Jon S., List,
You say: Perhaps I need to reconsider my association of "modes of being" with metaphysics I'd recommend looking at what Peirce says about the role of our implicit metaphysical principles in shaping the way we see the world. One role of a theory of metaphysics is to help us re-examine our common sense and scientific commitments and assumptions--especially where those metaphysical conceptions are blinding us to what stares us in the face. As such, both phenomenology and metaphysics play important if somewhat different roles in helping us re-examine the observations that serve as data for philosophical theorizing. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 6:14:59 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Categories and Modes of Being (was How should semeiotic be classified among the sciences?) List: My thanks to both Jeff and Gary R. for the helpful quotes and accompanying commentary. Here are a couple more that I found myself. CSP: My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way. They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future. (CP 1.23; 1903) CSP: Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else. Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third. Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other. I call these three ideas the cenopythagorean categories. (CP 8.328; 1904) Perhaps I need to reconsider my association of "modes of being" with metaphysics. However, if instead they belong to phenomenology--since Peirce said that we can directly observe them in the elements of the Phaneron, and explicitly referred to each of the Categories as a "mode of being"--then what is the difference between them and "modes of presentation"? I tend to think of the former as how phenomena Really are (metaphysics) and the latter as how they seem to be (phenomenology). After all, Peirce wrote earlier that the modes of being are logical elements that reappear in metaphysics. CSP: Just as the logical verb with its signification reappears in metaphysics as a quality, an ens having a nature as its mode of being, and as a logical individual subject reappears in metaphysics as a thing, an ens having existence as its mode of being, so the logical reason, or premiss, reappears in metaphysics as a reason, an ens having a reality, consisting in a ruling both of the outward and of the inward world, as its mode of being. The being of the quality lies wholly in itself, the being of the thing lies in opposition to other things, the being of the reason lies in its bringing qualities and things together. (CP 1.515; c. 1896) He also wrote later that the three different forms of thought--corresponding to Icons, Indices, and Symbols--are best explained by positing three different "modes of metaphysical being." CSP: You will observe that each kind of sign serves to bring before the mind objects of a different kind from those revealed by the other species of signs. The key to the solution of this question is that what we think of cannot possibly be of a different nature from thought itself. For the thought thinking and the immediate thought-object are the very same thing regarded from different points of view ... We must conclude, then, that the reason why different things have to be differently thought of is that their modes of metaphysical being are different. (CP 6.339; 1908) Incidentally, if "the immediate thought-object" here is the Immediate Object as defined in Speculative Grammar, then this would seem to be another passage where Peirce maintained that every Sign--or at least, every thought--has one. My thinking of a Rheme on the one hand, and the Immediate Object of that Rheme on the other, "are the very same thing regarded from different points of view." Anyway, I wonder if Peirce provided the resolution of all this in the following passage. CSP: What is reality? Perhaps there isn't any such thing at all. As I have repeatedly insisted, it is but a retroduction, a working hypothesis which we try, our one desperate forlorn hope of knowing anything ... But if there is any reality, then, so far as there is any reality, what that reality consists in is this: that there is in the being of things something which corresponds to the process of reasoning, that the world lives, and moves, and HAS ITS BEING, in [a] logic of events. We all think of nature as syllogizing ... I will submit for your consideration the following metaphysical principle which is of the nature of a retroduction: Whatever unanalyzable element sui generis seems to be in nature, although it be not really where it seems to be, yet must really be in nature somewhere, since nothing else could have produced even the false appearance of such an element sui generis ... the very semblance of my feeling a reaction against my will and against my senses, suffices to prove that there really is ... somewhere, a reaction between the inward and outward worlds of my life. In the same way, the very fact that there seems to be Thirdness in the world, even though it be not where it seems to be, proves that real Thirdness there must somewhere be. If the continuity of our inward and outward sense be not real, still it proves that continuity there really be, for how else should sense have the power of creating it? (RLT:161-162; 1898, emphases in original) Reality, as the subject matter of metaphysics, is a working hypothesis grounded in phenomenology, whose subject matter consists of the unanalyzable elements that seem to be in nature, each of which must correspond to a Real mode of being. It is precisely because logic as semeiotic is likewise grounded in phenomenology--verbs and Icons in 1ns, subjects and Indices in 2ns, reasons and Symbols in 3ns--that "Metaphysics consists in the results of the absolute acceptance of logical principles not merely as regulatively valid, but as truths of being" (CP 1.487; c. 1896). Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 2:24 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Jon, list, Jon wrote: JAS: 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) I'll have to split my response up a bit because of time constraints, and so will offer for now only places where Peirce associates 1ns with possibility (I'll take up the other categories in later posts). I agree that Peirce most frequently associates 1ns with quality, but there are other words he uses to distinguish that category from 2ns and 3ns. Here are examples of his associating 1ns with possibility. 1903 | Lowell Lectures on Some Topics of Logic Bearing on Questions Now Vexed. Lecture III [R] | CP 1.25 Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject’s being positively such as it is regardless of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others. The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility. And redness in itself, even if it be embodied, is something positive and sui generis. That I call Firstness. We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or may not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities [except] so far as they are actualized. You can see here as well the germ of his also characterizing the categories (first, in a late letter to William James as I recall) as may-be's, is's, and would-bes. So, commenting on (in the quotation above) only of 1ns: "We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or may not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities [except] so far as they are actualized. Perhaps I might better have characterized the first category as that of may-be's (btw, Peirce also writes of can-be's and might-be's). In the quotation below, 1ns is characterized here as being "an abstract possibility" (there is also a passage where he speaks of its "indeterminacy." We know 1ns, however, only "immediately," that is, in present experience. 1905-06-01 | The Logic Notebook | MS [R] 339:242r Firstness is the Mode of Being of that which is such as it is positively and regardless of anything else. It is thus an abstract possibility, It can therefore only be known to us immediately. This final quotation gives possibility as one of several ideas in which 1ns is "prominent." 1904 | A Brief Intellectual Autobiography by Charles Sanders Peirce | Peirce, 1983, p. 72; MS [R] L107:22 Firstness is the mode or element of being by which any subject is such as it is, positively and regardless of everything else; or rather, the category is not bound down to this particular conception but is the element which is characteristic and peculiar in this definition and is a prominent ingredient in the ideas of quality, qualitativeness, absoluteness, originality, variety, chance, possibility, form, essence, feeling, etc. The point of Peirce associating 1ns with possibility is, I think, that while we may come to know it most characteristically as "quality," before it is so known it is a mere qualitative possibility. JAS: I think of the [irreducible elements of experience] as quality (1ns), reaction (2ns), and mediation (3ns) I mainly do myself. But I also believe that there are reasons to expand our categorial associations to include, not only possibility, but to see 1ns as "a prominent ingredient in the ideas of quality, qualitativeness, absoluteness, originality, variety, chance, possibility, form, essence, feeling, etc." In short, to limit 1ns to "quality" seems to me all too restrictive in a way, perhaps, tending to limit the power of phenomenological thinking about it. In my view, to associate it only, or even mainly, with 'quality' might tend to persuade one to gloss over phenomenological 1ns and, so, to plunge willy-nilly into logic as semeiotic with an insufficient sense of how this category finds a place in that science. Still, even more abstract than 'quality' or 'possibility', at its most abstract, it is but a Pythagorean number, 1ns, which "characterization" Peirce would seem to have come to prefer. Yet I think that that move actually allows all the associations listed above (and more) to co-mingle in our thinking, perhaps especially our semeiotic thinking. Best, Gary Gary Richmond Philosophy and Critical Thinking Communication Studies LaGuardia College of the City University of New York 718 482-5690
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