Sung, Phenomenologically, there's no problem *conceiving* a universe in which Helium exists and Hydrogen does not. When you say that "each atomic element is 'formed' from its previous one by adding one more electron/proton pair (with our without one or more neutrons)," you are confining your conceptions to the conventional framework of physics. But you can't do phenomenology that way; you can't take any such conceptual framework for granted when conceiving the elements of *appearing* itself.
You could argue, without taking any such conceptual framework for granted, that the number two is inconceivable without the number one, and so on. But that would be for the same as arguing that you can't have a second without a first that it is second to. And that amounts to the same thing as saying that Secondness is inconceivable without Firstness. Phenomenology shares with mathematics the complete absence of any existence claims for the objects of its attention. Physics on the other hand claims that helium could not *exist* without hydrogen, in the physical universe as we know it; but that's quite different from an inconceivability claim. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Sungchul Ji [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 2-Nov-14 10:33 AM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: 'Peirce List'; 'biosemiotics list' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7309] Natural Propositions chapter four Gary F, I agree with most of what you said in your previous post, except one possible inconsistency that you may want to look into: You said, ". . . But it would indeed be misleading to compare the (110114-1) chemical elements with the elements of the phaneron, which Peirce also referred to as "universal categories" or "modes of being", because these are nested within one another in a way that atomic (discrete) elements are not: Secondness is inconceivable without Firstness, and Thirdness without Secondness." Can't you say something similar with atomic elements ? That is, "Helium (He) is inconceivable without H, and Li is (110114-2) inconceivable without He, etc., because each atomic element is 'formed' from its previous one by adding one more electron/proton pair (with our without one or more neutrons), just as each category of Peirce is 'formed' from its previous one by adding one more "Being". With all the best. Sung
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