Re: [Fis] Answer to Soren.

Some comments (marked AAAAA) - since I think we are agreed in principle:

Dear Arne

If you insist on calling Peirce a monist then I would like you to give you interpretation of his triadic philosophy, where he defines his three basic categories Firstness, secondness and Thirdness, which I think defies you classification.
AAAAA: I said, "So when one says that Peirce considered the mind and experience for real, he defined a way of speaking that is totally different from the traditional realist, and one therefore have to take that into account.

His categories then counts for both inside and outside as they are connected in a common field.
AAAAA: I think this fits very well with my saying" To my mind Peirce is a monist, not a dualist, but for some reason he, as monist, considered the domain of experience to be REAL (but not even he provided a definition of REAL). After all REAL is just a denomination!!!

But he does write that is a monist but in a very special way combined with synechism (everything is connected), Thycism (randomness is real but with a tendency to take habits) and Agapism (love is real and the core of evolution). Further Peirce is also a panentheist: the world is the divine, but it is also in the divine, meaning that he operates with a creative emptiness behind and before time-space geometry. I think you would call that dualistic!? He is further a conceptual realist. This means that he considers signs and categories as being as real as stones and natural laws.
AAAAA: I also think this fits very well with my saying

 Again he thinks them to be connected on a deep level, which does not make him a constructivist in the usual understanding.
AAAAA: I did not call him constructivist - I called him monist. Most constructivists operate with an abstract domain. However most of them try to fit this into a realist's way of speking - which is inconsequent.
 
Finally he is an evolutionist and a hylozoist, meaning that he thinks that mind is also present inside matter and they evolve together. Thus he places himself somewhere between Plato and Aristotle but with an evolutionary view for mind and matter, but with no explicit reincarnation theory as Plato had.
AAAAA: Doesn't evolution in the abstract i.e., the domain of models counts as evolution?

Further he believe that the world is in principle knowable if we had time and dedication enough doing idealistic science following what Merton later called the CUDOS norms.
AAAAA: Well I do not - and this is the point with my presenting the realist's dilemma.

I claim that he is a mystic who's road to enlightenment is science. This is a unique position as far as I know. He dares to introduce life, feeling, meaning and love in a realistic world view combined with a version of phenomenology believing in a deep connection between man and the world. Thus Peirce sees true science and religion working side by side in understanding the world.
AAAAA: So do I - but we must cut off the meaningless word tossing of philosophy.

He des then not mean the present social systems we call religion, to a certain degree neither the institution we call science, but some ideal version of them both that are not fundamentalistic and conservative holding on to one general understand of science and religion or what their knowledge out to be like. What connects all this is of course his semiotics, which is also a cognitive and communicative theory og how meaning is formed and function. That is again connected to a threefold theory of causation ( final, formal and efficient causation) just as his theory of evolution is threefold of which the Agapastic is the most important; and they are again connected in a subtle way.

This is how far I have come. I am not sure I have understood him to the bottom. I know that John has another interpretation of him. But this is at least close to the interpretation Joseph Brent reached in the second version of his Peirce biography and Michael Raposa in his book "Peirce's Philosophy of Religion". Some years ago we had a conference on Peirce's religious writing in Denver and we are still waiting for the book to come out.
AAAAA: I have not come that far on the way of Peirce at all - on the other hand I have travelled a long time on the Subject-Oriented road. How about you? I therefore see the parallel to Peirce's thinking and think it matters very little if you call the monist domain of knowledge for REAL or ABSTRACT. However I think it is very important to point out that Peirce defines experience as REAL to the realist mainstream scientist because he does not. And then the parallel between Bohr's and Peirce's thinking is striking

Best wishes

          Arne

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Received on Fri Jul 7 14:17:26 2006