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}Gary R, list
No- I don't conflate or merge 3ns and 2ns. I've no idea how, after
all these years of my posts, you would come to such a conclusion
about my views of the three universes/categories. And I certainly
don't reduce the three categories/universes to two.
Just because I used the word 'embedded' doesn't mean merger or
conflation. My understanding of habits/3ns is that they, as laws,
organize matter. BUT, since they are generals, then, they are not, in
themselves, actuals; they are not existents in the mode of 2ns. To
'be' such a law, they must 'be' within matter, as the law that
organizes that matter. So, the law of organizing a bacterium isn't
'existential' [2ns] outside of that bacterium but is an integral
part, as organization [3ns] of that bacterium.
So- nothing I've said denies the quotes you've provided.
Edwina
On Wed 22/08/18 3:51 PM , Gary Richmond [email protected]
sent:
Edwina, John, list,
Edwina wrote: The laws, per se, do not 'exist' on their own because
they are laws/generals.
I agree that most certainly laws do not 'exist' because they are
generals. But now you add:
ET: They are only operable when they function as the
habits/organization of actuality.So- they can certainly never be
'outside the universe of actually' [i.e., as Platonic Forms]; they
are embedded within actuality [Aristotle].
But saying, as you do, that laws can never be 'outside the universe
of actuality' and are merely 'embedded within actuality' is to in
effect conflate the 2nd and 3rd universes, to claim that there are
not three distinct Universes but really (I use that word advisedly as
reality is reduced to existence) only two. However, Peirce sees it
differently:
I believe the law of habit to be purely psychical. But then I
suppose matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit.
While every physical process can be reversed without violation of the
law of mechanics, the law of habit forbids such a reversal. 1891-08-29
| Letters to Christine Ladd-Franklin | W 8:387 in Commens Dictionary
And the generalizing law is "a universal tendency":
I was led to the hypothesis that the laws of the universe have been
formed under a universal tendency of all things toward generalization
and habit-taking. 1898 | Cambridge Lectures on Reasoning and the
Logic of Things: Habit | RLT 241; CP 7.515 Commens (emphasis added)
This "universal tendency. . .toward generalization" is, to my way of
thinking, the third universe. To seemingly reduce three Universes to
two (by conflating law, 3ns, and lawfulness, or law expressed in the
existential world, 2ns, is, to my way of thinking, not only to
undermine the reality of the third universe but the second
existential universe as well. (Note just below that Peirce writes
"existence (not reality).") 1901 | Individual | CP 3.613
…whatever exists is individual, since existence (not reality) and
individuality are essentially the same thing…
Existence has its own unique character, is "a special mode of
reality."1902 | Minute Logic: Chapter IV. Ethics (Logic IV) | CP
6.349
Existence […] is a special mode of reality, which, whatever other
characteristics it possesses, has that of being absolutely
determinate .
Further, distinguishing the second and third universes, Peirce
writes:1905 | Letters to Mario Calderoni | MS [R] L67
That mode of being which we call existence, the reaction of
everything in the universe against every other. . . brutally
insisting on a place is Secundan. I say “brutally”, because no
law, so far as we know, makes any single object to exist. Law only
determines in what way things shall behave, once they do exist
(emphasis added).
The dynamic character (which you and JAS have argued at length
about) is for Peirce clearly a characteristic of existence (secundan)
which he here distinguishes from reality (tertian). 1905 [c.] |
Pragmatism, Prag [R] | CP 5.503
…reality means a certain kind of non-dependence upon thought, and
so is a cognitionary character, while existence means reaction with
the environment, and so is a dynamic character…
So, as Peirce sees it, your view "abolishes objective necessity"
(the third university) in not fully accepting the independent reality
of would-be's. And he ties this to that which would be in futuro
(while existence is hic et nunc).
1905 | Issues of Pragmaticism | MS [R] 290:52
…Necessitarianism is the doctrine that there is no objective
indetermination of Modality; it abolishes objective necessity and
possibility together, and only conceives the future as that which
will have been.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical ThinkinguLaGuardia College of the City
University of New York 718 482-5690
On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 2:46 PM Edwina Taborsky wrote:
John, list
Agreed, the entities of pure mathematics do not exist in the
universe of actuality.
Now, with regard to the universe of necessity, i.e., Laws/Thirdness
- which you say are outside of the universe of actuality - I'll
quibble with the wording.
The laws, per se, do not 'exist' on their own because they are
laws/generals. They are only operable when they function as the
habits/organization of actuality.
So- they can certainly never be 'outside the universe of actually'
[i.e., as Platonic Forms]; they are embedded within actuality
[Aristotle].
Edwina
On Wed 22/08/18 2:22 PM , John F Sowa [email protected] [2] sent:
On 8/22/2018 2:11 PM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
> "I defined actuality as anything that ever was, is, or will be
> anywhere in the universe. Most of us know more about the past
> and present than we do about the future, but our knowledge is
> irrelevant to its existence. "
>
> What's the difference, then, between your definition of actuality
and
> the definition of possibility?
I was using Peirce's three disjoint universes. The entities
of pure mathematics do not exist in the universe of actuality.
The entities in the universe of necessity, such as laws,
are also outside the universe of actuality.
John
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