> 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.
----------------------------- 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 .