Agreed - that notion of the openness (Firstness) of potentiality, or the
abstractness of generality (Thirdness) is a basic requirement for a
non-mechanical, biological universe capable of adaptive evolution into finite
individual non-general actual existentialities (Secondness).
To refer to: "I would to quote Nicholas of Cusa: “Only in a finite fashion is
the infinite form received”" - Agreed - the potential, which is open or general
does not exist 'per se', i.e., within the same temporal and spatial perimeters
as the individual/actual.
And that's somewhat similar to Godel's Law, his 'incompleteness theorem' which
essentially states that the Formal (ie, the potential, the general) can never
be fully articulated within the Informal (ie, the actual, the particular). If
it could be - we'd have a mechanical universe incapable of adaptation and
evolution.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Moore
To: Jon Awbrey ; Peirce List ; John N. Deely ; Edwina Taborsky
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2014 8:10 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
END OF CHAPTER
Let us attempt a paraphrasis in terms of perception. The complexity of a
“quale”, if it is definitive of the meaning of a perception or a perceptual
[page 530] judgment, must be present and recognized as pertinent to the
perception insofar as it determines the meaning of the perception. And to the
extent to which the further segmentability of the “quale” is not definitive for
THIS perception, to the same extent that “quale” is simple or primary. It is
valid as Firstness and there are no PERTINENT inferential processes below its
threshold.¶
-x-
To conclude (seeing that I began with Thyomas Aquinas), I would to quote
Nicholas of Cusa: “Only in a finite fashion is the infinite form received”, OF
LEARNED IGNORANCE, II, 11).¶
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Peirce List <[email protected]>; John N. Deely
<[email protected]>; Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Edwina Taborsky
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 9:45 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
Part 328** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**29 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 528]
-x-
If it can be granted that for Peirce the Ground IS WHAT I REFERED TO AS
PRIMARY ICONISM, let us bear in mind that the Ground is an element, a marker, a
quality that is (for whatever reason) being isolated and considered in itself.
BY WHOM is it isolated? Potentially isolable, it becomes isolated when a
subject isolates it, from a certain point of view, and at that point it becomes
the terminus “a quo” [from which] of an inferential process, IN AN UPWARD and
not a downward direction – toward the series of relationships, in other words,
that bind the spot to me and my perceptual interests, not toward the series of
the infinite possible decompositions of the spot itself.¶
-x-
This, it seems to me, is exactly what happens when Peirce tells us that we
feel the black of the ink as Firstness. It is possible that – to be able to
recognize that what strikes our senses is a quality of blackness – the brain
deep down performs a number of successive operations. I also agree with Claudio
Paolucci (2005) that, for the empirical concept of “dog” as well, the Kantian
intellect may make use, not of images, but of a flowchart. But aside [page 529]
from the fact that the brain too, as a computational machine, must come to a
stop at a certain point in order to be able to transmit “blackness”, at the
level of conscious perception we are not aware of that additional
fractalization. There is a threshold on this side of which we perceive or sense
“black” as Firstness, primary iconism (or whatever you choose to call it), and
that is the starting point for all our subsequent inferences.¶
-x-
Commenting on Hume, William James (1987: 1061) declared: “Either your
experience os of no content, of no change, or it is of a perceptible amount of
content or change. Your acquaintance of reality grows literally by buds or
drops of perception. Intellectually and on reflection you can divide these into
components, but but as immediately given they come totally or not at all.Ӧ
-x-
Zellini also cites Wittgenstein (NOTEBOOKS, 18, 6, 15):
<< “If the complexity of an object is definitive of the sense of the
proposition, then it must be portrayed in the proposition to the extent that it
does determine the sense. And to the extent that its composition is NOT
definitive of THIS sense, to this extent the objects of this proposition are
SIMPLE. THEY CANNOT be further divided . . . What I mean is: if e.g., I say
this watch is not in the drawer, there is absolutely no need for it to FOLLOW
LOGICALLY that a wheel that is in the watch is not in the drawer, for perhaps I
HAD NOT THE LEAST KNOWLEDGE that the wheel was in the vwatch, and hence could
not have meant by “this watch” the complex in which the wheel occurs. And it is
certain – moreover – that I do not see all the parts of my THEORETICAL visual
field. Who knows WHETHER I see infinitely many points?¶ Let us suppose we were
to see a circular patch: is the circular form its PROPERTY? Certainly not. It
seems to be a “structural” property. And if I notice that the spot is round, am
I not noticing an infinitely complicated structural property? . . . . A
proposition can, however, quite well treat of infinitely many points without
being infinitely complex in a particular sense.” (English trans. 1961: 63e-65e)
>>
-x-
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Peirce List <[email protected]>; John N. Deely
<[email protected]>; Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Edwina Taborsky
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 8:50 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
Part 327** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**29 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 527]
-x-
In other words, our perception is not mathematical but ingenuous [marked by
lack of reserve, dissimulation, or guile; innocent or childlike simplicity,
straightforwardness, frankness; lack of subtle analysis or consideration:
SIMPLE, UNWARY, UNAWARE, OPEN] and not astronomical. Zellini (1980: 44) reminds
us that the existence of a THRESHOLD OF OBSERVABILITY is a postulate both of
physics and of the psychology of perception.¶
[page 528]
Zellini also appeals to Hume: our imagination must br capable of reaching a
minimum beyond which we cannot conceive of further subdivisions. We can speak
of a thousandth or even ten thousandth part of a grain of sand, but (apart from
the fact that we cannot see it – which from the point of view of perception is
no small matter) we cannot even imagine it except with the same dimensions as
the grain of sand itself: “The idea of a grain of sand is not distinguishable
nor seperable into twenty, much less into a thousand, ten thousand, or an
infinite number of different ideas.Ӧ
-x-
“Put”, said Hume, “a spot of ink upon paper, fix your eyes upon that spot,
and retire to such a distance, that at last you lose sight of it; ‘tis plain,
that the moment before it vanish’d the image or impression was perfectly
indivisible” (TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE, I, 2, 27). At a certain point, the spoy
will become invisible, because it is too far away, but when it is on the point
of disappearing, it will still be visible as a punctual and indivisible
MINIMUM. As is the case for the ideas of the imagination, an ultimate
conceivable term is given for our impressions, whereby we go directly from
nothing to a minimal perceivable reality not resolvable into smaller parts.¶
-x-
Hume might have added that – while it may be true that under the microscope
the same ink blot would reveal a universe of bacteria that made it look like a
painting by Kandinsky – from the point of view of our perceptual abilities, it
is a black spot, nothing more or less.¶
-x-
If it can be granted that for Peirce the Ground IS WHAT I REFERED TO AS
PRIMARY ICONISM, let us bear in mind that the Ground is an element, a marker, a
quality that is (for whatever reason) being isolated and considered in itself.
BY WHOM is it isolated?
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Peirce List <[email protected]>; John N. Deely
<[email protected]>; Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Edwina Taborsky
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 8:49 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
Part 326** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**28 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 526]
-x-
What happens when we put ourselves in the place of a perceiving subject?
Paolo Zellini, A BRIEF HISTORY OF INFINITY, trans. David Marsh, Penguin, 2003,
pp. 26-7, reminds us that:
[page 527]
<< “Adolf Grünbaum (“Can an Infinitude of Operations be Performed in a Finite
Time?”, 1969) recently demonstrated that the measured structure of physical
time justifies applying the arithmetical theory of limits to the solution of
the paradox. Human awareness of time has a base limit of perceptibility, that
is, a minimal threshold beyond which temporal intervals vanish into
inconceivable smallness. If we consciously try to contemplate ‘all’ the
intervals of the series (a), it would be realized concretely as a countable
infinity of mental acts, and the duration of each of these larger than the
minimal threshold that time allows. But this insuperable ‘minimum’ is an
Achimedean quantity: when added to itself infinite times, it yields an infinite
result. Consequently, the mental contemplation of the entire series would
result in an impossibly unlimited period of time. This would happen, for
example, if one ‘counted’ the intervals of (a) one by one, assigning to each of
them an ordinal [the divisor in a fraction as spoken or written out (as
hundredth in one hundredth or hundredths in three hundredths] number. This
would take more time than the necessary minimum just to conceive or pronounce
them. (But it is absurd, Aristotle objected [PHYSICS 8, 8, 263a-263b], to
maintain that whatever moves, moves while counting.) In reality, by raising
doubts about the possibility of traversing the interval (0-1), Zeno exploits
the unacceptable delay that is implied by reducing the series (a) to the
corresponding mental acts of the counting process, but he fails to make clear
that this process does not reproduce exactly the measurement of the physical
time involved in the actual traversal.¶ Thus, Grünbaum finds Zeno’s argument
illegitimate because it uses what is basically an INEVITABLE confusion between
two incompatible forms of thought. He explains that we do not experience the
intervals into which we subdivide the traversal in any measure that corresponds
to their actual nature. Rather, we derive our impression of their duration from
the time needed for our acts of mental contemplation which for each fraction of
the distance must perforce exceed our minimal threshold or limit.” >>¶
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Peirce List <[email protected]>; John
N. Deely <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 6:36 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Peirce List <[email protected]>; John
N. Deely <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 5:41 AM
Subject: Fw: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Cosmos
Part 325** MURDER MYSTERY! **ECO ON PEIRCE!**28 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 526]
-x-
In the paradox Achilles must first cover half yje distance, but before that
he must cover a quarter, and before that an eighth, and so on ad infinitum, so
that he will never succeed in catching up with the tortoise. It has been
observed, however, that, although this process of fractalization can continue
infinitely, its result can never be greater than one – as occurs in any case
with irrational numbers, so that 3.14, however successful we may be in
analyzing it, will never be 4 [GCM: “virtual as “never” (Scotus) vs.
“almost”(approximately true: pragmatism)].¶
-x-
If we apply this argument to the fractal length of a coast, where the
“potential” process of division could be infinite, as least insofar as we can
always postulate smaller and smaller microbes, then this does not prevent
Achilles in practice covering the space in a single stride. Achilles will cover
a unit of distance appropriate to him in a unit of time appropriate to him.¶
-x-
Already Aristotle (PHYSICS III, 8. 206) objected to Zeno that, among
magniyudes, there exist infinity by addition (I can always find an even number
greater than thr preceeding one) but not by division, insofar as the infinity
of the subetervals into which a unit of length is divisible is always contained
in a limited totality (never greater than one) which may constitute the object
of an empirical intuition.¶
-x-
In other words, if, cosmologically speaking, there is never perhaps a
Firstness that is NOT the result of a previous Thirdness, cognitively there is
a limit to our perceptive abilities, which experience as undivided something
that, cosmologically speaking, is “in posse” [in potential but not actually]
capable of being further divided. What is “in posse” belongs to cosmology. What
is “in actu” belongs to the agent subject.¶
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Gary Moore <[email protected]>
To: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Peirce List <[email protected]>; John
N. Deely <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2014 5:39 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/
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isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA
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