Forwarded from Claudio Guerri, who clearly meant to send this to the list. To respond (to a peirce-l post) with a post TO peirce-l, click on "Reply All," not on "Reply." - Best, Ben
----- Original Message ----- Ben, Diane, List, Time is for Peirce a 'logical time', so there is no real duration... Past, Present and Future are just logical considered in a synchronic triadic analysis There is an other difficult (and very serious) aspect in Firstness... Ben (and lots of other scholars) gives a perfect explanation from a philosophical point of view, if we consider ONLY Peirce's writings in it self, for the purpose of a logic/semiotic reasoning, for an abstract sign. But what happens if we consider a 'real sign' like a jar of mayonnaise if we have to make a market research or something more complex as the sign Architecture: Firstness Design the vague quality Secondness Construction the determinate/singular fact Thirdness Habitability the general law (thanks Ben for the nice table) Is Design really something 'vague'? Yes, it is 'really vague' in respect of the sign-Architecture, since it is only the possibility, but is is a very complex and consistent aspect in itself... it is a Theoretical Practice (Althusser) in respect to Architecture and its content consist in 3 years (in the US) or 6 years studies (in Argentina) in all Schools or Faculties of Architecture... though, I would propose to consider 'possibility' as a very much better option to explain Firstness... Best Claudio Benjamin Udell said the following on 14/03/2012 04:55 p.m.: Diane, list Peirce generally associated the categories with modalities more readily than with times: Firstness possibility, the may-be the vague quality. Secondness actuality the determinate/singular fact Thirdness (conditional) necessity/destiny, the would-be the general law Look up "Firstness" etc. at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, whichs consists of his own definitions. http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/dictionary.html Peirce regarded Secondness as action and reaction. In a letter dated Oct. 4, 1904, to Lady Welby (Collected Papers v. 8 paragraph 330), he discusses secondness, thirdness, and times. Generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon another, -- brute action. I say brute, because so far as the idea of any law or reason comes in, Thirdness comes in. When a stone falls to the ground, the law of gravitation does not act to make it fall. The law of gravitation is the judge upon the bench who may pronounce the law till doomsday, but unless the strong arm of the law, the brutal sheriff, gives effect to the law, it amounts to nothing. True, the judge can create a sheriff if need be; but he must have one. The stone's actually falling is purely the affair of the stone and the earth at the time. This is a case of reaction. So is existence which is the mode of being of that which reacts with other things. But there is also action without reaction. _Such is the action of the previous upon the subsequent._ It is a difficult question whether the idea of this one-sided determination is a pure idea of secondness or whether it involves thirdness. At present, the former view seems to me correct. [....] Insofar as action-and-reaction is a thing of the present, Peirce seems to regard the present as well as the past as a Second. Then Peirce talks about Kant's ideas and how maybe temporal causation is an action upon ideas, not upon existents. Then Peirce says: [....] But since our idea of the past is precisely the idea of that which is absolutely determinate, fixed, fait accompli, and dead, as against the future which is living, plastic, and determinable, it appears to me that the idea of one-sided action, in so far as it concerns the being of the determinate, is a pure idea of Secondness; and I think that great errors of metaphysics are due to looking at the future as something that will have been past. I cannot admit that the idea of the future can be so translated into the Secundal ideas of the past. To say that a given kind of event never will happen is to deny that there is any date at which its happening will be past; but it is not equivalent to any affirmation about a past relative to any assignable date. When we pass from the idea of an event to saying that it never will happen, or will happen in endless repetition, or introduce in any way the idea of endless repetition, I will say the idea is _mellonized_ ({mellön}}, about to be, do, or suffer). When I conceive a fact as acting but not capable of being acted upon, I will say that it is _parelelythose_ ({parelélythös}, past) and the mode of being which consists in such action I will call _parelelythosine_ (-ine = {einai}, being); I regard the former as an idea of Thirdness, the latter as an idea of Secondness. Peirce sometimes spoke of the present as a single instant of zero duration; could that kind of present be a first? In its extreme singularity, it would be a Second in Peirce's terms. We've talked in the past at peirce-l about how the "bare present," as a tiny, indeterminate, phenomenological moment, might be a First. Best, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: Diane Stephens To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:56 AM Subject: [peirce-l] a question In the book Semiotics I by Donald Thomas, he includes a chart which shows concepts associated with firsts, seconds and thirds. For example, a first is quality, a second is fact and a third is law. I understand all but second as past as in: First - present Second - past Third - future I would appreciate some help. Thanks. -- Diane Stephens Swearingen Chair of Education Wardlaw 255 College of Education University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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