> On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:32 PM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > In the passage from Peirce that you quote below, by way of Clark, I think the > distinction is that the degenerate seconds consider them in terms of their > form alone, which degenerates our understanding of them to firsts associated > with them, making our understanding of something that is internal.
If I recall (don’t have time to look it up) but in at least a few places Peirce treats degeneracy as a form/matter distinction. If you have the form but not the matter then it’s degenerate. That is while he’s making the geometric analogy his distinctions are just the classic medieval distinctions among types of relations (especially as found in Scotus) - - - - - - A quick quote from my Peirce-L note. This is a post from 7/15/03 by Jean-Marc Orliaguet. Peirce distinguished between the logical / formal categories and "metaphysical" (ontological?) categories, i.e. the categories of pure forms and categories of the "matter of phenomena". Considered as a form, a dyad is a dyad no matter if it is created by the mind by connecting two qualities or if it is the material dyad of a real fact. But ontologically, a dyad of pure imagination is not a material dyad, it is simply a dyad composed of two monads. Two qualities do not make matter. Peirce uses the terms genuine / degenerate categories to distinguish between them. A degenerate category has the same form but not the same "matter" as a genuine category. example with secondness: * genuine secondness : o_____o (no mind intervention, pure secondness, no mediation. Here you see the difference between Peirce and Hegel as well as between Peirce and some peirce-l extreme idealists ) * degenerate secondness : o.........o using here : '........' to represent the intervention of a mind (through a mediating third, a scaffolding, which is "forgotten", erased) Peirce: CP 1.452 452. The metaphysical categories of quality, fact, and law, being categories of the matter of phenomena, do not precisely correspond with the logical categories of the monad, the dyad, and the polyad or higher set, since these are categories of the forms of experience. The dyads of monads, being dyads, belong to the category of the dyad. But since they are composed of monads as their sole matter, they belong materially to the category of quality, or the monad in its material mode of being. It cannot be regarded as a fact that scarlet is red. It is a truth; but it is only an essential truth. It is that in being which corresponds in thought to Kant's analytical judgment. It is a dyadism latent in monads. JM
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