1) Clark - yes, thank you for your comment on my comment:
ET: The vital importance of chance as an agential force in the emergence and
evolution of matter/mind ...
Of course I didn't mean an individual [human or god] force by the term of
'chance'!. I find that Jon jumps to disagree with me as a matter of habit.
Either that, or his tendency to read in a literal manner leads him to such
conclusions. I meant 'chance or Firstness or spontaneity as a causal force -
and there's plenty of comments in Peirce on just this state.
2) But I don't agree with Jon's comment that Firstness is 'pure nothing' in the
absence of continuity or Thirdness. Nothing-is-nothing, and none of the
categories can be applicable to it.
Firstness is a mode of organization of matter/mind that is novel, spontaneous -
and thus, has no habits. BUT, it is not 'nothing', for otherwise matter would
never evolve its new habits. Matter only evolves these new habits when
Firstness introduces a novel form [which is not 'nothing' but a novel form]
..and this novel form can then persist within its taking on of habits/Thirdness.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: Clark Goble
To: Peirce-L
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)
On Nov 3, 2016, at 12:19 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
While I personally disagree with process theology itself, I actually agree
with Clark that Peirce's writings can plausibly be interpreted from a process
theology perspective. Peirce clearly rejected determinism--or
necessitarianism, as he usually called it--but I think that he did view God as
First Cause in the specific sense of Ens necessarium, since he said so
explicitly in "A Neglected Argument," its additaments, and the associated
manuscript drafts.
It’s worth noting that Peirce’s notions of vagueness in ontology (as opposed
to epistemology/logic) combined with his ontology of chance tend to
significantly change the meaning of both causation and ens necessarium.
Especially relative to how most thought even in the 19th century.
ET: The vital importance of chance as an agential force in the emergence
and evolution of matter/mind ...
I do not see how we can attribute "agential force" to chance or Firstness,
when in Peirce's thought--even in conjunction with Brute reaction or
Secondness--it is pure nothing in the absence of continuity or Thirdness.
I suspect there’s some talking past one an other here. Given Peirce’s
semiotic realism rather than a more traditional substance ontology (or even
monads of process such as in Leibniz and perhaps Spinoza) it’s worth asking
what ‘agent’ means.
Without speaking for Edwina I suspect she means by agent something different
from how you may be taking her.
I think due to the nature of Peirce’s idea of continuity in his semiotics and
ontology any ‘agent’ can always be further analyzed as made up of ‘smaller’
bits of firstness, secondness, and thirdness.
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