Clark, list: Hmm - it's always interesting to read how others view
oneself.
I hadn't thought that I was saying that " that thinking of all this
in the idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should
appropriate Peirce more in a materialistic way"
I don't know what the above actually means - 'idealist' and
'materialist way'.
My frustration on this list often comes because of the focus on
'pure philosophy' so to speak - and I see Peircean semiosis as
operating in the material as well as the conceptual world. What
interests me is 'how does a morphological organism develop and
function in this world' - and I consider that it does so by Peircean
semiosic principles. That is, I think we can understand how plants
interact and informationally network with each other - by semiosis -
and thus are not simple mechanical systems.
I'm not sure if entropy is limited to a more narrow area...
Edwina
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On Wed 05/04/17 4:13 PM , Clark Goble cl...@lextek.com sent:
On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
I am not sure exactly how this bears on your entropy conversation,
except that entropy is often described as disorder; so from that
standpoint, uniformity and habit-taking both seem to be negentropic
in nature.
The question really is of chance. For Peirce chance both forms
habits but also allows breaks from habit. Mind is the capacity to
form habits but habits can be long term habits or short term habits.
Again for Peirce the universe as a whole can be considered mind and
the universe is thus a kind of argument that is preceding by thinking
itself. However that means the universe is at odds with
thermodynamics, which Peirce thought applied only to mechanistic
deterministic systems.
What Edwina is more or less saying (if I have her right) is that
thinking of all this in the idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That
is we should appropriate Peirce more in a materialistic way. I
don’t have any problem with that, I should add. I think Peirce’s
cosmology has always been problematic. Both in terms of his arguments
for his cosmology but also it’s simply a view I think few people are
comfortable with. There’s a reason why platonism is often used
disparagingly. I think appropriating Peirce and his semiotics in a
more narrow way is completely fine. We can talk about signs quite
well without buying into his objective idealism. Although there will
be places where this will cause problem precisely because Peirce saw
an unity to his own thought.
I suspect the differences between you and Edwina in other contexts
ultimately is a manifestation of to what degree are we using Peirce
and to what degree are we attempting to understand Peirce on his own
terms. I think Edwina (and correct me if I’m wrong Edwina) gets
frustrated in the list is because there’s often been so much focus
on Peirce’s ontology and terminology related to that ontology
rather than on application (where the ontology matters far less).
So for example if I’m talking about semiotics within chemistry
Peirce’s cosmology likely rarely matters. Ditto if I’m talking
about systems programming or AI. My guess is that Edwina wants to
talk about firstness as entropy because she’s limiting the
discussion to a more narrow area.
Links:
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http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'jonalanschm...@gmail.com\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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