John, You said:
The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference > in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with > Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it > that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. I've been trying to figure this one out for myself, but am having some trouble, in particular with the "idea that the physical is just what we can experience." Would you be willing to clarify how you mean this? Is physical opposed to mental, and thus the mental is not something we can experience? And/or the spiritual? Or would you include mental and/or spiritual as subdivisions of the physical? My sense of physicalism, aside from your characterization, is that it's the idea that what is real is whatever physics discovers or says is real, which is quite different from what you are suggesting. I hope that you can understand my concern. After all, clearly an idealist could just as easily say that what is mental is whatever we can experience, and I think you can understand that idea. What's the point of calling all of experience one or the other? -- Franklin On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > Jerry, > > > > I was talking about the manifestations of first ness, not the concept of > firstness, when I said that firstness has no structure. You are not talking > about the manifestations of firstness if you think they have structure. You > aren’t talking about Peirce, here when you say things like > > > > [John Collier] Part-whole relations and mereology in general only arise > when we get to what Peirce calls existence, i.e., seconds. > > > > Part-whole relations are a deep component of one's metaphysical > perspective. > > > > Basically, that is irrelevant to what I was saying, and to Peirce’s views > on firstness (which I take to be definitive of the notion). > > > > Unless you understand this you are going to be asking questions without > an answer because the presuppositions are false. It has nothing to do with > my physcalism (which is not, actually, materialism I have come to believe). > The physicalism stems from the Pragmatic Maxim, which makes any difference > in meaning depend on a difference in possible experience together with > Quine’s idea that the physical is just what we can experience. I take it > that the last is also Peirce’s view, and he is no materialist. Basically, > you err, as I see it, in making a distinction that implies no difference in > meaning, however much it might seem to. It violates Peirce’s > prope-positivism, which he uses to deflate a lot of metaphysics. > > > > Of course you can reject either the Pragmatic Maxim, or the notion of > experience Peirce uses, or both, in order to save your distinction. But > then you aren’t talking about Peirce’s firsts when you say they have > structure. > > > > John Collier > > Professor Emeritus, UKZN > > http://web.ncf.ca/collier >
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