[Inquiry] Re: Actual, Existent, Real -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AER.  Discussion Note 3

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GR = Gary Richmond
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: AER-DIS 2.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/002369.html
In: AER-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-February/thread.html#2368

Gary,

Let me go through your remarks a little more carefully
this time, now that it's Monday morning and everything.

JA: [At one time] I was under the blithe impression that some aspects of
    Peirce's system were just so well understood and beyond controversy
    that it would be possible to start applying and extending them to
    clarify some problematic regions that had so far resisted the
    analyses of dyadic and dichotomous methods.

GR: Even until recently I had been imagining that there were at least "some aspects of
    Peirce's system ... well understood and beyond controversy", but apparently even
    something as basic and central as his category theory is still "up for grabs".
    This is depressing for anyone who wants "to start applying and extending [his
    triadic and trichotomic methods] to clarify some problematic regions that
    [have] so far resisted the analyses of dyadic and dichotomous methods".
    (So I've just quoted you twice in succession because I think your
    words bear repeating, Jon.)

GR: There are so many places where Peirce addresses the issue, for example, of
    what quality as (existential) firstness "is" that the excerpt (pasted below
    my signature) was chosen almost at random.  Also, in his several replies to
    the "necessitarians" and nominalists, mechanists and materialists, the
    "actualists" == secondists == the "something has to exist to be real[ists]",
    Peirce argues that such dyadic thinking proves inadequate under close scrutiny.
    I have always found that to be so.  Others are not convinced and apparently
    would prefer to go over these matters endlessly.  Perhaps that is an arguable
    view of what philosophy is and ought to be;  but Peirce, I believe, had a more
    evolutionary understanding of it.

GR: I sometimes wonder how many of these "arguments to the necessitarians" need be
    repeated on the list, and further wonder what the ultimate point is of those who,
    for example, see firstness "as a sort of metaphysical Cheshire cat's grin" and
    existence as necessary and sufficient as a definition of reality (whereas Peirce
    would say that while secondness is "predominant" in reality, that it is certainly
    not sufficient, etc).  Especially, what is their ulterior motive?  Are they trying
    to prove that Peirce is fundamentally wrong in his basic trichotomic view of the
    cosmos -- upon which the whole of his architectonic philosophy rests?  I hope rather
    that it's the pursuit of truth.  However, their "strong  personal feeling" that they
    are right and that Peirce is wrong do not impress a pragmatist, while Peirce's own
    arguments meet pragmatic criteria, imho.

Properties of the Twentieth Century Default Philosophy, I'd say,
as if to magically put it all behind us with a mere form of words,
which of course we can't.  People acted as if the ends of evolution,
history, and inquiry had already been reached.  Many, but not even all,
would deny it if challenged in so many words, but the symptoms remained.

But perhaps it would be better spiritual exercise to examine the
beams in our own eyes, all the better to heal ourselves thereby.
What sorts of things did Peirce do, no doubt with the best of
intentions, that, looking back from this perspective, we can
see were just asking for trouble?

I have one or three things in mind
that I'll try to articulate later.

Jon Awbrey

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