Aw: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Categories vs. Elements (was Lowell Lecture 2.14)

[Helmut Raulien]

 
 

I wrote both, "a sign consists of sign, object, and interpretant", and: "A sign consists of sign relation, object relation, and interpretant relation". To me (in my theory) the first kind of consisting is functional composition, and the latter is composition from traits. I just wanted to add this, because by close reading one might have been confused.

 




Gary, Jon, List,

To the question, whether "categories" are "elements" or "universes" I can say little how Peirce has answered to this, but I would say, based on my contemporary dealing with the difference between composition and classification:

I think, that "universes" sounds like classification, and "elements" like composition. E.g. compositional categories: The sign consists of representamen (or sign), object, interpretant. They are categorial elements of the sign. Primisense, altersense, medisense are (compositional) elements of the consciousness.

Classification: A sign is either a quali-, sin-, or legisign. This is categorial classification. But to call classes universes seems a bit far fetched to me. But universes being classes sounds senseful to me. Though I find "universes" a bit confusing, and dont know, why one should use the universe for a metaphor. To me it seems too big and to all-encompassing to serve as a metaphor for something else.

"Kinds of elements" to me is a combination of composition and classification, like with the ten sign classes: A sign is composed of its sign relation, object relation, interpretant relation, so e.g. "rhematic indexical legisign" is a composition of classes, three kinds (classes) of three (composed) elements.

Best,

Helmut

 

 26. November 2017 um 23:58 Uhr
Von: g...@gnusystems.ca
 




Jon A.S.,

 

Thanks very much for posting here some of the Peirce passages which demonstrate that, as you put it, “"categories" and "elements" were effectively interchangeable for Peirce, precisely at the time of the Lowell Lectures” (and, I would add, afterwards, depending on Peirce’s context and audience).

 

The specifically logical usage of the term “categories” was virtually inherited by Peirce from Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and logicians and metaphysicians could be expected to be familiar with this terminology, so it was convenient in that sense for Peirce to use it in his phenomenology/phaneroscopy. But it was also misleading, because Peirce’s “categories” were quite different from those of his predecessors, and I think that after 1902 especially, he increasingly used the term “elements” because it was less familiar in this context, and better suited to his phenomenology, i.e. to his way of arriving at the three conceptions as “indecomposable elements.” But he continued to use both; in Lowell 3, for instance, which is mostly about Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness, he referred to them 16 times as “categories” and 35 times as “elements”, beginning with this:

“Phenomenology is the science which describes the different kinds of elements that are always present in the Phenomenon, meaning by the Phenomenon whatever is before the mind in any kind of thought, fancy, or cognition of any kind. Everything that you can possibly think involves three kinds of elements.”

 

You are right that the phrase “kinds of elements” is ambiguous in a way, and when he refers to (for instance) Thirdness as an “element”, we could regard that as a mere abbreviation for “kind of element.” But he does this so often that “element” becomes in these texts interchangeable with “category” in their technical senses, as you said. Anyway, we should get back to this discussion when we have Lowell 3 in front of us. 

 

Gary f.

 

 

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 26-Nov-17 17:06
To: Gary Fuhrman 
Cc: Peirce List 
Subject: Categories vs. Elements (was Lowell Lecture 2.14)

 


Gary F., List:


 



As you may recall, I offered the hypothesis over a year ago that late in his life, Peirce shifted his terminology from "categories" to "universes," or perhaps confined "categories" to phenomenology/phaneroscopy and employed "universes" for metaphysics, or at least suggested that predicates/relations are assigned to "categories" while subjects belong to "universes."  Back then, Gary R. cited a passage from one of the drafts of "Pragmatism" that finally convinced me to abandon this conjecture, and it would seem to stand equally against the suggestion that Peirce definitively shifted from "categories" to "elements."



 




CSP:  To assert a predicate of certain subjects (taking these all in the sense of forms of words) means,—intends,—only to create a belief that the real things denoted by those subjects possess the real character or relation signified by that predicate. The word "real," pace the metaphysicians, whose phrases are sometimes empty, means, and can mean, nothing more nor less. Consequently, to the three forms of predicates there must correspond three conceptions 

Aw: [PEIRCE-L] RE: Categories vs. Elements (was Lowell Lecture 2.14)

[Helmut Raulien]

Gary, Jon, List,

To the question, whether "categories" are "elements" or "universes" I can say little how Peirce has answered to this, but I would say, based on my contemporary dealing with the difference between composition and classification:

I think, that "universes" sounds like classification, and "elements" like composition. E.g. compositional categories: The sign consists of representamen (or sign), object, interpretant. They are categorial elements of the sign. Primisense, altersense, medisense are (compositional) elements of the consciousness.

Classification: A sign is either a quali-, sin-, or legisign. This is categorial classification. But to call classes universes seems a bit far fetched to me. But universes being classes sounds senseful to me. Though I find "universes" a bit confusing, and dont know, why one should use the universe for a metaphor. To me it seems too big and to all-encompassing to serve as a metaphor for something else.

"Kinds of elements" to me is a combination of composition and classification, like with the ten sign classes: A sign is composed of its sign relation, object relation, interpretant relation, so e.g. "rhematic indexical legisign" is a composition of classes, three kinds (classes) of three (composed) elements.

Best,

Helmut

 

 26. November 2017 um 23:58 Uhr
Von: g...@gnusystems.ca
 




Jon A.S.,

 

Thanks very much for posting here some of the Peirce passages which demonstrate that, as you put it, “"categories" and "elements" were effectively interchangeable for Peirce, precisely at the time of the Lowell Lectures” (and, I would add, afterwards, depending on Peirce’s context and audience).

 

The specifically logical usage of the term “categories” was virtually inherited by Peirce from Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and logicians and metaphysicians could be expected to be familiar with this terminology, so it was convenient in that sense for Peirce to use it in his phenomenology/phaneroscopy. But it was also misleading, because Peirce’s “categories” were quite different from those of his predecessors, and I think that after 1902 especially, he increasingly used the term “elements” because it was less familiar in this context, and better suited to his phenomenology, i.e. to his way of arriving at the three conceptions as “indecomposable elements.” But he continued to use both; in Lowell 3, for instance, which is mostly about Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness, he referred to them 16 times as “categories” and 35 times as “elements”, beginning with this:

“Phenomenology is the science which describes the different kinds of elements that are always present in the Phenomenon, meaning by the Phenomenon whatever is before the mind in any kind of thought, fancy, or cognition of any kind. Everything that you can possibly think involves three kinds of elements.”

 

You are right that the phrase “kinds of elements” is ambiguous in a way, and when he refers to (for instance) Thirdness as an “element”, we could regard that as a mere abbreviation for “kind of element.” But he does this so often that “element” becomes in these texts interchangeable with “category” in their technical senses, as you said. Anyway, we should get back to this discussion when we have Lowell 3 in front of us. 

 

Gary f.

 

 

From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 26-Nov-17 17:06
To: Gary Fuhrman 
Cc: Peirce List 
Subject: Categories vs. Elements (was Lowell Lecture 2.14)

 


Gary F., List:


 



As you may recall, I offered the hypothesis over a year ago that late in his life, Peirce shifted his terminology from "categories" to "universes," or perhaps confined "categories" to phenomenology/phaneroscopy and employed "universes" for metaphysics, or at least suggested that predicates/relations are assigned to "categories" while subjects belong to "universes."  Back then, Gary R. cited a passage from one of the drafts of "Pragmatism" that finally convinced me to abandon this conjecture, and it would seem to stand equally against the suggestion that Peirce definitively shifted from "categories" to "elements."



 




CSP:  To assert a predicate of certain subjects (taking these all in the sense of forms of words) means,—intends,—only to create a belief that the real things denoted by those subjects possess the real character or relation signified by that predicate. The word "real," pace the metaphysicians, whose phrases are sometimes empty, means, and can mean, nothing more nor less. Consequently, to the three forms of predicates there must correspond three conceptions of different categories of characters: namely, of a character which attaches to its subject regardless of anything else such as that of being hard, massive, or persistent; of a character which belongs to a thing relatively to a second regardless of any third, such as an act of making an effort against a resistance; and of a character which belongs to a thing as