Gary F, Gary R, List,
Gary R: Peirce’s phenomenology is normative.
I’m not sure I fully agree that it is normative, but when I look closer I have
begun doubting myself. As I understand Peirce, his phenomenology is primarily
an observational science and should avoid making any normative claims or
prescriptions. But, in a sense it comes into play if we consider the method of
phenomenology. Following Richard K. Atkins in Charles S. Peirce’s Phenomenology
(2018), one can argue that Peirce has a fourfold method of doing phenomenology:
“First, she observes the phaneron. Second, she describes the phaneron. Third,
she analyzes the phaneron. Fourth, she evaluates the accuracy and adequacy of
her descriptions and analyses.” (p. 106, see also EP2:147-8). The fourth step,
Atkins argues, is something Peirce made use of, even if he rarely discussed it.
In the step of evaluation we do make judgments on how accurate a description is
of a phenomenon, the result should be a normative claim in the sense that we
and others should make use of the description that seems to fit best with the
observation. So perhaps Peirce’s phenomenology is indeed normative, in the
evaluation and critique of descriptions of phenomena inside the phaneron? Or
did you have anything else in mind Gary R? Maybe you mostly thought of it in
comparison to James?
And I have to say I like your summation that “Peirce's phenomenology initiates
an inquiry into the logical architecture of appearance itself.” very much!
Gary F: Can stones be sentient?
I enjoy the question, as it is something I have been pondering myself! But I
have great difficulty in understanding Peirce’s claim that “whatever is First
is ipso facto sentient”. Is it that the First of a stone, is that of being in
the feeling of a stone (or stonyness)? Is not sentience tied to at least some
other object, introducing secondness? The problem is exacerbated by me not
having access to RLT or CP 6 at the moment…
To at least answer your first question over at Turning Point, I believe that we
usually attribute feelings to object that we somehow believe have some will or
want. A chat bot might seem to want to make us happy or hurt us. An organism
might search for food or mates for reproduction. Stones do not seem to exhibit
this behavior. I think that the dividing line between sentient objects and
non-sentient ones hinges on the condition of whether the object has some sort
of “internal drive” towards something external. Gravity could explain the
moments of a stone, such that the stone on its own does not have an internal
will or power. This is a very crude sketch of an undeveloped idea. But then we
return to your question Gary F, when does something feel sentient? Or from my
perspective, have an internal drive?
Also, is not the stone or the feeling of the stone part of phaneron, which is
the collective total of consciousness? “I propose to use the word Phaneron as a
proper name to denote the total content of any one consciousness (for any one
is substantially any other), the sum of all we have in mind in any way
whatever, regardless of its cognitive value.” (EP2: 362, 1905). Thus, the stone
is content of a consciousness. Is it also consciousness then? Or is it not a
“content” of a consciousness, but rather as a whole, the entirety of a
consciousness?
This part of Peirce’s philosophy has always puzzled me. So I would happily hear
what you all think it means that a First is sentient. Is sentience here the
pure feeling as presented in the mode of thought? Does it not mean that we only
talk about ourselves when we say that a stone has sentience?
Best regards
Ivar
Le samedi 13 décembre 2025 à 08:19, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> a
écrit :
> Gary F. Jeff, List,
>
> Gary, I'm glad you brought up the difference between James' and Peirce's
> views of what constitutes a 'phenomenon' which, I believe, diverges both in
> scope andmethod.
>
> Peirce’s phenomenology is, of course, classificatory in the sense of
> distinguishing three categories, but it is also in my view, and I think more
> importantly, methodological. In the 'blackboard' lecture it appears to me to
> initiate a systematic analysis of the 'phaneron', one which isn't
> intrinsically physical or psychological (or metaphysical in James' sense,
> although it most certainly will find its role in Peirce's metaphysics). His
> phenomenology doesn't begin with what one finds in some actual or, even,
> possible occurrence (2ns), but with those formal elements one can discover in
> any and every phenomenon. In short, Peirce's formal categorial 'modes' --
> 1ns, 2ns, and 3ns -- are not contents of some existential experience but,
> rather, three universal ways of phenomena appearing within the phaneron. In
> later work he will characterize these categories as irreducible, mutually
> independent, that is, the three always appearing together(except, of course,
> for the purpose of analysis). This is to say, for example, that to explore
> 1ns as such is to consider that category in the abstract,prescinding from the
> fullness of tricategoriality where no one category ever appears independent
> of the other two.
>
> While James (and Husserl, for that matter) seems to see phenomena as a kind
> of temporal stream of pure existential experience, Peirce treats the phaneron
> as having essential modes (the categories) which can be studied and
> classified without necessarily referring to time, ego, or the existential
> world. Further down in the classification of sciences they will, naturally,
> find an important role in providing principles to especially semeiotics and
> metaphysics and, eventually, even the special and applied sciences.
>
> So, in a word, James’s phenomenon remains experiential and concrete while
> Peirce’s is formal, structural and, perhaps, normative (although I'd like to
> hear yours and others ideas regarding this last point as the normative
> sciences, of course, follow phenomenology in Peirce's classification of the
> theoretic sciences). One might say that Peirce is introducing a modal
> classificatory phenomenology not oriented directly toward lived experience
> (it is, after all, a theoretic science which, however, will find an important
> role in providing principles to the normative sciences, to metaphysics and,
> eventually, even the special and applied sciences).
>
> In my view, Peirce's phenomenology initiates an inquiry into the logical
> architecture of appearance itself.
>
> Best,
>
> Gary R
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2025 at 8:22 AM <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Gary R, your answer to Jeff’s question is as good or better than anything I
>> could have come up with. I might only add that Mill’s usage of the word
>> “phenomenon” is radically different from the use Peirce would make of it
>> later when he wrote to James in 1904 that “My ‘phenomenon’ for which I must
>> invent a new word is very near your ‘pure experience’ but not quite since I
>> do not exclude time and also speak of only one ‘phenomenon’” (CP 8.301).
>> Peirce on the other hand is already in 1898 practicing what we now call
>> “phenomenology” avant la lettre, in my opinion.
>>
>> Love, gary f.
>>
>> Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg
>>
>> From: Gary Richmond <[email protected]>
>> Sent: 11-Dec-25 05:25
>> To: [email protected]
>> Cc: [email protected]; Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]>
>> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Firstness and sentience
>>
>> Gary F, Jeff, List,
>>
>> Gary, thanks for introducing this intriguing question as to the nature of
>> 1ns. And, Jeff, your introduction of Mills' discussion of 'quality' seems to
>> me to provide a useful contrast to Peirce’s account of qualitative
>> possibility,1ns, in the 1898 Cambridge Lectures.
>>
>> Of course, both reject the old scholastic notion that a quality is some
>> mysterious entity inhabiting an object. And for both of them, the way we
>> encounter qualities is as feelings (sensations). But Mill shrinks 'quality'
>> into a kind of regularity of sensation: to call snow “white” is, in Mill's
>> view, simply to say that when snow is present under normal conditions that
>> we have a certain sensation: the quality, for him, is nothing other than the
>> sensation.
>>
>> Peirce, on the other hand, does not reduce qualities to physio/psychological
>> events. Rather, he examines the issue through phenomenological prescission
>> by abstracting from any subject/object relation to extract, as it were, the
>> pure suchness of a quality -- what it would be 'for itself'. True, this mode
>> of being can only be experienced as feeling. But quality is not a mere
>> feeling in a subject, nor, as mentioned above, some occult causal 'power' in
>> an object but, rather, the irreducible 1ns that any sensation instantiates
>> (but is not limited to).
>>
>> So, Peirce’s claim that “whatever is First is ipso facto sentient” is most
>> certainly not some panpsychist idea that stones and the like have minds. It
>> is a statement about how we can conceive qualitative being. Feeling, in the
>> RLT analysis, is not yet a psychological event. 1ns is, rather, the category
>> under which pure feeling can be presented to thought in phenomenological
>> analysis. Mill never argues anything like this as his 'sensations'
>> presuppose a subject and an object, while Peirce is trying to describe what
>> is prior both to reaction (2ns) and mediation/interpretation (3ns). Thus
>> Mill’s account, as I see it, is nominalist: qualities for him are only names
>> for kinds of sensations. On the other hand, Peirce’s view is grounded in
>> extreme scholastic realism such that qualities are real possible modes of
>> feeling whether or not they are embodied in any particular experience.Actual
>> subjective feeling arises only when certain kinds of complex, semiotic
>> systems emerge (for prime example, biological systems) and, indeed, Peirce
>> initiated an inquiry into how complex semiotic systems emerge. What
>> distinguishes him from Mill in this matter is his insistence that qualities
>> (1nses) are not merely descriptions of sensations but, rather, genuine modes
>> of semeiotic being, prescindible from any particular instance of their
>> appearance.
>>
>> In my view, with this insight Peirce deepens the inquiry into the
>> qualitative aspect of reality as being in its own distinct category, namely,
>> 1ns.
>>
>> Best.
>>
>> Gary R
>>
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