Duns Scotus thought it was important to see "thisness" in objects. Thomists don't see "thisness" as a proper category, but Scotus did and I find it interesting

This is also pretty Peircean. The difference might be that we would have to switch out the word "consciousness" for something more psychologically general like "semiosis".

So for Peirce, the Cosmos was "mindful" (and matter merely effete mind) in the sense that it was driven by the imperative of every increasing reasonableness.

That translates more to a natural end state of crisp "rational" order. That is, a world that does achieve counterfactual definiteness in the limit.

The human mind is something that is highly specific within existence. So only we are "conscious" in the way that we understand consciousness.

But Peirce started his metaphysics from a psychological beginning - how scientific human minds make sense of the world through a pragmatic process of inquiry. We form a "world" in our minds by a rationalising process of semiosis - an interpretive relation.

And then this linguistic semiosis - rational thought - can be generalised towards pansemiosis. Nature itself can be understood as a system of signs thinking itself into definite being.

It is a little metaphorical when stretched that far. But it is a far better foundation for metaphysics than thinking reality is a dumb accidental machine. It starts us off looking for the dialectical logic by which Nature could bootstrap itself towards crisp counterfactuality out of some prior total vagueness or Tychism.

And that process of semiosis ends in its "other" of global continuity or the holism of Synechism, in Peirce's scheme.

So the generality of Peircean metaphysics is Hegelian in spirit. But he latches on to something new in making this dialectical distinction that is embodied in the triadic modelling relation which is semiosis.

Modern science has arrived at the same place to the degree that it now understands reality as an interaction of information and dynamics. We have two kinds of "stuff" - formal stuff and material stuff. But actually they are the same kind of stuff as information and entropy have been shown to be dual faces of reality at the Planck scale.

Information is signal - the differences that make a difference. And entropy is noise - the differences that don't make a difference. And so at the bottom of all that, there is just difference.

But at the Planck scale, this unity also means that you have absolute smallness (constraint) and absolute hotness (freedom) looking the same. So there is also an effective annihilation of difference as such. Difference only gets born with the Big Bang fracturing the Planck scale symmetry. It grows to have fully expressed dialectical being from that point.

Hegel did not negate Aristotle, he merely showed his thinking was 1) a violation of itself and 2) incomplete. That ought to be enough to compel you in the direction of Hegel, because it's basically what your are here saying. — JerseyFlight

I dunno. Hegel has just never grabbed me.

Aristotle is a great as he covered both the organic and mechanical conceptions of nature. He did not finish the job, but he got it properly started.

Then Peirce clicked with me as soon as I actually understood where he was coming from (which took a few years). His story fits the modern scientific view where Nature is in fact a dialectic of the organic and the mechanical. Semiosis pinpoints how mechanical or informational constraints do organise chaotic or organically self-organising nature.

And that is what we have discovered to be the basis of life and mind. It is all about the semiotic machinery that regulates physical dynamics.

Peirce was half scientist - a high level scientist - as well as a founder of modern logic and a dazzling metaphysician.

I've skimmed and dipped into Hegel on many occasions. But it lacks the sharpness I always find in Peirce. So my own philosophical landmarks would be Anaximander, Aristotle and then Peirce.

Peirce just makes Hegel redundant - at least for my purposes in pursuing a systems metaphysics.

Pure potentiality for Hegel is also pure freedom. Every thing is constrained in his system until the realization of the Absolute idea. Tielhard tried to use Hegel and incorporate the historical person of Jesus as the Omega Point of the "after" of the Big Bang. I don't agree with this, but lots of thinkers spin off from Hegel. All fascinating

Pure potentiality for Hegel is also pure freedom. — Gregory

That is what I disagree on. It is too anthropomorphic.

As individual minds, we humans believe that our destiny is to be self-actualising. We should grow to become creating gods. Our power to construct is only limited by our imaginations. And that is (informationally) unlimited.

Semiosis - as the mechanism of Nature - has become unbound in our hands. With words, we can express any idea. With number, we can construct any form. Semiosis promises unlimited means in terms of what we might chose to will into being.

Yet this is one-sided. The other half of Nature's equation is entropy. Material freedom.

Humans in fact can only give physical expression to ideas that fit within thermodynamic constraints. We remain rooted in the fact that semiosis is about information being used to regulate physical dynamics. And doing so with the purpose of rebuilding itself as an actual material system doing informational regulation.

Our minds are a bundle of habits dedicated to the job of rebuilding that bundle of habits - preserving a bunch of neural pathways woven into a network of metabolic paths and organs. The blood has to pump. The fats and sugars have to feed the hungry cells. We are functioning organisms, not immaterial souls.

So the highest form of semiosis might be the most actualised human being. We look around and don't find a better example of life and mind at its most individually potent.

But that means we are the most constrained as well as the most free. That is the paradox of freewill. We all agree to the same things under the force of science and rationality and cultural custom. Or if really pushed, due to hunger, need of shelter, and other things that speak to basic entropic survival as organisms.

So to be supremely rational is both maximising our freedom and maximising our constraint. Or at least, it means we think of freedom as chaos constrained to the point where we can impose our own private will on Nature - within practical limits that we just accept as being out of our personal control.

I would love to fly by flapping my arms. But it is not a failure of freewill that I can't.

And could the further evolution of humans ever arrive at a place where we can contradict the "laws of nature"? We know that is a silly question.

So our actual potency is measurable in terms of entropy dissipation. We have potency as organisms to the degree we can generate enough entropy to pay for a matching amount of purposeful work.

This is the basic metaphysical equation that science has arrived at. Even the Cosmos obeys the same ground rule. It has this organismic structure - see David Layzer's model of the Universe as a dissipative structure.

The end state of dialectics is still a dialectic. The connection is semiosis. The two halves of the equation being balanced are constraint and freedom. Or information and entropy.

Aquinas is one out of thousands of interpreters of Aristotle. — Gregory

I said "the most thorough". Sure there are many less thorough. Do you know any that are more thorough?

Do you mean "wrote more words" or made more sense? Aquinas is a clear writer and useful for people learning philosophy. But his main points are not proven no matter how much ink he would waste on a question

Two arguments against Aquinas

1) he said Being is added to form and matter as they unite in order to actualize them. But as Saurez and his school pointed out, form and matter must first exist to be in that triad. So Aquinas was wrong

2) Descartes says our reason IS our soul. He is right. Hold up, says Aquinas. Reason is a power of the soul, and will is a power of that power, he says. But this leads to contradictions. Aquinas says the greater is prior to the lesser. The will does greater good than the reason, so if will is dependant on the "power" of reason, than the greater is posterior. This a contradiction in his system. Therefore Aquinas was wrong

Why are you obsessed with proof? What I meant by "thorough" was complete, rather than superficial. That he wrote more words, and makes more sense, is evidence (as in proof), that he is more thorough.

Aquinas said he could prove a simple all powerful all good ect God exists and that anyone who disagrees is irrational. Disciples of his, like Edward Feser, are obsessed with proof and think atheism should be considered a mental illness

How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? — Albert Einstein (From the lecture, 'Geometry and Experience').

But there just is no fact of the matter whether a word or picture is pointed at one thing or another. No physical bolt of energy flows from pointer to pointee(s). So the whole social game is one of pretence. — bongo fury

Unless you're a biosemiotician? :chin: