Edwina, List: Apparently we disagree once more, and I will try to be more careful going forward about how I express my interpretation of Peirce. My understanding is that he classified anything "singular," any *event *that happens or occurs, as Secondness; and that he considered any "interaction" to be Secondness, because it entails (at least) two subjects reacting with each other. Again, Firstness is that which is as it is, independent of anything else. An extended excerpt from "The Logic of Mathematics: An Attempt to Develop My Categories from Within" (1896) is pertinent here.
CSP: We remark among phenomena three categories of elements. The first comprises the qualities of phenomena, such as red, bitter, tedious, hard, heartrending, noble; and there are doubtless manifold varieties utterly unknown to us ... It is sufficient that wherever there is a phenomenon there is a quality; so that it might almost seem that there is nothing else in phenomena. The qualities merge into one another. They have no perfect identities, but only likenesses, or partial identities. Some of them, as the colors and the musical sounds, form well-understood systems. Probably, were our experience of them not so fragmentary, there would be no abrupt demarcations between them, at all. Still, each one is what it is in itself without help from the others. They are single but partial determinations. The second category of elements of phenomena comprises the actual facts. The qualities, in so far as they are general, are somewhat vague and potential. But an occurrence is perfectly individual. It happens here and now. A permanent fact is less purely individual; yet so far as it is actual, its permanence and generality only consist in its being there at every individual instant. Qualities are concerned in facts but they do not make up facts. Facts also concern subjects which are material substances. We do not see them as we see qualities, that is, they are not in the very potentiality and essence of sense. But we feel facts resist our will. That is why facts are proverbially called brutal. Now mere qualities do not resist. It is the matter that resists. Even in actual sensation there is a reaction. Now mere qualities, unmaterialized, cannot actually react ... All that I here insist upon is that quality is one element of phenomena, and fact, action, actuality is another. We shall undertake the analysis of their natures below. The third category of elements of phenomena consists of what we call laws when we contemplate them from the outside only, but which when we see both sides of the shield we call thoughts. Thoughts are neither qualities nor facts. They are not qualities because they can be produced and grow, while a quality is eternal, independent of time and of any realization ... A thought then is not a quality. No more is it a fact. For a thought is general. I had it. I imparted it to you. It is general on that side. It is also general in referring to all possible things, and not merely to those which happen to exist. No collection of facts can constitute a law; for the law goes beyond any accomplished facts and determines how facts that *may be*, but *all *of which never can have happened, shall be characterized. There is no objection to saying that a law is a general fact, provided it be understood that the general has an admixture of potentiality in it, so that no congeries of actions here and now can ever make a general fact. As *general*, the law, or general fact, concerns the potential world of quality, while as *fact*, it concerns the actual world of actuality. Just as action requires a peculiar kind of subject, matter, which is foreign to mere quality, so law requires a peculiar kind of subject, the thought, or, as the phrase in this connection is, the mind, as a peculiar kind of subject foreign to mere individual action. Law, then, is something as remote from both quality and action as these are remote from one another. (CP 1.418-420) This is also another example of where I see Peirce rather explicitly associating all thought(s) with Thirdness. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > Ben - I think you are correct in your example and definition of Firstness > and Secondness. That is, the sound/shock wave that you feel in your body > IS an example of Firstness. As Peirce writes, this is a STATE, not a > reaction [which would be Secondness]. > > "A feeling, then, is not an event, a happening, a coming to pass....a > feeling is a *state*, which is in its entirety in every moment of time as > long as it endures". 1.307. > > Think of Firstness as a STATE, a singular experience, a whole > feeling. Firstness is a *state* that affects another body, so to speak. > It is not just the sound/shock wave isolate from interaction but is instead > the interaction of that sound/shockwave with another. That interaction, > which is a qualitative state, is Firstness. Remember, Peircean semiosis > requires a network, an interaction; nothing is isolate-in-itself. > > Secondness develops when the other part of the interaction *reacts*. So, > Secondness, just as you point out, is your body's flinching or other > reaction. > > All of this is part of the process of Mind. Again, as Peirce writes "Every > operation of the mind, however complex, has its absolutely simple feeling, > the emotion of the *tout ensemble*" 1.311. > > This points to, again, the fact that Firstness is not an isolate state but > an *interactional state*. > > Edwina >
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