SUO: Re: Peirce and Whitehead
Nicola,
I think that you are criticizing Chapter 2 for not being something
that it doesn't pretend to be. It is not a cookbook on how to develop
a particular ontology, but a survey of a wide range of developments
in ontology.
JS>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.
NG>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.
No. You are reading more into Ch. 2 than the book claims for it.
The preface (p. xiii) says that it "introduces ontology" and that
"this chapter can be surveyed briefly or covered in depth." Ch 2
surveys a wide range of different approaches, and Ch 6 surveys all
the problems of "knowledge soup", which imply that any framework
that claims to be the final answer is destined to be problematical.
The conclusion of Ch 6 is given in Section 6.5, which proposes the
infinite lattice of all possible theories, and Section 6.6, which
shows how Peirce's semiotics provides a flexible way of interpreting
many "problematical issues." Then Ch 7 talks about the issues of
sharing and aligning different ontologies and the possible tools for
aiding that process.
NG>... 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.
JS>>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.
NG> 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!
I think that you are making the assumption that the society is the
same as the mereological sum of its members, while Whitehead says
that there is something more in the society than just its members
at any single point in time.
To illustrate that point, consider an example that was discussed some
time ago on SUO list:
1. A collection of 9 people.
2. A collection of 9 people who know how to play baseball.
3. A collection of 9 people who form a baseball team.
These three collections might happen to be identical by extension,
but only the third is a society in Whitehead's sense. What makes
the team different from a mere collection is an agreement among
the players (either an explicit contract or an implicit consensus)
to play the game according to the rules for the purpose of winning.
The act of agreeing, which is an essential part of the society,
transforms the 9 people into a team. If you look at them, you won't
notice much difference in their appearance before the agreement or
after the agreement. But there is an enormous difference in their
subsequent behavior -- they play the game for the purpose of winning.
For reference, I include below 3 paragraphs in which Whitehead defines
'society' -- this is an excerpt from the excerpt that I sent before.
Applying W's definition to the team:
1. The "social order" during the game is determined by some event in
the past -- namely the agreement to play baseball. That past
event is, according to Whitehead, an essential part of its
"genetic condition", which affects what they do in the future.
2. The society endures for some extended period of time, and it cannot
be identified with the "actual occasions" that occur in it at any
single point in time. As W says, "a set of mutually contemporary
occasions cannot form a complete society."
3. The "common form" or "defining characteristic" of the team is the
agreement to play baseball. In Peirce's terms, that defining
characteristic of the society is the mediator that determines
the prehensions that hold among the "actual occasions" throughout
the lifetime of the society.
As this example illustrates, trying to get just one such point across
can take much more space than I could afford to devote to the entire
discussion of Whitehead.
John Sowa
__________________________________________________________________________
A Society is a nexus which 'illustrates' or 'shares in,'
some type of 'Social Order.' 'Social Order' can be defined
as follows: 'A nexus enjoys "social order" when (i) there
is a common element of form illustrated in the definiteness
of each of its included actual entities, and (ii) this common
element of form arises in each member of the nexus by
reason of the conditions imposed upon it by its prehensions
of some other members of the nexus, and (iii) these
prehensions impose that condition of reproduction by reason
of their inclusion of positive feelings involving that com-
mon form. Such a nexus is called a "society," and the
common form is the "defining characteristic" of that
society.'
Another rendering of the same definition is as follows:
'The point of a "society" as the term is here used, is that
it is self-sustaining; in other words, that it is its own reason.
Thus a society is more than a set of [actual] entities to
which the same class-name applies: that is to say, it in-
volves more than a merely mathematical conception of
'order.' To constitute a society, the class-name has got to
apply to each member, by reason of genetic derivation
from other members of that same society. The members
of the society are alike because, by reason of their common
character, they impose on other members of the society the
conditions which lead to that likeness.'
It is evident from this description of the notion of a
'Society,' as here employed, that a set of mutually con-
temporary occasions cannot form a complete society. For
the genetic condition cannot be satisfied by such a set of
contemporaries. Of course a set of contemporaries may
belong to a society. But the society, as such, must involve
antecedents and subsequents. In other words, a society
must exhibit the peculiar quality of endurance. The real
actual things that endure are all societies. They are not
actual occasions. It is the mistake that has thwarted Euro-
pean metaphysics from the time of the Greeks, namely, to
confuse societies with the completely real things which are
the actual occasions. A society has an essential character,
whereby it is the society that it is, and it has also accidental
qualities which vary as circumstances alter. Thus a society,
as a complete existence and as retaining the same meta-
physical status, enjoys a history expressing its changing
reactions to changing circumstances. But an actual occa-
sion has no such history. It never changes. It only becomes
and perishes. Its perishing is its assumption of a new meta-
physical function in the creative advance of the universe.