Clark, list:
My view of 'virtual' is to understand it using the words 'as if', and the
concept of 'effect'.
So, a machine that has, eg, 'ten horsepowers' has, in its effects, the virtual
force of ten horses. This force is not potentiality; there is no potential for
the force to emerge as horses.
But, the effect of the work of that machine is 'as if' it operated as ten
horses.
A blanket to a small child can be a 'virtual mother' where it functions 'as if'
it were the mother; it has the effect of a mother's enveloping warmth but is
certainly not, potentially, a mother.
Hydrponics could possibly be understood as 'virtual soil', where plants are
grown in a water solution without soil - but with added nutrients to function
'as if' it were soil.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2016 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dynamic/Immediate Object and Determination/Causation
On Aug 25, 2016, at 8:33 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
wrote:
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.
I just meant that the final interpretant from Peirce’s cosmology is stability
in thirdness for the entire universe. My sense is this is too strong a claim,
even given his notion of continuity and that there may be many unstable
aspects. But to Peirce the endpoint of the universe is its becoming substance.
(Where substance for Peirce was this habit)
To your point though I agree. The dynamic/immediate interpretant distinction
is so useful. You see both Grice and Searle coming close to it. (I think Grice
indirectly gets his notions from Peirce although I’ve not studied that closely)
So the question of how to do things with words is really a question about 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.
Ah I see what you’re saying now.
I’ll confess I’ve never even thought about whether there was a distinction in
Peirce’s use. That’s a really interesting question. I just assumed they were
switchable but maybe I’m wrong in that.
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