Von: g...@gnusystems.ca
Jon A.S.,
Thanks very much for posting here some of the Peirce passages which demonstrate that, as you put it, “"categories" and "elements" were effectively interchangeable for Peirce, precisely at the time of the Lowell Lectures” (and, I would add, afterwards, depending on Peirce’s context and audience).
The specifically logical usage of the term “categories” was virtually inherited by Peirce from Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and logicians and metaphysicians could be expected to be familiar with this terminology, so it was convenient in that sense for Peirce to use it in his phenomenology/phaneroscopy. But it was also misleading, because Peirce’s “categories” were quite different from those of his predecessors, and I think that after 1902 especially, he increasingly used the term “elements” because it was less familiar in this context, and better suited to his phenomenology, i.e. to his way of arriving at the three conceptions as “indecomposable elements.” But he continued to use both; in Lowell 3, for instance, which is mostly about Firstness/Secondness/Thirdness, he referred to them 16 times as “categories” and 35 times as “elements”, beginning with this:
“Phenomenology is the science which describes the different kinds of elements that are always present in the Phenomenon, meaning by the Phenomenon whatever is before the mind in any kind of thought, fancy, or cognition of any kind. Everything that you can possibly think involves three kinds of elements.”
You are right that the phrase “kinds of elements” is ambiguous in a way, and when he refers to (for instance) Thirdness as an “element”, we could regard that as a mere abbreviation for “kind of element.” But he does this so often that “element” becomes in these texts interchangeable with “category” in their technical senses, as you said. Anyway, we should get back to this discussion when we have Lowell 3 in front of us.
Gary f.
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:jonalanschm...@gmail.com]
Sent: 26-Nov-17 17:06
To: Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca>
Cc: Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>
Subject: Categories vs. Elements (was Lowell Lecture 2.14)
Gary F., List:
As you may recall, I offered the hypothesis over a year ago that late in his life, Peirce shifted his terminology from "categories" to "universes," or perhaps confined "categories" to phenomenology/phaneroscopy and employed "universes" for metaphysics, or at least suggested that predicates/relations are assigned to "categories" while subjects belong to "universes." Back then, Gary R. cited a passage from one of the drafts of "Pragmatism" that finally convinced me to abandon this conjecture, and it would seem to stand equally against the suggestion that Peirce definitively shifted from "categories" to "elements."
CSP: To assert a predicate of certain subjects (taking these all in the sense of forms of words) means,—intends,—only to create a belief that the real things denoted by those subjects possess the real character or relation signified by that predicate. The word "real," pace the metaphysicians, whose phrases are sometimes empty, means, and can mean, nothing more nor less. Consequently, to the three forms of predicates there must correspond three conceptions of different categories of characters: namely, of a character which attaches to its subject regardless of anything else such as that of being hard, massive, or persistent; of a character which belongs to a thing relatively to a second regardless of any third, such as an act of making an effort against a resistance; and of a character which belongs to a thing as determining a relation between two others, such as that of being transparent or opaque or of coloring what is seen through it. Moreover, turning from the three kinds of predicates to their subjects, since by the "mode of being" of anything can be meant only the kinds of characters which it has, or is susceptible of taking, corresponding to the three kinds of characters, there must be three categories of things: first, those which are such as they are regardless of anything else, like the living consciousness of a given kind of feeling, say of red; secondly, those which are such as they are by virtue of their relation to other things, regardless of any third things, which is the case with the existence of all bodies, whose reality consists in their acting on each other, in pairs; thirdly, those which are such as they are by virtue of bringing two others into relation, as signs of all sorts are such only so far as they bring their significations to bear upon the objects to which they are applied. (EP 2:427-428, 1907; bold mine)
That "categories" and "elements" were effectively interchangeable for Peirce, precisely at the time of the Lowell Lectures, is evident from the Syllabus that he prepared to supplement them.
CSP: Phenomenology is that branch of science ... in which the author seeks to make out what are the elements, or, if you please, the kinds of elements, that are invariably present in whatever is, in any sense, in mind. According to the present writer, these universal categories are three. Since all three are invariably present, a pure idea of any one, absolutely distinct from the others, is impossible; indeed, anything like a satisfactorily clear discrimination of them is a work of long and active meditation. They may be termed Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness ... In the ideas of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, the three elements, or Universal Categories, appear under their forms of Firstness ... Phenomenology studies the Categories in their forms of Firstness. (EP 2:267, 272, 1903; bold mine)
The only potential distinction that I can discern here is that "elements" might be used to refer to the constituents of the "categories," if the latter are defined as "kinds of elements." On the other hand, in between these two writings, a version of "The Basis of Pragmaticism"--the one to whose title the EP2 editors appended "in Phaneroscopy"--eschewed any mention of "categories" in favor of "indecomposable elements."
CSP: I invite the reader to join me in a little survey of the Phaneron (which will be sufficiently identical for him and for me) in order to discover what different forms of indecomposable elements it contains ... The _expression_ "indecomposable element" sounds pleonastic; but it is not so, since I mean by it something which not only is elementary, since it seems so, and seeming is the only being a constituent of the Phaneron has, as such, but is moreover incapable of being separated by logical analysis into parts, whether they be substantial, essential, relative, or any other kind of parts ... We are to consider what forms are possible, rather than what kinds are possible, because it is universally admitted, in all sorts of inquiries, that the most important divisions are divisions according to form, and not according to qualities of matter, in case division according to form is possible at all. Indeed, this necessarily results from the very idea of the distinction between form and matter. If we content ourselves with the usual statement of this idea, the consequence is quite obvious. A doubt may, however, arise whether any distinction of form is possible among indecomposable elements. But since a possibility is proved as soon as a single actual instance is found, it will suffice to remark that although the chemical atoms were until quite recently conceived to be, each of them, quite indecomposable and homogeneous, yet they have for half a century been known to differ from one another, not indeed in internal form, but in external form ... We conclude, then, that there is a fair antecedent reason to suspect that the Phaneron's indecomposable elements may likewise have analogous differences of external form. Should we find this possibility to be actualized, it will, beyond all dispute, furnish us with by far the most important of all divisions of such elements. (EP 2:362-363, 1905; bold mine)
However, it seems to me that here Peirce is once again using "elements" for the constituents of the categories, but substituting "forms" for the latter. He now prefers not to refer to the categories as "kinds of elements," because that would make them divisions "according to qualities of matter," rather than according to form.
To muddy the waters further, none of these excerpts were published during Peirce's lifetime. Even the Syllabus passage was, according to the EP2 headnote, "not printed in the pamphlet for the audience." It is not a stretch to think that Peirce was simply experimenting with these different terminologies, and it may be impossible to establish once and for all whether they genuinely reflect a significant conceptual shift.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
On Sat, Nov 25, 2017 at 6:47 PM, <g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote:
Kirsti, you asked why my post about 2.14 put “categories” in quotation marks. It’s because that is the term Peirce used for Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness in the Cambridge Lectures of 1898. In the Lowell Lectures (and the Syllabus) of 1903, he mostly used the term “elements” instead, as we’ll see in Lecture 3, for instance. I’m drawing attention to the shift in terminology because I think it reflects to a conceptual shift that becomes increasingly evident in Peirce’s phenomenology from this point on.
----------------------------- 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 .
