Interesting remarks, including but not limited to those by Peirce. >Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has >actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of >a book!
It's also difficult to believe that anyone eats all the way through a rich, multi-layered Italian pastry. And yet, we do (usually). Kidding aside, I have literally no idea why Joe says it's difficult to believe that anybody could read all the way through it. Too much coherence? Too much mix of coherence and incoherence? Now, it's fun to try to work a certain amount of seeming incoherence into one's writing. Conversations, for instance, don't have to be written as give & take where speakers understand or even address each other's previous remarks in any direct way. It's a literary technique, or challenge, which one sees here and there. _Teitlebaum's Window_ by Wallace Markfield has some of it. Some of the "conversations" in _Mulligan Stew_ by Gilbert Sorrentino. In real life, of course, that kind of talk is often motivated by evasiveness. One year at a Thanksgiving dinner, a relative asked a question about another relative, a question which those of us in the know didn't want to answer. So I answered that the reason why the relative in question had gone to California (we're in NYC), was in order to "buy some shoes." There followed about an hour's worth of "purposely non-responsive" conversation by all the relatives, both those in the know and those not in the know (conversation which really confused some of the non-family guests), which was really jokes, puns, whatever we could muster. But the point wasn't incoherence, but, instead, unusual coherences intensified and brought into relief against the lack of some usual kinds of coherence. Years ago I read a newspaper column doing this, by Pete Hamill of all people, and it was really pretty funny. Also don't miss _t zero_ with "The Origin of Birds." Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Ransdell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:13 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Michael said: [MD:] Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's "Cosmicomics," [but] I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications" is titled "The Ends of the Universe," which posits an asymptotic "end" of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that "preceded" the sporting emergence of Firstness. RESPONSE: [JR:] Well, I'm not sure what the moral of it is supposed to be, Michael. I put all that down rather impulsively, not thinking much about what might justify it or what it might imply. In retrospect I think that what I was doing was trying to re-express what I thought Peirce was expressing in the following passage from the MS called "Answers to Questions Concerning my Belief in God" which Harshorne and Weiss published in the Collected Papers, Vol. 6: ==============QUOTE PEIRCE==================== 508. "Do you believe Him to be omniscient?" Yes, in a vague sense. Of course, God's knowledge is something so utterly unlike our own that it is more like willing than knowing. I do not see why we may not assume that He refrains from knowing much. For this thought is creative. But perhaps the wisest way is to say that we do not know how God's thought is performed and that [it] is simply vain to attempt it. We cannot so much as frame any notion of what the phrase "the performance of God's mind" means. Not the faintest! The question is gabble. 509. "Do you believe Him to be Omnipotent?" Undoubtedly He is so, vaguely speaking; but there are many questions that might be put of no profit except to the student of logic. Some of the scholastic commentaries consider them. Leibnitz thought that this was the best of "all possible" worlds. That seems to imply some limitation upon Omnipotence. Unless the others were created too, it would seem that, all things considered, this universe was the only possible one. Perhaps others do exist. But we only wildly gabble about such things. ==========END QUOTE========================= [JR:] But "wildly gabbling" doesn't necessarily mean "utterly senseless", as I was exaggeratedly construing it, but might only mean that what we are saying or thinking becomes seriously and irremediably incoherent at times to a degree which tends toward being utterly so even though it can always be presumed to have coherence to some degree even if only imperceptibly so at that time. And we may very well have as much coherence in our lives as we require -- or even more than we require, developed out of fear of not having enough -- which can send us on a path toward a precipice of disaster: unintended self-destruction by fanaticism. As animals go, we are extraordinarily proficient by nature at multi-tasking, though the various other species of animals exhibit many different degrees and types of multi-tasking behavior as well, but none apparently equal to even a very simply developed human being. And that is the same thing as the ability to cope with a correspondingly complex incoherence in experience with which the multi-tasking process is as if designed to cope. In other words, incoherence is a part of what we need because it is what we are equipped to cope with to an astonishingly high degree at times. Now, Peirce was a profoundly self-confident person in spite of his experience of the seeming radical senselessness of certain aspects of his life and the course of his experience, where nothing ever seemed to go right or as he could reasonably have expected it to go (or so it must have seemed, again and again), and so I can quite easily imagine there being more than a few occasions when he found himself laughing wildly while rolling around on the floor after yet another of God's practical jokes on him. That is how he impresses me as a person: I can imagine him capable of that (or its equivalent, of course). I do not picture him as an unhappy man. And that reminds me that I want to reassure all devotees of Italo Calvino that when I say he must have been insane, that is meant in the sense that, by ordinary human standards, he can only appear that way, as any authentic genius will appear. Geniuses are not to be confused with people with "very high IQs". And it is always possible that the wildest of gabble conveys as much of the truth of the matter in question as our lot to be able to discover. So I don't know whether you should abandon your attempt to conceptualize the cosmic stew or not. But thanks for the thoughtful response to a rather impulsive post, Michael. Maybe I should add that I find it difficult to believe that anyone has actually been able to read all of the way through Calvino's practical joke of a book! So I wouldn't count on it as a solution to anything. But it's a good read as far as you can stand it nonetheless! Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael J. DeLaurentis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 4:37 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Haven't had the pleasure of Calvino's "Cosmicomics," by I like the antidotal sound of it [cure for hyper-seriousness]. The asymptotic/singularities of beginnings and endings in continuous processes challenge all systems that allow for them, and do make for pretzelian thought-processes. But I note that the final chapter of David Deutsch's very creative "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications" is titled "The Ends of the Universe," which posits an asymptotic "end" of the universe(s) [actually, a sort of coming together of all the infinite parallel quantum universes a la Wheeler and co], which in part prompted the parallel question on the denouement in Peirce's cosmology. But, you're right, Joe: I think I'll retreat to Calvino. I never really recovered from trying to conceptualize the cosmological stew that "preceded" the sporting emergence of Firstness. -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 5:19 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! So it would seem, according to Peirce -- at first. But upon reflection, what could that possibly mean? Since it is supposed to be something that comes about only asymptotically, which is to say, not at all, it doesn't seem to make much difference one way or the other, does it? Then, too, there is the further consideration that no sooner is one question definitively answered -- supposing that to be possible -- than that very answer provides a basis for -- opens up the possibility of -- any number of new questions being raised. Of course they may not actually be raised, but we are only speculating about possibilities, anyway, aren't we? And isn't sporting something that might very well happen, though of course it need not, so that the possibly is always there, and the absolute end of all is not yet come to be?. So . . . not to worry (in case the coming about of the absolute end of it all depresses you): it won't be happening. But if, on the other hand, your worry is because it won't happen, I don't know what to say that might console you except: Make the best of it! (Of course there may be a flaw in my reasoning, but if so please don't point it out!) Did you ever read Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_, by the way? 135 pages of utterly incomprehensible cosmological possibilities! Calvino must have been insane. How could a person actually write, and quite skillfully, a 135 page narrative account of something that only seems to make sense, sentence by sentence, and actually does seem to at the time.even while one knows quite well all along that it is really just utter nonsense! Back to Peirce. I suspect he thought all along of this grand cosmic vision that seems to entrance some, repel others, but leave most of us just dumbstruck when pressed to clarify it, as being the form which the dialectic of reason takes -- in Kant's sense of transcendental dialectic, in which reason disintegrates when regarded as anything other than merely regulative -- in his modification of the Kantian view. The equivalent of a Zen koan, perhaps. Peirce says that God's pedagogy is that of the practical joker, who pulls the chair out from under you when you start to sit down. Salvation is occurring at those unexpected moments -- moments of grace, I would say -- when you find yourself rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter! (Peirce didn't say that, but he might have.) Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael J. DeLaurentis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:42 PM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! May be way out of school here, but what is the ultimate fate of "opinion," representation: ultimate merger with what is represented? Isn't all mind evolving toward matter, all sporting ultimately destined to end? -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Ransdell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:40 PM To: Peirce Discussion Forum Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! It is found in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear": The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality. CP 5.407 Joe Ransdell ----- Original Message ----- From: "Claudio Guerri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Peirce Discussion Forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:25 AM Subject: [peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign - help! Patrick, List, Patrick wrote the 28 June: "I like to start out from Peirce's definition of the real as "that object for which truth stands"" I could not find this definition in the CP... could you tell from where you got it? I found this one, closely related: CP 1.339 [...] Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (I imagine that "Lo" is "So") Thanks Claudio --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber [email protected]
