Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Gary Richmond]

Jon, Gary F, List,

One of the most revelatory passages -- at least for me -- relating to the
origin of the cosmos is the following (from *Reasoning and the Logic of
Things*, CP 6.191 - 198, emphasis added). Reading it supported my growing
sense at the time, several decades ago, that not only was 'Big Bang' theory
nominalistic, materialistic, irrational and, therefore, wholly inadequate
as a postmodern origin story, but that a cosmic theology on scientific
principles was indeed possible, and that Peirce had done yeoman's work
outlining it. Here's that 'outline' with key passages in bold. GR

*Looking upon the course of logic as a whole we see that it proceeds from
the question to the answer -- from the vague to the definite. And so
likewise all the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the
definite.* The indeterminate future becomes the irrevocable past. In
Spencer's phrase the undifferentiated differentiates itself. The
homogeneous puts on heterogeneity. However it may be in special cases,
then, we must suppose that *as a rule the continuum has been derived from a
more general continuum, a continuum of higher generality.  *

>From this point of view we must suppose that *the existing universe, with
all its arbitrary secondness, is an offshoot from, or an arbitrary
determination of, a world of ideas, a Platonic world*; not that our
superior logic has enabled us to reach up to a world of forms to which the
real universe, with its feebler logic, was inadequate.

If this be correct, *we cannot suppose the process of derivation, a process
which extends from before time and from before logic, we cannot suppose
that  [this process of derivation] began elsewhere than in the utter
vagueness of completely undetermined and dimensionless potentiality. *

*The evolutionary process is, therefore, not a mere evolution of the
existing universe, but rather a process by which the very Platonic forms
themselves have become or are becoming developed. *

We shall naturally suppose, of course, that *existence is a stage of
evolution. This existence is presumably but a special existence. We need
not suppose that every form needs for its evolution to emerge into this
world, but only that it needs to enter into some theatre of reactions, of
which this is one. *

*The evolution of forms begins or, at any rate, has for an early stage of
it, a vague potentiality; and that either is or is followed by a continuum
of forms having a multitude of dimensions too great for the individual
dimensions to be distinct. It must be by a contraction of the vagueness of
that potentiality of everything in general, but of nothing in particular,
that the world of forms comes about.*

*We can hardly but suppose that those sense-qualities that we now
experience, colors, odors, sounds, feelings of every description, loves,
griefs, surprise, are but the relics of an ancient ruined continuum of
qualities*, like a few columns standing here and there in testimony that
here some old-world forum with its basilica and temples had once made a
magnificent ensemble. And just as that forum, before it was actually built,
had had a vague underexistence in the mind of him who planned its
construction, so too *the cosmos of sense-qualities, which I would have you
to suppose in some early stage of being was as real as your personal life
is this minute, had in an antecedent stage of development a vaguer being,
before the relations of its dimensions became definite and contracted. *

The sense-quality is a feeling. Even if you say it is a slumbering feeling,
that does not make it less intense; perhaps the reverse. For it is the
absence of reaction -- of feeling another -- that constitutes slumber, not
the absence of the immediate feeling that is all that it is in its
immediacy. *Imagine a magenta color. Now imagine that all the rest of your
consciousness -- memory, thought, everything except this feeling of magenta
-- is utterly wiped out, and with that is erased all possibility of
comparing the magenta with anything else or of estimating it as more or
less bright. That is what you must think the pure sensequality to be. Such
a definite potentiality can emerge from the indefinite potentiality only by
its own vital Firstness and spontaneity.* *Here is this magenta color. What
originally made such a quality of feeling possible? Evidently nothing but
itself. It is a First.*
Namely, they represent the ideas as springing into a preliminary stage of
being by their own inherent firstness.

*But so springing up, they do not spring up isolated; for if they did,
nothing could unite them. They spring up in reaction upon one another, and
thus into a kind of existence. This reaction and this existence these
persons call the mind of God. I really think there is no objection to this
except that it is wrapped up in figures of speech, instead of having the
explicitness that we desire in science.* For all you know of "minds" is
from the actions of animals with brains or ganglia 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Vittorio, List:

Regarding your first worry, Peirce defines three different kinds of
*sequences*, which correspond to three different kinds of
philosophy--elliptical, where there is no definite starting point or
stopping point; parabolic, where the starting point and stopping point are
the same; and hyperbolic, where the starting point and stopping point are
different (CP 6.581-582, 1890; NEM 4:127, 1897-8). His own cosmology is of
the last kind, and he understands time accordingly, even while recognizing
that "there must be a connection of time ring-wise" (CP 1.498, c. 1896).
The resolution of this apparent paradox is provided by projective geometry,
where the ellipse of time is bisected by the line at infinity and their
points of intersection correspond to the two limits of time in the infinite
past and infinite future. I discuss this in detail in section 6 of my
"Temporal Synechism" paper, for which I provided links in my earlier reply
to Harris Bolus.

Regarding your second worry, where do you see Peirce "using 1ns and 2ns to
construct a 3ns" in his late account of continuity? Or perhaps I should ask
instead, where do you see me doing this in my attempt to flesh out his
mature topical conception? It is more likely that I have fallen into the
trap than Peirce himself, especially since--as I acknowledged during the
session--I am not very familiar with Hegel. In my understanding, 1ns and
2ns remain irreducible to 3ns, and all three are present in every
phenomenon. As Peirce himself says, "I chiefly insist upon continuity, or
Thirdness, and, in order to secure to thirdness its really commanding
function, I find it indispensable fully [to] recognize that it is a third,
and that Firstness, or chance, and Secondness, or Brute reaction, are other
elements, without the independence of which Thirdness would not have
anything upon which to operate" (CP 6.202, 1898).

Thanks,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 11:10 AM Vittorio Serra  wrote:

> Jon, (Gary, List)
>
> Sorry to miss your talks, but I looked at the slides posted by Jon.
>
> I have a couple of worries about this topic that I have been puzzling over.
>
> The first is that there seems to be a tension between Peirce's late
> account of continuity and the requirement -- from the logic of relatives --
> that every genuine Thirdness incorporate a genuine Secondness. Where is
> that Secondness in a continuum? We could say that the limits of the
> continuum (Peirce's `Absolute') together make up the required dyad, but
> Peirce allows that a continuum can be elliptical, with the limits merged
> and thus losing their dyadic character. Perhaps we can appeal to the
> cosmology and say that there are no complete continua until the (infinitely
> distant) future limit, so every partial continuum has existent limits that
> provide the required Secondness. (Partial continua may also provide a
> metaphysical counterpart for those lacunae in reality that Robert Lane has
> engaged with.)  But then for the evolution to operate we seem to need at
> least one complete continuum, namely time. Do you think there is a tension
> here and, if so, how might it be resolved?
>
> The second worry is that the late account of continuity could leave Peirce
> open to the same criticisms that he levels at Hegel. He seems to have used
> Firstness and Secondness to construct a Thirdness, then rendered those
> building blocks _aufgehoben_, cancelled, and Firstness and Secondness
> become derivative of Thirdness and no longer have their severally
> independent being; we only have a single primitive kind, not three.
> Irrespective of whether those criticisms are fair of Hegel, Peirce may have
> fallen into his own trap. Do you think this worry is justified?
>
> All the best
> Vittorio Serra
>
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Harris, List:

As I understand it, Peirce's solution to Zeno's paradox is summarized in
the passage that I partially quoted on slide 19. Here is what it says
without the later ellipses.

CSP: Just as it is strictly correct to say that nobody is ever in an exact
Position (except instantaneously, and an Instant is a fiction, or *ens
rationis*), but Positions are either vaguely described states of motion of
small range, or else (what is the better view), are *entia rationis* (i.e.
fictions recognized to be fictions, and thus no longer fictions) invented
for the purposes of closer descriptions of states of motion; so likewise,
Thought (I am not talking Psychology, but Logic, or the essence of
Semeiotics) cannot, from the nature of it, be at rest, or be anything but
inferential process; and propositions are either roughly described states
of Thought-motion, or are artificial creations intended to render the
description of Thought-motion possible; and Names are creations of a second
order serving to render the representation of propositions possible. (R
295:117-118[102-103], 1906)


On my reading, continuous motion is real and primordial, while discrete
positions in space and discrete instants in time are *entia rationis* that
facilitate *describing *continuous motion. Likewise, continuous
thought-motion/semiosis is real and primordial, while discrete propositions
and names are *entia rationis* that facilitate *describing *continuous
thought-motion/semiosis. Peirce makes the latter point in another way in
the following passage.

CSP:  Practically, when a man endeavors to state what the process of his
thought has been, after the process has come to an end, he first asks
himself to what conclusion he has come. That result he formulates in an
assertion, which, we will assume, has some sort of likeness--I am inclined
to think only a conventionalized one--with the attitude of his thought at
the cessation of the motion. That having been ascertained, he next asks
himself how he is justified in being so confident of it; and he proceeds to
cast about for a sentence expressed in words which shall strike him as
resembling some previous attitude of his thought, and which at the same
time shall be logically related to the sentence representing his
conclusion, in such a way that if the premiss-proposition be true, the
conclusion-proposition necessarily or naturally would be true. That
argument is a representation of the last part of his thought, so far as its
logic goes, that is, that the conclusion would be true supposing the
premiss is so. But the self-observer has absolutely no warrant whatever for
assuming that that premiss represented an attitude in which thought
remained stock-still, even for an instant ... It is more than doubtful
whether what we can state as an argument or inference represents any part
of the thinking except in the logical relation of the truth of the premiss
to the truth of the conclusion. And, moreover, the argument so considered
consists in the statements in words. How nearly they represent anything
really in the thought is very doubtful, and is quite immaterial. (CP 2.27;
1902)


In short, the minimum of *real *semiosis is an
argument--a continuous inferential process--not any discrete/individual
sign, nor a collection of such signs. Arguments are not built up of
propositions, and propositions are not built up of names. Instead,
propositions and names are creations of thought for retrospectively
describing hypothetical instantaneous states, thus *representing *arguments as
argumentations consisting of definite premisses and conclusions (cf. CP
6.456, 1908).

Regarding 1ns, I noted during my presentation that different categorial
vectors can be used to describe the same phenomenon from different
analytical perspectives. In itself, a sign corresponds to 3ns, but within
the genuine triadic relation of *representing*, it corresponds to 1ns with
the object corresponding to 2ns and the interpretant to 3ns--which is why
there are two objects (immediate/dynamical) and three interpretants
(immediate/dynamical/final) for every one sign. As I also mentioned,
sensations are examples of 2ns, but we can prescind qualities from them as
1ns. It is not our sensation of red that is 1ns, it is redness in itself,
apart from any actual embodiment or perception of it. "God the Creator"
corresponds to 1ns within the vector of process as applied to cosmology,
where "God completely revealed" corresponds to 2ns and "every state of the
universe at a measurable point of time"--when God is only *partially *revealed
by the universe itself as "a vast representamen"--corresponds to 3ns.

Regarding time itself, I agree that our having the idea of a true continuum
from our direct observation of its flow does not entail that anything else
is continuous in that same way. My own formulation of Peirce's topical
conception is a mathematical hypothesis that needs to be evaluated as to
whether and how well it fits time and other 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Jon Alan Schmidt]

Gary F., Gary R., List:

I agree with Gary F. that we should always try to harmonize what Peirce
writes about the same subject at different times, and I agree with Gary
R.'s brief response that seeks to do just that. For Peirce, indeterminacy
is characteristic of generality, which he equates with continuity--as Jeff
Downard mentioned during the session, "Now continuity is shown by the logic
of relations to be nothing but a higher type of that which we know as
generality. It is relational generality" (CP 6.190, 1898). Also,
"continuity is generality" (CP 6.203) and "Continuity, as generality, is
inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general" (CP 6.204).
Moreover ...

CSP: We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing
of negation. For *not *means *other than*, and *other *is merely a synonym
of the ordinal numeral *second*. As such it implies a first; while the
present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the
nothing of death, which comes *second *to, or after, everything. But this
pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual
thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal
nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such,
it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility--boundless
possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom. So
of *potential *being there was in that initial state no lack. (CP 6.217,
1898)


Peirce gives a similar description ten years later.

CSP: In that state of absolute nility, in or out of time, that is, before
or after the evolution of time, there must then have been a tohu bohu of
which nothing whatever affirmative or negative was true universally. There
must have been, therefore, a little of everything conceivable. (CP 6.490,
1908)


As I understand his cosmology, the primordial state was not *utter
*nothingness,
it was "utter indetermination" (KS) and thus "a little of everything
conceivable"--a continuum of possibilities, but no actualities or
necessities. On the other hand, the final state would be utter
determination, "the complete induration of habit reducing the free play of
feeling and the brute irrationality of effort to complete death" (CP 6.201,
1898). As a result, the state in between is the universe constantly *becoming
more determinate*, as the real possibilities and conditional necessities of
the future are converted at the present into the actualities of the past.

CSP: We look back toward a point in the infinitely distant past when there
was no law but mere indeterminacy; we look forward to a point in the
infinitely distant future when there will be no indeterminacy or chance but
a complete reign of law. But at any assignable date in the past, however
early, there was already some tendency toward uniformity; and at any
assignable date in the future there will be some slight aberrancy from law.
(CP 1.409, 1887-8)


Thanks,

Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt

On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 11:23 AM Gary Richmond 
wrote:

> Gary F,
>
> I too won't say much about the matter of primal 3ns, that is
> ur-continuity, being at the origins of the cosmos (or not) except to
> briefly comment on a snippet of a Peirce quote you gave from Kaina Stoicheia
>
> CSP:  [At the beginning there was "[u]tter indetermination. But a symbol
> alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the
> absolute beginning, is a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of
> things can alone be understood. EP2:322]
>
>
> GF: "It is not obvious how this can be reconciled with a cosmology
> arising from an ur-continuity or a primal Thirdness."
>
>
> GR: For now I'll say that I don't see a contradiction here. Peirce says in
> KS that the indeterminate nothing -- not a 'nothing' of subtraction or
> negation as he puts it in other writings, or, as he puts it here, not '
> *determinately* nothing',  -- but rather a 'symbol', for "a symbol alone
> is indeterminate."
>
>
> Now a symbol is a 3ns, in this case admittedly and necessarily a most
> unique one (as it occurs before there is even Time, which will become the
> continuity *par excellence* once there is a cosmos). It is, one might
> say, an ur-symbol; and, so, ur-3ns, ur-continuity.
>
>
> Well, again, I'll be most interested in what you, Jon, and others think
> before I comment further.
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Gary R
>
> On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 10:50 AM  wrote:
>
>> Jon, i have a question about your slides 20 and 23.
>>
>> On #20, under the heading of Objective Idealism, your proposal is that
>>
>> “Continuous/triadic semiosis is real and primordial (3ns).”
>>
>> On #23, under “Defining Continuity,” you cite the “Categorial Vector: 3ns
>> →1ns→2ns,” (the vector of *representation* in Gary R's terminology), and
>> i think it was at this point that you 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[John F Sowa]

Jeff,

I believe that Peirce's 1903 classification provides a simpler basis for 
explaining his comments about continuity.

JBD> I think Peirce's semiotic theory moves from an initial classification of 
signs to a physiological account of the functioning and growth of a systems of 
signs in their relation to the world via observation and action, This semiotic 
model of growth is guiding his inquiries in metaphysics and the special science 
about the complexity and nonlinear character of many different phenomena.

All the sciences, including phaneroscopy, depend  on mathematics, and 
methematics has three branches:  mathematical (formal) logic, discrete 
mathematics, and continuous mathematics.  That implies that phaneroscopy can 
use continuous math and mathematical logic (which includes existential graphs) 
for representing anything in the phaneron.

Logic as semeiotic is the third normative science, all methods of mathematics 
are available to it.  There is no need to postulate any other source.  Since 
the newly established date for Kaina Stoicheia is 1901, Peirce would have 
considered all those issues when he wrote his 1903 classification.

John
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hello Jon S, Gary R and Gary F, all,


I want to think the three of you for giving presentations at the 10-minute 
discussion on Zoom. I found each of the presentations and following discussion 
helpful.


I'd like to respond to some of the points Gary F makes in his discussion of 
"Nonlinear Semiotics".


Here are some initial thoughts about the general thesis of the presentation:  
that Peirce's semiotic account of the growth of signs is nonlinear in character.



Let me start by saying that I agree with the thesis. It seems fairly clear that 
Peirce was explicitly trying to make sense of how things grow and evolve— (1) 
in logic, semiotics and cognition, (2) in the metaphysics that is prior to the 
special sciences, and (3) in the physics, chemistry. biology and psychology of 
his day. This is especially clear in the essays and notes leading up to and 
after "A Guess at the Riddle." The central conceptions that are guiding the 
inquiries are high level conceptions like continuity and complexity as well as 
conceptions that appear to be designed for more specialized uses in physics and 
chemistry such as nonconservative and nonlinear.



My interpretative hypothesis is that Peirce saw from early on that the patterns 
of inference governing experimental inquiry involve an iterative process. What 
is more, the conceptions involved in the premises and conclusions in these 
patterns of inference undergo a process of being logically multiplied by 
themselves in involution, with some conceptions functioning like constants that 
are added. As such, the semiotic model has all the features found in algebraic 
expressions such as are studied in the mathematical modeling of strongly 
nonlinear dynamical systems (e.g., the quadratic iterator) in a phase space or 
a parameter space.



It is interesting to note that Peirce is aware that the iteration of inferences 
in a two valued monadic system of logic (e.g., Aristotle's logic theory of the 
categorical syllogism) is mechanical in character and does not give rise to 
nonlinear dynamics. Often, in the formal study of deductive inference, we treat 
the values of the logical operations as having a simple true or false 
character. In the cycle of inquiry, however, the values vary in a number of 
respects—including the confidence we attribute to the propositions and the 
vagueness and degrees of inadequacy of the conceptions involved. The 
conceptions, propositions and arguments are growing in terms of their logical 
depth, breadth and information. Having values that allow continuous variations 
makes possible the kinds of dynamics that take a fractal character around 
attractors in terms of the underlying geometry. The process itself is 
self-organizing.



In short, I think Peirce's semiotic theory moves from an initial classification 
of signs to a physiological account of the functioning and growth of a systems 
of signs in their relation to the world via observation and action, This 
semiotic model of growth is guiding his inquiries in metaphysics and the 
special science about the complexity and nonlinear character of many different 
phenomena.



In effect, Peirce is offering semiotic models of growth and complexity and that 
can be used to explain the nonconservative and nonlinear character of real 
physical, chemical, biological and social systems. As a historical point, it 
appears that Peirce's understanding of what is special about nonlinear systems 
involving feedback was remarkably advanced and precedes important developments 
such as Poincare's study of the three body problem. With the advantage and 
hindsight afforded by a century of further inquiry along these lines in 
mathematics and the special sciences, this should not be too surprising to us 
given Peirce's goal of explaining how all laws themselves might evolve.



If this is right, then I am wondering how the semiotic account of the dynamical 
growth and evolution of sign systems might serve as a philosophical model to 
help us explain the evolution of order, regularity and laws in nature? Can we 
offer some simple models and straightforward explanations that will help to 
make things clearer and easier to comprehend? As far as I am concerned, the 
problems appear to be remarkably difficult and hard to comprehend. This is 
especially true for problems having to do with the origins of order in 
cosmological, biological and cognitive systems.


Gary F. has already responded to these sorts of questions at the 10 minute 
session. As such, I am offering this note and following questions to the 
members of the list with the hope others might engage with the points Gary has 
made in the presentation.


Yours,


Jeff




From: peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu  on 
behalf of Jon Alan Schmidt 
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2023 2:34 PM
To: Peirce-L 
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

List:

Gary R., Gary F., and I are grateful to those of you who 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Daniel L Everett]

John

In my new ms submitted to OUP (Charles Peirce and the Philosophy of 
Linguistics) and in several recent talks I argue for the superiority of 
Peircean inferentialism over Fregean compositionality, titling one chapter 
Frege’s Error. This goes against many decades of work in linguistics (and one 
of the foundations of Fodor’s philosophy of linguistics as well). 

This is a discussion long overdue. 

Dan

> On Apr 17, 2023, at 13:11, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> 
> Folks,
> 
> All these issues that are being discussed are important.  But I believe that 
> we should also consider the following questions::
> 
> 1. How did Peirce's positions on these issues develop at various points in 
> his career?
> 
> 2. How did they relate to what he learned from his own research and from what 
> he was reading, especially from new discoveries and new publications during 
> those years?
> 
> 3. What changes would he have made in response to new discoveries and 
> developments during the century from 1914 to the present?
> 
> 4. And most importantly, what are the current issues where he not only 
> anticipated current research, but his ideas are now at the forefront of 
> current research?  And how would or should current research be modified or 
> redirected by his results?
> 
> The first two issues are important for understanding Peirce.s writings.  But 
> the fourth is essential for  telling the world that Peirce's writings are 
> critical for understanding the latest developments in all the sciences (which 
> include philosophy and engineering in his 1903 classification).  The third 
> issue is important as a stepping stone to the fourth.
> 
> I have attended several APA conferences and presented talks at a couple of 
> Peirce sessions.  But I found it frustrating that Frege and Russell were 
> frequently cited at many talks at many others, and I never heard anybody cite 
>  Peirce at any sessions other than the ones that were specifically designated 
> as sessions on Peirce.
> 
> I can't say that nobody ever cited Peirce at other sessions, because in 
> several of them, I pointed out that Peirce had anticipated something that the 
> speaker had said.  And those comments were well received by the speakers 
> themselves.
> 
> I believe that a very important task for all of us is to tell the world how 
> and why Peirce is still at the forefront of 21st century developments.  And 
> it's important to say that at venues that are not specifically dedicated to 
> Peirce.
> 
> John
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[John F Sowa]

Folks,

All these issues that are being discussed are important.  But I believe that we 
should also consider the following questions::

1. How did Peirce's positions on these issues develop at various points in his 
career?

2. How did they relate to what he learned from his own research and from what 
he was reading, especially from new discoveries and new publications during 
those years?

3. What changes would he have made in response to new discoveries and 
developments during the century from 1914 to the present?

4. And most importantly, what are the current issues where he not only 
anticipated current research, but his ideas are now at the forefront of current 
research?  And how would or should current research be modified or redirected 
by his results?

The first two issues are important for understanding Peirce.s writings.  But 
the fourth is essential for  telling the world that Peirce's writings are 
critical for understanding the latest developments in all the sciences (which 
include philosophy and engineering in his 1903 classification).  The third 
issue is important as a stepping stone to the fourth.

I have attended several APA conferences and presented talks at a couple of 
Peirce sessions.  But I found it frustrating that Frege and Russell were 
frequently cited at many talks at many others, and I never heard anybody cite  
Peirce at any sessions other than the ones that were specifically designated as 
sessions on Peirce.

I can't say that nobody ever cited Peirce at other sessions, because in several 
of them, I pointed out that Peirce had anticipated something that the speaker 
had said.  And those comments were well received by the speakers themselves.

I believe that a very important task for all of us is to tell the world how and 
why Peirce is still at the forefront of 21st century developments.  And it's 
important to say that at venues that are not specifically dedicated to Peirce.

John
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Gary Richmond]

Gary F,

I too won't say much about the matter of primal 3ns, that is ur-continuity,
being at the origins of the cosmos (or not) except to briefly comment on a
snippet of a Peirce quote you gave from Kaina Stoicheia

CSP:  [At the beginning there was "[u]tter indetermination. But a symbol
alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the
absolute beginning, is a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of
things can alone be understood. EP2:322]


GF: "It is not obvious how this can be reconciled with a cosmology arising
from an ur-continuity or a primal Thirdness."


GR: For now I'll say that I don't see a contradiction here. Peirce says in
KS that the indeterminate nothing -- not a 'nothing' of subtraction or
negation as he puts it in other writings, or, as he puts it here, not '
*determinately* nothing',  -- but rather a 'symbol', for "a symbol alone is
indeterminate."


Now a symbol is a 3ns, in this case admittedly and necessarily a most
unique one (as it occurs before there is even Time, which will become the
continuity *par excellence* once there is a cosmos). It is, one might say,
an ur-symbol; and, so, ur-3ns, ur-continuity.


Well, again, I'll be most interested in what you, Jon, and others think
before I comment further.


Best,


Gary R






On Mon, Apr 17, 2023 at 10:50 AM  wrote:

> Jon, i have a question about your slides 20 and 23.
>
> On #20, under the heading of Objective Idealism, your proposal is that
>
> “Continuous/triadic semiosis is real and primordial (3ns).”
>
> On #23, under “Defining Continuity,” you cite the “Categorial Vector: 3ns→
> 1ns→2ns,” (the vector of *representation* in Gary R's terminology), and i
> think it was at this point that you mentioned the idea of an “
> ur-continuity” which was there at the beginning in Peirce's cosmology
> (referring, i think, to his 1898 Cambridge Lectures).
>
> I wonder whether (or how) all this can be reconciled with the cosmology
> Peirce develops in “Kaina Stoicheia”, which i barely mentioned in my CSPS
> presentation on Saturday, but which seems to me highly relevant to *Objective
> Idealism*. KS was written a few years *after* the Cambridge lectures, and
> Peirce does not explicitly mention either continuity or 3ns anywhere in KS;
> instead, his cosmology begins with *indeterminacy*. On EP2:322 he says:
>
> [[CSP:] If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was
> in the beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no reaction
> and no quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and no time, but just
> nothing at all. Not determinately nothing. For that which is determinately
> not *A* supposes the being of *A* in some mode. Utter indetermination.
> But a symbol alone is indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate
> of the absolute beginning, is a symbol. That is the way in which the
> beginning of things can alone be understood. What logically follows?]
>
> The whole paragraph starting here in the edition of Kaina Stoicheia
>  on my website gives
> Peirce's account of what logically follows. What he arrives at is this:
> “That is logical which it is necessary to admit in order to render the
> universe intelligible. And the first of all logical principles is that the
> indeterminate should determine itself as best it may” (EP2:324).
>
> It is not obvious how this can be reconciled with a cosmology arising from
> an ur-continuity or a primal Thirdness. We could dismiss Kaina Stoicheia as
> anomalous among Peirce's works, or as something he changed his mind about
> later, but my preference (and i think yours, Jon) is to look for some
> continuity between KS and Peirce's other works that offer a semiotically
> realistic cosmology. I have a few ideas about this but would like to hear
> what others think before i post mine.
>
> Love, gary
>
> Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
>
> } Everything is actually everything else, recycled. [anon] {
>
> https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs 
>
>
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>
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Daniel L Everett]

I know that the late Adolf Grunbaum, my former colleague at Pitt wrote on Z’s paradox: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-science-Zenos-paradoxes-Grünbaum/dp/B0006E038EI am sure you know of this, but send a link just in case. I haven’t thought much about whether a Peircean account would be significantly different. Others likely have. Dan EverettOn Apr 17, 2023, at 11:14, Harris Bolus  wrote:Thank you, Gary, Gary, and Jon! Jon, you hit a lot of interesting points in your talk, and brought out many of the most puzzling aspects of Peirce's thought to me. In "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" he leaves us with a promissory note to solve Zeno's paradox with regard to the continuity of time in experience. However, in "Grounds of the Validity of the Laws of Logic", his solution seems to be more of a critique of Zeno than a positive account of continuity. This is understandable, since continuity is a vexing problem that he seems to have worked on fruitfully throughout his career. I've always wondered if he ultimately succeeded, or if the insolubility of the continuity of time might serve in a modus tollens argument against his JSP account and future accounts that rely on it. After all, it seems intuitive to me that there are a finite number of steps in any particular thought process. I struggle to imagine infinite and infinitesimal thought-motions having intelligible contents.Your explanation of his top-down approach through the representation vector certainly helps! I wonder, though, about two remaining questions. I would love to hear from anyone who has thoughts!1) You helped me understand that his conception of *God the Creator* as a First comes about later in his philosophy than I've ventured. To follow up, I'm wondering if he (a) rejected sense-qualities as Firsts in favor of God the Creator, or if he (b) attempted to maintain both. If he (a) rejected sense-qualities as Firsts, then I have to wonder how he accounts for them in his later top-down account of experience. If he (b) attempted to maintain both, then that's a surprising contrariety within the concept of Firsts - are they compatible?2) A top-down determination could certainly imply that time is continuous, but it doesn't seem to necessitate that it satisfies the five criteria in "Peirce's Topical Continuum": rationality, divisibility, homogeneity, contiguity, and inexhaustibility. In the same way, considering your quote from CP 4.642, to make time the standard by which we judge other things to be continuous doesn't seem to necessitate that anything in particular satisfies those criteria. So when Peirce argues that we need his account to justify the fact that we have "the idea of a true continuum," I question whether we have any experience like that. Unfortunately, my math is not up to par with your discussion in "Peirce's Topical Continuum", but it seems that especially contiguity and inexhaustibility are questionable, as well as the process involved in divisibility of delimiting indefinite material parts into actual parts. Do you feel that enough work has been done to explore if those are properties of real time, not just Peirce's mathematical-proper noun Time?Best,Harris BolusOn Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 11:49 PM Gary Richmond  wrote:Mary, Thank you for your response to our 10 minute thesis presentations today and, perhaps, especially your comment that "the connections among them were and are rich and intriguing," which was most gratifying to read. Jon is mostly to thank for making those connections, and I personally appreciate his including examples of my trikonic vectors in his presentation, as well as his mentioning my notion of ur-continuity in connection with a theory of the origin of the cosmos, one which does not begin with an inexplicable, but apparently at least quasi-material 'Big Bang'. This alternative theory is, of course, Peirce's, that theory subtly, richly and, in my opinion, convincingly developed by Jon over the past few years in List posts and published papers.I should add that, in good time, both Gary Furhman and I will also be posting our Powerpoint slideshows to Peirce-L. For now, however, we don't want to overwhelm the List with too much material too soon. Still, we are indeed eager to begin discussions of our presentation topics, beginning with Jon's. With that in mind, I'll copy here his impossibly succinct summary of what he covered in his presentation today, this as a springboard to further discussion.Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:Peirce’s mature topical conception of continuity mathematically defines it in accordance with Gary Richmond’s categorial vector of representation, from 3ns through 1ns to 2ns. Such continuity is discovered in phaneroscopy by observing and attending to the flow of time, the nature of the phaneron itself, and experience as its compulsive aspect, especially perception. Applying such continuity in semeiotic and metaphysics facilitates gaining a better understanding of 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Vittorio Serra]

Jon, (Gary, List)

Sorry to miss your talks, but I looked at the slides posted by Jon.

I have a couple of worries about this topic that I have been puzzling over.

The first is that there seems to be a tension between Peirce's late account of 
continuity and the requirement -- from the logic of relatives -- that every 
genuine Thirdness incorporate a genuine Secondness. Where is that Secondness in 
a continuum? We could say that the limits of the continuum (Peirce's 
`Absolute') together make up the required dyad, but Peirce allows that a 
continuum can be elliptical, with the limits merged and thus losing their 
dyadic character. Perhaps we can appeal to the cosmology and say that there are 
no complete continua until the (infinitely distant) future limit, so every 
partial continuum has existent limits that provide the required Secondness. 
(Partial continua may also provide a metaphysical counterpart for those lacunae 
in reality that Robert Lane has engaged with.)  But then for the evolution to 
operate we seem to need at least one complete continuum, namely time. Do you 
think there is a tension here and, if so, how might it be resolved?

The second worry is that the late account of continuity could leave Peirce open 
to the same criticisms that he levels at Hegel. He seems to have used Firstness 
and Secondness to construct a Thirdness, then rendered those building blocks 
_aufgehoben_, cancelled, and Firstness and Secondness become derivative of 
Thirdness and no longer have their severally independent being; we only have a 
single primitive kind, not three. Irrespective of whether those criticisms are 
fair of Hegel, Peirce may have fallen into his own trap. Do you think this 
worry is justified?

All the best
Vittorio Serra


From: peirce-l-requ...@list.iupui.edu  on 
behalf of Gary Richmond 
Sent: 16 April 2023 05:48
To: Mary Libertin
Cc: Daniel L Everett; Margaretha Hendrickx; Jon Alan Schmidt; Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organisation. Do not click 
links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content 
is safe.


Mary,

Thank you for your response to our 10 minute thesis presentations today and, 
perhaps, especially your comment that "the connections among them were and are 
rich and intriguing," which was most gratifying to read. Jon is mostly to thank 
for making those connections, and I personally appreciate his including 
examples of my trikonic vectors in his presentation, as well as his mentioning 
my notion of ur-continuity in connection with a theory of the origin of the 
cosmos, one which does not begin with an inexplicable, but apparently at least 
quasi-material 'Big Bang'. This alternative theory is, of course, Peirce's, 
that theory subtly, richly and, in my opinion, convincingly developed by Jon 
over the past few years in List posts and published papers.

I should add that, in good time, both Gary Furhman and I will also be posting 
our Powerpoint slideshows to Peirce-L. For now, however, we don't want to 
overwhelm the List with too much material too soon. Still, we are indeed eager 
to begin discussions of our presentation topics, beginning with Jon's. With 
that in mind, I'll copy here his impossibly succinct summary of what he covered 
in his presentation today, this as a springboard to further discussion.

Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:

Peirce’s mature topical conception of continuity mathematically defines it in 
accordance with Gary Richmond’s categorial vector of representation, from 3ns 
through 1ns to 2ns. Such continuity is discovered in phaneroscopy by observing 
and attending to the flow of time, the nature of the phaneron itself, and 
experience as its compulsive aspect, especially perception. Applying such 
continuity in semeiotic and metaphysics facilitates gaining a better 
understanding of semiosis and objective idealism, leading to the plausible 
hypothesis of the reality of God.

I would hope that it goes without saying that one does not have to have 
attended today's 10 minute thesis to jump into the conversation.

Best,

Gary Richmond

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 10:09 PM Mary Libertin 
mailto:mary.liber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Thanks for the presentations today.  They were well-coordinated; the 
connections among them were and are rich and intriguing. I look forward to 
further discussion. Thanks for providing slides, Jon.

Mary Libertin

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 15, 2023, at 8:44 PM, Daniel L Everett 
mailto:danleveret...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Yes, thanks very much. Very helpful.

Dan Everett

On Apr 15, 2023, at 19:56, Margaretha Hendrickx 
mailto:mahe3...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Thanks for your presentation.  It was very helpful (for me).

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 5:35 PM Jon Alan Schmidt 
mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>> wrote:
List:

Gary R., Gary F., and I are grateful to those of you who attended 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[Harris Bolus]

Thank you, Gary, Gary, and Jon!

Jon, you hit a lot of interesting points in your talk, and brought out many
of the most puzzling aspects of Peirce's thought to me. In "Questions
Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" he leaves us with a
promissory note to solve Zeno's paradox with regard to the continuity of
time in experience. However, in "Grounds of the Validity of the Laws of
Logic", his solution seems to be more of a critique of Zeno than a positive
account of continuity. This is understandable, since continuity is a vexing
problem that he seems to have worked on fruitfully throughout his career.
I've always wondered if he ultimately succeeded, or if the insolubility of
the continuity of time might serve in a modus tollens argument against his
JSP account and future accounts that rely on it. After all, it seems
intuitive to me that there are a finite number of steps in any particular
thought process. I struggle to imagine infinite and infinitesimal
thought-motions having intelligible contents.

Your explanation of his top-down approach through the representation vector
certainly helps! I wonder, though, about two remaining questions. I would
love to hear from anyone who has thoughts!

1) You helped me understand that his conception of *God the Creator* as a
First comes about later in his philosophy than I've ventured. To follow up,
I'm wondering if he (a) rejected sense-qualities as Firsts in favor of God
the Creator, or if he (b) attempted to maintain both. If he (a) rejected
sense-qualities as Firsts, then I have to wonder how he accounts for them
in his later top-down account of experience. If he (b) attempted to
maintain both, then that's a surprising contrariety within the concept of
Firsts - are they compatible?

2) A top-down determination could certainly imply that time is continuous,
but it doesn't seem to necessitate that it satisfies the five criteria in
"Peirce's Topical Continuum": rationality, divisibility, homogeneity,
contiguity, and inexhaustibility. In the same way, considering your quote
from CP 4.642, to make time the standard by which we judge other things to
be continuous doesn't seem to necessitate that anything in particular
satisfies those criteria. So when Peirce argues that we need his account to
justify the fact that we have "the idea of a true continuum," I question
whether we have any experience like that. Unfortunately, my math is not up
to par with your discussion in "Peirce's Topical Continuum", but it seems
that especially contiguity and inexhaustibility are questionable, as well
as the process involved in divisibility of delimiting indefinite material
parts into actual parts. Do you feel that enough work has been done to
explore if those are properties of real time, not just Peirce's
mathematical-proper noun Time?

Best,
Harris Bolus

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 11:49 PM Gary Richmond 
wrote:

> Mary,
>
> Thank you for your response to our 10 minute thesis presentations today
> and, perhaps, especially your comment that "the connections among them
> were and are rich and intriguing," which was most gratifying to read. Jon
> is mostly to thank for making those connections, and I
> personally appreciate his including examples of my trikonic vectors in his
> presentation, as well as his mentioning my notion of ur-continuity in
> connection with a theory of the origin of the cosmos, one which does *not*
> begin with an inexplicable, but apparently at least quasi-*material *'Big
> Bang'. This alternative theory is, of course, Peirce's, that theory subtly,
> richly and, in my opinion, convincingly developed by Jon over the past few
> years in List posts and published papers.
>
> I should add that, in good time, both Gary Furhman and I will also be
> posting our Powerpoint slideshows to Peirce-L. For now, however, we don't
> want to overwhelm the List with too much material too soon. Still, we are
> indeed eager to begin discussions of our presentation topics,
> beginning with Jon's. With that in mind, I'll copy here his impossibly
> succinct summary of what he covered in his presentation today, this as a
> springboard to further discussion.
>
> Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
>
> Peirce’s mature topical conception of continuity mathematically defines it
> in accordance with Gary Richmond’s categorial vector of representation,
> from 3ns through 1ns to 2ns. Such continuity is discovered in phaneroscopy
> by observing and attending to the flow of time, the nature of the phaneron
> itself, and experience as its compulsive aspect, especially perception.
> Applying such continuity in semeiotic and metaphysics facilitates gaining a
> better understanding of semiosis and objective idealism, leading to the
> plausible hypothesis of the reality of God.
>
>
> I would hope that it goes without saying that one does not have to have
> attended today's 10 minute thesis to jump into the conversation.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary Richmond
>
> On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 10:09 PM Mary Libertin 
> wrote:
>

Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Basis of Synechism in Phaneroscopy

[gnox]

Jon, i have a question about your slides 20 and 23.

On #20, under the heading of Objective Idealism, your proposal is that 

“Continuous/triadic semiosis is real and primordial (3ns).”

On #23, under “Defining Continuity,” you cite the “Categorial Vector: 
3ns→1ns→2ns,” (the vector of representation in Gary R's terminology), and i 
think it was at this point that you mentioned the idea of an “ur-continuity” 
which was there at the beginning in Peirce's cosmology (referring, i think, to 
his 1898 Cambridge Lectures).

I wonder whether (or how) all this can be reconciled with the cosmology Peirce 
develops in “Kaina Stoicheia”, which i barely mentioned in my CSPS presentation 
on Saturday, but which seems to me highly relevant to Objective Idealism. KS 
was written a few years after the Cambridge lectures, and Peirce does not 
explicitly mention either continuity or 3ns anywhere in KS; instead, his 
cosmology begins with indeterminacy. On EP2:322 he says:

[[CSP:] If we are to explain the universe, we must assume that there was in the 
beginning a state of things in which there was nothing, no reaction and no 
quality, no matter, no consciousness, no space and no time, but just nothing at 
all. Not determinately nothing. For that which is determinately not A supposes 
the being of A in some mode. Utter indetermination. But a symbol alone is 
indeterminate. Therefore, Nothing, the indeterminate of the absolute beginning, 
is a symbol. That is the way in which the beginning of things can alone be 
understood. What logically follows?]

The whole paragraph starting   
here in the edition of Kaina Stoicheia on my website gives Peirce's account of 
what logically follows. What he arrives at is this: “That is logical which it 
is necessary to admit in order to render the universe intelligible. And the 
first of all logical principles is that the indeterminate should determine 
itself as best it may” (EP2:324).

It is not obvious how this can be reconciled with a cosmology arising from an 
ur-continuity or a primal Thirdness. We could dismiss Kaina Stoicheia as 
anomalous among Peirce's works, or as something he changed his mind about 
later, but my preference (and i think yours, Jon) is to look for some 
continuity between KS and Peirce's other works that offer a semiotically 
realistic cosmology. I have a few ideas about this but would like to hear what 
others think before i post mine.

Love, gary

Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg

} Everything is actually everything else, recycled. [anon] {

  https://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{  
 Turning Signs

 

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