Hypostatic Abstraction, Precisive Abstraction, Proper vs Improper Negation
Since another thread's topic is 'factual properties', I'll start off this thread with an example of what hypostatic abstraction is ...
Hypostatic abstraction is a formal operation in logic that transforms a predicate into a relation. For example, "Honey is sweet" is transformed into "Honey has sweetness". In this example, it might be thought of that 'sweetness' is now a 'property' of honey.
My question to you is this .... In this example, is 'sweetness' truly a static property of honey? It is true that we can measure the amount of fructose and glucose in a specific sample of honey, but can we discern the differences in quality of sweetness to the taster? Consider the same with the word 'beauty'.
So, what we are discussing is properties, qualities, and attributes. In Peirce's scientific method of synechistic inquiry, he explains that there is hypostatic abstraction and precisive abstraction. How do these pertain to the perception and understanding in thought, dialogue, and the written word?
And when you ponder this, you should also consider the average person walking around out there in society without a clue as to what any of this means, haphazardly abstracting, ranting on social media, and teaching their children all of their haphazard habits.
Hypostatic abstraction is a formal operation in logic that transforms a predicate into a relation. For example, "Honey is sweet" is transformed into "Honey has sweetness". In this example, it might be thought of that 'sweetness' is now a 'property' of honey.
My question to you is this .... In this example, is 'sweetness' truly a static property of honey? It is true that we can measure the amount of fructose and glucose in a specific sample of honey, but can we discern the differences in quality of sweetness to the taster? Consider the same with the word 'beauty'.
So, what we are discussing is properties, qualities, and attributes. In Peirce's scientific method of synechistic inquiry, he explains that there is hypostatic abstraction and precisive abstraction. How do these pertain to the perception and understanding in thought, dialogue, and the written word?
And when you ponder this, you should also consider the average person walking around out there in society without a clue as to what any of this means, haphazardly abstracting, ranting on social media, and teaching their children all of their haphazard habits.
Comments (151)
I think that since we just predicated the quality of sweetness to honey, we have to ask what the degree of separation the quality of sweetness has from objective, scientific markers of what makes something more or less sweet - if they exist. It does indeed seem that the sweetness of a sample of honey cannot be prescinded from the amount of fructose or glucose that exists in that sample of honey (science has shown us that those things directly cause a perception of sweetness), or what would be causing that perception of sweetness? A hallucination? Therefore, the synechistic layer resides in that the sweetness of honey must exist on a continuum that relates smoothly to a scientific measure. As such, I would say that sweetness is not a static property of honey because we can measure the changes in intensity.
Sorry, to answer your question, in this example I don't think sweetness is a static property of honey.
So, do you think there is sufficient correspondence between fructose/glucose and perceived sweetness (value judgment)? It sounds like you must if you think sweetness is not a static property of honey. Or so it seems to me from the angle you're taking.
Is hardness a static, intrinsic property of a diamond? ... Does a diamond possess hardness?
I would start by seeing if the language indicates that the quality of hardness can exist on a continuum and if such a thing can be measured. In the case of hardness, it does look like it can exist on a continuum, and if we can determine that diamonds exist at some point on this continuum (presumably all diamonds are of equal hardness) such that they measure up as being hard, we can then say that they possess the quality of hardness. How we measure hardness I'm not sure, but I do think this makes diamonds intrinsically, or at least statically, hard.
The sun is bright. ... The sun has brightness.
Is brightness a static, intrinsic property of the sun?
But is 'hardness' a static, intrinsic property of a diamond?
No, because hardness is a trait associated with a continuum implied by our language and abstraction of the term. So, what is defined as hard can change, even if diamonds are probably hard by most measures.
Yes, I would say it is intrinsic. There is either light or no light, and so long as a light exists it has a brightness. Therefore, the sun must have brightness so long as it exists. This is to say that anything that exudes light must exist on the continuum of brightness and must therefore have brightness. This is only negated when the sun ceases to exist, at which point it no longer needs to have the quality of having brightness for it to have possessed brightness intrinsically; that the quality of this brightness depends upon the sun's existence, and would persist for its whole lifespan, means it is intrinsic to the sun.
And in these examples, how would you reach those value judgements? How would you come to your conclusions?
No. Brightness is a value judgement based on an organism's evaluation of the electromagnetic energies emanating from the sun. The emitting of energy is the intrinsic property of the sun. How that energy is interpreted depends on the interpreter.
I think he was just referring to the emission of light, which is directly related to the energy it emits. To take issue with the wording because it would require organisms to perceive that energy for it to technically qualify as "light" seems a little pedantic. But maybe he'll indicate what he meant.
Yes, I'm the author of the 'factual properties' thread: Hello there. Thanks for your posts in that other Thread, they contributed much, and I found them highly intriguing, so I thought that I'd return the favor by stopping by this Thread that you started. Let me see if I can contribute something positive. I will have to quote your original post on multiple occasions, so please be charitable towards my persona.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I think I understand, and I think I agree with this. I'm not sure though, this is way above my current level of awareness as a person. It's very difficult for me to wrap my head around such abstract notions, that is the honest truth. Though that is a limitation of my personal intellect.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Is sweetness a static property of honey? Hmmm... I would say, yes. But I could be wrong, I'm just "shooting from the hip" here.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
That is way more complicated than anything that I have ever had to deal with in my daily life, and in my professional life as a philosopher. I have no idea what to say here, honestly. This is far from being my area of expertise, even though I try to understand Peirce on occasion.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Mate, I don't know what any of this means, and I do philosophy for a living, I'm not some average person walking around out there in society without a clue, in that sense. But as to what you're actually talking about, in that sense, I've not a clue what it is you're saying. It's incredibly abstract, I'm afraid I don't understand it.
That's a little vague.
I suppose you are referring to that we cannot rightly perform a hypostatic abstraction if the thing in question does not possess that trait intrinsically without some amount of subjective or linguistic value-assignment. Thus, I do think @alleybear is/was on to something.
edit: sorry for presuming you to be male.
edit 2: fixed the language I used.
I have no access to what Peirce wrote about hypostatic abstraction, so I cannot comment about what he said.
Can "honey is sweet" be transformed into "honey has sweetness"?
As colour has different hues, sound has different pitches, there are different scales of pain, there are also different intensities of sweetness. For example, a mango can be very sweet, honey reasonably sweet and a watermelon slightly sweet.
In ordinary language we can say "this honey is sweet", meaning that this honey has one particular intensity of sweetness.
When we say "this honey has sweetness", we mean that this honey has a sweetness within the range very sweet to slightly sweet.
"Sweet" is a concrete concept, whilst "sweetness " is an abstract concept.
As the expressions "honey is sweet" and "honey has sweetness" have different meanings, one cannot be transformed into the other.
I like where you are going with this...
What is it about the word 'sweet' that makes it a concrete concept?
Do you mean that we can measure 'sweet', but we cannot measure 'sweetness'?
Can we measure 'hard' in the case of the diamond? Or are we more likely to measure hardness?
See, it's trickier than it seems at first glance.
No worries, and no need to mention it. I am quite used to that happening when I engage in intellectual discussions that are not in person.
Here's how I might go about this from a formal point of view (again, I might be wrong about this, so, grain of salt and all of that sort of cautionary talk).
"Transforms a predicate into a relation". Using "honey", "sweet", and "sweetness" as the three basic terms, I would symbolize "honey" as an individual constant, "i", next I would symbolize "sweet" as a unary first-order predicate, "S", and finally I would (controversially) treat "sweetness" as an individual constant, not a predicate. Here is how that would work. There's two steps to it. The first step is this:
1) S(h). This means "honey, as an individual thing, has the property of being sweet."
2) S(hs). This means "honey, as an individual thing, and sweetness, as an individual thing, are related by the relation of "being sweet".
The problem here, however, is that you cannot say (1) and (2) at the same time. You cannot define "S" as a unary predicate and then attempt to use it as a two-place predicate. Either you use two different predicates, or you go about this in a completely different way.
Your logic looks correct to me. S(hs) just reflects that honey is not intrinsically sweet. We know it isn't because the relation of being sweet in S(hs) is based in that we know that there are observable qualities that make honey sweet, and we also know what makes something sweet in general. Since we cannot prescind the sweetness of honey from the existence of fructose/glucose, we conclude that to measure the fructose/glucose in a sample of honey is to measure its sweetness. Thus, sweetness is not a static property, but rather one that can more or less be measured, and, thus, to claim that honey possesses the property of being sweet is an abstract value judgment based on a measure of sweetness.
Thanks. But I think that there might even be a third option, which would be the three terms as individual constants, and then to use a three-place predicate whose only purpose is to be an application predicate, if that makes any sense. If not, allow me to formalize what I'm saying. Suppose:
1) That "h" is an individual constant that stands for "honey",
2) That "s" is an individual constant that stands for "sweet",
3) That "t" is an individual constant that stands for "sweetness, and
4) That "I" is a three-place predicate (i.e., a ternary relation).
If so, then:
I(h,s,t)
Which means "There is a relation between honey, the property of being sweet, and the property of having sweetness).
Does that make any sense?
Not on its face, no. But I'll think about it.
edit: yes, that makes sense
Taking wine as an example, the more residual sugar there is in a wine the sweeter it will be. For example, a dry wine could have 1 gms/litre of residual sugar whilst a sweet wine could have 45 gms/litre of residual sugar. The amount of residual sugar defines how sweet a wine is. ( www.wineinvestment.com).
We can measure how sweet a particular wine is. For example, a wine may have 20 gms/litre of residual sugar. This gives us a concrete fact.
We also know that the sweetness of wine varies between about 1 gms/litre and about 45 gms/litre of residual sugars. Any wine will lie within this range. This gives us another concrete fact.
Therefore, how sweet a wine is is a concrete concept, tangible in the same way that apples and chairs are concrete concepts.
The sweetness of wine is an abstract concept, in that it is not tangible as apples and chairs are.
However, both "sweet" and "sweetness" are measurable. "Sweet" is measurable as 20 gms/litre of residual sugar. "Sweetness" is measurable as lying between 1 and 45 gms/litre of residual sugar.
Writings of Charles S. Peirce: a chronological edition
The Rule of Reason; The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce
I would have to buy them. Maybe this coming month when I get my check.
edit: didn't read the free account part
They are free to explore on those links, but I know they can be difficult to read without blowing up. And if you're anything like me, you'd want to highlight passages and make notes on the pages.
But it's somehow "unsatisfactory", innit. I mean, if that humble first-order formula is all that I can possible contribute to this conversation, then that makes me quite sad. I take that as a personal flaw about my own persona, though.
You definitely helped me think about it more rigorously. And as far as I can tell there is plenty of room for more conjecture, so don't be glum! :up:
edit: you introduced rigor to the conversation. I shouldn't have just framed that in terms of myself. Sorry.
This is the most rigorous representation I could come up with quickly of the current status of the example with the honey.
The following argument can be made when someone tastes honey:
[[tastes]] = {(sweet: -> T), (like honey -> T)}
We also have another argument that seems necessary that says that:
[[tastes sweet]] = {possesses sweetness -> T}
This second argument is backed up by the fact that we know sweetness as a measure is entailed by the things that make something sweet and that sweet as a judgment occupies a region on some sort of sweetness continuum.
Therefore, the person in question could make the logically sound utterance after tasting the honey:
(a) This honey tastes sweet.
(b) Therefore, this honey possesses sweetness.
This is, clearly, only valid from the viewpoint of the person making the value-judgment associated with the honey tasting sweet. That is to say that in this example we see that the hypostatic abstraction is only valid with a subjective judgment made by a human and even then it is still limited by that persons experiences, as someone else might not believe that honey qualifies as sweet (hypothetically; of course everyone finds honey to be sweet).
Thus, objectively, we cannot say that honey possesses sweetness in a general sense, as we are measuring it according to an inherently subjective measure.
Taking your idea as a sketch, let me see if I can add some color to it. I would say:
(a) This honey tastes sweet to a human being.
(b) Therefore, this honey possesses sweetness in itself, if by "in itself" we mean an object-subject relation.
(c) Any object-subject relation can be reduced (abstracted away) to a something-something relation.
(d) And in a something-something relation, there are two individual variables, "x" and "y", such that something binds them, and that something is a relation.
However, that relation itself, can be treated either as a unary predicate, or as an individual variable "z", but then you would need a fourt element to play the role of the ternary, binding predicate.
Does that make any sense? I'm not sure that it does.
EDIT:
Quoting ToothyMaw
Thanks mate, no need to apologize to me. You seem like a good person.
The trickiness lies in the fact that what we call 'concrete' and 'abstract' are not binary but exist along a continuum. Sweet and sweetness, hard and hardnessthese different facets of the same relational phenomena, depend on how we interact with them.
Think of how we know of a diamond's hardness. Hardness isnt revealed in isolation but through an interactionscratching a diamond against another material or measuring its resistance. This interplay demonstrates the relational nature of what might seem like a static property.
Hard and hardness might follow the same relational logic. Hard is often tied to an immediate sensory experience (Secondness), while hardness is a concept that emerges from systematic comparisons (Thirdness).
The 'hypo' static nature of 'hardness' is quite real, but a nominalist may say this is an unnecessary category (Thirdness) to consider.
Phaneroscopy includes this category in synechistic/phaneroscopic inquiry, phenomenology does not.
Nominalists might gravitate toward phenomenology because it aligns with analyzing discrete, immediate experiences. But phaneroscopy challenges us to consider continuity and relational emergencehow sweet is not isolated but tied to sweetness, and how hard relates to hardness through interactions that reveal their connections.
Habit in autopoietic momentum is a highly important aspect of Thirdness to be aware of. It reveals itself in all complex systems. Our neglect of understanding Thirdness is extremely dangerous. Nominalism is the cause of the blindness.
Something I wrote that might be helpful to read.
https://medium.com/@SarahCTyrrell/a-case-involving-claude-ai-b4b76bd6249e
I was understanding you (I think?) until this last paragraph. That's a real head-scratcher as far as I'm concerned. I don't know what to make of what you said there. Habit in autopoietic momentum is a highly important aspect, I'm with you up to that point. But then you say "of Thirdness to be aware of".
I'll just say it, since I consider you a friend at this point, even though I joined this Forum less than I week ago:
I don't understand Peirce when he talks about Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. I've thought about this for decades. I've read papers about it. I've had people explain it to me. I still don't get it. It's like, I can't even imagine it, like what is he talking about? It's so abstract that I can't even picture it. Like, what is it? What do I compare it to? I feel utterly dumb when I try to understand Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Is it like "I, you, they"? Is it like "he, she, they"? I don't get it. Please, can you help me understand just the very concept under discussion here? I can't wrap my head around it, it's too abstract for my simple capacity to understand things.
Did you read the link at the bottom of the post?
I am not able to continue this discussion right now (I'm working), but I hope you will read and explore more on your own.
Yes, I think that makes sense. The object-subject relation between the honey and perceived sweetness is provided by relations that should be able to be abstracted until we can isolate it as two variables bound by some relation in the form of a unary predicate or something. At that point I suppose we could say that we have achieved...something.
Yes, I did. Not all of it, though. I skimmed through certain parts. My take on A.I. (if that's what you're asking, I'm not sure. Forgive me if not) is that Claude, the A.I. that you were prompting, is not aware. I would compare Claude to a parrot. A very sophisticated parrot, but still an entity that has no "awareness of the meaning of the words that it repeats", so to speak. In that sense, Claude is more like Deep Blue, the A.I. from the 90's that only played chess, and that beat Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue wasn't aware that it was playing a game of chess. It played masterfully, like the best human players, it had grand strategies and detailed tactics, like the best human generals. But it had no concept of what it was actually doing, it had no real awareness. And I believe that the same goes for Claude, and for ChatGPT, and every other A.I.: they are not aware of what it is exactly that they are doing, despite their claims to the contrary.
You should carefully and thoroughly read it.
I got ChatGPT to tell me I solved the double-slit experiment once. Needless to say, it turned out to almost certainly be bullshit.
Not that AI is useless. Maybe I'll read what you linked.
If you carefully and thoroughly review my work, you will see how right you are and that nominalism is the problem.
There's a meme of someone who asked for the best way to use glue in a recipe for a homemade pizza, and ChatGPT gave her a list of instructions in which glue is indeed one of the ingredients.
It has no awareness of what it is actually saying to the prompter. I has no mind, since the series of processes that it undergoes are not brain processes, and meaning is something that requires a living brain.
Should I? Why? I'd read your parts, but what Claude the A.I. tells you seems fishy to me.
I don't know if I've said anything that goes against nominalism, honestly. I would just separate the abstract notion of hardness from something actually being "hard" in some cases, for example. I don't really think hardness as an idea is an independent entity, as it exists as a result of our perceptions and mental models of the world. No to mention, we couldn't have hardness if there was not a variety of things of various "hardnesses" as it might be measured, so these abstract continuums and such seem to arise naturally to me. Or maybe I'm being naive. I don't know.
If you really think that I am trying to promote AI in my work, you are sorely mistaken, and there is no reason to discuss this further.
No one is skeptical of you or your intentions, I think he just doesn't think much of AI.
I am not assuming that about you at all. I was just being clear. ... My experience has taught me that sometimes that is necessary when someone doesn't take the time to read or get to know the topic better before dismissing it. ... If that does not apply to you, then no worries.
Not at all.
You seem very... "extreme", in some sense of the word. You speak with absolute confidence, is what I'm saying. Is it because you put no stock in the concept of good, honest doubt? Or is it for some other reason? I'm curious.
I understand doubt quite well. As for whatever it is you are reading in me, perhaps that doubt has helped me through more than 50 years of research and study.
Perhaps. I'm sure it has. But it doesn't "seep through" your words, currently. It's as if you've already figured out something that requires no further contribution from anyone else, human or machine. Is that right? But it can't be. Why not? Well, you're here, aren't you? You're speaking to fellow humans on a Forum. You're also speaking to a machine when you speak to Claude. So, by necessity, it follows that you haven't figured out what I just said. But then I just don't know why your tone is rock-solid confident. Is it merely because you've been researching and studying for more than 50 years? Perhaps. But I know intellectuals that have been researching and studying for the same stretch of time, and in other cases, even longer. They don't speak with such confidence, in fact their doubts are very noticeable in their speech and their writing. Their speech patterns, that is, and their writing patterns, that is. They express doubt in their patterns, and manifestly so. That's all I'm saying, mate. I literally mean no offense by it.
No offense taken
Believe it or not, there is confidence to be found in understanding uncertainty, but I realize that this idea is very foreign to most people, especially in Western culture.
One of the reasons I explore artificial intelligence is because it is very relevant to this topic and our future. Because of this, I became Microsoft certified, and I am an artificial intelligence researcher.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
If you would like to understand Thirdness better, perhaps there is some type of complex system you would like to explore. .... Are you familiar with Ilya Prigogine? ... Because of nominalism, time was excluded from classical science. There is a lot to be learned about that by studying Leibniz. The idea was, that for God, everything is there, eternally, so science was focused on static objects, and we inherited all of this in materialism. ... Descartes' philosophy played a decisive role in the development of Leibniz's thought, and much of Descartes 'thought' was based on nominalism's stance that only static, discrete, individual things exist, (per Ockham, otherwise God would not be omnipotent and be able to damn an individual sinner or save an individual saint). .... I have a whole series of learning videos on this topic, in case you are interested. It's all human history, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with 'opinions'. I have found that some people prefer watching videos over reading, so I made some. ... Anyway, Ilya Prigogine wrote a book called 'From Being to Becoming'. His work with dissipative structures and thermodynamics showed that temporal processes mean that existence and being is a necessarily open system (relational). A closed system becomes stagnant and dies. ... Next, you might want to explore the idea of autopoiesis. ... So, to get a 'feel' for what Thirdness is, combine all of that. ... The abstract philosophical and logic aspects of this can be difficult for many people to grasp.
I'm really not trying to be difficult, but it is centuries of history to cover, and time is of the essence in the work that I do.
Where are you from? Or, what is your Native Language? I speak Spanish and English. I do not speak "Machine", as in, I cannot "talk" to you with Zeros and Ones. No human can do that for the purposes of communication.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
No, I am not.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Are you sure of that? That's a pretty loaded claim, girl. What evidence supports your claim, there?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I don't think so. I mean, I can imagine it, but it's like, here's a hand, mate. Here's a Moore-like argument to the contrary. Here's a hand, mate. Like, it's not a big deal. Solipsism is false. That's no secret to anyone, ey.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I don't know, girl. It's like, it sounds way to mystical for my taste. I say that from an Aesthetic POV, which I think is just as valid and legit as yours, innit.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I pitty the fools.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Yeah, you've been saying that for a while, now. What do you mean, like Maturana, the biologist? I kinda just don't believe him, know what I'm sayin'. Like, I just don't. I'm on the science team, not the vitalistic spirituality whatever-you-want-to-call-it team.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Girl, I think you need to be a mind flayer to grasp that. Like, I don't have the biological brain that I need in order to understand that, I'm not a mind flayer, and no such creatures exist. Which lead me to the suspicion that you, perhaps, are not human. Do you see why I'm worried about your extremely confident tone?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Can I just share a music video with you, then? Maybe it will improve your work, since my words are not improving it, it seems.
My gut tells me you are switching the order of qualitative and quantitative differences . The diamond is a a real "thing": It stays in form if left alone, it is a solid body.
Thank you, but that doesn't pertain to what we were doing in this exercise in logic.
The terms "Firstness", "Secondness", and "Thirdness" allow one to say that there is also "Fourthness". And if there's such a thing as Fourthness, why not Fithness? How about A-Trillionth-Billionth-Six-Hundred-Forty-Seventhness?
It just makes no damn sense, woman. It's meaningless. Like, it's not real talk.
So let me ask you this: are you a human being?
I really do not understand what you are up to. Do you think we need to restrict what can be communicated and (consciously) experienced like in "Who has always lived in cold places does not need a heater because he would not feel the 'cold'?" Is deprivation a solution?
Or is it the other way around: Do you think that the assumption of already knowing everything leads to disaster?
You seem to misunderstand the rigor behind Peirces triadic categories. Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are not arbitrarythey are grounded in Peirces phenomenological exploration of how reality presents itself. The categories are exhaustive, not endlessly additive, because they describe the irreducible modes of being: possibility, interaction, and mediation.
Suggesting Fourthness, ect., overlooks the logic behind these distinctions. Peirce didnt invent these categories as a playful exercise; they reflect the foundational structure of reality as understood through relationality. Im curious to know whether or not youve engaged directly with Peirces writings on this, such as The Categories in Detail or his Lectures on Pragmatism.
And calling me 'woman' is not an appropriate way to encourage quality dialogue.
Yes. It does seem quite clear that you do not.
"Mapping the medium"...
So sorry, my previous post wasn't complete.
It seems like you're raising a couple of different points, so let me try to address them.
If I understand correctly, your first question might be asking whether restricting what can be communicated or consciously experienced is a solution. My perspective is that synechistic inquiry doesn't aim to restrict; rather, it seeks to expand understanding by emphasizing relationality and context. The example of 'living in cold places' might reflect how our perceptions are shaped by habit and environment (which ties to Peirces concept of Thirdness), but deprivation itself isn't a solutionit's merely a condition that can influence understanding.
Your second question about assuming we already know everything is a sharp observation. Yes, I would agree that assuming complete knowledge can lead to disaster. Peirces philosophy explicitly warns against this by emphasizing fallibilismthe idea that our understanding is always provisional and open to revision. Thats why phaneroscopy, as a method, doesnt seek to impose limits on experience but to investigate its structure with humility and rigor.
I hope this addresses your perplexity.
No no no, you've mapped the medium. Have a nice day.
And I certainly hope the same for you. :smile:
Fair enough, I take that back then (can I?). I'll just call you "Mapping the Medium" from now on. Does that sound fair?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I don't think that those are the irreducible modes of being. That's what I'm saying. I think that Peirce just made that up, without any evidence or argument. And this is something that scholars of Peirce have pointed out in the literature. Why do you think that possibility, interaction and mediation are the irreducible modes of being? Why do you agree with Peirce on that topic? The concept of "possibility", the very notion of possibility, is a modal notion. It's one of the notions that are studied in modal logic. It also has its place in metaphysics. It has nothing to do with what Peirce understands by "modes of being".
Quoting Mapping the Medium
What is the logic behind these distinctions? It's just an ungrounded aesthetic choice that Peirce made, just as Hegel did: they liked the number 3, for aesthetic reasons. It has nothing to do with logic, not if by "logic" we mean the formal science that studies the logical form of arguments.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
And that's a wobbly, objectionable hypothesis, as far as metaphysics and science are concerned. Does Peirce or anyone else have any evidence for such metaphysically loaded claims?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
If by that you mean if I've read Peirce, then yes, of course I've read Peirce. I've listened to people explain their ideas about Peirce to me. I teach Peirce's ideas to my students at the Uni, when they have to study the classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James and Dewey. You seem to be suggesting that Peirce wasn't wrong about certain things, such as his triad of Categories. And all I'm saying is, that better intellectuals than me have argued, in print, that he was wrong.
I'm reading about him on Wikipedia and the SEP and it appears he just transposed firstness, secondness, and thirdness (terms he used when he was feeling appropriately abstract) onto a bunch of categories because he liked threes.
I think one could easily come up with some sort of relation that might justify more names. I mean, I read what he said about it, and he said that he just "thinks not" that we could endlessly perform hypostatic abstractions to derive more "intentions". So, I suppose that is the closest we might get to insight: he doesn't think it is useful to repeat the process past twice. For whatever reason.
I suppose in a concrete example of the type we talked about in this thread it would be useless to go past one or two applications of hypostatic abstraction, though. So I guess the examples might fit into the triad.
But I could be wrong on all of this, so take it with a grain of salt.
Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Peirce is the North American equivalent to Hegel in that sense. Both of them "just liked" the number 3, for Aesthetic reasons.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Hypostatic abstraction is indeed a "thing", it's not something that @Mapping the Medium just made up. This is why I'm following this Thread: I'm very curious about the things that Mapping the Medium is saying. I just don't think that she's using the most friendly language from the point of view of ordinary life.
EDIT: From the wiki:
Quoting Wikipedia
EDIT: In other words, mine is a Deweyian argument against Peirce here. Dewey had it right, Peirce had it wrong, at least in relation to hypostatic abstraction. Like, you have to think this from a Darwinian POV.
EDIT 2: And that's why I'm arguing with her, page after page, about A. I. The biological difference between A.I.s and human beings are just too unfathomable: they're not alive in the biological sense of the term. They have no genetic material (no DNA or RNA), they don't have cellular organization (they are not unicellular, nor multicellular), etc. They are not like us, the living beings of planet Earth. So this is not "just politics", this is ontology. It's political ontology, but no one believes me when I say that. We're debating ontology with a machine when we talk to someone like Claude the A. I. And I humbly think that Peirce does not provide us with the framework to do that. You have to think this one like Dewey: it's Darwinism, it's survival of the fittest, our natural intelligence (as opposed to a mere artificial intelligence) is the product of the entire history of Life on this Earth, from the microbe to the homo sapiens, this is a matter of survival as living beings, plain and simple.
I think that it might be useful to look at the examples @Mapping the Medium has provided.
In terms of the honey example, this is my understanding: you can say honey is sweet, and that may be regarded as true depending on the perception that honey is indeed sweet, as you are stating a simple predicate. When you perform the hypostatic abstraction, however, you take that predicate and turn it into a relation between honey and the object "sweetness" (honey has sweetness). The logical functioning of introducing "sweetness" consists solely in the truth values of those propositions that possess the property of being sweet. This last part indicates that there is a collection of propositions that might indicate certain things are sweet, including the one we started with, and they must possess sweetness if sweetness is itself a measure that exists on a continuum that entails the property of "sweet".
If you guys think there is something wrong in there just say so; I'm sure there is.
This is the part (one of many) that I don't understand. That just makes no sense to me. How can you "turn a predicate into a relation"? A predicate, in the context of any predicate logic (first order, second order, higher order, etc.) is literally a letter of the alphabet, typically instantiated by the letter "P". As such, it is neither a property nor a relation, it's just a predicate. A predicate cannot "turn into" a relation. You can use a two-place, three place, four place etc. predicate to represent relations, but the predicate itself cannot "turn into" a relation, because the predicate itself, in this context, is just a meaningless sing. It has no semantic import. It is purely syntactical. That is its "Nature", if you will. That is simply what it is. You cannot turn that into a relation. Arguably, it would be, at the very least, a category mistake, in Gilbert Ryle's technical sense of the term.
Any many-placed predicate is reducible to a monadic predicate. "The cat is on the mat" can be parsed as a binary predicate "Is on (cat, mat)" and so as a relation, or as a monadic predicate "On the mat(cat)". Relations are many-placed predicates.
But both "Honey is sweet" and "Honey has sweetness" are parsed as the monadic Sweet(honey).
The temptation is to hypostatize sweetness by treating it as an individual rather than as a predicate, by saying that "Honey has sweetness" is a relation between sweetness and honey. Best avoided. TO see why, try setting out what that relation - "has" - is.
While we can treat many-placed predicates as monadic, treating monadic predicates as relations is problematic.
Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Maybe I didn't argue well for it, but what you just said there was my intent: how do you actually turn a predicate (i.e., a monadic predicate) into a relation? Like, syntactically. You can't. Not within the context of predicate logic, at least. And by that I mean all of them, all of the types of predicate logic: first-order, second-order, higher-order, etc.
So what's "the proposal" here, exactly? What's "the pitch"? Because it seems to me (and I could be wrong about this), that the proposal is to use something other than predicate logic. Right? It has to be something like, I dunno, set theory. But that's overkill, depending on your objective. If you want to use logic to analyze the validity of arguments, then first-order predicate logic is fine for that. You don't need fancy stuff like set theory just for that specific purpose. You use set theory for other things, it has other purposes. And what I'm saying about set theory here, I would say of every logic that is intended as something other than a formal language that allows us to analyze the validity of such arguments.
Yes, or i.e. to reify. Be realist about mere abstractions. The kind of error ('platonism') usually alleged by the nominalist, not of the nominalist.
Very true. This is why those who try to associate Peirce with Platonism are so off base. ... Don't even get me started on that. I have a major pet peeve about those who try to lump Peirce's realism in with Platonism. ... As I said before in another thread, abstraction is a can of worms.
Shouldn't that align with your objection to hypostatisation?
No.
What's interesting is in that warning about the temptation to hypostasize, that's exactly what Banno did.
(Edit: this was when Mapping the Medium had said "he" instead of "Banno" and I thought she (MtM) was addressing the question of mine which she quoted, and which was about Goodman.)
I'm going to say something extremely controversial about that, which I don't expect you (or anyone else) to endorse, or to even agree with me in what I'm about to say. Platonism, in all of its forms, in all of the areas where it spreads, is an intellectual epidemic. That's how I would describe it, trying to be as objective and respectful as possible. At the level of the individual, it's an "intellectual drug".
Quoting Banno
'Haphazard' Hypostatic Abstraction... refers to the careless or uncritical process of reifying a quality, relation, or concept into a separate concrete entity or 'object' without sufficient consideration of its relational context, grounding or implications. This process often results in oversimplification or misrepresentation, where an abstracted concept is treated as if it possesses an independent, fixed existence, neglecting the dynamic interconnected nature of the phenomena being abstracted.
By framing hypostatization as something that exists as an isolated or universalized phenomenon, Banno risks oversimplifying a process that varies depending on context and intent.
Banno abstracts "the temptation" as if it is a monolithic or static property of thought rather than a contextual tendency shaped by specific frameworks or practices.
Banno concretizes hypostatization itself, treating it as a singular, inherently problematic act, rather than a tool that can be used skillfully or recklessly depending on the circumstances.
Banno glosses over relational emergence, assuming that hypostatization inherently leads to error without exploring how it may reveal insights when applied thoughtfully (e.g., in Peirce's work).
I was referring to what I said previously about this quote......
The temptation is to hypostatize
Banno
I apologize, as I didn't mean to refer to you as 'he'. I now realize you are engaged in the dialogue.
He is you. I will go back and edit. :wink:
As I said, a can of worms.
Hypostatic Abstraction is taking a predicate and turning it into a relation. That works for some, but not all, predicates. So "The cat is on the mat" can be parsed using one individual, the cat, and saying that the cat is one of the things on the mat. Or it can, by Hypostatic Abstraction on "....on the mat", be parsed as a relation between two individuals, the cat and the mat. Roughly, we take "On the mat(cat)" and use Hypostatic Abstraction to change that to "On(cat, the mat)".
That works becasue we can treat the mat as an individual.
But if we take "Honey is sweet" and try the same thing, we end up with your has(honey, sweetness); a mess. What is the "has" here? And the reason it becomes a mess is...
Sweetness is not an individual.
To treat sweetness as an individual is to treat a group of things as if it were an individual - to hypostatise.
I am going to calm my dog due to the fireworks in my neighborhood.
Happy New Year! :sparkle:
Happy new year.
Yes, there are some things reminiscent of General Semantics, but General Semantics is more nominalistic. :wink:
@Mapping the Medium, you think that nominalists are people who nominalise (or nominalize), in the grammatical sense which is, ironically and confusingly, precisely the process of creating a noun (a 'nominalisation') from a non-noun? But that (and the consequent expansion by one of the assumed ontological domain) is exactly what nominalists from Ockham to Goodman have generally abhorred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism?wprov=sfla1
No doubt. ... You have reached a midway point in the attempt to understand, but you still have some ways to go. You are approaching this from a nominalist position,.
I lived for a while in the mountains of North Carolina. There was a funny saying folks used to share if someone were to stop and ask for directions. .. "You can't get there from here."
Okay, this is how I see it:
If there are many propositions that could express that certain things are sweet, and sweetness is constructed from the properties of things being more or less sweet, then to turn the predicate "honey is sweet" into "honey has sweetness" seems valid, as it indicates a relation between one thing (honey) and a tangible property that corresponds to the original predicate being turned into a relation (that is to say the relation between things being more or less sweet and those things having the property of being sweet).
Therefore, it isn't really a category error, as this new "predicate of predicates" is derived from a physical reality: things are more or less sweet, and, thus, those things that qualify as being sweet are themselves more or less sweet depending upon a judgment. That is to say they possess sweetness - even if sweetness is not a monadic predicate in the sense that it only takes one argument. It could take many. Furthermore, if we (optionally) visualize a continuum of sweetness, it is clear that the statuses of other propositions regarding other things being sweet have no bearing on whether or not honey possesses sweetness.
So, my theory is that the "has" in "honey has sweetness" just represents a judgment that honey exists according to some measure of being sweet such that it possesses the more general property of sweetness by virtue of things being more or less sweet.
I am? In what sense of nominalist position? That of someone disposed to nominalisation/reification/hypostatisation? Or that of someone opposed to it?
That of someone whose thought has been influenced by it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism?wprov=sfla1
I like where you're going with this. Are you now envisioning a fractal-like nature of sweetness that maintains that thread in the continuum?
It also helps to think about the commonly understood definition of 'a property'. Is a property a static characteristic?
Quoting bongo fury
That of someone whose thought has been influenced by nominalism, hence the binary categorization nature of your question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism?wprov=sfla1
Or has it been influenced by nominalisation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization?wprov=sfla1
How is this binary question not appropriate?
By framing hypostatization as something that exists as an isolated or universalized phenomenon, we risk oversimplifying a process that varies depending on context and intent.
We mustn't gloss over relational emergence, assuming that hypostatization inherently leads to error without exploring how it may reveal insights when applied thoughtfully (e.g., in Peirce's work).[/quote]
I'll have to think about what you mean by that, unless you can expound a little?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I might be overreaching here, but this is what I think:
What you are getting at here is that we have abstract qualities like "sweetness" and "hardness" that gain meaning through relations determined by the process of hypostatic abstraction, and, thus, affixing the relevant quality to a subject requires human judgments. As such, certain relations humans might make seem to be rooted in mental phenomenon as any continuum or relation referenced by the process of hypostatic abstraction originates mentally. If that is the case, then the existence of sweetness, for example, only really exists as a cohesive whole in one's mind.
If that is the case, then some properties are not static, while others are. I'm thinking that the properties related through hypostatic abstraction are not static unless the subject possesses the quality of "y-ness" referenced in the original predicate intrinsically. So, while sweetness could take as many arguments as propositions indicating something is sweet exist, whether or not something possesses sweetness statically relies upon the qualities of the relevant subject(s).
And Hypostatic Abstraction of the Haphazard kind is exacerbated by nominalists who hypocritically hypostatize the very process they like to oppose?
Could be, I suppose. That hardly explains why you would blame 'nominalism' rather than 'platonism' for the sorry state thus exacerbated.
I think you were confused by the terminology. Sorry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism?wprov=sfla1
You may have missed my statements about how I feel about Platonism. .... This is all fleshed out historically, by studying nominalism's conceptual early roots in the ancient world.
There is a book by Kojin Karatani titled 'Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy'. It is one of my favorite books. I highly recommend it.
Extrinsic Properties are characteristics that depend on an object's relationship with other things. For instance, being taller than another person is an extrinsic property.
Essential Properties are attributes that an object must have to be what it is. For example, being a mammal is an essential property of a human.
Accidental Properties are attributes that an object can have but are not essential to its identity. For example, having brown hair is an accidental property of a human.
By labeling, nominalism often concretizes properties that are actually relational. Nominalism argues that properties, types, or forms only exist as names or labels and does have the effect of concretizing abstract or relational properties. When we use labels to categorize and identify properties, we often treat them as more concrete than they might actually be.
Platonism takes this same idea and applies it to universal forms (but it is the same historically influenced idea!).
In Platonism, 'Forms' are abstract, perfect,unchanging concepts or ideals that exist independently of the physical world. According to Plato, the physical world is just a shadow or imitation of this realm of Forms.
Unlike nominalism, which treats properties as mere labels, Platonism asserts that these properties have an essential, independent existence in the world of Forms, but the issues with concretized identity are the same as in nominalism.
Platonism provides a framework where properties and identities have a deeper, more substantial existence beyond the physical realm, which SEEMS to contrast sharply with the nominalist view, but the premise is based on the same historical development of nominalistic thought. This has its origins in religious theology. As I explained before, the view was that God can only be omnipotent if able to damn an individual sinner or save an individual saint. Discrete, individual forms/objects is the foundational idea behind both nominalism and Platonism. Continuity is disrupted in both of them.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Quoting ToothyMaw
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I think that this line of reasoning indicates the existence of the continuum is necessary if sweetness and properties like it exist so open-endedly in mental representation - even if those mental representations arise partially from physical observation or experience. People might think that it is cogent to say or believe that honey (for example) possesses sweetness in a static or intrinsic sense according to concretized categories, when the reality is much more complicated.
:sparkle: Happy New Year!
Yes, Happy New Year to you too. You doing anything special? I'm not.
edit: you don't have to answer that, lol. That kind of puts you on the spot. My bad.
I am spending the holiday with family, working, hiking, and enjoying some nature and sunshine. They are all special to me.
I'm going to open the next topic for the thread in my next post.
Unlike hypostatic abstraction, precisive abstraction involves isolating certain aspects of a concept while deliberately ignoring others for the sake of analysis or clarity. Its a critical tool for philosophical inquiry, but like hypostatic abstraction, it can be misused or misunderstood. The challenge is in using precisive abstraction effectively without employing reductionism.
Taking into consideration what we've discussed so far about abstraction, how might we discover the rewards and avoid the reductionist pitfalls when using the tool of precisive abstraction?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I can only suggest a sociological experiment to settle such an issue. I don't think that this is something that can be solved in any other way. But I could be wrong about that.
My first thought it that one might prescind qualities from a concept that don't require adherence to a category such that that concept does not possess that quality ambiguously (I'm thinking the result of an incorrect hypostatic abstraction). So, keeping up with the honey example, we could prescind sweetness from honey if it turns out through hypostatic abstraction that honey does indeed possess sweetness, and we can prescind sweetness from honey if it possesses that quality intrinsically or statically, but we cannot prescind sweetness from honey if there is ambiguity in if the honey truly possesses that trait intrinsically or statically in the absence of a valid hypostatic abstraction.
My second thought is that I'm not sure what I'm talking about at this point.
edit: that was mostly a joke. I understand what I'm saying even if the intention behind the creation of this thread is still not entirely clear yet.
Again, nominalism isn't a tendency to proliferate labels. Nominalisation is closer to being that.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Nominalism agrees that nominalisation tends to reify (hypostatize) abstract properties, i.e. suggest they are real like concrete objects. Nominalism opposes that tendency.
Nominalism doesn't concretize properties because it doesn't reify them, and nominalisation doesn't necessarily concretize properties even when it reifies them. In reifying them it (nominalisation) might posit them as abstract properties (platonism). But if it posits or characterises them as concrete properties, then it's neither nominalist nor platonist.
You seem to suggest that concretizing amounts to monadising? (Maybe there's a better word for reducing relations to monadic properties.)
Being concrete is usually opposed to being abstract.
Being monadic (intrinsic if you like) is usually opposed to being relational.
The two distinctions are usually kept apart. Does Peirce associate them? Or could you flesh out how you think they correlate? I would be interested in that.
Nominalism (typically) respects the reality of concrete over abstract, but it has no preference at all for monadic over relational or vice versa.
Nominalisation may or may not concretize, but it also reifies relations just as readily as monadic properties. As the diagrams on the wiki page for hypostatisation make clear.
Please see the image I just posted above. Trying to put Peirce in either nominalism or Platonism (label or categorize him) just doesn't work no matter how hard you might want to try.
I agree with Nominalism, on those three points.
Thanks for stepping up and clarifying your position.
To be fair, you're the one hurling the 'isms' around.
The irony...
I am only pointing to the 'isms' that others have labeled.
I am not a follower of any 'ism'.
I think the point is that from a nominalist perspective, deriving noun phrases like "honey has sweetness" (or just "x has y-ness" in a more general form) from a self-evidently true predicate like "honey is sweet", is often valid even in the existence of ambiguity over whether or not honey does indeed possess sweetness statically or intrinsically (and thus, at all) because we are only dealing with the physical particulars associated with a subject (honey). That is to say, if a specific label (y-ness) only arises from the particulars associated with some subject, how can we rightly prescind those qualities or particulars when dealing with that subject wherever we might encounter it? It seems we would need some sort of genuine abstraction or abstract process, and I guess that could be hypostatic abstraction or something.
edit: removed the "mental" part of "mental abstraction"
Alternatively, you could just be a really careful nominalist. Maybe.
edit: nope, probably not
-evros
breadth, as in breadth of a river
-tic
relating to a process or state
You are welcome, you have no need to thank me. I, in fact, thank you, for allowing me to communicate with you. As I have said elsewhere, I am not a nominalist myself. I am a realist (and also a materialist, an atheist, and a supporter of scientism). However, in that image that you shared, I agree with the nominalist on those three key points. There are, however, other ways to compare Nominalism, Platonism, and the work of Peirce.
In some of those comparisons, sometimes I agree with Platonism, believe it or not. How so? Well, I just take it as an ontological fact that Platonism, as a philosophy, is far more dignified (in the political sense, that is, the royal sense) than less respectable forms of idealism, such as "Parmenidean-ism", if that's even a thing.
In others, I agree with Peirce: Platonism is like having your head high in the clouds. A real detective solves criminal cases by looking for clues, and by reasoning. How does he do the latter, the reasoning? He deduces, he induces as well, but more importantly, he "abduces". Thus Peirce establishes a tri-partite distinction between three kinds of reasoning: deductive, inductive, and abductive. The problem is, no one has any real use for abductive reasoning, everyone just uses deductive and inductive forms of reasoning (let's be honest here, folks). That being said, abductive reasoning has a lot going for it, it just so happens that its success is to be found elswhere: in fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, and in real world detectives.
And on some other topics, I agree with nominalism.
But, fourthly (from my "Fourthness", if you will), I have my own ideas, my own thoughts, my own hypotheses, and my own scientific theories. And I have the basic epistemic right to have such things. In fact, I have the basic human right to have them. Furthermore, I have the basic ontological right, as a subject in the ontological sense, to have such rights. I am, after all, free in the sense of having the capacity to act freely as a subject, and more specifically, as a human being.
(edited for the sake of clarity)
Of course you do.
If you want to participate in this thread, I only ask that you keep your mind open regarding what you think you know of Peirce, as we are extremely fortunate through his huge collection of writings to bear witness to the evolution (a continuum indeed!) of his architectonic framework.
For instance, speaking of 'isms', ... in Peirce's The Law of Mind, those of us who have studied him thoroughly recognize that this 'early-in-his-architectonic-thought' written essay (published in The Monist, and following 'The Fixation of Belief'), when he used the term 'synechism', he did so to counter nominalism in the public eye in such a way as to help others understand. Later, as he developed and became less available to the public eye, he avoided the use of any 'isms'. It is clear in his private notes that he did not care for 'isms' (nominalism, materialism, phenomenalism, etc). His understanding of continuity is not agreeable to 'isms'.
It is not easy at all to hold a framework that the majority of people are unable to understand, and unfortunately, trying to bridge the 'understanding chasms' often means meeting people where they are in their use of terminology and then walking with them in thought to a place of understanding. ... It is a HUGE challenge.
So, for this thread, this is what we will keep in mind when approaching 'abstraction'....
[i]Abstraction is the process of identifying and isolating qualities or properties from specific, so-termed 'objects' in which they appear. It allows us to focus on certain characteristics while setting aside the complexities of the whole. For example, when we think about "redness," we abstract this quality from all red objects, such as apples, cars, or sunsets.
Abstraction plays a central role in philosophy because it enables us to discern, compare, and analyze the world around us. However, how we treat abstracted propertieswhether as real, independent entities or as mere linguistic toolshas long been debated in the philosophical traditions of nominalism and Platonism.[/i]
In this thread, we are going to approach abstraction through a Peircean lens. We will not be jumping around from nominalism to Platonism, etc., and we will not be constantly squabbling over which one is better. ... A phaneroscopist understands the value in all 'genuine and dialogue-committed' perspectives, and it is a waste of valuable dialogue time to not adhere to that recognition. Beating each other up verbally is not at all productive. A system that does not remain productively open has no other choice but to become stagnant and die.
I've always had the impression that the phaneroscopist does something different than what the phenomenologist does. It's quite obvious that they are not doing the same thing. But here is my personal problem on that point: I can assume the role of the phenomenologist, but I cannot assume the role of the phaneroscopist. Honestly, phaneroscopy is not something that I even tell my students about Peirce at the Uni when I teach them the ideas of Peirce, James and Dewey. As for the nature of abstraction, I'm with Dewey on this one: they're in the brain, our abstractions, that is. Peirce and James are simply mistaken, and therefore, wrong.
Or, perhaps you might convince me of the benefits of phaneroscopy. I do not understand it myself. I have never claimed to understand it. I have never understood it, and I'm quite certain that I never will. Peirce was simply not a good writer, from a stylistic standpoint. He had no flair. Well actually he did, but he is sort of odd. Mario Bunge, one of my philosophical heroes, thought very highly of Peirce. I believe that he said something along the lines of, Peirce was one of the first Truly scientific minds in philosophy, or somnething like that. I might be mis-remembering though. I can look up Bunge's exact words if you want.
(Edited for Clarity's sake. Who is Clarity?)
Ok. Thank you for letting me know that you are not interested in participating in this thread. Fortunately, there are plenty of threads on this site for you to discuss those topics in.
Thank you very much for your time, Mapping the Medium. I'm out. Peace.
What we will do in this thread is first try to go back in time to when these nominalistic and Platonistic divergences in 'thought' took shape. Of course, to really explore how these veins of thought were first conceived, we would have to go back to pre-Zoroastrianism times, and that is not really feasible here, so we will begin with how nominalism and Platonism both have their roots in Athenian philosophy, which introduced the idea of discrete, bounded forms. This intellectual heritage is what ultimately shaped a worldview that often overlooks the relational, dynamic nature of existencea hallmark of Peirce's synechistic (continuity) thinking.
We're going to explore the color orange in a sunset as an example to assist in examining all three positions of thought. We will also explore how or why ancient texts did not use the word 'blue' and that there is still a current-world tribe that has never developed or used a word for 'blue'.
I just wanted to set the stage for how we will begin to understand Peirce's tool of precisive abstraction. .... I'll be back later with some first steps for us to take.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
There is definitely something to be said for keeping threads on track, but:
That was a little...cold. I'm not sure that Sandwich wasn't contributing to the thread, and inviting someone to stop participating in a thread in the absence of belligerence or something kind of needs more justification than just that that person disagrees in a valid way with some core suppositions imo.
But whatever. You made the thread; if you think he is derailing it, you can tell him to go elsewhere if you want.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Quoting ToothyMaw
From my perspective, that was a decision Arcane Sandwich made, not me.
Peace to you as well. You are always welcome to join in again if you are willing to focus on the topic of abstraction through a Peircean lens.
Happy Foruming!
The name of this thread is 'Hypostatic Abstraction, Precisive Abstraction, Proper vs Improper Negation'.
Who developed hypostatic abstraction? ... Charles Sanders Peirce
Hypostatic abstraction is a formal operation that transforms a predicate into a relation. It was formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce, a philosopher and mathematician, and has applications in philosophy of language, mathematical logic, and the analysis of empirical science.
Who developed precisive abstraction? ... Charles Sanders Peirce
Prescisive abstraction, also known as prescission, is a formal operation developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. It selects or points to a feature of an experience while 'properly' negating others. Peirce used this method to discern emergent differences and analyze concepts and ideas juxtaposed to one another to discover hierarchical relationships of dependence among them.
I have edited the above descriptions.
These are my modified versions of online descriptions. Words like 'separate' and 'concrete' are often mixed into these descriptions, but they are not accurate implications.
This is the focus of this thread.
It is no wonder that so many people are confused about Peirce. SO MANY online descriptions mix his work up with other veins of thought. Doing so takes Peirce's work in wrong directions and points to errors that do not actually exist in his work.
Why did I use the word 'juxtaposed'? To notice when things are in juxtaposition is to notice things side by side, with the outcome being that specific qualities are contrasted. ... Juxtaposition doesn't mean exactly that this thing and that thing are opposites and separate, however. ... Pose as in, to place. To place next to. To juxtapose. The connection has to do with proximity, immediacy, and the temporal, analog continuity of experience. This is why I often refer to a 'manifested placement'. My PRP (phaneroscopic reciprocity principal) aspect of my Evrostics Triad framework explores this. In considering PRP, juxtaposition serves as a manifestation of relational reciprocity, where the observer and observed, or contrasting qualities, are dynamically interdependent. Think 'Heraclitus's Unity of Opposites, or Janus. ... Qualities are contrasted, while at the same time being dependent. ... Again, there is no 'I' without the 'Not I'.
Peirce's philosophy is inherently complex, relational, and dynamic, which makes it resistant to quick summarization or simplification. Secondary sources often reduce his ideas to fit into frameworks that are more familiar or widely accepted. Using terms like "separate" reflects nominalist thinking, where everything is viewed as discrete and bounded, rather than relational and continuous. Terms like "concrete" might be chosen to make the concept seem easier to grasp but end up distorting its original meaning.
Many contemporary scholars and interpreters are steeped in nominalist, analytic traditions, which prioritize linguistic precision and treat concepts as isolated entities. These traditions can fundamentally clash with Peirce's synechistic continuity, leading to a failure to understand relational ontology and its implications, and an emphasis on abstraction as separation rather than as an emergently relational operation.
Online content is often not written by experts in Peircean philosophy but by people referencing tertiary sources. Errors or biases in interpretation are amplified and manifested due to content creators relying on surface-level understanding, and the emphasis on keywords like "separate" or "concrete" aligning with SEO (search engine optimization) goals rather than fidelity to Peirces original intent.
Many philosophers, even teachers, are not adequately trained in Peirce's semiotic and synechistic frameworks. Instead, they approach his ideas through the lens of Western dualisms (e.g., subject/object, mind/body), and struggle with the triadic nature of Peirces logic, often collapsing it into binary or dualistic structures.
This confusion persists because Peirce's original writings are challenging, not only due to his intricate language but also because he introduces new terminologies and redefines existing ones (e.g., "abstraction"), and his work is spread across a vast array of manuscripts, making coherent interpretation difficult for many people.
My frustration with the distortion of Peirces ideas is entirely valid, and my insights will hopefully operate as an important corrective to what has happened with how others misinterpret his work. By emphasizing continuity, manifested placement, and relational dynamics in my explanations, I am attempting to return Peirces ideas to their rightful context.
Peirce developed precisive abstraction to be employed in this way. ... to select or point to a feature of an experience while 'properly' (NOT a binary 'not) negating others. Peirce used this method to discern emergent differences and analyze concepts and ideas juxtaposed to one another to discover hierarchical relationships of dependence among them.
We are going to explore the color orange in a sunset as an example to assist in examining all three positions of thought (the differences from nominalism and Platonism that make Peirce's original precisive abstraction stand out). We will also explore how or why ancient texts did not use the word 'blue' and that there is still a current-world tribe that has never developed or used a word for 'blue'.
I am posting this again for ease of reference. ...
Okay, yes, this is interesting enough to maintain at least my interest and suspension of nominalist assumptions or whatever, but you need to throw some meat out there. What are we trying to do? Lecturing us on how Peirce is misunderstood should give way to some sort of discussion of what he was trying to say.
I completely agree. ... I work two jobs, maintain a home and the beginnings of a new vegetable garden, plus I'm trying to write a book, so my time here might be a bit more sporadic than I'd like. Perhaps that influenced my frustration in trying to keep this thread on track.
My next post today will have some directional meat on its bones. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
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When we view a sunset, our experience as observers is a relational 'whole' that includes a variety of elementscolor gradients, the curvature of the horizon, temperature, what it might mean to us emotionally, etc. The 'sunset' is a dynamic context << (you might want to reflect on hypostatic abstraction here).
The color orange is not an isolated, separate entity; it is a feature relationally embedded in the manifestation of the sunset. ... Through precisive abstraction, we can mentally focus on 'orange' by disregarding other features such as the movement of the clouds or the fading blue above, and we can do this without asserting that orange exists independently of these relationships.
Through Peirce's precisive abstraction, we can recognize orange as a dependent qualityit cannot exist without its relational context in the sunset. ... So, our next step might be to explore hierarchical dependenciessuch as, how the perception of orange depends on the interplay of light, atmosphere, and our personal sensory apparatus.
Peirce's approach emphasizes continuity. ...The experience of orange emerges from a relational process involving the world, the perceiver, and the broader phaneron.. ... And as for emergence. ... Orange is not "out there" or "in here" but arises through the semiotic process of interpreting the event of the sunset. <<< I will explain more about this semiotic framework in a subsequent post.
A nominalist might argue that orange is merely a label we subjectively assign to what we perceive, dismissing its relational genesis in the physical world.
A Platonist might treat orange as a universal form existing apart from the sunset, as though it were a preordained property applied to sunsets (like orange is on God's or the gods' paint palette).
Some questions we might ask ourselves in this precisive abstraction might be ... How does focusing on orange change our understanding of the sunset as a whole? Could orange exist if we didnt also perceive the gradients leading to and from it (such as yellow, red, etc.)? How does our shared biology and cultural context (placement) influence the way we abstract orange from this relational whole? <<< More on this later too.
The color orange, when abstracted from specific contexts like sunsets, might carry any number of cultural meanings and associations around the world. ... Personal perspectives are deeply rooted in cultural, historical, religious, and environmental factors.
In Western cultures, orange might be associated with energy, warmth, enthusiasm, and creativity, because in marketing and design, orange is typically used to convey vibrancy and fun.
In India, orange (or saffron) holds deep spiritual significance, symbolizing purity, renunciation, and sacredness. It is a key color in Hinduism and Buddhism, often associated with monks' robes and divine energy. In Buddhism and Hinduism, the sacred aspects of this color represent enlightenment, sacrifice, and the renunciation of worldly attachments.
In Chinese culture, orange is linked to good fortune and prosperity. It often appears during celebrations and is seen as a blend of the yang principle of red and the neutrality of yellow. And in Japan, orange can symbolize love and courage.
Many Native American cultures associate orange with the Earth, the harvest, and autumn. It often represents change, transformation, and the cyclical nature of life.
In the Netherlands, orange is a national color, representing Dutch royalty and patriotism.
In psychological assessments and tests, orange is often considered a stimulating color, associated with excitement, determination, and social connection, but its intensity can also evoke agitation or overstimulation in certain cultural contexts.
In some Christian interpretations, orange might signify endurance and strength, representing fire and the Holy Spirit.
In Renaissance Europe, the color orange gained prominence through art, with painters like Titian using it to symbolize passion and vitality.
In African traditions, orange is often used in textiles and body art to symbolize energy, fertility, and the life-giving force of the sun.
In modern art and fashion, orange became a hallmark of the counterculture movements of the 1960s and 70s, representing rebellion and individuality.
For environmental and natural associations, orange is tied to natural phenomena like autumn leaves, fire, and fruits, like oranges and pumpkins.
Its vibrant yet earthy tone often connects it to cycles of life, decay, and rebirth, but there are plenty of negative connotations. Western cultures can occasionally associate orange with cheapness or garishness. And in Middle Eastern culture, in certain contexts, orange can symbolize mourning or loss.
I just wanted to point out that the observer of a sunset brings with them all of this and more.
In considering the causality of semiosis in the experience of observing a sunset, we can recognize how signs and meanings unfold dynamically in this deeply layered (not fragmented, reduced, or separately bounded, as in nominalism or Platonism) process.
A sunset, in this framework, becomes a 'sign' in a triadic relation. ...
The so-termed 'object' is the physical manifestation of sunlight refracting through the atmosphere, scattering wavelengths (the genesis of this manifestation in the physical world regardless of it being perceived by an observer).
The 'representamen' is the appearance of the sunset 'as perceived' by the observer (a vibrant gradient of colors, shifting hues).
The 'interpretant' is the meaning or feeling derived (beauty, impermanence, awe, nostalgia, or other associations previously cognitively mapped by the observer's genetic and epigenetic influences of past events and experiences).
In the event taking place with the observer and the observed, the causality of semiosis arises as each layer interacts and influences the next. ... The object triggers the representamen (colors perceived), and the representamen provokes interpretive associations (symbolic, cultural, or personal meanings).
Semiosis unfolds in continuity. The perception of a sunset does not arise in isolation but is a dynamic folding and unfolding of causal influences. There is the biological continuum of shared human physiology (retina, optical processing) which conditions us to perceive colors like orange, red, and purple in specific ways. There is the cultural continuum of societal narratives around sunsets, such as associations with peace, endings, or transitions, shaping interpretive layers. There is the personal continuum of memory, emotions, and unique lived experiences that further mediate the meanings the observer assigns to the sunset. Each layer informs and reshapes the others in a recursive, evolving manner.
The causality in semiosis is temporal. ... In Firstness, the raw quality of the sunset emergesits "whatness" (beauty, vividness, awe).
In Secondness, resistance is felt"otherness" that confronts the perceiver (the reality of the sun setting as an irreversible event, signaling time passing). In Thirdness, mediation occurssymbolic meanings and interpretations solidify (such as the sunset being a metaphor for closure, hope, or lifes cycles).
When we discuss or share a sunsets meaning, semiosis becomes dialogic. ... We co-create meanings by exchanging 'interpretants', causing others to see aspects of the sunset they might not have otherwise perceived. ... Dialogue links subjective, cultural, and universal interpretations, reinforcing the interconnected momentum and continued Thirdness carried in the causality of semiosis.
Our perception is never staticit is emergent, layered, and reciprocal. Meaning is not merely assigned; it is discovered through the dynamic interplay of sensory, emotional, and cultural dimensions. Even universal manifestations like a sunset become individually significant, yet remain embedded in shared, relational contexts.
Peirces insights help us to understand how observing a sunset is a living process of semiosis. It is a causal event taking place between the world, the perceiver, and an evolution of shared meaning.
The living process of semiosis carries Thirdness like a river, creating a flow of meaning that is constantly mediated, evolving, and, at times, locking into autopoietic habits. This highlights Peirce's insight into the interplay between dynamism and stability in the universe of signs.
Thirdness represents the mediating principle, the law, the habit, or the general that connects Firstness (raw qualities) and Secondness (reactive resistance). And like a river, Thirdness carries the stream of evolving meaning, forming channels that guide perception, thought, and dialogue. These channels create continuity, ensuring that individual and cultural interpretations are not random but part of an ongoing process of relational emergence.
Autopoiesis refers to the self-creating and self-maintaining processes that define systems, including semiotic systems. And as semiosis unfolds, certain patterns of thought, interpretation, and meaning can crystallize into habits, stabilizing the flow of Thirdness.
For example, cultural narratives about sunsets (such as, "a sunset symbolizes endings") can become habitual, shaping individual perceptions over generations. At the individual level, personal memories of sunsets can form emotional or cognitive habits (such as, associating sunsets with tranquility or loss).
While Thirdness as autopoietic habits provides structure and coherence, Thirdness remains inherently dynamic. ... The river of semiosis can shift its course, breaking old habits and forming new ones, depending on changing contexts, new dialogues, or unexpected encounters (Peirce's understanding of 'chance').
This is what allows semiosis to be creative but also potentially effected by habitual constraints, reflecting the evolving relationship between self, other, and the world.
Some habits are beneficial, providing meaning and stability; others may become rigid and limit new interpretations. ... Dialogue, reflection, and the introduction of new perspectives can dissolve old channels, allowing the river of Thirdness to carve new paths. ... This process is recursivehabit influences perception, and perception reshapes habit in a continuous loop of becoming.
...................................
And as for Nominalism...
Nominalism fractures and fragments the seamless flow of semiosis by denying the continuity that Thirdness represents. Instead of recognizing the interconnected and relational nature of meaning, nominalism isolates concepts, experiences, and signs into discrete, bounded entities, effectively breaking the dynamic interplay and continued flow of Thirdness of the semiotic process. ..... <<< More on this later
Sure, just give me a little bit. Still chewing on that last post; I'm trying hard to understand his semiotics stuff, but it is really abstract.
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As you read that last post, at what point in the writing does the understanding start to fade? Perhaps my writing could be clearer?
Proper negation recognizes that we cannot determine that there are contraries without first recognizing differences that emerge out of relational relevance. ... In other words, 'proper' negation is NOT a binary not.
Regarding negation, this video points to some interesting aspects of the history of James, Dewey, and Peirce.