Quickly - Peircean Generals

Posted on July 24, 2008
Filed Under Free Will, Peirce, Philosophy |

3B073818-BA56-4F6C-A209-C29992FDD03D.jpgI’d written a big post on Peirce’s view of Generals and Universals. After finishing it I decided it just was way too technical and got into too much of Peirce’s metaphysics. So instead of expounding on Peirce’s theories let me offer a brief outline of a cosmology that I think works. I don’t want to say this is the only possible cosmology nor that one has to accept it. I just want to offer one I think works without necessarily committing to its being true.

First consider that semiotics is an irreducible aspect of the fundamental ontology of the universe. This is the idea that the universe is partially made of signs. A sign is something that stands for something else, it’s object, that determines an interpretant.

Roughly we have

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The key point is that we move from one substance/state to a new one. The universe is at a fundamental level not static matter but information processes.

Thinking of the universe as information processes we can further say that a sign functions via a context. That is what happens around it affects how a sign behaves. This is common in signs with humans in regular language. The sign ‘closed’ stands for a closed store and determines in my mind as I walk by the idea that the store is closed. Yet this works only because I know how to read English, have an understanding of businesses being closed, of what stores are and so forth.

What I want to suggest is that it is conceivable that at an ontological level rather than just a human linguistic level this also goes on. This is part and parcel of semiotics being tied to the nature of the universe.

Now what this means is that the universe can acquire habits just like people can. Now these habits may not be universal in the sense of applying to all stuff (signs) in the universe. Rather we can imagine a continuum such that we have total absolute universals and total absolute individuals. In between we’ll have what we’ll call generals since they function as a general term in logic. An example would be like “all red fish.” Not all fish are red but the notion applies to a collection of fish.

The universe as it develops develops more habits. These habits then affect others. In effect the universe evolves.

Now let us also say that all four Aristotilean causes are part of the universe. Form obviously relates to signs as does efficient causation. We can also say that sign-systems of certain stable habits have become substances. The habits are the generals. So we can talk about say an electron as a substance because it is part of a sign system with the habit of a certain charge, mass and so forth. Now those habits may be due to other habits. Just as with human language being somewhat holistic we have the same with habits.

Habits thus cause determinations. That is as sign-systems become stable there are implications. Those implications are caught up in the meaning of the habit. Thus they are quasi-universals. (Once again electrons with certain charges, spins, masses and so forth are an example and those depend upon more general habits of matter such as the notion of charge, spin, mass and so forth)

For any set of entities there will thus be a set of generals covering them due to their habits. The habits create laws which describe what is or isn’t possible. They are universals of a sort.

Now since final causation is part of the universe we can say that sign systems have an aim. The aim isn’t conscious in the sense that I think about going to the door, for example. But there is a directedness inherent in the universe. Likewise we can’t talk about the universe or atoms having a mind. But we can say that something like a quasi-mind is inherent to stuff in the universe. So our minds and our intentions would simply be an emergent phenomena (but not radically emergent) of the stuff the universe is made from.

Put simply our minds have the relation to the quasi-mind like aspects of sign-processes much like water has a reducible relationship to electrons, protons, their charges, spins, and so forth.

Ethical laws thus arise natural as a part of the universe due to habitual patterns in the universe (i.e. intelligences) that have direction. They are knowable because as part of a sign system they have effects in the universe and affect other sign systems.

Comments

6 Responses to “Quickly - Peircean Generals”

Clark, I agree with much of what you’ve written here. In particular, I heartily agree with what I understand of your perspective on the universe as information processes, although I don’t think we need “objects” apart from “symbols” — perhaps we’re in an infinite regression of symbols. However, I’m not sure I’ve understood your perspective on universals. How do you get from highly generalized accounts of experience to universals? Do you intend them to be understood to be the same?

A symbol can be an object (and in fact usually is). This is what leads to unlimited semiosis. However Peirce is also what we’d call in Heideggerian terms an ontic realist as well as a Schelling styled objective idealist.

The reason we need something apart from symbols is to avoid some of the pitfalls that befell Hegel. (And Peirce is pretty explicit on this point) There are two critiques of Hegel, even though especially in his latter period Peirce has a lot of similarities. The first is akin to what you find in the Continental tradition especially in Heidegger and Derrida. That is the idea of convergence and presence. The second critique is that Hegel accepts only symbols or what Peirce calls thirdness. But for Peirce there are two other irreducible elements in the universe: firstness and secondness. While they are more expansive these correspond very roughly to first person experience and action/reaction.

3 john c. halasz on July 25th, 2008 6:08 pm

So Peirce is taking aim at how Hegel seems to skip over the moment of finitude in Kant, qua dependency on the sensuous reception of particulars, as well as Hegel’s orchestrating everything into the simultaneity of his system, “sublating” everything into the self-development of “the Concept”? Or, in other words, Hegel’s suborning all temporal change and difference into the self-reproducing self-movement of “the Concept”? I don’t have any grasp of what Schelling might have been up to, in my few feeble attempts to read up on him, which just left me baffled. I’d assumed that Heidegger’s discussion of his conception of freedom might be more Heidegger than Schelling.

Why is my experience not a symbol? — and same question with action/reaction.

Your experience is a symbol, an index, an icon, an action, a reaction, and a wholeness. The point is that there are many aspects to experience. Peirce breaks it down into three main categories based upon logic of relations (single, two place, three place) but then further breaks each of those down based upon the same categories. (So firstness has three aspects based upon more firstness, secondness, and thirdness). This is where his famous 10 categories and then later 66 categories come from. However it’s really a kind of fractal version of phenomenology and this process could be carried on indefinitely.

John, I can’t claim to know much Schelling and frankly most of what I know comes from Heidegger. And, as we all know, Heidegger is a “creative” reader. What I do know is that Schelling’s a bit like a 19th century version of Putnam. If you don’t like what he’s saying wait a couple of years and he’ll change his mind and say the opposite. But Schelling was very influential on Peirce. Indeed Peirce’s term for his own metaphysics as objective idealism comes from Schelling. But there are differences from either Schelling or Hegel. But there are also similarities. So he has some similarities to recent more “empirical” or “epistemological” readings of Hegel.

I’d write more on that but as I said I just don’t know enough Hegel or Schelling to make detailed comparisons.

I should add that through most of his writings Peirce is very antagonistic towards Hegel. For a while the nicest thing he can say about Hegel is that he comes up with good lists of trichotomies. (Divisions of three) By the end he’s more positive although there are still pretty significant differences. His famous Cambridge lectures towards the end of his life (collected as Reasoning and the Logic of Things) shocked a lot of people precisely because he was so Hegelian in certain ways. And of course many of those influenced by him sometimes went more Hegelian. (Although Dewey famously started out very Hegelian and moved further and further away from it as time went on - some saying he adopting James’ logic and Peirce’s psychology:)

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