Abstract
This chapter deals with the foundation of Peirce’s Objective Idealism, which claims that matter is nothing but an effete mind, dominated by inveterate habits. This doctrine clearly refuses the Cartesian dualism between mind and matter, proposing that everything in the universe is of the nature of mind, matter being an especial case of mind exhausted by predominance of law, notwithstanding some deviation of it promoted by the action of Chance. Actually, this doctrine was also a consequence of the hypothesis about the origin of the laws of nature, which claimed that such laws are habits of conduct acquired along evolution, in a sort of generalization procedure typically observable in human mind. The sequence of this chapter exposes Peirce’s Theory of Continuity, which becomes his mature concept of Realism, claiming that reality and continuity are almost synonymous. Two kinds of continua will be considered by Peirce, namely, of possibilities and of quasinecessity, approaching with both, respectively, the proper nature of firstness and thirdness.
¡Oh dicha de entender, mayor que la de imaginar o la de sentir!BORGES, La Escritura del Dios
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Notes
- 1.
We use the term eidetic in the Platonic sense of eidos, meaning the structure of the Real and its intelligibility.
- 2.
CP, 6.639.
- 3.
CP, 8.153; my italics.
- 4.
CP, 8.132–156; also published in EP, 57–66, with omissions of the paragraphs CP, 8.153–156.
- 5.
CP, 8.145; EP, 2.62–63; my italics.
- 6.
CP, 3.422; my italics.
- 7.
CP, 1.420; my italics.
- 8.
CP, 7.438.
- 9.
In order to address these questions, a study of the metaphysical nature of feeling is required, which will be explored in Chap. 5.
- 10.
CP, 6.24; EP, 1.292; W, 8.105.
- 11.
CP, 6.24–5; EP, 1.292–293; W, 8.105–106; my italics.
- 12.
There is no evidence that Peirce has ever had, even superficially, any contact with Marx’s works. The term “materialism” is employed by the author in its explicit sense, unrelated to the doctrine of Dialectic Materialism.
- 13.
CP, 6.23; EP, 1.292; W, 8.105.
- 14.
CP, 2.138.
- 15.
CP, 6.86; see also CP, 6.148; EP, 1.329; W, 8.152–153.
- 16.
CP, 6.301; EP, 1.361; W, 8.193.
- 17.
See CP, 7.559–560.
- 18.
CP, 7.563–564.
- 19.
See Chap. 5.
- 20.
CP, 6.272–286.
- 21.
CP, 6.277.
- 22.
CP, 1.164.
- 23.
CP, 7.565; EP, 2.1.
- 24.
CP, 7.570; EP, 2.2.
- 25.
CP, 7.569; EP, 2.2.
- 26.
CP, 1.337.
- 27.
See, for example, CP, 4.219–221.
- 28.
CP, 7.536.
- 29.
CP, 1.340; my italics.
- 30.
CP, 1.166–167; my italics.
- 31.
CP, 6.168.
- 32.
Critique of Pure Reason; A169, B221 (original note in the text). In these paragraphs in Kant’s work we find: “Every sensation, therefore, and likewise every reality in (the field of) appearance, however small it may be, has a degree, that is, an intensive magnitude which can always be diminished. Between reality and negation there is continuity of possible realities and of smaller possible perceptions. Every colour, as for instance red, has a degree which, however small it may be, is never the smallest; and so with heat, the moment of gravity, etc. The property of magnitudes by which no part of them is the smallest possible, that is, by which no part is simple, is called their continuity.” We have used the English translation by Norman Kemp Smith, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, NY; MacMillan, 1978, from the A and B editions of this work by Kant.
- 33.
CP, 6.120; EP, 1.320; W, 8.143; also see CP, 3.569 and 4.121.
- 34.
CP, 6.168.
- 35.
CP, 6.170.
- 36.
Cf. Physica 227a10; Metaphysica 1069a5.
- 37.
See CP, 6.122; EP, 1.321; W, 8.144.
- 38.
Cf. CP, 4.122–123.
- 39.
CP, 4.172; my italics. See also CP, 5.526–532 and 7.209.
- 40.
Cf. also CP, 1.412, 4.498–499, 6.92, and 8.114; EP, 1.278; W, 6.209.
- 41.
Cf. CP, 5.458–459 and 5.463; EP, 2.357–358 and 2.359.
- 42.
Cf. CP, 6.177–182.
- 43.
See the unfolding of this issue in Chap. 5.
- 44.
CP, 4.62.
- 45.
See note 38 in Chap. 3.
- 46.
CP, 2.32.
- 47.
NEM, p. 343.
- 48.
CP, 1.175.
- 49.
CP, 1.135; my italics.
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Ibri, I.A. (2017). Objective Idealism and the Continuum . In: Kósmos Noetós. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 131. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66314-2_4
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