SUO: Re: Ontology, Epistemology, Semiotics
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Richard,
Peirce was a relational thinker, as distinguished
from people who favor absolute terms above all else.
The term "thirdness" refers to those properties of both empirical phenomena
and formal structures that can only be modeled in any adequate way by means
of 3-adic relations. I think he used a quality word like "thirdness" as yet
another sop to those who are imbued with thinking in essences, but I believe,
just looking at the mess that's been made of this concession since his time,
that it'd probably be best to save it for special occasions, among friends
and folks who won't take it amiss, and begin to emphasize the explanatory
power of the 3-adic relations, in all their extensional glory, themselves.
Jon Awbrey
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Richard Cooper wrote:
>
> John Sowa wrote:
>
> <snip/>
>
> > But there is a strong similarity, which has raised many
> > controversies among biologists. As "objective" scientists,
> > they want to formulate their theories purely in terms
> > of efficient causes. But biological systems are very
> > difficult to explain without using words like "purpose".
> >
> > Any biologist who said "the purpose of the urinary system
> > is to excrete liquid wastes" would be banished as giving
> > ammunition to the creationists who are trying to use biology
> > to prove the existence of God the Creator who is the Grand
> > Designer of the Universe.
>
> This indicates that the biologist had her own agenda (purpose)
> in making the statement.
>
> > And that is why Peirce introduced his category of Thirdness.
> > Every instance of purpose or intention is an instance of
> > Thirdness, but there are things like biological functions,
> > which are also instances of Thirdness without implying the
> > existence of some being who had that explicit purpose.
>
> <snip/>
>
> I suppose a creationist would say that Thirdness is just a
> political ploy to deny a creator's purpose, using Victorian
> elipticisms to deny the one who had the purpose, while
> maintaining that there exists a purpose.
>
> Similary, a darwinist would say that biological functioning
> is the "purpose" of a process - evolution - which "optimizes"
> the cross product of environment and agency to obtain maximum
> "energy" gain at minimum "loss".
>
> Aren't all these some sort of Thirdness? Isn't Thirdness
> therefore some kind of abstraction that isn't well defined?
> How can Thirdness be distinguished from its complement
> ~Thirdness?
>
> It would be interesting to define Thirdness in terms of agents
> that could be animated versus agents that could be processes
> like evolution. Where would the concept of "process" stop
> in supporting the abstraction of "Thirdness"?
>
> Rich
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