> On Jun 6, 2017, at 11:55 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Clark, List, > > You say: "So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal > due to the role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those > terms, I believe the implication is that chance breaks symmetries enabled by > determinism." > > In saying this, you seem to be putting greater weight on points 2 and 3 > below. > > 1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the > conservation of energy. > 2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly > inexplicable. > 3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be > explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real > chance. > 4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is > maintained. (CP 6.613) > > I would have thought that points 1 and 4 would be particularly important for > understanding some of the reasons for limiting the scope of the 1st and 2nd > laws of thermodynamics as explanatory for the growth of order in natural > systems (i.e., that they govern closed systems, but are limited, in some > sense, in the application to open systems). Here are two questions.
In the discussion we were talking about habits as related to physics. I think Peirce recognized all four as important but the question was how chance could lead to habits, the way he argues in his cosmology. He provides a few arguments for this although not everyone will be convinced. And of course his cosmology, as I frequently note as a caveat, is among his more controversial positions. I’m not sure I agree with him there although I find myself also unable to fully dismiss his reasoning. > > (a) In what ways do points 1 and 4 add something that is not already found in > points 2 and 3? I think (3) is important in terms of what is demanded for explanation. i.e. we can’t just take regularities for granted but must ask how and why they arise. (1) and (2) are just premises due to observation. I don’t see (2) & (3) entailing (1) since (3) is just a demand for explanation not a conclusion. > (b) How might Peirce's account of the law of mind--which I take to be > embodied in a summary way in the 1st and 4th points--help us better > understand the relationships between the making and breaking of fundamental > symmetries and the growth of order in natural systems? I think they end up being the same thing. The earlier back cosmologically in terms of physics, not ontology, one goes the more symmetries you have. Thus the evolution of the early universe is a series of symmetry breaking by chance. Those in turn result in new natural laws due to the symmetry breaking. (Not fundamental natural law obviously) The justification for this in physics is due to cosmological expansion. That acts in a fashion akin to state change in general thermodynamics. Think starting with a gas and compressing until it’s a liquid and then a solid. Here the process goes the opposite direction but is analogous in terms of symmetry breaking. Now where it gets trickier is when Peirce moves to his more neoplatonic thinking before time to the ultimate ontological cosmology. There he’s doing something more akin to the Timaeus. But I’m not quite sure I buy it as he ends up not having time proper but something very much like time in terms of precession. Yet that’s a hidden ontological feature he doesn’t analyze. So from a purely philosophical perspective those ontological muses seem problematic due to the way he grapples with time. In a somewhat similar fashion the closer to the big bang one gets the more problematic time becomes in terms of quantum mechanics. To the point that I don’t think we can say much. That’s not an ontological analogue to Peirce’s cosmology though. Just that time is a tricky thing. > > These two questions are not yet well formulated. I'm posing them here in the > hopes of working towards a better formulation of what it is that I find > puzzling about the law of mind and its application to these questions about > the growth of order. There are some interesting quotes by Peirce here. I’m not sure his solutions are fully satisfactory though. Here’s one quote to keep in mind. We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring to be explained; and since law in general cannot be explained by any law in particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (CP 1.407) While not explicitly about mind, it does explain the mind-like constitution of the universe. Mind is mind because of its self-organizing capabilities. But that, for Peirce, depends upon chance. Peirce does distinguish between discontinuous and continuous chance. This is pretty important to him. (He goes through this in “The Law of Mind.”) Thus tychism is chance that averages out whereas synechism is the sorting of irregularities which is so key for his cosmology. Now mind isn’t chance. Is not one of my papers entitled "The Law of Mind"? It is true that I make the law of mind essentially different in its mode of action from the law of mechanics, inasmuch as it requires its own violation; but it is law, not chance uncontrolled. That it is not "an undetermined and indeterminable sporting” should have been obvious from my expressly stating that its ultimate result must be the entire elimination of chance from the universe. That directly negatives the adjective "indeterminable," and hence also the adjective "undetermined.” (CP 6.607) A useful paper for these thermodynamic discussions is: Reynolds, Andrew "Peirce's Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 403-423 We should also note that chance, for Peirce, is related to several concepts but that we should keep these straight: 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) 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) We tend to separate freedom, spontaneity, and distribution. Peirce appears to treat these as the same or at least closely related. He distinguishes them more based upon the type of questions we are asking. The distribution part of chance is why it is related to symmetry and thus Noether’s Theorem. Habit or law develops out of this and appears to be due to an ontological principle of habit taking. This is important since to form new habits old habits must be broken up. The key point of habit is repetition. But the repetition itself depends upon chance. This is best seen at the cosmological level where Peirce makes this argument explicitly. 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. Though time would not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first, because resulting from it. Then there would have come other successions ever more and more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever strengthening themselves, until the events would have been bound together into something like a continuous flow. The quasi-flow which would result would, however, differ essentially from time in this respect, that it would not necessarily be in a single stream. Different flashes might start different streams, between which there should be no relations of contemporaneity or succession. So one stream might branch into two, or two might coalesce. But the further result of habit would inevitably be to separate utterly those that were long separated, and to make those which presented frequent common points coalesce into perfect union. Those that were completely separated would be so many different worlds which would know nothing of one another; so that the effect would be just what we actually observe. (CP 1.412) This habit taking is later explained. all things have a tendency to take habits. . . . [For] every conceivable real object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former like occasion than otherwise. This tendency itself constitutes a regularity, and is continually on the increase. . . . It is a generalizing tendency; it causes actions in the future to follow some generalizations of past actions; and this tendency itself is something capable of similar generalizations; and thus, it is self-generative. (CP 1.409 emphasis mine) Quoting Kelly Parker on this point: The character of such things, and consequently the relations and modes of interaction among them, would be extremely irregular at first. The principle of habit-taking has the effect of making events in the Universe of Actuality more stable and regular. It underlies the emergence of permanent substances, as we have seen. Beyond this, it has the effect of stabilizing the kinds of reaction which tend to occur among different substances. Nothing forces there to be a tendency toward regularity in the Universe of Actuality, for the notion of force implies necessity, an advanced variety of the regularity we are trying to explain (CP 1.407). Regularity, like possibility and particularity, must appear in the evolving cosmos by chance. But just as we have seen the tendency to take habits operate on Firstness to establish the Universe of Ideas and on Secondness to establish the universe of Actuality, so does it operate on Thirdness, on itself, to establish a universe dominated by Thirdness, lawfulness, order, and reasonableness. Law is habit and Peirce is explicit in “A Guess at the Riddle” that law comes out of chance. We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring to be explained; and since Law in general cannot be explained by any law in particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (“A Guess at the Riddle”, CP 1.407) The ontological principle of habit taking is the principle of thirdness I believe. Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third (CP: 6.32, 1891) Three elements are active in the world: first, chance; second, law; and third, habit taking (CP 1.409, 1888) So we have to distinguish habit taking from law. I think the key text here is “The Architecture of Theories” from 1891. In that thirdness is the mediating between firstness and secondness as end. The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the character of its commands. A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an exact relation. Thus, a physical force introduces into a motion a component motion to be combined with the rest by the parallelogram of forces; but the component motion must actually take place exactly as required by the law of force. On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law. Nay, exact conformity would be in downright conflict with the law ; since it would instantly crystallise thought and prevent all further formation of habit. The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise. It thus resembles the “non-conservative” forces of physics, such as viscosity and the like, which are due to statistical uniformities in the chance encounters of trillions of molecules. So what he wants is something between pure chance and pure law which is the statistical tendency.
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