Edwina, an acute observation! An "outline" is a Kantian "schema" so important in Eco's demonstration of Kant's influence on Peirce and vastly important - and completely ignored - in Heidegger's KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICS where if you read expecting to find the 'mystical' or Nazi Heidegger one is only confused by all the reference to "schematism". Eco, appreciating both, shows there relevance to Peirce - predominantly Kant who is far less controversial to the point of being a philosophical 'saint', something that would have revulsed him. -x-". . . and points to the question of 'attention'" demonstrates how "points" IS "attention", illustrating a 'point' of "illumination" against the very obscure "background" you call "pure chance" and "beginning" which indeed is a "process of habit-taking" that is also such a "habit" itself. These synonyms of "attention" are the automatic focusing Philoponus talks of when he says human beings simply cannot conceive of a truly "eternal" universe. The whole problem of Zeno of Elea, Eco demonstrates, is the confusion of different kinds of "attention" where simply to "focus attention" on something means to literally shut out any attention to the "background" which is absolutely necessary to "present" what is being "focused on". This is what Eco means by referring to his examination of what he calls Peirce's "primary iconism". Gary C. Moore From: Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> To: Gary Moore <[email protected]>; Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Peirce List <[email protected]>; John N. Deely <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 7:37 AM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos Eco has a very nice outline - and points to the question of 'attention'. Peirce suggests that such, in the beginning, was pure chance. In 'A Guess at the Riddle' he outlines the process of habit-taking, where a 'flash' (of material existence) would be followed by another 'flash' and "there would have come other successions ever more and more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever strengthening themselves"....with this followed by 'different flashes might start different streams' (and habits)...1. 411, 412). So, 'attention' is possibly caused by both the internal reality of 'habits' in the system which constrain what can be focused on and even guide that focus, and also, pure chance. Edwina
----- Original Message ----- From: Gary Moore To: Jon Awbrey ; Peirce List ; John N. Deely Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 6:39 AM Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos Part 324** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**27 Dec 2014 9:55 am CST REVISE, READ ORIGINAL (Who killed truth?) FROM THE TREE TO THE LABYRINTH by Umberto Eco CHAPTER 15: THE THRESHOLD AND THE INFINITE: PEIRCE AND PRIMARY ICONISM * correlate with KANT AND THE PLATYPUS [page 525] -x- We can construct a semiotics without a subject or (what amounts to the same thing) in which the subject is everywhere. In this semiotics there will never be a “priman” because interpretation will proceed by “mise en abyme”. But, if from the cosmological point of view the inferential process is infinite, because there are no intuitions, then we cannot ignore the cognitive instance, that is, that edge of semiosis that is formed when a subject (any instance capable of saying “I” that somehow inters into the semiosis from the material and corporal outside – what I am speaking about is a brain) installs itself and touches off a chain of inferences under the stimulus of something that, from its own point of viewand only in this precise spatiotemporal segment, ATTRACTS ITS ATTENTION [footnote 7: At this point we might be tempted to open up another can of worms: Why does one thing attract my attention at the expense of another? But reconstructing a theory of attention in Peirce lies beyond my capabilities, and beyond the scope of this chapter.] The “I” in this case stands on that edge where on the one hand there stands, let us say, the dog – the thing that interests him at the moment – and, on the other hand, evcerything else – which does not interest him.¶ -x- In this phase Firstness, as we saw, is a presence “such as it is”, nothing but a positive characteristic , like a purple color perceived without any sense of the beginning or end of the experience, without any self-awareness separate from the sensation of the color; it is potentiality without existence, the simple possibility of a perceptual process. In order to contest these “qualia” [page 526] that precede any inference, we must take as our point of departure the principle that they constitute an intuitive moment, without our being able to conceive further inferential processes behind it, in a sort of infinite fractalization. But I would like to remind the reader that the infinite fractalization of a sea coast does not prevent a human subject, who has a molar view compared with the molecular view of an ant, from covering in a single step what would be for the ant an extremely long and tortuous trajectory.¶ -x- We are back, if you will, to the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, in which we must take into account the distinction between POTENTIAL INFINITY and INFINITY IN ACT, already present in Aristotle.¶ -x- ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Gary Moore <[email protected]> To: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Peirce List <[email protected]>; John N. Deely <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 6:22 AM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos Part 323** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**27 Dec 2014 9:55 am CST REVISE, READ ORIGINAL (Who killed truth?) FROM THE TREE TO THE LABYRINTH by Umberto Eco CHAPTER 15: THE THRESHOLD AND THE INFINITE: PEIRCE AND PRIMARY ICONISM * correlate with KANT AND THE PLATYPUS [page 524] -x- 15.5. PEIRCE AND THE TORTOISE When reading Peirce, we must not confuse cosmology and gnoseology. As I already remarked in K & P, two different but mutually interdependent perspectives are interwoven in Peirce’s thought: the metaphysical-cosmological and the cognitive. Unless we read them in a semiotic key, Peirce’s meyaphysics and cosmology remain incomprehensible. But we would have to say the same thing of his semiotics with respect to his cosmology. Categories such as Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness and the concept of interpretation itself not only define “modi significandi”, that is, the ways in which the world can be known: they are also “modi essendi”, ways in which the world BEHAVES, procedures through which the world, in the course of evolution, interprets itself. [page 525] In K & P, I cited Matteo Mameli, “Synechism: Aspetti del pensiero di C. S. Peirce”, 1997: 4: “Given that Peirce thinks and demonstrates that intelligibility is not an accidental characteristic of the universe, that it is not, that is, a mere epiphenomenon of how things are, but a characteristic that ‘shapes’ the universe, it follows that a theory of intelligibility is also a metaphysical theory of the structure of the universe” K & P, p. 399, n. 28). The theory of intelligibility and metaphysical theory, however, must sometimes be kept separate.¶ -x- Kant said that the fact that we believe we know things on the basis of the mere evidence of our senses depends on a “vitium subreptionis” or subreption: we are so accustomed from childhood to grasp things as if they appeared to us already given to us in intuition that we have never thematized the role played by the intellect in this process. Therefore even what were for him even empirical intuitions were already the result of a work of inference.¶ -x- We can construct a semiotics without a subject or (what amounts to the same thing) in which the subject is everywhere. In this semiotics there will never be a “priman” because interpretation will proceed by “mise en abyme”. But, if from the cosmological point of view the inferential process is infinite, because there are no intuitions, then we cannot ignore the cognitive instance, that is, that edge of semiosis that is formed when a subject (any instance capable of saying “I” that somehow inters into the semiosis from the material and corporal outside – what I am speaking about is a brain) installs itself and touches off a chain of inferences under the stimulus of something that, from its own point of viewand only in this precise spatiotemporal segment, ATTRACTS ITS ATTENTION [footnote 7: At this point we might be tempted to open up another can of worms: Why does one thing attract my attention at the expense of another? But reconstructing a theory of attention in Peirce lies beyond my capabilities, and beyond the scope of this chapter.] The “I” in this case stands on that edge where on the one hand there stands, let us say, the dog – the thing that interests him at the moment – and, on the other hand, evcerything else – which does not interest him.¶ -x- From: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> To: Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Friday, December 26, 2014 10:20 PM Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos Thread: JBD:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15230 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15235 SJ:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15236 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15237 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15238 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15239 HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15240 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15241 HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15243 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15244 HR:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/15246 Helmut, One should not take that illustrative example too literally. I was simply making another try at clarifying my use of the word "cosmos" and replying to Sung about anthropocentricity. Regards, Jon Helmut Raulien wrote: > Hi! I do not think, that my point of view or my argumentation has anything to > do > with celestial spheres or bearded father figures. I am a left wing anarchist > liberal communist feminist anticapitalist antifashist and so on. I am against > any authorority, except the authority of God. And, what this is, I am trying > to > find out. Best, Helmut. -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . 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