List,
Peirce has shown that the distinction of the Genuine and the Degenerate applies differently to the three kinds of elements: they differ in the grades of Degeneracy that can affect them. Now he introduces another distinction based on their necessary involvement in one another: Firstness is involved in both Secondness and Thirdness, Secondness is involved in Thirdness, but Thirdness is not involved in either of the others. This is blindingly obvious in the sense that you can’t count to Three unless you start with One and take a step to Two, and continue with another step. Experientially the involvement of Secondness in Thirdness is not so obvious, unless you regard the logical necessitation of a meaning as as a sort of actual compulsion. For example, the fact that a conclusion follows from a premiss in a necessary reasoning is the Secondness involved in its Thirdness. Firstness is involved in everything; everything, whether it has any meaning or not, has its quality. But what can you say about the meaningless, about “brute” fact, without meaning anything? Say it if you can. As a further challenge, Peirce gives us this example: “the tragedy of King Lear has its Firstness, its flavor sui generis.” How can we comprehend this “flavor,” this “quality,” this Firstness, which seems to have many names but is “perfectly simple and without parts”? We know that this tragedy has in fact many parts, some played by actors, others being “acts” further divided into “scenes.” We also know that a single performance of “King Lear” may have its own quality, for its one-time audience, which is different from the quality of other performances; how then can the tragedy of King Lear have a “simple” quality? For that matter, how can any phenomenon, regarded as a thing, be simple, when we know that our experience of it is psychologically assembled from countless elements? Bite into an apple and you know that at least five distinct senses, together with memories and anticipations of many similar experiences and associated ideas, are bundled together by your brain to construct this momentary experience. Yet the Firstness of the apple, or the bite, is perfectly simple. Clearly the simplicity of Firstness is much deeper, much more elementary, than the simplicity of any physiological occurrence or any experience regarded psychologically. No wonder it is difficult to comprehend. Gary f. From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca] Sent: 27-Dec-17 07:23 To: 'Peirce List' <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.9 Continuing from Lowell Lecture 3.8, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-low ell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13916: I will just mention that among Firstnesses there is no distinction of the Genuine and the Degenerate, while among Thirdnesses we find not only a Genuine but two distinct grades of Degeneracy. [CP 4.530] But now I wish to call your attention to a kind of distinction which affects Firstness more than it does Secondness, and Secondness more than it does Thirdness. This distinction arises from the circumstance that where you have a triplet ∴ you have 3 pairs; and where you have a pair, you have 2 units. Thus, Secondness is an essential part of Thirdness though not of Firstness, and Firstness is an Essential element of both Secondness and Thirdness. Hence there is such a thing as the Firstness of Secondness and such a thing as the Firstness of Thirdness; and there is such a thing as the Secondness of Thirdness. But there is no Secondness of Pure Firstness and no Thirdness of Pure Firstness or Secondness. When you strive to get the purest conceptions you can of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness,- thinking of Quality, Reaction, and Mediation,- what you are striving to apprehend is Pure Firstness, the Firstness of Secondness,- that is what Secondness is, of itself,- and the Firstness of Thirdness. When you contrast the blind compulsion in an Event of Reaction considered as something which happens and which of its nature can never happen again, since you cannot cross the same river twice, when, I say, you contrast this compulsion with the logical necessitation of a meaning considered as something that has no being at all except so far as it actually gets embodied in an event of thought, and you regard this logical necessitation as a sort of actual compulsion, since the meaning must actually be embodied, what you are thinking of is a Secondness involved in Thirdness. [531] A Firstness is exemplified in every quality of a total feeling. It is perfectly simple and without parts; and everything has its quality. Thus the tragedy of King Lear has its Firstness, its flavor sui generis. That wherein all such qualities agree is universal Firstness, the very being of Firstness. The word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation to what exists, while universal Firstness is the mode of being of itself. That is why a new word was required for it. Otherwise, “Possibility” would have answered the purpose. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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