Edwina,
You say that “a basic understanding of the term 'element', is as 'a component or constituent of a whole'.” But that “basic understanding” is an ordinary-language sense of the word, not the Peircean phenomenological sense. You are evidently thinking of them as material elements, but for Peirce they are formal elements, as he reiterated many times. That’s why Peirce rarely (if ever) referred to them as “components” or “parts” or “bits” of a larger whole. They are defined in terms of their formal relations, not in terms of what they are made of. As Peirce also said repeatedly, the concept of a “element” present in all phenomena is not easy to grasp, especially in view of the presence of all three in every phenomenon — “Whence it follows that you cannot possibly think of any one of those elements in its purity.” That’s why he spent so much time in this lecture trying to give his audience an experiential “feel” for them. I think if you read Lecture 3 you’ll see what he means. Gary f. From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 5-Dec-17 13:41 To: 'Peirce List' <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.1 With regard to your comment: "not about classification of phenomena but analysis into the elements of which they are composed, namely Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness." I don't see that 'elements' or 'categories' means 'of which they are composed, which is reductionistic. After all, a basic understanding of the term 'element', is as 'a component or constituent of a whole'. But I don't see that the categories are an analysis of the elements of which phenomena are composed'. I understand Peirce's use of 'element' to refer to the nature of, or basic mode of organization of that 'whole'. After all, Peirce's “three elements are active in the world, first, chance; second, law; and third, habit-taking” (CP 1.409) As active, they cannot refer to 'bits' or 'components of a whole'. Chance is a state of a phenomena - and thus, not a component or 'bit'. Law is a rule of that phenomena and again, not a component. Habit-taking is a process...not a component or bit of a whole. Edwina Taborsky On Tue 05/12/17 12:52 PM , <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] sent: 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]> [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 . 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 }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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