> On Nov 3, 2016, at 3:59 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Is it helpful at all to refer to "actualization," rather than "cause"? > Edwina's position, as I understand it, is that our existing universe is not > only self-organizing but also self-generating or self-originating; as Houser > put it in his introduction to EP 1, "Somehow, the possibility or potentiality > of the chaos is self-actualizing." This is the crucial transition from > Firstness (possibility) to Secondness (actuality), and the word "somehow" > reflects the fact that Houser's attempt to summarize Peirce's cosmology > effectively leaves this step unexplained.
Well I tend to agree with Edwina there with regards to Peirce’s position. Although I’m not sure actualization works. Usually I see that term being used to distinguish from a plan or a possibility versus the realization of that plan in actual matter. The problem is that our language really isn’t up to the task of these things. Which is why the Platonists tend to use explicit metaphor more regularly. It really does avoid a lot of problems for all the ridicule it might generate at times. This is also partially why in classic education Plato was left until last because it was considered so difficult to deal with. It’s interesting that these days we start with Plato in introductory classes and typically never return to him unless one is specializing in ancient philosophy or classics. Regarding firstness as possibility to secondness as actuality I think it illustrates the problem if we quote the relevant Peirce. While he’ll frequently talk of it as possibility and uncaused he’ll also talk of it as spontaneous occurrence. The problem is that occurrence again is nearly as problematic a term as cause is. After all to occur requires a brute appearance that is more secondness. So the language in these divisions can mislead somewhat if we don’t keep the categories numerical aspect front and center. I do not mean that potentiality immediately results in actuality. Mediately perhaps it does; but what immediately resulted was that unbounded potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort -- that is, of some quality. Thus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary logic, leapt into the unit of some quality. (CP 6.220) Again here we see running up against the same problem of language. This ‘zeroth’ category is a kind of possibility too. But he has to distinguish it from firstness as possibility. We might call it the possibility of possibility or simply this difference between possibility as such versus a particular possibility. Again the Platonists had these exact same problems with language and Peirce is almost certainly familiar with the language they used. You can see these a few pages earlier when he adopts explicitly platonic language. The evolution of forms begins or, at any rate, has for an early stage of it, a vague potentiality; and that either is or is followed by a continuum of forms having a multitude of dimensions too great for the individual dimensions to be distinct. It must be by a contraction of the vagueness of that potentiality of everything in general, but of nothing in particular, that the world of forms comes about. (CP 6.196) Really the process Peirce is after is the continuum between the completely unlimited to the completely limited. This is the three universes but within each universe there is its own continuum. This really is traditional neplatonism of late antiquity minus some of the more annoying metaphors like breaking of vessels. Although Peirce does use the womb metaphor albeit in a somewhat reversal of how the Timaeus does. Again I’m not sure I buy Peirce here in the least. Particularly I find the emanation theory he gives in CP 1.412 to be problematic for a few reasons. But that is his cosmology.
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