Gary, Clark, Sung, list,
to make the subject more complicated: We are dealing with the two kinds of Salthean Hierarchy (Paper "Salthe´12Axiomathes"). The division of object into immediate and dynamical object, and of the interpretant into its three modes is a compositional hierarchy: The object is composed of its two modes, I think, just like consciousness is composed of primi- alter- and medisense, altersense of its two, and medisene of its three submodes. On the other hand, the ten sign classes is a subsumption hierarchy: Here the subclasses are not parts of, but kinds of those in the previous level. I wonder, whether in either case of hierarchy, it stops at the third level (eg. (3.2.2)), or the tree goes on having branches (eg. (3.2.2) splits up to (3.2.2.1) and (3.2.2.2)).
Best,
Helmut
Helmut, Clark, List,
Helmut wrote: Peirce in fact does not start from firstness in the temporal sense, like in the beginning there was firstness: Firstness is a part of the irreducible triad of the three categories. It is merely called "firstness", because one needs some starting point to start thinking about anything, but any anything is triadic from its start. Irreducible though, so a sort of monism (but not a noism).
I agree that Peirce does not start with firstness in that sense that "in the beginning there was 1ns." And I agree that 1ns cannot be separated from the other Pythagorean categories (although, admittedly, in some of his cosmological writings, often quoted, it does sound as if he 'begins' there; perhaps he saw things better later as a consequence of his deep studies in continuity).
I am, however, hardly alone in making much of the "blackboard" example in Reasoning and the Logic of Things (RLT, 1898) as an _expression_ of Peirce's mature cosmology. In my opinion, this is one of the two essential lecture series for understanding Peirce's thinking (the other being the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, both available in inexpensive softbound editions),
In this example (RLT: 261 -283)), in my opinion, hardly yet fully appreciated, occurring in the final lecture of the series, Peirce argues that his blackboard represents "a continuum of some indefinite multitude of dimensions" (261) out of which not only the categories, but virtually every cosmological and, finally, every evolutionary thing will be 'written upon' (the chalk marks representing breaks in the continuum).
Now, for Peirce, 'continuity' is nearly, if not exactly, a synonym for 'thirdness'. See discussions of this in, for example, the work of Fernando Zalamea, perhaps, and as far as I'm concerned, certainly, the 21st century's profoudest thinkers on Peircean continuity (btw, illness prevented me from attending the Bogota symposium, but I hope and expect that we'll be hearing much about it from Cathy Legg and Jeff Downard, perhaps in addition from other scholars who presented at the conference and who are members of this forum).
So, for example, in 'Peirce's Continuum: A Methodological and Mathematical Approach', http://acervopeirceano.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Zalamea-Peirces-Continuum.pdf
Zalamea writes:
"Generality –as a law or regularity beyond the merely individual, as a deep layer of reality beyond the merely named, as a basic weapon in the dispute between realism and nominalism– falls into peircean thirdness and glues naturally together with the continuum" (10).
And he quotes Peirce, from several sources, in support of this notion (I should note, btw, that "glues" in the passage above is a technical term in the mathematics which Zalamea espouses).
"The continuum is a General. It is a General of a relation. Every General is a continuum vaguely defined.""Continuity, as generality, is inherent in potentiality, which is essentially general. (...) The original potentiality is essentially continuous, or general.""The possible is general, and continuity and generality are two names for the same absence of distinction of individuals."
I'm afraid I haven't time or energy to take this any further just now, so I'll end with a quotation. While I do not always agree with Joseph Esposito in his analysis of "the theory of Peirce's categories," I do most certain agree with him when he writes:
"Real potentiality. . . is only possible if Thirdness is First."
(Evolutionary Metaphysics: the development of Peirce's theory of categories, 191).
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 10:24 PM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
Supplement: Now one of my weird ideas: Peirce starts with firstness, and relation of firstness with itself leads from (1) to (1.1), and then to (1.1.1), and so on, so in this case, the relation is not really something more than the related. Hegel starts with nothing, and then dialectically relates nothing to "nothing", which so becomes a thing, the concept of "nothing". This is how "something" is created. This is not a monism, but a no-ism, that does nothing but show, that it is wrong. Hegel just shows, that the concept of "nothing" is impossible, but mistakes this insight for evidence, that everything has come out of nothing. But it has not, because there never has been nothing. Peirce in fact does not start from firstness in the temporal sense, like in the beginning there was firstness: Firstness is a part of the irreducible triad of the three categories. It is merely called "firstness", because one needs some starting point to start thinking about anything, but any anything is triadic from its start. Irreducible though, so a sort of monism (but not a noism).Sung, list,I am not a Peircean scholar either, compared to anybody else here, and I think, that if one stands somehow the suspicion of esotericness, before seeing, that it is not so very esoteric, at last it is quite simple: Firstness cannot have but only one mode, because it is, well, just firstness. Secondness is relation towards firstness, but whose relation? Its relation. So secondness consists of itself, its relation to itself, and its relation to firstness. Thirdness is that what combines firstness with secondness, so it contains firstness, secondness, and itself, which is the combination of the two. So thirdness has three relations: towards firstness, towards secondness, and towards itself, thirdness. Now relations are always something new, something other than the related, so you may call them "modes". Automatically, from these first-, second-, and thirdness, a neverending number of modes or subcategories unfold. It does not stop with six, nor with ten, nor with sixteen (if i have counted right). BUT: If mathematical ways of calculation (procection operators, matrices, sorry, I cant cope with that) lead to the same result: The better, isnt it? There must be something to it then.
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