Mike, list - I agree with you. I don't think that examining the
categorical signs of the phaneron can be understood as " analysis
into the elements of which they are composed".
Peirce referred to the 'elements of consciousness' - a key term is
'consciousness' [not necessarily human] but I understand this phrase
as 'elements of received interaction. ' I agree that it is a
'generality'. And agree with your focus on 'an instance of something
in Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness'.
Edwina
On Tue 05/12/17 1:55 PM , Mike Bergman [email protected] sent:
Hi Gary, List,
I somewhat disagree with your attempt to make the
"categories" synonymous with "elements". An alternate
explanation, and the one I prefer, is:
universal categories = "kinds of elements"
wherein "kinds of elements" is a generality (as is a
"universal category"). Where Peirce refers simply to "element"
(without the "kind of" amendment), I think he is referring to
something that is an instance of something in Firstness,
Secondness or Thirdness. I think this is more consistent with
his later uses.
I think those instances where Peirce has wanted to provide a
synonym or a new preferred term, he is more often pretty
specific about that, no?
You may, indeed, at some level be correct in making the
synonym argument, and in any case it is impossible to fully
refute. I guess, though, I really do not see the practical point
in pushing it. It is already hard enough to explain Peirce to
the non-cognoscenti, and I don't see where the synonym adds to
more understanding.
Mike
On 12/5/2017 11:52 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Peirce's third Lowell Lecture was advertised to be about
the “Universal Categories,” but as you can begin to
see already, in the lecture he referred to them most
frequently as “elements” or “kinds of elements.”
This is a good time to sort out the terminological issue
involved here, and i'll try to do that with a little
timeline.
c.350 BC: Aristotle's Categories begins a tradition of
specialized philosophical usage of the term
“category” as “a highest notion, especially one derived
from the logical analysis of the forms of proposition” (Century
Dictionary). This usage was followed by many later
philosophers, including Kant, Hegel and Peirce; but the
number of “categories” and their designations varied, and so
did the sense in which they were considered “highest.” In
common everyday usage, of course, a “category” is a
division or class, and a system of categories is one into
which persons or things can be classified. Peirce
occasionally used the term in that way, but far more
often he follows the more specialized usage handed down
from his predecessors.
1865-7: Following mostly in the footsteps of Kant, but
by a more strictly logical method, Peirce arrives at his
“New List of Categories” published in 1867. In 1866,
in Lecture XI of his first set of Lowell lectures, he
says that “logic furnishes us with a classification of
the elements of consciousness…. 1st Feelings or
Elements of comprehension, 2nd Efforts or Elements of
extension, and 3rd Notions or Elements of Information,
which is the union of extension and comprehension”
(W1:491). In the “New List” paper itself, Peirce
arrives at his “categories” through the analysis of
concepts, especially by “prescinding,” which means “attention
to one element and neglect of the other.
Exclusive attention consists in a definite conception or supposition
of one part of an object, without any supposition of the
other” (CP 1.549). This is obviously quite different from a
classification of objects or concepts into different
kinds, but once the “elements” of an object have been
prescinded, then they can be classified into the three
“kinds of elements” that we find in Lowell Lecture 3 of
1903.
1886: In his “Guess at the Riddle” Peirce wrote that
“three elements are active in the world, first, chance;
second, law; and third, habit-taking” (CP 1.409). But
he was never satisfied with any of the names he gave to
his three “categories” because all those terms were
misleading in one way or another. When not applying them
to special sciences like physics or psychology, he
started calling them First, Second and Third
because those terms seemed to have less ‘baggage’
(irrelevant associations) than any he had come up with
previously. A little later, applying “hypostatic
abstraction,” he started calling them Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness. These quasi-mathematical terms
fit very well into the logic of relations; perhaps their
most concise definition is the one In the 1903
“Syllabus”: “Firstness is that which is such as it
is positively and regardless of anything else.
Secondness is that which is as it is in a second
something's being as it is, regardless of any third.
Thirdness is that whose being consists in its bringing
about a secondness.” But we should also bear in mind
what Peirce said in his 1898 Cambridge lectures: “Let
me say again that the connection of my categories with
the numbers 1, 2, 3, although it affords a convenient
designation of them, is a very trivial circumstance.”
1902: Peirce for the first time recognizes a positive
science which is, in his classification, prior to logic
and semiotics, and calls it “Phenomenology” because
it aims to analyze phenomena into their elements. Two
years later he calls the science “phaneroscopy” in an
attempt to distinguish it from Hegel’s
“phenomenology”; but he continues to use both terms for the
science, more or less interchangeably, and likewise uses
both “categories” and “elements” in references to his
phenomenological triad. But “elements,” as in “elements
of the phaneron,” becomes the more usual term, perhaps
because “categories” in its everyday usage suggests
classification, and phenomenology as Peirce conceived it
was not about classification of phenomena but about
analysis into the elements of which they are composed,
namely Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.
That brings us up to Lowell Lecture 3, where he defines
Phenomenology as “the science which describes the
different kinds of elements that are always present in
the Phenomenon, meaning by the Phenomenon whatever is before
the mind in any kind of thought, fancy, or cognition of any
kind.” Notice that he does not begin with the
quasi-mathematical definitions of these “high notions,” but
with experiential descriptions of them — beginning
with Secondness, “that one which the rough and tumble of
life renders most familiarly prominent.” It is also the
element most essential to individuality, which links it
to Peirce’s remarks about beta graphs in the preceding
paragraph. But he begins his exposition of phenomenology
with the key point that “Everything that you can possibly
think involves three kinds of elements. Whence it follows
that you cannot possibly think of any one of those elements
in its purity.” That is why phenomenology is much more
challenging than classification; and as long as we recognize
that, it does little harm to refer to the elements as
“categories,” as Peirce himself sometimes does in Lowell 3.
Terminological habits that go back over two millennia are
hard to break.
Gary f.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 4-Dec-17 16:46
List,
Here begins my serialized posting of Peirce’s third
Lowell Lecture, given on Nov. 30, 1903.
https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-lowell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13872
[1].
The beta part of the system of existential graphs is
distinguished from the alpha-part by the presence of
ligatures in its graphs; and it is therefore natural to
think that the distinction between alpha-possibility and
beta-possibility lies in the latter's taking account of the
relation of identity. But it could easily be demonstrated
that this is not the truth of the matter. The true
distinction lies in the fact that beta possibility takes
account of individuals, so that whereas in the alpha part
all the spots are regarded simply as propositions and may be
general, in the beta part, besides these, individuals which
form an entirely different category, enter into the graphs.
I now go on to a preface to the gamma part of the subject,
which is by far the most important of the three, and which
is distinguished by its taking account of abstractions.
I begin by a remark drawn from Phenomenology.
Phenomenology is the science which describes the
different kinds of elements that are always present in
the Phenomenon, meaning by the Phenomenon whatever is
before the mind in any kind of thought, fancy, or
cognition of any kind. Everything that you can possibly
think involves three kinds of elements. Whence it follows
that you cannot possibly think of any one of those
elements in its purity. The most strenuous endeavors of
thinking will leave your ideas somewhat confused. But I
think I can help you to see that there are three kinds of
elements, and to discern what they are like. I begin with
that one which the rough and tumble of life renders most
familiarly prominent. We are continually bumping up
against hard fact. We expected one thing, or passively
took it for granted, and had the image of it in our
minds. But experience forces that idea into the
background, and compels us to think quite differently. You
get this kind of consciousness in some approach to purity
when you put your shoulder against a door, and try to force
it open. You have a sense of resistance and at the same time
a sense of effort. There can be no resistance without
effort: there can be no effort without resistance. They are
only two ways of describing the same experience. It is a
double consciousness. We become aware of ourself in becoming
awaare of the not-self. The waking state is a consciousness
of reaction; and as the consciousness itself is
two-sided, so it has also two varieties; namely, action,
where our modification of other things is more prominent
than their reaction on us, and perception, where their
effect on us is overwhelmingly greater than our effect on
them. And this notion of being such as other things make us
is such a prominent part of our life, that we conceive other
things also to exist by virtue of their reactions against
each other. The idea of other, of not, becomes a very
pivot of thought. To this element I give the name of
Secondness.
http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm [2] }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures
of 1903
Links:
------
[1]
https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-lowell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13872
[2] http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm
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