> On Nov 23, 2015, at 7:50 PM, Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chand...@me.com> > wrote: > > My recall may be wrong, but it is that CSP introduced the notion of "habits" > in distinction to the notion of "regularity." >
Yes I think habits imply regularities but regularities aren’t always habits. I think that’s somewhat what Edwina is getting at with the question of what level we’re speaking of. (See below) > On Nov 23, 2015, at 2:42 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > Clark- just type into google, the whole line from Peirce, and you'll find the > selection in the Collected Papers (ed. Hartshorne)...and it will give you > more of what he was writing than that sentence. I had tried that but wasn’t having much luck. Google Books kept cutting off the surrounding pages for me. The page it was on talks about the evolution of time in fundamental ontological cosmology. (The origin of firstness) But I wasn’t able to see a date. Also what came up was apparently the same quote in CP volume 4. Yet the top of the page read “Ladd-Franklin, Cosmology 8.318” and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Is it saying that what Google scanned is volume 8 but listed as volume 4 or something else? I wasn’t confident enough to say much about it. The Chronological Edition also came up which gave about half the paragraph prior to the quoted text, suggesting it was relating law and habit but again not enough to really give sufficient context. This is all I could find. …law, and some degree of conformity to law, which is constantly o the increase owing to the growth of habit. The tendency to form habits or tendency to generalize, is something which grows by its own action, by the habit of taking habits itself growing. Its first germs arose from pure chance. There were slight tendencies to obey rules that had been followed, and these tendencies were rules which rules which were more and more obeyed by their own action. There were also slight tendencies to do otherwise than previously, and these destroyed themselves. To be sure, they would sometimes be strengthened by the opposite tendency, but the stronger they became the more they would tend to destroy themselves. As to the part of time on the further side of eternity which leads back from the infinite future to the infinite past, it evidently proceeds by contraries. Now that’s still pretty confusing to me. The Chronological Edition quote is in volume 8 (1890-1892) so that gives a bit more about the time period. Also this quote does have the two directions but this weird enigmatic bit about destruction. Also there’s the distinction between 1st and 2cd order habits. (Habits and the habit of taking habits) So while this clearly is in the period when Peirce would be familiar with statistical mechanics I just am unsure his logic here or what phenomena he’s looking at to arrive at these conclusions. I’m open to any explanations. > I acknowledge your point that human beliefs are 'habits of thinking' but - > the question is, do they actually 'cause' a morphological existential > reality, in the same way as habits-of-formation cause a zebra to be, > morphologically, ...a zebra. So- I don't really see cognitive habits of > thinking ..as having much to do with this.. Well that’s one way to deal with it - to distinguish habits in fundamental ontology from other habits. I’m not sure he’s making that move. Certainly the passage in question is cosmological. However from what I can tell habits are just habits - a common term he applies to both the regular phenomena of everyday life as well as fundamental ontology. If you’re aware of a place where he makes a clear distinction in his use of the term I’d be very interested. I admittedly didn’t do a thorough search but my preliminary search found nothing. Rather I think he sees this as phenomena that applies at all levels of existence. Which is why he uses the same term. Also I’m not sure we can make the distinction between “psychic” and “cognitive” in how he speaks. It seems to me it’s all just mind for him. > As to whether they are 'reversible' - in the mechanical sense, I might > quibble with that. We can arrive at a belief, and then, change back to a > former belief, but I'm not sure if this return is as 'pure' as it originally > was. Let's say, I believe that unicorns do exist; then, I decide that they do > NOT exist; and then, I revert back to my first belief that they do exist. I > think this third belief is tainted, by its having been 'vetted' so to speak, > against the comparison with the belief in unicorns NOT existing. So, the > superficial belief might seem similar, but, not with that comparison clinging > to it. These changes have nothing mechanical and reversible about them..They > are, really, 'evolutionary'..even though the final phase is similar, > somewhat, to the first phase. In a follow up email that may have come after you wrote this I suggested one possible solution. To see habits as context sensitive. The reason we change belief is due to new evidence and thus a change of system. Yet in other ways I’m not sure that’s fully satisfactory. After all often I’m musing over evidence and simply changing my mind in a short time as I think through connections. If we make habits so context dependent then it almost loses the significance Peirce is setting for them. Also (and I think this is important) I think Peirce might say that the nature of the habit is wrapped up in his pragmatic maxim. That is a habit’s meaning consists not of an index to a particular context but of its counterfactual possibilities in all the ways we’d measure it. That is habit to be a habit has to be general and deal with a range of contexts. Presumably then the strength of habit would be tied to its properties across those contexts. Much like hardness is tied to the range of things we might scratch an object with. (To use Peirce’s own example) If we should understand the meaning of a particular habit in terms of the more mature counterfactual view of the pragmatic maxim then I’m not sure the move you make works. (Which is not to say Peirce necessarily thought along those terms of course - I’m just not clear what he thought here)
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