Regarding what I was trying to say about the relation between Thirdness
and Secondness, I was drawing on my memory of the following. (All
italicizing is as copied from Margolis's article.)
Joseph Margolis, in The Passing of Peirce’s Realism.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320422
"Peirce is very pointed here. In his Lowell Lectures (1903), for
instance, he says quite carefully and against the nominalist: ‘A
rule to which future events have a tendency to conform is /ipso
facto/ an important thing, an important element in the happening of
those events. This mode of being which /consists/, mind my word if
you please, the mode of being which /consists/ in the fact that
future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general
character, I call a Thirdness.’ (1:26). This means /both/ that there
is a thirdness in seconds and a secondness in thirds: /existing/
things (seconds) react in ways that manifest /real/ thirdness, and
real thirds (generals) are the inseparably predicable features /of/
(the power of) existing things apt for manifesting their secondness.
Universals don’t exist: to claim that they do would be a form of
‘nominalistic platonism’ (5.503); /universals are not particulars of
any kind./ There you have the key to the most economical defeat of
conceptualism. But, insofar as particulars do exist, /their/ (real)
general structure /is effective in/ their secondness; they cannot
exist unless they exist effectively, and they cannot exist
effectively unless their predicable structure is part (a ‘real
element’) of their effectivity. This also shows that haecceity
cannot be separable from quiddity: effectivity is a function of the
existence of /this/ and /that/, not of their essence as such. This
goes against Scotus (on Peirce’s somewhat doubtful reading). Scotus
(Peirce claims) wrongly construes the ‘thisness’ of particular
things as signifying /universals that single out particulars as
such;/ whereas their being particulars has to do only with their
existence (their secondness)."
Matt
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
