Hi Jack, list, Before attributing views to Kant with respect to the notion of a thing in itself or the conception of a noumenon, you might start with some passages from Kant's first Critique where he actually employs such notions and conceptions. Or, at least refer us to the sections you have in mind. Then, we can see how your remarks might (or might not) fit what Kant says.
In many places where Kant employs the conception of a thing in itself, for instance, he is criticizing other philosophers, such as Leibniz and Wolff. Leibniz claims that monads are non- extended non- composite mind- like substances. Kant is asking if the category of substance can be employed meaningfully in judgments about existing things if those things are not located at a place and time. Locating things in space and time are, on Kant's view, necessary to refer to them as existing in judgments concerning positive matters of fact, where the judgments are held assertorically. As such, it is important to distinguish between Kant's views and those he is criticizing. I often see them conflated. Alternately, you might refer to Leibniz's conception of a thing in itself and not attribute Leibniz's claims to Kant. Yours, Jeff ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 2:04 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] [EXTERNAL] Re: The Thing In Itself (Kant and Peirce - Again). Jon, List Semeiotic is, however you define it, a schema for a series of relations between predicates (or qualities or whatever you want to call a classificatory schema). It is a formalism - to be frank. Now being a formalism the terms "dynamical object" and so on -- these are about as arbitrary as it gets. For they are "stand in" predicates for a given quality within a formal structure (semiotic). In understanding Kant's thing in itself, we must throw it all away (suspend it until the noumena has been comprehended insofar as it can be). Kant's noumenal/thing in itself is pre-form wherein the metaphysical may be of the physical but is always pre-physical. Pre-capacity to even understand form/content. That is what the noumena is (for humans). You cannot usefully use Peirce to address the thing-in-itself (via semiotic formalisms) for it transcends the very notion of form. The noumenal is pre-consubstantiality even as consubstantiality is how we make sense of it. It is not possible to represent the thing in itself via form, or any means, because it goes before - our attempts to do so will always be wrong. Except we know via consubstantiality/contiguity that it, the noumenal, necessarily is. So Salt-Snail-Poison Ignoring any formal terms, semeiotic or otherwise, it is best to restrict theses to the simplest terms possible. Quality/Element/Subject. To a physicist, perhaps all three are elements? That the "quality" of the "element" (salt) is "poison" to a snail, is the formal - semiotic - classifcation of the relation in its simplest possible form. That the Q of the E(s) is not poison to any other organism (or need not be) is the point. Thus, the essence of salt, as it is in itself, is proven (regardless of formal structure but via formal structure - as with Godel). Thus Q of E(S) = V(P-H[S]) but not [X]. To humans, always V(-X) (in itself, there, but not possible to represent). All mathematics/lexicals/sciences/logics produce a value within a formal relata (relational schema) which value is never the thing in itself (but we know the thing in itself necessarily is and is pre-form). That is as scientific as Semeiotic may ever be. But only if it understands the X restriction which enables its liftoff - the fallibilism upon which science is based and which Peirce always embraced - thus there should be no reticience in disregarding large chunks of Peircean terminology as that is what Peirce aimed for (semeiotic as science). Quality of Element(Snail) = Value(Poison-to-Human[-of-Snail]). That is the semeiotic "standing for" schema simplified. I.e, Salt-Snail-Poison = Value(Poison-to-Human[-of-Snail]. However, P-H[S] is necessarily not Poison to a Snail which in semiotic/formal terms is more like P(S[Sa]). The first has a human intermediary - we cannot pretend that this doesn't "count" (formal logic and mathematics will tell you that it does). Thus, what salt - as poison - is to a snail, in absentia of human understanding, cannot be the "same" thing (Reality or otherwise) as it is to a snail minus the human predicate. And this is only in logical terms - which occludes the fact that no animal understands such things via logic (of this lexical, received, variety, other than the human). We have no idea - no matter what anyone says - of how a snail perceives salt. We assume it is the same - or similar - as in "fire is hot" (Kantian objectivity 1.0) but similar, mutual threshold of understanding, is not the "same" (it cannot be, even from the biological point of view - it mightbe similar, but never the same, for the divergences among humans themselves tell us this with zero ambiguity: savoury for some, poisonous for others). Nor is it relativity, it is just true. Every single mathematical system ever derived partakes of precisely the same schema. Bar none. Formal relationships - genres if you like - which justify certain functions/operations within a given "habitus" (area of operational protocol - entirely habitual insofar as the numericals/etc go). And all such are discursivities - which is why logic goes ahead of mathematics in every schema you've ever seen (epistemological). This is why Russell derives a paradox and Godel derives incompleteness -- the terms are arbitrary discursivities (functional, yes, but not innate or universal in any sense -- consubstantiality may be universal, but no given terms used "with substance" to "map substance" is necessarily divine/universal). V(X), however, is universal in every sense but we cannot represent its existence in formal terms without missing the point. For example, V(X) explains Peirce's entire schema and continua (the result...) but Peirce's schema, in itself (not noumenal), cannot do the same thing. Q(uality) of E(lement) = derivation of V(alue) but never the thing in itself: (X). A representation - VALUE - of the thing which is never the thing in itself (X). Now, this can be formalized a million different ways but it never breaks. It's the simplest - insofar as I know - means of explaining formal logic relative to semiotic and the limitations/possibilities therein as it pertains to the noumenal proof. I know - as it goes - that for this to be a "proof" in the academic sense, I'd have to go further (but I just know it is proven and have been rather lazy of late - not very well). Happy to let others go at it - whether to falsify or prove. Jack ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 6:28 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [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. Jack, List: To be honest, I am having trouble making sense of your posts so far today. Perhaps you could boil down your alleged "proof" to a few premisses, including your definitions of key terms like "value" and "essence," and the specific conclusion that you see as following necessarily from them. As it stands, you seem to have a few misunderstandings about Peirce's relevant views. What he denies is Kant's claim that there is an absolutely incognizable thing-in-itself. He defines the real as that which is as it is regardless of what any individual mind or finite community of minds thinks about it, and he affirms that whatever is real is capable of being represented and thus capable of being known. Accordingly, he warns against confusing the object of a sign with its interpretant, as you seem to be doing in your example--salt (dynamical object) is exactly the same reality for humans as it is for snails, but its effects on them (dynamical interpretants) are different. As a result, our general concept of salt includes not only the fact that it is savory to humans, but also the fact that it is poisonous to snails, as well as the fact that it would have had all the same characters even if humans and/or snails had never actually existed. Moreover, Peirce acknowledges that no discrete collection of dynamical interpretants could ever constitute a complete description of any dynamical object. That is why cognition, reasoning, inquiry, and semiosis are all examples of hyperbolic continua, as I discussed yesterday--a fully determinate representation of any reality (final interpretant) is an ideal limit that would only be reached in the infinite future, after infinite investigation by an infinite community, when "the all of reality" itself would likewise be "completely determinate" (CP 5.549, EP 2:378, 1906). As he adds a few paragraphs later ... CSP: Now thought is of the nature of a sign. In that case, then, if we can find out the right method of thinking and can follow it out,--the right method of transforming signs,--then truth can be nothing more nor less than the last result to which the following out of this method would ultimately carry us. In that case, that to which the representation should conform is itself something in the nature of a representation, or sign,--something noumenal, intelligible, conceivable, and utterly unlike a thing-in-itself. (CP 5.553, EP 2:380) Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Wed, May 3, 2023 at 11:04 AM JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Consider all known knowledge/values and all unknown but knowable values. E-E' (human) Combinatorial possibility over/through "time" is that which defines the above (all values, as such, ever derived). But it always implies V(X). That is, there is always an additional value to be added. Which value, in lexical/mathematical form, can never be the essence of the thing which is "valued". Salt combined with every other possible element (via human oversight/tool-use/computer) produces all kinds of reactions/values but none of these values/reactions is ever sufficient to define the first predicate in totalizing form (the essence of salt itself - which is where/why Godel's incompleteness theorem now extends to all varieties of logic and mathematics if properly understood). All such logics/mathematics amount to value-laden discursive descriptions of things, the essence of which is now proven to exist, necessarily (and necessarily beyond "value"), but no given discursive mathematical description is ever "complete" (totalizing as it were) in the sense that no given (Single) predicate/element/value can ever be entirely defined (as it is in itself, ever). And in very simple diagrams, I demonstrate how this holds for all which is known, and all which ever can be known (thus accommodating all forms of "known" or "possible" temporalities). The V(X) formula implies, always, that there shall be a value, no matter if infinite/finite (each considered simultaneously, without a problem), of any given object rendered discursively via logic/mathematics but that said value will never be the essence (X) of the represented object (thus representational inadequacy of, imo, all possible branches of knowledge over all possible temporalities). A Value will always be added (combinatorial pos. via contiguity) but the essence of any given value (X) will not/cannot ever be known (thus pointing beyond the conditions of universal contiguity via contiguity itself, or indexicality in the Peircean sense). And that, no matter what way I look at it, stands as necessary proof of Kant's noumena. (A lot more would have to be added - but I'm curious to see what Peirceans make of it since Peirce rejects the noumenal but his schema only "works" insofar as you admit the contiguous/combinatorial relationship which = semeiotic and which now says "thing in itself" is necessarily true) . Jack ________________________________ From: JACK ROBERT KELLY CODY <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2023 4:37 PM To: Peirce-L <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: 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).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► 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 UNSUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L in the SUBJECT LINE of the message and nothing in the body. More at https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/help/user-signoff.html . ► PEIRCE-L is owned by THE PEIRCE GROUP; moderated by Gary Richmond; and co-managed by him and Ben Udell.
