List: As I mentioned recently in a post <https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2019-05/msg00225.html> about "Direct vs. Indirect Experience," R 641-642 (1909 Nov 3-28) include some interesting discussions of Modality. These are lengthy excerpts, so I will break them up by providing brief summaries of what I see as the key points, sometimes adding a few comments of my own.
CSP: Now the only sense that can be extracted from what Aristotle and other philosophers say of this distinction [between Substance and Accident] comes to this, that Substances have a Mode of Being analogous to the function of the Subject of a simple proposition, such as *Socrates is mortal*, so that it might continue to be identically one and the same, although its Accidents, which are analogous to the predicate of a proposition, be quite changed or perhaps even reversed. Thus, the identical substance, the Real man, Socrates, who was mortal, may perhaps now be an immortal spirit. As to the nature of the "analogy" between a Mode of Being and a Mode of Meaning, I shall consider that below. Accidents, on the other hand, have a Being analogous to the nature of an Affirmative Predicate of a simple categorical proposition, as "mortal" in *Socrates is mortal*. This, as the old books say, is "natum dici de pluribus" [naturally said of many]. (R 641:23-24) Modes of Being in Metaphysics are analogous to Modes of Meaning in Semeiotic, since "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). Specifically, the Mode of Being of a *substance *in Reality is analogous to the Mode of Meaning of a *subject *in a Proposition; and the Mode of Being of an *accident *in Reality is analogous to the Mode of Meaning of a *predicate *in a Proposition. These correspond respectively to Matter and Form in some of Peirce's earlier writings, such as EP 2:303-304 and NEM 4:292-300 (both 1904). CSP: It seems preferable, for a reason that will soon appear, to say that an ad[j]ective or common noun in the singular number (especially, if it carries the indefinite article) is in respect to what it stands for, is ' *Indefinite*.' Indefiniteness essentially involves a *May-be*; 'a man' is one man alone; but it *may be* this, it *may be* that, it *may be* each in turn. To May-be is very peculiar in that it implies to *May-not-be*. As to the predicates that can be truly predicated of that which an adjective or common noun in the singular *Denotes*, or stands for, that for a direct perception of which its utterance is intended to be a substitute, a few are predicable with a stronger "*Modality*" than that of the May-be. A Man, for instance, *Must be* born in full life of a Male and a Female man, and *Must* have a spinal column separating two bags, or compartments, of his body; and he positively *Is*, (without *Must-being* nor any involving of the negative of the predicate, such as characterizes mere *May-being*,) markedly hairy only in parts, and elsewhere but rudimentarily, and he Is capable of grammatical speech, Is a user of tools, or Is a member of a tribe that mostly possesses these powers. But the vast majority of the true predicates of an Indefinite subject are mere May-be predicates. (R 641:24-26[24 to 24-2/3]) Predicates, including both adjectives and common nouns, are usually Indefinite *May*-bes; but those that are *essential *to the definition of *another *predicate are *Must*-bes when applied to subjects to which that other predicate applies. CSP: It is, therefore, accurate to say that the Indefinite is not subject to the Principle of Contradiction. This statement will excite opposition among Nominalists; but every argument against it will only serve to show its accuracy. For I do not say that the Principle of Contradiction is *false* of Indefinites. It could not be so without applying to them, which is precisely what I deny of it. An argument against what I say, namely, that the Principle of Contradiction does not apply to 'A man,' because 'A man is tall' and "A man is not tall,' can only amount to saying that *that* man that is tall is not, while tall, not-tall. That is true; and that is what I mean by refusing to say that the Principle of Contradiction is *false* of 'A man,' but when it is said of that man that is tall, that he is not not-tall, this is said of the *existing* man, which is not Indefinite, but is, on the contrary, a certain man and no other. Aristotle's doctrine of Future Contingents is a perfectly correct Logical doctrine. As to Metaphysics it says nothing at all. All it says is that if it be not yet determined whether I shall tomorrow perform a certain act or not, all that can be said is that I 'can,'--understanding by 'can,' merely the future tense of 'may'; and if it be said or implied that the future is Indefinite in that respect, that is, that *no more* than a 'Can-be' is true of it, it is therein necessarily implied that I can refrain from that act; that is, that I can not-perform it (as contradistinguished from 'I *cannot* perform it,' which applies the negation, not to 'perform' but to 'can.') (R 641:26-27[24-2/3 to 24-3/4]) The Principle of Contradiction *does not apply* to Indefinite May-bes, because "a man is tall" and "a man is not tall" *might *both be true. However, it *does apply* when this is said of a *certain *man, one who *exists*, because then he is no longer Indefinite--"Wilt Chamberlain is tall" and "Wilt Chamberlain is not tall" *cannot *both be true. Future contingents are Indefinite May-bes, because "I can do X" and "I can not-do X" *might *both be true. After a digression about determinism ... CSP: To return to Logic, if to say that I can perform a given act and that I can non-perform it, be not a violation of the Principle of Contradiction, (and certainly, it would be quite gratuitously to render the Principle false, to enunciate it so that that should be a violation of it,) then, since this is the nearest approach to a contradiction that two propositions both in the May-be Mode can attain, (for to say that I *cannot* perform an act does not state a May-be but the Must-be of a negation,) it follows that the Principle of Contradiction does not apply to the Mode of May-be. Common nouns and adjectives have always been called *Generals* or *Universals* by Logicians, merely because they are "*apta nata praedicari de pluribus*" [naturally able to be predicated of many], without observing that the words "*apta nata*" [naturally able] explicitly classes them as Indefinites, or May-bes,--a terrible blunder. A true General is a *Whatever-should-be* or *Whensoever-should-there-be*, which will impart its Generality to the following *would-be* or *there-would-be*. Just as the Principle of Contradiction does not apply to that which is asserted as a May-be, so the Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to a Would-be. (R 641:28-29[24-4/5 to 24-5/6]) "General" or "universal" is a *misnomer *for a common noun or adjective, because it denotes an *Indefinite *May-be rather than a *General *Would-be. Just as the Principle of Contradiction does not apply to the former, the Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to the latter; more on that below. CSP: I have spoken of Modes of Being *analogous* to these Modes of Meaning, and You may ask,--Your Honor the Reader may [ask], before the bar of whose Reason I am making my plea,--in what that "analogy" of which I speak consists. I will tell you: but accurately to define a relation so abstract, or even to judge whether the Definition be correct or not, is no easy matter. For that reason, it will be best to begin by showing you that such analogies exist, as you are very likely well aware already; and if not, they will be overwhelming[ly] plain in instances. You will observe that, as was well remarked in the Middle Ages, when the doctrine of Modals occupied that prominent place in Logical treatises which it ought to occupy and still would occupy, if it had not been dropped from our modern text-books because it calls for an exertion of thought of a quality which for modern Logicians,--a company recruited from unsuccessful preachers and other men of like intellectual grasp,--might occasion some dangerous cerebral lesion;--as was always said in those days when men were in downright earnests about logic, the Modes of Meaning primarily modify, not the Predicates of Propositions, and still less their Subjects, but the Copula, the junction of the two, the Proposition in so far as it asserts. (R 641:29-31[24-5/6 to 24-7/8]) As I noted at the end of that recent post, the Mode of Meaning of a Proposition *as a whole* is not expressed by its subjects or predicate, but by its *copula*. In retrospect, I suppose that it should have been obvious that each Mode of *Being *is expressed by the mood of the verb *to be* in categorical Propositions; but Peirce tended to *downplay *the role of the copula in many of his other late writings--incorporating it into the predicate as a Rheme, translating it into a more explicit continuous predicate, or seemingly (but not actually) omitting it altogether from EGs. CSP: Now any compound Form of Speech or Thought like a Proposition is *analogous* to that which it asserts and which is composed of similar elements. In other words, a Proposition is analogous to a Fact. A Proposition is related to the Subject which it *tells about*, on the one hand, and to the Predicate which it tells of that Subject, just parallel-wise to the way in which the very Fact itself which it expresses is related to the Thing Named by the Subject, and to the quality, act, or relation which it Signifies; while its Copula does that asserting which is in like manner parallel to the living Being of the Fact. This is the prime analogy; and along with this, there is in each case an analogy in the Fact, to the May-being, the Actuality, or the Would-being of the Copula. The Subsistence of the Thing, the Existence of the abstract State of things, and the Actuality (past or future) of the Fact, are analogous and correspondent with the Isness of the Subject, the Predicate, and the Copula respectively. The *mobility* of a physical mass is analogous to the May-being of a Predicate. A geometrical Point, Line, or Surface is analogous to a May-be Subject. A dynamical Force is analogous to a Would-be's Subject, a Law of Nature is analogous to a Would-be's Copula or Proposition, and its precise immediate effect is the analogue of the Would-be Predicate. These analogies a[re] simply forced upon whoever will think. (R 641:31-33[24-7/8 to 24-9/10]) As Peirce wrote elsewhere, "What we call a 'fact' is something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself" (EP 2:304; 1904). The subjects of a Proposition denote its *Objects*, the *Matter *of the Fact; the predicate signifies its *Interpretant*, the *Form *of the Fact; and the copula asserts the Mode of Being of the Fact *itself *as an *Entelechy *uniting Matter and Form, which need not match the Modes of Being of those constituents. For example, we do not say that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle *may be* 180 degrees, we say that it *is *180 degrees, or even *must be* 180 degrees (in Euclidian geometry); and of course, we routinely attribute May-be and Would-be predicates to Actual subjects. This is another hint at why representing Modality in EGs turned out to be so difficult. Moving on to the alternate drafts in R 642 ... CSP: A Perceptual Judgment need not be uttered to myself in the Syntax of speech. I far prefer, for my own part, some Diagrammatic Syntax; but it Essentially discriminates one Predicate, simple or compound, and one or more Subjects, according as the Proposition is Categorical or Relative, and besides these a Copula, which in Propositions is either Problematic, Assertoric, or Apodictic. An ordinary Perceptual Judgment, however, is always Assertoric. (R 642:11[18]) I already quoted this in that recent post, and do so again here to highlight two specific points. First, a Problematic, Assertoric, or Apodictic copula corresponds to the Mode of Being of a May-be, an Is, or a Must-be, respectively. Second, the copula belongs to the *syntax *of a Proposition, and thus does not *always *appear as a conjugation of the verb *to be*. For example, as Peirce noted elsewhere (R 664:10-12; 1910 Nov 26-27), all three *words *in the sentence "Cain killed Abel" are *subjects* of the Proposition that it expresses; this means that both the predicate and the (Assertoric) copula are embodied *entirely *in its syntax. After some brief remarks about distinguishing Reality from Externality ... CSP: But before entering upon that comparison it will be useful to consider a little further the parts and the logical varieties of the necessary syntax of Propositions. In the first place, let us ask whether it be correct to say that there are three kinds of Modality, S is P, S may be P, S must be P. This differs but a little from saying, 1st, P is true of S *now*, 2nd, P is true of S under *some* circumstances, which I don't know, or don't say, are not those of the present occasion, and 3rd, P is true of S, under such conceivable circumstances as *you choose to specify*. The first variety, the proposition *de inesse*, differs more from the other two, the Modals, than these do from each other, since these agree in speaking of whether or not a supposition is admissible. It might therefore be argued that there are but two *genera*, the Assertoric stating what Actually is or is not, and the Modal, stating what is or is not supposable. But the answer to this is that while the denial of 'S is P' simply states another fact of Actuality, the proper denial of 'S might be P' which states a rational supposition is 'S cannot be P' and states a Law of Nature, corresponding to a human Habit, whether acquired or virtually Innate, a Fact of an entirely different kind from a freedom, or absence of Law. Indeed there are two kinds of Negation, the one, merely superficial that negates the Predicate, 'S *est non*-P,' a form of proposition which the Latin Logicians called 'infinite' or 'Infinitate,' and Negation proper, which affects the Copula, and as doing so, [is] liable to reverse the nature of the assertion, although because there always is some Actual state of things, to deny that 'S's being P' is Actualized amounts to saying that 'S's being not P' is actualized. On the other hand if to say S may be P, means that S's being P is *no more than* an admissible Supposition, then 'S may be P' and 'S may not be P' are equivalent. (R 642:12-14[19-21]) "S may be P" (Problematic) means "P is true of S under *some *circumstances," "S is P" (Assertoric) means "P is true of S under *current* circumstances," and "S must be P" (Apodictic) means "P is true of S under *any *circumstances." Problematic and Apodictic could be grouped together as Modal, except that the *negation *of a Proposition in either of these Modes "reverse[s] the nature of the assertion," converting it into a Proposition in the *other *Mode; and the negation of an actuality is *both *another actuality (here) *and *"a kind of possibility" (CP 4.577; 1906). The need to distinguish such negation of the *copula *from the mere negation of a *predicate *is another complication for attempting to represent Modality by the *surface *on which an EG is scribed. Again, that surface is what corresponds to the copula, whose default Modality on the Sheet of Assertion is indicated by the Tincture of its border, which Peirce called the March (CP 4.553-554; 1906); and negation corresponds to a Cut or (more iconically) shading with a different Tincture. CSP: But if we lay aside these factitious manipulations and attend to the Real Facts of the case, we find that in Logic it is needful to recognize three Modes of Assertion; 1st, the assertion of Law, as 'S shall be P' or 'S would be P,' to which the Principle of Excluded Middle may be said not to apply, meaning that 'S shall be or would be P' and 'S shall be or would be non-P' may both at once be false; 3rd, the assertion of Freedom, or else a Capacity, as 'S may be P' or 'S can be P,' to which the Principle of Contradiction may be said not to apply, meaning that 'S can be or may be P' and 'S can be or may be not-P' may both at once be true; and between these, 2nd, the assertion of Actual Fact, as 'S is P' to which both those Principles apply. Without stopping now to *prove* that the recognition of these three Modes is indispensible to any complete vindication of Reasoning, I pass on to remark that the Modes of Being respectively asserted in Propositions of those three Modalities must be recognized in any sound explanation of the Macrocosm or of the Microcosm. (R 642:14-15[21-22]) Peirce reversed his usual order here, presenting the Modality that corresponds to 3ns as 1st, and the Modality that corresponds to 1ns as 3rd. The Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to an "assertion of Law" (3ns), because "S would be P" and "S would be not-P" might both be *false*; and the Principle of Contradiction does not apply to an "assertion of Freedom, or else a Capacity" (1ns), because "S may be P" and "S may be not-P" might both be *true*; but both principles apply to an "assertion of Actual Fact" (2ns), because *either *"S is P" or "S is not-P" *must *be true, but *not *both. Finally, we need to recognize *all three* of these Modes of Meaning and their corresponding Modes of Being in order to engage in sound reasoning about Reality. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
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