------------------------------------------
PEIRCE-L Digest 1299 -- February 16-17, 1998
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From PEIRCE-L Forum, Jan 5, 1998, [name of author of message],
"re: Peirce on Teleology"
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: Porphyry: On Aristotle's Categories/The New List (4)
by Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
2) the personal in communication
by Joseph Ransdell
3) Re: Tom Anderson's death
by piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
4) Definition/logical analysis
by Andre De Tienne
5) special note to Mark Weisz
by joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
6) Re: Tom Anderson's death
by David Matthew Mills
7) archives, threads, etc.
by Joseph Ransdell
8) Re: Tom Anderson's death
by Leon Surette
9) Re: The New List (Paragraph 3)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
10) Re: Tom Anderson's death
by Everdell[…]aol.com
11) Re: Tom Anderson's death
by Cathy Legg
12) Re: archives, threads, etc.
by Cathy Legg
13) Re: The New List (paragraph 3)
by Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:09:30 +0100
From: Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Porphyry: On Aristotle's Categories/The New List (4)
Message-ID:
In response to (BugDaddy: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 22:05:13 -0600 (CST))
Bill, when you say:
>Thus we end up with a sequence of systems, G1, G2, G3... and
>statements S1, S2, S3... which is already determined by G1, itself.
>Thus, there is a meta-mathematical sense in which all of these
>systems are really the same. They are different only with regard to
>their formal structure, and hence what can be proven within them.
you seem to allude to Gentzen's use of a 'principle of transfinite
induction'. This is of course mathematically sound, but nevertheless
it seems to me to be question begging since Gentzen leaves the
finitistic framework of Goedel's methods.
This is a way out, but at the same time nothing but a way out, like:
"I surely can't win the game, but then at least I can never loose."
-- Well, not my game. I think we can really win.
Before you wrote:
>As I understand it, Goedel proved that in the system
>G1 which he developed to represent the natural numbers, there is
>technique for generating a statement S1 which is meta-necessarily
>true, but unprovable within the system G1. We therefore can add
>S1 as an axiom to G1 to derive a system G2. But note: we do not
>have the option of adding ~S1 to the G1. Such an addition would
>lead to an immediate meta-contradiction. Thus we end up with a
>sequence of systems, G1, G2, G3... and statements S1, S2, S3...
>which is already determined by G1, itself.
I think we do have the option as long as we stay within the Goedelian
framework. In other words: I fully _accept_ Goedel's techniques and
results in the sense of Hilbert's finitistic demands. And I accept the
sense in which Goedel's result is indeed restrictive.
In still other words: I don't see much difference between a 'nota
notae' and a 'meta metae'. It's still the same game. Not a really new
move.
>In non-Euclidean geometries on the contrary, the additional
>axioms are not pre-determined by their common axioms, and are
>really different from each other.
Agreed!
Thomas Riese.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 08:27:49
From: Joseph Ransdell
To: peirce-l[…]TTACS.TTU.EDU
Subject: the personal in communication
Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19980216082749.7567ff38[…]pop.ttu.edu>
Coinciding with Tom Anderson's death there was an extended discussion on
another list I subscribe to but do not myself usually participate in where
the "impersonality" of list-based discussion was the topic. I have seen
this discussed extensively on other lists as well over the years I have
been involved in this sort of thing, starting back with my first experience
of it, which was with a closed, five-person group of five of us who worked
collaboratively in a shared project over a period of a couple of years,
beginning 7 or 8 years ago, followed by some six years of involvement with
open list-based discussion on a variety of different sorts of such lists.
Although it took a good many years for it to "sink in", I finally realized
that my major initial error and standing tendency was in not taking
seriously the fact that people who participate regularly and vigorously in
this type of communication range across a spectrum of sensibility as
regards the extent to which the communication is experienced as personal or
impersonal.
Towards one end of the spectrum, I believe, are people such as myself for
whom this sort of communication is as personal as any other, including face
to face conversation, regardless of whether any collateral personal
information is known or is being conveyed in the medium or supplied by the
context. At the other are people who, for whatever reason, find themselves
at least temporarily compelled to make use of the medium but never feel
that they are engaging in real personal contact with anyone, though they
may recognize what they regard as the "cerebral" or "intellectual" value of
it sufficiently to make it worthwhile to participate in it, anyway. And
then of course there are all of the intermediate or mid-range cases of
people who experience it as personal and involving personality but who also
find it somewhat lacking or limited in that respect, and that, I suppose
for a variety of reasons.
The question of the "personal" is not at all the same as that which we
usually associate with the "intimate", nor is it the same as the private as
opposed to the public. I don't think it has to do with whether the persons
themselves are more or less lacking in personal warmth or affect either,
though people who are apt to be especially disturbed about the
"impersonality" of the medium tend to think that this is what it is all
about, which causes them to misunderstand those who do not experience the
communication in this way as lacking in true affective capacities, and they
frequently take a "more human than thou" stance toward those not like
themselves in that respect, which, ironically, causes them to dehumanize
others in their very misunderstanding of them as supposedly "dehumanized by
technology". (The Unabomber iconizes this type of irony -- not as himself
an ironic person but as his self-conception is viewed from another
perspective -- very nicely for the extreme case, with his use of technology
to blow people into pieces in the interest of combatting its supposedly
dehumanizing effects.) I stress this because discussions in which that is
the working assumpton -- that the issue concerns whether the people
involved are or are not affectively adequate as persons -- is certain to
lead nowhere worth going.
The only thing I am somewhat confident of is that the difference between
people in this respect lies rather in their relationship to the words of
others and is more expressive of something culturally derived that has to
do with communicational style and stance than of some peculiarity of the
individual personality. I wish I could characterize that effectively but
find that I cannot. As regards Tom Anderson in particular, though, my own
sense is that, although I never met Tom elsewhere, I understand him as a
person as much as I would have if I had had the occasion to visit with him
face to face on many occasions because the basis of our personal
relationship would have been, in any case, our shared interests in the
things discussed here, and Tom found this communicational environment -- I
mean the general ambience of the PEIRCE-L forum as a human environment --
unusually congenial. I always had the sense of a person flourishing when
I read his many messages, and the news of his death was, to me, quite
personal and affecting though I never communicated with him except in
public messages here. I do not mean to "reduce" Tom as a person to this
special environment -- he had a personal life beyond this of which I know
nothing -- but this was a part of his personal life, too, and I think in
his case an unusually important one because of some unusal affinity with
it.
I say all this with the intention of conveying the importance of something
that I, personally, have not always found easy, which is to recognize that
here, as in any other communicational milieu, there are some for whom it is
as "natural" as any they have ever experienced, others for whom it is
difficult to relate to it effectively at all, and others for whom it is
more or less satisfactory or frustrating, in various degrees. The
distinction between the personal and the impersonal is not an important one
for understanding that, though what the relevant distinctions are is not at
all clear to me, and it makes me realize how little we actually understand
about what we are doing when communicating, here and elsewhere. I have a
sense, too, of some very important things ahead of us as the focus in
philosophy as elsewhere shifts more and more in the direction of concern
with the nature of communication.
Joe Ransdell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell - joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com
Dept of Philosophy - 806 742-3158 (FAX 742-0730)
Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA
http://members.door.net/arisbe (Peirce website - beta)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:02:21 -0500
From: piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tom Anderson's death
Message-ID: <19980216.110222.9190.5.piat[…]juno.com>
Beloved, irrepressible Tom. We're sure going to miss him. Always an
encouraging word, kind hearted, champion of the underdog. Seems like
whatever we talked about he'd read just about everyone I wanted to read
and usually about a dozen or more others that I'd never heard of but was
always glad he told me about. I never had an exchange with Tom when I
didn't learn something from his broad store of knowledge and his quick
and penetrating intellect. I met Tom five or six years ago over on a
mental health forum. Things weren't as open minded there as they are
here on the Peirce list and Tom's broad knowledge, curiosity, integrity
and generosity sometimes annoyed the more authoritarian types who were
often very hostile to him. He never responded in kind nor lost his
enthusiasm. He told us there about the Peirce list. I met him again on
a science forum and we went through Murray's _The Bell Curve_ together.
Tom always seem to have a broader more humane view informed by his wide
reading in psychology, philosophy, religion, math, science and
literature. Tom, who generally knew more than most, was forever seeking
and was never too proud to expose what he didn't know. Tom took the high
road. He was and will remain an inspiration to me. Still I will greatly
miss his irreplaceable, lively, thoroughly decent, generous and kind
spirit.
Jim Piat
_____________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 10:52:56 -0600
From: Andre De Tienne
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Definition/logical analysis
Message-ID:
>Thomas Riese.
>
>
>
>P.S. I certainly remember to have read that Peirce somewhere says
>"definition, i.e. logical analysis". Must have been on a left side
>page, first quarter of it. I am unable to recover the reference.
>Perhaps someone on the list can help me?!
>
This is in CP 8.343, left side page, first quarter of it, in a draft of a
letter to Lady Welby: "It seems to me that one of the first useful steps
toward a science of semeiotic, or the cenoscopic science of signs, must be
the accurate definition, or logical analysis, of the concepts of the
science." (forthcoming EP2, p. 482)
A similar passage is in the letter Peirce actually sent to Lady Welby, in
_Semiotic and Significs_, p. 86: "I wish you would study my Existential
Graphs; for in my opinion it quite wonderfully opens up the true nature and
method of logical analysis;--that is to say, of definition."
Another statement is in "New Elements" ("Kaina Stoicheia", MS 517): "A
_definition_ is the logical analysis of a predicate in general terms. It
has two branches, the one asserting that the definitum is applicable to
whatever there may be to which the definition is applicable; the other
(which ordinarily has several clauses), that the definition is applicable
to whatever there may be to which the definitum is applicable. _A
definition does not assert that anything exists_." (forthcoming EP2, p. 302)
Andre De Tienne
******************************************************************
Andre De Tienne Tel.(W): 317-274-2033
Assistant Editor Tel.(H): 317-328-8789
Peirce Edition Project, IUPUI Fax: 317-274-2347
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy, IUPUI E-mail: adetienn[…]iupui.edu
CA 545, 425 University Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46202-5140 http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce
******************************************************************
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 10:51:41 -0800
From: joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com (ransdell, joseph m.)
To: peirce-l[…]TTACS.TTU.EDU
Subject: special note to Mark Weisz
Message-ID: <34E88ABD.F38CFBB7[…]door.net>
Mark:
I've had some special and frustrating problems in communication with
you, owing to something having to do with your compuserve address, but I
wasn't aware until just now that neither of a couple of messages of mine
reached you. On my end there was the additional problem that my mailbox
was clogged at one of my addresses and the returned messages that would
have informed me that my messages weren't delivered didn't show up until
this morning when that mailbox got unclogged. I will take advantage of
the fact that you are receiving mail from PEIRCE-L to send you copis of
the two that bounced below. (I am assuming that a first message to you
on Friday did get to you okay
============message sent Saturday=====================
Mark:
You need not be concerned about the peirce-l password and the
instructions to change it. That is just something that is sent out
automatically by the machine that distributes the messages and actually
has no function that anybody ever makes use of.
Thanks again for your willingness to communicate with us about Tom.
Anything you say will be greatly appreciated by many on the list, you
can be certain.
Best regards,
Joseph Ransdell manager of peirce-l
====================message of Sunday=======================
Mark:
I received your message but it didn't go to the list because your user i
d was different from the one you subscribed from. The one you
subscribed from was
71333.133[…]compuserve.com
but this message came with the name
markw[…]compuserve.com
I subscribed you again under the second name (i.e. user i d, the part
just before the "[…]" sign.) this time but I have left the first one on
the subscription list as well in order to make sure that your messages
don't bounce again. This is just temporary, but you will be receiving
two of each message distributed by the list until we figure out which
will work best for you when it comes to posting.
If you have web browser you could check out the Peirce website and you
can find there a page for peirce-l with a link to a page where the
archives for the daily messages for the past 10 or 12 days are there to
browse through. It will give you some idea of Tom's activity, as I am
sure that he posted some messages during that time, the last one being
on the 8th of Feb, I believe, but there are earlier ones. The website
is
http://members.door.net/arisbe
The page for PEIRCE-L is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/people/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm
Anyway, continue to send any mail to me (as distinct from mail to the
list) at rather than the other address I use since my
mailbox at the other address seems to be clogged or something .
Best regards,
Joe
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 12:10:00 -0500
From: David Matthew Mills
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tom Anderson's death
Message-ID:
On the occasion of Tom Anderson's death, I found the following thoughts
from Peirce on the subjects of life, death, and living influence to be
timely, especially in light of Tom's influence on the members of this
discussion group, both collectively and individually.
-- Dave Mills
575. But, further, synechism recognizes that the carnal consciousness is
but a small part of the man. There is, in the second place, the social
consciousness, by which a man's spirit is embodied in others, and which
continues to live and breathe and have its being very much longer than
superficial observers think....
576. Nor is this, by any means, all. A man is capable of a spiritual
consciousness, which constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is
embodied in the universe as a whole. This as an archetypal idea can never
fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual
embodiment.
577. A friend of mine, in consequence of a fever, totally lost his sense
of hearing. He had been very fond of music before his calamity; and,
strange to say, even afterwards would love to stand by the piano when a
good performer played. So then, I said to him, after all you can hear a
little. Absolutely not at all, he replied; but I can feel the music all
over my body. Why, I exclaimed, how is it possible for a new sense to be
developed in a few months! It is not a new sense, he answered. Now that my
hearing is gone I can recognize that I always possessed this mode of
consciousness, which I formerly, with other people, mistook for hearing. In
the same manner, when the carnal consciousness passes away in death, we
shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively spiritual
consciousness which we have been confusing with something different.
519. "Do you believe in a future life?" Some kind of a future life there
can be no doubt of. A man of character leaves an influence living after
him. It is living: it is personal. In my opinion, it is quite proper to
call that a future life. Jesus so spoke of it when he said he would always
be with us.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 18:10:43
From: Joseph Ransdell
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: archives, threads, etc.
Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19980216181043.4e1f7e90[…]pop.ttu.edu>
In response to Cathy Legg:
I just now got a chance to read your message of a couple of days ago,
Cathy, and thought I should respond to the following paragraph:
>I have a large file of Tom's email messages - both to the Peirce-L and to
>me personally. I didn't keep all of them, just the ones that interested
>me, but that was most of them. It strikes me that they are of considerable
>intellectual value. So many lines of thought explored, ideas
>suggested...Tom had such wonderful intellectual curiosity. I wonder if
>some sort of archive could or should be set up? Maybe at Arisbe?
I set up a page called "Threads and Themes" at Arisbe some time back with
the idea of illustrating how something like that might be done for a good
many discussion sequences that have occurred over the years, some of them
involving very well-developed and lengthy posts containing material that
should be revived. In fact, one could imagine renewed discussion of those
very threads themselves again and again across time as people looking back
through them find that they want to do so. There is a real intellectual
treasure in the archives that will probably astonish almost anyone who
reviews it both by its quantity and quality, and to be able not only to
make it current, as it were, but to set these processes themselvs "in
motion" again, would be well worth trying. Realistically speaking, this
will work well only when we are technologically up to par in such a way
that it is convenient to do that -- possible in principle just isn't good
enough in this medium -- but that could easily come about in a year or two,
and so I thought that I would set up an example there of an especially
lively thread and then add others now and again. With no time available to
keep at it that is as far as I got with it, but like several of the
features of Arisbe my idea has been to establish something as an example
that others might in due time wish to follow up on.
As it happens, the thread I mounted there is the one Tom himself initiated
when he set a formal problem for people on the list to respond to --
remember the problem of the chords? -- in the context of a discussion of
probability and related conceptions. It is fairly easy to extract a thread
like that from the archives but it does take some time to do which I
haven't had. I can imagine some future time at which the past and present
of the forum would become available at once, with people not only learning
from past discussions like that but continuing them. Anyway, I think it
would be essential, in preserving Tom's contributions as well as others, to
re-present them in the dialogical threads of which they are a part, rather
than presenting them by themselves in abstraction from the original
dialogical context. The web page is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/threads/threads.htm
I think myself that it would be a good, farsighted move for someone with a
long-range interest in Peirce to volunteer to take the development of such
a page as their personal project, both as a public service and as something
that could help in establishing their professional identity across time. I
have thought of Arisbe as an assemblage of different projects like that,
all of which would eventually be taken over, one by one, by any number of
different "caretakers" who would identify themselves professionally in this
way. It does require some time to do that sort of thing, but not a whole
lot for any given such project. (I'm not urging you in particular, Cathy,
but just taking advantage of your message about Tom's contributions as a
pretext for saying this to anybody interested in doing that sort of thing.)
Joe Ransdell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell - joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com
Dept of Philosophy - 806 742-3158 (FAX 742-0730)
Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA
http://members.door.net/arisbe (Peirce website - beta)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 21:24:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Leon Surette
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tom Anderson's death
Message-ID: <199802170224.VAA15648[…]juliet.its.uwo.ca>
I want to add my expressions of sympathy to Tom Anderson's friends
and family. We will all certainly miss his inquisitive and courteous
intelligence. As a survivor of an emergency quadruple by-pass, I have some
slight insight into the terrible abruptness of heart disease.
Leon Surette Home: 519-681-7787
Dept. of English Fax: 519-661-3776
The University of Western Ontario Email: lsurette[…]julian.uwo.ca
London, Ontario
N6A 3K7
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 03:58:03 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: The New List (Paragraph 3)
Message-ID: <34ecfb4a.5248977[…]pop3.cris.com>
Peirce wrote:
> §3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense
>is that of the present, in general. This is a conception,
>because it is universal. But as the act of attention has no
>connotation at all, but is the pure denotative power of the
>mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an
>object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any
>predicate of that object, -- so the conception of what is
>present in general, which is nothing but the general recognition
>of what is contained in attention, has no connotation, and
>therefore no proper unity. This conception of the present in
>general, or IT in general, is rendered in philosophical language
>by the word "substance" in one of its meanings. Before any
>comparison or discrimination can be made between what is
>present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as
>it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized
>by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot
>itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated
>of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical
>with the conception of substance.
I sense a bit of ambiguity here: "That universal conception
which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general.
This is a conception, because it is universal." For there are
two meanings that can be applied here. On the one hand, we have
a universal conception of the present in general. On the other
hand we have a particular conception, which is "nearest to
sense," being identical to the "manifold of sensuous
impressions," which we saw in paragraph one. Is Peirce
deliberately combining these fundamentally different conceptions?
"But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is
the pure denotative power of the mind....and therefore no proper
unity." Is attention totally inexplicable in rational terms, or
does it exist through the intent of the man directing it?
"This conception of the present in general, or IT in general, is
rendered in philosophical language by the word "substance" in one
of its meanings." Hmmm... As I read these words, I think back
to Plato. What would he think of the present in general, the IT?
I think he would say that it is a mere shadow of reality seen as
if by a man in a cave, looking at figures dancing before a fire.
Is this what substance is?
"Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what
is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as
it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized
by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot
itself be made a predicate." Perhaps not, but can it be a
subject?
"This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a
subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of
substance." Is it not accurate to say that in some sense, IT is
in the mind, as the phantasm of sense?
-----
I hope I haven't been too negative here, too critical. I think
this third paragraph is rather dubious, but am not sure how
central it is to Peirce' argument, overall.
-----------------------------------
"In essentials unity, in nonessentials diversity,
in all things charity"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
William Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 00:03:41 EST
From: Everdell[…]aol.com
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tom Anderson's death
Message-ID: <44915b4e.34e91a30[…]aol.com>
I'll miss Tom, too. We were on a track together, looking at the relation
between Peirce's math and his metaphysics, and he was generous in both
learning and teaching.
But this will be the first time I shall be mourning someone in this personal
way whom I never met except on these white screens of pica type.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 21:59:24 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Tom Anderson's death
Message-ID:
Thanks for that, David. I found it moving, and true of Tom.
Cathy.
On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, David Matthew Mills wrote:
>
> On the occasion of Tom Anderson's death, I found the following thoughts
> from Peirce on the subjects of life, death, and living influence to be
> timely, especially in light of Tom's influence on the members of this
> discussion group, both collectively and individually.
>
> -- Dave Mills
>
> 575. But, further, synechism recognizes that the carnal consciousness is
> but a small part of the man. There is, in the second place, the social
> consciousness, by which a man's spirit is embodied in others, and which
> continues to live and breathe and have its being very much longer than
> superficial observers think....
>
> 576. Nor is this, by any means, all. A man is capable of a spiritual
> consciousness, which constitutes him one of the eternal verities, which is
> embodied in the universe as a whole. This as an archetypal idea can never
> fail; and in the world to come is destined to a special spiritual
> embodiment.
>
> 577. A friend of mine, in consequence of a fever, totally lost his sense
> of hearing. He had been very fond of music before his calamity; and,
> strange to say, even afterwards would love to stand by the piano when a
> good performer played. So then, I said to him, after all you can hear a
> little. Absolutely not at all, he replied; but I can feel the music all
> over my body. Why, I exclaimed, how is it possible for a new sense to be
> developed in a few months! It is not a new sense, he answered. Now that my
> hearing is gone I can recognize that I always possessed this mode of
> consciousness, which I formerly, with other people, mistook for hearing. In
> the same manner, when the carnal consciousness passes away in death, we
> shall at once perceive that we have had all along a lively spiritual
> consciousness which we have been confusing with something different.
>
> 519. "Do you believe in a future life?" Some kind of a future life there
> can be no doubt of. A man of character leaves an influence living after
> him. It is living: it is personal. In my opinion, it is quite proper to
> call that a future life. Jesus so spoke of it when he said he would always
> be with us.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg,
Philosophy Programme,
RSSS, ANU, ACT, AUS.,
0200.
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:25:46 +1100 (EDT)
From: Cathy Legg
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: archives, threads, etc.
Message-ID:
On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, Joseph Ransdell wrote:
> I set up a page called "Threads and Themes" at Arisbe some time back with
> the idea of illustrating how something like that might be done for a good
> many discussion sequences that have occurred over the years, some of them
> involving very well-developed and lengthy posts containing material that
> should be revived. In fact, one could imagine renewed discussion of those
> very threads themselves again and again across time as people looking back
> through them find that they want to do so.
I thought that was a good idea at the time, and followed the link but, as
you note, there has not yet been the time and resources to make more than
the barest beginning. That thread on chords petered out (in my opinion)
before it got to the really interesting question, namely, what the
example showed about continuity. There have been much longer-running and
more fruitful threads (e.g. on whether abduction confers probability or
"plausibility", and on the relationship between science and Topics of Vital
Importance - these are just two threads that I was particularly interested
in).
> There is a real intellectual
> treasure in the archives that will probably astonish almost anyone who
> reviews it both by its quantity and quality,
I agree, and I agree with you that it is better to present discussions
in dialogical, "thread" form than as a bunch of detached messages.
Pending someone putting in the work required to set that up, however,
(and I can't as I'm in the last stages of writing up my PhD thesis) I'm
willing to make my collection of Tom's messages to the Peirce-L
available as a temporary text archive if people think that would be a
good plan. At least a string-search would be possible to identify key
words and the passages surrounding them. It works for the CP.
Thanks for picking up on my message, Joe.
Cathy.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Cathy Legg,
Philosophy Programme,
RSSS, ANU, ACT, AUS.,
0200.
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/Depts/RSSS/Philosophy/People/Cathy/Cathy.html
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 12:49:45 +0100
From: Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: The New List (paragraph 3)
Message-ID:
William Overcamp wrote:
> Peirce wrote:
>
> > º3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense
> >is that of the present, in general. This is a conception,
> >because it is universal. But as the act of attention has no
> >connotation at all, but is the pure denotative power of the
> >mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an
> >object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any
> >predicate of that object, -- so the conception of what is
> >present in general, which is nothing but the general recognition
> >of what is contained in attention, has no connotation, and
> >therefore no proper unity. This conception of the present in
> >general, or IT in general, is rendered in philosophical language
> >by the word "substance" in one of its meanings. Before any
> >comparison or discrimination can be made between what is
> >present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as
> >it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized
> >by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot
> >itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated
> >of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical
> >with the conception of substance.
>
> I sense a bit of ambiguity here: "That universal conception
> which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general.
> This is a conception, because it is universal." For there are
> two meanings that can be applied here. On the one hand, we have
> a universal conception of the present in general. On the other
> hand we have a particular conception, which is "nearest to
> sense," being identical to the "manifold of sensuous
> impressions," which we saw in paragraph one. Is Peirce
> deliberately combining these fundamentally different conceptions?
Mathematically speaking we are talking about 'degenerate cases' here,
I think. The combination of both into one form is what I intended to
explain in my recent post on Porphyry/Aristotle's Categories. You'll
find numerous very similar passages in Peirce's writings on
cosmology. In fact, I think, the important thing here is to regard
what Peirce says not in a narrow 'psychological' sense.
We shouldn't forget that it was an enormous discovery in physics that
what happens in the celestial bodies, stars etc., in terms of
physical processes, and what happens here on earth, in you and me is,
physically speaking, 'the same'. In fact this has been achieved in
our Century (though it began with Newton). It is by no means obvious
or self-evident a priori.
In order to understand Peirce properly, I think it is decisive to
perceive that he here does something similar: 'Perception' with Bill
and Thomas and on a cosmic scale have the same structure -- in the
same sense in which the physical processes in Bill's and Thomas'
little fingers and in the planet Mars have the same fundamental
structure.
> "But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is
> the pure denotative power of the mind....and therefore no proper
> unity." Is attention totally inexplicable in rational terms, or
> does it exist through the intent of the man directing it?
I think there is what one usually calls 'motivation'. But once you
have focused your attention you will have, in one sense, forgotten
your 'motivation'. Though in another sense it is fulfilled exactly by
this that is foreign to it.
Mathematically: things can 'overlap', can't they? Take two
overlapping brackets like this: (()). There is a left bracket which
overlaps with a right bracket. That does not hinder you to say that
in another sense there are two brackets, one within the other. And,
as long as we do not know more, it even mathematically makes sense
to have both 'perspectives' together?!
At least: as soon as you see that they might be an overlapping you
have a motivation to tell them apart. And I think if you try that you
are very near to something which one might call an act of attention.
Or better: a shift of it. Back and forth.
> "This conception of the present in general, or IT in general, is
> rendered in philosophical language by the word "substance" in one
> of its meanings." Hmmm... As I read these words, I think back
> to Plato. What would he think of the present in general, the IT?
> I think he would say that it is a mere shadow of reality seen as
> if by a man in a cave, looking at figures dancing before a fire.
> Is this what substance is?
He is setting up two 'poles of tension' here. They are a relational
basis then. It's a question of a relation and not of this or that. In
his algebraic logic Peirce used this 'construction' too. It was later
rediscovered, in our Century, by the mathematician Birkhoff and
called 'lattice'. Just this alone has developed into an extended and
important branch of mathematics: Lattice theory. It has then proved
to be an important link between number theory and geometry.
You can find numerous references to this in Peirce's writings. Here
are just two, more or less randomly:
--------------------
CP 3.340:
No matter what relative term x may be, we have
0 -< x x -< ('infinity')
--------------------
It is a bit risky to insert the sign for 'infinity' in email-ascii.
You never know what the other mail programs will do with it. But the
above quote is particularly interesting since we would usually expect
terms like x in algebraic logic to be confined between the limits
0 and 1. The mapping from the interval 0 -- infinity to the interval
0 -- 1 is mathematically achieved by logarithms.
It often seems to me that it is not yet sufficiently regarded that
much what Peirce does in his development of his logic of relatives
has to do with this logarithmic mapping in logic.
Well, another dual pairing which shows the connection to today's
lattice theory more closely is in CP 3.341 (on page 200):
---------------------
1 -< form1 form2 -< n
---------------------
I can't notate it here adequately. In words it is:
"identity implies to love all that is loved by"
and
"to love something that is not loved by implies otherness"
I think it then is rather plain what this then has to do with the
structure of implication and the geometry of the syllogism.
And form1 and form2 are of course mutually duals again.
Can you see how one cog is engaged with another!
Effectively then 1 and n are so to speak "pulled in" -- as a visible
form!
Duality in the sense of projective geometry is very important here.
The "visible" logical forms of expression then lie on the 'diagonal'.
Peirce himself compared it to the way vectors are combined in
mathematical physics.
>From here there is then only a small step to Cantor's 'diagonal
method' ("Diagonalverfahren" in German), the idea of 'eigenvalues'
and all that. But here we have it all in a nutshell, so to speak.
And some of these logical forms then can be 'irrational'.
But this doesn't hurt Peirce, as it did Russel and others, since
these effects are then not isolated in the sense in which the
irrational numbers in the reals are not isolated. And then they are,
far from being destructive, of utmost utility -- even if we
'ultimately' can't 'know' them.
This duality is also similar to 'something' and 'anything'.
'Something' is whatever is identical with an undetermined thing and
'anything' is whatever is identical with itself (comp. e.g. footnote
to CP 3.73). Without relation to each other they are absolute
nonsense;-)
I think the important thing is to set up _duality_. The poles in themselves
in a sense count less than the 'grey matter' in between. The poles in
(projective) geometry would be 'point' and 'line'.
Peirce already here says that being is not made up of substance
or vice versa in the same sense in which a line is not made up of
points. If you had tried you would have this problem: what is the
"glue" then...?!
On another level I would like to remark that your question is at the same time
again illustrative of what you asked before, concerning
attention/motivation. It has just happened. Do you see that? -- The
text is self-illustrative without being self-referential in the usual
sense. There is a word for such 'self-illustrative' texts:
"mathematics". Or let's say: that's my way to regard things;-)
No: the mathematical, or 'self-illustrative', side is only an aspect of it.
But many people would call it 'progress' if we were able to regard
just normal 'plain ascii' text as a mathematical structure too,
wouldn't they? But being a new kind of applied mathematics we would
have to invent a new name. Are you motivated?
> "Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what
> is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as
> it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized
> by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot
> itself be made a predicate." Perhaps not, but can it be a
> subject?
>
> "This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a
> subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of
> substance." Is it not accurate to say that in some sense, IT is
> in the mind, as the phantasm of sense?
It is as much in the black speckles on paper which motivated you
to ask all these questions.
I would prefer not to say that it is 'in the mind', I would say this process
is mind. For one of the curious features of it is that things can be
'in the mind' without ceasing to be 'on the outside'. (Like in
physical theory: you wouldn't say that the force of an accelerated
body is 'in the body' though naively and as a figure of speech we
often regard it so.)
And this being on the inside while at the same time on the
outside as well, that's beauty, in mathematics and elsewhere, isn't
it?
Thomas Riese.
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