Jeff, list - I'll continue to reject that Thirdness preceded
1stness and 2ndness. I think that ALL THREE are primordial BUT - the
'big bang' action, so to speak, began with Firstness, followed by the
particularity of Secondness, followed by the habit-taking of
Thirdness. But by this, I do NOT say that Firstness was primordial.
Just that the first expression of the Three Primordial Modes...was
Firstness.
Agree, that most certainly, the development of Mind-into-Matter was
not by mechanical bits sticking together, but by the indeterminate
becoming determinate. BUT - I'd add that one must never ignore the
power of dissipation and Firstness, which rejects pure determinates
and constantly includes deviations from the norm - and - dissipation
of the normative habits.
Edwina
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On Fri 31/03/17 2:23 PM , Jeffrey Brian Downard
[email protected] sent:
Hi Jon S., List,
You say: If the tendency to take habits was truly "original," then
it seems to me that 3ns must have preceded 1ns and 2ns in some
sense. This is consistent with Peirce's remarks about "super-order"
in the first additament to the article (CP 6.490; 1908), as well as
the blackboard diagram in the final RLT lecture (1898); hence the
notion of primordial 3ns or "ur-continuity" that we have discussed
on the List in the past.
For my part, it tend to think that Peirce has a remarkably rich set
of resources to draw from for the sake of working out how the various
formal and material elements--studied in both phenomenology and
semiotics--might be combined in the conceptions he is employing in
formulating these hypotheses concerning the origins of order in the
cosmos. So, for instance, one might think of triadic relations that
embody vague sorts of order for the third part of a genuine triad,
and dyadic individuals that are just possibles--like essential and
inherential dyads and triads as the "subjects" that are governed by
such primordial forms of what is general. (see "On The Logic of
Mathematics; an attempt....")
Remember, the primary movement in the explanatory process is that of
showing how, through processes of diversification and specification,
something that has its origins in a homogeneous sort of vague-uralt
potentiality might evolve. It is not primarily by a process of adding
little elemental atomic bits together that things grow, but by a
process of the indeterminate becoming determinate that the cosmos
evolves.
Hope that helps.
Jeff
Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354
-------------------------
From: Jon Alan Schmidt
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 10:16 AM
To: Jeffrey Brian Downard
Cc: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis
(Was semantic problem with the term) Jeff, List:
What I find interesting about that quote from "A Guess at the
Riddle" (1887-8) is the often-overlooked implication that "the
principle of habit" (3ns) already had to be in place and operative in
order to bring about the "second flash," which "was in some sense
after the first, because resulting from it." Peirce only belatedly
recognized this himself; in one of the early manuscript drafts of "A
Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), he referred to the
notion that the habit-taking tendency brought about the laws of
nature as "my original hypothesis," and then made this comment about
it.
CSP: But during the long years which have elapsed since the
hypothesis first suggested itself to me, it may naturally be supposed
that faulty features of the original hypothesis have been brought [to]
my attention by others and have struck me in my own meditations …
Professor Ogden Rood pointed out that there must have been some
original tendency to take habits which did not arise according to my
hypothesis … (R 842)
If the tendency to take habits was truly "original," then it seems
to me that 3ns must have preceded 1ns and 2ns in some sense. This is
consistent with Peirce's remarks about "super-order" in the first
additament to the article (CP 6.490; 1908), as well as the blackboard
diagram in the final RLT lecture (1898); hence the notion of
primordial 3ns or "ur-continuity" that we have discussed on the List
in the past.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer,
Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [1]
On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
Edwina, Clark, Jon S, List,
Let's make a comparison for the sake of framing a question in the
special science of cosmological physics. Does Peirce's explanatory
principle help to address the kinds of questions that Ilya Prigogine
is trying to answer about the irreversibility of thermodynamical
systems? Once again, here is the quote in which Peirce describes the
principle: “out of the womb of indeterminacy, we must say that
there would have come something, by the principle of Firstness,
which we may call a flash. Then by the principle of habit there would
have been a second flash…..” (CP, 1.412)
See: Prigogine, Ilya (1961). Introduction to Thermodynamics of
Irreversible Processes (Second ed.). New York: Interscience.
If Peirce is addressing the same sort of question, then are the
Prigogine and Peirce explaining the irreversibility of such
thermodynamical processes in the same general way? Or, is Peirce
trying to answer a set of prior questions. For instance, one might
infer from the quote above taken together with Peirce says in the
last of the lectures in Reasoning and the Logic of Things (including
the suggestive draft versions) that Peirce is interested in more
general questions about what makes any sort of process ordered so
that it is irreversible--including, for example, the "unfolding" of
the dimensions of quality as well as those of space and the order of
time.
Prigogine's general strategy is to provide an account of what makes
some complex systems chaotic. Then, he tries to explain how some
chaotic systems can evolve in a manner that is self-organizing. The
explanation draws on the conception of a dissipative structure. As
such, a comparison between the two might help us better understand
how to frame competing hypotheses concerning the evolution of order
in such systems--including forms of order that are irreversible in
one way or another.
--Jeff Jeffrey Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Northern Arizona University
(o) 928 523-8354 [3]
Links:
------
[1] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[2]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
[3] http://webmail.primus.ca/tel:(928)%20523-8354
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