Jason, list,
That's a good question. In the relevant paragraph (CP 7.536, of which I quoted
only the last part), Peirce begins by saying: "It remains to be shown that this
element is the third Kainopythagorean category. All flow of time involves
learning; and all learning involves the flow of time." The element that he was
discussing was a "continuity" which he had just called a "direct experience"
(CP 7.535). (This is also another 'score' for Gary Richmond in his April 8,
2011 post http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/6995 to
peirce-l, in which he said "It seems to me that for Peirce being present means
being present to the flow, which flow implies all three modalities: past,
present, and future....")
I'm kind of reluctant to go out on a limb right now, having misinterpreted
Peirce's Oct. 12, 1904 letter to Lady Welby and spent a number of posts
cleaning up after myself. My guess is that, in virtue of their triadic parts in
the flow of learning, inference, and representation and interpretation, all
three times are Thirds, with Secondness, Firstness, and Thirdness strong but
not overwhelmingly so in past, present, and future, respectively. In other
words, learning-past as Secundan Third, learning-present as Priman Third, and
learning-future as Tertian Third. But I have no strong opinion at this point!
Best, Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: Khadimir
To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] a question
Would it not be fair to say that the conscious experience of the immediate
present must always be at least a second? That is the view I hold.
Jason H.
On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Claudio, 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
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