Re: [peirce-l] a questionClaudio, Eduardo, Diane, Gary R., list, I've found more of Peirce on the present-past-future trichotomy. This time, from Chapter 1 of the _Minute Logic_ (1902) manuscript, in CP 2.84 (on the past as Second), 2.85 (on the present as First), and 2.86 (on the future as Third). From CP 2.85:
Let us now consider what could appear as being in the present instant were it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is more occult than the absolute present. There plainly could be no action; and without the possibility of action, to talk of binarity would be to utter words without meaning. There might be a sort of consciousness, or feeling, with no self; and this feeling might have its tone. Notwithstanding what William James has said, I do not think there could be any continuity like space, which, though it may perhaps appear in an instant in an educated mind, I cannot think could do so if it had no time at all; and without continuity parts of the feeling could not be synthetized; and therefore there would be no recognizable parts. There could not even be a degree of vividness of the feeling; for this [the degree of vividness] is the comparative amount of disturbance of general consciousness by a feeling. At any rate, such shall be our hypothesis, and whether it is psychologically true or not is of no consequence. The world would be reduced to a quality of unanalyzed feeling. Here would be an utter absence of binarity. I cannot call it unity; for even unity supposes plurality. I may call its form Firstness, Orience, or Originality. It would be something _which is what it is without reference to anything else_ within it or without it, regardless of all force and of all reason. Now the world is full of this element of irresponsible, free, Originality. Why should the middle part of the spectrum look green rather than violet? There is no conceivable reason for it nor compulsion in it. [...] Note that there he discusses "what could appear as being in the present instant were it utterly cut off from past and future. We can only guess; for nothing is more occult than the absolute present." Elsewhere, at the end of CP 7.536 in an undated manuscript, he says "The consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves them both.": Thus, every reasoning involves another reasoning, which in its turn involves another, and so on _ad infinitum_. Every reasoning connects something that has just been learned with knowledge already acquired so that we thereby learn what has been unknown. It is thus that the present is so welded to what is just past as to render what is just coming about inevitable. The consciousness of the present, as the boundary between past and future, involves them both. Reasoning is a new experience which involves something old and something hitherto unknown. The past as above remarked is the _ego_. My recent past is my uppermost _ego_; my distant past is my more generalized _ego_. The past of the community is _our ego_. In attributing a flow of time to unknown events we impute a quasi-_ego_ to the universe. The present is the immediate representation we are just learning that brings the future, or non-ego, to be assimilated into the _ego_. It is thus seen that learning, or representation, is the third Kainopythagorean category. So that _consciousness of_ the present seems to match that which Gary Richmond said at peirce-l on April 8, 2011 about the present "moment" as distinguished from the present "instant," the present moment as a "triadic moment" http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/6995 I also find that, in Peirce's letter of Oct. 12, 1904 to Lady Welby, if I had looked at what he had written in the same (long) paragraph (CP 8.330) before the excerpt that I sent, I would have seen Peirce discusses Firstness of the quiet and Firstness of a shrill piercing whistle, and does so in a way that supports the idea of the present as a First. For it is the breaking of the quiet by the shrill whistle that he says involves Secondness, and that is the breaking of one moment by another, though each moment, taken apart, simply has its quality, its Firstness. Bet, Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: Benjamin Udell To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 7:10 PM Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question Claudio, 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
