Very nice outline - and I agree with the matter corresponding to
1ns, and Form to 2ns.
However, I don't consider passive as a clear explanation of matter.
I see matter as 'energy'; unformed energy, with the potential to be a
Form, i.e., a particular entity. But, matter without form is, in a
sense, indeterminate and thus, could be seen as passive. I see Mind
as transforming this potentiality, this energy, into particular
forms.
Again - very nice explanation.
Edwina
On Fri 07/12/18 6:15 PM , [email protected] sent:
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;
ὕ λη and μορφή or εἶδος are the terms for “matter”
(ὕλη) and “form” (either μορφή or εἶ δος). 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 ε ἶδος, 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
Sent: 6-Dec-18 13:30
To: [email protected]
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
[1]
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
Links:
------
[1]
http://moodle.nthu.edu.tw/file.php/28946/M._Nussbaum_and_H._Putnam_Changing_Aristotle_s_Mind.pdf
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
