ONT Re: Just In Time Logic
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JITL. Note 4
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| [On Time and Thought, MS 216, 08 Mar 1873] (cont.)
|
| It will easily be seen that when this conception is once grasped the
| process of the determination of one idea by another becomes explicable.
| What is present to the mind during the whole of an interval of time is
| something generally consisting of what there was in common in what was
| present to the mind during the parts of that interval. And this may be
| the same with what is present to the mind during any interval of time;
| or if not the same, at least similar -- that is, the two may be such
| that they have much in common. These two thoughts which are similar
| may be followed by others that are similar and according to a general
| law by which every thought similar to either of these is followed by
| another similar to those by which they are followed. If a succession
| of thoughts have any thing in common this may belong to every part of
| these thoughts however minute, and therefore it may be said to be present
| at every instant. This element of consciousness which belongs to a whole
| only so far as it belongs to its parts is termed the matter of thought.
| There is besides this a causation running through our consciousness by
| which the thought of any one moment determines the thought of the next
| moment no matter how minute these moments may be. And this causation
| is necessarily of the nature of a reproduction; because if a thought
| of a certain kind continues for a certain length of time as it must
| do to come into consciousness the immediate effect produced by this
| causality must also be present during the whole time, so that it is a
| part of that thought. Therefore when this thought ceases, that which
| continues after it by virtue of this action is a part of the thought
| itself. In addition to this there must be an effect produced by the
| following of one idea after a different idea otherwise there would be
| no process of inference except that of the reproduction of the premisses.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CE 3, pp. 74-75.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, MS 216, 1873, ["On Time and Thought"], pages 72-75 in:
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 3, 1872-1878',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1986.
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