Gary F, John S, List,
The passage cited earlier from the Carnegie application helps to clarify what is unique about Peirce's phenomenological account of the elements of experience. In May 1867 I presented to the Academy in Boston a paper of ten pages, or about 4000 words, upon a New List of Categories. It was the result of full two years' intense and incessant application. It surprises me today that in so short a time I could produce a statement of that sort so nearly accurate, especially when I look back at my notebooks and find by what an unnecessarily difficult route I reached my goal. For this list of categories differs from the lists of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel in attempting much more than they. They merely took conceptions which they found at hand, already worked out. Their labor was limited to selecting the conceptions, slightly developing some of them, arranging them, and in Hegel's case, separating one or two that had been confused with others. But what I undertook to do was to go back to experience, in the sense of whatever we find to have been forced upon our minds, and by examining it to form clear conceptions of its radically different classes of elements, without relying upon any previous philosophizing, at all. This was the most difficult task I ever ventured to undertake. [Carnegie application (1902)] In what ways does the account of the formal elements of firstness, secondness and thirdness "attempt much more" than is provided in the lists and tables of categories developed by Aristotle, Kant and Hegel? My understanding is that it attempts much more because it is meant to be an account of the formal elements in any possible experience that are, in some sense, universal and necessary? Let us ask: in what senses are the elemental relations of what is monadic, dyadic or triadic in experience universal and necessary? My interpretative hypothesis is that they are not taken to be universal and necessary in themselves (i.e., simpliciter). Rather, they are universal and necessary elements of experience with respect to the requirements that cognitive agents must meet in order to improve their understanding of the world by testing explanations against observations. As such, the idea is that Peirce is asking a question that Aristotle, Kant and Hegel failed to adequately answer, which is: what are the formal elements in experience that are necessary for (a) drawing on observations of surprising phenomena for the sake of formulating explanatory hypotheses by abduction, (b) deducing the testable consequences of what might possibly be observed if a given hypothesis were to be true and (c), inducing from given observations what explanations tend to be confirmed or disconfirmed by the data. In abduction and induction, the observations that are actually made supply us with the premisses of the arguments. In making deductions of the testable consequences from purported hypotheses, we are asking what we would expect to observable given an explanation as a supposition. If this interpretative hypothesis is on the right track, then Peirce is arguing that the formal elements of firstness, secondness and thirdness that are universally part of any possible experience are necessary for the purpose of drawing valid inferences by abduction or induction from such observations--or for deducing the consequences of what could be observed if a given hypothesis were to be true. Let's focus our attention on the last sort of case pertaining to deduction, and let's ask: are these formal elements universally necessary for deducing the consequences of what possibly could be observed if a given hypothesis were to turn out to be true? If so, in what ways are the formal elements necessary for drawing such inferences by deduction? There are two ways in which the elements are necessary, and I believe that the EG help us clarify both of these ways. 1) In drawing such deductive inferences, we must be able to arrive at conclusions about what is observable under different kinds of possible tests. 2) Drawing such deductions requires that we observe the formal elements in the sorts of logical diagrams that are necessary for us to see what follows from a given set of premisses. For my part, I think that Peirce's explanations of the EG in the Lowell Lectures does help us see what is necessary for (2). In what ways does it help us see what is necessary with respect to (1)? --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 18, 2017 2:07:06 PM To: 'Peirce-L' Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.6 List, Aristotle’s remarks at the beginning of De Caelo go like this: “A magnitude if divisible one way is a line, if two ways a surface, and if three a body. Beyond these there is no other magnitude, because the three dimensions are all that there are, and that which is divisible in three directions is divisible in all. For, as the Pythagoreans say, the world and all that is in it is determined by the number three, since beginning and middle and end give the number of an ‘all’, and the number they give is the triad.” Peirce occasionally called this triad the “cenopythagorean categories” — but for him, there is much more to them than we find in Aristotle’s summary of the Pythagorean notions. Although these elements are so fundamental that “confused notions” of them go back to the beginning of philosophy, great patience and effort is required to clarify them as they ought to be clarified by anyone interested in philosophy. Peirce’s comments on his predecessors Kant and Hegel help to situate Peirce’s own efforts along these lines. His emphasis on “the inexhaustible intricacy of the fabric of conceptions” — referring I think to conceptions in general, not just the three in question here — is remarkable, and his recognition of that (rather than modesty) compels him to say “I do not flatter myself that I have ever analyzed a single idea into its constituent elements.” In the drafts of this lecture and elsewhere, Peirce did give some account of his labors, though he decided not to “inflict” such an account on his audience at this time. I think we can be sure that if Peirce never managed to “analyze a single idea into its constituent elements,” it wasn’t for lack of effort or skill at logical analysis. Gary f. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 17-Dec-17 15:07 To: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.6 Continuing from Lowell Lecture 3.5, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-lowell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13896 39 (C. S. Peirce Manuscripts, MS 464-465 (1903) - Lowell Lecture III - 3rd Draught) | FromThePage<https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-lowell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13896> fromthepage.com 39 (C. S. Peirce Manuscripts, MS 464-465 (1903) - Lowell Lecture III - 3rd Draught) - page overview. 68 Paging in other book should have 2 added to each page after 5, and 1 added to 5 thought as a real power, or as anything but a fantastic... Those of you, ladies and gentlemen, who are interested in philosophy, as most of us are, more or less, would do well to get as clear notions of the three elements of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness as you can. [CP 1.521] Very wretched must be the notion of them that can be conveyed in one lecture. They must grow up in the mind, under the hot sun-shine of hard thought, daily, bright, well-focussed, and well aimed thought; and you must have patience, for long time is required to ripen the fruit. They are no inventions of mine. Were they so, that would be sufficient to condemn them. Confused notions of these elements appear in the first infancy of philosophy, and they have never entirely been forgotten. Their fundamental importance is noticed in the beginning of Aristotle's De Caelo, where it is said that the Pythagoreans knew of them. [522] In Kant they come out with an approach to lucidity. For Kant possessed in a high degree all seven of the mental qualifications of a philosopher, 1st, the ability to discern what is before one's consciousness; 2nd, Inventive originality; 3rd, Generalizing power; 4th, Subtlety; 5th, Critical severity and sense of fact; 6th, Systematic procedure; 7th, Energy, diligence, persistency, and exclusive devotion to philosophy. [523] But Kant had not the slightest suspicion of the inexhaustible intricacy of the fabric of conceptions, which is such that I do not flatter myself that I have ever analyzed a single idea into its constituent elements. [524] Hegel, in some respects the greatest philosopher that ever lived, had a somewhat juster notion of this complication, though an inadequate notion, too. For if he had seen what the state of the case was, he would not have attempted in one lifetime to cover the vast field that he attempted to clear. But Hegel was lamentably deficient in that 5th requisite of critical severity and sense of fact. He brought out the three elements much more clearly. But the element of Secondness, of hard fact, is not accorded its due place in his system; and in a lesser degree the same is true of Firstness. After Hegel wrote, there came fifty years that were remarkably fruitful in all the means for attaining that 5th requisite. Yet Hegel's followers, instead of going to work to reform their master's system, and to render his statement of it obsolete, as every true philosopher must desire that his disciples should do, only proposed, at best, some superficial changes without replacing at all the rotten material with which the system was built up. [525] I shall not inflict upon you any account of my own labors. Suffice it to say that my results have afforded me great aid in the study of logic. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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