Thanks, Jeff, for this careful look at Peirce's early work with the
form/matter distinction. For me, it clarifies especially Peirce's
relationship with Kant, which is quite complex, and crucial to the genesis
of his "New List of Categories".
You remark that "Peirce, like any good philosopher, is thinking about the
history of the use of these conceptions, and he's trying to remove
confusions in the different uses found in the scholastics, the rationalist
and empiricist moderns, the Kantians and neo-Kantians, the 19th century
logicians, etc." I would add that Peirce, even in his twenties, was already
more attentive to the history of the use of logical and scientific
conceptions than most other philosophers. He made that concern explicit in
his "Ethics of Terminology" (1903), but was already practicing that ethic in
the 1860s. No wonder he was so well prepared for his work on the Century
Dictionary and, later, Baldwin's Dictionary; he was already making
dictionary entries in his youth, taking the history of usage into account,
as we can see in W1. Perhaps one of the problems for our contemporaries in
reading Peirce (aside from his convoluted and sometimes inelegant style) is
that he knew too much about the usage of scientific terms. That's a handicap
for those who prefer context-free definitions.
gary f.
} The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin. [Finnegans
Wake 452] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ gnoxics
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 18-Aug-14 1:21 AM
To: Peirce List
Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy, iconoscopy, and trichotomic category
theory
Hi Jerry, Steven, Gary F., List,
I have no doubt that that the distinction between formal and material has,
as Jerry says, "deep metaphysical and semantic interpretations." In this
discussion, however, I'm only trying to draw on Peirce's use of formal and
material as it bears on the phenomenological categories.
I've pointed to a particular place in Peirce's papers that matters much to
the way I want to reconstruct Peirce's explanations of this distinction. (CP
6.353-63) What is more, I've suggested that my approach to understanding
his account of the phenomenological categories--both formal and material--is
based on the idea that Peirce's early writings in 1865-7 contain the kernel
from which the later phenomenological theory has grown. That is, I don't
think Peirce has changed his mind in the later writings in a way that
involves a discontinuity in the development of his account. Rather, from
quite early on he was already thinking about things at three levels: the
phenomenological analysis of the elementary categories of experience, the
logical analysis of the semiotic categories, and the metaphysical account of
the categories concerning what is real. What he seems to have done in
1890-1900 is to realize--for methodological reasons--the importance of
keeping the three levels of the account more distinct. Later on, in 1900-3,
he feels a need to give the phenomenological theory its own place within the
architectonic plan.
So, as a beginning of an answer your question, let me try to be more
specific about what I think Peirce is doing in the CP at 6.353-63--at least
insofar as this discussion has a bearing on his account of the
phenomenological categories. Let us note that this was written in 1902 as
an entry for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. As such, it
happens to be written at the very time that Peirce is thinking hard about
the point of a phenomenological account of the categories.
Let me start with a few general remarks. Peirce's early lectures in 1865
and 1866 were both on the logic of science. I want to stress the fact that
he is particularly interested in the task of developing a logical theory of
synthetic reasoning. In these early lectures, he reviews the accounts of
logical inference given by other philosophers, including Whewell, Mill,
Compte and Boole. In the next lecture on Kant, there is a sustained
discussion of the distinction between matter and form. (W, vol. 1, 240-56)
In this discussion, he refers back to the "old" way of thinking about the
distinction. Then, in lecture VIII, he turns to a set of questions about
the logical forms of inference by induction and hypothesis. Here, he says
that "the first distinction we found it necessary to draw-the first
conceptions we have to signalize-forms a triad: Thing Representation Form
(colon added for clarity). Kant you remember distinguishes in all mental
representations the matter and the form. The distinction here is slightly
different." (W, vol. 1, 257). The basic point he goes on to make is that
the triad he has introduced includes a distinction between thing and form,
and that this distinction is being introduced as a hypothesis in the context
of his theory of logic. He is taking pains to point out that the
distinction should not be taken to apply to things as they really are (i.e.,
in a theory of metaphysics), but only in a theory of how we represent them
to be (i.e., in a theory of cognition, or what he will later call a theory
of semiotics).
On Peirce's account, at least at this stage of his thinking, we "only know
forms and things through representations." A little while later, he adds
the following to his early definition of form and thing: "We come now to an
objection to the division of propositions which I have just given . . . .
In order to answer this objection we must revert to that distinction between
thing, image, and form established in the lecture upon the definition of
logic. A representation is anything which may be regarded as standing for
something else. Matter or thing is that for which a representation might
stand prescinded from all that could constitute a relation with any
representation. A form is the relation between representation and thing
prescinded from both representation and thing. An image is a representation
prescinded from thing and form." This, I think, is a particularly important
explanation of the distinction between matter and form-at least insofar as
we are working in the context of a theory of logic.
Let's see what he says in 1865 just after delivering these lectures about
form and matter as applied to the phenomena of experience: "Every phenomena
has three aspects which may be called its elements. In the first place it
may be differentiated from other phenomena and considered in its qualities;
the phenomena considered as having qualities may be called its phenomenal
form. In the second place the phenomenal form may be objectified that is
thought of-reproduced in the imagination; until this is done we do not make
it the subject of a thought, we do not say it is. Considered as a subject
of thought the phenomenon may be called the phenomenal matter."
("Unpsychological View of Logic"; W, vol. 1, 313)
In this short passage, he has said quite a lot. I won't try to unpack it
all, but I would like to note that the points he makes are explicitly framed
in terms of Kant's discussion of the three-fold synthesis of the imagination
in the first Critique. That is, the movement in thought from phenomenal
form to phenomenal matter is explained in terms of Kant's account of the
transition from the synthesis of apprehension in intuition to the synthesis
of reproduction in imagination. Ignoring all of the details here (the
details matter much), we can shorten a very long story by saying that Peirce
is examining Kant's account of how we first unify the manifold of appearance
and then later turn this unified presentation into a re-presentation that is
the subject of further thought.
Peirce is already at this early stage in his development as a philosopher
noting the problems Kant is struggling with in the deduction of the
categories in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant tells
us in the Preface that the problems were so great that he simply removed the
discussion from the second edition of the first Critique. Some decades
later, he took them up again in the third Critique and tried to deal with
those problems by coming at them from a rather different angle (and a
somewhat revised understanding of how we might understand the division
between the a priori and a posteriori elements in cognition).
What is more, Peirce is ready to introduce a hypothesis as to where Kant has
gone wrong in this discussion and what is needed to give a better
explanation. Peirce is working out this hypothesis in the Lowell Lectures,
and he states his main conclusions in "On A New List." There, he starts
with the Kantian way of framing the question: "This paper is based upon the
theory already established, that the function of conceptions is to reduce
the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity and that the validity of a
conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the content of
consciousness to unity without the introduction of it." There have been a
number of attempts to understand what Peirce is doing in the lectures
leading up to this essay-and to reconstruct the argument in the essay
itself. I happen to be fond to Manley Thompson's introductory book on
Peirce, and there are a number of dissertations on the subject, including
those by Ransdell, Lohkamp, and Buzelli. There is another, by Masato
Ishida, that has been especially helpful to me in explaining how the
arguments in the essay are supposed to work. (see A Philosophical
Commentary on C.S. Peirce's "On a New List of Categories" which is available
online in pdf). Without going any further, let me just say that Ishida's
dissertation is worth a close read for those who want to have a better
understanding of the way Peirce is developing the Kantian conception of the
categories in this essay.
With this preamble in hand, let us consider a few things that Peirce says in
his discussion of form and matter in the Baldwin definition. What we see
Peirce doing is to work his way through some remarks about Aristotle's use
of the distinction, and then to consider the way that Kant has reformulated
a number of key aspects of the distinction. One place you will find Kant
doing this is in the "Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection" in the first
Critique.
If you think about what Peirce is really doing in this definition, I think
there is a strategy at work. In addition to considering the way Kant has
reformulated Aristotle's distinction, he is also trying to infuse Kant's
distinction with some Aristotelian ideas that Peirce seems to suggest have
largely been ignored by Kant and his followers. In particular, the
Aristotelian conceptions that are connected with the notions of life and
growth seem to be much on Peirce's mind. That is the reason, I believe,
that Peirce spends time talking about Aristotle's experience as a practicing
anatomist and biologist.
As such, my strategy in making sense of what Peirce seems to be up to in
this definition is to start at the end with the remarks he makes about the
peculiar way logicians have used the distinction, and then to examine the
things he says about Kant's use of the distinction in his theory of
cognition. From there, I would continue to work backwards and add pieces to
this Kantian way of thinking about the distinction until we arrive at a
richer Aristotelian revision of Kant's conceptions.
That, at least, is my suggestion. I'll try to apply some of the remarks he
makes in this definition of matter and form to his account of the formal and
material categories as they are developed in the context of a
phenomenological theory, but that will have to wait until a later date when
I have more time.
--Jeff
Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354
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