Gary F, List,
In the "Logic of Mathematics," Peirce makes a distinction between the general class of genuinely triadic relations, and the species that are thoroughly genuine in their triadic character. Here is a way of characterizing the difference between the two. In all genuinely triadic relations, a general rule is the third correlate, and that rule governs the relations between the first and second correlates. Consequently, there are three kinds of genuinely triadic relations--and they can be distinguished on the basis of the character of the first and second correlates that are governed by the rule: 1. The laws of quality are general rules that governs the relations between qualities; 2. The laws of fact are general rules that governs the relations between facts, where each fact involves existing objects having various qualities; 3. Representations involve general rules that govern the relations between a thought playing the role of a first and a thought playing the role of a second. As such, I am working on the assumption that, when it comes to thoroughly genuine triadic relations, all three correlates have the character of thoughts. What is more, these thoroughly genuine triadic relations can be distinguished from triadic relations that are not thoroughly genuine on the grounds that the latter take qualities, objects and/or facts as the first and second correlates--and not thoughts of those things. --Jeff Jeffrey Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Northern Arizona University (o) 928 523-8354 ________________________________ From: g...@gnusystems.ca <g...@gnusystems.ca> Sent: Monday, January 8, 2018 3:13:25 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 3.11 One more comment on Lowell 3.11 before we move on: When we analyze a Genuine Thirdness, or the operation of a Sign, we find Thought playing three different roles, which we might call the Firstness of Thought (“which is such as it is positively and regardless of anything else”), its Secondness (“which is as it is in a second something's being as it is”), and its Thirdness (“whose being consists in its bringing about a secondness”) — those definitions are from the Syllabus (EP2:267). Experience and Information are two names for the Secondness of Thought, i.e. Thought as Event, as something that happens when two subjects enter into dyadic relations with one another. An experiencing “subject” and an experienced “object,” for example, are each what they are in that moment because the other is what it is at that time. “Information” here, as usual in Peirce, is not something that can be quantified in numbers of bits or megabytes, but an event that leaves some quasi-mind more informed about the Other than it was before the informing event. The event is a change in a “state of information,” as Peirce often puts it. But the “subject” or “mind” who is informed by this event must continue to be the same system or entity in order to be changed or informed by it; and if there is any regularity governing the information process, it must also continue in its generality, its ability to continue bringing about such events in the future. That is its Thirdness — which necessarily involves its Secondness and Firstness, as Peirce has already explained. Likewise a triadic relation can always be seen as a single relation involving three “subjects,” which in Peircean semiotics are called Sign, Object and Interpretant. The analysis can be continued: the sign in itself can have three modes of being; the sign-object relation likewise be predominantly monadic, dyadic or triadic; and the interpretant can represent that relation in three different ways. Peirce gives much more of this further analysis in the Syllabus, both in the “speculative Grammar” section and the “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations,” which culminates in the famous tenfold classification of sign types. But all this analysis depends on an understanding of Genuine Thirdness. So here again is the paragraph on this that I’ve been paraphrasing from Lowell 3: [CP 1.537] Now in Genuine Thirdness, the First, the Second, and the Third are all three of the nature of thirds, or Thought, while in respect to one another they are First, Second, and Third. The First is Thought in its capacity as mere Possibility; that is, mere Mind capable of thinking, or a mere vague idea. The Second is Thought playing the rôle of a Secondness, or Event. That is, it is of the general nature of Experience or Information. The Third is Thought in its rôle as governing Secondness. It brings the Information into the Mind, or determines the Idea and gives it body. It is informing thought, or Cognition. But take away the psychological or accidental human element, and in this genuine Thirdness we see the operation of a Sign. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell3.htm }{ Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1903
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