Re: [PEIRCE-L] Signs, Types, Tokens, Instances

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 25, 2019, at 12:47 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> How should we characterize these various ways of uttering the same 
> Proposition?  For example ...
> We are going to the restaurant.
> We are going to the restaurant?
> We are going to the restaurant!
> The only change here is the punctuation at the end, but I trust that the 
> reader can imagine how these three sentences would also sound quite different 
> when spoken, rather than written.  Clearly Peirce held that these are not 
> three different Signs; so are they three different Types of the same Sign, or 
> three different _ of the same Type?  Once again, if the latter, what 
> fills the blank?
> 

Worth noting that the distinction here is of course the characteristic focus of 
speech act theory of John Searle. I think Peirce had a somewhat similar albeit 
deeper notion as well. Jarrett Brock wrote an interesting paper on Peirce’s 
speech act theory in Transactions back in the 80’s that I have in my notes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319937?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 


One can debate how close this is to Searle of course. I think unlimited 
semiosis undermines a lot of Searle’s particular approaches. 

One rather key difference as well is how Peirce conceives of propositions. 
Quoting Peirce,

A proposition, as I have just intimated, is not to be understood as the lingual 
expression of a judgment. It is, on the contrary, that sign of which the 
judgment is one replica and the lingual expression another. But a judgment is 
distinctly more than the mere mental replica of a proposition. It not merely 
expresses the proposition, but it goes further an accepts it. I grant that the 
normal use of a proposition is to affirm it; and its chief logical properties 
relate to what would result in reference to its affirmation. (MS 517, 40-41; 
NEM 5.248)

This is just the illocutionary act and its content. 

It is very important that this distinction should be understood. The various 
acts of assertion or assevation, judgment, denial, effective command, and 
teaching are acts which establish general rules by which real things will be 
governed. No mere icon does that, for it only signifies a character and is 
perfectly passive; no index does it, although it is effective in the special 
case. No mere proposition does it. But it is of the nature of every complete 
symbol that it effects a general mode of real happening. (ibid, 36-38)

So I’d say there are either three different modes of meaning of the same sign.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Direct experience and immediate object

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 12:22 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> GF:  It’s important to note that Stjernfelt’s definition of the immediate 
> object is a functional one--the immediate object plays an indexical role 
> within the functioning of a Dicisign ...
> 
> According to Peirce, this is only true of some Immediate Objects--the 
> Existent ones for Signs that he classified as Designatives in the late 1908 
> taxonomy.  Immediate Objects can also be Possibles for Signs that are 
> Descriptives, or Necessitants for Signs that are Copulatives.

My apologies as I’m just coming back to the list after having too little time 
to read for quite some time. Are you talking about Stjernfelt’s discussion of 
natural signs? If so that functional focus would make sense rather than the 
more general case. But of course you’re completely right that possibles as 
immediate objects are extremely important.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 10:49 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
>> "Not quite sure what you’re asking. Could there have been a different 
>> movement less tied to Christianity? Probably."
> 
> I say probably not. And certainly not Islam.

I guess it depends upon what one sees as important and/or essential in the 
Renaissance. Certainly painting development would have been difficult under 
Islam given the very different restrictions on art and different visual 
emphasis. But that’s rather the issue I am getting at. What’s significant about 
the Renaissance?

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 10:49 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> Yes, communism and other religions do indeed talk about a higher purpose. As 
> do other aggregations of society. Social obligation is fairly standard in 
> almost any culture. But it generally expresses itself in the context of 
> groupthink and the need to belong. Christianity is different, because it 
> synthesizes a kind of individualism with higher purpose.

Hmm. I’m a bit nervous there. Here thinking of say Charles Taylor’s _A Secular 
Age_. I’m just not sure that individualism of the sort we think of as 
individualism is characteristic of pre-modern Christianity. There’s no doubt 
that starting with the Reformation that Protestants quickly move in that 
direction - primarily due to the hermeneutic shifts where the individual and 
the Bible become authority rather than the Catholic Church. But I’m not sure 
I’d attribute that to Christianity in general. Further even in the origins of 
modernism is precisely the re-introduction of pagan texts during the 
Renaissance that arguably enables this shift. Here’s thinking of the role of 
people like Giordano Bruno in enabling a shift. Now of course we can debate how 
significant that loose hermetic tradition that arises in the Renaissance really 
is for the rise of individualism in modernism. I think it’s sometimes 
overstated. But I think it’s more of an influence than broad Christianity 
beyond the break that happens with the printing press in Christianity leading 
to the form the Reformation takes. Although clearly there were many issues 
leading to the Reformation.

But again the real issue is the question of counterfactuals. If we rewound 
history to say 100 BCE and replayed things, are there worlds without 
Christianity that would give us individualism arising out of say paganism? It’s 
pretty hard to know. (Which makes the question really unanswerable) My guess 
though is that many would. There’s no intrinsic reason why say Platonism with 
the emphasis on the One in late antiquity necessarily is the only dominate form 
of paganism. Indeed many might argue that type of Platonism arises precisely 
due to conflict and competition with Christianity as the latter becomes 
popular. Without Christianity who’s to say something else doesn’t develop?

> The notion of Christian love enters the narrative. The courage to sacrifice 
> for what you believe in. Does Hinduism do this? Maybe. But its historical 
> context is different. Buddhism? Buddhism is more secular, less 
> individualistic, and constrained by filial piety, though they still are 
> inspired by love of truth.

Individualism certainly is taken as absent from the ancient world. Not just the 
ancient near east but around the world. So I’d agree that at least historically 
neither Hinduism nor Buddhism have individualism. I’m just skeptical 
Christianity did either. While Stoicism is anything but individualistic, it is 
interesting that the self-control and self-reflective nature of Stoic ethics do 
put an emphasis on the individual. It’s not hard to imagine that developing 
over time into something more akin to modern individualism.

To my eyes the key move in modern individualism is the shift in hermeneutics 
primarily due to the rise of the textual tradition of interpreting the Bible. 
That then quickly added to scientific hermeneutics and legal hermeneutics with 
a complex interplay between the three. Could that have arisen in other 
traditions like say a hypothetic Stoic one? It’s hard to say. There’s no Stoic 
corpus although there are the dialogs of Plato. Yet that individual 
self-reflection seems to at least possibly allow an individual hermeneutic to 
develop. At least I’m loath to say why it couldn’t, even if one sees it as less 
likely than within Christianity.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 4:31 AM, Stephen Curtiss Rose  wrote:
> 
> The Pragmaticist Maxim cuts through all these considerations and focuses on 
> the practical results of thinking, musing, etc Peirce designated aesthetics 
> and ethics as normative sciences. He was agapaic in his core understanding of 
> things. This suggests he would have had little interest in parsing the merits 
> of groups and religions but would have focused instead on the fruits of their 
> thinking. 

Many elements of the maxim as applied in this way arise out of Stoic ethics we 
should note. John Shook has a good article on this, “Peirce’s Pragmatic 
Theology and Stoic Religious Ethics.” Although much of what he discusses are 
parallels rather than evidence for direct influence. 

While the agapaic element obviously comes from Christianity, particularly the 
fairly platonic Gospel of John, the Stoic elements can’t be neglected. While 
Stoicism sees this through reason rather than love, the reasoning out the place 
of the individual in terms of the whole through self-reflection is significant. 
As is the rather pantheistic conception of God. (Here meaning how individual 
signs are parts of the whole)

> Peirce was hardly universalist in his understanding however, having a blind 
> spot about slavery. I can only assume that now that spot would have vanished. 
> And that he would see the fruits of considerations in terms of the degree to 
> which harm is created or prevented. That can and should be measured. It is 
> not beyond the province of science which is also universal.

Sadly blind spots in ethics towards slavery were nothing new. Again this was a 
constant problem in Roman ethics I’d say. It is one reason why Stoic ethics 
remain somewhat problematic IMO.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 2:38 PM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> Christianity was particularly important to the European renaissance. Why?

Not quite sure what you’re asking. Could there have been a different movement 
less tied to Christianity? Probably. If there was a tie I suspect it was 
primarily due to the place of Rome in Italy where the Renaissance started. But 
say, to pose a hypothetical counterfactual, refugees from Constantinople 
primarily went to the Germaic area which had for different reasons a stronger 
economy than Italy. We’d have expected a very different sort of “renaissance.” 
So while the form the renaissance took was very Christian, I tend to see that 
as tied to historic accident. For that matter had Islam not arisen and 
Constantinople fallen, would we talk about a Renaissance? Probably not although 
likely many similar developments in the technique of art or thought may well 
have happened. Or perhaps they wouldn’t have happened at all and Europe would 
have been stuck in a situation more akin to the prior thousand years.

If we talk evolution I think we have to recognize the place of chance in all of 
this. There may well be potential forms that are very useful that would be 
incentivized to arise. Yet the broader issues seem much more arbitrary.

> But Christianity introduces another dimension that is alien to the secular 
> Left or the atheist Right (and the vast majority of religions)... commitment 
> to a higher purpose, regardless of the earthly benefits that may or may not 
> accrue. Is there something in that, at least as a fundamental cultural 
> principle?

I’m nervous at attributing “higher purposes” just to Christianity. After all 
they’re common to many religions and even non-religions like Marxism. Now you 
could argue that Marxism can arise only because Christianity already sets the 
stage. However I think this is biasing things too much to a Eurocentric view of 
civilization. 

> Burkean conservatism and its attendant social practices has its place, but 
> the "higher purpose" is absent. Clinical. Behaviorist. A utilitarian morality 
> that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. Darwinism speaks 
> the same language, and it looks like its shelf-life will be limited. Their 
> fates are determined by the entropy of self-interest.

I’m not sure that’s true. I think Burkeanism can be reduced to “don’t change 
too fast and too radically because of unintended consequences.” Higher purposes 
seem orthogonal to that concern.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 8:43 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Hmm- I'm inclined to think that 'religions' - by which I am assuming a belief 
> in metaphysical powers, begins first at the individual psychological level, 
> where the individual becomes aware of his own finite nature and lack of power 
> to 'make things happen'. AND - his awareness that, despite his best 
> intentions, 'the best laid plans gang oft awry'.

It seems to me that viewing religion in terms of metaphysical claims ends up 
with a rather meager conception of religion. It’s true that some religions, 
medieval Christianity in particular, tended to emphasize belief. However many 
didn’t and even within pre-modern Christianity belief was only a component of 
the religion. For many religions practices rather than belief - particularly 
metaphysical claims - is the main focus. One can draw out metaphysics, but that 
tends to be rather distortive since it’s arguably not the focus of the 
religion. You then have in some religions, like Buddhism, the idea that 
metaphysics is at best serves an instrumental rather than literal function. 
(Here thinking of the Lotus Sutra and the allegory of the children in the 
burning building) Even within Christianity liberal theology tends to reject 
most of the traditional metaphysical claims as myths at best and elevates 
instead ethical duty or perhaps a more foundational sense of Being. (Here 
thinking of Tillich although heaven knows one can critique his ethical behavior)

All that said I think most evolutionary psychology does emphasize basic 
psychological behaviors such as agency detection along with the incentives of 
false positives versus false negatives as leading to religious comportments. 
(Atran’s In Gods We Trust is particularly good here although many other books 
analyze the subject)

It’s interesting again from a Peircean conception of common sense and its 
conservative nature to analyze these. Even if the beliefs are false (and some 
must be false given the varieties of religious belief) the underlying “common 
sense” makes sense. i.e. it’s better to be wrong about a predator being there 
than a predator not being there. What’s changed - and changed rapidly in the 
modern era - is that the context it which we live is radically different. Put 
an other way, the costs of being wrong about agents is simply quite different. 
(And I say that as a religious believer - but I think the underlying logic is 
quite interesting)

> Third - socialization rests on continuity, normative laws of behaviour and 
> belief, dependent expectations of how to interact with others. So- we develop 
> shared beliefs, a shared metaphysics of 'what happens when we die'; why do 
> bad/good things happen'.


This is true. And of course there are instrumentalist values to these beliefs 
to the community. Although one might also say that purported encounters also 
are reasonably common at the community level even if not the individual level. 
i.e. people who claim encounters with the dead souls. While especially in our 
“disenchanted world” we tend to dismiss such claims, they are quite widespread 
and thus have a social effect.
> I don't think this has anything to do with a 'religious leader' or medicine 
> man...Such a specialization will take place only in larger populations where 
> specialization of tasks does take place. But in small bands [about 30 people] 
> - there will rarely be a spiritual leader, much less a military!! Again - it 
> depends on the size of the population which is itself dependent on the 
> economic mode which is itself dependent on the ecological viability of the 
> land to support large populations. 
> 
This seems right. Again many religious experiences are happening on the 
individual level and are quite common. That’s not to dismiss the role of 
religious leaders - particularly in terms of transmitting religious 
interpretations of common phenomena. It matters whether your expectations of a 
phenomena is of false agency inference or a ghost. That in turn affects how 
stable the interpretations of phenomena are in a given community.

Again from a purely economical and evolutionary perspective though, communities 
that can get people to self-regulate are apt to be more successful at large 
sizes than those who don’t. So if you can convince people that someone is 
watching them and judging their actions, that allows for larger stable 
societies. Therefore there is an evolutionary value in such beliefs to make a 
community more successful than what government regulation and punishment alone 
can accomplish.

What’s interesting is to ask from a Peircean perspective how such things should 
be viewed. The way Peirce normally talks about critical common sensism tends to 
downplay, I think, the distinction between the instrumental value of a belief 
from its actual truth. That’s of course famously the difference Peirce has from 
James and to a degree Dewey. James I’d argue actually ends 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Democracy (was The real environmental problems...

[Clark Goble]

It’s worth noting that most evolutionary views of religion see much of it 
evolving intertwined with the evolution of government. To the point that it’s 
hard to separate the two. It’s true that particularly in evolutionary 
psychology religion has some key differences such as focus on the cognition of 
agency detection and so forth. Yet as a practical social organization the 
separation between government and religion is fairly recent. And arguably still 
incomplete (if it’s even possible to really separate the two)

>From a Peircean view with its emphasis on common sense as heavily tested 
>practices in a somewhat narrow environment it’s worth considering how these 
>social practices would evolve. And perhaps offer some more Burkean like 
>conservative reasons for worrying about the widespread abandonment of many 
>tested social practices.

> On Jun 19, 2018, at 7:53 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> On 6/19/2018 9:15 AM, Stephen Jarosek wrote:
>> Groupthink is the problem...
>> I believe that Christianity might provide some pointers.
> 
> All the religions of the world began at the village level,
> usually as a social group with a guru or medicine-man as
> the social-religious leader who shares power with the
> military leader.
> 
> Because of the sharing of power, the guru can only retain
> social power by persuasion.  That means an emphasis on
> normative values:  aesthetics by stories and ceremonies;
> ethics by morality and justice; and truth by knowledge of
> history, medicine, and good counsel.
> 
> But religion can be corrupted by wealth and political power.
> It's important to keep the guru poor and honest.
> 
> John
> 
> -
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> 
> 
> 
> 


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] How language began, a Ted talk by Dan Everett

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 14, 2018, at 6:06 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I came across a Ted talk by Dan E with the title
> "How language began".  At the halfway mark (9 minutes)
> he mentions Peirce and relates his semiotic to the issues:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFxg5vkaPgk
> 
> My only comment would be that there was probably some
> kind of vocalization a few million years earlier.
> 
> Chimpanzees in the wild use gestures to communicate among
> themselves.  When Australopithecus began to walk upright,
> they could carry stuff (food, weapons, and babies).  Sounds
> would be a useful supplement when their hands were full.

Some of Tomasello’s writings end up adopting fairly Peircean ideas along those 
lines. So far as I can recall he never mentions Peirce nor thirdness but much 
of his work ends up tied to a more robust thirdness leading to language. As I 
recall The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition has a lot of Peircean-like 
elements to it.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 9, 2017, at 7:18 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> But there is another side of the question revealed in Peirce’s 1909 letter to 
> Welby (SS 118):
> “My studies must extend over the whole of general Semeiotic. I think, dear 
> Lady Welby, that you are in danger of falling into some error in consequence 
> of limiting your studies so much to Language and among languages to one very 
> peculiar language, as all Aryan Languages are; and within that language so 
> much to words.”

This is very important and also a rut philosophy fell into during the move to 
linguistic analysis during much of the 20th century. Missing these more general 
cases in preference to ordinary language. 

> There is also a phenomenological side to Peirce’s semeiotic as revealed in 
> the Welby letters, but despite the subject line, we haven’t really considered 
> that in this thread …

Yes. I have a reply to that original comment from last week I’m still working 
on. I’ll hopefully take it up in there. I’m still quite swamped though. 
Hopefully others might take it up in the meantime.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 7, 2017, at 10:21 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> Clark,
>  
> Kirsti has presented zero evidence that the sign classifications Peirce 
> detailed in the 1908 Welby letters are summaries of earlier work rather than 
> current work on his part. In fact, if you actually read the material in 
> EP2:477-91 you’ll see why the editors described it as “among the richest 
> records of the evolution of his semiotic thought” — an evolution that was 
> very much in progress as he was writing, as is obvious from his own comments 
> on the process. And on p. 482, Peirce makes it very clear that “the accurate 
> definition, or logical analysis, of the concepts” of semeiotic was central to 
> his inquiry (not to Welby’s; in fact she apparently didn’t know what to make 
> of his analysis of signs).

Again just to be clear I’m not taking a position on the “when.” It’s just not 
something I’ve studied. 

I’d taken that header to the Lady Welby excerpts to imply he was working on it 
while writing to her.  However the excerpts, according to the header, come from 
a space of time from spring 1906 to Christmas 1908. So that’s a broad period 
which is all I was saying. i.e. he may have used the letter writing to clarify 
his thoughts, but he appears to have been thinking on the issues for some time.

To your final point, I’m not quite sure what you’re arguing. Certainly to the 
degree one is studying semiotics one must have accurate definitions and logical 
analysis. The question is whether that is a means to an end or the end itself. 
I’d note that the prior paragraph to the one you quote from on p. 482 goes 
through the divisions he takes from the medievals: grammar, logic & rhetoric. I 
have a post to Gary Richmond where I am dealing with his points and questions 
from last week that goes through that in more depth. It’s about half written 
but I want to be careful I get things right on it. I’d just say that the prior 
paragraph suggests meaning is quite significant. (Forgive the wordplay) It’s 
interesting that he quotes in that paragraph from his paper in 1867 as it 
relates to the relation of symbols to their objects.

My sense, perhaps mistaken, is that the debate is over which is more important, 
the grounds for meaing which Peirce puts first or the formal conditions of 
truth. That is, what does “first” mean both in how he views it in 1908 and how 
he viewed it in 1867.

Without speaking for anyone else, I’m certainly not devaluing the second 
science he discusses. Further I think even relative to meaning it is key. Yet I 
think the most important and foundational analysis consists of meaningfulness 
itself or the formal conditions of symbols having meaning. It is to conduct 
both those analysis though that one must first analyze the concepts. So I agree 
that is central, but only as a means to an end.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Aug 6, 2017, at 2:06 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
> 
> As evidence backing up interpretations on CSP's then current main interests, 
> works at hand, I find Welby correspondence necessarily weak. Not strong, that 
> is.

Again I’ve not kept carefully up on the nuances of what was innovated when, but 
it always seemed to me that many subtle aspects of his Welby correspondence 
illustrated rethinking of some aspects of the sign. Now I’d assume those didn’t 
originate for the Welby letter but probably represent work done in this general 
period of 1905 onward. 

My own position doesn’t appear to be the same as Kirsti’s. While I think he did 
focus on meaning, I think it was through his work on signs that he attempted to 
understand meaning. But again I note that I’ve just not paid close attention to 
the “when” of certain aspects of of the sign that appear in the Welby 
correspondence. I admittedly am more focused on the content. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 6:52 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But you will recall that his classification of signs and expansion of this 
> classification recently discussed here was an important part of his letters 
> to Victoria Welby. And in his late work, even his discussion of and expansion 
> of the notion of the Interpretant (meaning, as discussed in my last post) has 
> important structural features, not to be glossed over in my opinion. 

Well I think we’re saying the same thing the question is more the more minor 
issue of what was the driver: meaning or just curiosity of structure in 
general. That’s a more subtle point I don’t have strong positions on although 
I’m sympathetic to what I took Kirsti to be claiming: mainly that it was 
meaning that was the prime driver. But I think we all agree with what the 
outcome of that inquiry was.

I’d love to hear Kirsti defend her claim about meaning being the driver. 

My own beliefs here (which I’m more than happy to change with further 
information) come largely from the same paper you quoted earlier “Pragmatism” 
from 1907 (MS318) In particular the different variants of the paper he worked 
with seem to me to show a strong focus on meaning. 

Suffice it to say once more than pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of 
metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a method 
of ascertaining the meaning of hard words and abstract concepts. All 
pragmatists of whatsoever stripe will cordially ascent to that statement. As to 
the ulterior and idirect effects of practicing the pragmatistic method, that is 
quite another affair.

(Sorry just have my Kindle handy so no accurate page numbers)

He then continues going into nuance on meaning to shift to a discussion to 
signs. He bridges the discussion after talking about total meaning in terms of 
counterfactual (would-be) acts by asking how his principles of predication are 
to be proved. He turns for that to a discussion of signs, but the discussion of 
signs is ultimately conducted in service to his larger discussion of meaning 
and pragmatism. As he continues to discuss signs though, he always keeps that 
topic of meaning in sight. It’s true that by the middle of the paper he’s 
shifted from talking about meaning to talking about signification. But that’s 
merely because it’s a more precise way of continuing the same discussion. (IMO) 
I think he continues discussing meaning, noting such things that object of the 
sign can’t be the proper object. He then relates feelings as tied to the 
meaning of the sing. He finally discusses meaning once again in terms of “would 
be” as a way of ultimately grounding meaning. 

He finally closes by going through the various types of pragmatism contrasting 
them with his own over where they vary in terms of meaning using his discussion 
of the sign. To me that implies that the whole point of signs in that 
discussion was to elucidate the differences between his own meaning of 
pragmatism with James, Schiller and others.

Again, I’m fully willing to be wrong here. Most of you are far better versed in 
the nuances of Peirce’s development than I. But it really seemed to me to be 
that distancing himself from others over meaning that led to his getting into 
deeper nuance in the structure of the object and interpretant than he had in 
previous decades.

> SR:  Is this forum an effort to establish scholarly precision about what 
> Peirce said or meant or understood? Or is is an attempt to use his ideas as 
> we understand them as relevant signposts to now? Maybe it is both. . .
> 
> This has come up a number of times on this list, a few times by Stephen. I 
> would say that certain members of this forum at times emphasize the 
> importance of clarifying what Peirce's thought, while others at times 
> emphasize using his ideas to further contemporary thought. But this appears 
> to be mainly a matter of emphasis, and it seems to me that some of the 
> strongest contributors to this forum see it as a both (that is certainly my 
> position).

If the list is only for understanding the history or exegesis of Peirce’s own 
writings then it’s far too limited to be of that much interest I must confess. 
It’s in application that Peirce’s thought has most value. Whether that be in 
philosophy (my own interest) or chemistry or related fields as others have 
focused on. But if it’s merely dry history of philosophy with no interest in 
relevancy then the list will surely die quickly.

> I do not at all think that "it is safe to say" that Peirce's work on meaning 
> has been more influential than his work in semiotics, especially in recent 
> decades. While it is true that James and Dewey didn't fully (really, not all 
> that mujch) embrace Peirce's work on signs. But this field of modern 
> semeiotics which Peirce had pretty much invented (although drawing from 
> Classical, Medieval, and other sources) was, naturally, both entirely new to 
> 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 4:41 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But I consider Kirsti's notion that "CSP was all his life after SIGNS. That 
> was earlier. Later he was after meanings" itself, if not 'gravely', at least 
> completely in wrong. Peirce was actively thinking about signs and semiotics 
> throughout his life and, as I see it, increasingly so. Indeed his very idea 
> of 'meaning' is near identical to a particular kind of sign, namely, the 
> interpretant.

I don’t disagree with that - I think what I was agreeing with her over was the 
emphasis on meaning. Of course that’s not all that Peirce was focused on. Sorry 
if I suggested deeper disagreement - I was writing quickly. I don’t think 
Heidegger was only focused on meaning either, although that clearly was one of 
his main emphasis. How to take him in that regard is still a matter of debate 
in Heideggarian circles. (Thomas Sheehan has caused a bit of a divide over how 
to take Heidegger - he emphasizes the meaning aspect and thinks the focus of 
being misses the point - many disagree with him both on the place of meaning in 
Heidegger but also the importance of being)

Really quickly, how I took Kirsti (and please correct me if I’m reading wrong) 
was just that initially Peirce’s focus was on the structure of signs and later 
he was thinking through the structure in terms of meaningfulness that led to 
some of the innovations in structure in the early 20th century. (Such as those 
in his letters to Lady Welby) But I always took the main change as arising out 
of a deeper focus on meaning leading him to adopt positions surprisingly 
similar to Hegel at times. So ironically his deeper structural analysis of 
signs arises out of inquiry on meaning. That is recognizing the differences 
within both the object and the interpretant and how the former determines the 
latter.

Since it’s precisely there that I think there’s common ground with the 
Heideggarian stream of phenomenology (particularly the gap between object and 
sign which a guess is required to bridge) this is quite important in my view. 
Those elements, while often present in a primitive fashion in the earlier 
Peirce really are explicated best in his later works.

The second thing I’d add is that the place of the pragmatic maxim is crucial in 
all of this as a verification principle of meaning (not truth as others took 
it). While one obviously can’t fully separate the maxim from his work on signs, 
the place of meaningfulness as a key factor in his thought in some ways exceeds 
his work on signs. Indeed if Peirce’s thought had an outsized influence, I 
think it safe to say it was his work on meaning not signs that was most 
influential. It’s worth noting that neither James nor Dewey really fully 
embrace his work on signs, only his work on meaning. This is arguably true of 
most pragmatists. Even those later figures who seem to be close to aspects of 
Peirce’s signs - say Grice’s work on language - still end up missing the 
crucial insights. Perhaps because it was his work on signs that quickly became 
so forgotten except in vague ways from some of his popular early works that 
continued to be reprinted. Certainly the key formulation from the end of his 
life seem largely unknown.

More later when I get some time.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 31, 2017, at 12:52 PM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
> In my view Gary R. is gravely wrong in assuming that CSP was all his life 
> after SIGNS. That was earlier. Later he was after meanings.
> 
> Heidegger was never attempting to create any theory of SIGNS. He was after 
> meanings. Thus he turned into our ancient Greek heritance.  And did not 
> accept the modern meanings attacted to the basic concepts. - He 
> re-interpreted them.
> 
> With this he truly was in line with Peirce.

I think this is right, although the place of Being is different - although even 
there some of the ways Peirce uses the copula is interesting as we discussed 
back in the reading club on Natural Signs. 

> In 1970's  ( and onwards) Peirce became kind of covertly famous in Europe. 
> His writings were studied by the top philosophers. But his name was seldom, 
> if ever mentioned.

That’s interesting. I was familiar with Derrida’s and of course Habermas but I 
didn’t know there were others. 

> Since I read Heidegger's Time and Being, It has been quite clear to me that 
> he was after something akin to Peirce. - Kind of muddled Peirce, I thought.
> 
> Afterwards I read about all Heidegger has written. And was even more 
> convinced that my idea was valid.

I want to respond to Gary in some depth. Unfortunately my kids are starting 
school, my wife is 7 months pregnant, and we have an important client coming at 
work. But I am not posting and running. I think he raises some really important 
issues.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jul 28, 2017, at 2:29 PM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> By the 20th century Peirce will have somewhat changed his terminology; but 
> from 1902 on I believe he always refer to three branches of logica docens, or 
> logic as semeiotic: namely speculative grammar, critic, and methodeutic (or, 
> speculative rhetoric). These branches of logic all concern themselves with 
> the study of signs as such, while phenomenology is, as it were, pre-logica 
> docens (although it most certainly employs logica utens as has been discussed 
> on this list as we all employ logic even before we've reflected on it in a 
> scientific spirit). 

My understanding is that for Peirce semiotics (our term) is grounded in 
phenomenology or phaneroscopy. So I definitely don’t want to argue that the 
semantic extension of terms is the same in the Heideggarian tradition as in the 
Peircean tradition. Rather I wish to argue that via similar influences there is 
a similarity of content. Heidegger doesn’t really engage much with semiotics 
proper - his focus is primarily on Being arising out of his early work on 
Scotus and then via rethinking Husserl’s phenomenology - primarily 
intentionality and moving from bracketing/reduction to a general hermeneutic. 
Derrida is the one who later takes up semiotics in the more Heideggarian 
tradition via his research on Peirce.

So I’ll readily concede some of your points, such as pointing that some things 
are metaphysics rather than phenomenology for Peirce. But again I think we have 
to distinguish between the content of the two movements versus the terminology 
used to describe that content. I think the latter gets focused on to the 
detriment of thinking through the former.

> In truth this more scientific logical trivium goes back very far indeed, to 
> the Romans, Peirce writes: 

Yes, while we often look to Peirce’s engagement with the scholastics, 
particularly Scotus, a lot of this can be found in the tradition of platonism 
and stoicism in late antiquity. I’ll confess I’ve not read or studied much of 
Peirce’s engagement with such figures although I know he was very well read in 
the texts available - particularly Proclus and similar figures.

> So while I agree that in Heidegger as in Peirce that there is no bracketing 
> or reduction or psychologism or egoic intentiality as there is in Husserl, 
> yet speculative grammar (as a branch of logic) is, in Peirce's classification 
> of the sciences, further down in the list of sciences and, so, draws 
> principles from it and not the reverse. This is quite different from your 
> commenting that, "like Peirce, Heidegger uses [speculative grammar] as a 
> stepping off point" for his phenomenology. Quite the contrary in my opinion. 

Let me think through this a bit. Although my initial inclination is to note 
that in terms of thinking through issues it’s different from the position in 
the taxonomy of Peirce. That is while phenomenology ultimately grounds signs 
and signs these later fields that doesn’t entail that in inquiry the process of 
thinking proceeds solely in that direction. But you raise some good points and 
I’ll have some further comments later.
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[PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy & Phenomenology

[Clark Goble]

The recent discussion raised some thoughts I’d not entertained in some time. We 
know that there are huge differences between what Husserl called phenomenology 
and Peirce’s project. Indeed Peirce explicitly criticized Husserl for 
psychologism. There’s nothing really like the reduction or bracketing in 
Peirce’s thought and intentionality is completely inverse from 
Brentano/Husserl. Intentionality is from object through signs rather than 
anything like an ego or directness. Consciousness just isn’t an issue the way 
it is for the more Cartesian inclined phenomenologists. Peirce’s sense of 
intentionality arises not from the conceptions developed in the modern era but 
from Scotus’ notion of first and second intentions.

I’ve long noted that while Peirce’s phenomenology bears little resemblance to 
Husserl’s, Heidegger’s seems quite different. Famously it is both on the nature 
of consciousness and intentionality that Heidegger breaks from Husserl. 
Heidegger too turned to Scotus and particularly Scotus’ notion of 
intentionality. Following Scotus Heidegger saw a distinction between ideal 
meaning and real Being that the intended meanings must be a priori in some 
sense. For Scotus the foundation of signs thus because the a priori structures 
of the soul. I’m here thinking of Scotus’ Grammatica Speculativa.

Peirce too turns to this same aspect of Scotus’ thought. In the Comments 
dictionary there are quite a few entries for Speculative Grammar that are tied 
to Scotus’ thought. These are the conditions of signs as signs. (See CP 1.444 
for example)

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/speculative-grammar 


Like Peirce, Heidegger uses this as a stepping off point. Meaning becomes 
autonomous due to this a priori structure. That is fundamentally Heidegger 
breaks with Husserl over these same aspects of psychologism. The main place one 
might see a difference is over the meaning of an individual soul. Peirce sees 
individuals as symbols - arising out of these phenomenological structures in 
acts. Heidegger comes close, seeing historicity in the individual soul where 
these acts occur. Yet at the same time Heidegger’s notion of “living spirit” 
bears similarities to Peirce’s conception of universe in terms of sign. 
Unfortunately this is most pronounced in the early Heidegger rather than the 
more interesting Heidegger of the late 20’s and early 30’s. Yet the shift tends 
to maintain the a priori structure from his engagement with Scotus combined 
with a more historical sense. 

So I’m not saying they are doing the same thing, but I do think they are more 
commensurate than many think. (Unlike Husserl)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] [Sadhu Sanga] Re: Is relativity theory holding back progress in science?

[Clark Goble]

> On Jul 20, 2017, at 6:24 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I have been following new developments in physics for many years,
> and I am also interested in Peirce's views on the subject.  But I
> agree with the summary below by Kashyap V Vasavada.
> 
> I would prefer not to have these emails stuff my folder for
> Peirce-L.  Unless other Peirce-L subscribers want to read these
> notes, I suggest that the cc or bcc to Peirce-L should stop.

Ditto. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of Peirce content.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Did Peirce Anticipate the Space-Time Continuum?

[Clark Goble]

> On Jun 6, 2017, at 11:55 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> Clark, List,
> 
> You say:  "So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal 
> due to the role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those 
> terms, I believe the implication is that chance breaks symmetries enabled by 
> determinism."
> 
> In saying this, you seem to be putting greater weight on points 2 and 3 
> below. 
> 
> 1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the 
> conservation of energy.
> 2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly 
> inexplicable.
> 3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be 
> explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real 
> chance.
> 4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is 
> maintained. (CP 6.613)
> 
> I would have thought that points 1 and 4 would be particularly important for 
> understanding some of the reasons for limiting the scope of the 1st and 2nd 
> laws of thermodynamics as explanatory for the growth of order in natural 
> systems (i.e., that they govern closed systems, but are limited, in some 
> sense, in the application to open systems). Here are two questions. 

In the discussion we were talking about habits as related to physics. I think 
Peirce recognized all four as important but the question was how chance could 
lead to habits, the way he argues in his cosmology. He provides a few arguments 
for this although not everyone will be convinced. And of course his cosmology, 
as I frequently note as a caveat, is among his more controversial positions. 
I’m not sure I agree with him there although I find myself also unable to fully 
dismiss his reasoning.

> 
> (a) In what ways do points 1 and 4 add something that is not already found in 
> points 2 and 3? 

I think (3) is important in terms of what is demanded for explanation. i.e. we 
can’t just take regularities for granted but must ask how and why they arise. 
(1) and (2) are just premises due to observation. I don’t see (2) & (3) 
entailing (1) since (3) is just a demand for explanation not a conclusion.

> (b) How might Peirce's account of the law of mind--which I take to be 
> embodied in a summary way in the 1st and 4th points--help us better 
> understand the relationships between the making and breaking of fundamental 
> symmetries and the growth of order in natural systems?

I think they end up being the same thing. The earlier back cosmologically in 
terms of physics, not ontology, one goes the more symmetries you have. Thus the 
evolution of the early universe is a series of symmetry breaking by chance. 
Those in turn result in new natural laws due to the symmetry breaking. (Not 
fundamental natural law obviously) The justification for this in physics is due 
to cosmological expansion. That acts in a fashion akin to state change in 
general thermodynamics. Think starting with a gas and compressing until it’s a 
liquid and then a solid. Here the process goes the opposite direction but is 
analogous in terms of symmetry breaking.

Now where it gets trickier is when Peirce moves to his more neoplatonic 
thinking before time to the ultimate ontological cosmology. There he’s doing 
something more akin to the Timaeus. But I’m not quite sure I buy it as he ends 
up not having time proper but something very much like time in terms of 
precession. Yet that’s a hidden ontological feature he doesn’t analyze. So from 
a purely philosophical perspective those ontological muses seem problematic due 
to the way he grapples with time.

In a somewhat similar fashion the closer to the big bang one gets the more 
problematic time becomes in terms of quantum mechanics. To the point that I 
don’t think we can say much. That’s not an ontological analogue to Peirce’s 
cosmology though. Just that time is a tricky thing.
> 
> These two questions are not yet well formulated. I'm posing them here in the 
> hopes of working towards a better formulation of what it is that I find 
> puzzling about the law of mind and its application to these questions about 
> the growth of order.

There are some interesting quotes by Peirce here. I’m not sure his solutions 
are fully satisfactory though. Here’s one quote to keep in mind.

We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited 
range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring 
to be explained; and since law in general cannot be explained by any law in 
particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of 
pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (CP 1.407)

While not explicitly about mind, it does explain the mind-like constitution of 
the universe. Mind is mind because of its 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Did Peirce Anticipate the Space-Time Continuum?

[Clark Goble]

> On May 30, 2017, at 2:49 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> I am not happy with tychism: Conservation laws require infinite exactness of 
> conservation: Energy or impulse before a reaction must be exactly the same 
> before and after a reaction. Though in a very small (quantum) scale it is not 
> so, but then there must be some kind of counting buffer mechanism to make 
> sure that in a bigger scale infinite exactness is granted. This one is also 
> governed by laws. I do not believe in the dualism sui-generis versus laws, I 
> rather guess that it is all laws providing the possibility of evolution and 
> generation of new things, self-organization and so on. Without laws nothing 
> would happen, I´d say. I think that natural constants may change, but that 
> there are some laws that dont. And if these laws are only the ones based on 
> tautology: One plus one can never be 2.001, because 2 is defined as 1+1. 
> I guess these eternal laws are the laws of logic. I think they are 
> tautologies, like a syllogism is a tautology: The conclusion is nothing new, 
> all is already said in the two premisses: "Arthur is a human, all humans are 
> mortal, so Arthur is mortal", you can forget the conclusion by just putting 
> an "and" between the premisses: "Arthur is a human, and all humans are 
> mortal". The conclusion ", so Arthur is mortal" is redundant, except you do 
> not believe in continuity which is indicated by the word "and" between the 
> two premisses.
> My conclusion: "Law" is an inexact term. A "law" is a compound constructed of 
> an eternal part (tautology, continuity), and a changeable part ((temporary) 
> constants).

Mathematically of course conservation laws arise out of Noether’s Theorem. That 
more or less just states the relationship between symmetries and conservation 
laws. I don’t think we need a “buffer” to deal with this, just symmetries. It 
would seem that continuity may (or may not) apply to those symmetries and thus 
determines the conservation.

Of course Noether did her important work both on the theorem that bares her 
name as well as linear algebra well after Peirce died. But Peirce did do some 
work in the logic of linear algebra that is tied to the theorem. So far as I 
know he never approached the insight of her theorem though. He was familiar 
with the abstract principles though. However Peirce did write on conservation 
laws which we discussed here a few months back as tied to chance and 
determinism relative to habits.

In my attack on "The Doctrine of Necessity" I offered four positive arguments 
for believing in real chance. They were as follows:
1. The general prevalence of growth, which seems to be opposed to the 
conservation of energy.
2. The variety of the universe, which is chance, and is manifestly inexplicable.
3. Law, which requires to be explained, and like everything which is to be 
explained must be explained by something else, that is, by non-law or real 
chance.
4. Feeling, for which room cannot be found if the conservation of energy is 
maintained. (CP 6.613)

So Peirce clearly didn’t see conservation of energy as universal due to the 
role of chance. While I don’t think he put it in quite those terms, I believe 
the implication is that chance breaks symmetries enabled by determinism.




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Apr 20, 2017, at 9:32 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> After that one can consider
> the fine points of generic versus degenerate cases, and that is
> all well and good, but until you venture to say exactly *which*
> monadic, dyadic, or triadic predicate you have in mind, you
> haven't really said that much at all.

Glad I’m not alone in thinking that. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dyadic relations within the triadic

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 15, 2017, at 12:14 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> Clark, yes, that’s why I was careful to qualify my comments by saying “In 
> NDTR.” But when you say that “what happens actually affects what is 
> possible,” what you mean is that what happens now affects what can possibly 
> happen in the future. Possibility as Firstness is timeless, in Peirce’s 
> usage, so your usage of the term in your statement diverges from Peirce’s 
> usage in a categorial context.

That’s an interesting question. My assumption is simply that possibles are 
abstract. So what we’re really saying is that there is some possibility given a 
particular state where the state can be of varying levels of generality or 
vagueness. That is when we talk about how an event changes the possibilities 
we’re talking about what possibilities as first apply. The reasoning of 
possibilities is always this applying abstractions.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Dyadic relations within the triadic

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Apr 15, 2017, at 10:28 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> The upshot of this, as far as I can see, is that Firstness (possibility) 
> cannot determine Secondness (actuality) or Thirdness (law), and Secondness 
> cannot determine Thirdness: determination can only run in the other 
> direction. And again, this seems to me entirely consistent with the 
> definitions of the three trichotomies and the tenfold classification.
> 

We should note that this is for a particular type of analysis and meaning of 
determines. Since in his cosmology he’s not so limited. Further we can see how 
what happens actually affects what is possible. (If a bridge collapses it’s no 
longer possible to cross) So we should be careful not to assume NDTR applies to 
any type of analysis.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 9:30 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I'm guessing an engineer would have some acquaintance with
> relational databases, which have after all a history going
> back to Peirce, and I would recommend keeping that example
> in mind for thinking about k-adic relations in general.

I didn’t know that. Was the computer science that developed relational 
databases engaging with Peirce explicitly? Any good place to get a primer on 
that history?



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 12, 2017, at 8:15 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> CG
>> I’d more put it that biological descriptions typically aren’t
>> reducible to chemistry or physics... attempting to make the
>> reduction... did perhaps help in getting biologists to think
>> more carefully about the type of descriptions they make.
> 
> You could say the same about "reducing" meteorology to computational
> physics.  Weather predictions today are far more reliable than they
> were 50 years ago.  But it's good to have an alternate date when
> you're planning a picnic.

Yes that’s the exact way I think about it. It’s a practical issue not a 
metaphysical one. Further non-linear dynamics (not always at work) can make 
some reductions as difficult as some predictions. A little error can sometimes 
spiral out of control such as with a double pendulum.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 10, 2017, at 12:44 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> How exactly would you pose "the Kantian question about 'Das Ding an sich'?  
> What makes you think that I am "trying to get a short way out of" it?

I take it primarily as the problem of reference. While Peirce does have the 
index, he doesn’t require firm ground to use the index. It’s signs all the way 
down due to the way he conceives of signs. 

> "Our existing universe" is not limited to the past; it includes the future, 
> but it obviously does not include any other universes or "Platonic worlds."

Not sure what you mean by that. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 8, 2017, at 10:46 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> Indeed, Peirce defined "potential" as "indeterminate yet capable of 
> determination in any special case" (CP 6.185; 1898), but wrote that "Ideas, 
> or Possibles"--i.e., the constituents of the Universe of 1ns, "whatever has 
> its Being in itself alone"--are "incapable of perfect actualization on 
> account of [their] essential vagueness" (EP 2:478-479; 1908).  I found this 
> distinction very helpful in sorting out Peirce's cosmology when we were 
> discussing it on the List last fall.

I think this is more the distinction for Peirce between generality and 
vagueness. The difference is in who is able to make the determination. Vague 
could mean there is a determinate quality which is simply unknown or that the 
thing itself is developing that quality. Whereas generality is wrapped up in 
being able to simply pick one and is wrapped up in his notion of continuity.

My thought is that these are vague because they are symbols under growth and 
are coming to have the properties they will have one day. In the same way that 
I might only be able to speak vaguely of my son’s qualities since his life is 
just partially underway.

> I think that both of us agree with Edwina that all three Categories were 
> present from the very beginning of our existing universe.

I should hasten to add that I agree with that too. I take Peirce’s cosmology to 
be in logical time before there was anytime. Further, while I differ somewhat 
with Edwina regarding what Peirce believed about this, my own views are 
actually closer to hers..

> Gary quoted Clark as having written, "I think Peirce has [two] categories of 
> chance. One is discontinuous whereas the other is continuous. This ends up 
> being important in various ways."  However, I do not recall seeing that 
> statement in any of Clark's messages, and it also does not show up in the 
> List archive.  More importantly, where does this notion arise in Peirce's 
> writings?

I could have sworn I put that in the email. Looking I realize I didn’t. Part of 
it arises out of the continuum behind the continuum which we’ve discussed in 
the past here with the blackboard metaphor.

I draw a chalk line on the board. This discontinuity is one of those brute acts 
by which alone the original vagueness could have madea  step towards 
definiteness. There is a certain element of continuity in this line. Where did 
this continuity come from? It is nothing but the original continuity of the 
blackboard which makes everything upon it continuous. (6.203)

The one quote I’d give would be this one:

My definition of a continuum only prescribes that, after every innumerable 
series of points, there shall be a next following point, and does not forbit 
this to follow at the interval of a mile. That, therefore, certainly permits 
cracks everywhere. (4.126)

That’s not fully satisfying though although it points to the distinction. I was 
primarily thinking of the two tendencies after rereading Reynold’s paper 
“Peirce’s Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics” which I referred to last 
week. An other way of putting the distinction is as reversible and irreversible 
rather than continuous and discontinuous. The idea that ideas spread 
continuously yet can also change really is the same distinction.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 9, 2017, at 7:41 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> The surface is a vague boundary.  All plants and animals have
> exterior cells that are dead or dying (hair, skin, scales, bark)
> and they have secretions (sweat, tears, oils, sap, resins).
> 
> The outer layers are always mixed with liquids and solids from
> all kinds of sources (living or non-living), and they are subject
> to various abrasions and adhesions -- deliberate or accidental
> (e.g., a bird preening its feathers, animals scratching, grooming
> themselves or others, rolling in the dust, or washing in water).
> 
> Even the interior is not well defined.  There are many more billions
> of bacterial cells than human cells in and on the human body.  Some
> of them are pathogens, but most are *essential* to human health.

This seems right, although the word vague in a Peircean sense might not quite 
fit. I think not well defined is a better way to put it.

I especially like the point you and Kirstima make about non-human cells. Our 
body is very much a symbol in a certain sense that when examined closely does 
not have the type of unity we like to imagine. Even ignoring the issue of the 
human biome, we’re finding that even the DNA of our food can end up in odd 
places of our body, potentially interacting in more complex ways than we can 
yet determine. In the bodies of mothers the remnants of their children’s DNA 
can remain and have effects. Lines become blurry and complex. Even the very 
notion of inside and outside fail us. (Is the digestion system ‘inside’ and if 
so when?)

> Very few molecules exist in isolation.  For example, salt (NaCl)
> rarely consists of Na-CL pairs.  In a crystal, the atoms are
> organized in a lattice where each atom is surrounded by atoms
> of both kinds.  In water, Na ions float independently of CL ions.

And the very notion of atoms and molecules when examined more technically is 
better seen as a quantum field which is itself a type of potentiality.

We simplify both because we have to in order to reason about these things, but 
also because our simplifications work most of the time. Even if we could create 
a gigantic complex Hamiltonian to express the field of salt crystal, it 
wouldn’t necessarily help us.

> I agree that biology is not reducible to chemistry or physics.
> But I'd say that the major difference was caused by the first
> quasi-minds, which created the first non-degenerate Thirdness
> (purpose, goals, or intentions).

I’d more put it that biological descriptions typically aren’t reducible to 
chemistry or physics. Although for all the problems philosophy of science 
created here in the 50’s through 70’s attempting to make the reduction, I think 
it did perhaps help in getting biologists to think more carefully about the 
type of descriptions they make.





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[PEIRCE-L] Nature of Habit

[Clark Goble]

On more thing before I leave for the weekend. It seems to me that 1907’s famous 
MS 318 is pretty key to all this the more I think about it. That’s partially 
because he speaks of three habit-interpretants and changes how he talks of 
habit somewhat. Part of the manuscript is in EP 2:398. I didn’t see it 
available online anywhere. The primary focus is the pragmatic maxim, but I 
think he gets at many of the issues we’re discussing.

The main focus is the relationship between the inner world and outer world in 
terms of the effect of a sign. 

It is to be noted that in calling a habit “self-controlled,” I do not mean that 
it is in the power of the man who has it to cast it off,— to cease, in the 
example just given, to try to make his decorations beautiful; for we well know 
that he has no such power,— but what I mean is that it has been developed under 
the process just described in which critical feelings as to the results of 
inner or outer exercises stimulate to strong endeavors to repeat or to modify 
those effects. I may mention that I do not recognize pleasure and pain as 
specific feelings but only as being whatever feelings may stimulate efforts, in 
the one case to reproduce or continue them, or, as we say, “attractive” 
feelings, and in the other case to annul and avoid them, or, as we say, 
“repulsive” feelings. (MS 319 EP 2.431-2, 1907) 

Now Peirce is explicitly talking here of humans and not general semiosis as 
we’re concerned with. So I recognize we have to be careful. 

reiterations in the inner world―fancied reiterations―if well-intensified by 
direct effort, produce habits, just as do reiterations in the outer world; and 
these habits will have power to influence actual behaviour in the outer world; 
especially, if each reiteration can be accompanied by a peculiar strong effect 
that is usually likened to issuing a command to one’s future self. (MS 319: 94; 
CP: 5.487, 1907)

Also 
Habit. Involuntary habits are not meant, but voluntary habits, i.e., such as 
are subject (in some measure to self-control). Now under what conditions is a 
habit subject to self-control? Only if what has been done in one instance with 
the character, its consequences, and other circumstances, can have a triadic 
influence in strengthening or weakening the disposition to do the like on a new 
occasion. This is as much to say that voluntary habits is conscious habit. For 
what is consciousness? In the first place feeling is conscious. But what is a 
feeling, such as blue, whistling, sour, rose-scented? It is nothing but a 
quality, character, or predicate which involves no reference to any other 
predicate or other things than the subject in which it inheres, but yet 
positively is. [...] Our own feelings, if there were no memory of them for any 
fraction of a second, however small, if there were no triadic time-sense to 
testify with such assurance to their existence and varieties, would be equally 
unknown to us. Therefore, such a quality may be utterly unlike any feeling we 
are acquainted with, but it would have all that distinguish all our feelings 
from everything else. In the second place, effort is conscious. It is at once a 
sense of effort on the part of the being who wills and is a sense of resistance 
on the part of the object upon which the effort is exerted. But these two are 
one and the same consciousness. Otherwise, all that has been said of the 
feeling consciousness is true of the effort consciousness; and to say that this 
is veracious means less if possible than to say that a thing is whatever it may 
be.

There is, then, a triadic consciousness which does not supersede the lower 
order, but goes bail for them and enters bonds for their veracity. 
Experiment upon inner world must teach inner nature of concepts as experiment 
on outer world must teach nature of outer things.

Meaning of a general physical predicate consists in the conception of the habit 
of its subject that it implies. And such must be the meaning of a psychical 
predicate.

The habits must be known by experience which however exhibits singulars only.

Our minds must generalize these. How is this to be done?

The intellectual part of the lessons of experimentation consists in the 
consciousness or purpose to act in certain ways (including motive) on certain 
conditions. (MS 318 EP: 2.549–550, 1907)

But feeling simply is chance for Peirce as seen from the inside.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:53 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> 1) You write that 'chance isn't separate from Thirdness'. I think it is. 
> Chance/Firstness is a basic modal category; it's not part of Thirdness.
> 
> 2) I don't read Peirce's view as Neoplatonism ..i.e., that the  first 
> principle is 'the One'. I see Peirce's first principle as Mind.
> 

How do you read his long cosmological writings? That is, while I understand why 
you’d want to read him this way, and it may be more fruitful, it seems you have 
to exclude some pretty key texts.

Anyway, I’m not saying firstness is part of thirdness in any strong sense. 
Thirdness is a kind of mediate between firstness as chance and secondness as 
law. Also while Peirce has some neoplatonic tendencies I think the One and 
Matter are eliminated as “false categories” or merely limits of thought.

The process he discusses in CP 6.215-220 or CP 1.407-15 is the origin of the 
universe. So when we talk of the universe those are already all in place. 
Further Peirce himself calls this platonic. 

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. (CP 6.194)

Again I think there are compelling reasons to doubt Peirce here so we have to 
distinguish between what Peirce thought and our own analysis of what we might 
say he should have thought. 

I probably won’t be able to write more until next week.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't see that 'repetition depends on chance'. I think that you are 
> ignoring that Thirdness [the action of developing and taking habits] is 
> primordial and not a result of another modal category, i.e., Firstness. [I 
> think that all three modes are primordial; others see only Thirdness as 
> primordial]
> 
> 

Just to add to this, I probably should add a bit more defense to anticipate 
some arguments. I’m here thinking of the following quote:

Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third (CP: 6.32, 
1891)

again

Three elements are active in the world: first, chance; second, law; and third, 
habit taking (CP 1.409, 1888)

That is we must distinguish law from the tendency to take habits. There is I 
think some potential inconsistencies here in Peirce over time. So noting the 
time with our quotes is important. My sense is that Peirce was conflicted from 
thinking through this from a perspective of human psychology versus his more 
mathematical and physical drives and experiments. Fundamentally this tendency 
to acquire habits is learning, love, or aesthetics. Habit formation is the 
generalization of belief and habit privation is the generalization of doubt to 
the categories in general.

Belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness; it is a habit of mind 
essentially enduring for some time, and mostly (at least) unconscious; and like 
other habits, it is (until it meets with some surprise that begins its 
dissolution) perfectly satisfied. Doubt is of an altogether contrary genus. It 
is not a habit, but the privation of a habit. Now a privation of a habit, in 
order to be anything at all, must be a condition of erratic activity that in 
some way must get superseded by a habit. (CP: 5.417, 1905)

But this tendency is the law of mind which makes something more likely to 
arise, but which Peirce conceives of in some early form of statistical 
mechanics, perhaps arising out of Boltzmann’s thermodynamics. (As John noted 
Peirce doesn’t appear to have a full understanding of statistical mechanics, 
although one shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of reading Gibbs)

I think the key text here is “The Architecture of Theories” from 1891. In that 
thirdness is the mediating between firstness and secondness as end.

The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the 
character of its commands. A physical law is absolute. What it requires is an 
exact relation. Thus, a physical force introduces into a motion a component 
motion to be combined with the rest by the parallelogram of forces; but the 
component motion must actually take place exactly as required by the law of 
force. On the other hand, no exact conformity is required by the mental law. 
Nay, exact conformity would be in downright conflict with the law ; since it 
would instantly crystallise thought and prevent all further formation of habit. 
The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise. It thus 
resembles the “non-conservative” forces of physics, such as viscosity and the 
like, which are due to statistical uniformities in the chance encounters of 
trillions of molecules.

So what he wants is something between pure chance and pure law which is the 
statistical tendency.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 2:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> "We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a 
> limited range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
> spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
> mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact 
> requiring to be explained; and since Law in general cannot be explained by 
> any law in particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is 
> developed out of pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (“A Guess at 
> the Riddle”,
> 
> My reading of the above is that all three modes are primordial. Chance or 
> Firstness 'mingles' with Thirdness because all three modes are primordial [in 
> my view] but this correlation doesn't mean that Chance CAUSES Thirdness. It 
> co-exists with it and enables new laws to emerge and develop.
> 
I don’t quite understand that reading I confess. Chance isn’t separate from 
thirdness. This is really explicit in the other quotes I gave from Peirce’s 
cosmology. Again, I don’t think we have to agree with Peirce there. I have my 
doubts. But I’m not quite sure I see how to read him as asserting what you are 
claiming. Particularly when he explains the origin of firstness, secondness and 
thirdness out of “the womb of indeterminacy.”

If law were primordial it wouldn’t need to be explained whereas Peirce is 
explicit that it must be explained. Now I’m more with you in that I’m not sure 
I buy Peirce’s neoplatonism here. I’d much rather favor the three be primordial 
and irreducible. That makes far more sense to me. But that doesn’t appear to be 
Peirce’s position.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 7, 2017, at 11:58 AM, Gary Richmond  wrote:
> 
> But, as I see it, this is not at all the case. Chance may break up old 
> habits--and this is essential, for example, for evolution to occur

Breaking up habits to create new habits is habit creation. The key point of 
habit is repetition. But the repetition itself depends upon chance. This is 
best seen at the cosmological level where Peirce makes this argument explicitly.

Out of the womb of indeterminacy we must say that there would have come 
something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by 
the principle of habit there would have been a second flash. Though time would 
not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first, because 
resulting from it. Then there would have come other successions ever more and 
more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take them ever 
strengthening themselves, until the events would have been bound together into 
something like a continuous flow. 

The quasi-flow which would result would, however, differ essentially from time 
in this respect, that it would not necessarily be in a single stream. Different 
flashes might start different streams, between which there should be no 
relations of contemporaneity or succession. So one stream might branch into 
two, or two might coalesce. But the further result of habit would inevitably be 
to separate utterly those that were long separated, and to make those which 
presented frequent common points coalesce into perfect union. Those that were 
completely separated would be so many different worlds which would know nothing 
of one another; so that the effect would be just what we actually observe. (CP 
1.412)


This habit taking is later explained.

all things have a tendency to take habits. . . . [For] every conceivable real 
object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former like occasion 
than otherwise. This tendency itself constitutes a regularity, and is 
continually on the increase. . . . It is a generalizing tendency; it causes 
actions in the future to follow some generalizations of past actions; and this 
tendency itself is something capable of similar generalizations; and thus, it 
is self-generative. (CP 1.409 emphasis mine)

Quoting Kelly Parker on this point:

The character of such things, and consequently the relations and modes of 
interaction among them, would be extremely irregular at first. The principle of 
habit-taking has the effect of making events in the Universe of Actuality more 
stable and regular. It underlies the emergence of permanent substances, as we 
have seen. Beyond this, it has the effect of stabilizing the kinds of reaction 
which tend to occur among different substances. Nothing forces there to be a 
tendency toward regularity in the Universe of Actuality, for the notion of 
force implies necessity, an advanced variety of the regularity we are trying to 
explain (CP 1.407). Regularity, like possibility and particularity, must appear 
in the evolving cosmos by chance. But just as we have seen the tendency to take 
habits operate on Firstness to establish the Universe of Ideas and on 
Secondness to establish the universe of Actuality, so does it operate on 
Thirdness, on itself, to establish a universe dominated by Thirdness, 
lawfulness, order, and reasonableness.

Law is habit and Peirce is explicit in “A Guess at the Riddle” that law comes 
out of chance.

We are brought, then, to this: conformity to law exists only within a limited 
range of events and even there is not perfect, for an element of pure 
spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or at least must be supposed to 
mingle, with law everywhere. Moreover, conformity with law is a fact requiring 
to be explained; and since Law in general cannot be explained by any law in 
particular, the explanation must consist in showing how law is developed out of 
pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy. (“A Guess at the Riddle”,  CP 
1.407)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:50 PM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> SM is statistical mechanics. I don’t recall Peirce ever discussing it, though 
> it was well known at his time, and proven beyond a doubt with Einstein’s ex 
> planation of Brownian motion in 1906. Before that many French theorists 
> rejected it because atoms and molecules were not observables.

Ah. I should have guessed. I was reading it as Standard Model and was getting 
thoroughly confused. LOL.

To the issue of Peirce and statistical mechanics as a foundation for 
thermodynamics that article by Andrew Reynolds discusses it a bit. Here’s the 
full reference:

Reynolds, Andrew "Peirce's Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics," 
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), 
pp. 403-423

He discusses Peirce’s use of Boltzman although he never mentions Gibbs who I 
believe is the first to coin the term statistical mechanics. While Peirce 
mentions Clausius that’s not really statistical.

I found one other article that I’d not read before. “Peirce as a Participant in 
the Bohr-Einstein Discussion.” by Peder Christiansen in Charles S. Peirce and 
the Philosophy of Science pg 222. He argues that his five Monist papers was 
largely how Peirce engaged in the discussion with Boltzmann and his opponents. 
Although he also notes that Peirce’s papers were largely unknown by the main 
figures in the debate.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0SV6CgAAQBAJ=PA223=PA223#v=onepage=false

Anyway, while he doesn’t mention it explicitly, the way Peirce discusses 
Boltzmann makes me think he had read "On the Relation Between the Second Law of 
the Mechanical Theory of Heat and the Probability Calculus with Respect to the 
Theorems on Thermal Equilibrium” which was Boltzmann’s statistical formulation 
of the second law.

> I think that for some time now most physicists have agreed that order emerges 
> from disorder, along the lines outlined by Prigogine (he won the Nobel prize, 
> after all).

Yes, and Peirce’s arguments are pretty similar to Prigogine’s. Prigogine as I 
understand it was actually fairly familiar with Peirce. Indeed he quotes Peirce 
on the heat death of the universe. (Going from my notes here - but it’s 
relevant to the current discussion)

We may say that we know enough of the forces at work in the universe to know 
that there is none that can counteract this tendency away from every definite 
end but death. But although no force can counteract this tendency, chance may 
and will have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run dissipative; 
chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy by the 
regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by circumstances more 
and more favorable to its reconcentration by chance. (W 4: 551)

> Entropy production is behind the formation of order; order doesn’t just 
> happen on its own. The chance aspects of entropy production are crucial to 
> the emergence of order, but the overall trend is always to increasing 
> disorder.

Right, but it’s worth asking again about Peirce’s view of heat death here.

> Personally, I think that all thirdness originates this way, through symmetry 
> breaking, and I wrote an article on that Information Originates in Symmetry 
> Breaking (1996). I did not see it as confirming Peirce’s ideas about habit 
> formation, and I am still very doubtful that he didn’t just goof on this 
> whole issue because of a lack of understanding of SM.

Well my problem ultimately is over statistical mechanics and the eventual death 
of the universe which Peirce pretty well denies seeing it merely as an issue of 
heat inefficiencies which he thinks chance avoids.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Laws of Nature as Signs

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 1:36 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> With the discussions going on in a couple of threads about semeiosis in the 
> physico-chemical and biological realms, a question occurred to me.  What 
> class of Sign is a law of nature?  I am not referring to how we describe a 
> law of nature in human language, an equation, or other representation of it; 
> I am talking about the law of nature itself, the real general that governs 
> actual occurrences.

My sense is that laws of nature are merely habits. As John suggested we can see 
symmetry breaking in Peirce’s terms such that non-fundamental physical laws are 
the somewhat chance created habits. Habits in matter are thirdness. 

I’m not quite sure what question you’re asking though. As you mentioned, it 
seems they are legisigns. The interesting thing is each instance of a legisign 
is a replica or sinsign. So each time matter acts according to the legisign 
that act is a sinsign. 

> What is its Dynamic Object--the inexhaustible continuum of its potential 
> instantiations, perhaps?  How should we characterize its S-O relation?  It is 
> not conventional (Symbol), so is it an existential connection (Index)?  What 
> is its Dynamic Interpretant--any given actual instantiation, perhaps?  How 
> should we characterize its S-I relation--Dicent, like a proposition, or 
> Rheme, like a term?

A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established by men. 
Every conventional sign is a legisign [but not conversely]. It is not a single 
object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant. 
Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be 
termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word “the” will usually occur from fifteen to 
twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same 
word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica 
is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not 
ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as 
significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law 
which renders it so. (CP 2.246)

A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a 
law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the 
Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a 
general type or law, that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica. 
Not only is it general itself, but the Object to which it refers is of a 
general nature.  Now that which is general has its being in the instances which 
it will determine. There must, therefore, be existent instances of what the 
Symbol denotes, although we must here understand by "existent," existent in the 
possibly imaginary universe to which the Symbol refers. The Symbol will 
indirectly, through the association or other law, be affected by those 
instances; and thus the Symbol will involve a sort of Index, although an Index 
of a peculiar kind. It will not, however, be by any means true that the slight 
effect upon the Symbol of those instances accounts for the significant 
character of the Symbol. (CP 2.249)


So I’d say the object is the general that is the set of instantiations. Note 
that Peirce only starts distinguishing legisign from symbol in 1903. So often 
prior to that when discussing symbols he also is including legisigns. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:31 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't accept the neoDarwinian hypothesis that adaptation and evolution are 
> due to randomness and Natural Selection. I think that adaptation and 
> evolution are actions of Mind; that is, the biological systems adapt to 
> environmental realities - not randomly - but as INFORMED systems.

Well that might put a bit of an impasse since I tend to accept normal 
evolutionary theories and mechanisms. But more what I’m getting at is how 
chance (speaking broadly here in a fashion that might include randomness and 
spontaneity) combined with more determinate structures can lead to mind. Put an 
other way, I see mind as informed mind as more an emergent or higher order 
phenomena. But it’s a phenomena that arises out of habit and chance.

My sense, perhaps incorrect, is that you want spontaneity within mind to be a 
kind of informed deliberation not reducible to its parts (including chance).

> By entropy I am referring to the nature of a biological system that 'holds' 
> or binds energy as matter within its morphological nature. So, a particular 
> biological species that changes its capacity to hold onto this matter-and its 
> metabolic transformation, and it might to this for any number of reasons - 
> might release energy/matter to the 'world', which is then rapidly made use of 
> by another biological system. So, we will see an increasing complexity in an 
> ecosystem. A swamp with myriad grasses might see the development of more 
> 'individualistic grasses' which function only in a narrow range of the swamp, 
> BUT, this might lead to a proliferation of more diverse grasses and plants; 
> more diverse insects and birds - some at the periphery of the swamp, some in 
> the mainstream. 
> 

I’m trying to wrap my mind around that sense of entropy and relate it more to 
the sense in traditional thermodynamics. This seems a much, much, narrower use 
although maybe I’m just missing something since I’m not familiar with this use. 
(John - you mentioned your experience with thermodynamics. Any help here?)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 12:03 AM, John Collier  wrote:
> 
> There is still an understanding gap between QM and SM, largely due to the 
> fact that the theory of QM is deterministic. I have heard good scientists say 
> that QM is the basis of entropy, but I don’t find their arguments sound.

I’d tend to agree that reconciling QM to TD hasn’t been well thought through. 
I’m not sure that entails TD doesn’t apply (not that you are making that claim 
- just emphasizing the distinction)

What do you mean by SM?

> I don’t think I agree with Edwina that firstness is entropic, though in some 
> cases it can be. 

I took her to just be making that claim in a narrow area of inquiry.

> I think it is important to distinguish between chance and randomness. Peirce 
> focuses on chance. Chance events can be deterministic on the larger scale, 
> such as when we have a chance meeting with a friend in the store. Nothing in 
> either of our determining that we will be in the store at that time is 
> coordinated with our friend’s determinants except that these determinants 
> become coordinated when we meet. Without both stories together, the meeting 
> is chance, but not random in the technical sense, since the stories together 
> can be compressed to mark our meeting. I call situations like this relative 
> randomness: two histories are not sufficient individually to predict a common 
> event – they don’t contain enough information to compute this event, but the 
> stories together do, assuming determinism.

This is more or less what I was getting at. The combination of 
chance/determinism can lead to unique situations, such as Peirce argues happens 
with mind. I want to address Jon’s point about distinguishing between chance 
and what we might call variants of agency. I think a fair bit of work has been 
done on that in the free will literature. I’m not sure though that Peirce draws 
the distinctions that we’ve seen in the last 20-30 years of that literature. 
(Not that we should expect him to)

I’ll probably not get to Jon’s answer until later though.

> In any case, I don’t see the divergence Clark apparently sees in the use of 
> the concept of entropy.
> 

Not quite sure what you mean by that. I was just speaking of how the universe 
crystalizes into a system of higher information than was there at the beginning 
for Peirce. Peirce’s solution is just to say that TD only applies to the 
determinate part of a system. That is he doesn’t see entropy as an universal 
law, but a much more limited law. Is that more or less what you’re agreeing 
with or are you agreeing with me that such a claim is problematic for most 
physicists? Could you clarify a bit here?



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 6:34 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> - chance does not form habits but only facilitates breaking them - and since 
> chance/Firstness is primordial, then, breaking habits is so to speak, 
> necessary and normal in the universe. Just as habits are primordial; just as 
> differentiation into discrete instantiations is primordial..

Could you clarify this? Are you speaking of biological systems at a starting 
point where our analysis presumes they already are there? (Say a swamp in the 
year 2000 as the starting point - there are already habitual behaviors in place)

The question I have is that I assume you think new habits can develop. While 
this isn’t purely random due to selection, surely chance is a major component 
to developing new habits. 
> John, list - I agree with you that Firstness, in itself, is not entropic - 
> since it also operates within a stable system as vagueness, openness. But 
> Firstness as spontaneity, within that vagueness, can lead as Peirce pointed 
> out to minute changes in the form of the system, which can be accepted within 
> Thirdness and lead to new habits of formation and interaction.
> 
> I also agree that randomness and spontaneity are not identical - and that 
> Firstness is 'spontaneity'.
> 
> 

I’ll hold off for now discussing the distinction between spontaneity, chance 
and randomness. I do think if we use the terms we need to be clear what we mean 
by them since they are all ambiguous terms. 

The problem I have here is what you mean by entropy and change. After all 
change can happen that doesn’t increase entropy. While change typically 
increases entropy of the system of course it can reduce the entropy of the 
subsystem (as is common in evolutionary change). So I’m not quite sure relative 
to your topic of biological creatures what you mean by entropy. Could you 
clarify a little? (Sorry as my training just isn’t in biology but physics. I 
recognize I’m bringing a set of expectations that perhaps don’t apply.)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Jerry Rhee  wrote:
> 
> “So fundamentally the question is whether Peirce’s view that the universe is 
> growing to more reasonableness is incompatible with thermodynamics. Clearly 
> it is. 
> 
>  
> Hmmm… then what’s the semiotic answer to why spirals in BZ reaction?  
> 
> What did people say of Belousov's initial assertion?
> 
Local entropy can (and often does) decrease whereas the universal entropy 
increases.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 2:27 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Clark, list: Hmm - it's always interesting to read how others view oneself. 
> 
> I hadn't thought that I was saying that " that thinking of all this in the 
> idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should appropriate Peirce more 
> in a materialistic way"
> 
> I don't know what the above actually means - 'idealist' and 'materialist 
> way'. 
> 
> My frustration on this list often comes because of the focus on 'pure 
> philosophy' so to speak - and I see Peircean semiosis as operating in the 
> material as well as the conceptual world. What interests me is 'how does a 
> morphological organism develop and function in this world' - and I consider 
> that it does so by Peircean semiosic principles. That is, I think we can 
> understand how plants interact and informationally network with each other - 
> by semiosis - and thus are not simple mechanical systems. 
> 
> 

Right. More or less all I’m saying is you can do the analysis you want to but 
that the ontological questions (which Peirce was emphatically interested in) 
don’t apply. The reason I think you get frustrated with what you see as 
terminological issues is simply because Peirce often was speaking of ontology. 
When you try and relate these ontological uses of the terminology to your own 
project problems results.

Really all I’m doing is explaining why there are these terminological issues. 
That is when one is talking about human concepts, one is no longer speaking of 
ontology and we have to be careful not to appply ontological passages. Likewise 
once we’re talking about substances, such as in biology, we’re no longer doing 
ontology.

Most of the disagreements ultimately are just taking passages that are 
extremely general or even ontological and applying them inappropriately. I 
think this leads people to talk past one an other. As I’ve been at pains to 
point out, we have to be clear about the type of analysis we’re doing. Often 
that changes how we talk about it.

So I’m really just trying to clear for you a space of why your terminology 
works. But I had be sure what you’re talking about. That was why I originally 
asked about entropy. You’re using firstness in a much more narrow sense for a 
particular phenomena in biology.

I’ll probably go quiet again for a little bit — but I am reading an enjoying 
the discussion.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:43 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> I am not sure exactly how this bears on your entropy conversation, except 
> that entropy is often described as disorder; so from that standpoint, 
> uniformity and habit-taking both seem to be negentropic in nature.
> 

The question really is of chance. For Peirce chance both forms habits but also 
allows breaks from habit. Mind is the capacity to form habits but habits can be 
long term habits or short term habits. Again for Peirce the universe as a whole 
can be considered mind and the universe is thus a kind of argument that is 
preceding by thinking itself. However that means the universe is at odds with 
thermodynamics, which Peirce thought applied only to mechanistic deterministic 
systems.

What Edwina is more or less saying (if I have her right) is that thinking of 
all this in the idealist ways Peirce did is wrong. That is we should 
appropriate Peirce more in a materialistic way. I don’t have any problem with 
that, I should add. I think Peirce’s cosmology has always been problematic. 
Both in terms of his arguments for his cosmology but also it’s simply a view I 
think few people are comfortable with. There’s a reason why platonism is often 
used disparagingly. I think appropriating Peirce and his semiotics in a more 
narrow way is completely fine. We can talk about signs quite well without 
buying into his objective idealism. Although there will be places where this 
will cause problem precisely because Peirce saw an unity to his own thought.

I suspect the differences between you and Edwina in other contexts ultimately 
is a manifestation of to what degree are we using Peirce and to what degree are 
we attempting to understand Peirce on his own terms. I think Edwina (and 
correct me if I’m wrong Edwina) gets frustrated in the list is because there’s 
often been so much focus on Peirce’s ontology and terminology related to that 
ontology rather than on application (where the ontology matters far less).

So for example if I’m talking about semiotics within chemistry Peirce’s 
cosmology likely rarely matters. Ditto if I’m talking about systems programming 
or AI. My guess is that Edwina wants to talk about firstness as entropy because 
she’s limiting the discussion to a more narrow area.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 1:18 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> So- I don't see how Peirce's view is incompatible with the current view - but 
> I might be missing what you are trying to explain.
> 

Peirce explicitly saw entropy and conservation as not applying universally 
because they only applied to determinate systems. He also saw entropy as a 
statistical measure. The question is whether his semiotics violates the laws of 
thermodynamics and he explicitly saw that they did. The question then becomes 
how contemporary understanding of thermodynamics in science would see it. Most 
contemporary science sees thermodynamics as unbreakable. In that case if the 
universe is getting more ordered that violates the second law of 
thermodynamics. 

So fundamentally the question is whether Peirce’s view that the universe is 
growing to more reasonableness is incompatible with thermodynamics. Clearly it 
is. 

I don’t think that says much about the utility of semiotics. It does raise 
serious questions about his cosmology though for many people.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Since Mind refers to the 'habit-taking capacity' then, what appears to be the 
> ultimate limit, in my view, is not matter but habit. Habits don't move toward 
> more differentiation but towards more generality.
> 
> What is Firstness? It is the introduction of non-habits and thus, entropic 
> dissipation of the force of habits on the formation of matter. Peirce 
> 
Hopefully you saw that subsequent post where I noted not everyone agreed with 
the article I was using. Although I think in terms of Peirce’s conception of 
why thermodynamics doesn’t apply it’s pretty on the ball. My sense (perhaps 
wrong) is that the differences tend to be tied to terminology.

To the above, I agree habits are introducing more and more generality. However 
as they become more and more habitual they come more and more to take the 
character of substance. That is substance/matter is simply a reflection of a 
lack of variation from the habit. Peirce saw in the long run that these habits 
would crystalize in some sense. 

Now from the perspective of a habit, any variation is a swerve. Peirce in 
various places appears to have since qualia or feeling as firstness as the 
inner view of swerve that he picks up (in a somewhat distorted fashion) from 
the Epircureans. So to that degree that swerve or chance is a break from habit 
I fully agree with you. That’s entropy, formally considered. The problem is 
that Peirce’s conception of the in the long run means habits become more set 
which is anti-entropic.

The question though is what happens when habits form. Peirce sees that 
formation as also occurring out of chance. That’s why I think we can’t only say 
that chance/feeling is entropy. What Peirce sees as entropy proper is purely in 
terms of deterministic mechanics and the Boltzmann statistical view of entropy. 
So here we’re distinguishing between the law of entropy and the measure of 
entropy. That’s an important distinction to keep in mind. Chance as a break 
from habit increases the measure of entropy. But it does not affect the law of 
entropy which is purely a law of physical necessary motion.

The reason this is difficult to wrap our mind around is because we’re all used 
to quantum mechanics with it’s notion of randomness of a sort. Even people who 
don’t accept ontological chance still talk of randomness. Yet we apply 
thermodynamics to quantum mechanics all the time. So to us thermodynamics isn’t 
only a law of determinative mechanics. 

So when I asked you to unpack what you mean by entropy, more or less what I’m 
getting at is whether you are talking about

1. the measure of entropy 
2. the law of entropy in general 
3. a tendency to increase entropy

The problem is that I think most of us who don’t see thermodynamics in terms 
only of Newtonian mechanics just fundamentally see Peirce’s use as wrong. So 
please be aware what I’m getting at here is how Peirce saw it, not what the 
right way of seeing it is. At a bare minimum Peirce’s use is incompatible with 
contemporary use in most cases. (We’ll ignore the Bohmian mechanics proponents 
for the moment)





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 31, 2017, at 3:49 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> It turns out that Short "counts" different Signs based on different Immediate 
> Interpretants, but not based on different Dynamic Interpretants.  This makes 
> sense, given that the Immediate Interpretant is internal to the Sign, while 
> the Dynamic Interpretant is external to it; especially since each occurrence 
> of the latter is distinct, even for the same Sign.  So I wonder--does this 
> "counting" principle also apply to Immediate (internal) vs. Dynamic 
> (external) Objects?  Maybe so; in Short's example, the puffs of smoke would 
> seem to constitute the same Dynamic Object, but have different Immediate 
> Objects as a Sign of fire vs. a Sign of Apaches on the warpath.
> 
> This leads to my suggestion that every Sign has an Immediate Object and 
> Immediate Interpretant that are real possibilities internal to it, thus 
> forming a triad; but a Sign may or may not have a Dynamic Object and a 
> Dynamic Interpretant that are actualities external to it, as three correlates 
> of a triadic relation.  Again, what do you think?

I’m reading (slowly) through the messages. I wanted to comment on this though. 
My personal view (which may be wrong) is that what counts to equate signs are 
the immediate interpretant, sign vehicle, immediate object trichotomy. That is 
what is internal to the sign. While that’s close to what you have Short saying, 
I think I see the immediate object is quite important. Where I think I’m 
differing is that Short is counting what I’m calling the sign-vehicle as part 
of the immediate object. 

So I’d see smoke as a sign for apaches and smoke as a sign for fire as 
different simply because one is more general. That is smoke in general is a 
sign for fire. Smoke here and now thus signifies fire. But there’s also the 
general sign smoke in this part of Arizona is a sign for possible apaches. So 
to me the immediate objects really aren’t the same even though the dynamic 
object is the same (the particular smoke). However that’s different from the 
immediate object due to the smoke. (A subtle point, but keep with me)

(Sorry if others already responded to this) 

This gets back to our discussion of averageness we had here last June. I’d been 
relating Heidegger’s phenomenological principle to Peirce at that point you 
might recall. Unfortunately the terms weren’t quite ideal (averageness a pretty 
vague term). 

The idea is that the dynamic object virtually contains the immediate object 
(due to it containing virtually all the possible significations). Peirce’s term 
“dynamic” actually comes out of Platonism. So in The Sophist Plato talks of the 
lively possibility (dunamis) of being. The same notion gets taken up by 
Aristotle in his distinction between potential and actual. So the dynamic 
contains within itself the possibility of being represented.

The immediate object is thus the set of possibilities in which an object is 
determined for us by its sign. That set of possibilities within the immediate 
object is what I mean by averageness or everydayness. That is the ways in which 
our encountering the sign could be interpreted. 

Getting back to Short, while we can distinguish two different signs due to two 
different generalities when we talk of the object in question (smoke in the 
Arizona desert) then the immediate object of that particular smoke includes 
those other types of general signs. That is virtually the immediate object 
includes the possibilities of apaches, fire, and a whole lot more. It doesn’t 
include all possibilities though, only the possibilities available for me due 
to my culture and so forth. So if I’m completely ignorant of apaches, while 
smoke in Arizona implies apaches, it doesn’t for me. Whether one puts this 
distinction due to knowledge in the immediate interpretant or the immediate 
object seems to depend upon the type of analysis we are conducting.  (I can go 
further on that point but I’ll avoid it for now) The immediate interpretant is 
what the sign could actually do to my mind. It’s thus inherently very similar 
to the immediate object which is how the sign represents the object.

The dynamic interpretant is the actual effect of the sign (other than feeling 
which is in the immediate interpretant). Then the final interpretant is that 
“would have” effect given sufficient development. Typically final inoerpretants 
are interesting only in that they allow us to make sense of truth.

So the immediate object is itself a kind of sign of the dynamic object. It’s 
also what phenomenologically is the object. 

The problem is that how the immediate object functions really depends upon the 
type of analysis we are doing. That’s because if we think of semiosis as a 
process rather than a static slice of analysis any particular sign can itself 
be broken up into constituent signs. That’s especially true of the immediate 
object which can be broken up into all the 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Re: Re: Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 5, 2017, at 11:29 AM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:
> 
> I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial comment 
> that firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve hopefully shown, 
> those are actually opposed. Firstness is what violates entropy. It is 
> anti-entropy.

Sorry that was already long enough but rereading it there’s a crucial point I 
should make. Not everyone agrees on this point. So I don’t want to convey to 
Edwina this is settled. In particular Esposito sees tychism as an entropic 
factor and synechism as an opposing negentropic factor” (Evolutionary 
Metaphysics, 1980, 169)

I’ll confess I’ve not read Esposito, only references to his work. So I can’t 
speak to his argument. From references I’ve seen scattered in various works 
over the years I think Esposito sees the topic through habit and what forms 
habits versus what breaks habits. My previous post sees chance as performing 
both those roles. Esposito sees chances as breaking habit (thus Edwina’s view 
of firstness as entropy). I think though Peirce saw chance as simply something 
different (whether he was correct in that or not is an other matter)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Re: Re: Sign as Triad vs. Correlate of Triadic Relation (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

> On Apr 3, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> That is - I am also suggesting that Firstness is not simply quality, feeling, 
> chance - but - is entropy.

Could you unpack that a little more? I *think* I understand what you’re getting 
at — how chance undermines order — but I’m not quite sure. Or, put an other 
way, if habit is the opposite of a rise in entropy then movement away from 
habit (substance being the ultimate limit) would increase entropy.

The place where of course Peirce has some difficulty here is with the second 
law of thermodynamics. The heat death thesis is the clearest example of this. 
Now one might say that Peirce’s conception of substance as the limit of 
semiosis is heat death, but I don’t think that’s right. The heat death is 
basically the interaction between things leading to a broad distribution of 
energy so you lose differentiation. But for Peirce of course habits are moving 
towards more differentiation. While we see that locally we don’t see that 
globally. 

So far as I know not a lot has been written on Peirce and the second law of 
thermodynamics. Which is surprising given how much has been written on Peirce 
and chance - particularly related to classic epicureanism and stoicism. Given 
Peirce’s background in physics and chemistry he knew thermodynamics but from 
what I can tell didn’t really apply it to his cosmology.

One of the few articles on the subject in Andrew Reynolds “Peirce’s Cosmology 
and the Laws of Thermodynamics” in Transactions. There he notes Peirce’s 
conception of the first law (conservation) was that it was just an algebraic 
relationship and not an ontological condition (the way most physicists take 
it).  So for him it simply doesn’t prescribe that the total amount of energy in 
the universe is constant. Merely that in any system you have algebraic 
connections between energy flow. (See CP 6.602) 

He next distinguishes between forces for growth, that are irreversible, from 
those tied to the conservation of energy which are reversible. Since Perice 
thought growth had stronger evidence than conservation, growth was the 
exception. (6.613) He adopts the position of Carus in which the brain is 
primarily physical and thus subject to conservation laws except that “there are 
present states of awareness….Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can 
be weighed on any scales….” (CP 6.614) In explaining that quote from Carus, 
Peirce says, “It escapes materialism. It supposes a direct dynamical action 
between mind and matter, such as not been supposed by any eminent philosopher 
that I know of for centuries.” 

Regarding entropy again, Peirce’s platonic cosmology is kind of the inverse of 
what physicists would expect. The end is not heat death but a system “in which 
mind is at last crystalized in the infinitely distant future” (6.33) Reynolds 
argues that we ought distinguish between 20th century views of entropy from 
Peirce’s 19th century views. (I don’t know enough about the detailed history 
here to know how accurate he is - I’m assuming he’s getting it right) 

Peirce praises the Maxwell/Boltzmann statistical interpretation of entropy. 
(Reasoning, 220) The Boltzmann interpretation is that entropy holds only 
statistically. But Peirce sees real chance as working in a direction counter to 
the increase of entropy. “But although no force can counteract this tendency, 
chance may and will have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run 
dissipative; chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy 
by the regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by 
circumstances more and more favorable to its reconcentration by chance.” 
(Writings 4.551) Reynolds argues Peirce is thinking of what later was called 
the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. However Peirce for mechanism favors Boltzmann 
and thus something like the heat death but due to chance thinks this won’t 
happen. He recognizes the problem with entropy but sees himself as an 
ontological evolutionist. Since “the universe as a whole…should be conceived of 
as growing” (6.613) that growth ontologically escapes both conservation and 
entropy.

The way he does this is to see that there are temporary violations due to 
chance but that there’s then a tendency towards entropy. So it’s that 
combination that he thinks will let him achieve a final state, but which 
because of growth won’t be a heat death state.

Now of course none of this is terribly satisfying - especially to scientists 
who tend to see the laws of entropy as ontological or absolute laws. Indeed 
physicists seem quite willing to give up on most laws except thermodynamics. 
It’s this reason that I personally find Peirce’s cosmology so troubling, 
although I don’t think I’ve explained that before now.

I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial comment that 
firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve hopefully shown, those 
are 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

(Sorry - been swamped so I’ve not said much)

> On Apr 1, 2017, at 12:53 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Some new words may be useful, but there's already an overabundance
> of terminology from several millennia of philosophy, most of which
> Peirce replaced with a new set of terms.  That is the theme of the
> following article:

This seems quite true. My experience in trying to explain Peirce to people with 
a philosophical background is that the terminology is a big barrier. I 
understand why Peirce coined so many neologisms but it isn’t ultimately a good 
thing in many ways.

> On Apr 1, 2017, at 8:38 AM, Stephen Jarosek  wrote:
> 
> I am 100% with you on this. I just did a synonym search on imitation, without 
> luck. I think we need to invent a new word to more accurately describe this 
> replication and sharing of signs/behavior.


While it’s not exactly the same thing, the existing word of meme is probably 
close enough to do the job. I don’t think we need a new word.


> On Mar 31, 2017, at 2:18 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> With the aim of sharpening the point, Peirce seems to suggest that, for the 
> sake of explaining the cosmos, it is important to ask how degenerate forms of 
> these relations might have grown into more genuine forms of the relations.

As I’ve noted a few times, Peirce’s explanations largely come from 
neoplatonism. That’s of course a pretty controversial position to say the 
least. I’m also not quite convinced that his cosmology is really necessary for 
the rest of his thought. It’s enough to simply talk about acquiring habits and 
leave the cosmology there. The degenerate forms become genuine as habits 
enabling that genuineness arise.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Physico-Chemical and Biological Semiosis (Was semantic problem with the term)

[Clark Goble]

I don’t have time to chime in right now Edwina due to work but I’ll hopefully 
have some comments Monday.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 3:15 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> So- given the make-up of the posters on this list and their interest [in 
> philosophy] then, I don't see the point of bringing up the  non-philosophical 
> focus of Peirce's work.

I should note that while my own interests are primarily philosophical, my 
background is actual primarily physics not philosophy. I enjoy the 
non-philosophical topics quite a bit although I often don’t know enough about 
the topic to say much. I’ve brought up some of the non-philosophical topics 
here before too such as the relationship of category theory in advanced physics 
or mathematics as it relates to Peirce. Not that I know much about category 
theory, but a few others made comments I learned from.

So I am actually pretty interesting in the applied semiotics. Indeed while my 
interests are primarily philosophical I’ve read a reasonable amount on applies 
semiotics in various arenas.

I seem to remember a discussion a few months ago on political implications of 
Peirce’s thought. I focused primarily on his more conservative tendencies in 
his critical common sensism but also the focus on inquiry.

Anyway, please comment on the non-philosophical points. Even if I don’t 
typically comment I frequently read them.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 8:35 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> I don't see the point of outlining my research on this list - as I'd get 
> reactions of 'Peirce didn't say that!' and 'That's Taborsky-semiotics and 
> it's not Pure Peirce!...
> 

I think my point was just that what gets discussed is largely determined by the 
list members. If we don’t like what’s being discussed we can start new 
discussions. 

I’ll confess that many of the discussions the past year I didn’t find that 
interesting, although I occasionally chimed in here and there on say the 
religion topic. Partially because it was just something I was fairly ignorant 
on. So I like learning things I don’t know. Sometimes they end up being helpful 
in unexpected ways with my own pursuits.

I’ve started a few topics myself including the question of the metaphysical 
nature of truth in Peirce.

But there’s definitely other topics I’m interested in. One that someone brought 
up was what it means to equate two signs. I’d add what does it mean to repeat a 
sign, particularly relative to the index and icon parts of the sign. This is 
actually a big topic in Continental philosophy in the 1960’s especially by 
figures like Derrida and Deleuze.

If you have other topics I’m game. I wouldn’t mind going back to the reading we 
did on natural propositions a year or so ago. There were parts of that 
discussion I wasn’t able to join in on due to time demands that I still have 
questions about.

I also am studying more typical epistemological questions in a Peircean 
framework. It’s an interesting question to me since of course traditional 
epistemology is again a more static analysis of justification at the time of 
knowledge. There are problems with that. But if we switch to a more Peircean 
focus on inquiry, what is the place of those more traditional epistemological 
justifications?
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 6:30 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> In Peirce, we read about semiosis within protoplasm, within crystals, within 
> the formation of matter [matter is effete Mind]. None of this deals with 
> terminology but with the pragmatic function of semiosis - which Peirce sees, 
> as far as I can understand, as the gradual evolution of Mind. Mind is NOT a 
> synonym of the human mind or consciousness but of the natural world.

I think this gets at definition problems though. For instance often mind and 
consciousness are used synonymously in discourse. As you note that’s not how 
Peirce primarily uses it, although he’ll sometimes slip into other use when 
speaking more casually. 

In contemporary discourse even consciousness is ambiguous since it can 
simultaneously mean a kind of first person qualia or awareness of phenomena or 
even self-awareness as a kind of reflexive knowledge of a phenomena and that 
one is also aware that one is aware of the phenomena as a self-awareness. The 
former is pure firstness for Peirce I think although he’ll also sometimes call 
it the inner aspect of the swerve or chance in a sign process. The other 
aspects are indexical aspects of signs and simple complexity of signs.

But one quickly sees that keeping ones terminology is important.

While I’m more dubious towards his foundational ontologies it seems these 
matters become crucial there. While we’ve discussed those ontologies a lot of 
late, it’s mainly been due to other issues such as Peirce’s sense of truth.

> If one focuses only on words and terms, then, it is just as easy, indeed 
> easier,  to use the semiotics of such as Saussure or Morris ..for these are 
> all about 'this' means 'that' - and one can get readily into the seeming joy 
> of 'hidden meanings'. But Peirce doesn't deal with this; his semiotics is an 
> active, adaptive and evolving  process of generation of Mind-into-Matter - a 
> much more difficult analysis.

I’d actually disagree quite a lot with that. I think both miss key aspects of 
meaning - particularly Saussure whose structuralism is quite static whereas 
Peirce’s thirdness and definition of a sign anticipates much of 
post-structuralism. (Indeed one could argue that indirectly a lot of 
post-structuralism arises out of Peirce)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] semantic problem with the term

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 30, 2017, at 6:30 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> But a thing that bothers me about some of the focus of this list is its 
> isolation from reality; that is, it's all about words and definitions. But 
> Peirce wasn't focused on that. As John points out, he used his terms in a 
> variety of ways;  - and his focus was on the pragmatism of semiosis. That is 
> - what is the pragmatic function of Peircean semiosis?
> 
I think the biosemiotic people were focused on practical applications. There 
are of course lots of semiotic analysis of various sorts of communications out 
there although this list has never focused on that too much.

But while my own interests are primarily philosophical I’m certainly open to 
any topic people would like to start. Why not tell us some of your own research?

To the definition point, I think especially with philosophical concerns we’re 
grasping after subtle differences. Often we use the same words to mean 
different things. That’s especially true when the differences in question (like 
say the nominalist vs. realist one) have metaphysical implications but only 
subtle practical differences. That makes language a bit tricky. That’s a large 
reason why Peirce himself tended, especially in his later periods, to coin 
neologisms.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 29, 2017, at 1:58 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> J.A.S., your post quoting “New Elements” makes much more sense that the other 
> Jon’s claim that “icons and indices are species under the genus” of symbol, 
> which I’m pretty sure Peirce would never say. The point that Peirce makes in 
> his “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations” and elsewhere is that 
> symbols can involve indices, and indices can involve icons — indeed symbols 
> must involve both icons and indices in order to convey any information — but 
> icons do not involve indices nor do indices involve symbols, and this is what 
> makes them “degenerate” relative to the symbol. They are certainly not 
> species of the genus symbol. TRI again, Jon A.
>  
> As for which type of sign is logically “primordial,” I think the key to the 
> Peircean answer to that question is in his assertion that “a symbol alone is 
> indeterminate.” Now, any symbol which has a real object has been determined 
> by that object, to some extent, so clearly the “primordial” symbol is not one 
> of those. So the time before time is also prior to any information or 
> transformation. But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go into cosmology or the 
> universe of pre-reality.
> 

I wish I’d had the ability to put it that clearly Gary. Thanks for that. I’m 
marking this so I can quote you in future.

As you say, the primordial issue or cosmological issue is really the issue of 
moving for indeterminacy to determinacy. For practical symbols in semiotics you 
need indices and icons.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 28, 2017, at 6:52 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> But the point of Peirce's extreme scholastic realism is that the universal 
> "red" is not defined by the collection of all red things, and the universal 
> "lion" is not defined by the collection of all lions.  Rather, each 
> universal/general is a continuum that encompasses all possible reds or all 
> possible lions.  Between any two actual reds or actual lions, there is an 
> inexhaustible supply of potential reds or potential lions that would be 
> intermediate between them.  What kind of diagram does each of these 
> universals/generals specify accordingly?  What significant relations does it 
> embody?  How are we relating a stop sign to a diagram when we call it red, or 
> an animal at the zoo to a diagram when we call it a lion?

I’m curious as to John’s response. My own would be that different diagrams can 
get at different aspects of the universal but not necessarily represent it 
fully. As Icons there would typically be lost data. So you might have a graph 
of red things to represent the general of redness without necessarily arguing 
that the general arises out of red things (as with say Armstrong Universals). 
You might have a graph that specifies the range of colors represented by the 
general red (as some linguists do to compare color signs between cultures) and 
so forth.

The nature of an icon is to resemble the object but that usually means that 
there’s a matter of ‘more and less.’ That is there are additions that aren’t 
part of the original object and aspects that are missing.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 27, 2017, at 9:59 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> Therefore, the knowable universe is limited to everything we can
> imagine, and mathematics can analyze anything we can imagine.
> (This point is independent of the nominalist-realist debate.)

There’s a bit to unpack there - most particularly who the “we” is in that 
sentence. I think Peirce rejects the idea of the unknowable with his rejection 
of Kant’s thing-in-itself. Yet he also ties this to the ideal community of 
inquirers rather than any particular person. Put simply while the universe is 
knowable and therefore imaginable it doesn’t follow that it is imaginable for 
any finite group of people.

As you note this is also separate from the nominalist debate since a nominalist 
can agree with this. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 26, 2017, at 1:45 PM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> So, yes, I would have to say that Peirce was a realist about
> possibilities, and patterns of possibilities, from the start.
> That much is simply implicit in his mathematical approach to
> logic, probability, and information.

Yes, from fairly early on he see mathematics as possibilities. I’m not sure the 
date on the earliest he makes that explicit. (Sorry - no time to look it up 
right now)

I think my point about modal realism is more that connection between universals 
and particulars. Does he make that connection with mathematics early on? Again 
I don’t know. It’s one thing to speak about the nature of mathematics as 
possibilities and quite an other to speak about the relationship of mathematics 
to particulars. The old “why is the universe so mathematical.” Again I confess 
I’ve just not investigated the historical question here being more interested 
in the philosophy questions. If anyone else knows I am curious. That’s why I 
mentioned the review on Fraser since it seems to me his criticism of Berkeley’s 
platonism as nominalistic that gets at that issue.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 25, 2017, at 8:54 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> I declared myself long ago as one who sees more continuity
> of development than radical shift in Peirce's thought over
> his lifetime.  What I do see changing through the years is
> the greater diversity of his audiences as the river of his
> work flows from its constant sources to the alluvial delta
> he left for us to sift.  The greatest share of variance in
> what he writes is explained more by variations in the whom
> he is addressing than the what he is trying to communicate.

I certainly don’t dispute that - it’s completely my view as well for the most 
part. With regards to modal realism I suspect the question is when did he have 
something like modal realism - which seems there by the early 1890s and perhaps 
1880s - and when is it full bodied modal realism. It’s a difficult question and 
since there are almost always explicit references from the late 1890’s onward 
it’s just easier to use those and avoid controversy.

My own feeling is that most of the mature view was in place by the time he 
switched the pragmatic maxim to counterfactuals even if he didn’t necessarily 
treat those possibilities as real in a robust sense. I think the logic of his 
work pushed him there. Put an other way he may not necessarily have thought 
through all the implications of his logic or, as you note, simply didn’t have 
the right audience to make them clear.

While the logic of modal realism is in place with the shift of the maxim to 
counterfactuals, it seems to me it’s his thinking through the issues of 
universals to particulars where he saw Berkeley and even Scotus as too 
nominalistic that I think the full transformation occurs. But it seems a 
gradual one of recognition rather than substantial change to the logic of his 
argument. (IMO) But of course his main engagement with Berkeley is quite early 
- 1871.

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v2/w2/w2_48/v2_48.htm 


Is this sufficient for full bodied modal realism? Perhaps we can read it that 
way although I’m not sure I’d want to defend the thesis. (I’m open if others 
have defended it for the period prior to 1897)



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

Catching up on my reading - apologies for not responding much the past week or 
two.

It seems to me the starting point for thinking about truth for Peirce ought be 
externalism. That is are we talking about a knower who is roughly a human 
individual at a specific time or are we talking about truth in semiotic broader 
than any one individual. While Peirce occasionally talks of epistemology along 
a more traditional Cartesian conception by and large when he speaks of truth 
he’s speaking of this broader conception. Unless we keep that in mind I think 
we’ll always go astray.

An individual then ‘has’ truth to the degree that the sign within them is the 
same as this final interpretant. 

The next thing to keep in mind is that Peirce still maintains the traditional 
conception of proposition or statement as carriers of truth. By which he means 
they are signs that signify this interpretant. As the quotes Jon put up on 
wikipedia indicate we thus have a sort of correspondence but not a Cartesian 
sort. It’s not the correspondence of an internal image with an external object. 
Rather it’s the correspondence of the object signified through a sign with an 
interpretant that is the same as the final interpretant. The odd feature of 
Peirce’s conception of truth is that this sign need not be in a particular 
knowing subject. (I’m not sure of the implications of that since it gets into 
the question of intentionality in Peircean semiotics)

The biggest difference between Peirce and more traditional conceptions of truth 
in the loose Cartesian tradition (including Kant) would be that truth is 
essentially wrapped up with signs. It is triadic whereas for most philosophy 
correspondence and even coherence is merely dualistic.

I’ve been thinking of my original question I posed a month or two ago. That is 
what is the status of truth. To the degree an object signifies a stable 
interpretant it seems to me that truth is fated or necessary regardless of 
whether one adopts modal realism. I’ve come around to the idea that 
fundamentally what’s at stake with my question is less the question of truth 
than the question of time. That is to ask if truth exists is to ask when a sign 
is complete. If one adopts presentism or some related ontological conception of 
time then this seems to play havoc with Peirce’s semiotic. (Maybe others will 
disagree with me there)  The way out of this problem is either to embrace a 
four dimensional theory of time in which case there is already a truth about 
the future or else to embrace the later Peirce’s modal realism and simply talk 
about truth as those signs that are in all possible universes. That is to 
embrace the kind of robust talk of possibilities we see in contemporary modal 
realism.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 19, 2017, at 9:54 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Re: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Pragmatic_theory_of_truth 
> 
> 
> I have been giving another look at the InterSciWiki (ISW) article on the
> “Pragmatic Theory Of Truth” (PTOT) and I think it will be worth the time
> to clean it up and develop it further.  The plan that usually works best
> from me is to revise the content on the wiki and serialize it on my blog.
> 
> The PTOT article derives from the last Wikipedia revision I edited:

I think one thing that has to be kept clear is well made in that link. Dewey’s 
Warranted Assertability simply is different from what Peirce does. Of course 
this idea of warrant becomes important for Putnam as well. I’ll leave James out 
of the discussion because he just seems pretty inconsistent sometimes adopting 
a very Peircean conception and sometimes a much more short term functional 
conception of truth.

Peirce’s notion largely comes out of the idea that for a difference to be a 
difference it must make a difference and that those differences over time act 
on inquirers. 

The problem, that many brought up over the past few days, is the issue of 
information loss. That is Peirce’s faith really seems to presuppose a lot about 
both how signs act but also the persistence of the information of a sign. The 
problem is this is of course the problem of repetition being so important for 
effects and knowledge. Peirce gets the idea of habit right but I’m not sure 
he’s thought through the implications of erratic patterns of repetition and its 
implication for knowledge.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 16, 2017, at 7:48 AM, John F Sowa  > wrote:
> 
> To formalize the idea of convergence, I combined a Lindenbaum
> lattice with methods of belief (or theory) revision.  The lattice
> contains all possible theories expressible within a given logic,
> and the AGM operators for belief revision give a measure of how
> close one theory is to another.
> 
> I discuss this measure and relate it to Peirce and some critics
> (including Quine) in the signproc.pdf article.  (Excerpt below)

I’ve not read that yet John (hope to at lunch). But a quick thought. It seems 
to me Peirce isn’t committed to the view of convergence in the scientific 
realism of that era. The idea we’re getting closer and closer to the truth. 
Rather it would seem Peirce’s commitments entail that we might get close and 
then far so long as at infinity it reaches the truth. That means that as useful 
as short term notions of convergence are, they really don’t guarantee much. 

The way I usually think about it is that there are many continuous equations 
such that the limit as x → ∞ y → 0.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatic Theory Of Truth

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 13, 2017, at 7:00 AM, Jon Awbrey  > wrote:
> 
> I think John Sowa's remarks about the “major failures caused by ignoring 
> [Peirce]”
> and Jerry Chandler's remarks about later readings serving as a “Procrustian 
> bed
> for CSP's concepts” are very apt in this context, and I will have more to say
> in that regard if I can get to it.

I think so too, but I think we should make explicit what other doctrines Peirce 
held that was different from the mainstream of philosophy lead to these 
differences. Off the top of my head I think you have to mention the following:

  scholastic realism vs. nominalism
  modal realism vs. actualism (primarily for the late Peirce although with the 
 pragmatic maxim he moved to counterfactuals reasonably early)
  externalism vs. internalism
  signs vs. thoughts in a mind (i.e. the interpretant need not be a human mind)
  verification as meaning vs. verification as truth

There’s probably some others but those five see the key differences that make 
terms like correspondence or coherence misleading at best.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real; Continuity and Boscovich points.

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 10, 2017, at 6:57 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> In chapter 8 of Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism, Paul Forster 
> argues--convincingly, I think--that the different "theories of truth" are 
> competitors only within  a nominalist epistemology and metaphysics.  By 
> contrast, Peirce's realism recognizes that "correspondence, coherence, 
> consensus, and instrumental reliability are all essential and constitutive 
> elements of truth--none is any more fundamental than the others.  Moreover, 
> each of these elements of truth is a necessary condition for realizing the 
> others.  Each one--properly understood and fully explicated in accordance 
> with the pragmatic maxim--implies the others" (p. 175).

I think the bigger issue is that correspondence presupposes an internalist 
scheme like Descartes or Kant and which tends to be presupposed in most 20th 
century approaches to epistemology which are still caught up in the methods of 
neo-Kantianism. If you adopt an externalist scheme like Peirce does then the 
very problem disappears. That’s why when I hear the word “correspondence” tied 
to Peirce (or Heidegger or any other number of 20th century figures who broke 
with internalism) I think that someone needs to clarify what they mean. If 
there’s no absolute inside or outside then the very need of correspondence, 
coherence and so forth disappears. Even the direct realism of say Scottish 
common sense philosophy becomes much more sensible without the echoes of the 
Cartesian division between mind and world in place.

We can talk about these things relative to Peirce, but almost always we’re 
speaking in terms of signs not minds. So correspondence is the relationship 
between an object conceived in a certain way and an interpretant conceived in a 
certain way. It’s useful for a certain type of analysis but isn’t the 
ontological problem it is in most philosophy.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real; Continuity and Boscovich points.

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 9:10 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> On 3/7/2017 3:19 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
>> pure mathematics starts from a set of hypotheses of a particular sort,
>> and it does not seem obvious to me that these games are grounded
>> on such hypotheses.
> 
> More precisely, pure mathematics starts with axioms and definitions.
> A hypothesis is a starting point for a proof that also uses those
> axioms and definitions.
> 
> JBD
>> Peirce... uses tic-tac-toe in the Elements of Mathematics as
>> an example of how to take a kid's game, and then to examine it
>> in a mathematical spirit. Does this make the game a part of
>> mathematics?
> 
> It certainly does.  The axioms and definitions of tic-tac-toe
> can be stated in FOL.  From those axioms, you can prove various
> theorems.  For example, "From the usual starting position, if
> both players make the best moves at each turn, the game ends
> in a draw."

The problem with the game theoretical view of mathematics is the question of 
realism. This is why Godel made his argument about things not provable since he 
assumed they were true. While of course Wittgenstein’s model of language isn’t 
opposed to realism within mathematics there’s a difference between how we use 
the language of mathematics and what the objects of mathematics are. That is 
what are the relationship between the game and reality. 

Where this comes up is in semi-empirical methods such as Putnam suggested we 
apply to mathematics. As a practical matter there are unproven (and for all we 
know unprovable) mathematical theorems that are used as premises for other 
mathematical proofs. Perhaps this is still limited but I suspect it will 
accelerate in the future.

Again returning to language games of course while the notion can be abused a 
robust notion of language games is compatible with realism. But I think we have 
to think through carefully what sort of game we are playing if we’re going to 
use that as our metaphor.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Truth as Regulative or Real

[Clark Goble]

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In the Wikipedia article "Synechism," somebody wrote, without providing a 
> reference, "The fact that some things are ultimate may be recognized by the 
> synechist without abandoning his standpoint, since synechism is a normative 
> or regulative principle, not a theory of existence."

Yes, if there were a late quote along those lines that would have answered my 
question directly. I suspect though that is just someone assuming it’s merely 
regulative.

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In his review "An American Plato" of Royce (1885 MS) W  5:222-235 (see 
> 227-230), also EP 1:229-241 (see 234-236), Peirce says:


That’s a very good quotation. I’d forgotten about that since I’ve tended of 
late to restrict myself too much to the later Peircean writings. i.e. after 
1895 when his ideas are more stabilized. Plus of course it helps that EP2 is 
available on Kindle while inexplicably EP1 is not.

But that’s a really good quote related to some other discussions I was having 
over unknowable things and Peirce.

> On Mar 2, 2017, at 9:58 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> In that quote Peirce very clearly holds that not all will be known or can 
> even be imagined. What is left is the idea that details may remain vague (as 
> indeed a house that one sees is a kind of "statistical" object, compatible 
> with the existence of innumerable alternate microstates and that, in any 
> case, the object as it is "in itself" does not involve the idea of some 
> secret compartment forever hidden from inquiry; it is instead a matter of 
> deciding which questions one cares about. Material processes scramble 
> information, and life interpretively unscrambles some of it according to 
> standards of value and interest.
> 

An other excellent quote and helpfully quite late - almost 15 years into his 
modal realist period. I rather like his keeping actuality and reality separate 
since that was what confused me the most all those years ago.

What’s so interesting in that quote is that the realism seems wrapped up in his 
modal realism yet recognizes something is knowable in one possible world but 
not in the other. It’s hard not to think of the hamiltanian equation in the 
wave collapse model of quantum mechanics (say the Dirac Equation). There you 
have all the possible states as real but not actual. As soon as one makes one 
measurement then that constrains the possibilities. So Peirce is recognizing on 
a practical economics of epistemology something akin to uncertainty relations. 
(Here making just an analogy and not saying they are really the same sort of 
thing)

> On another note, Joe Ransdell used to insist that Peirce's realism was 
> stronger in the 1860s than it was when he wrote things like "How to Make Our 
> Ideas Clear" (1878).


I think he was more of a platonist by way of Kant in that very early phrase. 
Yet so many of the details weren’t worked out. I tend to see his modal realism 
as the most important idea. It’s connecting realism and possibility that seems 
like the leap that fully makes his ideas work (and leads him back to a certain 
kind of platonism defined in terms of possibilities)

> Of course his fellow pragmatists were not such strong realists as Peirce, and 
> William James later wrote of liking to think that J,S. Mill if he were still 
> alive would be the pragmatists' leader.
> 

Yes James definitely wasn’t and was more focused on what individuals think 
rather than the logical and community angle Peirce focused on. Dewey seems to 
be much more of a realist of the style of Peirce even if he doesn’t quite 
embrace Peirce’s logic. The rest (except perhaps for Royce depending upon how 
one looks at him) are too caught up in the nominalism of philosophy IMO.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] The Logic of Ingenuity

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Mar 1, 2017, at 8:59 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Part 4, subtitled "Beyond Engineering," is now online at 
> http://www.structuremag.org/?p=11107 .  
> It discusses how anyone can use the logic of ingenuity to imagine 
> possibilities, assess alternatives, and choose one of them to actualize.  I 
> have argued for years that just as science is perceived as an especially 
> systematic way of knowing, likewise engineering could be conceived as an 
> especially systematic way of willing; and if this is really the case, then 
> the distinctive reasoning process of engineers should be paradigmatic for 
> other kinds of decision-making, including ethical deliberation.

It seems a fundamental difference is that engineering presupposes stable 
knowledge from physics/chemistry. That is engineering in the contemporary sense 
(as opposed to practical construction in pre-modern times) requires knowledge 
of foundational rules to enable technological production. With regards to 
ethics though we simply don’t have anything like that due to the lack of agreed 
upon meta-ethics not to mention basic questions of whether ethics is knowable 
the way that physics is. (Even in a Peircean model ethical knowledge seems very 
unlike scientific knowledge and of course not everyone agree with Peirce!)

If ethical deliberation is like anything, it’s like pre-modern engineering with 
local norms rather than universal rules. The problem of course with premodern 
engineering, as amazing as things like the stone hedge, the pyramids or the 
works of Rome are, is that there are so many failures. That lack of 
predictability in a technological way where technology proceeds by accident 
likely is very much how we reason as a community ethically. That which is 
successful is kept as societal norms but the reasons for it and thus the 
ability to extend from the norms is lacking.

Now I think Peirce is able to explain both sorts of movements quite well with 
his critical common sensism. Yet that essential merging of the technological 
with the scientific that was lacking in premodern times lacks any equivalence 
with ethics.

Of course as you point out one can be systematic even when ones knowledge is 
more rules of thumb rather than universal laws. Yet the level of generality 
really does matter I think.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

On Feb 16, 2017, at 6:17 AM, John Collier  wrote:One of the hardest things for me in learning analytic philosophy (after original training and work in physics) was to think in words.Yes, the undue focus on the language turn in analytic philosophy has not necessarily been positive. I think the neglect of other ways of reasoning have let to lots of improper conclusions.Your point about physics is apt too. That’s definitely a discipline that incentivizes thinking diagrammatically. At least I found back in my college days that many problems could more easily be solved by moving out of the calculus/tensor/algebra arena of manipulating symbols (really tokens) and into broader diagrams. At a minimum it’d give the proper way to think about manipulating ones symbols. (Say doing change of coordinates for instance)My guess is that Peirce’s background in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry helped him in terms of thinking through practical logic of this sort. Although it is odd that more of the physicists who have entered philosophy haven’t taken these up quite as much. Perhaps due to the expectations especially in analytic philosophy towards linguistic methods.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

Whoops, neglected the end.

> On Feb 15, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> One can readily, for example, find individuals who (by all evidence) seem to 
> think more readily and more commonly in words than in "images and diagrams". 
> One can also find people with limited brain damage who (by all evidence) have 
> lost their ability to coherently verbalize (i.e., they cannot do language), 
> and yet those people otherwise seem to think perfectly well. 
> 

Yes. I think that’s a good criticism of Peirce who I think is biased towards 
thinking through questions in terms of people with a bias toward logic or the 
hard sciences. While ultimately I think that a plus in his writing rather than 
a negative, it does mean that his generalizations can be problematic. 

While I don’t think this ultimately affects his argument I’d say that people 
often have a bias towards either linguistic or visual thinking. The way a 
logician thinks will typically be different from a musician or a sculptor, 
broadly speaking. At least that has been my experience. That said I think most 
people think some of the time in wide range of styles.

A fun experiment to illustrate this I used to use in college classes was to 
count to 100 and try to do something else at the same time. Depending upon the 
method you use mentally to count you’ll find that some things you can do while 
others you can’t. You’ll find that some people think visually with a number 
line to count and are able to speak while counting. Most people count 
linguistically and thus can’t easily speak or listen to words at the same time.

I would dispute the limited brain damage example though. We have to be really 
careful there since ones cognitive linguistic systems may be functional yet key 
parts of the brain necessary for expression may be damaged. So we have to be 
very careful how we draw inferences from this. However that said we know of 
examples where children were not exposed to language and reach a point where 
they appear to be unable to develop those skills. Clearly they are still 
thinking but their brain simply hasn’t developed in a normal way.

Peirce I think avoids the problems some models of the mind by philosophers end 
up with. (Of course most contemporary philosophers of the mind are at least 
somewhat familiar with the science of the brain and avoid a lot of these older 
problems) Peirce simply doesn’t think that thinking is only conscious 
deliberation the way that especially in early modernism many philosophers 
assumed. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 15, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> Further, when Peirce elsewhere starts making broad pronouncements about 
> "thought" it oftentimes seems that he is referring solely to those rare 
> instances of clear thinking, but other times is referring to the typical 
> thinking, or all thinking?

I think in places Peirce does wax dogmatic at times. At least rhetorically. But 
I think the better way to read him typically when making broad pronouncements 
is that he’s postulating a theory and is more than happy to see it critiqued. 
That his own views changed as he continues to think about the ideas is a good 
indication that this is how he himself takes such views. 

I’d add that I think the style of late 19th century writing is just alien to 
us. We expect that when reading early 19th or 18th century German idealists but 
I think we expect Americans writing in English to write in a style we’re more 
familiar with. However I tend to think most philosophers, especially the great 
ones, are pretty bad writers. Of all the great writers probably only Mill and 
Peirce are the ones I enjoy reading the most. Yet even with Peirce we have huge 
paragraphs and examples of annoying writing and neologisms. 

Part of the problem is often that it’s simply hard. Many philosophers invent 
neologisms because they want to avoid the habits of thinking that older words 
invoke. They want to break us out of those habits to rethink the issues without 
that baggage. This leads to difficulty especially when talking about broad 
foundational ideas. The ideas and words closest to us are often the hardest to 
examine closely. (Thus the traditional problem of “to be” in philosophy)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Possible Article of Interest - CSP's "Mindset" from AI perspective

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 14, 2017, at 12:04 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> A Replica of the word "unicorn" is thus a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign that 
> calls up the idea of a unicorn because, although no unicorn really exists, 
> real descriptions of the unicorn are well known to the speaker and his/her 
> auditor.

This is why I said I thought things depend upon equivocation. When we say 
“phoenix” it’s not clear if we’re intending to refer to the idea of the phoenix 
(and thus a real general) or the phoenix in the world (which is false and thus 
has no referent).

The question is what type of object we’re referring to. Of course if I refer to 
the existing object of say “trucks” I’m also referring to the idea of them 
since that is partially how I refer. I refer by giving hints since the 
indexical link can’t be directly shared. Instead I share replicants of icons or 
indices or gesture to indicate indexically. 

I’m of the opinion much of this is an artifact of language simply because our 
words are often ambiguous regarding the sense in which we intend them.  By 
simply making clear how we intend to use a word a lot of the problems 
disappear. I wouldn’t go so far as to say all of them do of course. There’s 
always that gap between dynamic and immediate object and immediate object and 
interpretant. Not to mention ambiguity over how the sign-vehicle functions.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Generals, Realism, Individuals, Nominalism

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 8:01 PM, Stephen C. Rose  wrote:
> 
> Here is my answer. Triadic thinking is conscious consideration by 
> individuals. The first stage is that vague reality that comes up as a sign 
> and ends up becoming more likely a word than anything else. That enables 
> consideration, a second stage, an indexical query, sort of. For me that is a 
> list of values which are in effect an index of what Peirce called memorial 
> maxims. What Jeff calls metaphysical refers to the third stage which is 
> indeed the effect or action or expression that results from the consideration 
> of the first, the sign.  That is the effect, the practical outcome of the 
> triadic consideration. For Peirce is this not the sine qua non of inquiry 
> itself?

I’m not sure I’d agree with the conscious part. What’s so interesting to me in 
Peirce’s semiotic is the place of continuity which presupposes a kind of 
unconscious/hidden aspect to all sign processes. Likewise his externalism makes 
me think that most of what happens happens outside of consciousness.

That’s not to say his semiotic isn’t extremely useful for thinking through 
conscious deliberation but I think the consequence of that analysis will always 
be that a lot more is going on.

> Any way you slice it I cannot help thinking that this is what Brent was 
> trying to understand in his generally maligned biography of Peirce. It was 
> that chapter toward the end that helped me to see it. And I think Brent was 
> also, like me, fishing for the actual reason why Peirce could make the 
> outlandish claim that he would be built on like Aristotle. In any case, I 
> want to at least establish my question as legitimate. What does this all aim 
> at if not the way a practical person thinks, which would need to be taught to 
> replace the largely binary understandings that permeate culture and 
> understanding generally. 

I must have missed a post. I assume you mean Joseph Brent’s biography. I 
confess I’ve not read it. Could you possibly summarize that? I’m missing 
something here. (Undoubtedly my fault - my apologies I sometimes can’t keep up 
with the list and never quite find the time to go back and catch up)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Generals, Realism, Individuals, Nominalism

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 5:25 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> If we try to understand the differences between positions that, like Mill's, 
> are more radically nominalist in orientation and those, like Peirce's, that 
> are more radically realist, by focusing solely on matters of metaphysics, 
> then we will find that the nominalists can say many of the things that the 
> realists say--but in more limited terms that seem to presuppose less (which 
> is a virtue, no doubt). 

I’ll confess it’s been a while since I last studied Mill in any depth, but 
going by my distant memory I’d say the bigger facet between Mill and Peirce is 
vagueness. That is much of Mill’s writing presupposes that the entities in 
question are present in some way to consciousness or at least to some logical 
analysis. Peirce in contrast has a very significant logic of vagueness such 
that some properties are indeterminate but not available to the inquirer.  

This obviously problematizes Mill’s meta-ethic. My distant memory is that it 
also is a problem for his epistemology. His associationism I just don’t 
remember well at all so that may avoid this problem but I’d not be shocked to 
discover that depends upon fully determinate parts out of which larger 
knowledge is built. (My distance memory is that Mill is somewhat similar to 
Husserl & Russell in therms of knowledge by acquaintance but I might be 
completely wrong on that)

That’s somewhat of a tangent to your point but I raise it more to note that 
there are other elements of logic/metaphysics that are pretty crucial in 
distinguishing Peirce from his rough contemporaries. 

In a sense the nominalist presupposes less, but there are practical 
implications for what they do presuppose and often they presuppose more than 
Peirce. (The common assumption of completeness that really didn’t come under 
sustained attack until the mid to late 20th century is an example) I think 
externalism is an other example of this. Admittedly those who allow for robust 
knowledge by acquaintance can do more here. But I think that a more robust 
externalism is pretty important metaphysically although that does become 
significant in the more early 20th century with Sartre, Heidegger and others. 
(The reemergence of pragmatism as strong position with Putnam and others also 
comes to question these assumptions)

All of this is a round about way of saying I’m pretty skeptical the issue is 
always realism/nominalism. I think I’d want to see a solid argument to think 
it’s not dwarfed by other factors.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Generals, Realism, Individuals, Nominalism

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 11:09 AM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> There, as now, I'm not convinced that being a nominalist or realist would 
> adhere one to a particular sense of right or wrong in such a case. I would 
> imagine it was relatively trivial to argue in favor of, or against, dividing 
> the field in such a way, from either side, if your unrelated biases 
> predisposed you one way or the other. 

Nominalism and the more minority view of realism are still both very broad 
categories. Lots of different views can be found under each category. That’s 
partially why, as Ben noted, it’s hard to draw out implications. While I’m a 
big believer in looking at the cash value of an idea, with nominalism I’m not 
as convinced as some there is one. I mentioned the problem of what is 
changeable. I think a second consideration is a certain overskepticism towards 
generalities we find in nature.

However the reality is that the examples I gave of skepticism towards certain 
regularities science finds really aren’t due to nominalism. People completely 
ignorant of nominalism can make those same mistakes. Especially if there are 
political incentives towards doing so.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 7:19 AM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Yes, I agree with your outline of the neglect of Aristotle during the period 
> when the Church controlled knowledge - and the 13th c. re-emergence of his 
> works [Aquinas etc]..

I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. A lot of the texts, for whatever reason, 
simply weren’t widely available. I’d add that they heyday of Aristotle in the 
13th century was still a period of Church controlled knowledge - thus the 
various condemnations at the University of Paris largely tied to Aristotelian 
works. Even those who became dominant in this era (Scotus and Ockham) arguably 
did so because they engaged with Aristotle and frequently disagreed with him. 
So that’s not really neglect. It’s later as Aquinas becomes more popular (he 
was always popular with the Dominicans) that an Aristotilean fused Christianity 
becomes more acceptable. Although of course other major figures from the early 
13th century like Albertus Magnus were thoroughly engaged with Aristotle. 

Anyway I think while one can blame the church for the condemnations at Paris 
it’s unfair to blame them for a lack of engagement with Aristotle. And the 
condemnations occurred precisely because everyone had engaged seriously with 
him.

One should also note that the identities of Plato and Aristotle weren’t always 
clear in the texts. That affected how people read them. The relative clarity of 
who wrote what we have today is of much more recent development. I’m not sure 
the timing on all that but I assume it’s a product of early modernism even if 
some roots go back earlier.





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism -

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 5, 2017, at 11:12 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> At the beginning of the 13th c, the translations of Aristotle
> were denounced by theologians who had a vested interest in Plato.
> The fact that they were translated from Arabic sources also raised
> suspicions of heresy.  But scientists such as Roger Bacon were
> inspired by the science, and Thomas Aquinas made Aristotle safe
> for Christianity.

To be fair there were some theological reasons they were distrustful of the new 
innovations in scholastic thinking by Aristotle. A lot of the condemnations of 
1210-1277 have fairly compelling reasons behind them (even if we don’t in the 
least buy the theology they were defending). Some seem a bit silly admittedly, 
like the debate about whether there was a single shared intellect or separate 
intellects for each person. (Roughly a debate about whether propositions were 
individual or shared - although it often came to have a form more akin to what 
platonic mystics asserted of a shared mind)

It’s interesting that the greatest of the Aristotilean influenced scholastics, 
Aquinas, really had his heyday in the early Renaissance rather than during his 
life or the immediate years following.

> Crosby, Alfred W. (1997) The Measure of Reality: Quantification
> and Western Society, 1250-1600, Cambridge University Press.
> 
> Sample factoid:  In 1275, there were no mechanical clocks in Europe.
> By 1300, every town of any size had a church with a clock tower,
> and neighboring towns were competing with each other in building
> the most elaborate clocks.  The European emphasis on measuring time
> is a major difference between European civilizations and traditional
> societies everywhere else.  And it started in the 13th c.

This is an important feature often overlooked. It’s very hard to do 
reproducible empirical studies without accurate time keeping. There were some 
primitive methods like using hour glasses but having ubiquitous and 
synchronizable clocks probably transformed the world more than anything else 
before the age of steam and plumbing.







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Re: [PEIRCE-L] [peirce-l] First, second, third, etc.

[Clark Goble]

> On Feb 2, 2017, at 2:31 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:
> 
> Here is an article that I scanned some time ago, it was written by Andre de 
> Tienne:
> 
> http://www.medic.chalmers.se/~jmo/semiotic/Peirce_s_semiotic_monism.pdf 
> <http://www.medic.chalmers.se/~jmo/semiotic/Peirce_s_semiotic_monism.pdf>
> 
> the first page is missing, but I think than anyone interested in signs and in 
> triadic relations should read it.

BTW - I meant to include a comment in that post yesterday afternoon but ran out 
of time. (I was writing at work)

The link is dead and I couldn’t find the paper anywhere. Does anyone happen to 
have a copy they could post to the list?



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 30, 2017, at 12:28 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> Regarding #2, once again you insist on assigning a pejorative label to my 
> view.  It is not Platonic, it is Aristotelian (and Peircean), since I clearly 
> and consistently affirm that 3ns does not exist apart from 2ns (and 1ns).  
> Reality, being whatever it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it, is 
> not limited to existence, reacting with the other like things in the 
> environment.

I think we’re at the stage where our categories break down somewhat and the 
semantics get convoluted. For instance what does “exist” mean in that sentence? 
The assumption that platonists think forms *exist* requires a lot of unpacking 
about how we use the term exist for instance. 


> On Jan 30, 2017, at 12:05 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> As for point #2, of course the reality of laws can't be reduced to their 
> existences; that would be akin to reducing Thirdness to Secondness - and I 
> certainly don't accept that. BUT, in contrast to your view, I don't agree 
> that Thirdness can exist 'per se'; they 'exist' only within an individual 
> articulation. Again, Peirce was an Aristotelian, not a Platonist - and your 
> view is Platonic.

I think many scholars dispute the claim that Peirce was more Aristotelian than 
Platonic. But again a lot needs to be unpacked since it’s not as if those terms 
are themselves clear. There were lots of different sorts of Platonists. 
Especially by the period of late antiquity the two figures were often read of 
in an unified way. Get into the medieval era, especially during the rediscovery 
of Aristotle and it gets even more complex due to corrupt or falsely attributed 
texts. Also incentives to not veer too far out of the mainstream and be labeled 
heretical meant Aristotle was often read Platonically (or vice versa).

Anyway I’m not sure the labels platonist or Aristotelian are helpful unless we 
unpack what we mean by those terms. Take something simple like the forms. You 
might say the forms are the perfect cause of the objects instantiating the 
forms or you might say the forms are bundles of possibilities with limits on 
what is possible. How one conceives of the forms radically changes the type of 
platonism one engaging with. 

To my eyes Peirce saw possibilities, especially limited possibilities, as the 
platonic forms and was a realist towards them. That, to my eyes, makes Peirce a 
platonist of a sort. Likewise the fact that an object of type T wasn’t 
perfectly like T was acknowledged by both Plato and Aristotle. I’m not sure it 
tells us much. So Peirce’s notion of ‘swerve’ for instance is compatible with 
both views. 

While labeling can help, especially if we can establish Peirce was reading 
certain texts to help arrive at his own thinking (Kant, Aristotle, Plato, 
Proclus, Mill, Descartes, etc.) one can push labels too far. They can also be 
distorting (especially when some figures like Plato or Descartes are often 
understood only in terms of a certain polemic strawman).





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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 30, 2017, at 1:05 PM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> Well... that seems like a different sort of issue. That is a straight forward 
> issue of whether we exist in a deterministic world, and that can't be 
> nominalist-realist distinction, can it? 


Even if this isn’t a deterministic world one can and should distinguish between 
Bayesian conceptions of probability which are largely epistemological and 
frequentist conceptions which are physical/ontological. So one could be an 
ontological realist towards randomness in quantum mechanics yet still think 
there is a fact about the cards such that one specific card is on top. The 
question is much more whether when we talk about probability we’re talking 
about human knowledge or ontology.

Peirce was primarily a frequentist and so even before he became a full blown 
modal realist he still thought one should talk about probabilities in terms of 
actual conceptions rather than merely human knowledge.

It’s worth distinguishing the two even though it’s pretty easy to get into a de 
facto unknowability in a deterministic universe simply due to chaotic effects. 
Small measurement errors propogate so that without perfect knowledge of 
conditions one can’t in principle know the state of the system fairly quickly. 
A double pendulum is a great example of a chaotic system where this happens. 

BTW - I do think though that Peirce’s frequentist tendencies even early on 
explain why his much later modal realism isn’t as big a step as some portray it.

> Or, to phrase it differently, if we believe that anything entails chance, we 
> might as well believe that the future order of a deck of cards, which is 
> about to be repeatedly shuffled with a reasonable amount of 
> random-imperfection, is an example of a non-determined outcome. I can't see 
> how being a nominalist or a realist would affect that judgment.

The question really is what causes the unknowability. Is it inherent to the 
system or a feature of human knowledge. That is, is there a truth about the 
matter independent of human knowing. Part of this gets tricky due to the debate 
about the reality of time though. I don’t mean to make an already confusing and 
complex topic more so, but it is important.

Many nominalists who don’t subscribe to the notion of a block universe would 
say that technically it is not true “the sun rises tomorrow” because nothing 
yet exists tomorrow. A sentence about the sun rising tomorrow is merely a claim 
about future experiences but can’t be true in a philosophical sense. Some 
nominalists take Einstein’s GR seriously and think all spatial-temporal points 
have truth values so there is a truth about whether the sun rises tomorrow. 

So in a certain way the realist/anti-realist distinction is really just a claim 
about truth values.

Let’s ignore people who are anti-realist about the future for the moment. Now 
return to our double pendulum. The system due to it’s complexity is unknowable 
in the future except is very limited ways. Yet there is a truth about its 
future state (it’s position and velocities).

Where nominalism comes into the topic is the broad question about sentence. To 
be able to have a truth value any sentence must be translatable into sentences 
not making any reference to human minds. So if I can translate my sentence 
about the future double pendulum into statements about material objects in time 
that have truth values then I’m a realist about the future double pendulum 
state. If I think I can’t (because the future doesn’t exist) then I’m 
anti-realist. The more interesting claim is that a sentence about future states 
is actually a statement about human claims about the future that then can’t be 
translated into sentences without reference to humans.

With regards to probability the claim is that any sentence S that refers to 
probability P actually should be reduced to a sentence S’ that refers to human 
understanding of how strong their knowledge is.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 30, 2017, at 10:16 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> What you quoted from Clark was his description of "a very nominalist 
> conception of thermodynamics."  By contrast, I think that Peirce quite 
> clearly held (1) that the mental (psychical law) is primordial relative to 
> the material (physical laws), and (2) that the reality of laws (as well as 
> qualities) cannot be reduced to the existence of their actual occurrences; 
> they do have "some ontological mode of their own," which is 3ns (or 1ns) 
> rather than 2ns.  I know that you disagree on both counts, and no one 
> (including me) wants us to engage in yet another "exegetical battle," so I am 
> simply mentioning my alternative view in the context of this particular 
> discussion.


I think we have to break this out. That is I think what you say is right, but 
we have to be clear what we mean by it. 

I think in a certain sense Peirce is saying the mental and the physical are the 
same thing. This isn’t quite say Davidson’s anomalous monism (where the 
distinction arises because mental descriptions have a normative aspect). If I 
have Peirce right any physical laws ultimately are due to psychic laws of the 
underlying stuff. Put an other way it’s all mind and thus mind is, as you say, 
primordial. We distinguish the mental from the physical only because the latter 
is more fixed by habit and the former more ‘open.’ It’s all the same thing 
though so one isn’t necessarily primordial so much as it is less ingrained or 
habituated. But this isn’t really monism in a straightforwad way due to 
firstness and secondness. 

We’ve discussed this issue of monism before and my own position is we have to 
be careful with the sense in which we claim monism. The key passage is of 
course Peirce’s appropriation of Schelling’s “objective idealism.” My sense is 
that fundamentally all Peirce means by this is that ideas aren’t tied to 
particular minds. As he says

So those logicians imagine that an idea has to be connected with a brain, or 
has to inhere in a "soul." This is preposterous: the idea does not belong to 
the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea. The soul does for the idea 
just what the cellulose does for the Beauty of the rose; that is to say, it 
affords it opportunity.

  [..]

...you must see that it is a perfectly intelligible opinion that ideas are not 
all mere creations of this or that mind, but on the contrary have a power of 
finding or creating their vehicles, and having found them, of conferring upon 
them the ability to transform the face of the earth. If you ask what mode of 
being is supposed to belong to an idea that is in no mind, the reply will come 
that undoubted' the idea must be embodied (or ensouled; it is all one) in order 
to attain complete being, and that if, at any moment, it should happen that 
idea,-say that of physical decency,-was quite unconceived by any living being, 
then its mode of being (supposing that it was not altogether dead) would 
consist precisely in this, namely, that it was about to receive embo iment (or 
ensoulment) and to work in the world. This would be a me potential being, a 
being inflituro; but it would not be the utter nothingness which would befall 
matter (or spirit) if it were to be deprived of the governance of ideas, and 
thus were to have no regularity in its action, so tha throughout no fraction of 
a second could it steadily act in any general way. For matter would thus not 
only not actually exist; but it would not have even a potential existence; 
since potentiality is an affair of ideas. It would be just downright Nothing.  
(“On Science and Natural Classes” EP 2:122-3)


Part of the issue then is just Peirce’s rejection of the type of nominalism 
where there are mind-objects and ideas are state of these mind-objects. Rather 
ideas are logically first and minds are understood in terms of the ideas. 
Effectively a strong type of content externalism. This also shows a certain 
platonic element to his thought which is the inverse of how materialist 
nominalism had developed in the post-Cartesian world. Ideas aren’t material or 
mental states. They are first. (In the same way that platonic emanations start 
with the One, go to the forms/ideas, and eventually reach to point of soul or 
matter in motion)

It’s also worth reading Peirce explicitly on this issue of monism. This is 
admittedly from the early Peirce though although I think it highlights how his 
thought developed.  (Emphasis mine)

 The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, 
as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders 
to-day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise 
called monism.  Then the question arises whether physical laws on the one hand, 
and the psychical laws on the other are to be taken —
 (A) as independent, a doctrine often called monism, but which I would name 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 29, 2017, at 12:57 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> I would not call it a "force," but I agree that the traditional debate is 
> about whether there is something real (hence "realism") that all rabbits have 
> in common to make them rabbits vs. "rabbits" merely being a name (hence 
> "nominalism") that we apply to many different individuals simply because we 
> happen to perceive them as having certain similarities.  Even this way of 
> putting it arguably concedes too much to nominalism, because it implies that 
> the universal or general is a thing that is somehow identically instantiated 
> in multiple other things.
> 

A good place where this debate appears is thermodynamics. It’s fairly well 
known that defining a system with spatially extended objects with various 
symmetries allows one to define the laws of thermodynamics. Now this is a very 
nominalist conception of thermodynamics yet importantly it is one where the 
laws arise out of the symmetries of matter. So you don’t need the idea of laws 
logically prior to the objects to make sense of them. Just properties inherent 
to the objects. (There’d still be an ontological question about some of these 
properties like overlap and interactions of course — but in theory you could 
argue they inhere to the objects rather than are independent of them)

Peirce’s solution really is to argue that symmetries are themselves real 
independent of the objects.

Now this won’t work for foundational physics due to the crazy nature of quantum 
mechanics. It’s much harder (IMO) to formulate a quantum mechanics in terms of 
nominalism. People still try to do it of course, but it’s usually via a 
ontological slight of hand where the foundational laws place isn’t dealt with. 
You can see that slight of hand in say New Atheist arguments about why there is 
something rather than nothing. The foundational laws of physics are always part 
of this ‘before’ yet not seen as ‘something.’ Effectively they need a real 
lawlike prescriptive feature of the universe prior to there being an universe. 
Really this has the role God does for deists and the distinction between a 
deist and an atheist blurs at best. Of course this was common even in early 
modernism where extreme nominalists still put God into the picture.

Effectively a big reason why realism was a thing before was theology (whether 
pagan for the neoplatonists or in the medieval era and renaissance God for the 
Christians, Jews and Muslims and even for deists) So nominalism was a slow 
development partially done as science became independent from religion. After 
Newton it became possible to really conceive of all of reality in terms of 
deterministic atom and a few laws so nominalism took off and became the 
mainstream intellectual view.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nominalism vs. Realism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 27, 2017, at 4:19 PM, Eric Charles  
> wrote:
> 
> I must admit that I find much of the recent discussion baffling. In part, 
> this is because I have never had anyone explain the Nominalism-Realism 
> distinction in a way that made sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I think I 
> understand the argument in the ancient context. However, one of the biggest 
> appeals of American Philosophy, for me, is its ability to eliminate (or 
> disarm) longstanding philosophical problems. 

Coming late to the discussion after being out of town for several days. As I 
said last week I’m not convinced for most questions the nominalist vs. realist 
distinction really matters that much. But then it’s debatable how much 
philosophy really matters in practical terms - that’s especially true of 
metaphysical questions.

That said, the realist vs. nominalist distinction ultimately is a distinction 
of whether a property or structure depends upon how humans think about it. 
There are practical implications of this since if it does depend upon humans 
one might argue the construction is open to modification. This doesn’t follow 
naturally of course - there may be innate structures of thought due to our 
biology but in practice many people think if it could be thought differently we 
can engineer how people think about it. Where you see this happening is in the 
nominalistic types of continental philosophy where construction entails 
reconstruction often along political grounds. Foucault (the 20th century one) 
is a great example of that. In American academics you see this with gender 
theory, feminist theory, and intersectionality which are often explicitly tied 
to many structures being constructed and thus open to political reconstruction.

One should note that the realist/anti-realist question when tied to particular 
entities is a bit different from the more broad debate. The former is arguments 
about things like whether mathematics is a human construct or whether gender 
is.  One might think one is constructed (say gender) but not others (say 
mathematics). The broader question is simply whether any generality can be real 
or if only particular (typically spatio-temporal) entities are real. While the 
broad question can and does have implications for more narrow questions, 
technically one can argue one without taking a position on the other.

In the early 20th century, largely due to the influence of Hegel but also to a 
degree Frege there was a big debate between idealists and scientific realists 
over this topic. By the war this had largely died out although you can see 
questions about foundations of mathematics and even the demarcation problem of 
science as remnants of that debate. The pragmatists (primarily Dewey although 
also Peirce even though he wasn’t as well known) offered a third way between 
the poles of idealism and scientific realism (largely a convergence theory of 
realism). Sadly though this didn’t really catch on well. When there was a 
rebirth of pragmatism with Putnam and Rorty both tended to avoid the pragmatist 
solutions for various reasons.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 25, 2017, at 8:28 PM, Stephen C. Rose  wrote:
> 
> Peirce was more than a pingpong ball in a long and repetitive exegetical 
> battle involving I suppose the core group of this forum. But I have had 
> enough.  I simply will not open mail from the correspondents until something 
> that is not a bnary ether-or argument that dwells on "what Peirce thinks"  as 
> though he has not changed himself in a century. Sorry for the rant and if I 
> am alone in my reaction then I will willingly confess to having lost patience 
> and being somewhat saddened by it all. 

It would be nice to push on to some other topics. Sorry for my part I may have 
played in all this. My own interests are philosophical. So while getting what 
Peirce said is important it’s more the philosophical arguments that matter to 
my eyes.

To that line since I think we all agree that Peirce is at the end of life a 
modal realist, it’d be interesting trying to think through how one might 
respond to criticisms of modal realism. I’m here thinking less of what Peirce 
did say but how one might apply a Peircean inspired response to critics.

The usual reason people don’t like modal realism is just that it seems 
inherently unintuitive. My sense is that usually that’s because they want to 
think in nominalistic terms of real material objects rather than recognizing 
possibilities aren’t mind-dependent. Often there’s also a kind of latent 
remnant of 19th century determinism at play. That is there’s an assumption that 
to be real is to be actual. 

A stronger reason to be skeptical of modal realism is ontological simplicity. 
Ockham’s Razor is often brought up which is funny given Ockham’s nominalism. 
Lewis’ approach here is to say he’s not asking you to believe in more things of 
a different kind merely more things of the same kind. I’ll confess that seems a 
bit of a dodge. Here again I think the issue is in assuming realism of 
possibilities is creating a new ontological entity. I’m not sure it is if we 
already have the notion of possibilities. That is there seems to be some sneaky 
shifting of possibility to possible world as if the two were ontologically 
different. That is again I think nominalism is sneaking in. To say something is 
real but not actual avoids the problem. That’s because all you are really 
saying is whether its being depends upon a finite number of minds, not what its 
being is. 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

Just to add, I think the big break between Peirce and the nominalists is 
because a general can’t be limited to any collection of actual entities. This 
is obvious in mathematics if we talk about a general like “even integers.” 
Clearly that’s an infinite collection. But if you say something like “white 
horses” you don’t just mean all white horses but all possible white horses. You 
can limit things more, but generals by their very nature have this connection 
to continuity. 

While I said in practice there isn’t as big a practical effect between 
nominalists and Peirce’s realism it’s because nominalists are fine to 
potentially quantify over future experienced entities. That is the way they 
conceive of possibilities is much more in an Aristotilean fashion. Potential is 
just an openness to new finite entities. Peirce is thinking much more 
logically. So it’s with his pragmatic maxim that I think you see his thinking 
regarding nominalism develop most.

The original pragmatic maxim starts with meaning be how you do measure 
something. But that’s clearly problematic as a rock is hard whether you measure 
it or not. He then moves to a moderate realism by invoking counterfactuals. 
It’s hard if I could measure it. But he keeps thinking through these questions 
of potentialities and realizes he has to deal with a continuous set of 
possibilities. Further that an entity’s properties are independent of what I 
think about it. That is when I ask about a property scientifically I’m not 
merely making a claim about a future measurement but a claim about the entity 
itself.

It’s at that point that I think the traditional nominalistic tendencies, 
especially within science, start to split off. In one sense it doesn’t matter 
because all we can test are potential measurements. Yet the significance of 
those measurements are the properties of the thing itself. 

This is also where I think Peirce (and later Dewey) chart a third way between 
the traditional poles of realism and idealism such as were found in the early 
20th century. Especially in the United States.

I bring all this up because my sense is that it’s to the pragmatic maxim we 
have to look for all these terms.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 3:40 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
> 
> I think our problem may be that we’re not using the term “general” in the 
> same way. I’m trying to observe what Peirce calls “the proper distinction 
> between the two kinds of indeterminacy, viz.: indefiniteness and generality, 
> of which the former consists in the sign's not sufficiently expressing itself 
> to allow of an indubitable determinate interpretation, while the latter turns 
> over to the interpreter the right to complete the determination as he 
> pleases” (EP2:394). He “completes the determination” by selecting an 
> individual from the universe of discourse defined by the general term, and 
> that individual is the dynamic object of the sign.

I’m still thinking through all this but I think you’re right. Particularly the 
place of secondness in signs. (Without getting into some of the debates of 
triadicity that raged here in prior years)

I’d say there are actually three types of indeterminism. First vagueness where 
there is a definite property that isn’t determinate in terms of an established 
interpretant. ("A man I could specify said…”). Second what I understand by 
generality. (“All white horses…”) Finally a more ontological or evolutionary 
conception where an object is still determining its properties (“The height of 
my son as an adult.”)

It seems to me this is pretty key to Peirce’s thinking and also where his terms 
avoid a lot of the muddled thinking and communication found in much of 20th 
century philosophical conceptions of vagueness or metaphor.

The relationship between the universe of discourse and the object is a bit 
trickier. Again here I think we have to distinguish between the immediate and 
dynamic object. As I understand it in a particular conversation the universes 
of discourse that matter are the shared ones between the communicator and 
communicatee. That is separate from the object although its via these universes 
that the object is determined. Yet the indexical relationship to the object(s) 
is by a hint or guess.






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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 4:24 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> CG:  For a legisign the sign consists of a general idea and that’s what I 
> think you’re talking about.
> 
> Right, but a legisign/type can only be a collective; it cannot represent an 
> object that is a Possible or an Existent, only a Necessitant.

Yes, but I don’t see how that’s a problem for the reasons I mentioned about 
building up signs out of subsigns.

My sense is that we’re all talking past one an other due to semantics. That is 
there’s an element of equivocation in play. 

If I say, “all red objects” that is general but I can move from the general to 
the particulars. That doesn’t seem to be a problem with Peirce’s semiotics. 
(This is also why I think in practice the nominalist vs. realist debate doesn’t 
matter as much as some think)

I don’t have time to say much. I’ll think through it some more later. Right now 
I’m just not clear where the disagreement is.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] nominalism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 1:30 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> Would you say that agapasm is a 'drive towards unity' or is it a 'feeling' of 
> attraction to Otherness, and an action of the development of some, just some, 
> commonalities. That is, agapasm requires diversity of matter, for 'love' 
> exists only within an attraction to the Not-Self and the 'power of sympathy' 
> towards this otherness 6.307.

Think they end up being the same thing. For the Proclus strain of neoPlatonism 
you have that move away from unity which creates a gap. So there is something 
other to the not-self or the lack. In Plotinus it’s a bit more complex since 
matter as absolute private is Other and the One as absolute unity is also pure 
Other. Iamblicus and Proclus disagreed with Plotinus on the nature of matter. 
Plotinus is following Aristotle a little more closely here.

The full quote you reference is useful. (Emphasis mine)

The agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental 
tendencies, not altogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the 
mere force of circumstances or of logic, as in anancasm, but by an immediate 
attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind 
possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of 
mind; and this mental tendency may be of three varieties, as follows. First, it 
may affect a whole people or community in its collective personality, and be 
thence communicated to such individuals as are in powerfully sympathetic 
connection with the collective people, although they may be intellectually 
incapable of attaining the idea by their private understandings or even perhaps 
of consciously apprehending it. Second, it may affect a private person 
directly, yet so that he is only enabled to apprehend the idea, or to 
appreciate its attractiveness, by virtue of his sympathy with his neighbors, 
under the influence of a striking experience or development of thought. The 
conversion of St. Paul may be taken as an example of what is meant. Third, it 
may affect an individual, independently of his human affections, by virtue of 
an attraction it exercises upon his mind, even before he has comprehended it. 
This is the phenomenon which has been well called the divination of genius; for 
it is due to the continuity between the man’s mind and the Most High.

Later (315)

The agapastic development of thought should, if it exists, be distinguished by 
its purposive character, this purpose being the development of an idea. We 
should have a direct agapic or sympathetic comprehension and recognition of it 
by virtue of the continuity of thought.

His later paper “On Signs” is useful to expand these ideas from “Evolutionary 
Love.” Again emphasis mine.

A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something 
in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the 
mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That 
sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign 
stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all 
respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the 
ground of the representamen. “Idea” is here to be understood in a sort of 
Platonic sense, very familiar in everyday talk; I mean in that sense in which 
we say that one man catches another man’s idea, in which we say that when a man 
recalls what he was thinking of at some previous time, he recalls the same 
idea, and in which when a man continues to think anything, say for a tenth of a 
second, in so far as the thought continues to agree with itself during that 
time, that is to have a likecontent, it is the same idea, and is not at each 
instant of the interval a new idea. (CP 2.228)

He doesn’t really speak in terms of love there. But you can see the parallels 
to how he describes agapism in “Evolutionary Love.” Beauty in the way 
neoPlatonists conceive of it is wrapped up with all this. Beauty for Peirce you 
might recall is making firstness intelligible. Again this is right out of 
Proclus. This issue ends up being how you represent iconicity. For Peirce what 
we mean by beauty is the greek kalos. For Proclus kalos is the call of Being. 
This triadic structure in Proclus emanation theory is tied to this. His 
“Elements of Theology” really is an important context for Peirce here.

When you remember what an idea is for Peirce this love is caught up with 
determining in signs the original form which often is manifest either via the 
unconscious or via a kind of quasi-revelatory form. Again this is pretty 
standard in the more religious form of neoPlatonism such as written of by 
Iamblicus and Proclus.

For Peirce I think it depends upon the time time frame. In the very early more 
Kantian Peirce you still have these neoPlatonic ideas with Being and Matter 
being the unthinkable limits. In the later 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] nominalism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 12:20 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> As Edwina and I have discussed ad nauseam in the past, I disagree with her 
> interpretation that there was no "metaphysical agent," that there was no 3ns 
> prior to 1ns and 2ns, and that mind emerged with matter such that neither is 
> primordial.  Peirce explicitly affirmed the Reality of God as Ens 
> necessarium, the priority of continuity (3ns) relative to spontaneity (1ns) 
> and reaction (2ns), and the primordiality of mind (psychical law) with 
> respect to matter (physical laws).  I have no desire to re-litigate that 
> dispute, I am just noting it for the record.

Just to note the difficulty in these discussions is distinguishing between 
logical analysis and temporal analysis. When one says “prior” one has to be 
clear in what sense one is speaking. 

Time is itself an organized something, having its law or regularity ; so that 
time itself is a part of the universe whose origin is to be considered. We have 
therefore to suppose a state of things before time was organized. Accordingly 
when we speak of the universe as ‘arising’ we do not mean that literally. We 
mean to speak of some kind of sequence, say an objective logical sequence; but 
we do not mean in speaking of the first stages of creation before time was 
organized, to use ‘before,’ after,’ arising,’ and such words in the temporal 
sense. (6.214)

In Proclus’ emanation theory there’s a triadic structure of ontological 
constitution (monos) which is a kind of surplus (often translated as 
plentitude). As it proceeds you get the second part of the triad which is 
proceeding (prodos). This in turn causes a kind of reversal via desire for that 
surplus (episterophe) which is the third element and is a kind of reversal. 
This reversal is very similar to how the latter Peirce sees the relationship of 
the interpretant to the object. The sign indicates the object by way of a hint 
and what is produced is ‘less’ in a certain sense than the object. This 
reversal then creates a process that attempts to correctly represent the origin 
that is a surplus of what is represented.

So you have pure unbounded potential turning into potential of this or that 
sort (6.220) which then is a kind of platonic form where the form is 
possibility. Secondness for Peirce results from a first flash it resembles and 
results from (CP 1.412) Then this process continues until “the events would 
have been bound together into something like a continuous flow.” This is 
thirdness.

The important thing to note though is that first this is the same process as 
Proclus discusses (although he’s likely not the originator of it) and that this 
is ‘before’ any sense of temporality.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] nominalism

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 12:11 PM, Edwina Taborsky  wrote:
> 
> This nothing is limitless possibilities BUT, after those first two 'flashes' 
> outlined by Peirce, these flashes which introduce particular matter also 
> introduce Thirdness or habits of formation, and these then start to limit and 
> constrain the possibilities. So, I don't consider that the 'Nothing' is like 
> Firstness, since my reading of Peirce posits that Firstness operates as a 
> mode of organization of matter...and this requires matter to exist! That is, 
> my reading of Peirce is that the three modal categories only develop when 
> matter develops. So, before there was matter, this 'Nothing' is not 
> Firstness. As Peirce outlines it - it is 'nothing'. Firstness is a powerful 
> mode of organization of matter, rejecting closure, limits, borders. And 
> certainly, since matter at this pretemporal phase hasn't developed any laws 
> of modal organization, it doesn't yet function within Thirdness.

As I understand it the main difference between nothing (or the zeroth category) 
and firstness is just how bounded it is. Firstness has a character whereas 
Nothing does not. Again Peirce is here following several types of neoPlatonism 
from the latter period of late antiquity that divide the One into two types of 
Oneness, one more primordial.

It’s worth reading the SEP here although it doesn’t get into the nuances of 
differing schools of neoPlatonism.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/#One 


You’ll note that the neoPlatonic notion of everything having an inner and an 
outer aspect is also part of Peirce’s thought. Even Peirce’s agapism is pretty 
much the neoPlatonism of Iamblichus where love is the drive towards unity. 
Within the One (unthinking limit) are two aspects — an inner and an outer. The 
One and the Many. (This is where he and a few other prominent neoPlatonists 
split with other schools) Unformed chaotic matter is the ultimate unlimited 
which is the One in its inner form. Limit is the other principle. These then 
mix with each other in weird ways (this neoPlatonism was primarily religious 
rather than straightforwardly philosophical) allowing the emanation of the 
Forms (firstness for Peirce) and then to the World Soul which is roughly the 
neoPlatonic idea of thirdness.

I don’t recall if Peirce read Iamblichus (although I assume he did) although I 
know he read Proclus who was influenced by both Iamblichus and Plotinus. 

Again this to me is where Peirce is at his most controversial. But when reading 
these passages about limit, difference, and chaos of pure potency it’s worth 
reading the original sources Peirce is likely drawing upon. One should also 
note that the sources themselves didn’t always agree with each other in the 
details. 



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 24, 2017, at 10:43 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> I acknowledge that I may be confused here, but how can a sign that is general 
> have an object that is not general?

Just a guess but I suspect the issue here is how one identifies a sign. That is 
what makes a general sign be labeled as general. This is really just a semantic 
issue. 

This confusion is why I don’t tend to use the phrase “general sign” as it’s not 
obvious what is general. For a legisign the sign consists of a general idea and 
that’s what I think you’re talking about. (Correct me if I’m wrong) 

To your other point regarding determination, the sign can be indeterminate in 
terms of how it represents the object but the object could be any sort of 
object (firstness, secondness, thirdness). In all cases the sign would still be 
indeterminate. So I might signify a several elements of firstnesses. What 
objects is indeterminate and thus general even though the objects are not 
general. 

The nominalist view is that all general signs must ultimately refer to 
individual objects rather than real structures. Peirce allows the real 
structure to be the object independent of these other individual objects.  But 
for Peirce we must be able to signify both kinds of objects.

Of course Peirce’s notion of continuity entails that any sign can itself be 
broken up into further signs. So all this depends upon the type of analysis one 
is conducting.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Metaphysics and Nothing (was Peirce's Cosmology)

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 23, 2017, at 1:23 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  > wrote:
> 
> Why would "[my] literal meanings" of those terms be different from anyone 
> else's, or from the "generic meaning"?  As a first attempt ...
> Pragmatically, all real reactions have a tendency toward regularity (i.e., 
> habit-taking).
> Philosophically, 1ns and 2ns are both governed by 3ns (cf. CP 6.202).
> Theologically, God created everything else out of absolutely nothing.
> 

Given Peirce’s conception of God is God actually creating out of nothing? 
Further is the nothing as pure potency the nothing of creation ex nihilo?

Secondly when you say firstness and secondness are governed by thirdness I’m 
not sure what you mean. CP 6.202 seems to not be addressing that issue, 
depending upon what you mean by “govern.” That passage is more about Peirce 
objecting to his whole system being called tychism. He does say thirdness has a 
commanding function but he also says “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.” (6.202) That is they 
aren’t governed if by govern we mean dependence. Of course if by govern we mean 
lawlike recognition of their manifestation then I’d agree. 

My apologies if I’m misreading you.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 16, 2017, at 2:56 PM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> I don't believe that it's possible or desirable to put any limits on
> the way symbols grow.  Any attempt would "block the way of inquiry."

One should distinguish between epistemological limits - that is artificial 
bounds cutting off inquiry - and limits from truth or speculative ontological 
limits. For instance while we may figuratively characterize a series of tone as 
‘blue’ it seems that conceptually we can still make a distinction between sound 
and color that is a limit on the symbol. I think we can make such distinctions 
without cutting off inquiry. Indeed we make such symbolic distinctions all the 
time.

> 1. The vocabulary of every natural language is limited by the need
>for every generation of infants with no prior experience and
>a limited attention span to learn the structure and a basic
>vocabulary.
> 
> 2. But continuity implies that no finite vocabulary can adequately
>name and describe everything anyone might encounter during a
>lifetime (or even a day).
> 
> 3. Therefore, the basic vocabulary a child learns must be extensible
>in an unlimited number of ways.
> 
> 4. For any theory in mathematics or science, it's important to have
>precise definitions.  But those definitions are limited to the
>theory for which they have been defined.
> 
> 5. No theory of science remains fixed for very long.  And scientists
>usually keep the old vocabulary, but redefine the words as new
>phenomena and ways of explaining them are discovered.
> 
> 6. For examples, just think of the way Newton's vocabulary has been
>redefined in the 20th century.

I don’t dispute any of those points and indeed take them for granted. But again 
we might talk about the language of an infant in its development into an adult 
and then death. Logically that then has a beginning and end to the symbol. Now 
it’s true we can take the symbol in other directions to the degree it is shared 
and has to be available in multiple contexts independent of the context the 
utterer finds themselves in. In that sense any linguistic or quasi-linguistic 
symbol is eternal and unbound. If that’s what you mean again I fully agree. I’d 
just say that we should be careful to recognize not all symbols are those types 
of symbols.

It’s at this point of course that say people speaking of formal symbolic 
symbols get most upset at what they see as postmodern appropriation. So around 
the time of the Sokal controversy you had people talking about the sexual 
connotations of imaginary numbers. To those doing formal mathematics of course 
that’s complete nonsense. If the symbols aren’t kept in that context though 
then of course they, as with any symbol, can have new connotations as they 
appear in different contexts. I think all I’m saying is that Peirce can account 
for both processes of symbolic growth and how we can keep them separate.

Effectively the question of symbolic growth and its limits becomes the question 
of whether we can speak of a limited set of contexts. If we can’t, then of 
course many of the criticisms of postmodernism hold. If we can then we can 
apply the set-centric conceptions to symbols that I mentioned.

My own position is that of course connotations can go wild and symbols grow in 
these unwanted ways. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk of more limited symbolic 
generals from a logical perspective. (This is where I part ways with some of 
say Derrida’s more unbridled fans in English departments)


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 15, 2017, at 11:50 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> Gary F., when Peirce in Harvard Lecture 6 says that "the totality of all real 
> objects" is a "singular", he is pretty clearly discussing that which he 
> elsewhere calls an individual. Jon A.S. was discussing singulars in Peirce's 
> other sense of "singular," that which can only be at one place and one date 
> and occupies no time and no space, i.e., that which some nowadays would call 
> a point-instant. Peirce did not always adhere to his terminological 
> distinction (e.g., in "Questions On Reality" in 1868 
> http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/logic/ms148.htm 
>  ) between 
> "singular" (short for "singular individual") and "individual" (short for 
> "general individual"). In another example of his shifting between 
> "individual" and "singular", Peirce defines "sinsign" as an individual that 
> serves as a sign - I mean that he did not require sinsigns to be 
> point-instants - yet he uses the "sin-" of "singular" rather than some root 
> related to "individual" or the like in order to coin the word "sinsign
> 


Language isn’t terribly consistent on these points either. (No pun intended)

I suspect part of the issue is that how we consider the entities over which a 
general may apply we can always construct some bound and call that an unity. 
That is the extension of the general. Effectively that’s all Peirce is doing in 
the Harvard Lecture. Extending that one can apply it in more narrow ways where 
one logically considers the extension of any general. Conceived of in sets we 
end up with the set containing the properties or entities of the general as a 
singular.

The second sense is of course, from a modern physics conception, a tad more 
complex. Primarily because the reality of point particles fell out of favor 
despite attempts at salvaging it such as with Bohmian mechanics. I think Peirce 
here is quite helpful. While it’d be a mistake to say he anticipates this 
interpretation of quantum mechanics, his process approach certainly has many 
harmonies with it.



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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 15, 2017, at 8:02 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi wrote:
> 
> Peircer's qualities of feelings are not 'generals'. When reflected upon they 
> appear vague, which does not have any direct relation with tte philosphical 
> concept of 'general'.

I thought Peirce defined them as inversely related. That is the more general 
the less vague and vice versa. Both relate to indeterminacy but of different 
types. One due to our lack of knowledge and the other due to how broadly they 
apply.

> On Jan 15, 2017, at 8:00 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> Thanks, all, for the responses.  I'm still looking for better terms
> than “essentialism” or “ontologism” to explain the problem that I'm
> seeing here.  Essentialism is not the same thing as Platonism or any
> realism about supra-individual entities.  I personally don't have any
> objection to realism about Platonic Forms or Ideas, maybe because I'm
> doing most of my thinking in mathematical forms, where Pythagoras rules.


Do you mean it in more Aristotelean terms?  I guess I’m missing something here.


> On Jan 15, 2017, at 10:15 AM, John F Sowa  wrote:
> 
> The issues about universals and essences have been with us for a
> couple of millennia, and nobody has a proposed useful definition that
> everyone can accept.  Peirce developed his semiotic as a foundation
> that *avoids* those terms.

Yes, I think ‘essence’ as a notion has long been problematic primarily due to 
how it is used. That’s particularly true in Aristotle’s somewhat functionalist 
approach that I think confuses students to no end.

> JA
>> I find it more useful to focus on the pragmatics of language use
>> relative to the context of interpretation, frame of reference,
>> sign relational space, or universe of discourse at hand than to
>> go chasing after ontological absolutes.
> 
> ET
>> I think the search for 'this' and 'only this' meaning of a term
>> slips into that essentialism of 'ontological absolutes'.
> 
> Yes.  Peirce's principle that "symbols grow" is incompatible with
> any theory that depends on monadic predicates with a fixed definition.
> It's more compatible with Wittgenstein's language games (which may
> have been inspired by LW's discussions with Frank Ramsey).

I think one can still manage how symbols grow. That is consider them bundles of 
process. The question ends up being what the limits of the symbol are. Of 
course that becomes a complex topic too.






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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Nominalism and Essentialism are the Scylla and Charybdis that Pragmatism Must Navigate Its Middle Way Between

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jan 14, 2017, at 8:15 AM, Jon Awbrey  wrote:
> 
> But I did find this previous comment on Houser on Forster on Peirce while
> I was looking for something else, and it reflects my sense that Peirceans
> have more trouble controlling that slippery slide toward what I've called
> “essentialism” or “ontologism” than they do checking nominalistic drift.

I find that if we keep front and center Peirce’s notion of habit that this is 
less of a problem. That said though Peirce also treats structures, essences and 
similar phenomena through a lens of possibility. That does open up the danger 
than in adopting a modal realism one is sneaking a near Platonism back in 
through the window.

A similar risk occurs with Peirce’s notion of teleological causation. At times 
he is anxious to distinguish his sense from the type of necessity that perhaps 
is closer to Aristotle’s use or among the scholastics. He adopts a kind of 
Darwinian approach that seeks to avoid this causation. Yet at other times he’ll 
speak of what is necessary and not just highly probable - perhaps wrapped up in 
his notion of continuity - which again constantly keeps the threat of Platonism 
an ever present one.

Put an other way, I think you are right but that this difficulty is part and 
parcel of Peirce’s own writings that reflect this tension.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 10, 2017, at 12:21 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  
> wrote:
> 
> In a few cases, I have decided to go ahead and buy the book after reading it 
> for free--most recently, Forster's Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism.
> 

Coincidentally I’m halfway through that right now.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[CLARK GOBLE]

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[CLARK GOBLE]

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 8:35 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  > wrote:
> 
> CG:  I agree that this definitely tends to make nominalism self-refuting 
> which I see as a problem rather than a strength.
> 
> A problem for nominalism or for realism?  Is it legitimate for a nominalist 
> to deny that holding everything real to be singular is self-contradictory, on 
> the grounds that singularity is not a property?  (I am having that very 
> argument with a self-professed nominalist in another context right now.)

I think arguments with that level of circularity are pointless whether it be 
for realism, nominalism, materialism or whatever. All it really means is you’ve 
injected your assumptions in so alternatives are self-refuting. Which isn’t 
much of an argument.

A stronger argument for realism to me is always the argument that the 
fundamental laws of physics are necessary for there to be anything. Effectively 
that’s what Krauss does in his book A Universe from Nothing although he isn’t 
quite philosophically sophisticated enough to realize that’s what he’s doing. 
Once you require immaterial laws of physics to make everything work, then 
you’re unable to really take a strong nominalist stand. It’s not a knock down 
argument of course. For instance several people have noted that if you start 
with objects with certain properties you can derive the laws of thermodynamics 
and a lot else just from their symmetries. So that’s a more nominalist argument 
but doesn’t work with quantum mechanics. 

None of these arguments are fully persuasive to someone skeptical. But I 
suspect that’s true of any metaphysical argument which almost by necessity has 
to be weak. I think Peirce has an answer there with his process of inquiry. 
What we can’t doubt as a practical matter we hold as true. We just need to 
investigate all the arguments, look at the alternatives with as open an eye as 
possible, and then see what we believe that persists through inquiry. Again, 
far from perfect but probably the best we can do.

> CG:   I assume he’s somewhat platonic about mathematical objects. That is 
> more akin to Godel than the logicists or the constructivists. Yet honestly if 
> someone told me he was a logicist or a constructivist I’d not be at all 
> shocked either.
> 
> I am not that familiar with the alternatives, but Christopher Hookway, 
> Matthew Moore, and others seem to think that his views--especially his 
> emphasis on diagrammatic reasoning--are closest to mathematical 
> structuralism.  As with other sciences, he was more interested in the methods 
> of mathematicians than the objects of their investigations.

I’ll confess I don’t quite have as good a grasp on mathematical structuralism 
as I do logicism, intuitionalism, platonism or constructivism. Reviewing the 
SEP and wikipedia it does sound a lot like Peirce (real but not necessarily 
actual). It also sounds a bit like Armstrong Universals.

But thanks for pointing that out. I’ve honestly not read up on foundations in 
mathematics since college and we didn’t study structuralism then. I have my 
evening’s reading set out for me.
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 4:44 PM, jacob longshore  wrote:
> 
> Yes, I think you're right about that. Peirce's definitions of "generals" are 
> framed in terms of parts of a whole (and thereforefinite), whereas 
> "universal" would apply to an infinite number of possible entities. This 
> distinction he holds throughout his career. 
> 

I’m not sure the part to whole relation entails finitude depending upon what 
one means by that. Consider a square. You can cut it in half and have two parts 
but each part is still continuous in the Peircean sense even if we might say 
they have finite area. Again the discussion of Cantor and Dedekind is useful 
here. In particular Peirce’s modal realism in his mature phase of the late 
1890’s onward pretty well requires possibilities as continuous of a sort.






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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 7, 2017, at 6:52 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> With reference to individuals, I shall only remark that there are certain 
> general terms whose objects can only be in one place at one time, and these 
> are called individuals.  They are generals that is, not singulars, because 
> these latter occupy neither time nor space, but can only be at one point and 
> can only be at one date. (W2:180-181; 1868)
> 
> Peirce noted here that "the character of singularity" is itself a general, 
> which seems to render nominalism--the view that everything real is singular, 
> so nothing real is general--effectively self-refuting.  He defined an 
> individual as a collection of singulars joined across places and times, which 
> is thus general when taken as a whole.  Furthermore, absolute singulars are 
> "mere ideals," such that (ironically) an individual is really a continuum as 
> Peirce came to understand that concept decades later.  Consequently, anything 
> that we cognize about individuals is necessarily general, rather than 
> singular.  

I agree that this definitely tends to make nominalism self-refuting which I see 
as a problem rather than a strength.

While I’m not quite sure how to deal with this issue, I suspect that this 
arises out of Peirce’s conception of infinity as opposed to say Cantor’s. 
Peirce thinks through it by division while Cantor tends to think through it in 
terms of sets of individuals. Since for Peirce any ‘individual’ is formed from 
two cuts, that implies a line that can itself be further cut. It’s really not 
set theory.

I’m not sure how Peirce viewed number theory or even how much he knew of it 
given how much is from the 20th century. Certainly his father Benjamin Peirce 
had worked on the roots of number theory. If we think of number theory to 
arithmetic of integers in terms of sets that would appear to lead to thinking 
of individuals not as a collection of singulars. 

I did some Googling, since this is an area of Peirce’s thought I’m ignorant on. 
He did write on number theory in the paper “Logical Studies of the Theory of 
Numbers” around 1890. That paper seems to be somewhat similar to what Hilbert 
later did (his 10th problem). That is he was looking for an algorithm that 
would tell us if there are proofs. He thought we should do this by reducing 
equations to boolean algebra but that appears to merely be a hypothesis of what 
one might be able to do. 

I couldn’t find an online copy of that paper. The closest was this discussion 
of the paper by Irving Anellis.

http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ANELLIS/csp 


I’ll confess right up that I just am not at all sure how Peirce viewed 
mathematics. Given my own background in mathematics this is pretty embarrassing 
as you’d think I’d know something about this. I assume he’s somewhat platonic 
about mathematical objects. That is more akin to Godel than the logicists or 
the constructivists. Yet honestly if someone told me he was a logicist or a 
constructivist I’d not be at all shocked either. Those seem just as likely a 
way to conceive of in his philosophy, although he’d probably then argue that 
the structures of constructure or logic are themselves real independent of 
human thought as possibilities.

Going back to infinity along with Cantor and Dedekind, Peirce asserted that 
Dedekind’s cut actually came from Peirce. Apparently before publishing on that 
Peirce had sent Dedekind a paper on such approaches. In contrast to their 
approaches Peirce saw a problem that needed to be solved. (Relating to the 
other thread, this suggests that he was thinking along metaphysical lines in 
what we’d today call modal realism) That is Peirce saw the issue tied to the 
logic of possibility. Peirce saw their approach as “inchoate” which brings to 
mind that quote on metaphysics we’ve been discussing in the other thread.

Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere 
individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. 
Chaos is pure nothing. (“What Pragmatism Is,” CP 5.431 1905)

The continuum is a General. It is a General of a relation. Every General is a 
continuum vaguely defined. (“Letter to E. H. Moore,” NEM 3.925 1902)

Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially 
general. (...) The original potentiality is essentially continuous, or general.
(“Detached Ideas on Vitally Important Topics,” CP 6.204-5 1908)

The possible is general, and continuity and generality are two names for the 
same absence of distinction of individuals. (“Multitude and Number,” CP 4.172 
1897)

A perfect continuum belongs to the genus, of a whole all whose parts without 
any exception whatsoever conform to one general law to which same law conform 
likewise all the parts of each single part. Continuity is thus a special kind 
of generality, or conformity to 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 2:25 PM, Clark Goble <cl...@lextek.com> wrote:
> Here metaphysics seems important if only to show what hidden premises 
> undergird our thinking. It’s also possible that he might mean approaching 
> metaphysics in a somewhat transcendental approach akin to Kant’s various 
> transcendental arguments. i.e. for this to be true these must be true. Yet if 
> one does that form of argument one quickly realizes a certain undecidability 
> inherent to working backwards. That is more than one metaphysics can usually 
> account for the phenomena in question. It’s this thinking (criticizing) of 
> metaphysics that is important. How the pragmatic maxim with its emphasis on 
> difference and testing for meaning isn’t completely clear to me.

Just to add to that one can find Peirce making exactly these sorts of critiques 
of metaphysics in science such as the assumption of action at a distance or the 
idea that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. The latter in particular 
seems falsifiable and thus open in theory to test. The former is a bit trickier 
but presumably if we found some mediated substance then that would falsify it 
too. (How to deal with mediation by virtual Feynman particles makes me wonder 
how to deal with it though)
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Universal/General/Continuous and Particular//Singular/Individual

[Clark Goble]

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 1:58 PM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> I always liked his use of "general" since the word "universal" unqualified in 
> English seems to mean true of absolutely everything, and that's certainly not 
> what Aristotle meant by the Greek word traditionally translated as 
> "universal". But it seems like I'm the only person who minds this, so maybe 
> Peirce was just concerned with the idea of allowing exceptions in a given 
> class to which a general is applied, rather than avoiding the sense in which 
> "universal" evokes "maximally general". 

Pedagogically I think it’s a problem in trying to teach the concept to 
undergrads. I remember being terribly confused by ‘universal’ when I learned 
about it as a student. It tends to bias people towards nominalism. 

> On Jan 9, 2017, at 1:40 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt  wrote:
> (quoting Peirce)
> 
> Then the reasoning: "It will serve to show that almost every proposition of 
> ontological metaphysics is either meaningless gibberish,—one word being 
> defined by other words, and they by still others, without any real conception 
> ever being reached,—or else is downright absurd; so that all such rubbish 
> being swept away, what will remain of philosophy will be a series of problems 
> capable of investigation by the observational methods of the true 
> sciences,—the truth about which can be reached without those interminable 
> misunderstandings and disputes which have made the highest of the positive 
> sciences a mere amusement for idle intellects, a sort of chess,—idle pleasure 
> its purpose, and reading out of a book its method.

I think the interesting question is what metaphysical questions we could rescue 
and how we could rescue them. I’m not sure most are gibberish even if we can’t 
work out a test for them. But thinking through why that would be the case 
raises interesting difficulties. The extended metaphysical arguments Peirce 
gives either are the argument from musement (for a certain aspect for God) or 
his interesting argument for the quasi-platonic origin of the three categories 
as foundational cosmology. The latter in particular seems an argument from 
possibility.

>From what I can see his main argument is really that we have to make clear 
>what we’re talking about and metaphysics typically doesn’t do that. (To which 
>I agree - especially regarding 19th century and earlier philosophy) Yet he 
>elsewhere notes that we can’t escape from metaphysics. He has a somewhat 
>famous quote to this point. (Well famous among those who read Peirce anyway)

Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics -- not 
by any means every man who holds the ordinary reasonings of metaphysicians in 
scorn -- and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the 
crude and uncriticized metaphysics with which they are packed. We must 
philosophize, said the great naturalist Aristotle -- if only to avoid 
philosophizing. Every man of us has a metaphysics, and has to have one; and it 
will influence his life greatly. Far better, then, that that metaphysics should 
be criticized and not be allowed to run loose. (Peirce, CP 1.129)

Here metaphysics seems important if only to show what hidden premises undergird 
our thinking. It’s also possible that he might mean approaching metaphysics in 
a somewhat transcendental approach akin to Kant’s various transcendental 
arguments. i.e. for this to be true these must be true. Yet if one does that 
form of argument one quickly realizes a certain undecidability inherent to 
working backwards. That is more than one metaphysics can usually account for 
the phenomena in question. It’s this thinking (criticizing) of metaphysics that 
is important. How the pragmatic maxim with its emphasis on difference and 
testing for meaning isn’t completely clear to me.

 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theism and Peircean Cosmology

[Clark Goble]

> On Dec 29, 2016, at 12:52 PM, Helmut Raulien  wrote:
> 
> I think, maybe the concept of Christ is (btw) an attempt to solve the 
> almightiness-paradoxon (Can God create a rock He cannot move), by introducing 
> Himself in the role of a person who is not almighty, even got killed by the 
> Romans. The cost of this solution is to give up the concept of identity in 
> favour of a concept of tri-identity or trinity: Quite Peircean 2000 years 
> ago. Tragically, later the "Christians" have blamed not the Romans, but the 
> Jews for this killing.

Yes but the move to the person of Jesus causes far more problems for the more 
Greek absolutist conception of God. The problems of the traditional theologies 
of the two natures seem much more difficult than what they had before. Of 
course the reason for the theology isn’t how well they solve philosophical 
problems. 

> Btw, I have read, that the story of Jesus is somehow a copy of the Egyptian 
> story of Isis, or was it Osiris.

There are lots of patterns in religion and myth. The structuralists made hay 
with this at least through the middle of the 20th century. Some figures like 
Joseph Campbell continued to push it long after its theoretical underpinnings 
had become problematic.

> Like the story about Luther has ocurred about 160 years ago in England: A Mr. 
> Wycliff did the same, pinned reformatory theses to a church door, translated 
> the Bible, and had an uprising of farmers in his wake, same as later Luther, 
> just plagiating all that, but with bigger effect due to pamphlet printing 
> possibility then, more dead farmers, and he was antisemitic, and I wonder why 
> he still well regarded.

A few others mentioned Weber although I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. 
Certainly there’s a lot of people who think Weber completely wrong on the 
Protestant issue and that it’s one of these accidental correlations. Even if 
one gives Weber a bit more credit than many want to these days, there does seem 
a certain accidental component to it all tied up with what great powers 
happened to be ascendent the last 250 years. Would we view it the same way had 
Portugal, Spain and later France not screwed up their empires?



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