Gary F, List,
The distinction between these two ways of thinking about the phenomenological categories (matter and form) is present, I think, in the passage quoted. 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. (CP 1.530). The material categories of quality, reaction and mediation are the familiar categories that we readily find in common experience. The question is: are these common conceptions really fundamental as universal categories or not? Peirce suggests that it is an open question as to whether or not these material categories correspond in some way with the formal tones of thought that have the character of what he calls firstness, secondness and thirdness. These tones of thought have the form of elemental monadic, dyadic and triadic relations. That, at least, is how I read the writings between, say, 1896-1903 when he is developing the phenomenological account of the categories in a more refined manner--as a separate kind of philosophical theory. On my reading of the relevant texts, all of the observations, conceptions and valid forms of inference that any cognitive agent might employ to learn something about the world involve compositions of these three formal relations--no more and no less. If this claim is on the right track, then we can formulate a third question: 3. Does inquiry in philosophical logic show that self-controlled reasoning of any kind involves observations of these three formal features (and compositions involving them) in the signs we employ--and nothing more? I think a positive answer to this question is, at the least, a plausible hypothesis. As such, we have sufficient reason to treat examples of good and bad reasoning as data for our logical inquiries, and to focus our analyses on these formal features in the observations that we've gathered as we sort through the data and try to correct the observational errors that might be part and parcel of our data set for our developing theory of logic. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: g...@gnusystems.ca <g...@gnusystems.ca> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 1:52 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] How should semeiotic be classified among the sciences? Jeff, I’m puzzled by the fact that the two questions you pose are both about “the formal and material categories,” when by his own account (CP 1.284 for instance), all of Peirce’s phenomenological or phaneroscopic analyses deal with the formal categories (or “formal elements of the phaneron”) and not with the material. Thus your quotation from the Lowell Lectures I take to be entirely about the formal “categories” or “elements.” Perhaps I’m not understanding what you mean by “material categories” or why you see a need to mention both. Can you explain? Does the formal/material distinction have anything to do with how the categories are connected with the modal conceptions? By the way, we need a new subject line for this … Gary f. From: Jeffrey Brian Downard <jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> Sent: 11-Sep-18 12:00 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] How should semeiotic be classified among the sciences? Jon S, Gary R, John S, Gary F, List, A question has been raised about the connection between the phenomenological categories of first, second and third, and the modal conceptions of what is possible, existent and (contingently) necessary. Here is one place where Peirce provides a relatively clear explanation of the relation between these tones of thought--considered as formal elements and as material categories--as they are studied in phenomenology and these three modal conceptions. 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 three pairs; and where you have a pair, you have two 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. (CP 1.530). 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. (CP 1.531) 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. (CP 1.532) I think the following questions about the phenomenological categories are worth considering. 1. If Peirce's grand hypothesis concerning the character of the formal and material categories is plausible then, philosophically speaking, what follows as a consequence? 2. If the phenomenological analysis of the formal and material categories is on track, then how can we use these insights as a guide for philosophical inquiry? Here is a start on question (1). While it might seem something of a leap, I think the phenomenological theory provides the seeds of the arguments needed to show that analytic philosophers such as Quine and Goodman, and continental philosophers such as Derrida and Foucault, are mistaken. That is, these 20th century philosophers are mistaken in claiming that human experience is "radically subjective" in character and, as a result, that there are strong reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of any of us ever really understanding the reference and meaning of one another's expressions. Here is a start on question (2). The phenomenological account of the categories of experience and the methods that are employed in this kind of study provide us with the tools needed to more carefully the phenomena that are observed in any area of inquiry--including philosophical inquiry. Philosophy, in particular, requires more care and greater exactitude because the observations are drawn from common experience. As a result of the familiarity, we are highly prone to making various sorts of observational errors. Such errors, if not corrected, will tend to have a large impact on the hypotheses we form and the inductions we carry out to test the explanations. The history of philosophical inquiry tends to confirm the suspicion that we are, indeed, subject to such errors, both on the side of analyzing the observations that call out for explanation, and in drawing inferences about what follows from the data we've gathered. Yours, Jeff ________________________________ From: Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com<mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 6:25 AM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] How should semeiotic be classified among the sciences? Gary R., List: Could you please provide citations where Peirce associated possibility (1ns), existence (2ns), and conditional necessity (3ns) with phenomenology, rather than metaphysics? I understand those to be modes of Being, rather than irreducible elements of experience; I think of the latter as quality (1ns), reaction (2ns), and mediation (3ns). Thanks, Jon S.
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