Selected Quotations on Peirce and Other Authors
Organized by: Edwina Taborsky etaborsky@ubishops.ca
Hypertext version by: Ricardo R. Gudwin gudwin@dca.fee.unicamp.br
General Index
The Logic of Relatives
Realism
Barriers to Thought
Evolution and Causality
Material Cause - Aristotle
Formal Cause - Aristotle
Three Categories of Being
Time
The Diagramme or architecture
Firstness
Secondness
Thirdness
The Phaneron of the Sign
Dynamic Object
Immediate Object
The Interpretant
Immediate Interpretant
Dynamic Interpretant
Final Interpretant
Two Realities
Genuine and Degenerate Secondness
Genuine and Degenerate Thirdness
Universal and Local Properties
The Membrane or the Zone of Attraction/Attention/Action
"The great difference between the logic of relatives and ordinary logic is that the former regards the form of relation in all its generality and in its different possible species while the latter is tied down to the matter of the single special relation of similarity. The result is that every doctrine and conception of logic is wonderfully generalized, enriched, beautified and completed in the logic of relatives" 4.5
the logic of relations. "By a relationship I understand the conception of a fact about a set of things abstracted from the representation of the things themselves or, in other words, a predicate which requires more than one subject to complete a proposition, or conception of a fact" 6.318.
This means that a relationship is a metareference, acting as a predicate or general, applied to a number of instances.
"A relation is a predicate requiring one subject nominative and one or more objects in a definite sequence" 6.318.
Again, the metareferential system is 'abstracted from the representation of the things themselves' and acts as a predicate or general force. These relations, as codifications, are actions of specification. They can differentiate by class, between a thing and its qualities, between a thing and its parts. The correlate of a relation is a single entity/event. "It is existent, in that its being does not consist in any qualities, but in its effects in its actually acting and being acted on, " 6.318
"The daughters of nominalism, - sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism" 8.38
"life in the physical sense is due to life in the metaphysical or mentall sense.."
"where ordinary logic talks of classes the logic of relatives talks of systems. A system is a set of objects comprising all that stand to one another in a group of connected relations" 4.5
"thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue" 4.7
And we can consider not merely the growth of the individual mind, ..."but of organisms both in their geological succession and in their individual development, and with the formation of worlds, and even with the gradual coming into being and crystallization of the fundamental laws of matter and of mind" ff. 7.267
Three basic steps are required:" first, observation, second, the formulation of laws, and third - the determination of the constants" see 7.279
"the life of science is the desire to learn. If this desire is not pure, but is mingled with a desire to prove the truth of a definite opinion."..it will be ineffective and even harmful. 1.235
Semiosis. "an act, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into acts between pairs" 5.484.
The division of the interpretant into immediate, dynamic and final, are paradigmatic, all other divisions being synonymous or analagous with these categories.
Kant's a priori is 'universal' (common); his synthetic is related to experience..
Peirce sees the movement of consciousness as "causational and not conservative" 7.502. Now, causation can be understood as entropic, therefore, the movement of consciousness is an entropic or dispersional action. "There is no reversibility in it" 7.502
Free will suggests the randomness of chance, but, increasing complexity limits that freedom, and "I cannot admit the will is free in any appreciable measure" 8.311 (see 6.238-271 Man's Glassy Essence). for "chance can only amount to much in a state of things closely approximating to unstable equilibrium. Now in the act of willing there is no such state of things. The freedom lies in the choice which long antecedes the will. " 8.311
Realism 
"whether laws and general types are figments of the mind or real" 1.16
"how far real facts are analogous to logical relations" 4.69
"The real is that which insists upon forcing its way to recognition as something other than the mind's creation" 1.325. The real is active, and operative in Secondness, its sense of force, of will, of resisting our attempts to ignore it.
"the external world...does not consist of existent objects merely, nor merely of these and their reactions; but on the contrary, its most important reals have the mode of being of what the nominalist calls 'mere' words, that is, general types and would-bes" 8.191
"the real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it" 8.12
"we have, it is true, nothing immediately present to us but thoughts. These thoughts, however, have been caused by sensations, and those sensations are constrained by something out of the mind. This thing out of the mind, which directly influences sensation, and through sensation thought, because it is out of the mind, is independent of how we think it, and is, in short, the real" 8.12
"all human thought and opinion contains an arbitrary, accidental element, dependent on the limitations in circumstances, power, and bent of the individual; an element of error...but human opinion universally tends in the long run to a definite form, which is the truth" 8.12
This conclusion is "the same that any other mind will each" 8.12
"the final opinion, then, is indepdnent, not indeed of thought in general, but of all that is arbitrary and individual in thought; is quite independent of how you, or I, or any number of men think" 8.12
the present existence of potentiality is "a regularity in future events" 8.12
"this theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of a thing in itself, - a thing existing independent of all relation to the mind's conception of it" 8.13
the noumena, "or intelligible conceptions which are the last products of the mental action which is set in motion by sensation" 8.13
"the catholic consent which constitutes the truth is by no means to be limited to men iin this earthly life or to the human race, but extends to the whole communion of minds to which we belong, including some probably whose senses are very different from ours" 8.14
"a thing in the general is as real as in the concrete" 8.14
"it is a consensus or common confession which constitutes reality" 8.15
A "'realist fully admits that a sense-quality is only a possibility of sensation; but he thinks a possibility remains possible when it is not actual" 1.422
I am also stating that this movement of consciousness is found in all realities, for "there is such a unity in the universe that the difference between mental and natural phenomena is only a difference of degree" 7.463
This movement of consciousness, has to be understood as continuous, "consciousness is varied along from one time to another" and changes in this process"7.466
The "principles of contradiction and excluded middle...imply that whatever exists consists of individuals" 3.612.
Barriers to Thought
.1. absolute assertion; 2. denial that such can be known; 3. inexplicable 4. fact is perfect in its formulation
ie, infallibility rather than fallibility, there can be no claim to the exact certitude of knowledge
Mechanical necessitarianism, universal necessity, with its concept that the state of things is a given, can be fully known, and governs all realities both now and in the future, with the addendum that any discrepancies are merely due to our ignorance of this law.
"that strange union of nominalism with Platonism, which has repeatedly appeared in history, and has been such a stumbling-block to the historians of philosophy" 8.10
Evolution and Causality
"what is called matter is potentiality, what is called form actuality" Aristotle 414a15.
Demonstrative logic is assertoric, while probably argument inserts chances, entropic space.
"probability does not exist in the singular events, but consists in the degree of credence which ought to be reposed in the occurrence of an event. this is conceptualistic. finally, probability is regarded as teh ratio of the number of events in a certain part of an aggregate of them to the number in the whole aggregate. this is the nominalist view" 8.1
'everywhere the main fact is growth and increasing complexity' 6.58
'the variety of the universe is forever increasing' 6.91, but 'these departures from law are subject to a certain law of probability' 6.91.
only the evolutionary law is 'a law capable of developing itself' 6.91. and therefore, 'all law is a result of evolution' 6.91
"It is the ineluctable blunder of a nominalist...to talk of the cause of an event. But it is not an existential event tat has a cause. it is the fact, which is the reference of the event to a general relation, that has a cause" 6.93
"by thus admitting pure spontaneity or life as a character of the universe, acting always and everywhere though restrained within narrow bounds by law, producing infinitesimal departures from law continually, and great ones with infinite infrequency, I account for all the variety and diversity of the universe" 6.59
Is "consciousness...a mere illusory aspect of a material system" ? 6.61
"Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third" 6.32
the process of evolution "whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those generals which wre just now said to be destined, which is what we strive to express in calling them reasonable. In its higher stages, evolution takes place more and more largely through self-control, and this gives the pragmaticist a sort of justification for making the rational purport to be general" 5.433
Evolution, as pragmatism, 'ought'"in the first place, to give us an expeditious riddance of all ideas essentially unclear. In the second place, it ought to lend support, and help to render distinct, ideas essentially clear" 5.206. This action of thirdness, as final cause, operates in abduction, Abduction operates within perception, "Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis...the only logical operation which introduces any new idea, for induction does nothing but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis" 5.171.
"the object of the final opinion which we have seen to be independent of what any particular person thinks, may very well be external to the mind" 7.339
Final cause is 'evolution by creative love' or agapasm.
"The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose" 6.303
"the agapastic development of thought is the adoption of certain mental tendencies, not altogether heedlessly, as in tychasm, nor quite blindly by the mere force of circumstances or of logic, as in anancasm, but by an immediate attraction for the idea itself, whose nature is divined before the mind possesses it, by the power of sympathy, that is, by virtue of the continuity of mind" 6.308
evolution as the result of mere chance, also includes struggle and 'the crowding out of the weak'. the concept of a predeterminate order, necesitarianism, makes mechanical necessity the chief factor of evoltuion.. But habit taking- "serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they belong" 6.300
"all matter is really mind" 6.301
"the universe of mind which coincides with the universe of matter" 6. 501
Time is a reality, "as reality it is due to creative power" 6.506. which means, that time will change as its creative powers change..
"all laws are the result of evolution...underlying all other laws is the only tendency which can grow by its own virtue, the tendency of all things to take habits" 6.101.
"tychism "must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology, in which all the regularities of nature and of mind are regarded as products of growth, and to ..[an idealism] which olds matter to be mere specialized and deadened mind" 6.102. Another indispensable idea is ''the idea of continuity' - which Peirce termed 'synechism'.
Ideas spread continuously, and "in this spreading, they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality and become welded with other ideas" 6.104
"an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea. These two ideas are not present in the same state of consciousness, and therefore, cannot possibly be compared...to say...that they are similar can only mean that an occult power from the depths of the soul forces us to connect them in our thoughts after they are both no more" 6.105.
Material Cause - Aristotle
'that which in itself is not 'a this' Aristotle: 412a5
Formal Cause - Aristotle
'that precisely in virtue of which a thing is called 'a this' Aristotle 412a8
'matter is potentiality, form actuality' Aristotle 412a10
"the universe is a vast representamen, a great symbol of God's purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities" 5.119
"The Universe as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a great poem" 5.119
"a proposition is a sign separately indicating what it is a sign of" 7.203, which is to say, "it represents that an image is similar to something to which actual experience forces the attention"
The idea of continuous growth, rather than the discovery and the forever unaltered. This is the "genuine synthetic consciousness, or the sense of the process of learning, which is the preeminent ingredient and quintessence of the reason, has its physiological basis quite evidently in the most characteristic property of the nervous system, tthe power of taking habits" (1.390).
The central process of habit-making and habit-taking is in complete contrast to mechanical processes which are not formed via habits. that is, this process of habit-taking, thirdness, must remain synthetic and open to change. "It is essential that there should be an element of chance...and then that this chance or uncertainty shall not be entirely obliterated by the principle of habit, but only somewhat affects" 1.390.
That is, both inertia or the establishment and maintenance of a habit, plus entropic dissolution of this habit, must occur within evolution-as-learning. To consider that the ultimate end is merely the perfection of the original (Platonic) is not evolution but a merger of two somehow, unfortunately separated halves of a whole. But, "if your creed is that the whole universe is approaching in the infinitely distant future a state having a general character different from that toward which we look back in the infinitely distant past, ..." 1.362, this is evolution.
Evolution is not mere increase, but the increase of diversity. "Mechanical law can never produce diversification" 1.174.
It can only produce a mimetic expansion of the same. "if observed facts point to real growth, they point to another agency, to spontaneity" (1.174)
Entropy, as a non-conservative action, cannot be due to mere chance as accident or mutant error. Entropy acts in "one determinate direction and tend asymptotically toward bringing about an ultimate state of things" 7.471.
That is, entropy is irreversible and tends toward a finite point. This has led to the nominalist error of assigning it a teleological goal situated within thee functionalist desires of the individual, when it should really be understood as communal. Peirce, rather than use the word teleology, suggested 'finious' "to express their tendency toward a final state" 7.471. I will relate this to the final cause, located within the final interpretant.
Peirce considers that these two forces, which he calls uniformity or necessary law versus fortuitous distribution are basic, primordial and 'radically distinct'. "If we are to escape this duality at all, urged to do so by the principle of retroductioon" (7.521) or abduction or final cause - we must assert chance or firstness as primordial, with its utter irregularity.
Inertia, or conservative forces, "govern nothing but the space relations of particles" 7.523. That is, inertia or continuity sets up relations, it is "the law of the mutual reactions of particles in space" 7.523.
"the highest kind of symbol is one which signifies a growth, or self-development, of thought...the central problem of logic is to say whether one given thought is truly, ie, is adapted to be, a given other or not" 4.9
"evolution is nothing more nor less than the working out of a definite end" 1.204.
It is "a widespread error to think that a 'final cause' is necessarily a purpose" 1.211.
" ..we must understand by final causation that mode of bringing facts about according to which a general description of result is made to come about, quite irrespective of any compulsion for it to cme about in this or that particular way" 1.211.
Final cause is not specific but only "that the result shall have a certain general characters" 1.211
Under Peirceean pragmatics, we read that "the whole 'meaning' of a conception expresses itself in practical conseeuqnces, consequences either in the shape of conduct to be recommended, or int that of experiences to be expected" 5.2 (1878).
In 1902, he wrote that "action wants an end, and that that end must be something of a general description...we must look...towards something different from practical facts, namely, to general ideas, as the true interpretors of our thought" 5.3.
This, Peirce called 'synechism', an evolutionary process, which "is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process of the growth of reasonableness" 5.4
Efficient causation is mechanical and operates on the unilevel frame. It "is a compulsion determined by the particular condition of things, and is a compulsion acting to make that situation begin to change in a perfectly determinate way; and what the general character of the result may be in no way concerns the efficient causation" 1.212
Multiplication "is the pairing of every unit of one quantity with every unit of another quantity so as to make a new unit" 4.193.
There can be both free and dominated multiplication. The free would be chance; the dominated, bound to the two entities involved, would be dominated by the nature of those entities.and the result of that interation would be to preserve their essential characters. Free multiplication.."the multitude of possible sets of units any one of which could be formed out of units taken from each of a collection of mutually exclusive collections of units having severally the multitudes of the factors" 4.193.See 4.193
Peirce rejects proximate cause, "no single actual event can follow as logically consequent upon any other" 7.105
Peirce tells the reader to get rid "of the Ockhamist prejudice of political partizanship that in thought, in being, and in development the indefinite is due to a degeneration from a primary state of perfect definitiveness. The truth is rather on the side of the scholastic realists that the unsettled is the primal state, and that definiteness and determinateness, the two poles of settledness, are, in the large, approximations, developmentally, epistemologically, and metaphysically" 6.348
Multiplication is 'double-ended' (4.669), and can be both progressive and regressive (4.670). It is also most "invariably an associative operation. While addition is 'associative and commutative', multiplication is 'doubly distributed' (3.47)
"the concept of multiplication we have adopted is that of the application of one relation to another" 3.76, which moves it into the concept of probabilities..nondeterminative and commutative..
"Multiplication by 'beta' effects nothing. Multiplication by 'v' may have peculiar effects, but it is undone by a second multiplication by 'v'. Multiplication by O can never be undone, nor the same effect be otherwise produced" 4.316.
That is, speaking of causality, as triadic, "it is impossible to deal with a triad without being forced to recognize a triad of which one member is positive but ineffective, another is the opponent of that, a third, intermediate between these two, is all-potent" 4.317
Thirdness is not "any existing individual object, but a type, a general, which does not exist but governs existents, to which individuals conform" 8.313
Therefore, the law, as 3rdness, is not a force, and should not be reified into a unilevel state of thirdness as either 1stness or 2ndness. "Thus, the relation of law, as a cause, to the action of force, as its effect, is final, or ideal, causation, not efficient causation" 1.212
"Efficient causation is that kind of causation whereby the parts compose the whole; final causation is that kind of causation whereby the whole calls out its parts" 1.220.
Therefore, "final causality cannot be imagined without efficient causality" 1.213 but "an efficient cause, detached from a final cause in the form of a law, would not even possess efficiency" 1.212
"the idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea" 1.216.
"The modern philosophers...recognize but one mode of being, the being of an individual thing or fact...I call that existence. Aristotle, on the other hand, whose system, like all the greatest systems, was evolutionary, recognized besides an embryonic kind of being...like the being of a future contingent event" 1.21-22
Three types of evolution (6.13ff)- tychastic, anancastic and agapastic,
Three types of evolution (1.104). The Darwinian, based in the group, based on chance mutations and non-selection of the leasst fit; the Lamarkian, where the changes are not by chance but by the fortuitous strivings of the individual; the catastrophic, where sudden changes of the envt require different forms of behaviour.
The first can be physical, the second can be conceptual, the third, also, paradigmatically conceptual and material.
"not only will meaning always, more or less, in the long run, mould reactions to itself, but it is only in doing so that its own being consists" 1.343. We can consider 'meaning' as Thirdness, and "the idea of meaning is irreducible to those of quality and reaction" 1.345.
Peirce's premises are "that every genuine triadic relation involves meaning...and a triadic relation is inexpressible by means of dyadic relations alone" 1.345.
"Whatever is truly general refers to the indefinite future" 2.148
"the great principle of continuity...how all is fluid and every point directly partakes the being of every other, it will appear that individualism and falsity are one and the same" 5.403 ff... one man's experience is nothing, if it stands alone' 5.403
Reality is independent of what you and I think of it, but it is not unknowable, nor is it dependant only on thought, on human thought,
to live within indubitable beliefs' "remains that of somewhat primitive man, yet as we develop degrees of self-control unknown to that man, 5.511...we outgrow this certainty, and doubt is necessary for the evolution of thought
Peirce was against proximate cause, or causality as nearness in either time or space. Causality could be far larger than effect, and as such "the future determines the past in precisely the same way in which the past determines the future" 6.69, whereas in the psychical world, of history, the past does indeed determine the future, and 'the relations of the present to the past and to the future, instead of being the same, as in the domain of the Law of Energy, are utterly unlike" 6.70.
In this sense, evolution of consciousness has three phases; the primary consciousness which is 'feeling' ro firstness' , "the immediate element of experience generalized to its utmost" 7.365. This is preconsciousness or primary consciousness.
There are two 'modes of action' "the conservative and the causational" 7.505,
. "Ideas persist in consciousness for a long time after they are gone from the field of easy attention" 7.417
the idea of evolution is, not that we are moving towards a predefined already existent thereby, perfection, but that evolution operates according to certain laws, and these laws are themselves, in the process of developing. "the problem was to imagine any kind of a law or tendency which would thus have a tendency to strengthen itself. evidently it must be a tendency toward generalization, - a generalizing tendency" 7.515
And "we must search for this generalizing tendency rather in such departments of nature where we find plasticity and evolution still at work" 7.515.
"The most plastic of all things is the human mind, and next after that comes the organic world, the world of protoplasm" 7.515.
"Now, the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of habit taking. ....I was led to the hypothesis that the laws of the universe have been formed under a universal tendency of all things toward generalization and habit-taking" 7.515
consciousness "has a duration...there is no such thing as an instantaneous consciousness; but all consciousness relates to a process" 7.351
Three Categories of Being
These three modes of being, Peirce called the 'cenopythagorean categories" LW p.24. Oct 12/1904
(LW= Letters to Lady Welby).
"thoughts, the habitual connection between thoughts, and processes establishing a habitual connection between thoughts" 7.355..with ideas succeeding one another 'according to a general rule'
"in every logical mind there must be 1st, ideas; 2nd, general rules according to wich ne idea determines another, or habits of mind which connect ideas; and, 3rd, processes whereby such habitual connections are established" 7.358
unconscious mind is feeling"7.364, "the immediate element of experience generalized to the utmost" 7.365. This is Mind. Mind is not just consciousness, as the psychologists claim" (7.365)
"consciousness is a special, and not a universal, accompaniment of mind" 7.366
These three modes of being or categories, must not be considered in a serial consequence (5.43). Hegel's error was to consider them 'three stages of thinking" 5.38
'There are three modes of being...They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact, and the being of law that will govern facts in the future" 1.23
the monadic experiences are simple, the dyadic are recurrences, "each a direct experience of an opposing pair of objects" 7.528; the triadic are comprehensions, "each a direct experience which connects other possible experiences" 7.528
Aristotle also notes that "the three dimensions are all that there are" Aristotle 268a11. and he also calls them, 'the beginning, middle and end'
Peirce analyzes three types of consciousness, in his 1904 reply to James. where, "consciousness means feeling'. He defines the people who limit consciousness to feeling as 'sensationalists'. "They analyze psychic phenomena into their smallest portions, just as a physicist does physical phenomena...these sensationalists find nothing present to the mind bu feelings" 8.289. And just as the physicists confines analysis of reality to 'matter and motion' and no signs - considering the latter only psychical phenomena. the sensationalist will exclude signs as 'cerebral connections' or 'physical phenomena..
then, 'consciousness as a dual affair-
others, include feeling, experience as not mere twoness but reaction, and thirdly 'the consciousness of the future" 8.291
"In consciousness there is no such thing as an indivisible present moment" Royce in 8.292
'the outer, the inner and the logical world' 8.299
"qualisense is the sort of consciousness of any whole regardless of anything else, and therefore regardless of the parts of that whole. Volition is a double consciousness of exertion and resistance. Consciousness of habit is a consciousness at once of the substance of the habit, the special case of application, and the union of the two" 8.304.
So, every object is either a "Can-be, an Actual, or a Would-be" 8.305
Therefore, thinking, is not focused within only one process, but is a continuum of expanding consciousness. We cannot, for example, operate only within the immediate percepts of firstness. this would lead us to a reality based around a collection of incidents, of 'perceptual facts' "which are the first judgments which we make concerning percepts" 7.198.
This would be a reality based within only the immediate interpretant.
"A perceptual fact is therefore an abstract affair. Each such fact covers only certain features of the percept...it is involuntary and cannot be prevented or corrected...[it is] a relatively isolate fact" (7.198) which does not call for any explanation.
This triad is also known as "feeling, volition, cognition" 1.332 and 'quality, relation, and synthesis or mediation' (1.378) and 'chance, law and habit taking" (1.409)
"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 bur 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" 8.328
1867: quality, relation and representation;
1898; quality, reaction and mediation
firstness, secondness, thirdness
"entirely new words without any false associations whatever' 4.4
Time
"we have no reason to think that even now time is quite perfectly continuous and uniform in its flow" 1.412
There are three elements of consciousness - "immediate feeling is the consciousness of the first; the polar sense is the consciousness of the second; and synthetical consciouisness is the consciouisness of a third or medium" 1.382
"First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation" 6.32
"The origin of things, considered not as leading to anything, but in itself, contains the idea of First, the end of things that of Second, the process mediating between them that of Third". 6.32
Systems which emphasize the 'many' "has for its principal component the conception of First', for 'variety is arbitrariness and arbitrariness is repudiation of any Secondness" 6.32
"unconscious inference means inference in which the reasoner is not conscious of making an inference' 8.67 ie, not that the propositions are unconscious, but the reasoner
An iindividual event, occurs in the hic et nunc, and is a reaction, an instant. Now - the law of this reaction, is external, is its formal code. In itself, the action is "arbitrary, blind, an brute exertion of force' 7.532 it is 'anti-general'.
"In this respect it contrasts with a quality of feeling, which though not in itself general is susceptible of generalization without losing its characer as quality of feeling" 7.532.
This should be noted - that emotional qualities are more prone to generalization, even if that is thirdness as degneerate in the 2nd degree. Thirdness and Firstness have a mode of unity that is lacking in secondness.
Feeling is unanalyzed. "Volition is through and through dual. There is the duality of agent and patient, of effort and resistance" 1.332
The polar sense of secondness, 'splits into two, "for first, there is an active and a passive kind, or will and sense, and second, there are external will and sense, in opposition to internal will (self-control, inhibitory will) and internal sense (introspection). In like manner,
The difference between 'compulsion' which is an interaction within secondness and necessity, which is a relation within thirdness
The whole interaction, within this diagramme, is a necessary reasoning "the necessity of such reasoning consists in this, that not only dos the conclusion happen to be true of a pre-determinate universe, but will be true, so long as the premisses are true, howesoever the universe may subsequently turn out to be determined" 4.31.
If we were to see evolution as mind, then "that which is thought acquires being, that is, perfect defintiiveness, in the sense that the effect of what, is thought in any lapse of time, however short, is definitive and irrevocable; but it is not until the whole operation of creation is complete that the universe acquires existence, that is, entire determinateness, in the sense that nothing remains undecided. " 4.431
"Experience is double, as much as reality is. That is, there is an outward and an inward experience" 7.440
Consciousness in a state of secondness, is focused both internally and externally. "a direct consciousness of something inward and an equally direct consciousness of something outward. in fact, these wo are one and the same consciousness. they are inseparable. " 7.531
Now, we can have two classes of interaction. there are those "which are performed under the uncontrolled governance of association and those in which by the 'agency' of consciousness...the actions come under self-criticism and self-control" 7.444. The associative process we will examine within the immediate object; the inferential within the interpretant.
"uncontrolled inference from contiguity, or experiential connection, is the most rudimentary of all reasoning" 7.444 and is found within many biological species. "inference from resemblance implies a higher degree of self-consciousness" 7.444 and requires a formal code of referentiality, to 'judge' the resemblance between two entities. This simple inference of relationship by resemblance is common to simple outlines - whether in the mythological designs of earlier societies or in the multiple analogical comparisons so prominent in the humanities and social sciences, whose work often links entities whose only relation is in the mind of the observer.
The Diagramme or architecture
"All valid necessary reasoning is infact thus diagrammatic" 1.54.
this is deductive reasoning, which "examines the state of things asserted in the premisses, forms a diagram of that sate of things, perceives in the parts of that diagram relations not explicitly mentioned in the premises, satisfies itself by mental experiments upon the diagram that these relations would always subsist, or at least would do so in a certain proportion of cases, and concludes their necessary, or probable, truth" 1.66
"a diagram is a representamen which is predominantly an icon of relations and is aided to be so by conventions" 4.418
Or, qualities of feeling, dyadic relations, and predications of representations (1905. 1.561)
Or "firstness, or spontaneity; secondness, or dependence; thirdness, or mediation" 3.422
consciousness 'takes up time'. consciousness 'has a duration' and 'there is no such thing as an instantaneous consciousness' but all consciousness relates to a process" 7.351 The steps of this process can be analyzed..
Peirce's graphs, where "the alpha part of graphs...is able to represent no reasonings except those which turn upon the logical relations of general terms" 4.510.
"The beta part...is able to handle with facility and dispatch reasoning of a very intricate kind...its reasonings generally turn upon the properties of the relations of individual objects to one another" 4.511
However "it is unable to reason about abstractions" 4.512 This is the gamma part, which "is still in its infancy"
Peirce also defined these three phases as: primisense, in which there is but one fundamental mode; altersense has two modes, sensation and will, while medisense has three modes, abstraction, suggestions and association . 7.551 and 7.276 or, collation, experimentation and generalization
Firstness
"Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject's being positively such as it is regardless of aught else" 1.25
This seems to be divided into two: the medad and the monad. " medad must mean an indecomposable idea altogether severed logically from every other; a monad will mean an element which, except that it is thought as applying to some subject, has no other characters than those which are complete in it wihtout any reference to anything else" 1.292.
"A medad would be a flash of mental 'heat-lightning' absolutely instantaneous, thunderless, unremembered, and altogether without effect" 1.292
"The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of freshness, life, freedom...Freedom can only manifest itself in unlimited and uncontrolled variety and multiplicity; and thus the first becomes predominant in the ideas of measureless variety and multiplicity" 1.302. It is 'self-contained'.
"The first is predominant in feeling, as distinct from objective perception, will, and thought" 1.302. A monad is in a state of firstness, without comparison,
"By a feeling, I mean an instance of that kind of consciousness which involves no analysis, comparison or any process whatsoever, not consists in whole or in part of any act by which one stretch of consciousness is distinguished from another, which has its own positive quality which consists in nothing else, and which is of itself all that it is, however it may have been brought about; so that if this feeling is present during a lapse of time, it is wholly and equally present at every moment of that time...by a feeling I mean an instance of that sort of element of consciousness which is all that it is positively, in itself, regardless of anything else" 1.306.
. "A feeling, then, is not an event, a happening, a coming to pass, " 1.307, ie, it is not relative to another state. "a feeling is a state, which is in its entirety in every moment of time as long as it endures" 1.307.
"a feeling is an element of consciousness which might conceivably override every other state until it monopolized the mind, although such a rudimentary state cannot actually be realized, and would not properly be consciousness" 6.18
To move into the stage of awareness of this state, introduces a relation. "although a feeling is immediate consciousness...yet there is no consciousness in it because it is instantaneous"...feeling is nothing but a quality, and a quality is not conscious: it is a mere possibility" 1.310
Firstness is not a state of consciousness,(which would be closed) but a quality of consciousness. (see 1.344)
Firstness is 'total feeling, "perfectly simple and without parts...the mode of being of itself" 1.531
Presentness is not abstract, it is not Pure Being. To say such "is a falsity so glaring" 5.44..."the present, being such as it is while utterly ignoring everything else, is positively such as it is" 5.44
" an emotion is always a simple predicate substituted by an operation of the mind for a highly complicated predicate 5.293
"we must not fall into the absurdity of setting down as a datum and starting-ppoint of philosophy any abstract and simple idea, as hegel did when he beegan his logic with pure Being" 8.111
"the realist's opinion is that it is one thing to be and another thing to be represented" 8.129
Secondness
is "a two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance" 1.24. It is actuality, which "consists in its happening then and there". It is "a mode of being of one thing which consists in how a second object is" 1.24.
We do not know things by feelings, but via "the reactions of ourselves upon things and of their parts on one another" 8.79
secondness is 'hic et nunc', "it happens but once. If it is repeated, that makes two reactions...it is an individual event...a reaction cannot be generalized without entirely losing its character as a reaction" 7.532
"it is arbitrary, blind, and brute exertion of force" 7.532
firstness, as a quality fo feeling, "though not in itself geenral is susceptible of generalization without losing its characters as quality of feeling' 7.532.
So, secondness, "reaction, which is the Dyad category, should have an aggressive unity that Quality, the Monad category, does not exhibit" 7.532
Two qualities of feeling "become more than mere qualities...they acquire the concreteness and actuality of feelings " 7.533 in states of secondness.
"the mere experience of a sense-reaction (2ndness) is not learning. that is only something from which something can be learned, by interpreting it. the interpretation is the learning" 7.536
"a generalized reaction is a law. but a law, by itself without the addition of a living reaction to carry it out on each separate occasion, is as impostent as a judge without a sheriff. it is an idle formula" 7.532
Secondness "is the experience of effort, prescinded from the idea of purpose" 8.330.
"Effort is effort by virtue of its being opposeos; and no third element enters. Note that I speak of the experience, not of the feeling, of effort. " 8. 330.
"Experience generally is what the course of life has compelled me to think" 8.330.
Secondness is either genuine or degenerate. a genuine secondness "consists in one thing acting upon another" 8.330.
Secondness is the basis of mechanism, positivism.
Peirce's view is "the inadequacy of Secondness to cover all that is in our minds" 8.331.
"the Hegelian notion that the one satisfactory method in philosophy is to examine an opinion and to detect in it some hidden denial of itself, - which is nothing but the reductio ad absurdum" 8.110..."for very seldom is anybody really convinced by the Socratic style of dialectic" 8.110
"Genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon another" LW Oct 12 1904 p 26, without the addition of law or reason.
Secondness is the "most prominent of the three. This is not a conception, nor is it a peculiar quality. It is an experience. It comes out most fully in the shock of reaction between ego and non-ego. It is there the double consciousness of effort and resistance. That is something which cannot properly be conceived. For to conceive it is to generalize it; and to generalize it is to miss altogether the hereness and nowness which is its essence."8.267
So, firstness "can be described.."as being such as it is positively, of itself, while secondness is such as it is relatively to something else" 8.267.
Hegel's error was to serialize these and dismiss them as mere stages on the road to a final phase of collation. "The third element of the phenomenon is that we perceive it to be intelligible, that is, to be subject to law, or capable of being represented by a general sign or Symbol" 8.268..
"The essential thing is that it is capable of being represented. Whatever is capable of being represented is itself of a representative nature. The idea of representation involves infinity, since a representation is not really such unless it be interpreted in another representation. but infinity is nothing but a peculiar twist given to generality" 8.268
"The action of the previous upon the subsequent" LW 26, is a pure idea of secondness."The relation between teh previous and the subsequent consists in the previous being determinate and fixed for the subsequent, and the subsequent being indeterminate for the previous. But indeterminacy belongs only to ideas; the existent is determinate in eveyr respect; and this is just what the law of causation consists in" LW 27.
Again, the law of causation would refer, in modern terms, to entropy. "Accordingly, the relation of time concerns only ideas" LW 27, which is to say, that entropy refers only to semiosic signs in a state of 2ndness and thirdness, not firstness, ie, in the interpretant phase. Therefore, "temporal causation (a very different thing from physical dynamic action) is an action upon ideas and not upon existents" LW 27.
The error is to think of the future as something 'that will have been past'
"The Second, or Relate is, in itself, either a Referate if it is intrinsically a possibility, such as a quality or it is a Rerelate if it is of its own nature an Existent. In respect to its first, the Second is divisible either in regard to the dynamic first or to the immediate first. In regard to the dynamic first, a Second is determined either by virtue of its own intrinsic nature, or by virtue of a real relation to that second (an action). its immediate second is either a Quality or an Existent" LW Oct 12, 1904 p.28
Secondness is explained within the concept of struggle, which is "a mutual action between two things regardless of any sort of third or medium, and in particular regardless of any law of action" 1.322
"the sense of reaction is thus a sense of connection or comparison between feelings" 6.19
Secondness is a forcefulness, a volition. "the Hegelian school overlooks the importance of the will as an element of thought" 8.40
for "the whole end of inquiry is the settlement of belief" 8.41
It is "a double consciousness. We become ware of ourself in becoming aware of the not-self. The waking state is a consciousness of reaction; and as the consciousness itself is two-sided, so it has also two varieties; namely, action, where our modification of other things is more prominent than their reaction on us, and perception, where their effect on us is overwhelmingly greater than our effect on them" 1.324
"This notion, of being such as other things make us, " is the idea of secondness 1.324 It is predominant "in the ideas of causation and of statical force. 1.325 "Constraint is a Secondness" 1.325
"Secondness is the predominant character of what has been done" 1.343
"fact has distinct features...every fact has a here and now...fact is intimately associated with the dyad...consists in fight" 1.435. "Its existence does not depend upon any definition, but consists in its reacting against the other things of the universe" 1.436. and "every fact is connected with a reciprocal fact" 1.437
"An object cannot be a second of itself. If it is a second, it has an element of being what another makes it to be" 1.526..it is 'not a compound of two facts'.
A dyad is made up of two agents, with one being active and existentially prior and the other being passive and existentially posterior.
Secondness, as made up of two parts, actuality and existence, a secondness in firstness, a secondness in secondness.
or effort and resistance
"The Second, or Relate, is, in itself, ither a Referate if it is intrinsically a possibility, such as a quality or it is a Rerelate if it is of its own nature an Existent" LW28.
"In respect to its first, the Second is divisible either in regard to the dynamic first or to the immediate first. In regard to its dynamic first, a Second is determined either by virtue of its own intrinsic nature, or by virtue of a real relation to that second (an action). its immediate second is either a Quality of an Existent" (LW p.28)
Secondness, like firstness, is also a positive rather than abstract existence, operating within the element of struggle, will a 'sense of resistance' 5.45
Brooks & Wiley point out that "entities that evolve must exhibit spatiotemporal continuity and some intrinsic boundary conditions" 104. Further, "any irreversible process operating on discrete, or individualized, entities produces a hierarchy" 104
Thirdness
The "mode of being, which consists in the fact that future facts of Secondess will take on a determinate general character" 1.26. It is in the nature of a general prediction, and "cannot ever be completely fulfilled" 1.26. This is not an inviolate law but a 'tendency to be fulfilled'.
"a sign mediates between the interpretant sign and its object" LW p.31 Oct 12, 1904
"Since Space represents a law whose prescriptions are nothing but conditions of reactions, and since reaction is Duality, it follows that the conditions of the prescriptions of space are necessarily Dual" 6.82.
"Brute action is secondness, any mentality involves thirdness" 8.331. This thirdness is a general law and not an actuality. No material reality is transfered, if it were so, this would be thirdness degenerate in the 1st degree (down to a secondness)
"a Third is something which brings a First into Relation to a Second" 8.332
"A sign is something by knowing which we know something more" 8.332
A sign "is an object which is in r elation to its object on the one hand and to an interpretant on the other, in such a way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object" 8.332
laws 'cannot have distinct identities in themselves, for distinct identity only belongs to existent things' 6.82
However, this has still, possibly, gone through that mediation. "We will call everything marked by being a third or medium of connection, between a first and second anything, tertian" 1.297.
"By the third, I mean the medium or connecting bond between the absolute first and last. The beginning is first, the end second, the middle third. The end is second, the means third" (1.337)....Continuity represents Thirdness almost to perfection" 1.337.
"there is no absolute third, for the third is of its own nature relative" 1.362. In other words, there is no final truth.
"a triad cannot be analyzed into dyads" 1.363.
"If you take any ordinary triadic relation, you will always find a mental lement in it. " LW 29
"The general idea of plurality is involved in the fundamental concept of Thirdness, a concept without which there can be no suggestion of such a thing as logic, or such a character as truth 4.332
"the triadic fact takes place in thought. I do not say in anybody's thinking, but in pure abstract thought; while the dyadic fact is existential" 6.324
A nominalist will see laws as particular formulae. Nominalism denies this category. In he Cartesian design, "the only force is the force of impact, which clearly belongs to the category of Reaction" 5.63.. "but there is a mode of influence upon external facts which cannot be resolved into mere mechanical action" 5.64
Thirdness is "the self-development of that essential idea" 5.72
Thirrdness "is operative in Nature" 5.93 within the principle of uniformity and regularity, "general principles are really operative in nature" 5.101
"Thirdness, as I use the term, is only a synonym for Representation...it is proper to say that a general principle that is operative in the real world is of the essential nature of Representation and of a Symbol" 5.105
"A law is in itself nothing but a general formula or symbol" 5.106
"Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existnece or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing" 5.431
"Wee have in our minds as the main body of its contents, what never can be in consciousness in either of these senses, and never can be in existence or be distinctly supposed to eixst. This is the whole world of triadic relations, thought" 8.283
Some mistake the past for the future, and reify thirdness into actual entities. some "question whether we are to say the external world alone is real and the internal world fiction or whether we shall say that the internal world is the real and the external world a fiction. While the true idealism, the pragmatic idealism, is that reality consists in the future. 8.284
"the third category- the category of thought, representation, triadic relation, mediation, genuine thirdness, thirdness as such - is an essential ingredient of reality, byet does not by itself constitute reality, since this category (which in that cosmology appears as the element of habit) can have no concrete being without action, as a separate object on which to work its government, just as action cannot exist without the immediate being of feeling on which to act" 5.426 Hegel degrades this to a mere 'stage of thinking' and meant to obviate the other two categories..
thirdness relates to the conservation of energy, to inertia
"variety upon being multiplied almost in every department of experience shows a tendency to form habits. These habits produce statistical uniformities" 6.97
As this action of generalization, it can be found within all forms of organization of matter. I refer to Rosen's outline of protein folding, where "folding serves to bring constituent residues that are remote in primary structure into close spatial proximity. thus, in standard chemical terms, atoms and reactive residues are brought into , and held in,close spatial proximity, een though they seem far apart in terms of primary structure" 272. This process, is a site of action, an 'active site' and "these 'active sites' embody in themselves many of the properties of tradiational chemical molecules, they are not molecules> not being held together by internal chemical bonds of their own, they cannot be isolated as indpendent 'substances'; as such they are not fractionable in these terms from the bigger molecule which manifests them" (272). That is, they are not in states of Secondness, discrete spatiotemporal realities - but- they are real, nevertheless. "They actively participate in conventional molecular reactions, though (sic) which they can be characerized in functional terms. The reactants that interact with them can see them; indeed, that is all these reactants can see. But we have rendered them invisible to ourselves by our very way of intrinsically characterizing chemical structure. As such, they cannot be directly coded for via any purely syntactic scheme" 272. Thirdness is a process, a function, and not decomposable or compaosable, into discrete units. That is the error made, again and again, by all formalist methodology. Rosen's outline of this level, the genotype level of function, sees it as a scaffold, where "sequences are held together, not by any direct intersymbol bonds, but by being suspended in a larger structure" 274. Intersymbol bonds are the operations of units within Secondness; this configuration within a general scaffold, is the operation of processes within Thirdness. Rosen continues, "if we perchance interpret the elements of such configurations to be atoms, or chemical groups, or even bits and pieces of chemical groups, then such scaffolded configurations may themselves act like conventional chemical species. If so, they are in fact much more general than conventional molecules; there may be no way of holding them together through internal chemical bonds at all. They can only 'exist' when scaffolded together"...If the scaffolding as a whole is pertrubed, or disrupted, they disappear, they cease to exist, they denature. But they do not 'decompose' in any conventional sense, and they reappaer when the scaffolding is restored". 272.
Rosen suggests that the active sites "of folded polypeptides, or of multichain structures, are of this character. Hence that folding generates a scaffolding which, in this sense, brings entirely new chemical entities into existence, entities composed of parts drawn from residues remote from each other in terms of primary structure. Hence, these scaffolded entities do not have a symbolic representation in terms of that structure" 274. This is thirdness, the process of generalization, developing relationships "of parts drawn from residues remote from each other" and permitting the development of 'entirely new chemical entities'. This active process cannot by fractionated because it is not a 'thing-in-itself' but a process. Rosen explicitly states against this symbolic attempt of control, where there is "no algorithm that will take us from tertiary structure to functional activity, or 'active sites' (275. "What is involved here is complexity, even here, at the molecular level, where there is as yet no life" 275.
As such, this level of generalization, the genotype, is not transformable directly into the level of the specific, the phenotype. As Peirce confirms this theory "involves a complete rupture with nominalism. Even Duns Scotus is too nominalistic when he says that universals are contracted to the mode of individuality in singulars, meaning, as he does, by singulars, ordinary existing things" 8.208.
That is "absolute individuals" are entia rationis, and not realities" 8.208.
"A concept determinate in all respects is as fictitious as a concept definite in all respects" 8.208
the nominalist "must say that all future events are the total of all that will have happened" 8.209. This si a mechanical outline. the nominalist must say this, "else he will make the future to be endless, that is, to have a mode of being consisting in the truth of a general law" 8.208
"What we commonly designate by pointing at it or otherwise indicating it we assume to be singular. but so far as we can comprehend it, will be found not to be so. We can only indicate the real universe; if we are asked to describe it, we can only say that it includes whatever there may be that really is. This is a universal, not a singular" 8.208
"the mind is virtual, not in a series of moments, not capable of existing except in a space of time - nothing so far as it is at any one moment" 8.248
"the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference" 5.313
"we do not fall into the contradiction of making the Mediate immediable" 5.289
and, "no present actual thought (which is a mere feeling) has any meaning, any intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual" 5.289
"accordingly, just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body we ought to say that we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us" fn 5.289
feelings, the "Immediate (and therefore in itself unsusceptible of mediation - the Unanalyzable, the Inexplicable, the Unintellectual) runs in a continuous stream through out lives; it is the sum total of consciousness, whose mediation, which is the continuity of it, is brought about by a real effective force behind consciousness" 5.289
"logic must be founded on ethics...ethics rests iin the same manner on a foundation of esthetics" 8.255
Note- feeling, reaction, thought (three levels of consciousness)
The Phaneron of the Sign
"every sign, since it signifies primarily that it is a sign, signifies its own consistency" 5.313, ie, but men and signs reciprocally 'educate each other. "each increase of a man's information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a word's information" 5.313
"every sign stands for an object independent of itself; but it can only be a sign of that object in so far as that object is itself of the nature of a sign or thought" 1.538.
"every thought, or cognitive representation, is of the nature of a sign. 'Representation' and 'sign' are synonyms. The whole purpose of a sign is that it shall be interpreted in another sign...when a sign determines an interpretation of itself in another sign, it produces an effect external to itself, a physical effect, thought teh sign producing the effect may itself be not an existent object but merely a type" 8.191
"no sign can function as such except so far as it is interpreted in another sign( for example, in a 'thought,' or whatever that may be). Consequently it is absolutely essential to a sign that it should affect another sign. In using this causal word, 'affect', I do not refer to invariable accompaniment or sequence, merely, or necessarily. What I mean is that when there is a sign there will be an interpretation in another sign. The essence of the relation is in the conditional futurity; but it is not essential that there should be absolutely no exception. " ff 8.225
Peirce also outlines the five steps of semiosis in his Notes on Science 1892, 1893 7;276-278, where the dynamic object
is understood as an 'interesting phenomenon'; then, using a means of measurement, this becomes the immediate object, which then is subject to specific measures (immediate interpretant), and into the exact measurement (dynamic interpretant) and finally, the development of a theory by which all such phenomena are operative.
"the entire universe..is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs' 5.449 ff
"all the veritably indubitable beliefs are vague" 5.505...
"a sign is objectively general, in so far as, leaving its effective interpretation indeterminate, it surrenders to the interpreter the right of completing the determination" 5.505
A sign is equally vague, if it also leaves its interpretation indeterminate, reserving 'for some other possible sign or experience the function of completing the determination" 5.505.
"A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that to which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. 1.339
Peirce later called the sign a 'representamen', A representation is that character of a thing by virtue of which, for the production of a certain mental effect, it may stand in place of another thing. The thing having this character I term a representamen, the mental effect, or thought, its interpretant, the thing for which it stands, its object" 1.564. 1899
In his outline of 1897, he writes "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. that sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in rference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representation'. 2.228 The sign is thus connected with three things, the ground, the object and the interpretant.
symbol should not be restricted to conventional signs (see Peirce 2.340) which he did in 1867, but "every symbol, as involving an assertion, or rudimentary assertion, is general" 2.341 (1895)
"It is usual and proper to distinguish two Objects of a Sign, the Mediate without, and the Immediate within the Sign" LW p.83.
"The Mediate Object is the Object outside of the Sign; I call it the Dynamoid Ojbect. The Sign must indicate it by a hing; and this hint, or its substance, is the Immediate Object...the Dynamoid Object may be a Possible; when I term the Sign an Abstractive" LW p.83
"Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations" 5.395.
Aristotle rejected the mechanist philosophy that order or inertia is the only law, and instead, said that "events come to pass in three ways, namely, (1) by external compulsion , or the action of efficient causes, (20 by virtue of an inward nature, or the influence of final causes, and (3) irregularly, without definite cause, btu just by absolute chance; and this doctrine is of the inmost essence of Aristotelianism" Peirce 6.36. See Aristotle’s outline of Causes 194 b. See chance in Book II, ch 4, 5, 6 196
"A sign has two objects, its object as it is represented and its object in itself" 8.333.
"It also has three interpretants, its interpretant as represented or meant to be understood, its interpretant as it is produced, and its interpretant in itself" 8.333
Aristotle also divided his causes into the particular and generic, or local and global (physics, 195b)
"it is plan tha there is such a thing as chance and spontaneity Aristotle 196b15.
Dynamic Object
Can be considered the real, the sensually active. It is nominalistic to consider that cognition moves directly from sensation to thought; this is Locke's view, it is the view of all nominalists, where the one is a reflection or a bond, with the other.
"nothing can be more completely false than that we can experience only our own ideas" 6.95..
."our knowledge of things in themselves is entirely relative, it is true; but all experience and all knowledge is knowledge of that which is, independently of being represented" 6.95
The dynamic object is that which "the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience" 8.314. The Dynamic Object is the identity "of the actual or real' the Immediate object is the perception in the self.
For someone like Hobbes, the signs in the mind are dependent on language; for Ockham, they are natural, and therefore, for Hobbes as well as Saussure, the commonalities of belief are conventional and arbitrary. For an extreme nominalist, even the concepts in the mind would not be common or universal, but strictly local events, whence there could be no truths or common judgments. So too, with Locke, who also considered general ideas of 'contrivances of the mind'
For Berkeley "nothing that we can know or even think can exist without the mind, for we can only think reproductions of sensations...we cannot think of a thing as existing unperceived, for we cannot separate in thought what cannot be separated in perception" 8.29
"We separate the past and the present. The past is the inner world, the present the outer world" 8.282
External reality exists. Peirce's critique of Hegel was that "he has usually overlooked external Secondness...he has committed the trifling oversight of forgetting that there is a real world with real actions and reactions" 1.368
An 'indecomposable element of the phaneron, "which are what they are regardless of anything else, each complete in itself; provided, of course that they are capable fo composition" 1.295. This means, that the object has magnitude (see Aristotle). These, Peirce refers to as 'Priman'.
"the Reality which by some means contributes to determining the Sign to its Representation" 4.536
Mind, the mind of the cosmos, is external mind, "all knowledge comes to us by observation, part of it forced upon us from without from Nature's mind and part coming from the depths of that inward aspect fo mind, which we egotistically call ours; though in truth it is we who float upon its surface and belong to it more than it belongs to us. Nor can we affirm that the inwardly seen mind is altogether independent of that outward mind which is its Creator" 7.557.
Induction expands. Abduction replaces the predicate, or the system of relations, by a different predicate or hypothesis of relations.
"perception is the possibility of acquiring information" 7.587.
Immediate Object
We now move into the state of discrete reality - "indecomposable elements which are what they are relatively to a second but independently of any third. Such, for example, is the idea of otherness. We will call such ideas and all that is marked by them Secondan (i.e., dependent on a second)" 1.296.
This is the sensation, the sensual observation which is at the root of the internal/external interface. These sensations "belong to the particular situation of the observer, nd the particular instant of time" 7.331, which is to say, 'no man can make another man's observations, or reproduce them; but he cannot even make at one time those observations which he himself made at another time" 7.331.
This is the index, which "exercises a real physiological force over the attention...and directs it to a particular object of sense" 8.41
It is an aspect of the relation of secondness, a volitional force., and it introduces "a consciousness of duality or dual consciousness. Feeling is simple consciousness, the consciousness that can be contained within an instant of time, the consciousness of the excitation of nerve-cells; it has no parts and no unity. What I call volition is the consciousness of the discharge of nerve-cells, either into the muscles, etc., or into other nerve-cells; it does not involved the sense fo time (i.e. not of a continuum) but it does involve the sense of action and reaction, resistance, externality, otherness, pair-edness" 8.41
"the lower consciousness of feeling and the higher consciousness of nutrition, this direct cosncisousness of hitting and of getting hit enters into all cognition" 8.41
to state that any two immediate objects or sensual observations are alike, requires a mediative process. "that comparison would be an act of thought not included in the two observations severally; for the two observations existing at different times, perhaps in different minds, cannot be brought together to be compared directly in themselves, but only by the aid of memory.." 7.332.
The pure priman, that quality of feeling irregardless of anything else, "there is nothing else in immediate consciousness" 1.318
This could also be the "real, physical connection of a sign with its object, either immediately or by its connection with another sign, I call the pure demonstrative application of the sign" 5.287. That is, the Internal Object operating within the internal architecture of the Sign, is connected to the External Object, operating outside of the architecture.
However, the 'representative function' of the sign does not lie in this demonstrative application, "because it is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought" 5.287 and both the Dynamic Object and the Immediate Object are not within thought.
"That which distinguishes both sensations proper and emotions from the feeling of a thought is that in the case of the two former the material quality is made prominent" 5.294
"an incomplex thought can..be nothing but a sensation or emotion, having no rational character" 5.294. Note- that "this is very different from the ordinary doctrine, according to which the very highest and most metaphysical conceptions are absolutely simple" 5.294
A quality, which is a state of firstness, "is eternal, independent of time and of any realization" 1.420.
"the Object as the Sign itself represents it, and whose Being is thus dependent upon the Representation of it in the Sign" 4.536
"every thought is a sign" 5.253...and "thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time" 5.253 which is to say, it is interpreted by being moved into another sign.
The sign is not synonymous with the external reality.
"cognition arises from a process of beginning" 5.293, but not from an absolute first
The Interpretant
thought, the interpretant, has 'three properties" "First, it is something we are aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and third, it involves the establsihment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit" .5.397. We can see in this, the II, the DI and the FI. The DI can be called 'thought at rest' (5.397), 'although thought is essentially an action'. The final point, is the establishment of a belief, a habit.
The interpretant is a thought, an event, an act of the mind. "thoughts have no existence except in the mind; only as they are regarded do they exist...two thoughts cannot be similar unless they are brought together in the mind...two thoughts are separated by an interval of time" (5.288)
perceptual facts are "the first judgments which we make concerning percepts" 7.198. It is an abstract affair. "Such a fact which represents the percept in a very meagre way, although it is, in itself, a relatively isolated fact, - as isolated as any fact can be, - nevertheless does not, in itself, call for any explanation" 7.198
"The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses...The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant, is [the] purpose is asking it" 8.314
Peirce's argument against intuition, understanding it in Anselm's perception as a cognition undetermined by a previous cognition, concludes that "we have no intuitive faculty of distinguishing intuitive from mediate cognitions" 5.224
Perception, then, "represents two objects reacting upon one another" 5.55. It involves surprise. "This action of experience takes place "by a series of surprises" 5.51.
" a double consciousness at once of an ego and a non-ego, directly acting upon each other" 5.53
This is "the momentary direct dyadic consciousness of an ego and a non-ego then and there present and reacting each upon the other" 1.334
He feels that one of these agents is passive, the other active, "the will to produce a change is active, the will to resist a change is passive" 1.334.
"The only way in which any force can be learned is by something like trying to oppose it" 1.334.
This shock, permits learning, awareness. "It is [the] special field of experience to acquaint us with events, with changes of perceptions. Now that which particularly characterizes sudden changes of perception is a shock. A shock is a volitional phenomenon" 1.335. "It is the compulsion, the absolute constraint upon us to think otherwise than we have been thinking that constitutes experience" 1.336
Without this insertion of closure by the shock of otherness - one must rely on 'divine assistance', on some external intentional agency by which to contact, interact with, perception. Peirce's doctrine of 'immediate perception', operating in a state of secondness, prevents.."that denial cuts off all possibility of ever cognizing a relation" 5.56.
The source of the perception, is the other, the non-ego.
The Interpretant can also be understood within Peirce's outline of the Legisign, which is "a law that is a Sign" 2.246.
"This law is usually established by men. Every conventional sign is a legisign...It is not a single object, but a general type...Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be termed a Replica of it....The Replica is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences" 2.246. A Sinsign is an "actual existent thing or event which is a sign" 2.245.
The interpretant is a mediating representation; representation is reference to an interpretant.
A symbol is "signs which are at least potentially general" 1.559., (1867), and symbols should not be restricted to 'conventional signs' (2.340, 1895)
The Interpretant operates within a state of Secondness. "the second is therefore the absolute last" 1.358.
"for the second to have the finality that we have seen belongs to it, it must be determined by the first immovably, and thenceforth be fixed; so that unalterable fixity becomes one of its attributes" 1.358. Now, the state of secondness is itself divisible. "thus we have a division of seconds into those whose very being, or Firstness, it is to be seconds, and those whose Secondness is only an accretion. This distinction springs out of the essential elements of Secondness. For Secondnesss involves Firstness...One is the second whose very Firstness is Secondness. the other is a second whose Secondness is second to a Firstness". 1.528. I will call the first one the Immediate Interpretant and the second one, the Dynamic Interpretant.
Furthermore, Peirce goes on to call the "Secondness in which one of the seconds is only a Firstness" a 'degenerate Secondness' (1.528), while the other one, is genuine, the 'Secondness of genuine seconds, or matters'. The degenerate one "really amounts to nothing but this, that a subject, in its being a second, has a Firstness, or quality" (1.528.). As Peirce notes, "with this distinction Thirdness has nothing to do" (1.528)
The Final Interpetant is the Representamen, and note that Peirce said that it need not involve the human mind. The dynamic interpretant will be the sign. "By a sign I mean anything which conveys a definite notion of an object in any way, " 1.540, while a representamen is "whatever that analysis applies to" 1.540.
A representamen is"a subject of a triadic relation TO a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called its INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant" 1.541. Now, with this as the definition of the Final Interpretant,. Peirce notes "this relation cannot consist in any actual event that ever can have occurred" 1.542. "The interpretant cannot be a definite individual object. The relation must therefore consist in a power of the representamen to determine some interpretant to being a representament of the same object" 1.542
Peirce's 1903 definition is "A Sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to that same Object, and that in such a way as to bring a fourth into relation to that Object in the same form ad infinitum" 2.92.
I would consider the Quality as the Immediate Object. Furthermore, he states that it is not necessary that the Interpretant should actually exist.
the rule of erasure and insertion; the rule of iteration and deiteration (4.500)
CONTROL. The interpretant is a process of controlling cognition. It cannot begin until the 'percept' is formed, within a state of secondness. "The distinction of logical goodness and badness must begin where control of the processes of cognition begins; and any object that antecedes the distinction, if it has to be named either good or bad, must be named good....taken at its own valuation" 5.114 That is, a percept in firstness is accepted at face value.
"A fact is an abstracted element...a fact is so much of the reality as it represented in a single proposition. "6.67
"thus, there are three elements of cognition: thought, the habitual connection between thoughts, and processes establishing a habitual connection between thoughts" 7.355.
In order, the II, DI and FI "a thing which stands for another thing is a representation or sign. so that it appears that every species of actual cognition is of the nature of a sign" 7.355
The sign then, is "interpreted to thought and addresses itself to some mind" 7.356.
the validity of it being a sign, is its ability to enter into relationships, that is "the sign must be interpreted as another sign" 7.356
"This character of signs that they must be capable of interpretation in every sense belongs to every kind of cognition" 7.357..
cognition is, not in itself, but "for what it is in its effects upon other thoughts" 7.357
And "the rationality of thought lies in its reference to a possible future" 7.361
Immediate Interpretant
"unanalyzed effect" of a sign, 'the effect the sign first produces or may produce upon a mind, without any reflection upon it". LW:p.110
If this is the immed. inter. then, it is not possible 'to exercise any control over that operation or to subject it to criticism" 5.115. 'therefore, perceptual judgment is "utterly beyond control" 5.115
"The Immediate Interpretant consists in the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual reaction. Thus the Immediate and Final Interpretants seem to me absolutely distinct from the Dynamical Interpretant and from each other" 8.315
Peirce refers to Aristotle's statement that "the objects of thought are in the sensible forms" (Aristotle 432a5).. by which I understand, that potentiality has become closed within a code., and Peirce states that the starting point or first premiss of thought, is 'in a perceptual judgment', ie, in the immediate interpretant.
"whatever we say of ideas as they are in consciousness is said of something unknowable in its immediacy" 7.425.
In its phase of firstness in the immediate object, we cannot know it; equally, we cannot know it in its immediate interpretant phase as an idea, except that it is. "the only thought that is really present to us is a thought we can neither think about nor talk about" 7.425. For that, we need a formal code, a referential code.
Therefore, thinking, is not focused within only one process, but is a continuum of expanding consciousness. We cannot, for example, operate only within the immediate percepts of firstness. this would lead us to a reality based around a collection of incidents, of 'perceptual facts' "which are the first judgments which we make concerning percepts" 7.198. This would be a reality based within only the immediate interpretant.
"A perceptual fact is therefore an abstract affair. Each such fact covers only certain features of the percept...it is involuntary and cannot be prevented or corrected...[it is] a relatively isolate fact" (7.198) which does not call for any explanation.
This immedediate interpretant, is, "so far as it is immediately present, a mere sensation without parts, and therefore, in itself, without similarity to any other, but incomparable with any other...whatever is wholly incomparable with anything else is wholly inexplicable, because explanation consists in bringing things under general laws or under natural classes. Hence, every thought, in so far as it is a feeling of a peculiar sort, is simply an ultimate, inexplicable fact" 5.289
"no present actual thought (which is a mere feeling) has any meaning, any intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what this thought may be connected within representation by subsequent thoughts" 5.289.
Therefore, in thought, ie, in interpretation, there are three elements - the material quality, or "how it feels, which gives thought its quality".5.290. This is the Immediate Interpretant, which is the 'material quality of a representation' 5.291.
. then, "the pure denotative application, or real connection, which brings one thought into relation with another" 5.290/ This is the dynamic interpretant
Then, "the representative function which makes it a representation . 5.290. This is the final interpretant.
These perceptual judgments "contain general elements" 5.181, and it is here, that abduction works. 'abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any sharp line of demarcation'...the abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash' 5.181
the immediate interpretant, as an idea, if "left to itself does not retain its vividness but sinks more and more into dimness" 7.500. This will, however, be strengthened, if it is to remain, by moving into the phase of the dynamic interpretant, which works within formal codifiication, such that associations or bonds can be made. There are numerous hierarchies of associations, from the most simple and primitive to the complex.
"the perceptive judgment is the result of a process, although of a process not sufficiently conscious to be controlled, ro, to state it more truly, not controllable and therefore not fully conscious" 1.181
"self-control is the character which distinguishes reasonings from the processes by which perceptual judgments are formed" 5.194. .
This idea is also Peirce's 'simple apprehension, which produces concepts expressed by names or terms' (4.39
"the interpretant as it is revealed in the right understanding of the Sign itself, and is ordinarily called the meaning of the sign. " 4.536
also termed the 'emotional interpretant" 5.475. "If a sign produces any further proper significate effect, it will do so through the mediation of the emotional interpretant, and such further effect will always involve an effort" 5.475
"our perceptual judgments are the first premises of all our reasonings and that they cannot be called into question" 5.116
There are no specific images in this Immediate Interpretant The II is linked to the Dynamic Interpretant, "if a thought of a certain kind continues for a certain length of time as it must do to come into consciousnesss the immediate effect produced by this causality must also be present during the whole time, so that it is a part of that thought" 7.353 The immediate effect is the formal code, the dynamic inerpretant
"reasoning unconsciously can hardly be called reasoning" 7.458.
"reasoning proper begins when I am conscious that the judgment I reach is the effect in my mind of a certain judgment which I had formed before" 7.459. That is, I must have a means of reference, a formal logic and code. This takes place in the dynamic interpretant nodal site.
Dynamic Interpretant
dynamic "the actual effect which the Sign, asa Sign, really determines. 4.536
"the Dynamical Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign. This interpretant derives its character from the Dyadic category, the category of Action. this has two aspects, the Active and the Passive, which are not merely opposite aspects but make relative contrasts between different influences of this Category as More Active and More Passive. In psychology this category marks Molition in its active aspect of a force and its passive aspect as a resistance". 8.315. Feelings are "no part of the dynamic Interpretant " 8.315.
This is also referred to as the 'energetic interpretant" 5.475.."an exertion upon the Inner World...It can never be the meaning of an intellectual concept, since it is a single act, [while] such a concept is of a general nature" 5.475.
This refinement, by virtue of the introduction of referential logic, a formal logic, a code, inserts a constraint on the movement of the sensation. This dynamic interpretant can have, moreover, multiple layers of such codes, each more and more restrictive and specific. Therefore, these can be, like Prophyr's categories, and we can indeed analyze them within the scholastic 'intentio secundo', the secondary intentionality..as differentiated from the immediate interpretant of intentio prima.
A simple dynamic interpretant will have a basic codal reference - leading to what Peirce terms a 'simple consequence' (7.460. "Such inferences are common enough. Uneducated people seldom reason in a higher way; and educated people reason so very often" 7.461.
I would also consider the dynamic interpretant under the concept of the second intention "thought about thought as a symbol" 4.465, the relation of the sign to its interpretant.
this can be a judgment, which are 'true or false' 4.39
.the 'direct effect actually produced by a Sign upon an interpreter of it. 4.536
."the [dynamical]interpretant derives its character from the Dyadic category, the category of Action" 8.315
but, since "action cannot be a logical interpretant" 5.491, then
"the dynamic interpretant is a single, actual event" LW p.111
The dynamic interpretant, operating within these formal codes, permits multiple associations. "the action of associative suggestion does not take place instantly as soon as the two ideas are in consciousness together. There are continual changes going on in the connections of ideas in consciousness; and the action of associative suggestion does not take place until chance has brought teh two ideas into suitable connection for acting upon one another" 7.500.
Then, this will move into the final interpretant, which is 'outside the internal consciousness',
Final Interpretant
this is the ultimate in reasoning, and can also be understood as learning, but not learning as discovery but as creation. Knowledge is being created in this phase.
"The mere experience of a sense-reaction is not learning" 7.536. That is, even the subtle descriptions of the dynamic interpretant are not knowledge.
"logic must be founded on ethics...ethics rests in the same manner on a foundation of esthetics" 8.255. and, the three levels of consciousness can be understood within the Peircean categories as Feeling, Reaction and Thought,.
The final interpretant, the need "is something that gives its sanction to action. It is of the third category. Only one must not take a nominalist view of Thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. Consciousness may mean any one of the three categories. But if it is to mean Thought it is more without us that within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us." 8.257
The most important result of Peirce's pragmaticism, is that it insists on an abandonment of nominalism,
"another event which takes place altogether outside my consciousness, though there is a sign of it in consciousness. Namely, the association between the two ideas becomes strengthened, in such a way that the more vivid idea becomes more likely to call up the less vivid one on another occasion" 7.501. That is, this final interpretant is an action that reinserts conservative inertia or stability.
This could be similar to his 'ratiocination or reasoning, which produces inferences, expressed by argumentations - which latter I would suggest refer to the establishment of relationships' See 4.39 (1893)
"a tendency towards ends is so necessary a constituent of the universe that the mere action of chance upon innumerable atoms has an inevitable teleological result" 8.44
"One of the ends so brought about is the development of intelligence and of knowledge....knowledge in its development leaves no question unanswered" 8.44
"There is efficient causation and there is final, or ideal causation...But the end of thought is action only in so far as the end of action is another thought. "8.272
"the final settled opinion is not any particular cognition, in such and such a mind, at such and such a time" but is what is held true as "the result of sufficient experience and reasoning" 7.336 f, which is to say, that the 'final opinion is independent of the thoughts of any particular men, but is not independent of thought in general" 7.336
Now - is this final interpresent a correspondence with the immediate object, that first stimuli of sensation? ie, is it "that all conclusions of reasoning are valid only so far as they are true to the sensations" 7.338.
"the object of the final opinion which we have seen to be independent of what any particular person things, may very well be external to the mind" 7.339. That is, final cause is not focused in the individual - and is, as filiated with the external reality, not completely internal. Again, Peirce states that "the object of final belief which exists only in consequence of the belief, should itself produce the belief" 7.340 which is to say, that the final interpretant is the final cause. This is not serial linearity,
To say that realities exist before the belief, is merely to state that external reality exists.
This is also comparable to Aristotle's final cause, and for Peirce also, is the action of truth-seeking, for this action, using both experience nd knowledge out to result in thee truth. It includes time and experience "the only kind of predestination of the attainment of truth by science is an eventual predestination...[via] the rationalizing power of experience" 7.78
this is also known as the 'logical interpretant', which ascertains "the nature of this effect' of the mental effect. The result of this is not a specific sign, but a 'general application', a 'habit-chance' (5.476).
The relation of the final interpretant to the sign (understood as the logical node, is as a Term, Proposition, or Argument which acts upon the Interpretor 'through his own self-control" 4.538
"refers to the manner in which the Sign tends to represent itself to be related to its Object" 4.536
Importantly, this final interpretant, as final cause, is not implicitly contained in the premises. As Peirce pointed out, that type of reasoning is "regulated entirely by the principle of contradiction...that nothing must be said in the conclusion which is not implied in the premises" 4.52, which is merely a way of thought based on unearthing of the hidden existent - a platonic thought. In this instance, thought is not the development of relationships, but the digging up of the existent.
the manner in which "the Sign tends to represent itselt to be related to its Object" 4.536...its effect is to establish rules for interpretation of actions
It is this interpretant, outside the direct touch of Secondness, yet indexically related to it, that I will consider within Aristotle's final cause., lying in some measure, as a means of evolutionary "rationalization of the universe" 1.590
This final cause is future directed and communal rather than individual, "for past experience is for each of us ours, and that which the future brings is not ours, which becomes present only in the instant of assimilation". 7.531
As reflexive, this is as a final cause, and as Peirce defines the general, "always in a state of incipiency, of growth" 1.615
And the final interpretant operates within the notion of a community, "without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge" and this is an infinite and future-focused community
"the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference" 5.313, the community is increasing in knowledge..
The final interpretant is belief, pragmatic belief, involving self control of thought; it is communal,
a person is not "absolutely an individual...[but] the man's circle of society...is a sort of loosely compacted person "5.421
"the rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future" 5.427, for "future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control" 5.427, but this cannot be a specific interpretation, but must be 'applicable to every situation' and therefore, 'it must be simply the general description of all the experimental phenomena which the assertion of the proposition virtually predicts" 5.427
Pragmaticism is not phenomenalism, operating within the richness of sensual data, but 'eliminates their sential element, and endeavors to define the rational purport" 5.428
the final interpretant can also be a factor in a circular continuuum.."our section of time, is constrained within limits..but time itself "stretches on beyond those limits, infinite though they be, returns into itself, and begins again" 6.210
'whatever is absolutely simple must be absolutely free; for a law over it must apply to some common feature of it. And if it has no features, no law can seize upon it" 6.236.
Two Realities
the potential and the actual
the external and the internal
the past/future and the present
Peirce also refer to 'two kinds of laws', "those which in a different state of things would continue to hold good and those which in a different state of things would not hold good". He calls the former 'formal laws' and the latter 'material laws'. "The formal laws do not depend on any particular state of things, and hence we say we have not derived them from experience; that is to say, any other experience would have furnished the premisses for them as well as that which we have experienced while to discover the material laws we require to have known just such facts as we did" 7.137
He further comments on the danger of reducing all formal laws to material laws, and vice versa.
"A reality which has no representation is one which has no relation and no quality' 5.312
"Every sane person lives in a double world, the outer and the inner world, the world of percepts and the world of fancies" 5.487
'matter is effete mind' that 'inveterate habits become physical laws' (6.24), which suggests that logic, conceptual order, is primordial, and that matter, the articulation of this logic into specific entities or metastates, is dependnent on the operations of this primordial logic or mind.
Difference between the external and the real. The external is "any object whose attributes...will...remain exactly what they are" despite what one thinks of them 6.327. If the attributes vary, it is called 'a figment'.
"generals are predicates" 6.340 .
A singular is a subject, and is known by the compulsion of its state of secondness, that characterizes experience. "the singular subject is real; and reality is insistency" 6.340
The direction of time, from past to future, is operative only in the mind, but not in physics. "This makes one of the great contrasts between the law of mind and the law of physical force, where there is no more distinction between the two opposite directions in time than between moving northward and moving southward". 6.127
In the upper hierarchies, "the present is affectible by the past but not by the future" 6.127
"Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own" 6.132. This continuity is firstness, the force of feeling. "Accordingly, time logically supposes a continuous range of intensity in feeling' 6.132
Feeling.. 'has a subjective, or substantial, spatial extension'..[and] feeling, as a subject of inhesion, is big"6.133
"Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. the second is the energy with which it affects other ideas...the third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it" 6.135
'The first character of a general idea..is that it is living feeling...in its absence of boundedness..in the presence of this continuity of feeling....6.138-9. "feeling which has not yet emerged into immediate consciousness is already affectible and already affected. In fact, this is habit, by virtue of which an idea is brought into present consciousness by a bond that had already been established etween it and another idea while it was still in futuro" 6.141
"the affection of one idea by another...is that the affect idea is attached as a logical predicate to the affecting idea as subject. so when a feeling emerges into immediate consciousness, it always appears as a modification of a more or less general object already in the mind" (6.142)...note- generals are predicates..
This synechism, this law of continuity, does not demand the surrender of particularity, it only "requires that they shall influence and be influenced by one another' 6.153;
"all the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite" 6.191
'the very first and most fundamental element that we have to assume is a Freedom, or Chance, or Spontaneity, by virtue of which the general vague nothing-in-particular-ness that preceded the chaos took a thousand indefinite qualities. The second element we have to assume is that there could be accidental reactions between those qualities..."6.200
All that there is, if First, Feelings; Second, Efforts; Third, habits...dead matter would be merely the final result of the complete induration of habit reducing the free play of feeling and the brute irrationalisty of effort to complete death" 6.201
"the original potentiality is the Aristotelian matter of indeterminacy from which the universe is formed" 6.206
multiple worlds is only possible in potentiality, multiple worlds "is not of the order of the existing universe, but is merely a Platonic world, of which we are, therefore, to conceive that there are many, both coordinated and subordinated to one another; until finally out of one of these Platonic worlds is differentiated the particular actual universe of existence in which we happen to be" 6.208
The local and the global, the statistical and the case, such that an average within the statistical realm will be, widely disparate in the immediate case study.
There must be non-equilibrium, or assimilation, relations, interaction, would be impossible.
, "an element of pure spontaneity or lawless originality mingles, or least must be supposed to mingle, with law everywhere" 1.407.
"we can immediately know only what is 'present' to the mind" 1.38
"the notion that a particle is absolutely present in one part of space and absolutely absent from all the rest of space is devoid of all foundation"..."we apprehend our own ideas only as flowing in time, and since neither the future nor the past, however near they may be, is present, there is as much difficulty in conceiving our perception of what pases within us as in conceiving external perception" (1.38)
"the present can contain no time" 1.38
Kant's error,.., he "seeks to show that the only way we can apprehend our own flow of ideas, binding them together as a connected flow, is by attaching them to an immediately perceived persistent externality" 1.39
Neither actuality or Potentiality, on its own, can exist. Matter, "deprived of the governance of ideas, and thus were to have no regularity in its action, so that throughout no fraction of a second could it steadily act in any general way. For matter would thus not only not actually exist, but it would not have even a potential existence, since potentiality is an affair of ideas. It would be just downright Nothing" 1.218.
this realism is not Cartesian rationalism, called by Peirce "intellectualism, "which denies that blind force is an element of experience distinct from rationality, or logical force" 1.220.
What this 'lower' level does, is to relate to the material level in such a way, by its force of contnuity, "it confers upon them the power of working out results in this world" (them, being individual members of a class). 1.220
final, or mental causation; and material, or efficient, causation.....they are distinct...
"To confound these two things together is fatal" 1.265
"Mind has its universal mode of action, namely, by final causation" 1.269
An evolution governed only by adaptive immediacy, is efficient causality; "it suggests a machinery of efficiency to bring about the end" 1.269
regarding two classifications - "one is a division according to the form or structure of the elements, the other according to their matter" 1.288
the formal code can be understood as propositional, for "a proposition is a sign separately indicating what it is a sign of" 7.203. ..."this amounts to saying that it represents that an image is similar to something to wich actual experience forces the attention" 7.203.
It acts as the general, as the predicate, and "a proposition cannot predicate a character not capable of sensuous presentation; nor can it refer to anything with which experience does not connect us" 7.203.
"the entire meaning of a hypothesis lies in its conditional experiential predictions" 7.203, which is to say, the formal code, the metanarrative - is capable of prediction.
"We live in two worlds, a world of fact and a world of fancy...we call the world of fancy the internal world, the world of fact the external world" 1.321.
"First and second, agent and patient, yes and no, are categories which enable us roughly to describe the facts of experience" 1.359 but as Peirce notes, this is not enough. "The third is that which bridges over the chasm between the absolute first and last, and brings them into relationship" 1.359.
To operate ONLY on the unilevel architeccture, is a nominalist reality. Even if there are relations, these are not generalizations or mediations, but individual facts; they are dyadic bonds. "For that reason, pure dyadism is an act of arbitrary will or blind force...the dyad is an individual fact, as it existentially is; and it has no generality in it" 1.328.
This is a non-evolutionary diagramme. "Ancient mechanics recognized forces as causes which produced motions as their immediate effects, looking no further than the essentially dual relation of causse and effect. That was why it could make no progress with dynamics" 1.359
That there are three categories, none reducible to the other, but, they are filiated each with the other "Not only does Thirdness suppose and involve the ideas of Secondness and Firstness, but never will it be possible to find any Secondness or Firstness in the phenomenon that is not accompanied by Thirdness" 5.90. Hegelianism is serial, with all merging into one, but "what is required for the idea of a genuine Thirdness is an independent solid Secondness and not a Secondness that is a mere corollary of an unfounded and inconceivable Thirdness" 5.01
Genuine and Degenerate Secondness
"when the second suffers some change from the action of the first, and is dependent upon it, the secondness is more genuine" 1.358. But, this relation must "not be a mere accident or incident of the first; otherwise the secondness again degenerates" 1.358
There are two distinct grades of secondness and three grades of thirdness.
"Besides genuine Secondness, there is a degenerate sort" 1.365. A genuine relation will consist of two realities, which are in relation either by existential or conceptual relations. "A real relation subsists in virtue of a fact which would be totally impossible were either of the related objects destroyed; while a relation of reason subsists in virtue of two facts, one only of which would disappear on the annihilation of either of the relates" 1.365.
Genuine second relations are constituted by external facts, and 'are true actions of one thing upon another" 1.365. Degenerate seconds are imputed relations of the quality of a thing upon another. "We speak of allurements and motives in the language of forces, as though a man suffered a compulsion from within" 1.365.
Degenerate secondness operates by applying firstness to its nature. IF the action of consciousness ends at this site, then, this is a degenerate action, locating reality only within the internal realm. This sets up a reality, a state of existence, as being essentially 'relative to', a reference to a first that 'never attains full Secondness'.
The degenerate form of Secondness, is "but a weak or Secondary Secondness that is not in the pair in its own quality, but belongs to it only in a certain respect" 5.69
Genuine and Degenerate Thirdness
There are two degrees of degeneracy among thirdness.
"the first is where there is in the fact itself no Thirdness or mediation, but where there is true duality; the second degree is where there is not even true Secondness in the fact itself" 1.366.
Thirdness degenerate in the first degree uses as, mediator, not an action of generalization, but a bond of force, Secondness. This is inductive collation, a synagoge of gathering by a firm boundary. This is an accidental relation of two entities which have, in reality, no bond. "Intelligibility, or reason objectified, is what makes Thirdness genuine" 1.366.
In speaking of the sign, again, Peirce considers two forms of 'degeneracy', by which he does not refer to any evaluation, but to its relational role. An index (Obsistent Sign) is, degenerate in the lesser degree (Thirdness as first degree degenerate), if it has a genuine relation to the object. An icon (Originalian Sign) is degenerate in the greater degree (Thirdness as second degree degenerate)if it is a sign whose significance is due to its quality. (2.92) A genuine sign is 'transuasional' or symbol, which is general and mediative.
Thirdness, in its most simple degenerate form, where "the idea of the future can be so translated into the Secundal ideas of the past" LW;p.27.
thirdness degenerate in the second degree, an even more elusive form of degeneracy, is one that inserts a quality, a feeling, (relation of Firstness) as authoritative mediator, and sets up a situation where a monadic state assumes an action of mediation that it should never have.
"the mere coexistence of two singular facts constitutes a degenerate form of dual fact" 1.372
just as there are three orders of Thirdness, so there are three kinds of synthetical consciousness..."Synthetical consciousness degenerate in the first degree, corresponding to accidental Thirdness, is where there is an external compulsion upon us to think things together...[we]are compelled to think certain things...Synthetical consciousness, degenerate in the second degree, corresponding to intermediate thirds, is where we think different feelings to be alike or different, which, since feelings in themselves cannot be compared and therefore cannot be alike, so that to say they are alike is merely to say that the synthetical consciousness regards them so, comes to this, that we are internally compelled to synthesize them or to sunder them. This kind of synthesis appears in a secondary form in association by resemblance" 1.383.
This degenerate in the second sense is a synthesis by the 'inward attractions of the feelings or representations themselves', while the degenerate in the first sense is by an external 'force of necessity'.
"The First degree of Degeneracy is found in an Irrational Plurality, which...is a mere complication of duality.." 5.70, as for example, in minute subdivisions.
"In pure Secondness, the racting correlates are Singulars, and as such are Individuals, not capable of further division" 5.70.
"The most degenerate Thirdness is where we conceive a mere Quality of Feeling, or Firstness, to represent itself to itself as Representation" 5.71
"a relatively reactive thirdness or thirdness of the lesser degree of degeneracy, and a relatively qualitative thirdness or thirdness of the last degeneracy" 5.72
Internal reality - as existence, "existence, though brought about by dyadism, or opposition, as its proper determination, yet, when brought about, lies abstractly and in itself considered, within itself" 1.461. That is, internal reality cannot exist other than in the hic et nunc, in present perfect time, and - released from thirdness continuity.
We know that there are three types of Firstness, of which only one is genuine. "qualitative possibility' is genuine. However, within secondness, we can have secondness operating within existence; and within thirdness, we can have thirdness operating within mentality, resulting from applying firstness to these categories.
"In genuine Thirdness, the first, the second, and the third are all three of the nature of thirds, or thought...the first is thought in its capacity as mere possibility...the second is thought playing the role of a Secondness, or event...the third is thought in its role as governing Secondness...the operation of a sign" 1.537.
In the first degree of degenerate Thirndess, "the third brings about a Secondness but does not regard that Secondness as anything more than a fact" 1.538.
Universal and Local Properties
"There are at least two distinct orders of categories, which I call the particular and the universal" 5.43.
The particular are series, "only one of each series being resent"...the universal categories, on the other hand, belong to every phenomenon" 5.43. We can here distinguish the particular efficient and formal causes, and the general material and final.
"universality is a relation of a predicate to the subjects of which it is predicated. That can exist only in the mind, wherein alone the coupling of subject and predicate take place" 8.18
the universal is in the mind, by virtue of habit (8.18) of habitualiter rather than actualiter. Its existence in the mind "is independent of consciousness" 8.18
And, it can be, in this form, understood as real. It is "universal in the mind, singular in things out of the mind" 8.18. That is, the real is singular in existence and universal in the mind. Ockham vs this.
"in the action and reaction of bodies, each body is affected by the other body's motion, not as participating in it but as being opposite to it. 6.84
"an isolated particle is at any instant at one point; that is its actual sate. But it is so affected by the state which is not actual, but belongs to it by a data differing from the actual [in]one way, that, at a date differing from the actual the other way, it takes a state differing in the opposite way from its actual state' 6.84.
Space, according to Peirce "represents the law of the reciprocal reactions of existents'. 6.84. Therefore, since space is universal, then existents are in interaction.
The Membrane or the Zone of Attraction/Attention/Action
this zone is the site of doubt, of error, of entropic reflexion and doubt of the supremacy of inert truth. "inanimate things do not err at all; and the lower animals very little. Instinct is all but unerring; but reason in all vitally important matters is a treacherous guide" 6.87. That is, this membrane zone is more evident in the higher than the lower species.
"sensation and the power of abstraction or attention may be regarded as , in one sense, the sole constituents of all thought" 5.295.
"By the force of attention, an emphasis is put upon one of the objective elements of consciousness" 5.295. This is not immediate consciousness (Immediate Interpretant), nor is it feeling. It 'consists in some effect upon consciousness, and so can exist only so far as it affects our knowledge...and can consist only in the capacity which the recognition emphasized has for producing an effect upon memory, or otherwise influencing subsequent thought" 5.295.
"Attention is a matter of continuous quantity; for continuous quantity ..reduces itself in the last analysis to time" 5.295....
the greater the attention, the closer the connection and the more accurate the logical sequence of thought"
"Attention is the power by which thought at one time is connected with and made to relate to thought at another time" 5.2295.
"Attention is an act of induction, but it is an induction which does not increase our knowledge...an argument from enumeration" 5.296
"Attention produces effects upon the nervous systems. These effects are habits, or nervous associations" 5.297..."the formation of a habit is an induction, and is therefore necessarily connected with attention or abstraction" 5.297
I am also saying that abduction, as a version of induction, takes place in the membrane zone
As Peirce notes, in dealing with non conservative actions, or entropy,[he does not use this latter term] "the parts of the action which are non-conservative are two, first and most important the ruptures, by which the elastic potential is at once converted into heat, and second and less important, the contacts" 7.472.
That is, the first action in abduction, is to break up the relations, the rules of interaction, which is then, relesed as energy or heat. The contacts or artifacts, will then, as released from their strings of relations, dissolve.
Indeed, Peirce seemed to term 'causational' as non-conservative, by which I would understand that causality is located within entropic forces..
"Man cannot think at all without formulas" 7. 494 f. Therefore, formal codality, within the dynamic interpretant, is necessary.
This chance, however, is not mere randomness, but "chance in the form of a spontaneity which is to some degree regular...specification must b supposed due to a spontaneity which develops itself in a certain and not in a chance way" 6.63.
Brooks and Wiley consider entropy-producing behaviour to be irreversible, that is, a new codal order will deviate from that order, because "biological evolution is a non equilibrium entropic process" 1988 103
"protoplasm feels. It not only feels but exercises all the functions of mind" 6.255 - growth, reproduction, taking of habits,
'"protoplasm is chilled by liquefaction, and that this brings it back to the solid state, when the heat is recovered" 6.259
"protoplasm certainly does feel...physical events are but degraded or undeveloped forms of psychical events" 6/264. Now - when these habits are broken up, then, "feeling becomes intensified" 6.264.
"Habits are general ways of behaviour which are associated with the removal of stimuli. But when the expected removal of the stimulus fails to occur, the excitation continues and increases, and non-habitual reactions take place; and these tend to weaken the habit...it is the characteristic of unstable equilibrium that near that point excessively minutes causes may produce startingly large effects" 6.264
"This breaking up of habit and renewed fortuitous spontaneity will, according to the law of mind, be accompanied by an intensification of feeling" 6.264
"wherever chance-spontaneity is found, there in the same proportion feeling exists. In fact, chance is but the outward aspect of that which within itself is feeling" 6.265
The primeval chaos "in which there was no regularity... there was an intensity of consciousness" 6.265
"wherever diversity is increasing, there chance must be operative" 6.267
"all mind is directly or indirectly connected with all matter, and acts in a more or less regular way; so that all mind more or les partakes of the nature of matter. Hence, it would be a mistake to conceive of the psychical and the physicl aspects of matter as two aspects absolutely distinct" 6.268
viewed from the outside, an entity is matter; from the inside, it is consciousness..
'generalization is nothing but the spread of feelings' 6.268
Darwin's origin of species "merely extends politico-economical views of progress to the entire realm of animal and vegetable life" 6.293
"The frequent liquefaction of protoplasm increases its power of assimilating food; so much so, indeed, that it is questionable whether in the solid form it possesses this power" 6.251
this membrane phase is active, "it takes place only during exercise'..
The membrane phase can be called the ' phase of doubt', for the system has moved out of certainty into dubitando, "the first condition of learning is to know that we are ignorant" 7.322..."real inquiry begins when genuine doubt begins and ends when this doubt ends" 7.322.
The membrane zone is the zone of entropy, of efficient causation, where "the non-conservative elements are the predominant ones" 7.503.
referring to molecules, Peirce states that "in the quiescent state the molecules are in stationary motion, while in the active state they are partly broken up and the fragments are wandering...and every action is...purely causational and not conservative" 7.503.
The phase of certainty-, where the "mind could not regard anything as possible except what it believed in" 7.323, except what it was certain of-, this phase of certitude would mean that the system was no longer able- to think.
"To say that an omniscient being is necessarily destitute of the faculty of reason" 7.323
The scientific method - is more truthful, if more stressful. As Peirce says, 'reasoning' "will never be adopted when any of the others will succeed" 7.324.
Investigation involves, besides sensation, the production of new beliefs out of old ones according to logical laws". 7.331f
The inductive action, which is experimentation testing predictions based on a hypothesis; deductive, only traces out the ideal consequences of hypotheses, and abduction, develops new hypotheses.
First type of induction (3)-sampling, and based on that collection, we conclude probable relations; second type-longitudinal; third type
'abduction - is the first step of scientific reasoning, as induction is the concluding step'
"first, the putting together of facts which it had not occurred to us to consider in their bearings upon one another, second, experimentation, observation, and experimental analysis...and third, the generalization of experimental results, that is, the recognition of the general conditions governing the experiment, and the formation of a habit of thought under the influence of it" 7.276.
The immediate interpretant-where "an interesting phenomenon has attracted attention" 7.276.
The next step must include the development of a formal code, the "method by means of which the elements of the phenomenon can be subjected to experiment" 7.276 this is the dynamic interpretant. And finally, after references to this code, such that the phenomenon can be repeated - the final interpretant is the "ascertainment of a law" 2.276.
Steps two and three can be repeated with ever iincreasing certitude of truth. Again, the three stages are, "first, the observation and miscellaneous research into the phenomena; secondly, the analysis of the phenomena and formulation of their laws, including hypothetical explanations of them; thirdly, the determination of the constants" 7.279. These are the three phases of interpretation.
The rejection of this three step process, will lead to a system that is unable to mediate its interaction between itself, ie, internal, and its not-self, ie, external processes. Peirce outlines the three methods of insulation from this method - namely, fixation of belief by tenacity, authority, and a priori or commonality, where tenacity "tends only to fix such opinions as a man already holds' - (7.317), with these opinions dependent on caprice and sporting; while authority or persecution "tends only to spread the opinions which happen to be approved by rulers" and "the method of public opinion tends to develop a particular body of doctrine" within a community. 7.317. "the method of obstinancy will infallibly be succeeded by the method of persecution and this will yield in time to the method of public opinion" 7.318.
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