A most importan note! Kirsti
John F Sowa kirjoitti 21.10.2016 20:55:
On 10/21/2016 1:09 PM, Jerry LR Chandler wrote:
By "scientific causality," do you mean /efficient/ causality (i.e.,
brute reactions), /final/ causality (i.e., laws of nature), both,
or something else altogether?
Scientific causality is not so constrained as your question suggests.
In discussing what Peirce meant, it's important to read his sources,
especially the ancient Greeks and the Scholastic logic and philosophy
built on their work.
The English word 'cause' is derived from the Latin 'causa', which
was a translation of Aristotle's 'aitia'. But the modern word
has become specialized to the single sense of efficient cause.
To see how far the ancient words evolved, note that the French word
'chose' (usually translated as 'thing') is the direct descendant of
the Latin 'causa'. The modern French 'cause' was borrowed from
Latin in a sense that corresponds to the English 'cause'.
In a discussion of the historical sense of the four aitiai or causae,
it's better to call them four modes of explanation. Peirce would
certainly have understood the difference.
In any particular text, it's important to determine whether Peirce
was using the word 'cause' in a modern sense or its historical sense
as a mode of explanation.
John
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
