RE: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions, Chapter 5 : Cognition as biologic
Mara, thanks for this! Damasio is one of the neuroscientists who have developed in great detail our understanding of perception as part of a functional cycle. He’s not the only one, of course; I’ve cited several others in my book Turning Signs, especially in Chapter 9 (http://www.gnusystems.ca/mdl.htm) where I diagram the “meaning cycle” as a “practice-perception cycle”. I think the basic idea is already established in biosemiotics, but Stjernfelt’s work allows us to see the evolution of such cycles as self-modifying instantiations of a logical form, where logic is semiotic; and I think your own work continues the development of this core concept. It’s all loops within loops … For me, all of this follows naturally from Peirce’s observation that it is “not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic” (CP 4.551, 1906 http://www.gnusystems.ca/gld.htm#quasi ). Just as science is a “dialogue with Nature”, between the observable world and theoretical models of it, the life of an organism is a dialogue between its habits and the external world it has to cope with. Its habit-set is virtually an internal model of its world, or rather of its interaction with its Umwelt. This entails that for every organism — including humans — what you see depends on what you are primed to look for, just as much as it depends on what’s out there in your visual field. I could go on all day about this, but I’d better not. Instead I’ll go back and respond to your earlier post about the ventral/dorsal split, which arrived just after I’d sent my post that you’re responding to here. gary f. From: Mara Woods [mailto:mara.wo...@gmail.com] Sent: 14-Nov-14 5:13 PM Very interesting, Gary F. Damasio's view of the mapping of body states are already loaded with interpretation and, as you suggest, underlie self-control. First, they are indexes of particular physiological states that can be influenced by further action in the environment. For example, blood sugar levels can be influenced by successfully finding food, or unsuccessfully doing so, resulting in even lower levels of blood sugar. Only those body states that can be so influenced are indexed. Next, the intensity of the affective response to the body map is an icon of the underlying body state. The intensity of the affective response primes the physiological responses and motivates their priority. Thus, the meaning of a body state is partially the action which the body is prepared to take to resolve the divergence from the homeostatic norm. The exteroceptive actions of the organism are in search of immediate objects whose interpretants help identify them as having the right functional tone for the satisfaction of the internal need. I wonder whether we can considered the body map level of internal signs a feature of Innenwelt or just endosemiosis. The core self, one of the hierarchy of selves referred to in the title of his book, importantly refers to the interoceptive changes in the body maps that correlate to exteroceptive events. The coordination of subject to object within the organism is a function of the selfhood of organisms for Damasio. Here are some excerpts from Self Comes to Mind that describe some key aspects of the nested hierarchy of self: “Changes in the protoself inaugurate the momentary creation of the core self and initiate a chain of events. The first event in the chain is a transformation in the primordial feeling that results in a 'feeling of knowing the object,' a feeling that differentiates the object from other objects of the moment. The second event in the chain is a consequence of the feeling of knowing. It is a generation of 'saliency' for the engaging object, a process generally subsumed by the term attention, a drawing in of processing resources toward one particular object more than others. The core self, then is created by linking the modified protoself to the object that caused the modification, an object that has now been hallmarked by feeling and enhanced by attention. At the end of this cycle, the mind includes images regarding a simple and very common sequence of events: an object engaged the body when that object was looked at, touched, or heard, from a specific perspective; the engagement caused the body to change; the presence of the object was felt; the object was made salient” (Damasio 2010: 203). A few paragraphs later: What is being added to the plain mind process and is thus producing a conscious mind is a series of images, namely, an image of the organism (provided by the modified protoself proxy); the image of an object-related emotional response (that is, a feeling); and an image of the momentarily enhanced causative object. The self comes to mind in the form of images, relentlessly telling a story of such engagements. (Damasio 2010: 2013, emphasis in original). Now, Damasio's
RE: [PEIRCE-L] Natural Propositions, Chapter 5: Universes of Discourse and Umwelt theory
Mara, that’s a very good question you’ve raised. I’ll insert my responses below. From: Mara Woods [mailto:mara.wo...@gmail.com] Sent: 14-Nov-14 3:45 PM All, In section 5.2, Stjernfelt brings up the “Adaptation to Rationality” hypothesis in conjunction with the issue of logical constants so problematic in Hurford's account. The logical constants problem is mostly a consequence of Hurford's limited view that reference to a dynamic object requires omniscience. It is not necessary, I think, to go into much detail here, except to mention that Hurford conflates mistake making in animal cognition with the inability to perceive concrete individuals across space or time. The immediate object of the individual in one scene does not bind with the immediate object of the same individual in another scene to make a sign that refers to the dynamic object of the concrete individual. Stjernfelt solves this problem in Hurford's work by bringing in the concept of the Universe of Discourse, a subset of all possible referents in the universe that are brought to bear on a particular proposition (or, presumably, set of propositions). He quotes Boole in a footnote on p. 131 of NP: In every discourse, whether of the mind conversing with its own thoughts, or of the individual in his intercourse with others, there is an assumed or expressed limit within which the subjects of its operation are confined. The most unfettered discourse is that in which the words we use are understood in the widest possible application, and for them the limits of discourse are co-extensive with those of the universe itself. But more usually we confine ourselves to a less spacious field. (...) Now, whatever may be the extent of the field within which all the objects of our discourse are found, that field may properly be termed the universe of discourse. Furthermore, this universe of discourse is in the strictest sense the ultimate subject of the discourse (Boole, from The Laws of Thought, 1852). GF: We should notice here that discourse is essentially communicative, or dialogic as Peirce would say, and is usually applied to communication carried out through a linguistic medium. This makes it problematic to apply the “universe of discourse” concept to phenomena closer to the other end of the semiotic spectrum, such as perception in animals. What I am curious about in this section is how the Universe of Discourse concept overlaps with Umwelt theory. For one, it is clear from Stjernfelt's words that he sees the Universe of Discourse as a restriction on the referent objects of discourse. In Umwelt theory, though, it is not just that a species only attends to certain dynamic objects in the environment. All perception and interaction with the environment is already loaded with meaning. It seems that the limitation of an Umwelt is not just on what objects can be detected by a perceptual apparatus but rather what meaning the objects have or potentially could have for the animal. In Uexkull's work this is mediated by the functional tone of the object -- the what can I do with this-ness that the object radiates with from the point of view of the perceiver. Thus, if anything, a Universe of Discourse would be the subset of Immediate Objects, the signs of which are picked up because of the framing or priming effects of the interpretants rising from the animal's Innenwelt. Yes indeed. The interpretant of a momentary perception feeds forward into the next moment of perception; what we see affects what we look for next. I wonder the indexical relation that the immediate object has with the proposition (the perception-action cycle in question) could be said to point to an iconic relation in the Innenwelt between the physiological goals and the psychological drives of the animal. I think that could be said; and thus every act of perception (if I may call it that) modifies in turn the iconic relation between Innenwelt and Umwelt (regarding the former as a model of the latter). Such iconic signs have to be involved in an index in order to inform the animal, i.e. there has to be some actual connection between sign and object. I think the index within the syntax of the dicisign points to that connection, and makes it the immediate object (NP p. 68). This amounts to a self-referential loop within the loop of the action-perception cycle. Regardless, a Universe of Discourse would not be limited only by the set of possible dynamic objects but also which interpretants are applicable to the discourse in the first place. This may be domain specific (e.g., the concept of subject in the various disciplines, or framing or priming effects of the previous thought) or level specific (e.g., explaining an inference chain to a first year university student or to an expert in the discipline) or application specific (e.g., having a casual conversation versus a problem solving discussion). Whether the immediate
[PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy - Don't Triangles Move Forward?
We think sequentially by necessity. Whoops. Thought gone. But seriously, I wonder if triangles do not move. In other words they cannot be fixed. Does that mean that no product of triadic thinking can be fixed. Probably so. Generals are fixed. Maybe in the CSP way of communal consensus and whatever other confomatory evidences there may be. Values are generals. Good generals are ontological. Bad generals are just bad. Triadic philosophy by advocating triadic thinking espouses triangles over monadic or binary shapes but the reason is they can nest so as things move they can bring along what works such as the ethical index or the name of the root triad reality, ethics, aesthetics. But each nanosecond and each time that consciousness believes itself to be operative life itself unfolds so that expressions and actions are impossible to see as the same from time to time. Maybe a triangle is like a wave so its form remains the same and even its location could be said not to substantially change, but its content always changes. That would suggest that the question remains. Books http://buff.ly/15GfdqU Art: http://buff.ly/1wXAxbl Gifts: http://buff.ly/1wXADj3 - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc.
Well, Edwina, I am not going to list specks of evidence, you need to read the literature. I got it primarily through studying distributed cognition, especially to teach it for several years in our cognitive science programme. Key words are distributed social knowledge, scaffolding, and bootstrapping. These all have technical meanings in distributed cognition, and I won’t try to explain them in an email list context; they require extensive study. John From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: November 15, 2014 10:09 PM To: John Collier; sb; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. John - I'd certainly like to see the empirical evidence that concludes that IF you write a document out rather than cut-and-paste it, THEN, you will understand it better. And I'd like to see the empirical evidence that IF you make mistakes when you are writing it out, THEN, these mistakes are not due to your own misunderstandings but are instead due to 'the dictates' of one's culture. I wasn't aware that we are merely shadows of a culture. I know that in totalitarian and fascist regimes, humans are expected to be just that; mimetic clones of an ideology - but in a free society, individuals are expected to operate with the capacity of their own reason, their own life experiences and their own capacity to reflect on and analyze their own individual actions. And the comment that Peirce incorrectly linked individuality with mistakes. Of course he did so; only the individual acts - either in error or correctly. And, I'd like to see evidence that the mistakes we make are 'a cultural issue'? Since when is our individual psyche, our individual psychological nature and personal nature/experience removed from all causality - and the causality of our mistakes in life are kicked off to 'culture'??? So - no-one is responsible for anything anymore; it's all due to 'our culture'. No - I don't accept these axioms. Edwina - Original Message - From: John Colliermailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za To: sbmailto:peirc...@semiotikon.de ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edumailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2014 2:41 PM Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. Stefan, List, That is indeed a good quote. It is on precisely that point that Putnam diverges from Peirce in his “brain in a vat” argument. He says “we determine meaning if anything does”. This leads him to his internal realism and rejection of metaphysical realism. I think that we can still keep metaphysical realism by not putting so much emphasis on only language making sense, as I argue in a 1990 article in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, but the argument is much easier if we just reject Putnam’s premise and follow Peirce. To Edwina: there is a lot of empirical evidence for Kirsti’s claims. I’ll take that ahead of your reasoning. No doubt you have pointed to small set of cases that don’t fit the general evidence, which is statistical. John From: sb [mailto:peirc...@semiotikon.de] Sent: November 15, 2014 7:11 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edumailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Kirsti Määttänen Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. Dear Kirsti, a CP-Quote i like very much: Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn round and say: ”You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought.“ In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of a man‘s information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a word’s information. CP 5.131 Best Stefan Am 15.11.14 17:30, schrieb Edwina Taborsky: Kirsti- you make a lot of assumptions, most of them without any empirical or objective evidence, and thus, one can only conclude that there are merely and only: your personal opinions. For example: 1) The cut-and-paste method of copying does not enable understanding while the handcopy method does enable understanding. Kirsti- there is no evidence of your assertion. Understanding what is in a document is not dependent on the method of copying that document. After all, the numerous scribes of the monasteries did not, when copying out texts, necessarily also understand them. 2) Mistakes in hand copying a document are due to the dictates of your culture and not merely personal blunders. Again, there is no evidence of such an assertion. First, you'd have to prove that such errors have nothing to do with personal blunders; and second, you'd have to prove that these errors are due to and only to: 'cultural dictates' - and third, you'd have to prove both the cultural mindset and how this 'forces' your hand.
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc.
John - I think we are talking about two different issues. No-one is arguing that our knowledge base (distributed cognition) is not developed within societal constraints and focus, but at the same time - to claim that our knowledge is ONLY societal and thus deductive and cannot be questioned, changed, explored by the individual human intellect and individual reasoning capacities and individual expriences - is to deny the function of abductive and inductive thought. Edwina - Original Message - From: John Collier To: Edwina Taborsky ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 11:27 AM Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. Well, Edwina, I am not going to list specks of evidence, you need to read the literature. I got it primarily through studying distributed cognition, especially to teach it for several years in our cognitive science programme. Key words are distributed social knowledge, scaffolding, and bootstrapping. These all have technical meanings in distributed cognition, and I won’t try to explain them in an email list context; they require extensive study. John From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: November 15, 2014 10:09 PM To: John Collier; sb; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. John - I'd certainly like to see the empirical evidence that concludes that IF you write a document out rather than cut-and-paste it, THEN, you will understand it better. And I'd like to see the empirical evidence that IF you make mistakes when you are writing it out, THEN, these mistakes are not due to your own misunderstandings but are instead due to 'the dictates' of one's culture. I wasn't aware that we are merely shadows of a culture. I know that in totalitarian and fascist regimes, humans are expected to be just that; mimetic clones of an ideology - but in a free society, individuals are expected to operate with the capacity of their own reason, their own life experiences and their own capacity to reflect on and analyze their own individual actions. And the comment that Peirce incorrectly linked individuality with mistakes. Of course he did so; only the individual acts - either in error or correctly. And, I'd like to see evidence that the mistakes we make are 'a cultural issue'? Since when is our individual psyche, our individual psychological nature and personal nature/experience removed from all causality - and the causality of our mistakes in life are kicked off to 'culture'??? So - no-one is responsible for anything anymore; it's all due to 'our culture'. No - I don't accept these axioms. Edwina - Original Message - From: John Collier To: sb ; peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2014 2:41 PM Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. Stefan, List, That is indeed a good quote. It is on precisely that point that Putnam diverges from Peirce in his “brain in a vat” argument. He says “we determine meaning if anything does”. This leads him to his internal realism and rejection of metaphysical realism. I think that we can still keep metaphysical realism by not putting so much emphasis on only language making sense, as I argue in a 1990 article in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, but the argument is much easier if we just reject Putnam’s premise and follow Peirce. To Edwina: there is a lot of empirical evidence for Kirsti’s claims. I’ll take that ahead of your reasoning. No doubt you have pointed to small set of cases that don’t fit the general evidence, which is statistical. John From: sb [mailto:peirc...@semiotikon.de] Sent: November 15, 2014 7:11 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu; Kirsti Määttänen Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Continuity, Generality, Infinity, Law, Synechism, etc. Dear Kirsti, a CP-Quote i like very much: Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn round and say: ”You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought.“ In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of a man‘s information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a word’s information. CP 5.131 Best Stefan Am 15.11.14 17:30, schrieb Edwina Taborsky: Kirsti- you make a lot of assumptions, most of them without any empirical or objective evidence, and thus, one can only conclude that there are merely and only: your personal opinions. For example: 1) The
[PEIRCE-L] Sung asserts: the simplest category in the category theory is the commutative triangle.
On Nov 16, 2014, at 6:01 AM, Sungchul Ji wrote: Hi, I just learned that the simplest category in the category theory is the commutative triangle. The next simple one would be the commutative square Sung: After posting examples (perhaps hundreds?) of your beliefs about category theory, you have learned (at last) that there is a relation between category theory, geometry (a triangle), the algebra of commutativity and graphs (icons),(as represented by the three vertices of a triangle which are also represented by three nodes of a graph.) How, if at all, does this change to a dual representation of a mathematical object (as both a vertex and a graph node) change your interpretations or your assertions about representation and representamen? How is it relevant to CSP's philosophy? How does the categoric representation of number of vertices, number of nodes and number of commutative illations influence your beliefs about Peircian firstness, secondness and thirdness? Also, FYI, the small book by Zalamea, Peirce's Logic of Continuity (2012), revolves in part, about possible representations of category theory. While I do not find Zalamea's argument compelling, it is a very stimulating read. BTW, you may wish to note that the next step in category theory is a tetrahedron, that is a geometric form representing an object in space. Thus, the size of categories within mathematical category theory is scaled by the integers, 3,4,5,..., the number of nodes of the graph. Personally, I have found it extremely useful to study the grammar of category theory as a critical element connecting the semantic meanings of mathematical terms as they are used in quantitative propositions. Congratulations on your beginning of a long, a very long journey. Cheers Jerry - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sung asserts: the simplest category in the category theory is the commutative triangle.
Dear Jerry, Thanks for your informative comments. Yes. I agree, I have a long journey into the open and evolving world of category theory. As you know I have been using commutative triangles for the past couple of years on these lists, without calling them by that name, I just referred to them as categories. Now I know that they are examples of the simplest category, perhaps equivalent to atoms in chemistry, words in linguistics, and one the 10 classes of signs in semiotics. The next obvious question would be what would correspond to the next simplest category,i.e., the commutative square, in chemistry, linguistics and semiotics ? Molecules, sentences, and dicisigns ? With all the best. Sung (From the bar in Radisson Hotel, Baltimore. I am supposed to give a lecture at 9 am tomorrow morning, at the International Conference on the Unified Field Mechanics. The title of my talk is: The Planckian Information Theory as a Unified Theory of Organizations in Physics,Genomics, Glottometrics, Econophysics, and Cosmology). On Nov 16, 2014, at 6:01 AM, Sungchul Ji wrote: Hi, I just learned that the simplest category in the category theory is the commutative triangle. The next simple one would be the commutative square Sung: After posting examples (perhaps hundreds?) of your beliefs about category theory, you have learned (at last) that there is a relation between category theory, geometry (a triangle), the algebra of commutativity and graphs (icons),(as represented by the three vertices of a triangle which are also represented by three nodes of a graph.) How, if at all, does this change to a dual representation of a mathematical object (as both a vertex and a graph node) change your interpretations or your assertions about representation and representamen? How is it relevant to CSP's philosophy? How does the categoric representation of number of vertices, number of nodes and number of commutative illations influence your beliefs about Peircian firstness, secondness and thirdness? Also, FYI, the small book by Zalamea, Peirce's Logic of Continuity (2012), revolves in part, about possible representations of category theory. While I do not find Zalamea's argument compelling, it is a very stimulating read. BTW, you may wish to note that the next step in category theory is a tetrahedron, that is a geometric form representing an object in space. Thus, the size of categories within mathematical category theory is scaled by the integers, 3,4,5,..., the number of nodes of the graph. Personally, I have found it extremely useful to study the grammar of category theory as a critical element connecting the semantic meanings of mathematical terms as they are used in quantitative propositions. Congratulations on your beginning of a long, a very long journey. Cheers Jerry Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, N.J. 08855 732-445-4701 www.conformon.net - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
[PEIRCE-L] Synechism quote correction
Jon, list, Somebody recently brought to my attention off-list a typo in the synechism quote that I sent on November 10, 2014. prescribing what sort of hypotheses are lit to be entertained and examined should instead be: prescribing what sort of hypotheses are fit to be entertained and examined Correction is incorporated below: Synechism from Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Volume 2, 1902, page 657, reprinted in CP 6.169-73. http://books.google.com/books?id=Dc8YIAAJpg=PA657lpg=PA657 http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm#Synechism Synechism [Gr. /συνεχής/, continuous, holding together, from /σύν/ + /ἔχειν/, to hold] not in use in the other languages. That tendency of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of prime importance in philosophy, and in particular, upon the necessity of hypotheses involving true continuity. A true CONTINUUM http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/C4defs.htm#Continuum (q. v.) is something whose possibilities of determination no multitude of individuals can exhaust. Thus, no collection of points placed upon a truly continuous line can fill the line so as to leave no room for others, although that collection had a point for every value towards which numbers endlessly continued into the decimal places could approximate; nor if it contained a point for every possible permutation of all such values. It would be in the general spirit of synechism to hold that time ought to be supposed truly continuous in that sense. The term was suggested and used by C. S. Peirce in the Monist, ii. 534 http://books.google.com/books?id=8akLIAAJpg=PA534vq=synechism (July, 1892). Cf. PRAGMATISM http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Baldwin_Dictionary_Definition_of_Pragmatic_%281%29_and_%282%29_Pragmatism, passim. The general motive is to avoid the hypothesis that this or that is inexplicable. For the synechist maintains that the only possible justification for so much as entertaining a hypothesis, is that it affords an explanation of the phenomena. Now, to suppose a thing inexplicable is not only to fail to explain it, and so to make an unjustifiable hypothesis, but much worse — it is to set up a barrier across the road of science, and to forbid all attempt to understand the phenomenon. To be sure, the synechist cannot deny that there is an element of the inexplicable and ultimate, because it is directly forced upon him; nor does he abstain from generalizing from this experience. True generality is, in fact, nothing but a rudimentary form of true continuity. Continuity is nothing but perfect generality of a law of relationship. It would, therefore, be most contrary to his own principle for the synechist not to generalize from that which experience forces upon him, especially since it is only so far as facts can be generalized that they can be understood; and the very reality, in his way of looking at the matter, is nothing else than the way in which facts must ultimately come to be understood. There would be a contradiction here, if this ultimacy were looked upon as something to be absolutely realized; but the synechist cannot consistently so regard it. Synechism is not an ultimate and absolute metaphysical doctrine; it is a regulative principle of logic, prescribing what sort of hypotheses are lit to be entertained and examined. The synechist, for example, would never be satisfied with the hypothesis that matter is composed of atoms, all spherical and exactly alike. If this is the only hypothesis that the mathematicians are as yet in condition to handle, it may be supposed that it may have features of resemblance with the truth. But neither the eternity of the atoms nor their precise resemblance is, in the synechist's view, an element of the hypothesis that is even admissible hypothetically. For that would be to attempt to explain the phenomena by means of an absolute inexplicability. In like manner, it is not a hypothesis fit to be entertained that any given law is absolutely accurate. It is not, upon synechist principles, a question to be asked, whether the three angles of a triangle amount precisely to two right angles, but only whether the sum is greater or less. So the synechist will not believe that some things are conscious and some unconscious, unless by consciousness be meant a certain grade of feeling. He will rather ask what are the circumstances which raise this grade; nor will he consider that a chemical formula for protoplasm would be a sufficient answer. In short, synechism amounts to the principle that inexplicabilities are not to be considered as possible explanations; that whatever is supposed to be ultimate is supposed to be inexplicable; that continuity is the absence of ultimate parts in that which is divisible ; and that the form under which alone anything can be understood is the form of generality, which is the same thing as continuity.
[PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy - Arisbe
(Arisbe) Charles Sanders Peirce: ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY: Home Page of the International Peirce Community http://buff.ly/1BG3CMM I do what I can to alert Twitter folk to Peirce. I remember an excellent introductory statement listing all of his impacts. But when I took a look just now I could not find it. If I was a novice, well maybe I am, I would want to see this in order to get a sense of the person. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Triadic Philosophy - Arisbe
Maybe you're talking about Joe Ransdell's FAQ Who Is Charles Peirce? http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/faqs/whoiscsp.HTM http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/faqs/whoiscsp.HTM Best, Ben On 11/16/2014 8:59 PM, Stephen C. Rose wrote: (Arisbe) Charles Sanders Peirce: ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY: Home Page of the International Peirce Community http://buff.ly/1BG3CMM I do what I can to alert Twitter folk to Peirce. I remember an excellent introductory statement listing all of his impacts. But when I took a look just now I could not find it. If I was a novice, well maybe I am, I would want to see this in order to get a sense of the person. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
