John S, list,
Speaking of Aristotle’s influence on Peirce, and in particular the connection
between De Anima and Peirce’s concept of quasi-mind, there is a very explicit
example in one of Peirce’s 1906 drafts for his Monist series on pragmatism, the
one beginning at EP2:371. Peirce deals here not with the mind-matter
distinction but with the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter. A
close look at this shows that the concept of matter emerging from this
distinction is very different from the concept of matter that is usually
contrasted with mind in current metaphysical thinking.
This essay, “The Basis of Pragmatism in the Normative Sciences,” points out
that “Idioscopy,” which includes all of the “special sciences” (such as
physics, biology, psychology and sociology), depends for its basic principles
on “cenoscopy” (which “embraces all that positive science which rests upon
familiar experience”). “A sound methodeutic requires heuretic science to found
its researches upon cenoscopy, passing with as slight a gap as possible from
the familiar to the unfamiliar” (EP2:373). But formulating this methodeutic
“presents a certain difficulty” because it involves reconsidering some of our
own beliefs, which requires critical thinking. “Each criticism should wait to
be planned, and each plan should wait for criticism. “Clearly, if we are to get
on at all, we must put up with imperfect procedure.” This is where Peirce
appeals to Aristotle’s De Anima (as the EP2 editors point out in an endnote)
for a “key … to be tried upon this intricate grim lock.”
This “key” is “The idea of growth,— the stately tree springing from the tiny
grain” (Peirce’s italics). Now, growth is one of the key semeiotic ideas in
Peirce’s late philosophy, which frequently asserts an analogy (if not an
identity) between sign processes and life processes. The example (or metaphor)
he gives here, and indeed nearly all of Peirce’s uses of the term “growth” in
semeiotic contexts, suggest that the idea is very close if not identical to
what we now call self-organization. Peirce does not quote a Greek term which
Aristotle used for this idea of “growth,” but he does quote some other Greek
terms which he calls “wonderful conceptions” that Aristotle “came upon” in
developing the idea: “δύναμις and ἐνέργεια, ὕλη and μορφή or εἶδος, or, as he
might still better have said, τύπος, the blow, the coup.”
The terms δύναμις and ἐνέργεια are typically translated as “potentiality” and
“actuality” respectively; ὕλη and μορφή or εἶδος are the terms for “matter”
(ὕλη) and “form” (either μορφή or εἶδος). This gives us a pair of metaphysical
dualities, which is itself significant in that Peirce focusses in this essay on
the “hard dualism” of Normative Science, which “forms the midportion of
cenoscopy and its most characteristic part” (EP2:376). Peirce had earlier
introduced the concepts of Aristotelian matter and form as a complementary pair
in his “New Elements” essay (EP2:304), where they correspond to subject and
predicate, or denotation and signification. But in this 1906 essay he gives a
new twist to this matter/form distinction by saying (as quoted above) that
instead of μορφή or εἶδος, Aristotle might better have used the term “τύπος,
the blow, the coup.” (As I showed in a blog post recently, the earliest meaning
of τύπος — which later evolved to mean the same as the English “type” — was “a
blow.”)
This suggests that form is the active and forceful side of the matter/form
duality, while matter is the passive side. In phaneroscopic terms, matter
corresponds to Firstness and form to Secondness. This is a bit startling at
first — at least it struck me that way — but as Peirce explains it (using the
duality of the sexes as a metaphor) it does become a key to the methodeutic of
cenoscopy and thus to the very nature of reasoning, inquiry and semiosis
itself. Perhaps I don’t need to show how this duality plays out in Peirce’s
1906 essay (but I will in another post if anyone wants me to). But I think it’s
significant that around this same time, Peirce was saying to Lady Welby that
“the Form is the Object of the Sign,” and defining the Sign as a “medium for
the communication or extension of a Form” (EP2:477). He was saying this in a
draft which dealt largely with Existential Graphs, for a reason which he
explained in this paragraph (SS:195):
I should like to write a little book on ‘The Conduct of Thoughts’ in which the
introductory chapter should introduce the reader to my existential graphs,
which would then be used throughout as the apparent subject, the parable or
metaphor, in terms of which everything would be said,—which would be far more
scientific than dragging in the “mind” all the time, in German fashion, when
the mind and psychology has no more to do with the substance of the book than
if I were to discourse of the ingredients of the ink I use.
He goes on to explain that in EGs, “the blank leaf itself [i.e. the sheet of
assertion] is the quasi-mind.” Now, if we apply the matter/form distinction to
EGs, I think we would have to say that the blank sheet is the matter which gets
determined by some form being scribed upon it, just as any sign is determined
by its object to determine an interpretant. For Peirce, what is essential both
to quasi-minds and to symbols is that they are indeterminate, i.e. subject to
further determination. That is pretty close to the concept of matter (ὕλη) as
Aristotle defined it in Book 2 of De Anima. In this sense, then, mind is
matter, not form. No wonder, then, that the mind/matter distinction seems quite
foreign to Peirce’s late semeiotic.
I don’t know how much sense this makes to readers of the list, but I’ll try to
clarify if necessary. I do find it significant in that this same period saw the
publication of Peirce’s “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism,” his most
elaborate attempt to connect his EGs with his “proof” of pragmatism and thus
with the rest of his philosophy.
Gary f.
-----Original Message-----
From: John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net>
Sent: 6-Dec-18 13:30
To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Another Perspective on 'Quasi-Mind'
In discussing quasimind, it's important to consider Aristotle's hierarchy of
psyches in _De Anima_. Since Peirce was familiar with Aristotle, that
hierarchy may have had some influence on his views:
1. Vegetative psyche of plants.
2. Sensitive psyche of sessile animals like sponges and clams.
(Aristotle was the first to note that sponges were animals.)
3. Locomotive pysche of worms.
4. Psyche of animals having imagery (phantasia).
5. Rational psyche of an animal having logos (zôon logon echein).
Each psyche inherits all the abilities of the more primitive psyches.
For Aristotle, the rational psyche of humans is the most advanced.
For discussion of that hierarchy, see Martha Nussbaum & Hilary Putnam,
"Changing Aristotle's Mind",
<http://moodle.nthu.edu.tw/file.php/28946/M._Nussbaum_and_H._Putnam_Changing_Aristotle_s_Mind.pdf>
http://moodle.nthu.edu.tw/file.php/28946/M._Nussbaum_and_H._Putnam_Changing_Aristotle_s_Mind.pdf
Interesting point: Nussbaum and Putnam cite the way Thomas Aquinas used
Aristotle's hierarchy to justify the resurrection of the body at the Last
Judgment. (Quotations below)
They say that Aquinas had a more integrated interpretation of Aristotle than
many later philosophers. But they don't claim that the resurrection of the
body is essential to that view.
John
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