Peircers, Here is a passage that I think is critical for understanding what Peirce meant by a category.
| I will now say a few words about what you have | called Categories, but for which I prefer the | designation Predicaments, and which you have | explained as predicates of predicates. | | That wonderful operation of hypostatic abstraction by which | we seem to create ''entia rationis'' that are, nevertheless, | sometimes real, furnishes us the means of turning predicates | from being signs that we think or think ''through'', into being | subjects thought of. We thus think of the thought-sign itself, | making it the object of another thought-sign. | | Thereupon, we can repeat the operation of hypostatic abstraction, | and from these second intentions derive third intentions. Does this | series proceed endlessly? I think not. What then are the characters | of its different members? | | My thoughts on this subject are not yet harvested. I will only say that | the subject concerns Logic, but that the divisions so obtained must not be | confounded with the different Modes of Being: Actuality, Possibility, Destiny | (or Freedom from Destiny). | | On the contrary, the succession of Predicates of Predicates is different | in the different Modes of Being. Meantime, it will be proper that in our | system of diagrammatization we should provide for the division, whenever | needed, of each of our three Universes of modes of reality into ''Realms'' | for the different Predicaments. | | C.S. Peirce, CP 4.549, “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism”, | The Monist 16, 492–546 (1906), CP 4.530–572. The way that Peirce explains his concept of a category in this passage is also helpful in building a bridge, or seeing the underlying continuities that exist, between the categories of Aristotle and Kant and the mathematical concept of a category that we find in play in more recent times. I began an exploration of this connection in a page of rough notes that I collected a while back. • http://mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey/Notes/Precursors Regards, Jon -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
