Gary F.,
That was a wonderful explanation! From here on out I'm gonna hold to the
standard you followed:
Secondness refers to the category or mode.
Second (capital S) is the referent which is in the mode of Secondness
because of its relation to a relata (but no other relata).
second (small s) refers to the relata from above.
Matt
On 10/29/15 11:04 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got
the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s
about all I will have time for, until next week). I’m also copying to
the Peirce list since this is more about Peirce than biosemiotics.
Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all /modes of being/. They are
not entities or beings. These /modes/ of being are /defined/ by Peirce
in terms of how a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to other
beings makes that being what it is.
Let X = the being.
Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively and
without reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a
First,” but this X is by definition unrelated to anything else; there
is nothing else in its universe, and consequently nothing we can say
about it that will locate it in /any/ universe. So it is /not/ the
first of a series.
If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any
third,” then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an
/effort/, it cannot be that without /resistance/; there is no effort
without resistance, no resistance without effort. We can designate
resistance then as Y. So we can say that each of them is Second to the
other, or “a Second.” The presence of the other in its universe, /and
nothing else/, makes each of them what it is. If we think of them as a
pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which one we call
X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary which of them is
first or second in the series. /That/ use of the words “first” and
“second” has nothing to do with Firstness or Secondness as Peirce is
defining them.
Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and
third into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a /gift/, it
must be given by somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can
say that X is what it is only because it brings Y into relation with
Z. We can /also/ say that Y, as giver, brings X into relation with Z;
/and/ that Z, as recipient, brings X into relation with Y (remember
we’re talking about /logical/ relations, not human relations). X is
what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation with Y
and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of
them is “a Third.”
But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining
their mode of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count as
first, or second, or third. What counts is that there are three
/relata/ here, each of which is made what it is by its role in the
triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what sort of commodity X is,
or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z is. Thirdness is
a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given being.
And the same applies to the other two modes.
Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message
below, hoping that the explanation is given above.
Gary f.
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
