My focus wasn't on the epistemological - for that's been dealt with, I think,
fairly well in Peirce's Fixation of Belief - with the tactics of Tenacity,
Authority, A Priori vs the inductive Scientific Method.
What I think is interesting, is the self-organized development of habits of
morphology within the system..and how these evolve and adapt. That, to me, is
one of the key strengths of the Peircean analysis - it can explain this.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce List
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 12:27 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce & Constructor Theory
On Aug 21, 2015, at 10:02 AM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
Clark - doesn't the question then become - how are habits or laws formed? I
wonder if 'abduction, induction, deduction' are the answer. We, who analyze and
verbalize the laws, may indeed prove them as laws by induction. But how is the
habit itself, which we see and define as a law - how is that formed within the
physico-chemical, biological..and even, the societal world?
It seems to me we have to keep the more epistemological questions separate
from the ontological/physical ones.
To the ontological formulation of laws, Peirce discusses this in quite a few
places in the 1870’s. While I’ve not looked at this issue much in terms of the
later Peirce, it doesn’t appear he changes his views much in his mature period.
In terms of cosmological laws, I think symmetry breaking which then
“congeals” structures is fairly well understood and lines up fairly well with
Peirce’s early views. That is the idea of habit forming which develops into
substance.
Biology I tend to see as reductive to chemistry for these questions even if
the way the laws are formed in terms of scientific progress often isn’t
conducive to such reductions. i.e. the linguistic form the laws take often
adopt norms that aren’t reductive. A problem long noted in the philosophy of
laws in science. At least since the reductive craze in the mid 20th century.
While reduction isn’t as popular now, I think in cases like this with regards
to basic ontology it’s helpful.
If this is true then what appear to be permanent can in fact shift. Perhaps
not quite the way Peirce formulated his swerve, but close. In physics if you
heat up the system you reopen the symmetries and lowering the temperature can
lead to new and different structures. In biology of course as the
macro-environment shifts then evolution will adapt to the new systems - as we
see happening with climate change.
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