Clark, List
yes, I'd agree; even now we can't be sure that 'the Big Bang' is an 'absolute
beginning' and as you note - we still haven't figured out the notion of time.
I'd also agree with your "the universe in its role as a sign is developing
simultaneously historically and logically.". And a requirement of that
semiosic development is the role of the Three Categories - which includes
totally novel chance events as well as habits of organization.
Yes - I'd add that we can't say that our 'Mind' and its analyses over time is
'an essentially ordered series' or includes 'accidental' influences which may
or may not move into habits of thought. That means that one cannot declare that
a 'later work' 'more accurately reflects my analytic research' than an earlier
work.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)
On Nov 2, 2016, at 10:05 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:
Jon and I (and others) have argued that the 3ns which "emerges" following
the creation of this Universe (that is, after the Big Bang, so to loosely
speak) is *not* the same as the 3ns which is the ur-continuity represented by
the black board example in the last of the 1898 lectures. It seems to me that
much hinges on whether or not one sees our Universe as presupposing this
ur-continuity (nothing in particular but everything in general, with yet a
tendency toward habit-taking because of this ur-continuity, otherwise termed
the zero of pure potential, which is, for Peirce, certainly not "nothing at
all").
I’m not sure I’d agree about injecting the big bang into this. It seems to me
Peirce’s at best ambiguous about a beginning to the universe. Admittedly he’s
living before most of the interesting physical discoveries of the 20th century.
But even among physicists these days the common view is that the big bang isn’t
an absolute beginning.
That said I do think we should distinguish, as the ancient platonists did,
between logical relations in emanations and historic development. Of course
this distinction blurs a bit given his semiotics is his logic yet the universe
in its role as a sign is developing simultaneously historically and logically.
I find Peirce’s fundamental ontology and cosmology the most problematic of
his views (and perhaps the most separable). However if we take it as a logical
analysis rather than a cosmological/temporal one then it is far more fruitful.
As soon as you inject chance as an inherent ontological component of ones logic
then that has a lot of implications I think Peirce traced out quite well. Most
of the controversial aspects of his thought are natural consequences of holding
to tychism and synechism.
Fundamentally it leads to the problem of time which is a traditionally thorny
issue. I’m not sure physics has figured it out despite the mathematics of
general relativity. We really don’t understand the arrow of time and a lot
else. The understanding of time Peirce had available to him was limited. There
are a lot of thorny difficult problems here and it’s probably a place Peirce is
less trustworthy in his analysis.
Interestingly there’s a famous argument by Duns Scotus against causes going
backwards infinitely in time. I don’t know if Peirce mentions this although I’d
assume he’d read it.
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Duns_Scotus/Ordinatio/Ordinatio_I/D2/Q2B
I should I don’t buy the argument although it is quite a good argument.
However it hinges on the distinction between an essentially ordered series and
accidental series.
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