Compare to Aristotle, Aquinas, & Peirce.

Recentest significant edit: September 5, 2013: I am beginning a process of revising this post in order to make it more presentable, less like my notes and jottings. Update November 6, 2016: Obviously I didn't follow through, but today I change at least a few things.

Update January 16, 2017: My discussion of agent, patient, act, borne needs MUCH revision. Unfortunately I've written no detailed discussion of the topic elsewhere on my blogs. I touch on them in spots in Methods of active learning by basic faculties; also in Contrarian, partisan, insularist, conformist; and in Telos, entelechy, Aristotle's Four Causes, pleasure, & happiness.

Here are tables

for comparison of my little systems to systems of Aristotle, Aquinas, and C.S. Peirce, in an easy way to look at.

The Four Causes & Related Principles

Aristotle (Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2)

external	efficient cause agent		end, final cause
			act
internal	patient matter, material cause		form, formal cause

Tetrastic

beginning agent bearer middle, means

end, telos act borneness check, entelechy

Tetrastic (elaborated)
Traditional four causes in all capitals

	1. Agent.	2. Bearer.	3. Act.	4. Borneness.
Existence (consistently extreme version).	EFFICIENT CAUSE.	Sustainer.	Consumer, exhauster.	Assimilator / suppressor.
Stages as turns of becoming.	Beginning.	Middle, means.	END, telos.	Check, entelechy, standing finished.
Stages.	Impetus.	Development, process.	Culmination.	Settlement, establishment.
Four human causal principles.	Will, conation.	Ability, dealing.	Affectivity, feeling of good or bad, emotion.	Cognition.
Static or quasi-static causes.	Essential tensions, pressures (of a thing especially as in its environment but also internally).	Composition, MATERIAL (of a thing but also of its external relations, environment, media, etc.).	Differentiation, diversification (of a thing especially as a system among others in its environment, but also as among its parts, organs).	Unitary STRUCTURE (of a thing especially but also of its external relations, environment, etc.).
Correlatives, examples, etc.
Correlated research foci.	Laws, universal constraints, regime (plurally instanced universals).	Elements, media & materials, domain (universe of discourse or total population & its parameters).	Kinds, varieties; species. (Neither universal nor individual.)	Individuals (connected, ordered, etc.) in a larger world.
Correlated concrete phenomena.	Motion & forces.	Matter.	Life.	Mind.
Kinetic / mechanical correlatives.	Net momentum, impulse, force.	Rest mass, rest energy, internal work & power.	(Non-rest) energy, work, power.	Internal, balanced momenta (potential & kinetic), impulses, forces.
Light-cone zones of communication and cause & effect.	Future light cone's surface (almost now).	Inside the future light cone (unambiguously later).	Past light cone's surface (just now, barely now).	Inside the past light cone (unambiguously earlier).
Mathematical time perspective.	Optima & feasibles.	Probabilities.	Information (newsiness).	Bases, facts, data (for logical reasoning).
General processes.	Decision processes.	Stochastic processes.	Info / communic. processes.	Inference processes.
Basic subsistence.	Catching or gathering the food.	Cooking or otherwise preparing the food.	Presenting & consuming the food.	Digesting & reflecting on the food.
Bahavioral phases / foci.	Adoption, appropriation, assumption, control.	Processing, adaptation, production.	Consumption, expression, conversion.	Rumination, assimilation, learnings.
Inter-behaviors.	Vying - conflict, competition, rivalry, debate.	Cooperation & tolerance.	Community, distinctive unitings.	Checks & balances.
Creative process (Helmholtz & Poincaré).	Saturation (getting handles on a problem).	Incubation.	Illumination (e.g., as in "eureka!").	Verification.
Tetradic semiosic stages.	Objectification.	Representation.	Interpretation.	Establishment.

The Categories

Peirce (Frstness, Secondness, Thirdness)

being
accident	{	Firstness, quality (of feeling) Secondness, reaction, resistance Thirdness, representation
substance

Tetrastic

1. diversity/sameness (e.g., double-of, sum-of antiderivative-of, etc.) 2. whetherhood, modality (e.g., y/n, maybe, iff, probably, etc.)

3. attribute, accident, modification, property, etc. 4. substance (e.g., this man, this horse)

Elements of Logical Psychology

Aquinas, rooted in Aristotle 1. concept   2. judgment   3. reasoning   Peirce 1. apprehension   2. judgment   3. inference

Tetrastic 1. apprehension (simple / compound), association, plotting, tracking, graphing 2. judgment (simple / compound), apportioning, comparing, weighing, measure, counting 3. evaluation (to an apprehension), classification, differentiation, calculation 4. inference (to a judgment), identification / designation, ordering, reasoning I keep changing my mind about this.

Elements of Logical Process (Semiosis)

Peirce   1stness. sign     2ndness. object   DETERMI- NATION   3rdness. interpretant

Tetrastic   1. object     2. sign     3. interpretant     4. recognizant

Peirce abduction   induction   deduction

Tetrastic surmise (doesn't automatically preserve truth; doesn't automatically preserve falsity) (strictly ampliative) induction (doesn't automatically preserve truth; automatically preserves falsity) ‘forward-only’ deduction (automatically preserves truth; doesn't automatically preserve falsity) reversible deduction (automatically preserves truth; automatically preserves falsity)

Requisites for Beauty

Aristotle   order & due magnitude;   order, symmetry, & limitation/ definiteness	Aquinas   wholeness or perfection, integritas sive perfectio due proportion or harmony, debita proportio sive consonantia radiance, claritas	Tetrastic
		naturalness, due force, due directed magnitude harmony, due proportion, due rhythm, consistency	radiance, vibrance wholeness, structural integrity, stability

Elemental Modes of the Psyche

Aristotle   vegetative appetitive sensory-perceptual locomotor rational		Tetens   feeling understanding will		Kant (a) cognitive faculties (b) feeling of pleasure or displeasure (c) faculty of desire (correlated with (a) understanding, (b) judgment, (c) reason)		Peirce 1. feeling, sensation 2. sense of resistance 3. general conception Sense of resistance includes will, pleasure, pain.		Tetrastic
								1. will & conation 2. dealing, handling	3. affectivity 4. cognition

A little more on elemental modes of the psyche

Tetrastic 4x4 of time-orientational modes of the psyche

Time	Will, Conation	Dealing, Handling	Affectivity	Cognition
For almost now:	Trying (out)/(for)	Testing, devising	Desire	Fancy, "impression"
For later	Seeking	Preparing, approach.	Hope, Confidence	Expectation, anticipation
For barely now	Taking, picking	Achieving	Pleasure, Satisf.	Noticing, discernment
For earlier	Adhering, habit	Maintaining, skill	Attachment	Memory

Some have classed desire (a feeling) outside of the feelings and instead as a kind of will or conation. Yet, the similarity between will/conation and the feeling of desire is part of a pattern. The 4x4 table above is a systematic fairground of similarities and dissimilarities. Consider for instance the column under “Will, Conation” vis-à-vis the column under “Affectivity.” Desire does resemble trying. Yet likewise, for instance, (affective) attachment resembles (volitional) adherence. Hence, to reclassify desire as a mode of will invites a general reclassification of affectivity as volition. But perhaps trying is the archtypical mode of will?—such that a resemblance to trying is a sign of being a mode of will? Yet even if one grants that there is something to that idea, why assume that the scenario depicted in the idea is unique? One also might regard memory, recognition, and knowledge as archtypical cognition. Maintenance and skill resemble them. In fact the English words “can,” “ken,” and “know” are cognate. Are maintenance and skill really cognition, while testing, preparation, and achievement are not cognition? No, and instead, it makes more sense and is more interesting to trace out the larger emerging pattern. In considering whether to conflate will/conation with desire, it’s good to consider the broader picture and to make sure of having done adequate inventory.

From the inner mind to the outer limits

The times “almost now,” “later,” “barely now, just now,” and “earlier”, mentioned in the above tables, point to a generalization from the ubiquitous physical case of relativity’s light cone. Now, we say, roughly speaking, that one’s past affects one’s future but not vice versa. Should we likewise distinguish the present which one affects and the present which affects one? Aren’t they pretty much the same zone with respect to the somewhat prolonged present which a mind actually experiences? Yet they turn out to be worth our distinguishing as times far oftener than we do so.

The initial point is:
• to recognize the philosophical generality of the idea of a finite general upper speed limit and the general import, for any system of communication and cause/effect, of finite general practical upper limits on the speed of signal propagation, though the given medium’s effective speed limit be less high and exact than some ultimate physical limit like lightspeed, and
• to recognize that mutually causal relationships involved with co-present objects don’t absolutely unite outgoing potency and incoming information, don’t render them indistinguishable in a wash of instantaneity -- don’t actually so unite them any more than they phenomenologically so unite them (as is more easily noticed from the viewpoints of the objects involved; compare with Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the never completed circuit between touching and being touched and even between touching oneself and being touched by oneself). Instead, two “presents” differ like future and past, differ as the respective edges, surfaces, of future and past. The difference runs deep -Then we can see, in parallel, (a) the future as an entrainment, or as a continuous unification, of successive almost-nows, and (b) the past as an entrainment, or as a continuous unification, of successive just-nows. This can be seen systematically reflected throughout the tetrastic 4x4 table (above) of time-orientational modes of the psyche, in the columns under will, dealing, affectivity, and cognition. For instance, we can see (a) a seeking as a unity arising across successive tryings, and (b) an adhering as a unity arising across successive takings or pickings.

A not insignificant further dimension of division of the psyche into elemental modes

I would also divide the psyche’s elementary modes along another dimension into those classes which in the case of cognition are (1) imagination, (2) conception & intellect, (3) the senses & cultivable ‘intuition’/‘instinct,’ and (4) commonsense perception.

* * *

Promised discussion of beginnings, middles, ends, and checks/entelechies:

Archaí, beginnings, tryings, leadings, unsettlings. Mésa, middles, mediations, means, steadied going(s). Télê, ends, culminations, unsteadied going(s) . Entelecheíai, entelechies, checks, settlings.

In a Nutshell

Now, when we try, seek, pick or take, or adhere to something, sometimes it’s so direct that we don’t think of means as being saliently involved. But often enough there are intermediate stages through which we go, and intermediative things.

• If the decision-making, the beginning, is regarded as a kind of main cause, those middles appear, relative to the situation of interest, as intermediate causes, helpers, facilitating causes. Of course they’re also intermediate effects. In any case we regard them as means.

• If the end is achieved, effected, sometimes it’s so directly obvious that we don’t think of any checks as being involved. But often enough there are collateral and at least a bit later things or events to which we look. If the end is regarded as a kind of main effect, those things or events “on the side” or further in time appear, relative to the situation of interest, as side effects, after-effects, evidentiary effects, checks.

Just as in advance one may have desired and hoped for the end, likewise one may have imagined and anticipated the collateral effects, the evidences, e.g., wakes, trails, tracks, shells, etc. One then also will have hoped for them, but only because one hopes for them as signs of the end’s having been achieved. They aren’t means to the end, they’re beyond and in addition to the end in a rather similar sense as the means are beyond and in addition to the beginning, the decision-making. And, just like an end, a check can be prospective, not yet accomplished.Update July 14, 2013: The check is not only of whether the means succeeded in achieving the end, but also of whether the end was good as it seemed in advance. In advance, one looks to the prospective "check," the prospective entelechy, to consider such issues as unintended consequences and conflicts among values. See my recent post Telos, entelechy, pleasure, happiness. End of update.

We often think of an agent cause as compelling. That’s an affinity, not a rigid rule. One could also stand physically willing but not insistent for motion, and thus one will amount to a contributing agent cause of one’s motion if one does move. But let’s focus on the typical affinities among ideas. By pushing oneself, in the sense of pushing against the hardly movable ground for example, one compels one’s own motion, with a kind of physical insistence. On the other hand, we regard means as enabling rather than compelling. (The particular means may be necessary or, thanks to alternatives, unnecessary.) Now, let’s use this pattern of affinities in order to flesh out the conception of the “check,” the establishment or settlement or confirmation, as a cause. Given a goal, a prospective end or satisfaction, there is a necessity — not a compulsion but a kind of needfulness — for a means. Now, what conception stands to needfulness, as enablement stands to compulsion? A kind of reasonableness. Given that it will be established or practically knowable (at least by oneself if not by others, or even vice versa) and be a basis (for knowledge or whatever), one has reason to do something, that is, it’s reasonable to do it, in the sense that it will be real or solid or legitimate or in evidence. Why do it if it’s such that it might as well be unknown by anybody ever? Of course, sometimes one does something because it will be off the record or hidden or transitory or somehow not for real (and others will not know of it). But that is weak counter-example because the same kind of weak counter-example has always occurred in the case of goals: sometimes one does something because others will not care about it or even because it will block their aims. One note: just as an end or goal is not only about pleasure but first of all about the good — otherwise we might as well just attach electrodes to our brains' pleasure centers — likewise the check is not only about knowing and wakefulness, but first of all about the real, the legitimate, etc. To the problematics of goals, pleasures, pains, indifference, and of people acting against their own interests and ends, I come bearing reminders of the problematics of checks, knowledge, ignorance, deception, and of people acting as their own unwitting accomplices.

As a middle, a continuing, is like a staying-begun, so a check is like a staying-ended. There’s some nice simplicity and symmetry about these ideas, even as they incorporate asymmetry. We live in time-asymmetric world in which the check, the hold, the staying-ended (and, so to speak, its content) which follows upon a thing’s ending pertains to that thing more specifically, more informatively, than does a hold or holding-off which precedes the thing’s beginning. This and other asymmetries seem to have their part in the symmetries that abound.

Of course, just as a means can secondarily be an end and vice versa, so a check can secondarily be a means and vice versa, and likewise so can a check secondarily be a beginning, a decision point, etc.

Sidebar My conception of entelechy is somewhat nonstandard, based on ideas of stability and confirmation. I don’t seek mainly to clarify Aristotle. Unlike Aristotle and tradition, I don’t seek to stretch act and end to encompass form and entelechy. Such encompassment conflates the driven with the borne, the vibrant (or vigorous) with the firm, etc., and ramifies into conflating the driver (agent) with the bearer (patient). Systematic deeper equivalences aren’t found without recognizing the systematic distinctions nearer the surface.   A traditional view of entelechy appears in the entry for “entelechy” in the great Century Dictionary. C.S. Peirce may have written the entry and probably at least reviewed it, since it is among the words at the relevant database at the Peirce Edition Project’s branch at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) (Website at http://www.pep.uqam.ca/ ) From the Century Dictionary, Vol. III, Page 1946, Entastic to Enter (DjVu): entelechy (en-tel´e-ki), n. [ ‹ L. entelechia, ‹ Gr. ’εντελέχεια, actuality, ‹ ’εν τέλει ’έχειν, be complete (cf. ’εντελής, complete, full): ’εν, in; dat. of τέλος, end, completion; ’έχειν, have, hold, intr. be.] Realization: opposed to power or potentiality, and nearly the same as energy or act (actuality). The only difference is that entelechy implies a more perfect realization. The idea of entelechy is connected with that of form, the idea of power with that of matter. Thus, iron is potentially in its ore, which to be made iron must be worked; when this is done, the iron exists in entelechy. The development from being in posse or in germ to entelechy takes place, according to Aristotle, by means of a change, the imperfect action or energy, of which the perfected result is the entelechy. Entelechy is, however, either first or second. First entelechy is being in working order; second entelechy is being in action. The soul is said to be the first entelechy of the body, which seems to imply that it grows out of the body as its germ; but the idea more insisted upon is that man without the soul would be but a body, while the soul, once developed, is not lost when the man sleeps. Cudworth terms his plastic nature (which see, under nature) a first entelechy, and Leibnitz calls a monad an entelechy.      To express this aspect of the mental functions, Aristotle makes use of the word entelechy. The word is one which explains itself. Frequently, it is true, Aristotle fails to draw any strict line of demarcation between entelechy and energy; but in theory, at least, the two are definitely separated from each other, and ’ενέργεια represents merely a stage on the path toward ’εντελέχεια. Entelechy in short is the realization which contains the end of a process: the complete expression of some function—the perfection of some phenomenon, the last stage in that process from potentiality to reality which we have already noticed. Soul then is not only the realization of the body; it is its perfect realization or full development. E. Wallace, Aristotle's Psychology, p. xlii. Joe Sachs in the “Energeia and Entelecheia” section of his article “Aristotle (384-322 BCE): Motion and its Place in Nature” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is dissatisfied with the traditional emphases in interpretation of what Aristotle meant by entelécheia. Sachs writes: Entelecheia means continuing in a state of completeness, or being at an end which is of such a nature that it is only possible to be there by means of the continual expenditure of the effort required to stay there. Just as energeia extends to entelecheia because it is the activity which makes a thing what it is, entelecheia extends to energeia because it is the end or perfection which has being only in, through, and during activity. Yet, the activity and effort turn out sometimes, in Sachs’s descriptions, to be a stable static balance of forces, for instance as with an attracted stone at rest against the attractive earth under water. We normally would not say that such a stone is active or that such a stone’s position or behavior is a continual expenditure of effort. Instead we would note the effort that stands invested and the potential energy, potential activity, thereby involved. All the same — aside from Sachs’s initially making it sound as though a stable static equilibrium couldn’t be an entelechy — his conception of entelechy is closer than the traditional one is to my deliberately altered conception of it, given his emphasis on the staying complete, not to mention his depicting it in terms of places and embeddedness in the world. And I also don’t regard all entelechy as necessarily static. Maybe my version isn’t as nonstandard as I thought!

End versus check: culmination versus standing finished

By ‘end,’ I mean a culmination, an end in the sense of télos, actualization, fulfillment. The check, on the other hand, is a kind of settlement, solidification, and holding in completeness — entelechy (see sidebar) —, be it ontic or epistemic.

The check or entelechy amounts to a kind of confirmation of things which might have been illusory or transitory. In a broader sense than is usual for the word “entelechy,” one can consider wakes, tracks, trails, shells, husks, etc., as entelechies, or as outcroppings of an entelechy of the situation.

However, the traditional emphasis, in the conception expressed by the term “entelechy,” has been on the entelechy as a having COMPLETE (or a holding or being COMPLETE), fully and not just partly actualized — rather than on entelechy as a HAVING (or HOLDING or BEING) complete - a standing finished - in a settled completion that can stand up to trials. It’s been enTELechy instead of entelECHY. That traditional emphasis on fullness of actualization (rather than on solidity, establishment), going back to the term’s orginator Aristotle, has permillennially missed something of the confirmational aspect, I think.

Hard it is to become good, harder still to stay good — that sort of thought seems to have been at the root of it, so it’s good to remember that, in a practical sense, what’s involved in staying good is not only that one fully has the good, but also that one’s good is firm and can stand up to reality’s trials and tests, whether they come thick and fast, or otherwise. It’s a good which is tried and true.

Moreover, it is simpler to regard entelechy in that way, as being a distinct principle, something further than a being-fully-completed, since one already regards the middle as being something further than a being-fully-begun. The analogy is exact down through its foundations, as will be seen in a moment. One must be regardful of the systematic conceptual structure of stayings and becomings which undergird these ideas.

Which brings us to the following:

Occam Doesn’t Raze Exactly One Corner of the Square of Opposition

One might object that “beginning, middle, end” seems so nice and complete; why add something more? Beginning, middle, end, like start, continue, stop.

Logically, however, it doesn’t seem so nice and complete at all. Instead:

Beginning, like starting at time t
— X occurs? no (for some period) till t, yes (for some period) since t.
Middle, like continuing at time t
— X occurs? yes (for some period) till t, yes (for some period) since t.
End, like stopping at time t
— X occurs? yes(for some period) till t, no (for some period) since t.
Check, like refraining, holding at time t
— X occurs? no (for some period) till t, no (for some period) since t.

Now that’s logically nice, complete, and hardly escapable, exhausting the combinatorial possibilities of the two relevant parameters.

The entelechy is traditionally associated with the form. Now, a structure is an equilibrium (be the equilibrium static, harmonic, or whatever else) among forces with some stability. Therefore the structure of a thing - even with all the mobility, flexibility, etc., which the structure may have - is a settlement or establishment of the thing, and is the kind of form (as opposed to form as aspect, figure, quality, etc.) most suited to be regarded as the entelechy. While the good has the rational character of an end, a culmination, on the other hand the true, the sound, the legitimate, have the rational character of a check, an entelechy.

It is also possible to make an entelechy the end, goal, culmination of one's action, as when one acts in order to prove something - maybe in inquiry, but also, for instance, about oneself in daily life, acting to prove oneself as being legitimately this or that, deserving of some sort of recognition or honor or accorded status, or to prove that some people do or don't deserve some status. (How many times, in practical matters, have you heard one person ask another, "what are you trying to prove?")
One can make a goal of any of the four causes, and there are 'arenas' of contention for them -
For instance one makes a goal of a beginning, a deciding, a leadership, when one vies or contends in group or mass decision-making for a decision or for a way of decision-making (politics, military battle, etc., deciding who or what gets to decide, etc.).
If it's a vying to have or be means in general, then it's for wealth, wherewithal, (e.g., business, commerce, finance, etc.) .
If it's a vying to have or be ends in general, a vying to be valued, then it's for glamour, glory, wattage, splendor (e.g., fashion, sports, popularity, notoriety, opulence, "hipness," etc.).
If it's a vying to have or be entelechies in general, a vying to be legitimized, then it's for honor, standing, etc. (e.g., case-building, discussion, debate, the formation of common opinion).

Agent, patient, act, borneness

Tetrastic version of the Four Causes & their Principles.

1. Beginning, impetus. Agent cause, mechanism, etc. & Agency, operation. Mover, affector, agent. Source of change or rest. Compare versus net momentum, impulse, force. 2. Middle, means, development. Material, composition. & Bearing, coping. Bearer, endurer. Mediation of change or rest. Compare versus rest mass, rest energy, internal work & power.

3. End, telos, culmination. Actualization, differentiation, etc. & Act, action, activity. Moved, affected, acted-on. Culmination of change or rest. Compare versus (non-rest) energy, work, power. 4. Check, entelechy, establishment. Structure. & Borneness, balancement. Borne, endured. Settlement/resolution of change or rest. Compare versus internally balanced momenta (potential & kinetic), impulses, forces.

Note: Momentum, force, etc., do not "cause" energy, work, power, as "effects." Instead the quantities were originally conceived of in the attempt to quantify "causativeness" and effect.

The “agent-patient” distinction was discarded long ago in fields like chemistry, yet the ideas remain useful for informal discussion. They could be more useful if they were conceived more systematically.

The agent acts on the bearer a.k.a. patient, e.g., matter, and, to the extent that the bearer suffers through to a completed change, that completed change is the act. Agent-patient-act: the ancient philosophical tradition.

(In the case of "rest" or stasis imposed by the agency, I'm not aware that Aristotle discussed "completed" stasis or the like, but suitable ideas seem to include that of a stasis culminating in some event and that of a stasis with the potential energy of the event in which it would culminate.)

Inching beyond ancient tradition.

The act is an affectedness, an acted-on-ness, of the bearer (except in the extreme case of a creation out of nothing). A bearer is affectable, but it is not always vigorously, distinctively affected; I mean that bearing and being affected aren’t to be crudely conflated, as when we think of bearing only as suffering rather than as, first of all, patience. Indeed we don’t conflate them when we think of the bearer as matter, process, etc., and of the affectedness, the act, as energy, culmination, etc. There is an equivalence between bearing and being affected, yet also distinctions between them along lines of potency vs. act, and of inside vs. outside. The perspective of inside-outside relations also arises in one’s seeing an inside as a “mini-outside.” Internal act, internal vigor, help constitute the temper, harmony, patience of a whole.

Breaking with ancient tradition.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If bearer per se is to be distinguished from bearer as affected, and if bearer’s patience and endurance are to be distinguished from bearer’s affectedness (the act), then, correspondingly, agent per se is to be distinguished from agent as borne, and agency as affecting is to be distinguished from borneness, borneness manifested in the extents and ways in which agency is itself turned, opposed, balanced, stabilized, etc. However, neither Aristotle nor the Scholastics considered form first of all in terms of movements or forces balanced within a system, though this equilibrium is, if stable and basic to the system, the system’s structure (in its aspects kinetic & static) and, otherwise, a kind of state of the system. Instead Aristotle & the Scholastics emphasized more abstract and pliable conceptions of form and classed the form, along with the end, as act. So tradition passed along three principles — agent, patient, act — yet four causes — efficient, material, final, and formal.

- posted by The Tetrast @ 1:01 AM 2 comments [top of post] [top of page] Copyright © BenjaminðA.ðUde11.

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