Beyond Perspectivism and the Primacy of Man…
Modes of Being, Semiotics, the Intelligent Universe and a Divine Order
“the hubris of science, or scientific totalitarianism, originates from the fact that modern science knows only “horizontal causality”, since it searches for laws as constant relationships between phenomena, i.e. it studies reality as a system of forces, not of values”…
— Augusto del Noce
“We have to build our lives to reflect the patterns that exist in nature and not those configured by machines. The order we seek is reflected in creation. It is not machine-like. Meaning, as I have said before, precedes reason. Life unfolds not via staccato inputs from disembodied pieces of matter but out of a living unpredictable whole. An ant contains more wonder than all our technology”…
— About this Life
[ LINK ]
“it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring” …
– Carl Sagan
physics
/ˈfɪzɪks/
the science that deals with matter, energy, motion, and force
The thinking subject — res Cogitans.
The emergence of a Marxist power-directed system of thought that represented a hard-fork decoupling from Western Civilisations traditional truth-directed system of thought and its symbiotic relationship between the Contingent Being of Man (the Created) and the Necessary Being of God (the Creator).
The inevitable post-modern metamorphosis of Nietzschean Perspectivism, where Reality and Truth Claims (i.e. correspondence of beliefs with Reality) were increasingly becoming Subjective Marxist Cultural & Social Constructs (e.g. Legal Positivism, Academic Peer Reviews, an endemic Secular Progressive Liberal Orthodoxy, Modern Monetary Theory etc…).
A Sociologism whereby knowledge and morality become social phenomena — a post-truth Modern Sophism.
“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality”…
— David Bohm
A Theology of Marxism and all its Infinite Errors.
Peirce’s Categories of the Whole (Modes of Being) — Beyond Cartesian Dualism, Hegel’s Absolute Idealism and Marx’s Dialectical Materialism
“According to Guenon, the crisis of the Modern World is first of all metaphysical. The negation of authority is not a stage or a consequence of Rationalism; it is rather its precondition, a rejection of a super-human order and of a cognitive faculty higher than individual reason”…
— Augusto del Noce
As outlined in Triadic Categories of Thought, late 19th- and early 20th-century American Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s ideas reconcile these Aristotelian and Kantian categories of Human understanding of Reality at their most fundamental first-principle categorical level (i.e. revealing the nature and modes of Being) and in doing so, it represented a return to and renewal of the Western Civilisation philosophical traditional.
A reawakening to an independent objective Reality beyond the subjective human mind and Primacy of Man.
A renewal in Metaphysics ( Study of Being — Science of Reality) and Realism.
Rather than ask the question:
- What can Exist? — Aristotle and his development of Ontological Predicates: Categories of Things; or
- How can we Understand? — Kant and his development of Epistemological Predicates: Categories of Understanding,
Charles Sanders Peirce asks a different question that profoundly alters humans’ understanding of Reality.
“If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind”…
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
What are the categories of Human Consciousness that reflect modes of Being?
What are the categories of the whole?
Peirce’s question and his answers would further illuminate the intelligibility of the Universe.
Noting modes of Being represented a further development of the Study of Being & Metaphysics ( the Science of Reality) beyond Rosmini’s Triadic of Being ( Ideal Being, Real Being and Moral Being) and Duns Scotus’s Univocity of Being.
“The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs’…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Peirce’s ideas would not only refine our understanding of the nature of Reality but would also:
- synthesise Aristotle’s and Kant’s Categories into Triadic Categories of Thought;
- introduce new concepts to our understanding of Reason beyond Aristotle’s deductive reasoning and Bacon’s inductive reasoning. These included the roles of abductive reasoning and semiotics to reveal new relationships of meaning. It represented a shift to a Triadic of Reason ;
- develop a guiding normative framework for good reasoning based on a Peircian Semiotic Triadic and Pragmatic Maxim. Ideas that would recognise how we embrace signs to mediate the meaning of abstract concepts by the observer with the object being observed. Ideas that would recognise that the meaning of the abstract concept can be defined by its practical effects;
- extend Kant’s ideas relating to the inherent structures of the Human Mind to ones that are Semiotic and Sign based ( the Semiotic Mind, Geometric Mindand Semiotic Languages) . High dimensional relationships of meaning and spatial structures of thought. Ideas that would form the basis for the emergence of new Semiotic Sign Machines ( Computers) that would embrace these concepts and compute these high dimensional relationships of meaning through signs and rules (syntax) of understanding ( so called Artificial General Intelligence — although by the third decade of the 21st Century was this becoming the Obfuscation of Intelligence? ); and
- develop a Triadic framework for understanding Human Consciousness that included the Primisense, Altersense and Medisense.
Modes of Being — Aristotle, Duns Scotus and Peirce
“My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future”…
— Peirce: CP 1.23
Peirce’s Categories of the Whole (Modes of Being) builds on the ideas of Aristotle and Duns Scotus.
“That conception of Aristotle which is embodied for us in the cognate origin of the terms actuality and activity is one of the most deeply illuminating products of Greek thinking”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Peirce explores three modes of being and builds on Aristotle’s distinction between potentiality and actuality in Metaphysics Book IX.
In this book, Aristotle states that understanding unity requires understanding potentiality and actuality. He argues that substance is that which exists fundamentally.
Alongside, actual existence, there is potential existence (principles of change).
In living intelligent organisms such as humans, a rational potentiality exists. The potentiality can be for opposing actions.
Aristotle viewed potentiality as a type of Being (although actuality is prior to potentiality).
From Aristotle’s perspective, everything in nature exists in a state of potentiality until it is brought into actuality through motion and change. An idea key to understanding how things move from possibility to real existence.
In contrast, Medieval Theologian and Philosopher John Duns Scotus argued for a formal distinction between essence (what something is) and its existence (what makes it real) in finite beings.
He viewed essence as a kind of intrinsic Being and in finite beings has the potentiality for actualisation of existence in Reality (unactualised possibilia — a potentia essendi — the potentiality of being)
Potentiality for actualisation and actuality of existence ( rather than an inseparable perfect unity).
Could Being be understood as a process of transformation (the transformation of potentiality into actuality (Aristotle) — potentiality for actualisation (Duns Scotus) and what were the highest first-order categories of human consciousness that could express this transformation process?
What was the relationship between the Self and the Non-Self as part of this transformation?
What was the relationship between the Conscious Self — Ego and Unconscious Self — Non-Ego as part of this transformation?
Peirce’s Categories of the Whole (Modes of Being)
Peirce’s Categories of the Whole is a process philosophy framework that describes the fundamental modes of Being:
- Firstness (Possibility/Quality/Feeling) — The mode of possibility, quality and pure potential. A mode of Being independent of anything else (e.g. raw sensations, moods, qualities etc…).
- Secondness (Actuality/Reaction/Fact) — The mode of Being of actuality, brute existence, and resistance. This includes the collision of Idealism (mind and possibililty) and Materialism (brute experiences); and
- Thirdness (Law/Mediation of Meaning/Generality) — The mode of Being of mediation of secondness (raw experiences & brute reality) with an intelligibility of thirdness that form generalisations, comprehensibility, meaningfulness and habits through reason, context and interpretation. It introduces relationships and meaning into understanding Reality itself****.
[ ****Note Peirce’s Agapic Evolution is that selfless unconditional love is a force of evolution and actualisation. It is where Beings influence and develop each other in ways that foster mutual growth. A creative and nurturing process through harmonious interactions and cooperation].
“Thirdness is the mode of being that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Peirce’s Categories of the Whole (modes of Being) represents the synthesis of Metaphysics and Physics grounded in Being.
“To be a nominalist consists in the underdeveloped state in one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Rather than reducing Reality to horizontal causality understood as a system of forces (efficient causes), material (material causes) or form (formal causes), we would understand Reality as having a higher Divine Order of Things.
A unity of the modes of Being.
Being, Peircian Semiotics and why do things relate?
Peirce’s philosophy represents a paradigm shift from the foundational ideas of Modernism and Post-Modernism that were anchored in Nietzschean Perspectivism and its orientation towards the Primacy of Man.
Ideas that reflected an independent objective Reality beyond the Primacy of Human Consciousness — Conscious Self — Ego.
“Since we cannot change Reality, let us change the eyes which we see Reality” …
- Nikos Kazantzakis
It was an awakening to higher-order properties of Reality beyond the materialist or physical realm.
Beyond atoms, elements and physical forces.
It was an awakening to higher-order properties of Reality beyond the idealist or immaterial realm.
Beyond the mental, conceptual and ideas.
Peirce was synthesising Physics and Metaphysics into Categories of the Whole — an exploration of modes of Being and the mediation of a processual Unity of Being and ordered intelligibility that enables human thought and being to be connected through semiotics and laws of nature.
“There is a different way to attend to the world. Dostoyevsky put it slightly differently when he said, ‘beauty will save the world’. We have to open our eyes and our hearts to it. We have to build our lives to reflect the patterns that exist in nature and not those configured by machines. The order we seek is reflected in creation. It is not machine-like. Meaning, as I have said before, precedes reason. Life unfolds not via staccato inputs from disembodied pieces of matter but out of a living unpredictable whole. An ant contains more wonder than all our technology”…
— About this Life
[ LINK ]
Our sense of coherence in Being is mediated through signs that can illuminate the structures of Reality.
A Philosophy of Metaphysical Idealism and Epistemological Realism.
An intelligent universe that was part Biological and part Logical.
“So we must start from this dual nature of intelligence as something both biological and logical”…
— Jean Piaget
A dawn of a new Age of Meaning (Semiotics) where the relationship between the Observer (Interpretant) and the Observed (Object) is understood to be mediated via signs.
“It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature”…
— Niels Bohr
Consciousness is not simply part of a Hegelian or Marxist dialectical process of Human thought but instead is an innate feature of the Universe and in Being.
Thought interacts with reality but does not create it.
“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.”
— Werner Heisenberg
Peirce’s Triadic of Human Consciousness and Categories of the Whole outlines the mechanisms through which Aristotle’s Ontological Predicates and Kant’s Epistemological Predicates are mediated and resolved.
It explains how universals and laws are not simply conceptual constructs of human thought but are real features of the World embedded in Nature itself.
It explains the role of signs in mediating meaning and how the Semiotic Triadic and Pragmatic Maxim when combined can illuminate the meaning of conceptual abstractions by observing and experiencing their practical effects.
It explains how God and an ultimate rational order ground the real laws of the Universe and higher-order Reality in contrast to Hegel’s Absolute Idealism’sorientation towards Human Thought — Conscious Self.
It explains the central role of Peirce’s Triadic Semiotic in the pursuit of Truth in contrast to the alternative Sausserean Dyadic Semiotic framework.
It is grounded in the Monism of Being, the Unity of Being, the Univocity of Being, and the Universality of Reason. It implicitly recognises the distinction & relationship between the Contingent Being of Man (Created) & the Necessary Being of God (Creator).
Beyond Descartes’s Dualism, Hegel’s Idealism and Marx’s Materialism that were all anchored in Nietzschean Perspectivism.
It represents Western Civilisation’s re-awakening from the slumber of Post-Modernism and a renewal in Realism & Metaphysics.
Restoring the notions of an objective independent Reality and Truth.
A Reality where new Relationships of Meaning are revealed to the Observer through the process of asking questions, abductive reasoning and the interplay between existence, knowing, inquiry and interpretation.
How we engage with and interpret Reality through our embodied lived experiences, cognitive abstractions and the relationships of concepts and categories mediated through an ever-expanding web of semiotic signs and human consciousness **** .
[ **** Note — A perspective not dissimilar to Nietzsche’s outward orientation of human consciousness ]
Signs that couple meaning with their practical effects and form abstract geometrical semiotic landscapes.
It is through the processes of entanglement (relationships of signs and meaning) and symmetry that we can reduce the complexity and continuum of Reality (a Complexity Void) into Generalisations to bring together a Sense of Coherence.
“The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in the tendency to generalisation”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Generalisations that enable us to develop heuristics (mental abstractions) and form habits (physical actions).
“A very moderate exercise of this third faculty suffices to show us that the word Category bears substantially the same meaning with all philosophers. For Aristotle, for Kant, and for Hegel, a category is an element of phenomena of the first rank of generality” …
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Generalisations that enable the development of Categories of Thought anchored in logical structures and relationships of meaning (Category Theory).
“ The truth is that pragmaticism is closely allied to the Hegelian absolute idealism, from which, however, it is sundered by its vigorous denial that the third category (which Hegel degrades to a mere stage of thinking) suffices to make the world, or is even so much as self-sufficient”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
Unlike Hegel or Descartes, Peirce recognises that pure thought alone will not suffice in humans’ attempts to understand such an objective independent Reality.
Reality is not simply the logical unfolding of absolute thought (e.g. Hegel’s Absolute Idealism).
“The subject behaves in general as a thinking subject; yet the subject is also concrete consciousness. Therefore, the idea, absolute truth, must be present for this subject as concrete self-consciousness, as an actual subject. The idea posesses certainty for the subject only insofar as it is a perceptible idea, in so far as it exists for the subject. This is immediate knowledge, is certainty. It is also necessary that what is true is also what is certain for me. This is the further process of mediation and is no longer something immediately apprehended, so this mediation is the transition into the universal. For the universal absolute idea is the end here as well as the beginning”…
— Friedrich Hegel
Instead, Reality is independent but intelligible, evolving through laws, relationships, and habits.
An ongoing process of asking questions, open inquiry and epistemological humility.
“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal”…
— Werner Heisenberg
Peirce breaks from Hegel because he believes that reality is not just an unfolding of logical thought but an independent, evolving system of signs, laws, and generalities that humans can come to understand through experience, inquiry, and semiotic mediation.
His Pragmaticism maintains that:
- The Universe is not just a chaos of individual things but an evolving system of relations, meanings, and unfolding Reality;
- The structures of Reality go beyond Human conceptualisation, however the Universe is inherently intelligible. It is fundamentally semiotic and brings together the metaphysical with the physical. An unfolding through meaning, signs and habits. Universalities and generalities( real foundations in the structure of Reality itself) created by God in the World that can be gradually understood by human intelligence (part logical and part biological);
- Meaning arises from the practical effects of ideas (not just abstract dialectics — thesis, antithesis, and synthesis);
- Knowledge is an unfolding semiotic process, not just a rationalist system; and
- General laws and universal principles are real, embedded in the structure of the universe itself.
It was an extension of Aristotle’s ontological predicates by recognising the thinking subject (the observer — the interpretant) and the object are coupled (Pragmatic Maxim) and that it is via semiotic signs (Semiotic Triadic) that we mediate meaning.
It was an extension of Kant’s epistemological predicates and structures of thought by recognising that a deeper understanding emerges through revealing the relationships between these semiotic signs (an emergent dynamic web of semiotic signs).
“ Kant taught that our fundamental conceptions are merely the ineluctable ideas of a system of logical forms”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
It is a recognition that our Mind, Body and Spirit are all part of Being.
Rosmini’s Triadic of Being — Ideal Being, Real Being and Moral Being.
An understanding of Reality grounded in the highest category of Human Thoughtand the Univocity of Being.
[ Note: Kant understood the shortcomings of Pure Reason. His statement “Reason can never prove the existence of God” highlighted its limitations. Existence could not be a predicate ( a predicate is something that attributes a property to a subject). It is not a real property that changes the concept of something. In other words, one could not conceptually define something into existence through theoretical reason. Kant, however, did believe that practical embodied reason and how we ought to live (i.e. moral dimension of human nature) required the postulation of God as rationally necessary. Faith was not irrational but a leap beyond what Theoretical Reason or Pure Reason could establish]
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