Gary F., List:
GF: I think it would be less of a stretch to identify the *contents* of
those Universes as Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, i.e. as subjects or objects
in which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (respectively) inhere.
I have generally been reluctant to talk about Firsts/Seconds/Thirds, rather
than Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness. I am not sure that the former
terminology is completely appropriate and consistent with Peirce's usage,
especially late in his life, although I am open to being convinced
otherwise. In fact, he seems to have shifted toward discussing "Universes"
rather than "categories," perhaps in order to emphasize that they are
objective constituents of reality, not mere labels that we apply to
organize our experience.
GF: This leaves open the possibility of identifying *one* of the
categories as *Creator* of all three Universes.
Peirce's statement was not that one of the categories created all three
Universes, but that all three Universes--or at any rate, two of the
three--have a Creator who is independent of them. I take this to mean that
the Creator might not be *entirely *independent of one of the three
Universes. Of course, my basic argument is that Peirce unambiguously
described God as "pure mind" and the Universe that corresponds to Thirdness
as that of "Mind," so the alignment seems pretty clear.
GF: To me it seems logical enough to regard this insubstantial Being, this
*capacity*, as the Creator of all three Universes.
Again, it is not that the Creator is *identified *with one Universe or its
contents, it is that He might not be entirely *independent *of one
Universe. And "mere capacity for getting fully represented" does not
strike me as equivalent to "capacity for creation," especially of other
Universes. In "A Neglected Argument," the only description of a Universe
that mentions the other two is that of the third.
GF: This would be somewhat analogous to regarding abduction as Creator of
the hypothesis which, my means of deduction, creates a theory which through
inductive testing becomes more and more substantial. As we all know,
abduction is the only source of new ideas; perhaps Firstness is the only
source of Ideas. Likewise we might regard the dreamer as Creator of the
dream *and* of the fact of the dream *and* of whatever might be predicated
of it (i.e. of its meaning, if it has any).
But abduction is *not *the creator of the hypothesis, it is the reasoning
process by which a *person *creates the hypothesis. Reasoning is thought,
which is Thirdness. Peirce characterized a person as a symbol or as a
continuum, both of which are Thirdness. Likewise, the dreamer who creates
the dream, the fact of it, and whatever might be predicated of it is a
person (again, Thirdness).
GF: But I think you will agree that *possibility* is the logical
equivalent of Firstness, not Thirdness. Peirce at this stage in his
thinking often identified continuity with generality, and he wrote c.1905
that “The generality of the possible” is “the only true generality” (CP
5.533). So I don’t think continuity is confined to Thirdness ...
This brings up one of the great puzzles for me in Peirce's writings. He
steadfastly associated possibility with Firstness and continuity/generality
with Thirdness, but his mathematical definition of a continuum evolved
toward the notion of an infinite range of indefinite possibilities. Is a
continuum of possibilities more properly considered to be an example of
Thirdness (as a continuum) or Firstness (as possibility)? Should we
perhaps distinguish *possibility *as Firstness from *potentiality *as
Thirdness? If so, on what basis?
GF: ... and I think Gary Richmond has argued that the ur-continuum or *tohu
bohu* represented by the blackboard in Peirce’s famous cosmology lecture is
the first Universe, which comprises “vague possibilities.”
From browsing through the List archives, I took Gary R. to be suggesting
that the blackboard or "ur-continuum" is Thirdness, consistent with my
initial post in this thread. Perhaps he can weigh in on this himself.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 9:59 AM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
> Jon, list,
>
>
>
> On the question of which of the three Universes may *not* “have a Creator
> independent of it,” I’d like to offer an argument that it could be the
> Universe of Firstness rather than Thirdness. However I won’t have time this
> week to construct an argumentation as thoroughgoing as your argument for
> Thirdness as Creator; so instead, I’ll just insert a few comments into your
> post, below. I’ll put Peirce’s words in bold.
>
>
>
> Gary F
>
>
>
> } God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more
> divine in the lapse of all the ages. [Thoreau] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ *Turning Signs* gateway
>
>
>
> *From:* Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 9-Oct-16 22:45
>
> List:
>
> As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I started the thread on "Peirce's
> Theory of Thinking," there is an intriguing paragraph about cosmology in
> the first additament to "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." It
> did not actually accompany the article originally, but nevertheless is in
> the Collected Papers as CP 6.490. Before discussing it directly, a few
> preliminaries are in order.
>
> In the very first sentence of the published article itself, Peirce stated,
> "The word 'God,' so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say), is the definable
> proper name, signifying *Ens necessarium*; in my belief Really creator of
> all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2.434). In the second
> additament, the one that did appear in *The Hibbert Journal*, he added,
> "It is that course of meditation upon the three Universes which gives birth
> to the hypothesis and ultimately to the belief that they, or at any rate
> two of the three, have a Creator independent of them …" (CP 6.483, EP
> 2.448). Furthermore, in three different manuscript drafts of the article
> that are included in R 843, Peirce explicitly denied that God is "immanent
> in" nature or the three Universes, instead declaring (again) that He is the
> Creator of them:
>
> - "I do *not* mean, then, a 'soul of the World' or an intelligence is
> 'immanent' in Nature, but is the Creator of the three Universes of minds,
> of matter, and of ideal possibilities, and of everything in them."
> - "Indeed, meaning by 'God,' as throughout this paper will be meant,
> the Being whose Attributes are, in the main, those usually ascribed to Him,
> Omniscience, Omnipotence, Infinite Benignity, a Being *not* 'immanent
> in' the Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but the Sole Creator of every
> content of them, without exception."
> - "But I had better add that I do *not* mean by God a being merely
> 'immanent in Nature,' but I mean that Being who has created every content
> of the world of ideal possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and
> the world of all minds, without any exception whatever."
>
> These passages shed light not only on Peirce's concept of God--he was
> clearly a theist, not a pantheist or panentheist, at least as I understand
> those terms--but also on what exactly he had in mind with his three
> Universes of Experience that the article describes as consisting of Ideas,
> Brute Actuality, and Signs. These evidently correspond respectively to (1)
> ideal possibilities, matter, and minds; (2) Ideas, Matter, and Mind; and
> (3) ideal possibilities, physical facts, and minds. Of course, it is
> barely a stretch, if at all, to identify these with his categories of
> Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
>
> *[GF: ] *I think it would be less of a stretch to identify the *contents*
> of those Universes as Firsts, Seconds and Thirds, i.e. as subjects or
> objects in which Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (respectively)
> inhere. This leaves open the possibility of identifying *one* of the
> categories as *Creator* of all three Universes. As you have pointed out
> already, Peirce begins by defining “Idea” as “anything whose Being consists
> in its mere capacity for getting fully represented, regardless of any
> person's faculty or impotence to represent it.” These are clearly contents
> of the *first* Universe, and Peirce certainly asserts their Reality
> (after defining that term): “*Of the three Universes of Experience
> familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings
> to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local
> habitation and a name within that mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the
> fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not
> in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves their Reality.*”
>
> *[GF: ] *I think it is worth noticing that Peirce defines the contents of
> the first Universe by quoting from *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*, Act V –
> which is largely a dialogue about reality and dreams; and that his
> definition of Reality (in the previous paragraph) uses a dream as an
> example of something that is unreal in one sense but real in another: “
> *“Real”** is a word invented in the thirteenth century to signify having
> Properties, i.e. characters sufficing to identify their subject, and
> possessing these whether they be anywise attributed to it by any single man
> or group of men, or not. Thus, the substance of a dream is not Real, since
> it was such as it was, merely in that a dreamer so dreamed it; but the fact
> of the dream is Real, if it was dreamed; since if so, its date, the name of
> the dreamer, etc. make up a set of circumstances sufficient to distinguish
> it from all other events; and these belong to it, i.e. would be true if
> predicated of it, whether A, B, or C Actually ascertains them or not.*”
>
> *[GF: ] *Peirce is saying that the *substance* of the dream is not Real,
> although the *fact* of the dream is. But he has just defined “idea” in
> the *vernacular* sense as “*the substance* of an actual unitary thought
> or fancy” and contrasted that sense with “Idea,” defined as “*anything
> whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented,
> regardless of any person's faculty or impotence to represent it*” – which
> has the Reality proper to the first Universe, the Reality of a
> *possibility*. (and *not* the reality of a *substance*. Once this “airy
> nothing” or “anything” does get fully represented, then it has the Actual
> (and perhaps substantial) Reality proper to the second Universe, and if it
> actually represents something *to somebody* (insert sop to Cerberus),
> then it has the Reality proper to the third Universe. To me it seems
> logical enough to regard this insubstantial Being, this *capacity*, as
> the Creator of all three Universes. This would be somewhat analogous to
> regarding abduction as Creator of the hypothesis which, my means of
> deduction, creates a theory which through inductive testing becomes more
> and more substantial. As we all know, abduction is the only source of new
> ideas; perhaps Firstness is the only source of Ideas. Likewise we might
> regard the dreamer as Creator of the dream *and* of the fact of the dream
> *and* of whatever might be predicated of it (i.e. of its meaning, if it
> has any). Thirdness, on the other hand, has *connective* rather than
> *creative* power: “*The third Universe** comprises everything whose Being
> consists in active power to establish connections between different
> objects, especially between objects in different Universes.*”
>
> [resuming JAS:] What I quoted above from CP 6.483 and EP 2.448 suggests
> the possibility that only two of the three Universes have a Creator
> independent of them, which raises the question of which one might not.
> Peirce provided a major clue in CP 6.490:
>
> A full exposition of the pragmaticistic definition of *Ens necessarium*
> would require many pages; but some hints toward it may be given. A
> disembodied spirit, or pure mind, has its being out of time, since all that
> it is destined to think is fully in its being at any and every previous
> time. But in endless time it is destined to think all that it is capable
> of thinking … Pure mind, as creative of thought, must, so far as it is
> manifested in time, appear as having a character related to the
> habit-taking capacity, just as super-order is related to uniformity.
>
> According to Peirce, then, God is "pure mind," and thus in some sense may
> not be *completely *independent of the Universe of Mind (i.e.,
> Thirdness), while nevertheless being the independent Creator of the other
> two Universes--of Ideas and ideal possibilities (i.e., Firstness), and of
> Matter and physical facts (i.e., Secondness).
>
> What does all of this have to do with cosmology? By 1908, Peirce
> apparently no longer held (if he ever did) that Firstness came first, so to
> speak; God *created* Firstness (and Secondness), but God Himself *is*
> Thirdness. Furthermore, what exactly did God create when He created
> Firstness? Peirce once again supplied the answer in CP 6.490:
>
> In that state of absolute nility, in or out of time, that is, before or
> after the evolution of time, there must then have been a tohu-bohu of which
> nothing whatever affirmative or negative was true universally. There must
> have been, therefore, a little of everything conceivable.
>
> In other words, there was an infinite range of vague possibilities,
> consistent with Peirce's evolving mathematical definition of a *continuum*,
> which is a paradigmatic manifestation of Thirdness.
>
> *[GF: ] *But I think you will agree that *possibility* is the logical
> equivalent of Firstness, not Thirdness. Peirce at this stage in his
> thinking often identified continuity with generality, and he wrote c.1905
> that “The generality of the possible” is “the only true generality” (CP
> 5.533). So I don’t think continuity is confined to Thirdness; and I think
> Gary Richmond has argued that the ur-continuum or *tohu bohu* represented
> by the blackboard in Peirce’s famous cosmology lecture is the first
> Universe, which comprises “vague possibilities.” —Anyway, that’s all I
> have time for today, so I’ll leave the rest to you, for now!
>
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