Patternhood, Correlation, and Generality
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PATTERNHOOD, CORRELATION, AND GENERALITY: FOUNDATIONS OF A PEIRCEAN THEORY OF PATTERNS Jimmy Jericho Aames Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the Department of Philosophy Indiana University July 2016 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Master’s Thesis Committee André De Tienne, Ph.D., Chair Timothy Lyons, Ph.D. Cornelis de Waal, Ph.D. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Timothy Lyons, Dr. Cornelis De Waal, Dr. Samuel Kahn, and Dr. Chad Carmichael, who willingly shared their precious time to review my work and offer valuable comments and suggestions at various stages of writing. But above all I want to thank Dr. André De Tienne, without whose dedicated mentorship this work would have been impossible. It was Dr. De Tienne who initiated me into the labyrinthine world of Peirce’s thought, and whatever I write will invariably bear the stamp of his influence. iii Jimmy Jericho Aames PATTERNHOOD, CORRELATION, AND GENERALITY: FOUNDATIONS OF A PEIRCEAN THEORY OF PATTERNS This thesis develops a general theory of patterns on the basis of the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. The main questions with which this thesis is concerned are: what is the ontological status of patterns? In what does their reality consist in? Why does exhibiting patternhood seem to be a nec- essary condition for the very possibility of cognition? The development of the theory is motivated by a discussion of Ontic Structural Realism (OSR), a theory that has recently been gaining attention in analytic philosophy of science, especially in philosophy of physics. The central claim of OSR is that only patterns (structures) are real; individual objects are not real, or have only a “thin” being in some sense. In this thesis I deal mainly with the version of OSR developed by James Ladyman and Don Ross in their book Every Thing Must Go. I address two criticisms that are commonly levelled against OSR, (1) that it cannot give an adequate account of the difference between physical struc- ture and mathematical structure, and (2) that it cannot give an adequate account of the relationship between the world and our representations of the world. I then show how Peirce’s philosophical framework, as encapsulated in his pragmatism, theory of the categories, Scholastic realism, and theory of the continuum, could provide an answer to these difficulties. OSR will also be used to illuminate an aspect of Peirce’s philosophy which I believe has not been sufficiently emphasized in the literature, namely its structuralist aspect. Specifically, it will be shown that Peirce’s philosophy leads to a worldview very similar to that of OSR, via a path of reasoning that is completely different from those standardly used to argue for OSR. This thesis as a whole is an attempt to throw light on the nature of patternhood through an elucidation and justification of this path of reasoning, which I call the alternative path to OSR. André De Tienne, Ph.D., Chair iv Table of Contents Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2 1. What is This Mysterious Thing Called Pattern? ........................................................................ 10 1. 1. The Theoretical Background of OSR .................................................................................. 10 1. 2. Dennett’s Theory of Real Patterns ....................................................................................... 15 1. 3. The OSR of Ladyman and Ross ............................................................................................ 19 1. 4. Problems with OSR .............................................................................................................. 25 1. 4. 1. Problem 1: The Physical/Mathematical Distinction ................................................. 25 1. 4. 2. Problem 2: The Concept of Representation .............................................................. 36 2. Pragmatism as a Structuralist Theory of Meaning ..................................................................... 41 2. 1. Two Formulations of Pragmatism ....................................................................................... 41 2. 2. Pragmatism as a Structuralist Theory of Meaning .............................................................. 46 3. Peirce’s Theory of the Categories ............................................................................................... 52 3. 1. On a New List of Categories: General Outline ................................................................... 52 3. 2. Reference to a Correlate ....................................................................................................... 59 3. 3. Semiosis and the Flow of Information ................................................................................ 73 4. Nominalism and Realism ............................................................................................................ 85 4. 1. Introduction of Terminology and Basic Framework ........................................................... 87 4. 2. Peirce’s Scholastic Realism ................................................................................................. 92 5. Peirce’s Theory of the Continuum ............................................................................................ 100 5. 1. Secondness as the Category of Individuation .................................................................... 101 5. 2. The Mathematical Theory of the Continuum .................................................................... 103 5.3. Continuity, Generality, and the Inexhaustibility of Nature ................................................ 115 v Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................................ 121 References ........................................................................................................................................ 123 Curriculum Vitae vi Abbreviations CP x.y = Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volume x, paragraph y. NEM x.y = The New Elements of Mathematics, volume x, page y. SS: x = Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, page x. Wx: y = Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, volume x, page y. RLT: x = Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, page x. EPx: y = The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, volume x, page y. PM: x = Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings, page x. COWJ x: y = The Correspondence of William James, volume x, page y. MS x: y = Manuscript housed in Harvard University’s Houghton Library. The number x signifies the catalogue number assigned by Richard S. Robin in his Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce; y is the sheet number. L x: y = Correspondence housed in Harvard University’s Houghton Library. The number x signifies the catalogue number assigned by Richard S. Robin in his Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce; y is the sheet number. 1 Introduction The central question with which this thesis is concerned is: what is a pattern? Everything that we experience in this world seems to have some sort of pattern, a regularity by which we are able to make sense of the things and events around us, and respond to them in appropriate ways. This is not to deny that there are purely random events, such as the “snow” noise that appears on analog TVs receiving no transmission signal. But even such noise must display some kind of regularity—in the case of the TV static, the noise is displayed on a TV screen, which is itself a regularity in space and time (and other dimensions, as we shall see), the noise consists of black and white pixels of the same size and shape, the distribution of black and white across a sufficiently large area is uniform, etc.—otherwise we would not be able to perceive the noise at all. It is true that the noise itself is not a regularity, yet it can be discerned only against the backdrop of a series of regularities. Exhibiting regularity seems to be a condition for the very possibility of cognition; but why should this be the case? What kind of mode of being does a pattern have? Furthermore, is there anything in the world that is not a pattern? This thesis will be concerned primarily with the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, in particular his pragmatism, theory of categories, and ideas on continuity. We shall see how Peirce can guide our way through the seemingly intractable maze of issues surrounding the concept of patternhood, and why it is no exaggeration to characterize him as a philosopher of patterns. But before delving into Peirce’s philosophy, I would first like to take my point of departure in a theory called Ontic Structural Realism (OSR), a theory which has recently been gaining attention in analytic philosophy of science, especially in philosophy of physics. It was developed in the late 1990s by the British philosophers of science James Ladyman and Steven French, partly as a radi- calization of the position called