I was briefly glancing through some of the email that came in during the couple of weeks I was roughly internet free. One very interesting one was regarding Peirce's notion of reality. Now that was partially the subject of the Wiki debate over the relationship between truth and the opinion of inquirers. Basically Peirce says the true is not what any finite set of inquirers think. But it is what an ideal community would arrive at in the long run. In other words it is what an infinite community would discover. But of course the infinite doesn't occur like that in this world, thus we must have a thorough going fallibilism about beliefs. All of this is somewhat related to the German idealist Schelling though.
Like Peirce, Schelling thought reality was independent of how we think. But also like Peirce, he didn't think this implied that there was no mind or spirit in reality. (The way the realist/anti-realist debate is typically framed) Schelling called this Objective Idealism. Now this seems a bit odd, but for Peirce what he calls thirdness is inherently mind-like. This doesn't mean that it is akin to a naive idealism. Merely that semiotics inherently means that things behave in a mind-like fashion. Thus physics would be to Peirce very mind like in how it works, even in its mechanistic form in the 19th century. The best way to think about this is less to think of it as a kind of traditional Platonic "mind" or "intellect" out there. Rather I think it better to think of it as a kind of expansion of what we mean by mind. Peirce was rather clear on this, talking not just about things like the collective of ants as a mind, but even various natural phenomena as mind-like.
Rather than taking this, as idealism often is, as a kind of supernatural view of reality in terms of our naive view of mind rather than stuff, it is better to think of it akin to how science tends to conceive of mind rather than philosophers. That is, it expands mind, intentionality, and so forth so that many processes fit the label of mind. Put an other way, Peirce might be seen as fully accepting that AI is possible, at least in terms of thirdness. Further Peirce would argue that computing machines that behave in mind-like ways suggests we ought think physical process as mind-like as well, only more primitive or simple. Perhaps it would be better to call it quasi-mind so as to not confuse things too much, given how we associate the term mind with the problem of consciousness. (And consciousness proper would, I think, be an issue of firstness, not thirdness for Peirce)
The second thing to recognize about Peirce is that especially in his latter period, continuity was key for him. Thus any purported duality would have an infinite set of gradations between it. This is how he resolved, for instance, the mind/body problem. Thus rather than something being mind like or not, we would really have to ask how mindlike it is. That seems strange at first, until you consider that any definition of mind in terms of phenomena would appear to offer degree. Just looking at the animal kingdom it seems we have degree, with a human mind exhibiting more features than say an ape, which has more features than say a gopher, fish, insect, and so forth on down to single cells. That's not to say it is just a matter of degree. Different species have different abilities. But I think this way of thinking is quite helpful.
By putting himself in this line, Peirce ends up following, in certain ways, the line of Plotinus, Boehme, di Cusa, and Schelling himself.
I should add that those interested in the relationship between Schelling and American Pragmatism ought check out this review by H. G. Callaway. "Schelling and the Background of American Pragmatism". Of course one also can't neglect both the American transcendentalists like Emerson nor the controversial Swedenborg. (William James' father was a follower of Swedenborg, and Schelling himself was influenced by Swedenborg)
The interesting thing with Peirce is, I think, not so much the parallels with idealists like Schelling or even the neoPlatonists or strains of neoPlatonism in medievalists he studied. Rather what is interesting is where he differs from the idealists in certain ways and adopts a more thorough going realism. I'd note that the debate in Taylor Carman's Heidegger's Analytic ends up being very similar. To what degree do we view Heidegger as an idealist and to which extent do we consider him a realist? While clearly there are differences between Peirce and Heidegger, they clearly walk that line between the two in certain ways.
Thus rather than something being mind like or not, we would really have to ask how mindlike it is. That seems strange at first, until you consider that any definition of mind in terms of phenomena would appear to offer degree.
Is this to say that, for Peirce, the reference from which an entity may be judged more or less mind-like is itself some posited consensus of the "infinite community"? That is, to what degree do concepts such as Mind-Likeness inhere in the fallible beliefs of finite individuals?
I apologize, the comment box seems to have eaten my blockquote tag on the previous comment. The first paragraph is from the post.
alex
I fixed your tags for you.
Peirce would say that any belief, including all his own theories, were fallible. Indeed I think Peirce would see taking his body of thought dogmatically as something horrible. He would be very open to rigorous debate over his ideas. As to what mind is or how mindlike something is, I think he'd also say that while it may well be we achieve the answer, we can never be fully sure we've achieved the answer due to the finite amount of inquiry that has gone on.
It is important to note that Peirce never says we don't believe the truth. (I'll avoid the word "know" since Peirce typically talks about belief, not knowledge, and when he uses knowledge he is usually using it in its loose common sense) So Peirce would say there are lots of things we know. However that finite inquiry always renders things problematic. I should add that this is very similar to what Heidegger and Derrida assert as well. Derrida in particular gets a bad rap for not believing in truth or the like. But that's clearly not the case. Indeed I have a whole post of quotes from him on the subject. Indeed I find Derrida interesting precisely because I think he pushes the implications of fallibilism inherent in the heremeneutic circle in places people just aren't comfortable.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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