List , Jeff, Gary F, Gary R, Ivar ... Jeff’s analysis, in my view, is excellent- and is saying what I was trying to outline in my thought-fantasy. Jeff writes: "From a Peircean perspective, what matters is not whether the rock has a mindlike interior, but whether the more basic levels of reality involve (i) qualitative possibilities (Firstness), (ii) constraints/compulsions or “brute suchness” (Secondness), and (iii) the formation of stable regularities (Thirdness as habit/law). If one takes a continuous field ontology seriously, then the primitives are not little billiard balls, but loci of qualitative character (charge, spin, etc.) standing in relations of mutual susceptibility—what Peirce calls the peculiar relation of affectability. And if one further takes seriously the idea that law is not merely “written into” the cosmos from the outset but becomes increasingly definite—then the growth of regularity begins to look like the growth of a kind of memory: not memory as personal recollection, but memory as the persistence of constraints, the consolidation of tendencies, the sedimentation of habits across time—all involving the growth and flow of information. On that way of putting it, the sharper question becomes something like: Is a primordial field of potentiality the kind of thing to which Peirce’s “whatever is First is ipso facto sentient” could intelligibly apply? That is: are the qualitative aspects and couplings of the most basic reality better thought of as utterly mindless “dead matter,” or as something whose most primitive mode is closer, in kind and not just in degree, tofeeling/possibility—with “dead matter” emerging as the highly constrained limit where habit has hardened and the range of qualitative “free play” has been drastically narrowed?” I think the above outline of the path from 1ns through 2ns to 3ns [ and reverse!] is excellent. I think one has to be very careful , however, about the meaning of ‘primordial field of potentiality’ [let’s call this domain A]. . This does not mean determinism, ie, that the ‘forms’ of Existence’ are primordial’. The fact remains, that Firstness is chance and freedom ..and the actualities [call them B] are not the result of a direct linear action from A to B. Edwina
> On Dec 14, 2025, at 5:58 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> > wrote: > > From a Peircean perspective, what matters is not whether the rock has a > mindlike interior, but whether the more basic levels of reality involve (i) > qualitative possibilities (Firstness), (ii) constraints/compulsions or “brute > suchness” (Secondness), and (iii) the formation of stable regularities > (Thirdness as habit/law). If one takes a continuous field ontology seriously, > then the primitives are not little billiard balls, but loci of qualitative > character (charge, spin, etc.) standing in relations of mutual > susceptibility—what Peirce calls the peculiar relation of affectability. And > if one further takes seriously the idea that law is not merely “written into” > the cosmos from the outset but becomes increasingly definite—then the growth > of regularity begins to look like the growth of a kind of memory: not memory > as personal recollection, but memory as the persistence of constraints, the > consolidation of tendencies, the sedimentation of habits across time—all > involving the growth and flow of information. > On that way of putting it, the sharper question becomes something like: Is a > primordial field of potentiality the kind of thing to which Peirce’s > “whatever is First is ipso facto sentient” could intelligibly apply? That is: > are the qualitative aspects and couplings of the most basic reality better > thought of as utterly mindless “dead matter,” or as something whose most > primitive mode is closer, in kind and not just in degree, > tofeeling/possibility—with “dead matter” emerging as the highly constrained > limit where habit has hardened and the range of qualitative “free play” has > been drastically narrowed?
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