List,
The following text from a few years later may throw some light on Peirce’s remarks about “other categories” and how they differ from the “Universal Categories,” which he also called “formal elements of the phaneron”: [[ There can be no psychological difficulty in determining whether anything belongs to the phaneron or not; for whatever seems to be before the mind ipso facto is so, in my sense of the phrase. I invite you to consider, not everything in the phaneron, but only its indecomposable elements, that is, those that are logically indecomposable, or indecomposable to direct inspection. I wish to make out a classification, or division, of these indecomposable elements; that is, I want to sort them into their different kinds according to their real characters. I have some acquaintance with two different such classifications, both quite true; and there may be others. Of these two I know of, one is a division according to the form or structure of the elements, the other according to their matter. The two most passionately laborious years of my life were exclusively devoted to trying to ascertain something for certain about the latter; but I abandoned the attempt as beyond my powers, or, at any rate, unsuited to my genius. I had not neglected to examine what others had done but could not persuade myself that they had been more successful than I. Fortunately, however, all taxonomists of every department have found classifications according to structure to be the most important. ]] — CP 1.288, from “πλ” (MS 295), identified in the Robin catalogue as part of a draft of the 1906 “Prolegomena.” Later in that same MS Peirce compares the “structure of the elements” to the “valencies” which determine the columns in Mendeléeff's table of the chemical elements. Here in the Lowell Lectures, though, Peirce emphasizes that when we think of Secondness we naturally think of “two reacting objects, and along with these, as subjects, their Reaction,” — but “these are not constituents out of which the Secondness is built up”; rather each of them involves Secondness. That is why Secondness (and Thirdness), though “conceptions of complexity,” are indecomposable elements. Gary f. From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca] Sent: 20-Dec-17 11:21 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.7 Continuing from Lowell Lecture 3.6, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-lowell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13902 [CP 1.525] 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. I will, however, make a few remarks on these categories. By way of preface, I must explain that in saying that the three, Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, complete the list, I by no means deny that there are other categories. On the contrary, at every step of every analysis, conceptions are met with which presumably do not belong to this series of ideas. Nor did an investigation of them occupying me for two years reveal any analysis of them into these as their constituents. I shall say nothing further about them, except incidentally. [526] As to the three Universal Categories, as I call them, perhaps with no very good reason for thinking that they are more universal than the others, we first notice that Secondness and Thirdness are conceptions of complexity. That is not, however, to say that they are complex conceptions. When we think of Secondness, we naturally think of two reacting objects, a first and a second. And along with these, as subjects, there is their Reaction. But these are not constituents out of which the Secondness is built up. The truth is just reverse, that the being a First or a Second or the being a Reaction each involves Secondness. An Object cannot be a Second of itself. If it is a Second, it has an element of being what another makes it to be. That is, the being a Second involves Secondness. The Reaction still more manifestly involves the being what an other makes a subject to be. Thus, while Secondness is a fact of complexity, it is not a compound of two facts. It is a single fact about two objects. Similar remarks apply to Thirdness. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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