Jon, list, There is one statement near the beginning of your post that strikes me as absurd, and nothing in the remainder of your explanation changes that impression.
JAS: at the present, that [completely determinate] state of things [namely the all of reality] "is comprised of everything that is in the past" (p. 253). The past is not a place where things go when they die (i.e. become completely determinate). Nothing exists “in the past.” The “state of things” (as Peirce says) is “an abstract constituent part of reality.” In reality though, as in the “perfect sign,” nothing is static; “the all of reality” then is as imaginary as a point on a continuous line. Everything that happens, including every instance of determination, happens now, and nothing unhappens. I’ve offered an alternative Peircean account of determination and causality which addresses the question raised by Gary R here: https://gnusystems.ca/TS/css.htm#causdetrmn, for those who might be interested. The crucial point I’d like to make is this: time and semiosis are both continuous, but while time is one-dimensional and one-directional, i.e. “linear” (to use a spatial metaphor), semiosis is predominately nonlinear. Semiosis requires time but also requires energy flows, and energy flows in systemic processes are typically nonlinear. In the human brain, for instance, the majority of functional areas that project neuronal signals to other areas also receive feedback from those areas, and do so continuously during the current process. Where the organization is hierarchical, the top-down and bottom-up flows mutually determine what happens. Peirce does acknowledge mutual determination in the context of Existential Graphs, but he could not have known how it was physiologically embodied in semiosis or cognition, because system science was hardly even embryonic in his time. Jon, my reading of your post may be uncharitable, but I couldn’t help it! Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jon Alan Schmidt Sent: 25-Jul-25 18:11 To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semiosic Ontology (was Spencer-Brown's concept of 'reentry') Gary R., List: CSP: There is but one individual, or completely determinate, state of things, namely, the all of reality. (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906) You ask how this assertion (2ns) squares with the evolutionary tendencies of the cosmos (3ns) and the role of chance (1ns), both of which Peirce plainly affirms elsewhere. I give my answer to this question in "Temporal Synechism"--at the present, that state of things "is comprised of everything that is in the past" (p. 253), because the future is always indeterminate to some extent; and "the ongoing evolution (3ns) of the entire universe conforms to the categorial vector of process: from being absolutely indeterminate (1ns) in the infinite past, when everything would have been in the future, toward being absolutely determinate (2ns) in the infinite future, when everything would be in the past" (p. 256). Therefore, in the ultimate sense, "the all of reality" is the entire dynamical object of the final opinion, the totality of what an infinite community would affirm after infinite inquiry--looking back across time as a whole, not somehow looking forward from a moment within time (determinism). However, that completely determinate state of things will never actually come about, which is why “our knowledge [along with everything else] is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum of uncertainty and of indeterminacy" (CP 1.171, c. 1893). CSP: At present, the course of events is approximately determined by law. In the past that approximation was less perfect; in the future it will be more perfect. The tendency to obey laws has always been and always will be growing. We look back toward a point in the infinitely distant past when there was no law but mere indeterminacy; we look forward to a point in the infinitely distant future when there will be no indeterminacy or chance but a complete reign of law. But at any assignable date in the past, however early, there was already some tendency toward uniformity; and at any assignable date in the future there will be some slight aberrancy from law. Moreover, all things have a tendency to take habits. (CP 1.409, EP 1:277, 1887-8) CSP: I may mention that my chief avocation in the last 10 years has been to develop my cosmology. This theory is that the evolution of the world is hyperbolic, that is, proceeds from one state of things in the infinite past, to a different state of things in the infinite future. The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity. The state of things in the infinite future is death, the nothingness of which consists in the complete triumph of law and absence of all spontaneity. Between these, we have on our side a state of things in which there is some absolute spontaneity counter to all law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly on the increase owing to the growth of habit. (CP 8.317, 1891) I have deliberately refrained from introducing God into recent threads because, as indicated by the subject line of this one, I would prefer to focus for now on semiosic ontology rather than cosmology--especially since we have discussed the latter at great length over the years, both on and off the List, such that my position is already well known to you and others. As I said earlier today in a different thread, it is a fundamental semiotic principle that every sign is determined by a dynamical object that is external to that sign, independent of that sign, and unaffected by that sign. Accordingly, if the entire universe is one immense sign as Peirce and I maintain, then it must be determined by such an object--one that is external to the universe, independent of the universe, and unaffected by the universe. Of course, if God the Creator were real, then God would be such an object; hence, there is reason to suspect that God is real, and the final interpretant of the universe as a sign would then be God completely revealed. "The starting-point of the universe, God the Creator, is the Absolute 1st; the terminus of the universe, God completely revealed, is the Absolute 2nd; every state of the universe at a measurable point of time is the 3rd" (CP 1.362, EP 1:251, 1887-8). In other words, God's purpose in continuously determining the universe as a sign--specifically, a perfect sign and thus a quasi-mind--is increasingly definite self-disclosure. "The creation of the universe ... is going on today and never will be done" (CP 1.615, EP 2:255, 1903). "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. ... Thus, when I speak of chance, I only employ a mathematical term to express with accuracy the characteristics of freedom or spontaneity" (CP 6.199&201, 1898). Whose freedom or spontaneity? "On the other hand, the perfect sign is perpetually being acted upon by its object, from which it is perpetually receiving the accretions of new signs, which bring it fresh energy, and also kindle energy that it already had, but which had lain dormant. In addition, the perfect sign never ceases to undergo changes of the kind we rather drolly call spontaneous, that is, they happen sua sponte but not by its will" (EP 2:545n25, 1906). If not by its will, then by whose will? In summary, as I wrote years ago in "A Neglected Additament: Peirce on Logic, Cosmology, and the Reality of God" (https://philpapers.org/archive/SCHANA-7.pdf), "God as Ens necessarium, eternal pure mind, creative of thought (third Universe), imagines an inexhaustible continuum of real possibilities and their combinations (first Universe), and exercises perfect freedom in choosing which of these to actualize (second Universe)." Returning to ontology, this is the constitution of being, which--like any topical continuum--conforms to the categorial vector of representation (3ns→1ns→2ns). According to Peirce, "Metaphysics consists in the results of the absolute acceptance of logical principles not merely as regulatively valid, but as truths of being. Accordingly, it is to be assumed that the universe has an explanation, the function of which, like that of every logical explanation, is to unify its observed variety. It follows that the root of all being is One; and so far as different subjects have a common character they partake of an identical being" (CP 1.487, c. 1896). My hypothesis is that the observed variety of the universe is unified and explained by recognizing that the One root of all being--the identical being of which all the different subjects within the universe partake--is the being of a sign. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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