SUO: Re: CG: Re: Peirce and Whitehead
At 5:51 PM -0500 1/8/01, John F. Sowa wrote:
>Nicola,
>
>Before claiming to understand Whitehead, you must read
>what Whitehead wrote. Sherburne is merely a summary of
>one of Whitehead's books (Process and Reality). Its only
>purpose is to lead you to relevant passages in P & N.
>Before drawing any conclusions, you must read the original,
>and for further clarifications, you should turn to other
>writings by Peirce, especially his immediately following
>book, Adventures of Ideas.
Just to be clear: I DO NOT claim to understand Whitehead! I am just
pointing out that your presentation of his ideas does not help
understanding him, and especially the map between Whitehead's and
Peirce's categories seems to be problematic.
>It is fair for you to claim that my brief summary was not
>clear. But I think that you have seriously misinterpreted
>the passage I quoted from Adventures of Ideas (in my previous
>note) as well as what you read from Sherburne's summary.
>
>>... After reading your
>>note, my doubts are still there: a nexus does not seem to me as a
>>"mediating entity", but rather the result of such mediation.
>
>No. The nexus includes many "actual occasions" and the
>prehensions that link them. That is a paradigm case of
>what Peirce discusses as Thirdness. Please reread W's
>discussion of nexus. As an example, a nexus can be an
>arbitrarily large "society" -- that is the ultimate mediator.
This is the point. In which sense is a society a mediator?? Take the
small society constituted by me and you: in this moment, there is
internet which mediates between the two of us, so that we constitute
a whole (we have our own unity). We are a unity as a result of this
mediation, but we are not a mediator!
Maybe we have different intuitions of what the term "mediation" means
in English...
> >On the other hand, it is clear it is the prehension that mediates...
>
>Whitehead clearly states that a prehension is a dyadic relation
>of a subject and an object. That is as clear an example of
>Secondness as you can get.
The prehension is what puts together the subject and the object.
Therefore, in my understanding, it seems obvious to consider *it* as
a mediator. Moreover, a relation between a subject and an object is
not an example of Secondness to me, since it clearly depends on *two*
things, while Secondness imply dependence on *one* thing.
>
>>Of course the whole matter is complicated, but the problem is that
>>neither your book nor your further comments help to get a coherent
>>picture of it.
>
>I'm sorry. I tried to be as clear as I could in about 6 pages,
>since most people would not tolerate much more than that. If
>anyone is not convinced, they should look at the original.
But the purpose of the chapter was not to introduce the reader to the
work of Whitehead and Peirce, but rather to present an independent
synthesis of their work to be used by knowledge engineers who haven't
read the original writings of these philosophers.
>You have a right to say that my presentation was not clear,
>but you don't have a right to say that your interpretation
>based on a summary by a third party is more accurate.
Indeed, I am not claiming that.
Cheers,
-- Nicola
--
---------------------------------
Nicola Guarino
National Research Council phone: +39 O49 8295751
LADSEB-CNR fax: +39 O49 8295763
Corso Stati Uniti, 4 email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
I-35127 Padova
Italy
http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
(***updated 7/6/2001 ***)