List,
Peirce's attempt to render the 'Firstness of Secondness' (i.e. pure Secondness) comprehensible deals mostly with the difficulty of prescinding it from the experience of willing, separating it from the Thirdness involved in that experience. I think Peirce may be overstating the case when he says that "he who wills is conscious of doing so, in the sense of representing to himself that he does so": when a cat is hunting a mouse, for instance, I would attribute to the cat a will or even intention to catch the mouse, but doubt that the cat is representing to himself that he does so. But perhaps that's a psychological point of view which would not apply to a strictly logical view of the experience, since logic is a matter of self-control, which indeed must imply some kind of self-representation. Somewhat more difficult to follow is Peirce's attempt to contrast actuality (as Secondness) with quality (as Firstness). His remarks on Hegel's "neglect of Secondness" seem paradoxical, based as they are on the premiss that "the word "existence" names, as if it were an abstract possibility, that which is precisely the not having any being in abstract possibility." However, I think this does follow from Peirce's earlier statement (CP 1.527) that matter "has no being at all except the being a subject of qualities. This relation of really having qualities constitutes its existence." Certainly it's difficult to draw the line here between logic and metaphysics. Anyway, this whole paragraph demonstrates how hard it is to make "brute" Secondness intelligible. Maybe that's why Zen masters used to get it across to their students by shouting at them or whacking them with a stick. Gary f. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 30-Dec-17 10:35 To: 'Peirce List' <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.10 Continuing from Lowell Lecture 3.9, https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts/ms-464-465-1903-low ell-lecture-iii-3rd-draught/display/13922 (cf CP 1.532): As to Secondness, I have said that our only direct knowledge of it is in Willing and in the experience of a Perception. It is in Willing that the Secondness comes out most strongly. But it is not pure Secondness. For, in the first place, he who wills has a Purpose; and that idea of purpose makes the act appear as a Means to an end. Now the word Means is almost an exact synonym to the word third. It certainly involves Thirdness. Moreover, he who wills is conscious of doing so, in the sense of representing to himself that he does so. But representation is precisely genuine Thirdness. You must conceive an instantaneous Consciousness that is instantly and totally forgotten and an effort without purpose. It is a hopeless undertaking to try to realize what consciousness would be without the element of representation. It would be like unexpectedly hearing a great explosion of nitroglycerine before one had recovered oneself and merely had the sense of the breaking off of the quiet. Perhaps it might not be far from what ordinary common sense conceives to take place when one billiard ball caroms on another. One ball "acts" on the other; that is, it makes an exertion minus the element of representation. We may say with some approach to accuracy that the general Firstness of all true Secondness is Existence, though this term more particularly applies to Secondness in so far as it is an element of the reacting First and Second. If we mean Secondness as it is an element of the occurrence, the Firstness of it is Actuality. But actuality and existence are words expressing the same idea in different applications. Secondness, strictly speaking, is just when and where it takes place, and has no other being; and therefore different Secondnesses, strictly speaking, have in themselves no quality in common. Accordingly existence, or the universal Firstness of all Secondness, is really not a quality at all. An actual dollar to your credit in the bank does not differ in any respect from a possible imaginary dollar. For if it did, the imaginary dollar could be imagined to be changed in that respect, so as to agree with the actual dollar. We thus see that actuality is not a quality, or mere mode of feeling. Hence Hegel, whose neglect of Secondness was due chiefly [to] his not recognizing any other mode of being than Existence,- and what he calls Existenz is a special variety of it merely,- regarded Pure Being as pretty much the same as Nothing. It is true that the word "existence" names, as if it were an abstract possibility, that which is precisely the not having any being in abstract possibility; and this circumstance, when you look upon existence as the only being, seems to make existence all but the same as nothing. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903
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