> On Apr 5, 2017, at 10:17 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > wrote:
> I would suggest that 1ns is better characterized as spontaneity, life, and > freedom than as pure chance in the sense of randomness, especially as it > relates to mind as 3ns. I’ve been trying to think the best way to get into this subject. I recognize it’ll diverge from Edwina’s discussion so I’m changing the subject. It’ll definitely get into ontology and a careful analysis of terminology which I know Edwina doesn’t enjoy so that’ll help keep the discussions separate. The question ends up being even if we can make a distinction between the terms what the cash value is. That is if meaning is given by a careful application of the pragmatic maxim, what does it mean here? First off I’m not sure there’s as big a divide as you think in those quoted texts. Particulary this one. Thus, when I speak of chance, I only employ a mathematical term to express with accuracy the characteristics of freedom or spontaneity. (CP 6.201; 1898) I think that while Peirce may not have been familiar with Gibb’s development over Boltzmann of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, he did have pretty clear and particular views on what the mathematics of chance was. That is he was a frequentist and thought the outward aspect mathematically was this frequentist conception. The inner aspect is feeling. Wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling. [—] …diversification is the vestige of chance-spontaneity; and wherever diversity is increasing, there chance must be operative. On the other hand, wherever uniformity is increasing, habit must be operative. (“Man’s Glassy Essence”, CP 6.265-6, 1892) Chance […] as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a distribution. That is to say, there is a large collection consisting, say, of colored things and of white things. Chance is a particular manner of distribution of color among all the things. But in order that this phrase should have any meaning, it must refer to some definite arrangement of all the things. (“Reasoning and the Logic of Things”, CP 6.74, 1898) Given this, while I understand the desire to distinguish spontaneity from chance as Peirce uses it they are synonymous. That means that the distinction you find in say the free will literature between chance and libertarian free will (either at an event level or agent level) It’s also the case that chance creates habit. So habit is a kind of relationship between determinism and indeterminism (chance). In terms of meaning, I just don’t see any basis for a distinction in content between chance, spontaneity or so forth. The only difference is that Peirce’s ontology sees “feeling” or absolute firstness as the inner quality of this.
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