List, John: 3.418. "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under which it suits our purposes to state the fact."
On Dec 6, 2015, at 6:26 AM, Franklin Ransom wrote: > On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 5:02 PM, John Collier <[email protected]> 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). > > > Basically, John, your response is irrelevant to what I am saying. By way of background, I have had a lifelong interest in metaphysics and the relations between the sciences and metaphysics. Obviously, my interest is closely related to medicine and the biological sciences where the science of physics can contribute by contributing utterly simplistic calculations of the relevant but relative units for particular situations (identities.) The physical units, in and of themselves, are given biological meaning only by the union of them. Back to the issue at hand. Metaphysics, as an mode of human thinking and communication, must start with words, words with meaning for the author, either as utterances or symbolic expressions on a 'sheet of assertion' or another media. No one individual (such as physicist) can impose, for humanity as a whole, a particular meaning on the starting units, or the union of such starting units, or, more generally, on part-whole relatives and part-whole relations. More directly, a metaphysical proposition may be stated in many different languages and symbol systems. Thus, the mereology of metaphysical propositions may draw upon terms and symbols as desired by the author of metaphysical propositions. Further, a metaphysics without part-whole relations (scaling) and identity can hardly be a metaphysics AT ALL as neither emergence or evolution could be relatives. Frankly, I interpret your metaphysics, after reading your posts for more than a decade on this and other list serves as well as personal conversations from time to time, your metaphysics is merely the science of physics (unless you have had a recent epiphany.) >From my perspective, you capture the essence of being with your defense of the >phrase, "It's from bits". CSP is clear enough about meaning of a fact or a unit of measure: 3.418. "Thus, the question whether a fact is to be regarded as to referring to a single thing or to more is a question of the form of the proposition under which it suits our purposes to state the fact." Let's just agree to disagree, John. Cheers Jerry
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