John, list - I agree with you that Firstness, in itself, is not
entropic - since it also operates within a stable system as
vagueness, openness. But Firstness as spontaneity, within that
vagueness, can lead as Peirce pointed out to minute changes in the
form of the system, which can be accepted within Thirdness and lead
to new habits of formation and interaction.
I also agree that randomness and spontaneity are not identical - and
that Firstness is 'spontaneity'.
Edwina
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On Thu 06/04/17 2:03 AM , John Collier [email protected] sent:
A few points. Thermodynamics is a specialty of mine since I was an
undergraduate, especially the statistical version. I don’t think I
agree with Edwina that firstness is entropic, though in some cases it
can be. In other cases it is just something like form considered in
isolation. I take it that the senses (qualia on some accounts) start
with this, but there is typically a good deal more going on outside
of this firstness that would lead me not to call it entropic. However
I would also say that there are events that we perceive that are not
coordinated with previous experience, and that these can lead to
habits to accommodate future similar events. See my Dealing with the
Unexpected [1] (CASYS 2000) for an account of how this can happen in a
complex system like the mind, though I see no reason why this need be
a mental process, and could apply to interacting complex processes in
general, leading to habits in the broad sense. In my paper I use the
idea to explain Piaget’s asdsimi9lation and accommodation, which
is, of course, a generalization process, but a novel one, not
preprogramed.
There is still an understanding gap between QM and SM, largely due
to the fact that the theory of QM is deterministic. I have heard
good scientists say that QM is the basis of entropy, but I don’t
find their arguments sound. I think it is important to distinguish
between chance and randomness. Peirce focuses on chance. Chance
events can be deterministic on the larger scale, such as when we
have a chance meeting with a friend in the store. Nothing in either
of our determining that we will be in the store at that time is
coordinated with our friend’s determinants except that these
determinants become coordinated when we meet. Without both stories
together, the meeting is chance, but not random in the technical
sense, since the stories together can be compressed to mark our
meeting. I call situations like this relative randomness: two
histories are not sufficient individually to predict a common event
– they don’t contain enough information to compute this event,
but the stories together do, assuming determinism.
In any case, I don’t see the divergence Clark apparently sees in
the use of the concept of entropy.
John Collier
Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate
Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal
http://web.ncf.ca/collier [2]
From: Clark Goble [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, 05 April 2017 8:43 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic
Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)
On Apr 5, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
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
Hopefully you saw that subsequent post where I noted not everyone
agreed with the article I was using. Although I think in terms of
Peirce’s conception of why thermodynamics doesn’t apply it’s
pretty on the ball. My sense (perhaps wrong) is that the differences
tend to be tied to terminology.
To the above, I agree habits are introducing more and more
generality. However as they become more and more habitual they come
more and more to take the character of substance. That is
substance/matter is simply a reflection of a lack of variation from
the habit. Peirce saw in the long run that these habits would
crystalize in some sense.
Now from the perspective of a habit, any variation is a swerve.
Peirce in various places appears to have since qualia or feeling as
firstness as the inner view of swerve that he picks up (in a somewhat
distorted fashion) from the Epircureans. So to that degree that
swerve or chance is a break from habit I fully agree with you.
That’s entropy, formally considered. The problem is that Peirce’s
conception of the in the long run means habits become more set which
is anti-entropic.
The question though is what happens when habits form. Peirce sees
that formation as also occurring out of chance. That’s why I think
we can’t only say that chance/feeling is entropy. What Peirce sees
as entropy proper is purely in terms of deterministic mechanics and
the Boltzmann statistical view of entropy. So here we’re
distinguishing between the law of entropy and the measure of entropy.
That’s an important distinction to keep in mind. Chance as a break
from habit increases the measure of entropy. But it does not affect
the law of entropy which is purely a law of physical necessary
motion.
The reason this is difficult to wrap our mind around is because
we’re all used to quantum mechanics with it’s notion of
randomness of a sort. Even people who don’t accept ontological
chance still talk of randomness. Yet we apply thermodynamics to
quantum mechanics all the time. So to us thermodynamics isn’t only
a law of determinative mechanics.
So when I asked you to unpack what you mean by entropy, more or less
what I’m getting at is whether you are talking about
1. the measure of entropy
2. the law of entropy in general
3. a tendency to increase entropy
The problem is that I think most of us who don’t see
thermodynamics in terms only of Newtonian mechanics just
fundamentally see Peirce’s use as wrong. So please be aware what
I’m getting at here is how Peirce saw it, not what the right way
of seeing it is. At a bare minimum Peirce’s use is incompatible
with contemporary use in most cases. (We’ll ignore the Bohmian
mechanics proponents for the moment)
Links:
------
[1] http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/CASYS2000final.pdf
[2] http://web.ncf.ca/collier
[3]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'[email protected]\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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