So the question about "Thing in itself" and "essence" is a theological one, and as such cannot be treated with reason or scientifically (not falsifiable, not verifyable).
It was a theological question, I think, but no longer. For you can verify it. It has imo been verified if you understand the logic. You need not even go to "spirit". Again, think logic. What is the value of any given quality/element in absentia of, or in combination with, any other qualiy/element? The second necessitates that we will always add values (as more combinations accrue over time) whilst the first maintains, rigidly, that no matter how many combinations (and no matter how much time) we cannot know the totalizing value of any given quality as it is individuated (or in itself). We know value only though mediation/combination but through this means we also know that such elements exist in absentia of mediation (insofar as hydrogen is not oxygen but each combined is water). Now, when you add the qualification of "human" (human's logical/discursive value derivation of the elements/qualities therein), you see, I think beyond doubt, that the Kantian point is proven. What is hydrogen in absentia of human reason? For we have to admit that it exists beyond human reason and even prior to it. What is its value? None? Something? The human valuation of it subsequent to the existence, physic and evolutionary, of hydrogen itself? It's not "if a tree falls"... it's just a logical conclusion: these things have essence/value (call it what you will) aside/apart from the human interpretation of them (which means they exist in "value" form, if you like, in ways humans cannot comprehend). That is before you go to the thing in itself, as such, - once you go there, you understand that this holds for all "things" as such. Which means all human knowledge is as a discursive mapping of things which never amounts to the value/quality/essence of those things as they are apart from the human discursivities. And that is proven in simple "common sense" reasoning now. Humans are made of salt, water (thus hydrogen), etc., and then make an individuatiing value-judgement of those "elements" isolated or in combination with other elements. Chomsky always used the alien analogy with respect to language. That a visiting alien would understand all languages, spoken, by all animals, to be much the same. Point being, that order/language (or capacity for...) is innate, but no given order/language is ever innately true. That is the arbitrariness of the academies in ways I don't think has yet been understood. I.e., the arbitrariness of our discursive systems in understanding, with appeals to totalizing knowledge, things which exist beyond our discursivities. Beyond the human attempt to reason. No one, even the religious, doubt that humans "came" last (Genesis as an example) - biologists and so forth agree. Then how can we say - in the simplest terms - that our (human) understanding of these things is the "totalizing value" of them as they exist? We wouldn't accept that an ant's perspective of the human world is better than the human, and this isn't a mere perspectivalist "thing". It goes beyond - or points that way. As for falsification - you cannot falsify a great deal of things merely accepted as true (the existence of the sun, for example). You may very well attempt to falsify the thing in itself (ding an sich) (I have, many times) but as far as I can see, it simply holds now and likely (I'm certain as it goes) will always hold. Jack ________________________________ From: Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 5:43 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Cc: JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]>; Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again). *Warning* This email originated from outside of Maynooth University's Mail System. Do not reply, click links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe. Supplement: But what I wrote below is only valid, if the universe is a system. Is it? I apply the AGIL-aspects from Talcott Parsons: -Adaption: The universe does not have to adapt to anything. -Goal attainment: Whether the universe is pursuing a goal, if there e.g is a divine plan existing, is a theological question. -Integration: As nothing gets into the universe from outside, nothing has to be integrated. -Latency: Yes, the universe is latent. So the question about "Thing in itself" and "essence" is a theological one, and as such cannot be treated with reason or scientifically (not falsifiable, not verifyable). A theist would say: Yes, the universe has its position in a system´s hierarchy, as God controls it". An atheist would say: "Everything has developed by itself, out of nothing, as nothingness is unstable in itself, logically impossible by its own logic means, like Hegel has written". So: This question is all about belief, and impossible to discuss to an end, I guess. Jack, List, "Essence" to me seems like an ancient concept, such as "ether". I think, any thing is definerd as such (as this thing) by its position in a system´s hierarchy (composition, definition, or subsumption). Some things, like "poison for humans" are defined (and classified and subsumed) by the human specie`s system. Others, like salt, are universally defined (and so on), because salt is salt, everywhere in the universe. I guess, to say: ""A" has an own essence", means, that it is universally defined(...). But "essence" suggests, that the thing´s traits come from itself, and are independent of the universe, so, e.g. salt would taste the same in another universe too. But that would be a far-fetched assumption, which I donot see justified at all. So, sorry, I donot see the "itself" or "essence" of anything. Best Regards Helmut Gesendet: Mittwoch, 03. Mai 2023 um 17:37 Uhr Von: "JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY" <[email protected]> An: "Peirce-L" <[email protected]> Betreff: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again). I wanted to raise the topic of the ding an sich as it pertains to Peirce visavis Kant. This has been done to death here previously, but I believe I have a reached a proof (which I need to formalize) of the necessity of Kant's noumenal/thing in itself. The irony of this proof is that it comes via Peirce (his influence with respect to contiguity and a whole lot more). 1. Salt-Snail-Poison 2. Salt-Human-Savoury 3. Salt-Human-Poison A quick sketch. In (1), the quality produced by the Salt/Snail interaction (with human perspective implied, but presumed to persist if absent) is Poison. In (2), it is Savoury. In (3) it is poison again. Salt to snail and salt to human (2) and (3) all, then, produce different qualities regarding the value of "salt". Question: What does this say about salt in itself and the possibility of knowing the essence of what salt is in itself? For that has been the contentious area in Peircean discussions regarding Kant's ding an sich (on this messaging list) for a long time. Peirce - and many here - maintaining that you can know what a thing is in itself (calling Kant a "confused realist" iirc). But if Salt is poison for a snail, and savoury for a human (and then, also, poisonous to some other humans, or even a different form of savoury), then what is Salt in itself? It cannot be what the human makes of it. It is not possible for it to be whatever the human experiences/defines it as, because it is not a anthropocentric thing. Which is obvious enough in the perspectival/anthropological ethnographies which follow a loose or rigid Peirce schema with respect to ontology (thinking of Kohn and South American studies with regard to animal perspectives and flat ontoloogies). Thus, what is salt? It has to exist in itself, for we cannot doubt that it exist as an individual quality removed from "snail" and "human" and, simultaneously, it has to exist in contigious relationship with the various other minerals/subjects/predicates. It seems very simple, and it is, but in extended diagrams/reasonings (proof, imo, which I call the value/essence or V{X}) proof, it is not so simple. That the thing in itself exists - something I had thrown away as I went with Peircean phaneroscopy (a term I had forgotten) - is now beyond questioning to me. Which leaves me with many questions - firstlly, what does this mean for Peircean studies? Peirce rejects the thing in itself, in Kantian form, twice, in his manuscript, along the same basis. He views it as an absurdity (I'd have to check again). But this puts him in the same category of post-Kantians (Hegelians/neo-Hegelians) whom, to me, seem to take Kant's logic (formulae, as Peirce does in tabular form with obvious Hegelian influence) but ignore the primary metaphysical point which underpins everything Kant ever wrote. The thing in itself. Because it is so hard to accomodate, even the Kantians confuse it - Schopenhauer called it the "will" (which I am certain it isn't). Hydrogen Oxygen Water H20 No one doubts there is such a thing as "water" and few doubt the existence of "hydrogen" and "oxygen". But water is not hydrogen nor oxygen - nor is hydrogen nor oxygen what what they are, in themselves, to humans for the simple fact that they predate human existence (taking evolutionary models) and exist outside human contact of such elements, if you want some other model. Thus: Salt-Snail-Poison (value of-Salt/Snail-for-human = Poison) (essence of Salt remains noumenal/thing in itself X). The irony, for me, is that you cannot make sense of it without Peirce but have to disregard Peirce's own disavowal of Kant's noumena/thing in itself to get there. What is Water to Fire, for example? Or even ice to a penguin? For ice to a penguin cannot be what it is to a human but must be ice, all the same. Peirce said you can "know" the thing in itself, I believe, but cannot represent it? I went with that for a long time but am now of the opinion, that you cannot know the thing in itself or represent it (the latter being most obvious). If we assume that we can know the thing in itself, but cannot represent it, we move closer to Peirce, I think, if only because his categories of firstness and secondess as well as general phaneroscopy point in that direction. Long story rendered short: salt is not the same thing to a human as it is to a snail. And this isn't the usual perspectivalist deviation. It is rather the affirmation of the Kantian noumenal. For salt must have its own essence in absentia of all human existence - unless we become solipsist - and that essence, therefore, is never what we make of it in our own representational schemas. This moves into mathematics/logic insofar as we consider received "arbitrary" lexicals as mathematical discursivties and then Godel and his incompleteness theorem as well as Russell's famous paradox. The discursive representation (value, mathematical/logical, within/between a given system, logical or mathematical) is never the essence of the thing therein represented [V(X)]. Russell's paradox, to me, is a paradox of received "reason" (the idea that sets express something universal beyond the logical idiom) which is, in its own way, highlighted by Godel's incompleteness theorem which I now contend holds not for only some forms of mathematics/logic but for all. Which gives way to Chomsky. Chomsky's idea of universal grammar, brought forward from various contributors but made distinctly new, is that of an innate (X) preload if you like which goes beyond any given "input/output" logical categorization of the "essence" of language. Poverty of stimulus, for example, demonstrates precisely the point I am trying to make: the Kantian metaphysical apriori, formal, rhymes with Chomsky's universal grammar and poverty of stimulus (it is the only, logical, way which, given a finite set of "data" children may produce infinite derivations of said "data" including malapropisms which are not taught but are logically "sound" if grammatically "incorrect"). That is, in a very long-winded post/message, Chomsky's UG (poverty of stimulus and recursion) seems, now, to be proven beyond all doubt in its most simplistic or "weakest" (general) form. It handles the Kantian apriori (metaphysical essence) and retains Kantian objetivity 1.0 (fire is hot whatever it is in itself, therefore we have minimal thresholds of objective understanding) whilst also expressing the disjuncture between whatever the value of a given lexical is and the essence of language (the first knowable and second, I think, forever beyond human understanding - by infinite regressive definition, if made "positive"). tl;dr in a given series such as salt-snail-poison, the human "value" visavis perspective/ontological is always presupposed but typically removed (not present in the series). Morever, from a position of pure contiguity, the universe itself, we infer a kind of non-contiguous necessity (that which is beyond the walls of intelligence, whether human or computational, insofar as intelligence implies logic/reason for none of the values derives from logic/reason, whether science or philosophy, are ever the essence of the "thing" which is valued but that such a thing exists and necessarily has an essence is now beyond all doubt). That is Peirce's contribution (via indexical-contiguity and general cosmic outlook) to what I know to be a proof of the noumenal thing in itself (expanded elsewhere in diagrammatic form). _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ â–º 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] . â–º To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. 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