Gary, List
>”A key, anti-Cartesian point is, as you wrote, that once dualism is excluded >either mind or matter must be primordial, and Peirce clearly maintained that >mind is primary, that matter is best understood as a rigidified form of mind.” As a dual-aspect monist myself, I felt compelled to ask Grok whether Peirce was also so inclined. From this dual-aspect perspective, then, I’d suggest that the most primal duality is not mind vs matter, but the known versus the unknown. Hence my interest in the quantum void and Sunyata (the creative void of Hinduism/Buddhism), and the parallels between them. Here’s Grok’s response to my question: Yes, Charles Sanders Peirce can be considered a dual-aspect monist. His philosophy, particularly his doctrine of synechism, suggests a continuity between mind and matter, viewing them as two aspects of a single underlying reality. Peirce's metaphysical framework posits that reality is fundamentally continuous, with mental and physical phenomena being different manifestations of the same process, rather than distinct substances. His emphasis on the interplay of Firstness (quality), Secondness (reaction), and Thirdness (representation) further supports this, as these categories bridge the mental and physical without reducing one to the other. However, Peirce’s views are complex, and some interpretations might lean toward objective idealism or panpsychism, but dual-aspect monism aligns closely with his holistic approach to reality. In his description of a participatory universe, John Archibald Wheeler coined the metaphor of reality "pulling itself up by its bootstraps". His notion of "it from bit" suggests that physical reality (the "it") emerges from information (the "bit") through the act of observation. And of course, the act of observation requires a body (matter) to enable it. The bootstrap metaphor as a feedback loop bringing it-self into existence suggests a primal, inextricable relationship, one that is more primal than mind vs matter. BOTTOM LINE: What is information if not a "known" defined relative to an unknown? You cannot have information without a body to engage it and give it meaning, hence the significance of embodied cognition in dual-aspect monism. The tension between the known and the unknown is primal to the “creative void” that is Sunyata. This relates to virtual particles and the Feynman diagrams. Perhaps “anti-Cartesianism”, then, requires further nuance. I wonder… could association (Secondness, relations, interaction, stimulus-response) be distilled to this tension between the known and the unknown that has its origins in the primal (creative) void? Cheers, sj From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 16 August, 2025 6:03 AM To: [email protected]; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary Jon, List, Thanks for this succinct super-summary of Peirce's view that matter is derivative of mind and for the several short quotes strongly supporting that understanding. One can disagree that this was his conception, but you've made it clear, as it has been clear to many Peirce scholars for decades, that his objective idealism does indeed identify matter as “effete” mind, mind that has lost the flexibility of learning. . A key, anti-Cartesian point is, as you wrote, that once dualism is excluded either mind or matter must be primordial, and Peirce clearly maintained that mind is primary, that matter is best understood as a rigidified form of mind. But it remains unclear to me -- although I think I'm getting closer to understanding your position on this -- how every material thing is itself a sign (yes, certainly can be analyzed as 'a token of a general type') and that every physical interaction is a degenerate form of semiosis. Best, Gary R On Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 11:25 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary R., Gary F., List: I had the same thought about Peirce conceiving mind as broader than consciousness, recalling those very statements in CP 6.489 (1908), but I agree that he and Planck evidently both maintained that matter is "derivative from" mind and thus "presupposes" mind. After all, Peirce's objective idealism, the doctrine "that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits [of mind] becoming physical laws [of matter]" (CP 6.25, EP 1:293, 1891), is unquestionably a species of idealism as he broadly defined it just four sentences earlier in the same text--"the physical law as derived and special, the psychical law alone as primordial" (CP 6.24, EP 1:292). He carefully explains in that entire passage that once dualism is ruled out, something must be primordial--either mind (idealism) or matter (materialism) or both (neutralism); he does not even entertain the possibility that neither could be primordial. In short, Peirce's unambiguously and repeatedly stated view--especially in the 1890s, but even after the turn of the century--is that everything is mind, and some of it has become matter. He refers to matter as "a peculiar sort of mind ... mind so completely under the domination of habit as to act with almost perfect regularity & to have lost its powers of forgetting & of learning" (R 936, c. 1891); "specialized and partially deadened mind" (CP 6.102, EP 1:312; 1892); "mind hidebound with habits" (CP 6.158, EP 1:331; 1892); and "mind whose habits have become fixed so as to lose the powers of forming them and losing them" (CP 6.101; 1902). Again, my own reformulation is that every discrete thing (matter) is an instance of a sign (mind), an individual token of a general type that possesses qualitative tones; and every dyadic reaction between such things is a degenerate manifestation of continuous and triadic semiosis. I have more to say on this thread topic, prompted by subsequent posts, but will do so in multiple short replies like this over a few days instead of combining them into a single long one as I sometimes have done in the past. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt <http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt <http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 11:10 AM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary R, list, I guess we are assuming that what Planck called “consciousness” is essentially what Peirce called “mind.” But Peirce was very clear that there is much more to mind than consciousness — and that consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings. For instance, he wrote that “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. Most of us are in the habit of thinking that consciousness and psychic life are the same thing and otherwise greatly to overrate the functions of consciousness” ( <https://gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#gncx> CP 6.489). This is fully compatible with Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979) and with the usage of “consciousness” in the sciences of our time that deal with the subject. Peirce does use the terms “Mind” and “Thought” as synonyms, for the most part, and since Thirdness is predominant in both, clearly Mind has the power to determine what happens in both the psychical and the physical worlds (which are of course not entirely separate). As implied by Peirce’s reference Thirdness as that which “brings about a Secondness,” and his definition of the verb “determine” (“to limit by adding differences”), determination is that aspect of causality which imposes limits on which possibilities can be actualized in the flow of time (and thus be real possibilities?). It seems to me that in the physical world, there are three ontological requirements for anything to happen, to change, or to be determined: time, energy and matter. I find it difficult to imagine that any of them can be more primordial than the other two. This doesn’t seem compatible with Peirce’s cosmology of the 1890s. Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation. [The Bab] { <https://substack.com/@gnox> substack.com/@gnox }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 12-Aug-25 20:26 To: Peirce List < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary List, Since my youth I've been interested in what was once called the 'new physics', especially cosmology and quantum theory, from an amateur's standpoint, perhaps beginning in middle school when my older brother, Richard, gave me a book, The Boy Scientist (A Popular Mechanics Book) by John Bryan Lewellen (1955). In my reading concerning quantum theory, every once in a while I come across this quotation by Max Planck. “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” (The Observer, January 25, 1931) Planck expanded on this idea in the course of his work. For example, in a 1944 lecture): “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind -- this mind is the matrix of all matter.” (“The Nature of Matter” (Das Wesen der Materie), Florence, 1944) Of course each time I read such quotations I can't help but think of this famous Peirce quotation. "The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws." CP 6.25 It would appear that both thinkers saw Mind as the ultimate foundation of Reality including, of course, our experience of it, and that matter only makes sense within that framework. In short, both argue that the existence of matter presupposes mind, ". . . the matrix of all matter” as Planck put it. So it would appear that Planck, the so-called 'father of quantum theory', and Peirce, the 'founder of philosophical pragmatism' (and 'founder of semeiotics' -- at least the triadic form of it) both advanced this idea, yet from somewhat different standpoints: Planck from investigations at the forefront of the physics of his time, Peirce from the forefront of investigations into logic as semeiotic. Peirce developed his position via a comprehensive philosophical 'system', incomplete as it may be in certain regards. For him, mind and matter are not separate 'substances' (which is dualism) but, rather, proceed along a continuum, matter appearing as the more fixed, habitual form of mind’s activity, mind being more 'fluid' (while his semiosic synchecism allows for the evolution of both and together). To me, Peirce’s view on the matter seems more 'naturalistic' than Planck's as he places the primacy of mind within an evolutionary cosmology, while Planck attributes it to a singular conscious source. As is well known, they both characterized themselves as theists, although it can be argued (and I do mean both pro and con) that each saw God/Mind as a unifying, rational, ordering principle of the cosmos and less the anthropomorphic deity of traditional theology. And both emphasized that science and religion needn't be in conflict, for Planck because he considered that they deal with different aspects of reality: famously, science with the how of things, religion with the why of them. I'm not sure at the moment how I'd characterize Peirce's position on this matter. Any thoughts there? As I see it, and in a nutshell, for Planck mind/consciousness is an irreducible point d'origin that underlies all physical existence. For Peirce it is the ongoing, universal, continuous, semiosic process from which matter forms. Planck’s vision is more reflective, leaning towards personal metaphysical assertions; Peirce’s vision is semiotically structured, mind seen within a more fully developed, detailed, and considerably more systematized account of cosmic development. As always, I'd be interested in what forum members think about any of this matter of Planck and Peirce seeing mind as primary, matter secondary Best, Gary R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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