Re: [peirce-l] a questionClaudio, Eduardo, Diane, list,
Let's note that, especially for Diane, that Jon has pointed us to passage where
Peirce DOES associate the present with Firstness, in "The Reality of Thirdness"
from the 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. I missed it because I narrowed my
search too much. Peirce: "The immediate present, could we seize it, would have
no character but its Firstness." Peirce also in that passage (CP 1.343-349)
associates Secondness with the past and Thirdness with the future.
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/03/16/c-s-peirce-%E2%80%A2-the-reality-of-thirdness/.
It looks like I misinterpreted the quote (from Peirce's letter to Lady Welby)
that I sent a day or two ago, unless Peirce changed his mind. Somehow I
remember reading somebody's claim (I think in a discussion about the light
cone) of an association by Peirce of Secondness with both present and past, but
it's too long ago, I forget. So now we can say:
Firstness Possibility, the may-be. The vague Quality. Present.
Secondness Actuality. The determinate/singular Fact Past.
Thirdness (Conditional) necessity/destiny, the would-be. The general.
Law. Future.
Yes, I was a little surprised by Claudio's "logical time" comment too.
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
Maybe Peirce did so in logic, but I'd have thought that he did otherwise in
metaphysics. The quote that I offered from Peirce's letter to Lady Welby does
not seem a synchronic analysis of time without real duration.
I agree with you, Claudio, that your "design - construction - habitability"
trichotomy seems to work with better with the trichotomy of possibility/quality
- actuality/reaction - necessity/habit than with the trichotomy of present -
past - future. Well, Peirce seems not to have focused on the trichotomy of
present - past - future too often.
Best, Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: Eduardo Forastieri
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question
Claudio, Ben, List:
It is rewarding that Ben's table is approximate to what you, Steve, Jon and
myself have been suggesting on its perimeter.
I would appreciate if you could elaborate more on why and how Peirce narrows
his conception of time to a synchronistic triadic analysis (granted, however,
that a trichotomy is an extensive abstraction of time and space relations).
Is Secondness -viewed as a tenseless "logical time" and as independent of
constative or performative indexicality- consistent with Peirce's approach to
synechism, fallibilism or the pragmatic maxim?
Aren't they related, both in actuality and real possibility?
If semiosis is regardless of time but still bound by trychotomic implicatures,
then it would defeat itself as undecidable and incomplete.
I have nor Peirce text at hand, yet I find it difficult to conceive Peircean
time as abstract iconic diagrams of Firstness represented in abstract Thirdness
symbolisms, unless they were to be bound somehow by indexicality in a
trichotomy's implicature.
Best,
Eduardo Forastieri-Braschi
On 3/16/12 3:48 PM, "Benjamin Udell" wrote:
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
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