Benjamin Udell wrote:
Jean-Marc, list
It is unfortunate that Peirce used the terms 'First', 'Second' and 'Third' in
the place of ordinals when he used the same vocabulary for the categories.
In the texts that you chose the terms do not refer to categories, they simply refer to 3 things presented in
a given order, as in the English language, when you say: "first I will make some coffee",
"secondly I will get some bread" and "thirdly I'll eat breakfast".
No. Wrong. Referring to "a First" and "a Second" and "a Third" is _not_ normal
English and certainly not normal written English. It distinctively coheres, rather glaringly to anybody
fluent in English, with the specific sense lent to that set of forms by Peirce. Peirce's manner of using
those ordinal words is so distinctly un-English that one sees whole discussions about Peirce which avoid
quoting him saying such things, because it sounds strange in English.
One cannot deduce from that that "making coffee" is firstness, "getting some bread" is
secondness and that "eating breakfast" in thirdness
If the sign was a First as you commented on CP 2-274 according to the
cenopythagorean category Firstness, how would you explain that the sign taken
in itself can be a quality (a First), an existent (a Second) or of the nature
of a law (a Third)?
It can be a First, a Second, etc., in various ways and respects. This is
elementary stuff in Peirce.
At this point, I honestly think that you are grasping at straws. I'm sorry, but
it's over.
Best, Ben Udell
Ben,
you know the song?
A B C
It's easy as, 1 2 3
As simple as, do re mi
maybe you should consider the following definition, where Peirce to
avoid any confusion with the categories uses the letters A, B, C.
1902 - NEM IV pp. 20 - 2. Parts of Carnegie Applications .
... Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its
interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of
correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself
stand to C// ...
(source is
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/rsources/76defs/76defs.htm)
why would A be firstness, B secondness and C thirdness?
/JM
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