While I couldn’t find the Peirce quote I was searching for I did find this from Joe Ransdell:
Qualities are not what philosophers sometimes call "the given" to which "interpretation" is somehow to be added to form cognitive units; for qualities are not objects of predication but rather that which is (monadically) predicated of objects, though not considered AS predicated since that would involve conceptual recourse to the other categories. [Note: this is treacherous territory: I am inclined at present to say, though, that quality is, first of all, predicable content not regarded as predicated though regardable in that way as well, and, second, when so regarded (via hypostatic abstraction) they are regarded as properties, in which case certain further things can be said of them considered as such. I do not think this means that he simply uses the term "quality" sloppily or even ambiguously. I think he regards it as legitimate to speak of quality sometimes as a matter of firstness and sometimes as a matter of thirdness depending on which way of regarding it is intended, as should be clear enough from the context if one is aware of the two different kinds of regard for it.) While he’s more talking about the myth of the given I think he is getting at the idea by Peirce that all thought is mediated. Working the details of this out relative to something like “the given” (and its myths) can be tricky. I’m not entirely sure of it myself. My guess is that for any sign there is an experience of the sign before us. But in terms of the raw feeling of that sign there is this new example of firstness. That in turn, to think upon, ends up being thought in terms of thirdness. However where the confusion pops up is that it’s very easy to then think that thinking is just a series of representations before the mind. I’m not sure Peirce makes that move although it remains the dominant paradigm in psychology and probably cognitive science. (I confess I can never quite make sense of that distinction although most people I encounter who self-identify as cognitive scientists seem much more open to non-representational views) Having said that though here there may be more disagreement over how to read Peirce. I know some do read Peirce as entailing a kind of representationalism. So perhaps somewhat against my earlier comment that this is all semantics there may be a deeper disagreement between the sides. I suspect the question can be productively be formed as whether the experience of a quality is a thought or whether it is just the experience of the mediation of a quality that is a thought. Part of the issue appears to be that firstness proper is in a sense ineffable. To make it effable is to represent it in a sign but then it’s no longer firstness. Is it only thought when in the sign? That’s fundamentally the issue. While yesterday this seemed primarily a semantic issue now I’m just not quite so sure. The main argument I think is that Peirce distinguishes thought from mind in a few places. I think for thought he’s talking of proposition-like entities. The mode of being of the composition of thought, which is always of the nature of the attribution of a predicate to a subject, is the living intelligence which is the creator of all intelligible reality, as well as of the knowledge of such reality. It is the ENTELECHY, or perfection of being. (CP 6.339-341;1908)
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