[PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8917] Re: Peirce's categories

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hi Gary F., Kobus, Lists,

For my part, I don't think the point Peirce is making in this sentence itself 
is all that simple:  "Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as 
it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other." (CP 8.328)

There are a number of ways of trying to diagram such a relation.  Does one of 
the possible ways capture something that Peirce is trying to say is really 
basic?  Pick any of the ways that this combination of a second and a third 
might be diagrammed and see if it is adequate for articulating what Peirce is 
doing in the richer discussions of the ways theses relations are brought 
together, such as in the essay on "The Logic of Mathematics, an attempt to 
develop my categories from within" or in the two essays on the nomenclature and 
division of dyadic and triadic relations.  These essays raise hard questions 
about what Peirce is saying about the ways that dyads and triads can be 
combined.  Or, I find it hard to tease it all out.  If there is some simple way 
to explain what he is doing in these essays, I'm all ears.

--Jeff

Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: g...@gnusystems.ca [g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 6:23 AM
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
Subject: [biosemiotics:8917] Re: Peirce's categories

I have to confess that I don't see the problem here, or the need for an 
elaborate explanation. Peirce's sentence seems to me perfectly clear in its 
context (CP 8.328):



[[ The ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are simple enough. Giving 
to being the broadest possible sense, to include ideas as well as things, and 
ideas that we fancy we have just as much as ideas we do have, I should define 
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness thus:

Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and 
without reference to anything else.

Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to 
a second but regardless of any third.

Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a 
second and third into relation to each other.

I call these three ideas the cenopythagorean categories. ]]



Each of these "ideas" is the mode of being of a thing or idea ("that which 
is"). I think Edwina also confuses the issue by saying that Thirdness is a 
"mode of organization of matter". Peirce never says that about any of his 
"categories."



Gary f.



} Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can 
be counted. [William Bruce Cameron] {

http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway



-Original Message-
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu]
Sent: 28-Oct-15 08:02
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L 
Subject: [biosemiotics:8914] RE: Peirce's categories



Hello Kobus,



I happen to think that is a very good question, and one that is not adequately 
explained in the secondary literature.  Having spent some time digging through 
Peirce's works for clearer answers, I think the answers can be found in the 
texts--but I sure wish Peirce had made things clearer himself.  One thing we 
need, I think, is a clear explanation of how the key ideas that are being 
worked out in the phenomenological account of the formal categories are being 
developed and refined in a diagrammatical manner in the graphical systems of 
logic.  That isn't much of a response, but I look forward to seeing what others 
have to say.



If you are interested in seeing a bit more of an answer, I have a short paper 
that was presented at the Congress last summer and would be happy to share it 
with you. Bill McCurdy has also worked on this problem, and he has come to 
similar kinds of conclusions about how we should picture the connections that 
are being formed between un-bonded monadic, dyadic and triadic relations.



--Jeff



Jeff Downard

Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy

NAU

(o) 523-8354



From: Kobus Marais [jmar...@ufs.ac.za]

Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 2:15 AM

To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee

Subject: [biosemiotics:8913] Peirce's categories



Dear List

I hope that you will have patience with what may be a very ignorant question. 
In CP8.328, Perice defines thirdness as follows:

Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a 
second and third into relation to each other.



Now, I would have thought that thirdness brings a first and a second into 
relation to each other. Why would Peirce say that thirdness brings a second and 
a third into relation to each other? In which sense could thirdness bring a 
second into relation with itself? Or what am I missing here?



Thanks.

K



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[PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8917] Re: Peirce's categories

[Sungchul Ji]

HI,

Peirce said: "Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it
is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other."


Why did Peirce say "a second and third into relation" instead of saying "a
first and second into relation" ?

Wouldn't it have been clearer if Peirce said

"Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing
two entities into relation to each other" ?


All the best.


Sung



On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 9:23 AM,  wrote:

> I have to confess that I don't see the problem here, or the need for an
> elaborate explanation. Peirce's sentence seems to me perfectly clear in its
> context (CP 8.328):
>
>
>
> [[ The ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are simple enough.
> Giving to being the broadest possible sense, to include ideas as well as
> things, and ideas that we fancy we have just as much as ideas we do have, I
> should define Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness thus:
>
> Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively
> and without reference to anything else.
>
> Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, with
> respect to a second but regardless of any third.
>
> Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing
> a second and third into relation to each other.
>
> I call these three ideas the cenopythagorean categories. ]]
>
>
>
> Each of these "ideas" is the *mode of being* of a thing or idea ("that
> which is"). I think Edwina also confuses the issue by saying that Thirdness
> is a "mode of organization of matter". Peirce never says that about any of
> his "categories."
>
>
>
> Gary f.
>
>
>
> } Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that
> counts can be counted. [William Bruce Cameron] {
>
> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu]
> Sent: 28-Oct-15 08:02
> To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; PEIRCE-L 
> Subject: [biosemiotics:8914] RE: Peirce's categories
>
>
>
> Hello Kobus,
>
>
>
> I happen to think that is a very good question, and one that is not
> adequately explained in the secondary literature.  Having spent some time
> digging through Peirce's works for clearer answers, I think the answers can
> be found in the texts--but I sure wish Peirce had made things clearer
> himself.  One thing we need, I think, is a clear explanation of how the key
> ideas that are being worked out in the phenomenological account of the
> formal categories are being developed and refined in a diagrammatical
> manner in the graphical systems of logic.  That isn't much of a response,
> but I look forward to seeing what others have to say.
>
>
>
> If you are interested in seeing a bit more of an answer, I have a short
> paper that was presented at the Congress last summer and would be happy to
> share it with you. Bill McCurdy has also worked on this problem, and he has
> come to similar kinds of conclusions about how we should picture the
> connections that are being formed between un-bonded monadic, dyadic and
> triadic relations.
>
>
>
> --Jeff
>
>
>
> Jeff Downard
>
> Associate Professor
>
> Department of Philosophy
>
> NAU
>
> (o) 523-8354
>
> 
>
> From: Kobus Marais [jmar...@ufs.ac.za]
>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 2:15 AM
>
> To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee
>
> Subject: [biosemiotics:8913] Peirce's categories
>
>
>
> Dear List
>
> I hope that you will have patience with what may be a very ignorant
> question. In CP8.328, Perice defines thirdness as follows:
>
> Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing
> a second and third into relation to each other.
>
>
>
> Now, I would have thought that thirdness brings a first and a second into
> relation to each other. Why would Peirce say that thirdness brings a second
> and a third into relation to each other? In which sense could thirdness
> bring a second into relation with itself? Or what am I missing here?
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
> K
>
>
>



-- 
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701

www.conformon.net

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:8917] Re: Peirce's categories

[Clark Goble]

A few sundry comments.


> On Oct 28, 2015, at 10:00 AM, Sungchul Ji  > wrote:
> 
> HI,
> 
> Peirce said: "Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, 
> in bringing a second and third into relation to each other."
> 
> 
> Why did Peirce say "a second and third into relation" instead of saying "a 
> first and second into relation" ?
> 
> Wouldn't it have been clearer if Peirce said 
> 
> "Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing 
> two entities into relation to each other" ? 

Yes, that’s a clearer way of putting it assuming we maintain “entities” 
sufficiently broad. At times Peirce uses numbers to refer to place and then 
more often to refer to his categories. This can be confusing.

> You wrote: "I should note that I think “second and third” in the sentence 
> don’t mean secondness and thirdness but more that there are three terms. 
> 
> The first is the sign and the second and third are the object and 
> interpretant . . . . “

Yes, but the object and interpretant can themselves be firstness, secondness or 
thirdness. So there’s a great deal of complexity here that doesn’t appear at 
first glance. I rather like how Gary put it. To get at the details of what 
Peirce means you have all his existential graphs. I think someone once put in 
here on Peirce-L that we should conceive of the implications as a kind of 
fractal unending depth.


> On Oct 28, 2015, at 10:04 AM, Stephen C. Rose  > wrote:
> 
> I enlarged and hopefully clarified my response here.
> 
>  Brief Notion of The Triad — Everything Comes — Medium http://buff.ly/1WhQxnr 
> 
Yes, I think this is right. I’ve got my response from last week for Edwina 
coming where I have some quotes from “New Elements” that deal directly with 
what you write.

I particularly like when you say, "the Second is always Ethics.” I’d not 
considered it that way before but it makes a lot of sense. Not ethics as the 
sort of metaethics philosophers are often interested in of course. But ethics 
as how force or power act on us. While I didn’t address it in my response to 
Edwina this is very key to Derrida’s notion of ethics he lifts from Levinas’ 
phenomenology as well. Things act on us and provide an ethical demand to which 
we respond. Semiosis tends towards its perfection (the entelechy) because of 
this ethical demand. While Levinas doesn’t put it in these semiotic terms the 
idea is that signs want to represent their object. That somewhat 
anthropomorphic “want” gets at this tendency which can certainly be conceived 
of ethically. That would allow us to deal with Peirce’s notion of “summum 
bonum” or agape in his semiotics.

About the only place I might disagree is in how you use index. But I’d need you 
to unpack this a little more to be sure.
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