> On Oct 23, 2015, at 11:24 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote:
> 
> Clark - yes, the Heidegger-Derrida mysticism of The Word. That was/is -  
> truly terrible! Pure nominalism - but made authoritative by the aspatial and 
> atemporal mystic essentialism of The Word.

Yes, I just don’t think Heidegger and Derrida were doing word mysticism. Just 
that a lot of people who missed the key phenomenology part were able to ape the 
language. To me both Heidegger and Derrida were realists in the same mold as 
Peirce (albeit with a very different style of language focused on metaphor). To 
see this one need only look at the place of key scholastic realists on the 
thought of Heidegger and Derrida.

> And yes - Peirce's outline of the Final Interpretant - which is how 'every 
> mind' would act. Perfect. But nominalism instead rejects this Final 
> Interpretant and instead, focuses strictly on the Immediate Interpretant.  Is 
> it tied up with metaphor? I think the dynamic interpretant can be aligned 
> with metaphor. And agreed - that we may never reach the 'final truth' - but 
> Peirce was well aware of that as you know.

The real issue are what are the implications for philosophy of the final 
interpretant being at best off in an infinite future.

I think in particular the problem for Derrida was that most of philosophy at 
the time thought that the final interpretant was here in the present in our 
presence. This is key for say the positivists but is really part of what 
Descartes introduces as epistemology. I don’t think we appreciate in these 
years where few are epistemological foundationaglists just how widespread this 
view affected philosophy. 

Arguably the whole reason Peirce critiques most philosophy as nominalistic is 
wrapped up with this legacy of Plato and Descartes. The idea of a present final 
interpretant. If under Descartes we have thoughts that correlate with things 
then the immediate thoughts take the place of the final interpretant. However 
if you recognize the problem with this then all you’re left with are the names 
in the mind. That is the immediate and dynamic interpretant without the final 
interpretant is nominalism. Nominalism arises because of how the mind is cut 
off from reality. The combination of shifting the nature of truth plus 
scholastic realism avoids all this. 


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