Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Helmut Raulien]

 

Dear list members,

I am afraid this is not very Peirce-related, but I want to say something about the creation concept, as I more and more am getting the opinion, that it is anthropocentric and misleading. "Atum", the ancient Egyptian myth, as you wrote, is the state of the beginning, and it is nothing and everything at the same time. I think this is impossible. Either there was nothing or everything. If there was nothing at the beginning, then evolution is based on creation. If there was everything, then it is based on limitation by habit-taking: Viable events and patterns are reinforced, nonviable ones are forgotten. Obviously there is both, creativity, and habit-taking. So the Egyptians concluded that at the beginning there should have been a situation which is both, "all" and "nothing" at the same time. But all is the opposite of nothing, isnt it. An Esoterician perhaps would answer that I just cannot combine these two concepts, because my mind is too narrow, and I have not pondered enough about the divine wisdom. But I do not like this typical esoterian patronizing rethorical move, so I would rather conclude, that there was no beginning. I think, logically this is the best explanation. So I think, that there is creativity, ok, but no creation out of nothing. That does not mean that I am an atheist, I just do not share the anthropocentric definition of God as an engineer or craftsman occupied with a job. If He is nonlocal, He most likely is nontemporal too (Einstein, time-space-transformation), and nontemporality means that logically there is no need to suggest a beginning and a creation. Btw: To say, that the big bang was the beginning of time is a contradiction too: A beginning is in time, not of time. Time can not begin, because a start requires an already existing time, isnt that so.

Best,

Helmut


 Freitag, 14. Oktober 2016 um 22:58 Uhr
 "Michael Bergman"  wrote:
 

Thanks, Gary.

This is exactly the mindset of the KBpedia Knowledge Ontology [1], which
has a triadic upper structure until typologies of natural classes come
into play.

This KKO structure is likely to undergo substantial revision over time,
but the application of Peirce's ideas of the three categories and
categorization (including a speculative grammar for knowledge bases [2])
has guided the initial development.

Mike

[1] http://www.mkbergman.com/1985/threes-all-of-the-way-down-to-typologies/
[2] http://www.mkbergman.com/1958/a-speculative-grammar-for-knowledge-bases/

On 10/14/2016 2:29 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
> Jon, Edwina, Gary F, Soren, List,
>
> John Sheriff, in /Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle: Grounds for
> Human Significance/, in commenting on what Peirce calls the "pure zero"
> state (which, in my thinking, is roughly equivalent to the later
> blackboard metaphor) quotes Peirce as follows: "So of potential being
> there was in that initial state no lack" (CP 6.217) and continues, "
> 'Potential', in Peirce's usage, means indeterminate yet capable of
> determination in any specific case" (CP 6.185-86) [Sheriff, 4). This
> "potential being" is, then, decidedly /not /the "nothing of negation,"
> but rather "the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is
> involved or foreshadowed" (CP 6.217).
>
> Sheriff had just prior to this written: "Peirce frequently drew the
> parallel between his theory and the Genesis account" and discusses this
> in a longish paragraph. I think it is possible to overemphasize this
> "parallel" (and, as I've commented here in the past, Peirce's "pure
> zero"--or ur-continuity in the blackboard metaphor--seems to me closer
> to the Kemetic /Nun /in the dominant Ancient Egyptian creation myth;
> while it should be noted in this regard that Peirce knew hieroglyphics
> and may well have been acquainted with this myth).
>
> Jon wrote:
>
> [M]y current working hypothesis is that "Pure mind, as creative of
> thought" (CP 6.490) is the Person who conceives the /possible /chalk
> marks and then draws /some /of them on the blackboard, rather than
> the blackboard itself as a "theater" where chalk marks somehow
> spontaneously appear; instead, the blackboard
> represents /created /Thirdness. However, I will tentatively grant
> that your analysis may be closer to what Peirce himself had in mind.
>
>
> I would tend to disagree with you, Jon, that this ur-continutiy is
> "creat/ed/" 3ns; rather, I see it as "creat/ive/" 3ns as distinguished
> from the 3ns that become the habits and laws of a created universe. So,
> in a word, my view is that only these laws and habits are the 'created'
> 3nses.
>
> One way of considering this is via the Ancient Egyptian myths just
> mentioned. In these Kemetic myths there is "one incomprehensible Power,
> alone, unique, inherent in the Nun, the indefiniable cosmic sea, the
> infinite source of the Universe, outside of any notion of Space or
> Time." At Heliopolis this Power, the Creator, is given the name, Atum,
> "which means both All and 

Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology

[Helmut Raulien]

List,

Regarding the question, whether Peirce was a pantheist or not, I was thinking about the meaning of "immanent". If it means that something is contained (nonlocally in this case), like as an epiphenomenon or a trait of something, then something "immanent" implies not being the creator of this thing. But if God is the creator, and still is present everywhere and everywhen, i.e. nonlocally and nontemporally, might this still be pantheism, though without immanence? In this case the universe does not contain God, but the other way round. And the immanence is also the other way: God is not immanent in the universe (or the three of them), but the universe is immanent in God? No, maybe one cannot say so, if one believes in creation as a process, because then in the beginning there must have been a God without a universe. But on the other hand, this might be a too anthropocentric concept of God and of creation: Maybe it is not a linear process, like a carpenter making a chair?

About possibilities: Are they creative or privative? Is a possibility an invention, or something that remains when a lot of other items in question have been identified as, or turned out to be, impossibilities? With God as firstness, it should be the first (creative possibility) , I guess. But this might be a hen-and-egg-question, which suggests that there was a beginning: Either a nothing, or an everything. But maybe there was no beginning (like eg. buddhists claim).

Best,

Helmut

 

 11. Oktober 2016 um 16:59 Uhr
 g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
 




Jon, list,

 

On the question of which of the three Universes may not “have a Creator independent of it,” I’d like to offer an argument that it could be the Universe of Firstness rather than Thirdness. However I won’t have time this week to construct an argumentation as thoroughgoing as your argument for Thirdness as Creator; so instead, I’ll just insert a few comments into your post, below. I’ll put Peirce’s words in bold.

 

Gary F

 

} God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. [Thoreau] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway

 

 

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 9-Oct-16 22:45
 

List:



As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I started the thread on "Peirce's Theory of Thinking," there is an intriguing paragraph about cosmology in the first additament to "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God."  It did not actually accompany the article originally, but nevertheless is in the Collected Papers as CP 6.490.  Before discussing it directly, a few preliminaries are in order.

In the very first sentence of the published article itself, Peirce stated, "The word 'God,' so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2.434).  In the second additament, the one that did appear in The Hibbert Journal, he added, "It is that course of meditation upon the three Universes which gives birth to the hypothesis and ultimately to the belief that they, or at any rate two of the three, have a Creator independent of them …" (CP 6.483, EP 2.448).  Furthermore, in three different manuscript drafts of the article that are included in R 843, Peirce explicitly denied that God is "immanent in" nature or the three Universes, instead declaring (again) that He is the Creator of them:


	"I do not mean, then, a 'soul of the World' or an intelligence is 'immanent' in Nature, but is the Creator of the three Universes of minds, of matter, and of ideal possibilities, and of everything in them."
	"Indeed, meaning by 'God,' as throughout this paper will be meant, the Being whose Attributes are, in the main, those usually ascribed to Him, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Infinite Benignity, a Being not 'immanent in' the Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but the Sole Creator of every content of them, without exception."
	"But I had better add that I do not mean by God a being merely 'immanent in Nature,' but I mean that Being who has created every content of the world of ideal possibilities, of the world of physical facts, and the world of all minds, without any exception whatever."


These passages shed light not only on Peirce's concept of God--he was clearly a theist, not a pantheist or panentheist, at least as I understand those terms--but also on what exactly he had in mind with his three Universes of Experience that the article describes as consisting of Ideas, Brute Actuality, and Signs.  These evidently correspond respectively to (1) ideal possibilities, matter, and minds; (2) Ideas, Matter, and Mind; and (3) ideal possibilities, physical facts, and minds.  Of course, it is barely a stretch, if at all, to identify these with his categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.

[GF: ] I think it would be less of a stretch to identify the contents of those Universes as Firsts,