I want to understand his categories better, but Peirce himself does not explain them terribly well. Any help here would be much appreciated. — Manuel
Thanks for the shout-out!I'll start a thread as others like aletheist might give different answers. — apokrisis
This is a good example of why Peirce's categories can be difficult to grasp without a lot of careful study. Seeing the red of a ball is an instance of 2ns, not 1ns, because the redness is embodied in the ball. The redness in itself, as a qualitative possibility apart from any physical instantiation and without comparison to anything else, is the closest we can get to an idea of pure 1ns.For instance seeing the red of a ball is an instance of firstness ... — Manuel
Even just the brute impact of the ball on you is 2ns, independent of your sensation of it, although that is also 2ns. Here the quality of the feeling of the rubber is 1ns.... me reacting to someone throwing the ball at me and felling the rubber of the ball would be secodness ... — Manuel
Sure, anything cognitive is basically 3ns. However, an important principle to keep in mind is that the categories are never really isolated from each other in our experience, only as artifacts of analysis that result from a kind of abstraction. We prescind 2ns from 3ns, and we prescind 1ns from both 2ns and 3ns.... and me thinking about whom to hit in this game would be thirdness. — Manuel
Even just the brute impact of the ball on you is 2ns, independent of your sensation of it — aletheist
"Firstness is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else."
"Secondness is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third."
Thirdness is is that mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation with each other" — Manuel
He says that "typical idea of firstness are qualities of feeling, or mere appearances. That scarlet... the quality itself ..." he also speaks about the idea of "hardness" being an example of firstness. — Manuel
You appear to apply these categories as widely as possible, which was likely his intent. — Manuel
I've always thought using an empirical example would be extremely helpful, as in, speaking about a red ball in a game of dodgeball so I can better visualize the categories:
For instance seeing the red of a ball is an instance of firstness, me reacting to someone throwing the ball at me and felling the rubber of the ball would be secodness and me thinking about whom to hit in this game would be thirdness. — Manuel
Strictly speaking, his categories are phenomenological rather than metaphysical, the irreducible elements of whatever is or could be present to any mind in any way. — aletheist
No, it would be pure matter lacking all qualities whatsoever.If I "do away" with firsts, it would be a ball lacking colour "only"? — Manuel
Indeed, 1ns does not exist apart from its concrete instantiations, but it is a real possibility. Peirce carefully distinguishes existence as reaction with other like things in the environment from reality as being such as it is regardless of what anyone thinks about it.It's difficult to imagine 1sts without concrete instantiations of a quale, as in, I don't know if such things could exist: a quale or phenomenal properties without concrete instantiation. — Manuel
You can't, but the impact itself is 2ns regardless of whether you "register" it. The sensation as you actually experience it is 2ns, while the quality of that sensation is 1ns. We can only apprehend that quality in itself by prescinding it from the experience.How can I register an impact without a sensation? — Manuel
That depends on what you mean by "transcend the phenomenal" and "reduction to ideaism." After all, Peirce considered phenomenology to the the first positive science, on which all the others depend for principles, and explicitly affirmed (objective) idealism in the sense that the psychical law is primoridal while the physical law is derived and special, such that matter is a peculiar sort of mind--mere specialized and partially deadened mind.Surely they have to transcend the phenomenal to avoid a mere reduction to idealism. — apokrisis
No, we are both saying that the redness of the ball is 1ns, while getting hit by it is 2ns.You're saying that getting hit by a red ball is a firstness, aletheist says it's a 2ndness. — Manuel
No, again, the sensation itself is 2ns, but its prescinded quality is 1ns.Firstness for him, as I understand him in this example, would be the sensation of rubber I feel from the ball, but me getting hit would be a second. — Manuel
Peirce distinguishes his Schelling-fashioned objective idealism from Berkeley's subjective idealism, as well as Kant's transcendental idealism and Hegel's absolute idealism.I’ve noticed before that if you go looking for references on ‘objective idealism’ that Pierce comes up at the top of the rankings. (He endorses Berkeley but rejects Berkeley’s nominalism.) — Wayfarer
After all, Peirce considered phenomenology to the the first positive science, on which all the others depend for principles, and explicitly affirmed (objective) idealism in the sense that the psychical law is primoridal while the physical law is derived and special, such that matter is a peculiar sort of mind--mere specialized and partially deadened mind. — aletheist
Sure, anything cognitive is basically 3ns. However, an important principle to keep in mind is that the categories are never really isolated from each other in our experience, only as artifacts of analysis that result from a kind of abstraction. We prescind 2ns from 3ns, and we prescind 1ns from both 2ns and 3ns. — aletheist
All thought is in signs, so all mind is semiosis.How do you get from “Eveything is mind”, to “Everything is semiosis”? — apokrisis
According to Peirce's own testimony, he is above all else a synechist. That is what leads him to be not only a pragmatist, but also an extreme scholastic realist, a tychist, and an objective idealist, which is why he eventually seeks to differentiate his "pragmaticism" from the pragmatism of James and others.Peirce certainly makes idealist sounding statements. Yet he is, in the end, the pragmatist and so all about the epistemology of how we mentally model the ontic structure of the world. — apokrisis
Like I said, qualities in themselves do not exist, but they are nevertheless real--they are as they are regardless of what anyone thinks about them.Bare qualities exist for us only within cognitive frames. Thus they don’t actually “exist”. — apokrisis
No, on my reading of Peirce, 3ns is primordial. In his cosmological diagram, the starting point is a clean blackboard (3ns), then come the aggregated white chalk marks of a Platonic world (1ns), out of one of which our existing universe is actualized as a discontinuous mark (2ns).Firstness is primordial - the start of “thingness” - when it comes to his ontology. — apokrisis
All thought is in signs, so all mind is semiosis. — aletheist
According to Peirce's own testimony, he is above all else a synechist. — aletheist
How do you get from “Everything is mind”, to “Everything is semiosis”? — apokrisis
Peirce held that science suggests that the universe has evolved from a condition of maximum freedom and spontaneity into its present condition, in which it has taken on a number of habits, sometimes more entrenched habits and sometimes less entrenched ones. With pure freedom and spontaneity Peirce tended to associate mind, and with firmly entrenched habits he tended to associate matter (or, more generally, the physical). Matter he tended to regard as “congealed” mind, and mind he tended to regard as “effete” matter. Thus he tended to see the universe as the end-product-so-far of a process in which mind has acquired habits and has “congealed” (this is the very word Peirce used) into matter.
This notion of all things as being evolved psycho-physical unities of some sort places Peirce well within the sphere of what might be called “the grand old-fashioned metaphysicians,” along with such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Whitehead, et al. Some contemporary philosophers might be inclined to reject Peirce out of hand upon discovering this fact. Others might find his notion of psycho-physical unities not so very offputting or indeed even attractive. What is crucial is that Peirce argued that mind pervades all of nature in varying degrees: it is not found merely in the most advanced animal species.
This pan-psychistic view, combined with his synechism, meant for Peirce that mind is extended in some sort of continuum throughout the universe. — SEP, Charles Sanders Pierce
Objective Idealism is the view that the world "out there" is in reality mind communicating with (I would say instantied in) our human minds. It postulates that there is only one perceiver, and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived. It accepts common sense Realism (the view that independent material objects exist), but rejects Naturalism (the view that the mind and values have emerged from material things).
Plato is regarded as one of the earliest representatives of Objective Idealism (although it can be argued that Plato's worldview was actually dualistic and not truly Idealistic). The definitive formulation of the doctrine came from the German Idealist Friedrich Schelling, and later adapted by G. W. F. Hegel in his Absolute Idealism theory. More recent advocates have included C. S. Peirce and Josiah Royce. — Philosophy Basics, Objective Idealism
Merely affirming traditional idealist concepts of spirit and mind would have been no achievement at all. There would be nothing new worth discussing. — apokrisis
With pure freedom and spontaneity Peirce tended to associate mind, and with firmly entrenched habits he tended to associate matter (or, more generally, the physical). — SEP, Charles Sanders Pierce
With pure freedom and spontaneity Peirce tended to associate mind, and with firmly entrenched habits he tended to associate matter — SEP, Charles Sanders Pierce
As for semiosis, I still can't see how it applies outside the organic realm. — Wayfarer
Can't all of the relations between inorganic substances be fully described in terms of physics and chemistry alone? — Wayfarer
And idealism doesn't mean 'believing that all is mind' or anything of the sort. — Wayfarer
IDEALISM - This is the view that the only reality is the ideal world. This would be the world of ideas. It is the view that there is no external reality composed of matter and energy. There are only ideas existing within minds.
https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/intro_text/Chapter%204%20Metaphysics/Idealism.htm
Alright but, which of his writings do you consider to be helpful when looking into the categories. — Manuel
The logic of his categories has to be convincing, otherwise someone else can ask "why don't you follow Whitehead or Heidegger?" or anyone else. — Manuel
I read Peirce as striving to undermine certainties about both matter and mind, and that way clear space for a uniting semiotic view of these divided categories. — apokrisis
And idealism doesn't mean 'believing that all is mind' or anything of the sort.
— Wayfarer
Erm... — apokrisis
Perhaps something like Russell's neutral monism — Wayfarer
So, shift the perspective a bit. What I think idealism is saying is that perception itself, cognition itself, are the constituents of the world - the 'meaning-world' in which we live. — Wayfarer
That is where understanding the idealist perspective requires something like a gestalt shift - an insight into how mind 'constructs' world. But it doesn't post 'mind' as being an objective 'thing' from which the world is made - it's that the very nature of cognition determines the world for us. Get the difference? — Wayfarer
the monism I suscribe to simply says there is one fundamental kind of stuff. — Manuel
What I was trying to point out is that if it requires so much effort to think this way, couldn't someone come along and say, no, 1sts 2nds and 3rds don't work? They could say "All you need is mind and reaction, mind takes care of 1sts and 2nds, reactions takes care of 3rds. 1stness is actually an unnecessary complication." — Manuel
Physical description still requires global laws to regulate the local accidents. It all gets very mysterious when it comes to the holism of quantum theory and the need for wavefunction decoherence. So physics tries to describe reality by excluding any sense of an observer or interpretant. But it is still there in that the laws of nature "know" what is going on. Or that the Universe is made of information and so semiosis is happening "everywhere". — apokrisis
Strictly speaking, the propositions of physics are senseless, like an unexecuted computer program, until as and when the propositions are used by an agent and thereby become grounded in the agent's perceptual apparatus in a bespoke fashion, at which point Locke's secondary qualities become temporarily welded to the physical concepts.
Classical physical concepts are therefore by design irreducible to mental concepts; something has been a central feature of physics rather than a bug, at least up until the discovery of special relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which show that even the Lockean primary qualities of objects are relative to perspective. — sime
Life and mind are localised semiosis. Cosmology is generalised semiosis. — apokrisis
I really can't understand that step. I think there's an ontological discontinuity there which is being obfuscated. Not that I have an alternative. — Wayfarer
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.