Jack, List,
Maybe, maybe not, that the universe (or God) has total knowledge about everything that happens in it. Again a theological question. If it has, or God has, then things don´t have a self. If it doesn´t, then things have an essence and a self. An answer would not be verifiable, because not hypothetically falsifiable, but there is an indication: The quantum entanglement. It is not usable for human communication, but maybe the universe can use it for processing its own quasi-mind, and so have total knowledge. I don´t say I believe that (what is belief anyway?), but I see the possibility of it.
Best, Helmut
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 03. Mai 2023 um 18:44 Uhr
Von: "JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY" <[email protected]>
An: "Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]>
Betreff: Re: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
Von: "JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY" <[email protected]>
An: "Helmut Raulien" <[email protected]>
Betreff: Re: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
Final thoughts re Hegel/Peirce:
Knowing it - firstness, no? - is not the same as "knowledge of it" inasmuch as this second implies representational capacity. For example. whether atheist or secular or religious, the idea that you can know God but cannot represent God (in Genesis for example) corresponds to Kant's idea of the thing in itself refracted via the Hegelian/Peircean qualification of "experience" (firstness).
Or memories - subsequent - never being the same thing.
It all just points to an immense gap in a wide array of disciplines which, imo, including, if not more than any other, computational systems, assume the capacity for a totalizing knowledge set which now, via Godel's incompleteness theorem expanded entirely, with qualifications given and others better situated to provide more, is out of bounds.
I.e., functionality is not Truth. It is the phaneroscopic ideal which (to my recollection) says you can know these things but I hasten to add that representations of them, and here many will object, are simply not possible in the sense that no individual value (if organic in any way) can ever be totally known (as it is in itself - and that they, qualities/elements - are in themselves, is now beyond doubt).
As for Chomksy - I think of cognitive science and computing and then of Chomsky warning regarding A.I. The brain, or what we think we know of it, is far more complicated than we tend to presume (the idea that an A.I. model can simply replicate the brain is not just impossible, if you understand it, in the organic sense, but dangerous).
Jack
From: JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 5:31 PM
To: Helmut Raulien <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 5:31 PM
To: Helmut Raulien <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
Helmut, List,
It is certainly ancient (Grecian).
But it is absolutely true insofar as I have reasoned it after throwing Kant away numerous times and then coming to a conclusion.
Kant's position, that things have an essence in themselves, thing in itself, ding an sich - do away with the idea of "come from themselves" and assume they only have an essence/value insofar as contiguity goes/combinatorial possibility and the same result is derived. Element-Element' (E-E' where ' = infinite) implies that all manner of combinations - assume infinite - produce all manner of values. But that no number of value/combinatorial merry-go-rounds ever are sufficient to give us the "total value" (essence) of any given thing in itself (natural thing/organic). Now, that these things exist - obvious, else why combinatorial? - individuated and contiguous, but that the combinations never yield the total value of any thing as it is in itself (its essence now) is seen to be true. And that is a long, long, debate made as simple as possible. I've been turning the matter over for months and have realized that Kant was right. He was pointing to that which cannot be represented (representational inadequacy) and such explains the difficulty of Critique of Pure Reason.
It - Kant - needed Hegel/Darwin/Peirce/Godel/Chomsky (and so many others) to clarify his position and make it simple (but still immensely confusing).
It is the only metaphysical proof - as far as I can see - ever given. And it just has enormous consequences for all branches of "knowledge" (I have derived a diagrammatic "free will" proof which is so simple but so impossible to refute from this understanding of Kant via Peirce).
If anyone understands it, in gist, then the credit goes to people like Godel, Russell, and Chomsky (system iconoclasts in their own fields - Wittgenstein, too). The mathematical - ontological - fallout is simply immense. Dominoes have fallen - whether we admit it now or in a decade - which take a long time to rearrange.
As an example, positivism in politics is logically - in dialectical reasoning - now out of bounds in ways which "organically" follow Kant's V(X) (mine, but his) thing in itself proof.
One last note. Peirce was a chemist. He understood combinatorial possibility and indexicality as a chemist understands these things. Which, simply, means he knew that these qualities must exist in themselves (isolated - relatively non-contiguous, except for human mediation, experience) but also that they combine to produce other qualities). But - taking Turner, Victor, it is demonstrably true - not even valid - that no number of possible combinations can ever yield the essential property of any given "thing" or "quality" as it is in itself. It is beyond human knowledge, forever, to do so, as Kant always maintained.
You may know it - in the Hegelian sense/Peircean too - but you cannot represent your knowing of it. If you can represent it, that is not it (the thing in itself). I am still finishing a final draft of this and thus submit the general idea to this list before continuing as I value the feedback (being Peircean).
It's not anti-Peircean, btw, as I know some will assume - for it proves a great many things which Peirce assumed (such as "symbolic consolidation" - can't recall if that's my term for something Peirce wrote or if I "stole" it from Mauss/Errol Daniel). It brings, when understood - by others, not me - semeiotic into the realm of science (as Peirce always said would happen).
From: Helmut Raulien <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 5:14 PM
To: JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]>
Cc: Peirce-L <[email protected]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 5:14 PM
To: JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]>
Cc: Peirce-L <[email protected]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Aw: [PEIRCE-L] The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again).
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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).
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).
- Salt-Snail-Poison
- Salt-Human-Savoury
- 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).
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