Clark, list - at the moment, I'm going to disagree - that is, I'm
not entirely convinced by your outline.
The way I see it, is that Mind doesn't 'end up in the Final
Interpretant phase' as particular instantiations. To the contrary,
Mind ends up as generalities.
"In endless time, it is destined to think all that it is capable of
thinking.....a generalization of order" 6.490
Since Mind refers to the 'habit-taking capacity' then, what appears
to be the ultimate limit, in my view, is not matter but habit. Habits
don't move toward more differentiation but towards more generality.
What is Firstness? It is the introduction of non-habits and thus,
entropic dissipation of the force of habits on the formation of
matter. Peirce repeatedly refers to the 'breaking up of habit' [see
Man's Glassy Essence, 6.264] in which he writes of 'the manner in
which habits generally get broken up", because "matter never does
obey its ideal laws with absolute precision, but that there are
almost insensible fortuitous departures from regularity, these will
produce, in general, minute effects. But protoplasm is in an
excessively unstable condition; and it is the characteristic of
unstable equilibrium that near that point excessively minute causes
may produce startlingly large effects"...."Now this breaking up of
habit and renewed fortuitous spontaneity will, according to the law
of mind, be accompanied by an intensification of feeling".
My reading of the above is that Firstness, which is a basic
foundational law of the universe, could be defined as entropy, or the
force that continuously breaks up stability. Therefore - I don't get
your conclusion that Firstness is anti-entropy or that it violates
entropy. If Firstness were supreme then, we would in a sense, see the
heat-death of the universe since matter would dissipate to its lowest
state or even non-existence. What prevents this is Thirdness, the
taking of habits - which enables particular articulations of these
habits to emerge and live their short/long exisentialities. But
Firstness, as a basic principle of the universe, is quite ready to
destabilize those habits and insert 'minute differences - i.e, to act
as entropy.
That's where I see it at the moment.
Edwina
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On Wed 05/04/17 1:29 PM , Clark Goble cl...@lextek.com sent:
On Apr 3, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
That is - I am also suggesting that Firstness is not simply quality,
feeling, chance - but - is entropy.
Could you unpack that a little more? I *think* I understand what
you’re getting at — how chance undermines order — but I’m not
quite sure. Or, put an other way, if habit is the opposite of a rise
in entropy then movement away from habit (substance being the
ultimate limit) would increase entropy.
The place where of course Peirce has some difficulty here is with
the second law of thermodynamics. The heat death thesis is the
clearest example of this. Now one might say that Peirce’s
conception of substance as the limit of semiosis is heat death, but I
don’t think that’s right. The heat death is basically the
interaction between things leading to a broad distribution of energy
so you lose differentiation. But for Peirce of course habits are
moving towards more differentiation. While we see that locally we
don’t see that globally.
So far as I know not a lot has been written on Peirce and the second
law of thermodynamics. Which is surprising given how much has been
written on Peirce and chance - particularly related to classic
epicureanism and stoicism. Given Peirce’s background in physics and
chemistry he knew thermodynamics but from what I can tell didn’t
really apply it to his cosmology.
One of the few articles on the subject in Andrew Reynolds
“Peirce’s Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics” in
Transactions. There he notes Peirce’s conception of the first law
(conservation) was that it was just an algebraic relationship and not
an ontological condition (the way most physicists take it). So for
him it simply doesn’t prescribe that the total amount of energy in
the universe is constant. Merely that in any system you have
algebraic connections between energy flow. (See CP 6.602)
He next distinguishes between forces for growth, that are
irreversible, from those tied to the conservation of energy which are
reversible. Since Perice thought growth had stronger evidence than
conservation, growth was the exception. (6.613) He adopts the
position of Carus in which the brain is primarily physical and thus
subject to conservation laws except that “there are present states
of awareness….Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can be
weighed on any scales….” (CP 6.614) In explaining that quote from
Carus, Peirce says, “It escapes materialism. It supposes a direct
dynamical action between mind and matter, such as not been supposed
by any eminent philosopher that I know of for centuries.”
Regarding entropy again, Peirce’s platonic cosmology is kind of
the inverse of what physicists would expect. The end is not heat
death but a system “in which mind is at last crystalized in the
infinitely distant future” (6.33) Reynolds argues that we ought
distinguish between 20th century views of entropy from Peirce’s
19th century views. (I don’t know enough about the detailed history
here to know how accurate he is - I’m assuming he’s getting it
right)
Peirce praises the Maxwell/Boltzmann statistical interpretation of
entropy. (Reasoning, 220) The Boltzmann interpretation is that
entropy holds only statistically. But Peirce sees real chance as
working in a direction counter to the increase of entropy. “But
although no force can counteract this tendency, chance may and will
have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run dissipative;
chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy by
the regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by
circumstances more and more favorable to its reconcentration by
chance.” (Writings 4.551) Reynolds argues Peirce is thinking of
what later was called the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. However Peirce
for mechanism favors Boltzmann and thus something like the heat death
but due to chance thinks this won’t happen. He recognizes the
problem with entropy but sees himself as an ontological evolutionist.
Since “the universe as a whole…should be conceived of as
growing” (6.613) that growth ontologically escapes both
conservation and entropy.
The way he does this is to see that there are temporary violations
due to chance but that there’s then a tendency towards entropy. So
it’s that combination that he thinks will let him achieve a final
state, but which because of growth won’t be a heat death state.
Now of course none of this is terribly satisfying - especially to
scientists who tend to see the laws of entropy as ontological or
absolute laws. Indeed physicists seem quite willing to give up on
most laws except thermodynamics. It’s this reason that I personally
find Peirce’s cosmology so troubling, although I don’t think
I’ve explained that before now.
I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial
comment that firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve
hopefully shown, those are actually opposed. Firstness is what
violates entropy. It is anti-entropy.
Links:
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