> On Mar 28, 2017, at 3:41 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > CSP: If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was in the > beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no reaction and no > quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and no time, but just nothing > at all. Not determinately nothing. For that which is determinately not A > supposes the being of A in some mode. Utter indetermination. But a symbol > alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute > beginning, is a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of things can > alone be understood. (EP 2:322) > > As observed by the PEP editors in an endnote, "This statement brings to mind > Peirce's favorite Evangelist: 'In the beginning was the Word' (John 1:1)." > It seems consistent with the comment by Jon A. about symbols being primordial > relative to icons and indices--not to mention the entire universe, which > Peirce described elsewhere as "a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's > purpose"; and "every symbol must have, organically attached to it, its > Indices of Reactions and its Icons of Qualities" (EP 2:193-194). So it also > strikes me as another data point in favor of interpreting 3ns as primordial > relative to 1ns and 2ns in Peirce's considered cosmology. >
Just to problematize this a tad, I think we might want to distinguish between the cosmological development of an icon or index into an index. As you note for Peirce this arises neoplatonically via symbols. This is roughly constricting possibilities. But when we speak of a real object that’s already determinate in some sense and how it determines signs, then I think we can and ought speak of indices and icons that have that function because of real (i.e. mind independent) characters.
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