbol.


CP 5:383-4 (revised version of Fixation of Belief):

Now, there are some people, among whom I must suppose that my reader is to be 
found, who, when they see that any belief of theirs is determined by any 
circumstance extraneous to the facts, will from that moment not merely admit in 
words that that belief is doubtful, but will experience a real doubt of it, so 
that it ceases in some degree at least to be a belief.
To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found 
by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external 
permanency - by something upon which our thinking has no effect [But which, on 
the other hand, unceasingly tends to influence thought; or in other words, by 
something Real]. Some mystics imagine that they have such a method in a private 
inspiration from on high. But that is only a form of the method of tenacity, in 
which the conception of truth as something public is not yet developed.

Enough for now!

gary f.

From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: 20-May-14 9:19 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Dear Gary

I think this problem you bring up here hinges on the definition of mystical. 
I agree that Peirce does not use this term as he does not use the term 
Panentheism. These are terms that I have used to describe his position. The 
term revelation is also my term. I do not recall if Brent use of it in 
writing. But this was what I got out of a discussion with him in the Symposium 
on the Religious Writings of Charles S. Peirce in Denver 2003. 
http://wings.buffalo.edu/research/peirce/symposiumAnnCall.pdf . Brent writes. 
...for Peirce, semiotics should be understood ... as the working out of how the 
real is both immanent and transcendent and how the infinite speaker may be said 
to practice semiosis ... in the creation of our universe.  Brent (1998:212)

But I do agree that it is a problem for many researchers of Peirce if there is 
such a connection between his ide og reasonableness as semiotic logic and a 
perennial philosophy idea of pure mysticism, where you transcends space and 
time into an experience of unity, which is described by so many mystics over 
the time, within various religions and outside them. As Nesteruk writes:

Contemporary cosmology, as well as science in general, has to face the paradox 
of human subjectivity in the universe. This paradox was explicitly formulated 
in philosophical thought by E. Husserl and rephrased later by many thinkers 
across philosophy and theology.   
(Nesteruk 2005 p. 8)

I do interpret Peirce's 'musement' as a form of meditation and his argument for 
that all men would reach to the concept of God as an explanatory factor for the 
reasonableness of the evolving universe and our place in it. Musement is an a 
free experiential abduction. It is not purely rational exercise.

Peirce certainly new something about Vedic thinking and Advaita Vedanta and the 
pure forms of Buddhism as can be seem from a few quotes from CP. I have been 
unable to find anymore writings here. If he got it from James or Carus. I do 
not know. Peirce and William James were both influenced by Buddhist thinking. 
James also met with Vivekananda as well as with Suzuki, the most famous 
interpreter of Zen-Buddhism. Suzuki worked in the US for Paul Carus, the editor 
of The Monist. But surely Schelling is close to this kind of thinking too. Here 
is a quote on Vedic thinking from Peirce:

There is still another direction in which the barbaric conception of personal 
identity must be broadened. A Brahmanical hymn begins as follows: I am that 
pure and infinite Self, who am bliss, eternal, manifest, all-pervading, and who 
am the substrate of all that owns name and form. This expresses more than 
humiliation, - the utter swallowing up of the poor individual self in the 
Spirit of prayer. All communication from mind to mind is through continuity of 
being. A man is capable of having assigned to him a role in the drama of 
creation, and so far as he loses himself in that role, - no matter how humble 
it may be, - so far he identifies himself with its Author.   
(Peirce CP 7.572)

Like Aristotle, Peirce - based on his synechism - assumes that the stuff of 
reality or of which the world is built is Hylé, a continuum of matter and mind. 
Peirce viewed our non-scientific ways of thinking as being indispensable not 
only for knowledge but as the very basis for perception and thought. For Peirce 
it is his phenomenological, which he called phaneroscophy, basis of his 
philosophy. Evolutionarily this reflection also reminds you of the common 
origin of matter and consciousness. Rather than thoughts being substantial 
entities identified either

SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

 such a method in a private 
inspiration from on high. But that is only a form of the method of tenacity, in 
which the conception of truth as something public is not yet developed.

Enough for now!

gary f.

From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: 20-May-14 9:19 AM
To: Gary Fuhrman; Peirce List
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Dear Gary

I think this problem you bring up here hinges on the definition of mystical. 
I agree that Peirce does not use this term as he does not use the term 
Panentheism. These are terms that I have used to describe his position. The 
term revelation is also my term. I do not recall if Brent use of it in 
writing. But this was what I got out of a discussion with him in the Symposium 
on the Religious Writings of Charles S. Peirce in Denver 2003. 
http://wings.buffalo.edu/research/peirce/symposiumAnnCall.pdf . Brent writes. 
...for Peirce, semiotics should be understood ... as the working out of how the 
real is both immanent and transcendent and how the infinite speaker may be said 
to practice semiosis ... in the creation of our universe.  Brent (1998:212)

But I do agree that it is a problem for many researchers of Peirce if there is 
such a connection between his ide og reasonableness as semiotic logic and a 
perennial philosophy idea of pure mysticism, where you transcends space and 
time into an experience of unity, which is described by so many mystics over 
the time, within various religions and outside them. As Nesteruk writes:

Contemporary cosmology, as well as science in general, has to face the paradox 
of human subjectivity in the universe. This paradox was explicitly formulated 
in philosophical thought by E. Husserl and rephrased later by many thinkers 
across philosophy and theology.   
(Nesteruk 2005 p. 8)

I do interpret Peirce's 'musement' as a form of meditation and his argument for 
that all men would reach to the concept of God as an explanatory factor for the 
reasonableness of the evolving universe and our place in it. Musement is an a 
free experiential abduction. It is not purely rational exercise.

Peirce certainly new something about Vedic thinking and Advaita Vedanta and the 
pure forms of Buddhism as can be seem from a few quotes from CP. I have been 
unable to find anymore writings here. If he got it from James or Carus. I do 
not know. Peirce and William James were both influenced by Buddhist thinking. 
James also met with Vivekananda as well as with Suzuki, the most famous 
interpreter of Zen-Buddhism. Suzuki worked in the US for Paul Carus, the editor 
of The Monist. But surely Schelling is close to this kind of thinking too. Here 
is a quote on Vedic thinking from Peirce:

There is still another direction in which the barbaric conception of personal 
identity must be broadened. A Brahmanical hymn begins as follows: I am that 
pure and infinite Self, who am bliss, eternal, manifest, all-pervading, and who 
am the substrate of all that owns name and form. This expresses more than 
humiliation, - the utter swallowing up of the poor individual self in the 
Spirit of prayer. All communication from mind to mind is through continuity of 
being. A man is capable of having assigned to him a role in the drama of 
creation, and so far as he loses himself in that role, - no matter how humble 
it may be, - so far he identifies himself with its Author.   
(Peirce CP 7.572)

Like Aristotle, Peirce - based on his synechism - assumes that the stuff of 
reality or of which the world is built is Hylé, a continuum of matter and mind. 
Peirce viewed our non-scientific ways of thinking as being indispensable not 
only for knowledge but as the very basis for perception and thought. For Peirce 
it is his phenomenological, which he called phaneroscophy, basis of his 
philosophy. Evolutionarily this reflection also reminds you of the common 
origin of matter and consciousness. Rather than thoughts being substantial 
entities identified either with physical brains or immaterial minds, Peirce 
understands thoughts as signs. We are more in thought than thoughts are in us.

Now I have had discussion with some pan-semioticians if experience is a 
necessary aspect of semiosis, and I have argued yes, since feeling is 
fundamental to Firstness. They think no, and that semiosis is a dynamical 
fundamental system of interaction in the physical world, more fundamental than 
the classical mechanical physics description. But in The Architecture of 
Theories (1891) Peirce wrote:

Without going into other important questions of philosophical architectonic, we 
can readily foresee what sort of a metaphysics would appropriately be 
constructed from those conceptions... a Cosmogonic Philosophy. It would suppose 
that in the beginning -- infinitely remote -- there was a chaos of 
unpersonalized feeling, which being without connection or regularity would 
properly

SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Dear Gary and list

Your quote made me think of John of the Cross famous poem of the dark night 
describing the mystical union. http://www.ewtn.com/library/SOURCES/DARK-JC.TXT 
. I have italicized the places where the a-personal  in the union is described 
though the poem is within the frames of Christianity, which John managed to 
stay within but Eckhart was kicked out from after his death.

STANZAS OF THE SOUL

   1. One dark night,
   fired with love's urgent longings
 -- ah, the sheer grace! --
   I went out unseen,
   my house being now all stilled.

   2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
   -- ah, the sheer grace! --
   in darkness and concealment,
   my house being now all stilled.

   3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
   nor did I look at anything,
   with no other light or guide
   than the one that burned in my heart.

   4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
   to where he was awaiting me
   -- him I knew so well --
   there in a place where no one appeared.

   5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
   O night that has united
   the Lover with his beloved,
   transforming the beloved in her Lover.

   6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
   there he lay sleeping,
   and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

   7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
   with its gentle hand,
   suspending all my senses.

   8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
   all things ceased; I went out from myself,
   leaving my cares
   forgotten among the lilies.

Best

   Søren

Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 20:18
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Quick followup on L 482 or whatever it really is:

Douglas R. Anderson quotes Peirce's whole letter to John W. Brown on pages 
15-16 in Chapter 1 in _Strands of System_ and adds, MS, Fisch Collection

http://books.google.com/books?id=jc5r7WoNEE8Cpg=PA15lpg=PA15dq=%22Peirce%22+%22John+W.+Brown%22source=blots=1aP337-t1esig=9mtD-IDxK7zpfD9NvbojyNy4IZ0hl=ensa=Xei=rt18U8_sGsXisATup4BIved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepageq=%22Peirce%22%20%22John%20W.%20Brown%22f=false

There's a chapter end note 11 indicated but I can't access the page with its 
text in Google Preview.

Best, Ben

On 5/21/2014 1:49 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Gary F., Stephen, all,

The full text of Peirce's letter of April 24, 1892 to the Reverend John W. 
Brown is at

http://www.unav.es/gep/LetterJBrown.html

at the website of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos. G.E.P. also has images of 
the letter, beginning at:

http://www.unav.es/gep/1Brown.html

The quote about speculation and experience is in the 1898 lectures, CP 1.655

[CP 1.655, QUOTE] If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly to 
hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her from a villain, would 
you stop to reason out the metaphysical question of whether it were possible 
for one mind to cause material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive 
them? If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder of your days. 
In the same way, if a man undergoes any religious experience and hears the call 
of his Saviour, for him to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical difficulty 
would seem to be an analogous sort of thing, whether you call it stupid or 
whether you call it disgusting. If on the other hand, a man has had no 
religious experience, then any religion not an affectation is as yet impossible 
for him; and the only worthy course is to wait quietly till such experience 
comes. No amount of speculation can take the place of experience. [END QUOTE, 
FONT ENLARGEMENT ADDED]

Compare this passage from the 1892 letter:

[QUOTE] But this time - I was not thinking of St. Thomas and his doubts either 
- no sooner had I got into the church than I seemed to receive the direct 
permission of the Master to come. Still, I said to myself, I must not go to the 
communion without further reflection! I must go home  duly prepare myself 
before I venture. But, when the instant came, I found myself carried up to the 
altar rail, almost without my own volition. I am perfectly sure that it was 
right. Anyway, I could not help it. [END QUOTE]

The passage from the 1898 lecture seems connected with his 

SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Sorry, It was Ben who found the quote about walking in the garden.

  Søren

Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 20:18
Til: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Quick followup on L 482 or whatever it really is:

Douglas R. Anderson quotes Peirce's whole letter to John W. Brown on pages 
15-16 in Chapter 1 in _Strands of System_ and adds, MS, Fisch Collection

http://books.google.com/books?id=jc5r7WoNEE8Cpg=PA15lpg=PA15dq=%22Peirce%22+%22John+W.+Brown%22source=blots=1aP337-t1esig=9mtD-IDxK7zpfD9NvbojyNy4IZ0hl=ensa=Xei=rt18U8_sGsXisATup4BIved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepageq=%22Peirce%22%20%22John%20W.%20Brown%22f=false

There's a chapter end note 11 indicated but I can't access the page with its 
text in Google Preview.

Best, Ben

On 5/21/2014 1:49 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Gary F., Stephen, all,

The full text of Peirce's letter of April 24, 1892 to the Reverend John W. 
Brown is at

http://www.unav.es/gep/LetterJBrown.html

at the website of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos. G.E.P. also has images of 
the letter, beginning at:

http://www.unav.es/gep/1Brown.html

The quote about speculation and experience is in the 1898 lectures, CP 1.655

[CP 1.655, QUOTE] If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly to 
hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her from a villain, would 
you stop to reason out the metaphysical question of whether it were possible 
for one mind to cause material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive 
them? If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder of your days. 
In the same way, if a man undergoes any religious experience and hears the call 
of his Saviour, for him to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical difficulty 
would seem to be an analogous sort of thing, whether you call it stupid or 
whether you call it disgusting. If on the other hand, a man has had no 
religious experience, then any religion not an affectation is as yet impossible 
for him; and the only worthy course is to wait quietly till such experience 
comes. No amount of speculation can take the place of experience. [END QUOTE, 
FONT ENLARGEMENT ADDED]

Compare this passage from the 1892 letter:

[QUOTE] But this time - I was not thinking of St. Thomas and his doubts either 
- no sooner had I got into the church than I seemed to receive the direct 
permission of the Master to come. Still, I said to myself, I must not go to the 
communion without further reflection! I must go home  duly prepare myself 
before I venture. But, when the instant came, I found myself carried up to the 
altar rail, almost without my own volition. I am perfectly sure that it was 
right. Anyway, I could not help it. [END QUOTE]

The passage from the 1898 lecture seems connected with his 1903 remark that 
experience is our only teacher, as you say, Gary F., but it also seems to 
harken back to the 1892 letter.  In the 1898 passage I've enlarged the line 
that seems to allude to the passage that I quoted from the 1892 letter. On the 
other hand, for my part, I'm unsure what broader conclusions about Peirce's 
thought's longer-term development can be drawn from all this. Brent does seem 
speculative about this.

Still, Peirce's _Monist_ Metaphysical series does take a more religiously 
suggestive turn after April 1892, as Brent pointed out. Of course, it could 
have been that Peirce was already planning that turn, and his mystical 
experience came timely with it, invited by that turn, and perhaps reinforcing 
or energizing it somehow.

(1891 January), The Architecture of Theories, The Monist, v. I, n. 2.
(1892 April) The Doctrine of Necessity Examined, The Monist, v. II, n. 3
(1892 July) The Law of Mind, The Monist, v. II, n. 4
(1892 October), Man's Glassy Essence, The Monist, v. III, n. 1
(1893 January), Evolutionary Love, The Monist, v. III, n. 2
(1893 July), Reply to the Necessitarians, The Monist, v. III, n. 4
and one should also mention
Immortality in the Light of Synechism, submitted 1893 May 4, but unpublished 
in The Monist because of a misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, I don't see all this as having much to do with Peirce's 1905 
distinction of pragmaticism from pragmatism more generally. He wanted to 
distinguish pragmaticism from the magical pragmatist Papini's notion that 
pragmatism cannot be defined, and from the Schiller's and James's versions. 
Peirce believed that they held, among other things, that truth is not immutable 
and that infinity is not real. He also disagreed with James's ideas of the will 
to believe. While such unpragmaticistic ideas run contrary to Peirce's 
religious ideas, they also run contrary to his ideas in general.

Note, on the listing of the letter to Brown as L 482. I don't have my copy of 
Brent's Peirce handy and the Google preview omits some pages that I needed to 
see. I had wanted to find out whether the letter to Brown was a 

SV: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

Dear Eduardo


Thank you. I have been fascinated by it since I discovered this connection. 
Which made me study some necessary works of the traditions.



Isayeva N. (1993). Shankara and Indian philosophy. Delhi: Sri Satguru 
Publications.



John of the Cross. (2003).  Dark night of the soul, New York: Dover 
publications.

Nargajuna. (1995). The fundamental wisdom of the middle way (J. L. Garfield, 
Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

floyd merrell is, by the way, doing wonderful work in this area. We published 
an article from him some years ago. merrel, f. (2009). Musement, play, 
creativity: Nature's way. 
javascript:openOrCloseBlock('item1')%22%20%5Co%20%22Se%20komplet%20beskrivelse%20af%20Musement,%20play,%20creativity%20:%20nature's%20way
  Cybernetics  Human Knowing, 16 (3-4), 89-106.

Best

   Søren


Fra: e...@coqui.net [mailto:e...@coqui.net]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 23:00
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: g...@gnusystems.ca; Peirce-L@list.iupui.edu
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1

Soren:

Forgive my intrusion and brevity.  This is a beatiful message.  In Spanish we 
would say: muy hermoso.

Eduardo Forastieri-Braschi


-Original Message-




From: Søren Brier [sb@cbs.dk]
Sent: 5/21/2014 2:11:56 PM
To: 
g...@gnusystems.ca;Peirce-L@list.iupui.edumailto:g...@gnusystems.ca;Peirce-L@list.iupui.edu
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and 
religion: text 1


Dear Gary and list

Peirce seems keen to work with the foundation of all religions, which is one 
way to characterize the pure types of mysticism and the theory of collecting 
them into a perennial philosophy.  His theory of the immanent divine as 
Firstness and  his idea of an emptiness before the three categories or 
universes, as he also calls them -a Tohu Bohu (the great emptiness) as he 
quotes from the old testament - is pretty mystical.  It is also important to 
note that Peirce is both inspired by transcendental Christianity as well as 
Buddhism in a sort of panentheism. The divine is both immanent and transcendent 
in Peirce's philosophy. It is both an emptiness behind and before the 
manifested world in time and space giving birth to a Firstness of 
possibilities, random sporting, qualia and possible mathematical forms. 
Peirce writes:



If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in order to 
account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in which the whole 
universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute nothing. . . . But 
this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of negation is the 
nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure 
zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no 
compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which 
the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely 
undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no 
compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.

Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of things? 
But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing in 
particular necessarily resulted. . . .

I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless freedom. 
That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is not the logic of 
freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is that it shall 
annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle and 
do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle potentiality is annulled by its 
complete idleness.



(CP 6.215-219)


This philosophy places emptiness and the void at a central a place in 
Peirce's metaphysics, as it is in the pure mysticism of Buddhism, for instance 
the version represented in the writings of Nargajuna (1995) in his famous verse:


Whatever is dependently co-arising
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation
Is itself the middle way.

(Garfield 1995, p. 93)
This verse defines the middle way of Buddhism. It is the view arising from 
the contention that everything is supported and connected by a positive 
emptiness (which is not an absence but a primary being), the foundation for 
nearly all major Buddhist schools in East Asia (Garfield 1995)[1]. The 
metaphysics of emptiness is to be found not only in Buddhism but also in the 
Vedic thinking of Shankara's Advaita Vedanta  and Christian mysticism (John of 
the Cross and Eckehart). Peirce saw Buddhism and Christianity melting together 
within a transcendental religious view of empathy and love as the foundation of 
reality. The emphasis on feeling and emotion as central to all rational 
thought is one of Peirce's outstanding contributions to understanding the 
processes of mind

[PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and religion: text 1

[Søren Brier]

...



  (Sheriff 1994 p. XVI).
Interesting works dealing with Peirce's view on religion and science:

Brent, J. (1938): Charles S. Peirce: A Life, Revised and Enlarged Edition 
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Brier, S. (2010): The Conflict between Indian Vedic Mentality and Western 
Modernity. I: Mentality and Thought: North, South, East and West. red. / Per 
Durst-Andersen ; Elsebeth F. Lange. Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School 
Press, 2010: 53-86.
Brier, S. (2012). C. S. Peirce's Complementary and Transdisciplinary Conception 
of Science and Religion, Cybernetics  Human Knowing, Volume 19, Numbers 1-2, 
2012: 59-94
Corrington, R. S. (2000) An Introduction to C.S. Peirce: Philosopher, 
Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist  (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 
1993) and A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge 
University Press, 2000),
Clayton, P. and Peacock, A. (2004). In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our 
Being: Panentheistic   Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World, 
Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Ejsing, A. (2007). Theology of anticipation: A constructive study of C. S. 
Peirce. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, OR: Pickwick 
Publications.
Hartshorne, C. (1972). Whitehead's philosophy. Lincoln, NE: University of 
Nebraska Press.
Hartshorne, C. (1984). Towards a Buddhisto-Christian religion. In K. K. Inada  
N. P.  Jacobson  (Eds.), Buddhism and American thinkers (pp. 1-13).  Albany, 
NY: State University of New York Press.
Innis, R.E. (2013). The Reach of the Aesthetic and Religious Naturalism: 
Peircean and Polanyian Reflections, 
https://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD38-3/TAD38-3-fnl-pg31-50-pdf.pdf
Orange, D. M. (1984). Peirce's Conception of God: A Developmental Study 
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984),
Peirce, B. (1881). Ideality in the Physical  Sciences , Boston: Little , Brown, 
and Company.
Potters, V.G. (1997): Charles S. Peirce: On Norms  Ideals, American Philosophy 
Series, Fordham University Press.
Raposa, M.  (1993).Peirce's Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana 
University Press, 1993)
Sheriff, J.K. (1994): Charles Sanders Peirce's Guess at the Riddle: Ground for 
Human Significance, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Niemoczynski , L. (2011). Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of 
Nature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).



Best wishes

  Søren Brier

Professor in the semiotics of information, cognition and commmunication science,
department of International Business Communication, Copenhagen Business School,
Home page: www.cbs.dk/staff/sbibchttp://www.cbs.dk/staff/sbibc. , 
Cybersemiotics.com



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SV: [biosemiotics:5904] Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7 8

[Søren Brier]

Dear Sung

Prigogine can be said to deliver a physical support to Peirce's evolutionary 
worldview except that he does not have a theory of signification and meaning.

Best
 Søren

-Oprindelig meddelelse-
Fra: Sungchul Ji [mailto:s...@rci.rutgers.edu]
Sendt: 28. april 2014 04:06
Til: Gary Richmond
Cc: Stephen C. Rose; PEIRCE-L@list.iupui.edu
Emne: [biosemiotics:5904] Re: [PEIRCE-L] de Waal Seminar: Chapters 7  8

Gary R, List,

According to I. Prigogine (1917-2003), there are two types of structures in the 
Universe -- (i) equilibrium STRUCTURES (e.g., table, bible, ec.) that do not 
change with time nor require energy dissiaption for them to exist, and (ii) 
dissipative STRUCTURES(e.g., the flame of a candle, TV images, EEG, 
Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, action potentials) that change in time and 
require dissipation of energy for their existence.  As is well known, Prigogine 
was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for having contributed to 
establishing the concpet of dissiaptive structures.

Can philsophers and semioticians utilize the Prigoginean theory of STRUCTURES ?

With all the best.

Sung
__
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology 
and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, 
N.J. 08855
732-445-4701

www.conformon.net






 Stephen, Michael, Gene, List,

 It seems to me that in sum the argumentation so far has been that
 Michael maintains that Peirce should be seen as a structuralist, Gene
 has countered that Peirce is best seen as a thorough-going process
 philosopher, and Michael responded to this by saying that to refer to
 his philosophy as processual is redundant since a properly understood
 structuralism includes the ideas of process and growth, and I have
 suggested that structuralism is generally not understood as such (that
 is, as involving change and growth), and that many Peircean
 philosophers see Peirce as a process thinker, but not as a
 structuralist.

 Now you may be suggesting--but I'm not exactly sure what your intended
 meaning was, Stephen--that Michael may well be proven correct and that
 there is good reason to see Peirce as a structuralist when that theory
 is properly understood to include the notions of history, change,
 and growth.

 But currently--and although I'm not a big fan of post-structuralism
 and deconstruction, etc.--structuralism tends to connote to many
 certain ideas which are not processual. Thus, at the conclusion of a
 the overview of structuralism in the Wikipedia article one is give
 these tenets common to the various forms of structuralism as
 formulated by the feminist theorist, Alison Assiter:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

 *First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a
 whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural
 laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are
 the real things that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of
 meaning.*


 Now I would imagine that Michael would say that Assiter does not
 properly understand structuralism. Still, and again, structuralism
 does indeed connote these ideas to many. And especially for this
 discussion note that the third tenet is that structural laws deal
 with co-existence rather than change.

 So, until structuralism is properly understood (and I have no doubt
 that Michael has things of considerable importance to say about this,
 especially in the realms of linguistics and semiotics), it's a heavy
 load at present to suggest that Peirce is more structuralist than
 processual (or, rather, that that the idea of structure properly
 understood includes process, as Michael is saying).

 I'll be eager to learn more about this proper understanding of
 structuralism, and in that sense I agree with you, Stephen, that we
 should reserved judgment.

 Best,

 Gary



 *Gary Richmond*
 *Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
 *Communication Studies*
 *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*


 On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 7:53 PM, Stephen C. Rose
 stever...@gmail.comwrote:

 I think it is much too early in the course of things to exclude
 Michael's conjectures which I assume are intended to widen in a
 radical and original manner the scope of Peirce's influence. It has
 after all taken 2000 years to arrive at the start of an appropriate
 revision of Aristotle, again based in part on Peirce's growing
 influence. It is somewhat a problem for the dead, who cannot respond,
 to have exclusive interpretations attached to aspects of their
 thought. Particularly if, like Peirce, they were inclined to favor
 the growth of communities of discourse and partial to abduction which
 means, I assume, guessing.

 *@stephencrose https://twitter.com/stephencrose*


 On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Gary Richmond
 gary.richm...@gmail.comwrote:

 Gene, Michael, List,

 I