If human persons & the cosmos are mutually constituted ... random thoughts
why retorsion arguments have transcendental significance
Ecosemiotically, all manner of recursive feedback loops operate because each microcosmic ontogeny (individual history) recapitulates (embodies) an entire macrocosmic phylogeny (evolutionary history).
Anthropologically, humanity's journeying toward a wholly embodied, concrete, social universal, each person a mutually constituted particular, each exemplifying the universal in ways that remain peculiarly unique, while otherwise entirely non-contrastive, non-conflictive & harmonious.
Because human persons & the cosmos are mutually constituted, each person, as an ontogenetic microcosm, will embody the receptive potencies of our entire phylogenetic macrocosm.
Because of this co-constitutive relationship, the receptive potencies of the cosmic logoi are encoded in the operative potencies of human tropoi, thereby generating recursive ecosemiotic feedback loops.
This triadically transcends subject - object dualisms as well as any immanent - transcendent binary.
Notes on the heuristic that underwrote the above:
Second order abstractions and propositions, as a meta-level
structure, do not necessarily derive in full conscious awareness but are imparted through the acquisition of cultural symbolism (already layered) and through our own innate biosemiotic heuristic processes and neurocircuitry.
These propositional facilities, albeit meta-level, because they are not fully conscious, might function as subdoxastic routines and might consist of such as our foundational presuppositions and first principles.
Most philosophical schools seem to address, in some way or another, what we are here calling subdoxastic routines or heuristic subroutines. This is not to at all suggest that conceptual mapping across various philosophical hermeneutics can be done facilely.
Nevertheless, for example, we have Maritain's connaturality, Polanyi's tacit dimension, Newman's illative sense, Fries' nonintuitive immediate knowledge and Peirce's abduction.
These are described, in our view, as innate existential orientations or what I called receptive potencies, above. Other subdoxastic routines do get smuggled in as implicit presuppositions of culturally imparted paradigms.
Peircean 3ns (nomicities) normatively mediates between 1ns (possibilities) & 2ns (actualities)
This irreducible triadicity embeds in recursive feedback loops - triads nesting in triads.
dynamics of becoming (3ns) mediate between the dynamics of being (1ns) & willing (2ns) to effect authenticity
dynamics of being (1ns)
essential receptive potencies (1ns) of what-ness (primary quiddities or logoi) are reduced to existential acts (2ns) of that-ness as ordered (3ns) to being
dynamics of willing (2ns)
personal operative potencies (1ns) of who-ness (particular haecceities or hypostases) are reduced to volitional (efficient) acts (2ns) of this-ness, where-ness, when-ness & how-ness as ordered (3ns) to willing
dynamics of becoming (3ns)
final operative potencies (1ns) of we-ness or universal community (secondary quiddities or tropoi) are reduced to intellectual (formal) acts (2ns) of why-ness as ordered (3ns) to becoming
Notes on Retortion Arguments
The above accounts for the unavoidable circularity & self-referentiality of retortion arguments, what I called recursive feedback loops.
But, we might ask with Bill Vallicella when is retorsion probative?
Just because naturalism is an indispensable methodological presupposition doesn't mean it necessarily holds, metaphysically, it only means that we will be unfortunate if it does.
Just because some (weak) Principle of Sufficient Reason is an indispensable methodological presupposition doesn't mean it necessarily holds, metaphysically, it only means that we will be unfortunate if it does not.
Like Vallicella, my tentative conclusion is that retorsion has merely a transcendental significance, not a metaphysical one.