Nominalism versus Realism

[RehabDoc]

In reading 'The Idea of the World', the claim is made that there is no basis for 'Realism'. That is, nothing is 'Real' until an observation is made and therefore one concludes that one cannot say anything of certain regarding "reality."

I think this is a fundamental error based on a Nominalistic perspective that cannot see that there is a reality in potentiality, in the 'hidden' Implicate Order of Quantum Mechanics. It is a mistaking of 'Physical Actuality' of the Explicate Order, for the 'Real Relational Potentiality' of the Implicate Order.
Historically this whole issue of physical actuality versus real potentiality goes back to the 17th century and the 'battle' between the Scholastics and the Cartesians. Between Scholastic Realism and Cartesian Nominalism. Which, of course, was won by Cartesian Nominalism, with Descartes making the claim that Scholastic philosophy needed to be abandoned because it was 'too complicated' and that things required simplification through the imposition of what effectively was Cartesian foundationalism--the idea that an individual could have full access to the whole truth. Now Cartesian Nominalism has, as its fall-out, physicalism, individualism, phenomenalism, and sensationalism. All of which have sustained advancements in 'objective science' but which have also created huge problems by making it axiomatic that the observer is entirely separate from the system being observed as is maintained in Newtonian Mechanics of the 'classical world'. But, as is well recognized and documented in 'The Idea of the World', quantum mechanics makes it clear that this is an untenable assumption, and one that undermines the entire Cartesian agenda. Which is what the whole book is about, basically. Which is to restore 'Idealism' and take down 'Physicalism'. But it is a mistake to take down 'Realism' with 'Physicalism'. The claim of Scholastic Realism was never that the 'Real' was the Physically Actual. Not at all! The claim was that, by way of triadic semiotics (as was fully developed by John Poinsot and published in his Tractatus di Signis in 1632), it is the Real as relational potentiality which influences what becomes physically actual. Peirce added his principle of Synechism, which is that the relational potentiality arises out of a primordial Continuum such that every moment of time has infinite depth of potentiality, that anything can happen with non-zero probability. Which is how the new and spontaneous enters into actuality.
I totally agree with Bernardo's distinction between 'consciousness' and 'meta-consciousness' with the former being what can potentially come into reportable awareness, and the latter being what has actualized into reportable awareness. Which renders the term 'unconscious' meaningless.
Even though this idea continues to be thrown around continuously and all over the place. The Scholastics recognized this in their philosophy of cognition. Everything comes into consciousness, but only a small fraction makes it into 'meta-consciousness' and a reportable level of awareness. This comes up in 'Idea of the World' in the discussion of the Libet experiments on the 'awareness' of when one is going to produce a spontaneous movement. The process is initiated in consciousness but does not reach the level of meta-consciousness until a few hundred milliseconds later. This is of huge importance for many different reasons. Including the foundations for moral culpability. Which is why Peirce was so concerned about the elevated position of Nominalism in the dominant Cartesian Nominalistic understanding that supported and abetted the undermining of the moral foundation for behavior, undermined the scientific process itself, and ultimately led to a complete dead end of skeptical nihilism. This is pretty much where we now find ourselves at this point in human history. Peirce warned about it over 100 years ago. And Peirce was not alone in seeing this wicked underbelly of Nominalism that supported the 'Gospel of Greed' based on individualism and competitive 'will-to-power' driven behavior--a sure pathway to mutually assured destruction (MADness) and a complete undermining of the 'Gospel of Love' based on cooperativity and mutually assured flourishment (MAFness).

So I would think that 'The Idea of the World' makes a basic error in mistaking Actuality for Reality and thus making the claim that Realism is undermined by this form of Idealism. In fact, it is not at all. It is all a matter of being sure to understand what is Real and what is Actual. I think this distinction is of fundamental significance, and it actually emerges clearly in Peirce's philosophical system, in Scholastic Realism and in triadic semiotics; Scholastic Realism can actually be understood in the context of Semiotics as Semiotic Realism, which realizes that the main issue with regard to experience is its interpretation in terms of its significance, its meaning. This is a dynamic function of consciousness. And, the final thing about this is that this process of interpretation, which can be called 'semiosis', or the action of signs, or 'signification', is NOT just limited to living organisms but goes ALL THE WAY DOWN the scale to the fully inanimate. And in fact, one can say that it is the capacity for semiosis that is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness, that there is 'Physiosemiosis' ( see: https://www.pdcnet.org/signsystems/cont ... _0027_0047 and https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals ... e-p375.xml ) involving inanimate matter, 'Phytosemiosis' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytosemiotics ) involving the plant form of living organism, Zoosemiosis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoosemiotics ) involving the animal form of living organism and Anthroposemiosis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_communication ) involving the human being.

( As an aside: It is interesting to speculate regarding the significance of virosemiotics in the current global situation... for example, see: https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-134 regarding a semiotic perspective regarding what this current moment in global history may be attempting to communicate )

[RehabDoc]

And that the process of evolution is actually 'Semiosis' which is directed toward the goal of developing increasing Semiotic Freedom (as was originally suggested by biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer), where 'Semiotic Freedom' can be conceptualized as 'Interpretance Capacity'--ie. the level of sophistication of communicative functionality. Why should this be the case? Because increasing levels of semiotic freedom confers increasing survival capability.

See: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... 10.01087.x

Indeed, as Hoffmeyer says in this abstract:

"The evolutionary trend toward the production of life forms with an increasing interpretative capacity or semiotic freedom implies that the production of meaning has become an essential survival parameter in later stages of evolution."

How does the 'production of meaning' through semiotic freedom sustain survival? I will resist getting into an answer to this question, but it is actually fairly straightforward when one thinks carefully about what is meant in this context by the concept of 'meaning'...

[RehabDoc]

Peirce writes: “what he adores, if he is a good pragmaticist, is power; not the sham power of brute force, which, even in its own specialty of spoiling things, secures such slight results; but the creative power of reasonableness, which subdues all other powers, and rules over them with its sceptre, knowledge, and its globe, love” (CP 5.520, c.1905).

This is the goal for the 'good pragmatist' and, I would say, for the thoughtful human being. Reasonableness is "the Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love..."

[AshvinP]

In reading 'The Idea of the World', the claim is made that there is no basis for 'Realism'. That is, nothing is 'Real' until an observation is made and therefore one concludes that one cannot say anything of certain regarding "reality."

Hey, Gary!

"Realism" in physics generally refers to the idea that material objects exist which are mind-independent, i.e. they will exist regardless of whether there is any consciousness which observes them. That is the view which BK is challenging, not the philosophical realism of the scholastics. The latter is about the existence of abstract objects without spatio-temporal properties, like Platonic forms, and I do not believe BK's model rejects the possibility of those.

I totally agree with Bernardo's distinction between 'consciousness' and 'meta-consciousness' with the former being what can potentially come into reportable awareness, and the latter being what has actualized into reportable awareness. Which renders the term 'unconscious' meaningless.
Even though this idea continues to be thrown around continuously and all over the place.

I'm not sure we can write off the term "unconscious" that easily, although I am currently ambivalent about it myself. I would say there are at least two distinct contents of consciousness which we are unaware of - 1) sub-conscious contents (those which we can potentially access through various methods) and 2) supra-conscious contents (those which may access us to bring us into higher levels of conscious awareness). The problem is we may not know what kind of contents we are dealing with any given time or circumstance, such as a revelatory dream or vision, hence the word "unconscious" refers to both. The term does have its drawbacks, though, such as the implication that we are dealing with a realm which is other than mental activity or a realm which is eternally inaccessible (which may or may not be true).

[RehabDoc]

Yes, Ashvin, but don't you think it is confusing to reject 'Realism' when what is being rejected is the nature of the relationship between perception and actuality. For example, it does not necessarily reject the idea that an understanding of the truth of actuality can be approached through consensus across individual observations. So what are we supposed to do with that? The idea of there being the possibility of understanding truth through consensus is exactly what Peirce proposed as the way the truth is obtained--through the consensus that arises among a community of inquirers who are all using the 'semiotic spiral' which we call the 'scientific method' to make sense out of our observations. The huge problem with Cartesian Nominalism is that it claims that an individual BY THEMSELF, has direct access to truth--ie so-called 'foundationalism'. This is a huge problem with Nominalism that feeds into its connection with Individualism, and its fundamental undermining of the significance of communication. How do you bring together the statement that there is no actual 'Realism' with the statement that Scholastic Realism is viable and actually in a position to supersede Cartesian Nominalism? It is also difficult to disentangle the concept of truth through scientific consensus and the undermining of 'realism'. My contention is that there is MUCH TO BE GAINED here by introducing the science of Semiotics as the science of signification and meaning, together with the insights of Charles Sanders Peirce which were of great importance and, if we want to bring it around, of great 'significance'. Why? Because of the displacement of the material foundation that Nominalism maintains by a relational foundation consistent with Scholastic Realism and triadic semiotics. Which implies that we are meaning-making creatures, that communication is real and necessary, that we only survive through the 'Social Principle' and through cooperativity, and that the 'Gospel of Love' is of higher importance and significance than the 'Gospel of Greed' into which Nominalism feeds. For me personally, this is the most important message to come out of the fundamental shift that Bernardo is fueling. And it cannot come a minute too soon. None of us is going to get out of this predicament through individual isolated action. It is going to take a concerted and coordinated effort on the part of each Semiotic Animal on the planet. And it begins with a recognition of the reality of Semiosis--that we are interpretant of our experience--and that evolution itself is actually semiosis in action, as was maintained by the late John Deely in his papers on the reality of 'physiosemiosis'--ie. that even the inanimate matter of the universe is engaged in semiosis that directs things in defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, to greater and greater semiotic freedom in the context of open systems into which energy is being pumped. That is, evolution, as semiosis, is directed toward the generation of dissipative systems of greater and greater complexity with steadily increasing semiotic freedom. And that this process goes from the very beginning of time forward and from the very origin of space outward. The universe is engaged in a process of continual semiosis. Which explains how we came to be.

[RehabDoc]

Ashvin,
I do not share your ambivalence about the term 'unconscious'...I think that would imply that consciousness is not the single unitary ontological primitive. it is not a helpful term at all because it reinforces the Nominalistic credo that you can only know what you think and speak about, which is a completely false concept that ignores the capacity of the body for forms of knowledge and understanding that are ineffable. I think it is a basic misunderstanding of what we mean by the term 'conscious' as distinct from 'reportable awareness' or 'responsiveness' (which becomes a major issue in patients with various 'disorders of consciousness' and the whole issue of the 'determination of brain death' which is critical to transplantation medicine). The whole point of Bernardo's idealism is that everything is conscious. There is nothing that is 'unconscious', which would imply that it is outside of consciousness--but the whole idea that consciousness is the one and only ontological primitive implies that there is nothing that exists outside of consciousness. However, not everything is meta-conscious. I think that putting this all into semiotic terms makes it so much more accessible. But for some reason there is NOTHING on the Essentia Foundation website about semiotics as the science of relationality. Which does not makes sense if one recognizes that relationality is the foundation of consciousness. This understanding emerges out of the understanding of consciousness as process and thus the deep and fundamental connection between consciousness and temporality. And, just my opinion, but I think that it is in connection with temporality and dynamism, the centrality of the dynamical, to which there needs to be more attention paid. Just looking at the table of contents of 'The Idea of the World', there seems to be a predominant focus on spatiality and not a lot said about temporality in the model. And yet consciousness is inherently processual. So I see that as not necessarily a criticism but a place for elaboration and insightful exploration. For example, what does 'the Idea of the World' have to say about the phenomenon of synchronicity?
OK I will stop there.

[Ben Iscatus]

Gary, you could submit an essay to Essentia to demonstrate your interesting pov. But please make it as accessible as you can.

[Eugene I]

The idea of there being the possibility of understanding truth through consensus is exactly what Peirce proposed as the way the truth is obtained--through the consensus that arises among a community of inquirers who are all using the 'semiotic spiral' which we call the 'scientific method' to make sense out of our observations. The huge problem with Cartesian Nominalism is that it claims that an individual BY THEMSELF, has direct access to truth--ie so-called 'foundationalism'. This is a huge problem with Nominalism that feeds into its connection with Individualism, and its fundamental undermining of the significance of communication.

I agree with your semiotic view in general, but want to point that the consensus is still made of individuals, and the evolution of knowledge involves both the development of communal language and meanings as well as individual development, insights and discoveries. It's like building a house with bricks - every brick is a contribution from individuals that involves both the prior communal and integrated knowledge and aggregate of meanings and also the individual discoveries, insights and creative breakthroughs, and the communal and semiotic is what holds the bricks together. The problem occurs when only individual is emphasized in this process and communal is disregarded, or the other way around - the communal is emphasized and individual is disregarded or suppressed. Such extremes are typically non-functional, as we can also see in the human societies - when a society becomes too much dominated by individualism or by the dictate of society, in both cases we often observe stagnation or degradation. The most optimal evolutional path needs the right balance between individual and communal.

[RehabDoc]

"...the communal is emphasized and individual is disregarded or suppressed."

Ashvin,
If the ground rules are that everything is falsifiable, which, in Peircean terms, is the principle of 'fallibilism', then any individual who comes up with a clear counter-example that can be verified by others, can then topple the communal 'belief' and then it is 'back to the drawing board' for the community. I can see how the communal could dominate the individual if we are talking about the authority of the state being the determining factor, but that is a completely different way of fixating belief which is clearly highly problematic. If it is uniformly accepted that the way of science is the means of accessing truth, then one does not run into a problem of the communal dominating the individual because the whole process of truth-seeking begins with the observations of the individual. But those observations need to be shared and verified. The issue is that the observation of ONE individual does not truth make--which is the contention of Cartesian Nominalism--certainly, Descartes 'knew' he was right because he doubted everything except himself--because it was G-d whispering the truth in his ear. Which is of really grave concern. It is the basis for the emergence of a political demagogue who consolidates the authority of the state via a populist movement. And we know what kind of serious problem that can be. One of the main messages that comes out of such an individual is that 'science is not to be trusted' implying 'only I am to be trusted.' And we know how FU'd that can get very quickly. Yes, there is a necessity for freedom of the individual, but the question is always FOR WHAT PURPOSE.
I would say there are two purposes for which freedom is justified: 1. To allow one to be able to take care of the needs of an Other--ie. freedom for fulfillment of responsibility, and 2. To be able to exercise 'abduction' to generate new and creative hypotheses, deduce practical observables via the pragmatic maxim, and then make observations to see if those observables are detected. But the process of generating observations is NOT limited to an individual--particularly not the individual doing the abducting. That is a formula for disaster because of the fallibility of individual observers who tend to want to see what their hypothesis suggests ought to be seen. In other words, they have a problem with bias. Which is why there must be consistency of the observational findings established ACROSS the individuals of the community. The more that people end up observing the same thing, the more confident the community can be in the validity of the hypothesis. BUT if one individual finds a counter-example and suggests that the hypothesis needs to be revisited or revised, then the community must follow suit and do a validity check. THAT is the way of science. Individuals have their role, but so does the community. Ultimately, it is the community that determines the level of confidence in the hypothesis, NOT the individual who came up with it. That is the operation of the 'semiotic spiral' (abduction-deduction-induction-abduction... ) which we otherwise recognize as the 'scientific method'. The individual does not make a 'breakthrough' until there is communal validation. But, human beings, themselves, are fallible and that is why there need to be 'checks and balances' both on individuals and on the community. So I agree with you, Ashvin, that the most optimal evolutional path needs the right balance between the innovation and abductive ability of individuals, and the process of verification by which the community of inquirers works together to either verify or disprove the hypotheses brough forward by individuals. The real problem comes when the process gets 'politicized' and some people point at others who lean toward the importance of the validation by the community that is required and call them 'Socialists' or (my favorite) the 'Left', while others who lean toward the importance of the freedom of the individual are called 'Fascists' or the 'Right'. When we hear these labels being thrown around freely, particularly on social media or mass media, then there are bound to be obstacles placed on the 'road to inquiry' which itself requires the cooperation of individuals and communities. There ought to be automatic red flags going up everywhere whenever the scientific process is compromised by politics. And I love the fact that Peirce made the pronouncement that there should be written on every building, on every wall, in every public place (and if he were alive today, on every available source of information): DO NOT BLOCK THE WAY OF INQUIRY. For example, because the answer that is being found to be the case does not correspond to one's personal political persuasion See: https://doi.org/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.50.3.319

It is really a very simple message, but one which is so often and so readily overridden.

[RehabDoc]

Gary, you could submit an essay to Essentia to demonstrate your interesting pov. But please make it as accessible as you can.

That sounds like a good idea, Ben. But I am wondering if I write something and send it in, mostly focusing on the issue of semiosis and temporality/process, if it may be dismissed as being 'redundant' or 'not applicable'. I just find the complete absence of anything about semiotics, and, as well, the lack of recognition of the centrality of the question of unfolding process, motion and deep time, to be fairly astonishing and I don't want to invest a lot of personal time and effort to put something together that is going to be rejected outright.