Clark, List: Thanks for your responses, which I am still digesting. Just a couple of quick things before I call it a day.
JS: As for the Final Interpretant, "I confess [with Peirce] that my own conception of this interpretant is not yet quite free from mist" (CP 4.536, 1906); but I am starting to think of it as perhaps the habit of feeling, action, or thought that would emerge from self-controlled repetition of a particular Dynamic Interpretant. CG: That’s right but habit in what? The entire universe. I am not sure what you mean by this, but I was thinking (in the mist) of the habit that develops in the one who repeats the Dynamic Interpretant. JS: So to say that water virtually contains H2O is to say that H2O is virtual water--it is not water, it does not have the nature of water, but it has the efficiency of water. Is that right? CG: There are some properties not shared, just as a circle isn’t a sphere. I’m not sure I want to use the words “nature” or “efficiency” here lest I repeat my earlier mistake. Both of those words are from Peirce's definition of "virtual" in *Baldwin's Dictionary*. Not that we have to take him as the infallible authority, but my whole point here is that I am trying to understand what "virtual" means in the specifically Peircean sense (if there is one). If "X virtually contains Y" is not equivalent to "Y is a virtual X" such that "Y is not an X, nor of the nature of an X, but has the efficiency of an X," then the term in the first formulation is evidently being used in some other way. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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