> On Oct 20, 2016, at 9:18 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> Now we have "Modes of Being" or "modes of reality" that are identified as 
> "three Universes" and correspond to "Actuality, Possibility, Destiny (or 
> Freedom from Destiny)."  We also have "Realms for the different 
> Predicaments," which are what we used to call "Categories," but these 
> divisions "must not be confounded with the different Modes of Being"; 
> instead, "the succession of Predicates of Predicates is different in the 
> different Modes of Being."  Peirce leaves it at that ... and thus I am still 
> confused about Universes and Categories.

I think this is right. It’s probably worthwhile remembering the origin of these 
categories in Kant’s categories early in Peirce’s life. Like you I’m often 
confused between modes of being and categories. My sense (perhaps wrong) is 
that the latter are wrapped up with judgements for Peirce. They are thus more 
Kantian even if Peirce early on gives them a fairly neoplatonic like 
ontological thrust. The former though seems explicitly fundamental ontology in 
terms of actuality, possibility and destiny (roughly convergence from different 
efficient causal paths).

Again Kant has his 12 categories in four classes. The forth class of modality 
is possibiltiy, existence and necessity. The other three classes are quantity, 
quality, and relation. If I’m following Peirce correctly he’s just separating 
modes of being from these first three classes as the categories. 

I’m just going off the top of my head here, but I think this tendency in Peirce 
goes back quite early - to the 1870’s if not before.
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