Jon, list - I'm going to continue to disagree with your interpretation. I
consider that the two descriptions of the emergence of the universe are not
compatible. But - as to why Peirce wrote the two - of course, that is beyond
me.
The 1.412 description is specific in 'the original chaos, therefore, where
there was no regularity, was in effect a state of mere indeterminacy, in which
nothing existed or really happened 1.411. And his outline of the emergence of
both matter and mind seem to me, [I've provided the quotes before] a clear
outline of the self-organization and evolution of both.
There is, in this outline, no a priori Mind - pure or otherwise.
Then, in 6.490, Peirce talks about the 'disembodied spirit or pure mind, has
its being out of time' - This is clear - that we have here an a priori agency
which "is destined to think all that is is capable of thinking".THought
separate from matter???? This means, also, that this Pure Mind is NOT a 'state
of utter nothingness'.
My reading of this - a pure disembodied mind - is that it is Platonic - and
this contradicts Peirce's basic Aristotelianism which does not allow for Mind
separated from Matter.
That is, throughout Peirce's many discussions of Mind and Matter and his
discussion of the three categories - we do not read [as far as i can recollect]
any hint of their separation, any suggestion that Mind is 'disembodied' and
'full-of-its truths'. Indeed, Thirdness is, as embedded within
Secondness/Firstness - always able to change and evolve its habits, something a
pure Mind would not do.
So- my reading of these two sections is that they are two completely different
outlines, and are incompatible with each other. I think you and even Peirce
are, indeed, using the arguments for the 'existence of God' from Anselm, the
classical ontological argument, that If one can think of a perfect Being, then,
this perfect being is real....and..if such a belief is common, then, this is
'evidentiary' proof that such a being exists. I consider that this analysis is
insufficient as proof - and that the very notion of a 'pure mind' contradicts
the outline of a self-organized mind-matter universe that Peirce provided in
'A guess at the riddle'.
I cannot explain these two, to my reading, very different descriptions of the
emergence and evolution of the universe of mind and matter - and simply have to
leave it as that: I cannot explain it. As an atheist and someone who accepts
the power of self-organization and evolution, I admit to being drawn to the
1.412 Guess at the Riddle [and other outlines of agapasm and evolution] rather
than the agential power-of-god outline. But that doesn't mean anything
conclusive - other than an awareness of my own predeliction for the one outline
versus the other! But - I do think they are incompatible.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
To: Edwina Taborsky
Cc: Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology
Edwina, List:
ET: I think you will have to admit that neither you nor I know for sure
which of the two arguments for the emergence of the universe are 'really held'
by Peirce.
On the contrary--I think that we do know for sure, or at least have to
assume, that Peirce "really held" what he said in "A Guess at the Riddle" in
1887-1888, and "really held" what he said in "A Neglected Argument" in 1908.
This is why I always try to include the date with any quotation from him--it is
important to recognize its timing within the overall development of his
thought, which was far from static.
The question, then, is simply whether the 1908 statements that I have cited
represent a significant change in his views over two decades, or if they are
compatible with the 1887-1888 paragraph that you quoted below. Again, I think
that CP 6.490--which also dates to 1908, and in fact was intended precisely to
serve as a supplement to "A Neglected Argument"--strongly suggests the latter
conclusion. My apologies in advance for the lengthy excerpts this time.
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. Order is
simply thought embodied in arrangement; and thought embodied in any other way
appears objectively as a character that is a generalization of order, and that,
in the lack of any word for it, we may call for the nonce, "Super-order." It is
something like uniformity. The idea may be caught if it is described as that of
which order and uniformity are particular varieties. 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.
I have already discussed the hint that Ens necessarium is "pure mind." The
rest of this passage implies that thought is always "embodied" in some kind of
"super-order," of which order and uniformity are two examples. Peirce then
draws an analogy--the thought-creating character of pure mind is to the
habit-taking capacity as super-order is to uniformity. Since he just said that
uniformity is a particular variety of super-order, the habit-taking capacity
must be a particular variety of the thought-creating character of pure mind.
Recall that the "second flash" of CP 1.412 came about "by the principle of
habit"; so evidently it was a manifestation of pure mind, as creative of
thought. Likewise for the "other successions ever more and more closely
connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever strengthening
themselves." While CP 1.412 might plausibly be interpreted in isolation as
describing "the self-organized emergence of the Universe" with "no metaphysical
Agent" involved, CP 6.490 indicates that the habit-taking capacity depends on
there being such an Agent.
Now imagine, in such vague way as such a thing can be imagined, a perfect
cosmology of the three universes. It would prove all in relation to that
subject that reason could desiderate; and of course all that it would prove
must, in actual fact, now be true. But reason would desiderate that that should
be proved from which would follow all that is in fact true of the three
universes; and the postulate from which all this would follow must not state
any matter of fact, since such fact would thereby be left unexplained. That
perfect cosmology must therefore show that the whole history of the three
universes, as it has been and is to be, would follow from a premiss which would
not suppose them to exist at all. Moreover, such premiss must in actual fact be
true. But that premiss must represent a state of things in which the three
universes were completely nil. Consequently, whether in time or not, the three
universes must actually be absolutely necessary results of a state of utter
nothingness. We cannot ourselves conceive of such a state of nility; but we can
easily conceive that there should be a mind that could conceive it, since,
after all, no contradiction can be involved in mere non-existence. A state in
which there should be absolutely no super-order whatsoever would be such a
state of nility. For all Being involves some kind of super-order.
This is a difficult passage, but it s me to strikes me as a kind of reductio
ad absurdum for any claim that the universe came about without the Reality of
God. A "perfect cosmology" conforming to such a claim "must not state any
matter of fact," but must instead "follow from a premiss which would not
suppose [the three universes] to exist at all." As a result, "the three
universes must actually be absolutely necessary results of a state of utter
nothingness"; that is, "A state in which there should be absolutely no
super-order whatsoever." But in such a state, absolutely nothing is absolutely
necessary; in fact, there cannot be any Being whatsoever, since "all Being
involves some kind of super-order." Hence the Reality of God--an eternal
Being, Ens necessarium--is the only premiss that can account for the reality of
the three universes, without already assuming it.
Any such super-order would be a super-habit. Any general state of things
whatsoever would be a super-order and a super-habit. 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.
Peirce explicitly mentioned the first chapter Genesis in CP 1.412, and
invoked it again here--tohu bohu is the Hebrew expression in verse 2 that is
usually translated as something like "without form and void." The notion of a
state where "nothing whatever affirmative or negative was true universally,"
which thus involves "a little of everything conceivable," is consistent with
Peirce's late theory of a continuum. It does not consist of discrete points,
as Cantor and others defined it, but of potential points that are welded
together and thus indistinct. Even this description is misleading, because the
contiguous points do not comprise the continuum; the latter is the more
fundamental concept. The principles of non-contradiction and excluded middle
thus do not apply, unless and until an actual point is determined, which is a
discontinuity. Continuity is generality, and generality of any kind is
impossible in the absence of super-order and super-habit; i.e., the Reality of
God.
There must have been here and there a little undifferentiated tendency to
take super-habits. But such a state must tend to increase itself. For a
tendency to act in any way, combined with a tendency to take habits, must
increase the tendency to act in that way. Now substitute in this general
statement for "tendency to act in any way" a tendency to take habits, and we
see that that tendency would grow. It would also become differentiated in
various ways.
This really says nothing different from the last sentence of CP 1.412 that
you quoted. So it looks like Peirce has not changed his basic cosmology over
the intervening two decades; he has simply clarified the necessity of the
Reality of God before it ever could have gotten off the ground.
Regards,
Jon
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon, list:
I think you will have to admit that neither you nor I know for sure which
of the two arguments for the emergence of the universe are 'really held' by
Peirce. There is, A, the self-organized emergence and evolution of Mind and
Matter within the axioms of the three categories - and this reference to the
embodiment and evolution of Mind with Matter is found all through Peirce's
writings. And, there is, B, the introduction of an a priori agency, God, in a
later text- without any real examination of the relation of Mind and Matter in
this god-created universe.
Your reliance on "IF it's written at a later date, THEN, this means Peirce
believed in its axioms even more' - is merely your view of linear writing.
Then, there is your own open declaration of theism - and my equally open
declaration of atheism. These have to affect each of us.
This leads me to conclude that - as I said, neither you nor I know which of
the two arguments is 'really held' by Peirce. I think we'll have to leave it at
that.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
To: [email protected] ; Peirce-L
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2016 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology
Edwina, List:
ET: What i read from the above is the self-organized emergence of the
Universe.
Peirce wrote "A Guess at the Riddle" in 1887-1888 and "A Neglected
Argument" in 1908. The latter, including its various drafts, states explicitly
that in Peirce's belief, God is Really creator of all three Universes of
Experience and everything in them, without exception. This means that either
(a) he changed his mind at some point during the intervening twenty years, or
(b) he saw no incompatibility between the two positions. His cosmological
remarks in CP 6.490, written only a little later in 1908 than the article
itself, suggest strongly that (b) is the case.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 8:26 AM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]>
wrote:
Gary R - you wrote:
"I am not an atheist because, for one thing, I refuse to 'reduce' the
origins of this cosmos to an improbably singularity (a Big Bang--and, as you
probably know, there is not one version of this theory, but several, and
competing theories as well, although the current scientific dogma won't allow
for that).
Nor do I see self-organization (a sound enough principle) and
self-creation (whatever that may mean) as the only principles of semiosis, life
and evolution."
I certainly won't critique or comment on your rejection of atheism as
that's hardly my right, but I'd like to comment on the 'singularity of origin
of our universe' [Big Bang] and self-organization.
With regard to the singular explosive origin, there certainly are
numerous theories, including for or against the Big Bang. Since I am rejecting
a metaphysical origin [God] as the origin of the universe, I stick with the Big
Bang for now. I refer to Peirce's 'A Guess at the Riddle'...
"The original chaos, therefore, where there was no regularity, was in
effect a state of mere indeterminacy in which nothing existed or really
happened.
Our conceptions of the first stages of development, before time yet
existed, must be as vague and figurative as the expressions of the first
chapter of Genesis. Out of the womb of indeterminacy we must say that there
would have come something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a
flash. Then by the principle of habit there would have been a second flash.
Though time would not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after
the first, because resulting from it. Then there would have come other
successions ever more and more closely connected, the habits and the tendency
to take them ever strengthening themselves, until the events would have been
bound together into something like a continuous flow.....' 1.412
What i read from the above is the self-organized emergence of the
Universe. There is no metaphysical Agent [God- which requires an a priori
agency, something which the Scholastics dealt with by not dealing with it
except within belief] - but - the basic principles of organization of the three
categories ARE there. And that's all three - pure spontaneity, discrete
instantiations, and regularity or habit-taking. These are all aspects of Mind -
and matter, as Peirce constantly wrote, is 'effete Mind'. So, Mind seems to be
primal...and even, self-organized.
As Peirce outlined in his examples of crystals as instantiations of
Mind, or the decapitated frog which, lacking a brain, 'almost reasons. The
habit that is in his cerebellum serves as a major premiss. The excitation of a
drop of acid is his minor premiss. And his conclusion is the act of wiping it
away. All that is of any value in the operation of ratiocination is there,
except only one thing. What he lacks is the power of prepatory meditation"
6.286.
Just so- the above triad is a semiosic action - and equally applicable
to a crystal, which also lacks the power of prepatory meditation but does have
the entire semiosic act/syllogism within it.
Edwina
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