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[PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8927] Re: Peirce's categories

[gnox]

Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got the point 
I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s about all I will have 
time for, until next week). I’m also copying to the Peirce list since this is 
more about Peirce than biosemiotics.

 

Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all modes of being. They are not 
entities or beings. These modes of being are defined by Peirce in terms of how 
a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to other beings makes that being what 
it is.

 

Let X = the being.

 

Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively and without 
reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a First,” but this X is 
by definition unrelated to anything else; there is nothing else in its 
universe, and consequently nothing we can say about it that will locate it in 
any universe. So it is not the first of a series.

 

If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any third,” 
then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an effort, it cannot 
be that without resistance; there is no effort without resistance, no 
resistance without effort. We can designate resistance then as Y. So we can say 
that each of them is Second to the other, or “a Second.” The presence of the 
other in its universe, and nothing else, makes each of them what it is. If we 
think of them as a pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which 
one we call X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary which of them 
is first or second in the series. That use of the words “first” and “second” 
has nothing to do with Firstness or Secondness as Peirce is defining them.

 

Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and third 
into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a gift, it must be given by 
somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can say that X is what it is 
only because it brings Y into relation with Z. We can also say that Y, as 
giver, brings X into relation with Z; and that Z, as recipient, brings X into 
relation with Y (remember we’re talking about logical relations, not human 
relations). X is what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation 
with Y and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the 
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of them is “a 
Third.”

 

But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining their mode 
of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count as first, or second, 
or third. What counts is that there are three relata here, each of which is 
made what it is by its role in the triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what 
sort of commodity X is, or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z 
is. Thirdness is a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given 
being. And the same applies to the other two modes.

 

Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message below, 
hoping that the explanation is given above.

 

Gary f. 

 

From: Kobus Marais [mailto:jmar...@ufs.ac.za] 
Sent: 29-Oct-15 05:00
To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee



Thanks, Gary, your explanation makes sense, but it does leave me with questions 
such as: Would Peirce (in general) have had problems with saying that thirdness 
brings a first and a third into relation with each other.

Gf] Yes he would, because as the terms are used above, Thirdness is a mode of 
being, which cannot bring other things into relation with each other. It’s the 
being (the X) that does that, if its mode of being is Thirdness. The other two 
relata are called “second” and “third” simply to indicate that there must be 
three of them, not to assign attributes of Secondness or Thirdness to them 
(because those are not attributes, as Peirce defines them).

 

Or that thirdness brings a third and a third (or a first and a first/second and 
second) into relation with each other?

Gf] Same answer.

 

The ‘normal’ way of saying is that thirdness brings firstness and secondness in 
a relation to each other (E.g. Merrel, Sensing semiosis p.17-18),

Gf] I don’t have that text so I can’t check the accuracy of your quote, but it 
doesn’t sound “normal” to me. Much more normal would be to say that Secondness 
involves Firstness and Thirdness involves Secondness. If we’re talking 
semiosis, we can say that a proposition brings a subject and predicate into 
relation with each other, and maybe it’s not too much of a stretch to regard 
the subject as a Second, the predicate as a First and the proposition as a 
Third. But that’s different from your sentence above, and is of no use for 
defining what Thirdness is as a mode of being. Rather it assumes some such 
definition implicitly.

so I would be interested in knowing whether Peirce had anything (except the 
vague statement that I have quoted originally) to say about what can be 
mediated and how? 

Gf] Yes, that’s what Peircean semiotic is 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

[Auke van Breemen]

List,

Just dropping in with a quick association.

There is something to be said for the thought that phaneroscopy can be regarded 
as secondness, relative to phenomenology as thirdness. Logic can be seen as 
their relative difference.

Best,

Auke van Breemen

-Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: Jeffrey Brian Downard [mailto:jeffrey.down...@nau.edu] 
Verzonden: donderdag 29 oktober 2015 16:31
Aan: PEIRCE-L 
Onderwerp: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

Gary R., Jon, List,

In what sense can phenomenology "draw" things from logic?  If it can draw 
something, what can it it draw?

First off, it may have been poor choice on my part to use the word "draw" in 
trying to describe what we might gain by looking to logic for the sake of 
developing a phenomenological theory.  So, let me start by agreeing with Gary 
and Jon that it is important to keep straight the ordering of the sciences, and 
remember that phenomenology can draw its principles from mathematics, and that 
the normative sciences can draw their principles from both math and 
phenomenology--but not the other way around.

Having conceded those points, let me try to explore the questions stated above. 
 In what sense can phenomenology "draw" things from logic?  We can ask the same 
question, of course, about the relationship between phenomenology and 
mathematics.  In what sense can mathematics draw things from phenomenology.  As 
we know, Peirce starts with three questions in "The Logic of Mathematics, an 
attempt to develop my categories from within:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which mathematical 
deduction can set out?
2. What are their general characters?
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

The strategy Peirce adopts in this essay is to see if we might draw on the 
phenomenological examination of the fundamental categories of experience--both 
material and formal--for the sake of answering these questions.  So, let me 
ask:  in what ways might we be able to draw on the normative science of logic 
as semiotics for the purposes of answering a similar set of questions about 
phenomenology?  Let's construct the questions about phenomenology by following 
Peirce's lead:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological 
inquiry can set out?
2. What are their general characters? 
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

Is it permissible to draw on the normative science of logic as semiotic for the 
purposes of framing the questions that phenomenology seeks to answer?  If so, 
is it permissible to draw on the normative science of logic for insight 
concerning the kinds of conceptions we might start with in framing the 
hypotheses that are offered as possible answers to those questions?  My hunch 
is that the answer to both questions is Yes.  So, let's explore the possibility 
that this might be the correct answer.  

In order to refine that positive answer, let's consider the second question 
stated above:  if phenomenology can draw something from the normative science 
of logic for the purposes of framing the questions and the hypotheses that it 
considers, what can it it draw?  Peirce points out that, in doing mathematics, 
we only need a logica utens for the sake of drawing out the consequences from 
the starting hypotheses.  The same is true when it comes to developing a 
phenomenological theory.  There is no need for a logical theory.  We can 
perform the required analyses of the key conceptions (and tones of thought) 
without any assistance from such a theory.

Having said that, Peirce's method for developing the account of the categories 
from within in "The Logic of Mathematics" is the following:  "Our method must 
be to observe how logic requires us to think and especially to reason, and to 
attribute to the conception of the dyad those characters which it must have in 
order to answer the requirements of logic." (CP 1.444)

It is possible that, at this point in the discussion, Peirce is describing the 
method he is using for the purposes of developing a critical grammar.  If this 
is right, then it is worth pointing out that the development of a theoretical 
explanation the logical character of the dyadic relationship in sign relations 
rests ultimately on observations about the character of such things as logical 
obligation and self-control.  It is also worth point out that the test of the 
adequacy of the explanation is see whether or not the explanation "answers the 
requirements of logic."  That is, does it put us in a better position to 
explain how it is possible for a logical argument to be valid or how it is 
possible for imperfectly rational creatures like us to answer the question:  
why ought I to be logical?

It is also possible that, at this point in the discussion, Peirce is describing 
a method that he is using for the purposes of developing a phenomenological 
theory.  If he is, would it be a violation of 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Benjamin Udell]

Jeff D., all, I think I wasn't clear enough about what I was saying in 
the list of taxa, so I've revised a bit.


Jeff D., list,

Sorry for the delayed response. I've rarely been so inundated with 
practical matters.


I think that I'd agree with Kant's remark "That philosophy which mixes 
pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of 
philosophy" if by "philosophy" one takes him to mean pure 
philosophy, or pure cenoscopy in Peirce's sense, as opposed to applied 
philosophy/cenoscopy, which can get into questions such as that of the 
evolution of living beings from material systems as understood by the 
special sciences (a.k.a. idioscopy), and so on. Peirce goes so far as to 
outline a three-way division of science in which the second branch is 
Science of Review, which he also called Synthetic Philosophy and 
_/Philosophia Ultima/_, and which does mix empirical principles with 
pure ones.


Forgive me for citing Wikipedia but I wrote most of the article and it 
has a convenient table of taxa; the footnotes have links to Peirce texts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences_%28Peirce%29#Taxa

*Branches:*
1. Science of Discovery (*Classes:* 1. Mathematics, 2. Cenoscopy a.k.a. 
_/Philosophia Prima/_, 3, Idioscopy a.k.a. the Special Sciences - 
Physical & Psychical).
2. Science of Review, a.k.a Synthetic Philosophy, which includes 
classification of the sciences.

3. Practical Science, a.k.a. the Arts.

In descending taxical order, one can discern, not too dimly, the guiding 
questions that you point out,of (1) ideals, (2) conduct, and (3) thought 
and learning, *in two cycles*:




First cycle:
1. Each *branch* has its own distinctive animating *motive/purpose* 
common to all its subdivisions.

2. Each *class* has its own great *subject* and *kind of observations*.
3. Throughout an *order* , researchers pursue the same *general kind of 
inquiry* (but deal with different kinds of conceptions); orders can 
differ hierarchically within a class.




Second cycle:
4. Throughout a *family* of science, *conceptions* are shared but skills 
differ.
5. Throughout a *genus* of science, *skills* are shared, but 
acquaintance with facts in detail differs.
6. Throughout a *species* of science, the researchers are all thoroughly 
well *qualified* *in all parts of it*.



7. In a *variety* of science, researchers devote lives to it but no so 
numerously as to support journals, societies, etc.



I think that this bears out that Peirce was thinking much as you say he was.

Best, Ben

On 10/21/2015 5:14 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:


Ben, Lists,

Let me a add a piece to what you've said to see if we are on the same 
track.  I add this point in order to highlight some features of what 
Peirce is trying to accomplish in thinking architectonically about 
inquiry.  Many philosophers in the 20th century, especially those who 
are more analytic in their orientation, reject certain propositions 
that Peirce affirms about the value of working in an architectonic 
manner (that is, with a plan in hand) for the purposes of doing 
philosophy, so I'd like to make these points a bit more explicit.


Remarks that have been made by a number of contributors to the List 
about what philosophy might or might not contribute to questions about 
the origins of order in the cosmos, or the evolution of living beings 
from material systems, or the real character of the law and force of 
such things as gravity remind me of the dangers of not keeping things 
in a clearer order when it comes to setting up our explanations in 
both the cenoscopic science of philosophy and the idioscopic sciences 
of physics, chemistry, biology and the like.  I can't help but think 
that Peirce has pretty darned good reasons for insisting that doing 
philosophy well requires  that we reflect on matters architectonic.


The main thing I want to add to what you've said is prompted by a 
remark that Kant makes about philosophical methodology.  In the 
Preface of the Grounding, he puts a sharp edge on the claim.  He 
says:  "That philosophy which mixes pure principles with empirical 
ones does not deserve the name of philosophy" (G, 390)  Later in 
Section 2, Kant makes the following point about any procedure which 
does not clearly separate between different kinds of questions (e.g., 
about questions concerning the justification of the primary principles 
of valid reasoning from questions about how we human beings often do 
in fact think).  He says:  "such a procedure turns out a disgusting 
mishmash of patchwork observations and half-reasoned principles in 
which shallowpates revel because all this is something quite useful 
for the 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Gary R., Jon, List,

In what sense can phenomenology "draw" things from logic?  If it can draw 
something, what can it it draw?

First off, it may have been poor choice on my part to use the word "draw" in 
trying to describe what we might gain by looking to logic for the sake of 
developing a phenomenological theory.  So, let me start by agreeing with Gary 
and Jon that it is important to keep straight the ordering of the sciences, and 
remember that phenomenology can draw its principles from mathematics, and that 
the normative sciences can draw their principles from both math and 
phenomenology--but not the other way around.

Having conceded those points, let me try to explore the questions stated above. 
 In what sense can phenomenology "draw" things from logic?  We can ask the same 
question, of course, about the relationship between phenomenology and 
mathematics.  In what sense can mathematics draw things from phenomenology.  As 
we know, Peirce starts with three questions in "The Logic of Mathematics, an 
attempt to develop my categories from within:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which mathematical 
deduction can set out?
2. What are their general characters?
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

The strategy Peirce adopts in this essay is to see if we might draw on the 
phenomenological examination of the fundamental categories of experience--both 
material and formal--for the sake of answering these questions.  So, let me 
ask:  in what ways might we be able to draw on the normative science of logic 
as semiotics for the purposes of answering a similar set of questions about 
phenomenology?  Let's construct the questions about phenomenology by following 
Peirce's lead:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological 
inquiry can set out?
2. What are their general characters? 
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

Is it permissible to draw on the normative science of logic as semiotic for the 
purposes of framing the questions that phenomenology seeks to answer?  If so, 
is it permissible to draw on the normative science of logic for insight 
concerning the kinds of conceptions we might start with in framing the 
hypotheses that are offered as possible answers to those questions?  My hunch 
is that the answer to both questions is Yes.  So, let's explore the possibility 
that this might be the correct answer.  

In order to refine that positive answer, let's consider the second question 
stated above:  if phenomenology can draw something from the normative science 
of logic for the purposes of framing the questions and the hypotheses that it 
considers, what can it it draw?  Peirce points out that, in doing mathematics, 
we only need a logica utens for the sake of drawing out the consequences from 
the starting hypotheses.  The same is true when it comes to developing a 
phenomenological theory.  There is no need for a logical theory.  We can 
perform the required analyses of the key conceptions (and tones of thought) 
without any assistance from such a theory.

Having said that, Peirce's method for developing the account of the categories 
from within in "The Logic of Mathematics" is the following:  "Our method must 
be to observe how logic requires us to think and especially to reason, and to 
attribute to the conception of the dyad those characters which it must have in 
order to answer the requirements of logic." (CP 1.444)

It is possible that, at this point in the discussion, Peirce is describing the 
method he is using for the purposes of developing a critical grammar.  If this 
is right, then it is worth pointing out that the development of a theoretical 
explanation the logical character of the dyadic relationship in sign relations 
rests ultimately on observations about the character of such things as logical 
obligation and self-control.  It is also worth point out that the test of the 
adequacy of the explanation is see whether or not the explanation "answers the 
requirements of logic."  That is, does it put us in a better position to 
explain how it is possible for a logical argument to be valid or how it is 
possible for imperfectly rational creatures like us to answer the question:  
why ought I to be logical?

It is also possible that, at this point in the discussion, Peirce is describing 
a method that he is using for the purposes of developing a phenomenological 
theory.  If he is, would it be a violation of the principle that phenomenology 
should draw its principles from math and not from the normative science of 
logic?  I don't think so.  But I'd need to work that out.

--Jeff
 






Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: Gary Richmond [gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 11:05 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

Jeff, list,

It's VERY late on the East 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Benjamin Udell]

Dear Ben Novak, list,

I should add something for a broader picture.

I've talked about associating a certain impatience for a new perspective 
with deduction. Generally, Peirce justifies abductive inference _/in 
general/_ as leading more expeditiously than anything else does to new 
truths. The point of the whole scientific method is to speed inquiry up, 
in Peirce's view. So some sort of impatience has a natural place in 
scientific inquiry. Being ampliative, an abductive inference necessarily 
makes a new claim beyond the premisses. But Peirce doesn't see novelty, 
counter-intuitiveness, or anything like that, as justifying a given 
abductive inference (prior to testing). One doesn't know at that point 
whether it has led to a new truth. Instead, plausibility, as natural 
simplicity, is what justifies an abductive inference prior to testing, 
and the associated emotion is not that of impatience or suspense, but 
that of surprise, bafflement, conflict with one's assumptions or 
beliefs. I'm suggesting that the sense of impatience does, however, 
belong to the occasion of deduction, just as the new perspective does - 
because reaching the conclusion will lead to a true new perspective, if 
the premisses are true.


Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 1:34 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:


Dear Ben Novak, list,

As regards an explanation A's implying the surprising phenomenon C, 
that seems more on the level of implication than of an actual 
inference, which would be the mind's moving from A as an accepted 
premiss to conclude at least tentatively C. The mind already believes 
C and does not yet believe or suspect A (that happens instead in the 
abductive conclusion). I'm not sure that Peirce always thought that 
that implication had to be strictly deductive (he just says "a matter 
of course") but I'll have to dig into "On the Logic of Drawing History 
from Ancient Documents" where he goes into that relation in some 
detail if I recall correctly.


But let's say that it _/is/_ deductive, and that it is a deductive 
implication even if not an actual deduction. Sometimes one needs to do 
a kind of proof of concept. One thinks roughly that a certain 
hypothesis would entail the phenomenon, but one needs to show the 
entailment clearly. This proof may take mathematical form, and so on. 
It won't always be so comfortable and easy.


In the deduction of further implications of the hypothesis once 
accepted (albeit on probation), it is not always so easy to find 
distinctive implications unimplied by competing explanations or by 
accepted theory.


Anyway, generally, the challenge of a heuristically worthwhile 
deduction is to reach a new (or nontrivial) perspective without 
actually concluding in a claim new to, i.e., unentailed by, the 
premisses. In seeking a new perspective, one is trying to get 
something like information, news, even though the deduction is 
uninformative in the Shannon sense. It is this sense of seeking news 
that I'm magnifying into an (mild) emotion of impatience or suspense.


That's very easy in the case of categorical syllogisms, and the 
novelty is minimal there, but still observable:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Ergo———Socrates is mortal.

Of course there are all kinds of logic problems where the solution is 
not so obvious.


You wrote,

Therefore, I ask: If one assumed that "If A, then C would be a
matter of course," and then deduced from A that one should find
not only C, but also D and F, then when one checked and found that
D or F were not found in the circumstances in which one found C,
would then one have an attenuative deduction situation? Or would
one only have the falsification of hypothesis A?

If, from A one attenuatively deduces D, and next finds D false upon 
observation, then from not-D one attenuatively deduces  not-A; A is 
disproven (i.e., falsified).


I should add that I've found only one place where Peirce wrote of a 
new aspect as part of deduction's function. See Appendix below.


Best, Ben

Appendix: Peirce wrote in his 1905 letter draft to Mario Calderoni (CP 
8.209)

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-letter-draft-mario-calderoni-0

[] The second kind of reasoning is deduction, or necessary
reasoning. It is applicable only to an ideal state of things, or
to a state of things in so far as it may conform to an ideal. It
merely gives a new aspect to the premisses. [ End quote]

In mentioning the "new aspect," Peirce was stating something that many 
have noticed. Technically it doesn't apply to all deduction (a 
deduction with the form /pq/ ergo /p/ is valid but brings no new 
aspect to the premisses), but just to deduction with some heuristic 
value (and, I'd say, among such deductions, more to attenuative 
deduction than to equipollential deduction).


On 10/21/2015 10:46 PM, Ben Novak wrote:


Dear Ben Udell:

Please rest assured that I did not take any of your comments as 
criticism.


Rather, I am 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Clark Goble]

> On Oct 29, 2015, at 9:31 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> In what sense can phenomenology "draw" things from logic?  If it can draw 
> something, what can it it draw?

An other question. We tend to think of logic as functional in its own right. 
For deduction and the mathematics of other types like Bayesian inference that’s 
true. It seems for abduction and perhaps types of induction that for the logic 
to function correct it can’t easily be separated from where it is applied. 
(There isn’t a way that I can see to talk about adductive inference without 
talking about the particular context of such inference for instance)

Does this relate to the question of phenomenology (in the Peircean sense) and 
logic?

The reason I ask is because you say:

> ...remember that phenomenology can draw its principles from mathematics, and 
> that the normative sciences can draw their principles from both math and 
> phenomenology--but not the other way around.

I wonder how we deal with things like quasi-empirical methods in mathematics 
(started I think by Putnam who clearly was influenced by Peirce in his 
approach). Admittedly the empirical isn’t the phenomenological (or at least 
it’s a complex relationship). I’m here thinking of mathematics as practiced in 
the 20th century and less Peirce’s tendency to follow Comte in a fascination 
with taxonomy.

My understanding is that we’re talking just about a hierarchy of abstract 
principles. As such mathematics as a category in the taxonomy is about 
generality of laws. In this sense an area of study is simply separate from the 
hierarchy in terms of principles. We have to then separate phenomenological 
principles from phenomenology in general which may indeed draw from logic. The 
analysis may then lead to discovery of general principles.

Of course for Peirce phenomenology is the study of the categories in their 
general form. His very inferences for why there must be three fundamental 
categories arises out of logic. At least it seems that way to me. Likewise when 
early only he switches from 5 categories to 3 (dropping Being and Substance) 
it’s because he sees them as unthinkable and irrelevant in a certain way. But 
that seems drawn from logic too. Jeffrey seems to say something similar when he 
talks about explanatory adequacy and observations. 

Apologies if I’m just missing the focus in this discussion. It just seems that 
if by “draw” we mean how particular laws are tied to more general laws then we 
can’t . If by “draw” we mean the method of analysis then of course we can and 
must. It just seems to me that while Peirce uses common terms like mathematics 
he means something subtle and nuanced about them such that his taxonomy of the 
sciences isn’t really a taxonomy of the sciences in any normal sense.
-
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Benjamin Udell]

Dear Ben Novak, list,

As regards an explanation A's implying the surprising phenomenon C, that 
seems more on the level of implication than of an actual inference, 
which would be the mind's moving from A as an accepted premiss to 
conclude at least tentatively C. The mind already believes C and does 
not yet believe or suspect A (that happens instead in the abductive 
conclusion). I'm not sure that Peirce always thought that that 
implication had to be strictly deductive (he just says "a matter of 
course") but I'll have to dig into "On the Logic of Drawing History from 
Ancient Documents" where he goes into that relation in some detail if I 
recall correctly.


But let's say that it _/is/_ deductive, and that it is a deductive 
implication even if not an actual deduction. Sometimes one needs to do a 
kind of proof of concept. One thinks roughly that a certain hypothesis 
would entail the phenomenon, but one needs to show the entailment 
clearly. This proof may take mathematical form, and so on. It won't 
always be so comfortable and easy.


In the deduction of further implications of the hypothesis once accepted 
(albeit on probation), it is not always so easy to find distinctive 
implications unimplied by competing explanations or by accepted theory.


Anyway, generally, the challenge of a heuristically worthwhile deduction 
is to reach a new (or nontrivial) perspective without actually 
concluding in a claim new to, i.e., unentailed by, the premisses. In 
seeking a new perspective, one is trying to get something like 
information, news, even though the deduction is uninformative in the 
Shannon sense. It is this sense of seeking news that I'm magnifying into 
an (mild) emotion of impatience or suspense.


That's very easy in the case of categorical syllogisms, and the novelty 
is minimal there, but still observable:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Ergo———Socrates is mortal.

Of course there are all kinds of logic problems where the solution is 
not so obvious.


You wrote,

   Therefore, I ask: If one assumed that "If A, then C would be a
   matter of course," and then deduced from A that one should find not
   only C, but also D and F, then when one checked and found that D or
   F were not found in the circumstances in which one found C, would
   then one have an attenuative deduction situation? Or would one only
   have the falsification of hypothesis A?

If, from A one attenuatively deduces D, and next finds D false upon 
observation, then from not-D one attenuatively deduces not-A; A is 
disproven (i.e., falsified).


I should add that I've found only one place where Peirce wrote of a new 
aspect as part of deduction's function. See Appendix below.


Best, Ben

Appendix: Peirce wrote in his 1905 letter draft to Mario Calderoni (CP 
8.209)

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-letter-draft-mario-calderoni-0

   [] The second kind of reasoning is deduction, or necessary
   reasoning. It is applicable only to an ideal state of things, or to
   a state of things in so far as it may conform to an ideal. It merely
   gives a new aspect to the premisses. [ End quote]

In mentioning the "new aspect," Peirce was stating something that many 
have noticed. Technically it doesn't apply to all deduction (a deduction 
with the form /pq/ ergo /p/ is valid but brings no new aspect to the 
premisses), but just to deduction with some heuristic value (and, I'd 
say, among such deductions, more to attenuative deduction than to 
equipollential deduction).


On 10/21/2015 10:46 PM, Ben Novak wrote:


Dear Ben Udell:

Please rest assured that I did not take any of your comments as 
criticism.


Rather, I am very interested in the issues that you have raised, and 
eager to understand them. I therefore appreciate very much your 
explanatory emails, both in response to me and to others, as well as 
of all those others who have contributed to this thread.


I find your puzzlement about the "emotion belonging to occasion of 
(attenuative) deduction" to be fascinating, at least as you describe 
the problem:


It's true, 'impatience' and 'suspense' seem strong words for the
emotion belonging to the occasion of (attenuative) deduction. I'm
thinking of a feeling of curiosity about the future such that one
wishes to shorten by deduction the wait till discovery. You
suggest the word 'dissatisfaction'. One could think of a feeling
of dissatisfaction with the facts known or hypothesized so far, as
if they seemed coy, or insufficient for a worthwhile conclusion,
to which one responds by managing to deduce a worthwhile
conclusion. Yet "dissatisfaction" as the occasion of deduction
seems too vague. Surprise and perplexity could also be taken as
kinds of dissatisfaction. If we take seriously Peirce's idea that
deduction _predicts_, then the idea of at least some mild feeling
of suspense or impatience seems to follow logically enough as
belonging to 

[PEIRCE-L] Phenomenology and architectonic considerations

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Ben, Gary R., Clark, List,

Ben has offered two things that are quite helpful to me for the purposes of 
thinking more clearly about the relationships that hold between math, 
phenomenology and the normative sciences.  

First, he has pointed out that Kant's remark to the effect "That philosophy 
which mixes pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of 
philosophy" seems to reflect Peirce's own commitments with respect to 
philosophical methodology when are are talking about pure philosophy as opposed 
to applied philosophy.  As Ben notes, Peirce goes so far as to outline a 
three-way division of science in which the second branch is Science of Review 
which does mix empirical principles with pure ones.  While I am able to 
remember that applied philosophy combines the pure and empirical parts, I often 
lose track of the idea that the Science of Review also combines the two.

Second, Ben provides a revised table of the taxa for setting up the 
architectonic:

Branches:
1. Science of Discovery (Classes: 1. Mathematics, 2. Cenoscopy 3, Idioscopy) 
2. Science of Review, a.k.a Synthetic Philosophy, which includes classification 
of the sciences.
3. Practical Science, a.k.a. the Arts.

In descending taxical order, one can discern the guiding questions concerning 
(1) ideals, (2) conduct, and (3) thought and learning, in two cycles:

First cycle:
1. Each branch has its own distinctive animating motive/purpose common to all 
its subdivisions. 
2. Each class has its own great subject and kind of observations. 
3. Throughout an order, researchers pursue the same general kind of inquiry 
(but deal with different kinds of conceptions); orders can differ 
hierarchically within a class.

Second cycle:
4. Throughout a family of science, conceptions are shared but skills differ. 
5. Throughout a genus of science, skills are shared, but acquaintance with 
facts in detail differs. 
6. Throughout a species of science, the researchers are all thoroughly well 
qualified in all parts of it. 
7. In a variety of science, researchers devote lives to it but no so numerously 
as to support journals, societies, etc.

So, with this helpful table in hand, I am wondering how we might go about using 
it in trying to answer the two sets of questions that are on my mind.  First, 
we have the questions about the relationship between phenomenology and math.  
How can phenomenology (and the normative sciences, for that matter) help us 
answer these questions:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which mathematical 
deduction can set out?
2. What are their general characters?
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

Drawing on Peirce’s way of framing these questions about the starting points 
for mathematical inquiry, I’ve framed an analogous set of questions about 
inquiry in the phenomenological branch of cenoscopic science.  How might the 
normative sciences help us answer the following questions about phenomenology.

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological 
inquiry can set out?
2. What are the general characters of these phenomenological hypotheses?
3. Why are not other phenomenological hypotheses possible, and the like?

As Ben’s table helps us to keep clear, math and phenomenology are two classes 
of scientific inquiry under the larger branch of the science of discovery.  As 
such, they share a common animating purpose that is common to all its 
subdivisions, and that common purpose is to discover the truth—regardless of 
whether it be the truth about the formal relations that hold between ideal 
states of affairs expressed in a given system of mathematical hypotheses or 
whether it be the truth about positive matters concerning the formal elements 
that are essential for all possible observations concerning the phenomena that 
are part of our common experience.  While they belong to the same branch of 
inquiry, these two classes (i.e., math and cenoscopic science) have their own 
great subject and kind of observations.  

The same does not hold when it comes to the relations between phenomenology and 
the normative sciences.  These two areas of inquiry belong to the same class, 
so they share the same general subject and kind of observation.  Having said 
that, they are two different orders of scientific inquiry.  As such, they deal 
with different kinds of conceptions—and they differ hierarchically within the 
class.  The normative sciences need to draw their leading conceptions and 
principles from phenomenology.  At the same time, we must be careful not to 
bias or prejudice our inquiries in phenomenology by importing the current 
results arrived at in the normative sciences into our examination of the 
elements that are essentially part of all the phenomena we might observe.  

The temptation of importing conceptions from the normative sciences into our 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phenomenology and architectonic considerations

[Benjamin Udell]

Quick note, just to be clear: 'a revised table of the taxa' refers to my 
revising myself to add some lines of division. The only revision to 
Peirce is the showing of two cycles, he didn't mention such cycles. Also 
I've reinserted in Jeff D.'s response the horizontal line that I put 
between the 6th and 7th taxa. The cycle seems to gothrough 1st, 2nd, and 
3rd taxa, and again through the 4th, 5th, and 6th taxa. I occurs to me 
that this idea of two cycles in the taxa may not be original. I don't 
know, I thought of it this morning while writing the post. - Best, Ben


On 10/29/2015 1:52 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:

Ben, Gary R., Clark, List,

Ben has offered two things that are quite helpful to me for the purposes of 
thinking more clearly about the relationships that hold between math, 
phenomenology and the normative sciences.

First, he has pointed out that Kant's remark to the effect "That philosophy which 
mixes pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of 
philosophy" seems to reflect Peirce's own commitments with respect to 
philosophical methodology when are are talking about pure philosophy as opposed to 
applied philosophy.  As Ben notes, Peirce goes so far as to outline a three-way division 
of science in which the second branch is Science of Review which does mix empirical 
principles with pure ones.  While I am able to remember that applied philosophy combines 
the pure and empirical parts, I often lose track of the idea that the Science of Review 
also combines the two.

Second, Ben provides a revised table of the taxa for setting up the 
architectonic:

Branches:
1. Science of Discovery (Classes: 1. Mathematics, 2. Cenoscopy 3, Idioscopy)
2. Science of Review, a.k.a Synthetic Philosophy, which includes classification 
of the sciences.
3. Practical Science, a.k.a. the Arts.

In descending taxical order, one can discern the guiding questions concerning 
(1) ideals, (2) conduct, and (3) thought and learning, in two cycles:

First cycle:
1. Each branch has its own distinctive animating motive/purpose common to all 
its subdivisions.
2. Each class has its own great subject and kind of observations.
3. Throughout an order, researchers pursue the same general kind of inquiry 
(but deal with different kinds of conceptions); orders can differ 
hierarchically within a class.

Second cycle:
4. Throughout a family of science, conceptions are shared but skills differ.
5. Throughout a genus of science, skills are shared, but acquaintance with 
facts in detail differs.
6. Throughout a species of science, the researchers are all thoroughly well 
qualified in all parts of it.

7. In a variety of science, researchers devote lives to it but no so numerously 
as to support journals, societies, etc.

So, with this helpful table in hand, I am wondering how we might go about using 
it in trying to answer the two sets of questions that are on my mind.  First, 
we have the questions about the relationship between phenomenology and math.  
How can phenomenology (and the normative sciences, for that matter) help us 
answer these questions:

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which mathematical 
deduction can set out?
2. What are their general characters?
3. Why are not other hypotheses possible, and the like?

Drawing on Peirce’s way of framing these questions about the starting points 
for mathematical inquiry, I’ve framed an analogous set of questions about 
inquiry in the phenomenological branch of cenoscopic science.  How might the 
normative sciences help us answer the following questions about phenomenology.

1. What are the different systems of hypotheses from which phenomenological 
inquiry can set out?
2. What are the general characters of these phenomenological hypotheses?
3. Why are not other phenomenological hypotheses possible, and the like?

As Ben’s table helps us to keep clear, math and phenomenology are two classes 
of scientific inquiry under the larger branch of the science of discovery.  As 
such, they share a common animating purpose that is common to all its 
subdivisions, and that common purpose is to discover the truth—regardless of 
whether it be the truth about the formal relations that hold between ideal 
states of affairs expressed in a given system of mathematical hypotheses or 
whether it be the truth about positive matters concerning the formal elements 
that are essential for all possible observations concerning the phenomena that 
are part of our common experience.  While they belong to the same branch of 
inquiry, these two classes (i.e., math and cenoscopic science) have their own 
great subject and kind of observations.

The same does not hold when it comes to the relations between phenomenology and 
the normative sciences.  These two areas of inquiry belong to the same class, 
so they share the same general subject 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Clark Goble]

> On Oct 29, 2015, at 9:06 AM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> I think that I'd agree with Kant's remark "That philosophy which mixes pure 
> principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name of philosophy" 
> if by "philosophy" one takes him to mean pure philosophy, or pure cenoscopy 
> in Peirce's sense, as opposed to applied philosophy/cenoscopy, which can get 
> into questions such as that of the evolution of living beings from material 
> systems as understood by the special sciences (a.k.a. idioscopy), and so on. 

In one sense this seems almost true by definition. That is if we’re doing an 
analysis that depends upon keeping straight phenomena from necessary 
conditions. On the other hand as I’ve discussed here before I tend to agree 
with Quine that Kant’s division is deeply problematic in practice. By practice 
I don’t mean just applied philosophy (although I’m unsure what we mean by 
that). It seems to me that the very separation between logical supports and 
empirics is itself a kind of applied philosophy that breaks down when we 
consider philosophy in more abstract. That’s not to say the opposition isn’t 
frequently useful. It’s worth considering pure cenoscopy as a logical issue. 
Just that in more epistemological or even ontological senses the opposition 
doesn’t seem firm.

But maybe what I’m really questioning isn’t the “pure principles” vs. 
“empirical principles” so much as “applied philosophy” and “pure philosophy.” 

Peirce discusses something related in “The Basis of Pragmaticism  in the 
Normative Sciences” (chapter 27 in EP emphasis mine).

Two meanings of the term “philosophy” call for our particular notice. The two 
meanings agree in making philosophical knowledge positive, that is, in making 
it a knowledge of things real, in opposition to mathematical knowledge, which 
is a knowledge of the consequences of arbitrary hypotheses; and they further 
agree in making philosophical truth extremely general. But in other respects 
they differ as widely as they well could. For one of them, which is better 
entitled (except by usage) to being distinguished as philosophia prima than is 
ontology, embraces all that positive science which rests upon familiar 
experience and does not search out occult or rare phenomena; while the other, 
which has been called philosophia ultima, embraces all that truth which is 
derivable by collating the results of the different special sciences, but which 
is too broad to be perfectly established by any one of them. The former is well 
named by Jeremy Bentham’s term cenoscopy κοινοσκοπι the lookout upon the 
common), the latter goes by the name of synthetic philosophy. Widely different 
as the two sciences are, [they are] frequently confounded and intertangled; and 
when they are distinguished the question is often asked, “Which of these is the 
true philosophy?” as if an appreciation of one necessarily involved a 
depreciation of the other. In the writer’s opinion each is an important study. 
Cenoscopy should be that department of heuretic science which stands next after 
Mathematics, and before Idioscopy, or special science; while Synthetic 
Philosophy, the subject upon which Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte, William 
Whewell, and Herbert Spencer have left us admirable works in their several 
ways, stands at the head of the Retrospective Sciences.

Is this what you’re getting at? In your list from the original post you have 
cenescopy as one division within the science of discovery. I’m not sure where 
you see Kant fitting in here though. I assume it’s the same divide but I’d be 
interested in seeing if you think so. In your list of taxonomy these are 
separated by science of discovery and science of review. However some might see 
applied philosophy more as practical science, your third category. 

To me Kant’s dictim seems more about the divide between mathematics and 
cenoscopy. If so, then does “pure cenoscopy” mean something more mathematical? 

Sorry for my being so confused. Despite my misgivings about Peirce’s project 
here, I do think that keeping the categories separate is useful even if I think 
our inquiry in practice won’t be so neat. For Quine the concern with Kant was 
more epistemological than categorical.

 
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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phenomenology and architectonic considerations

[Benjamin Udell]

Clark, list,

I don't know whether (A) Peirce would put all applied cenoscopy (applied 
_/philosophia prima/_) into Science of Review or whether (B),for Peirce, 
some of it could be cenoscopy applied in physics, cenoscopy applied in 
psychology, etc. (B) seems much likelier to me. There's philosophy of 
physics, philosophy of chemistry, and so on. In his brief intellectual 
autobiography in 1904, Peirce said of philosophy (the context shows that 
he means cenoscopic philosophy),


   [] All so-called "logical" analysis, which is the method of
   philosophy, ought to be regarded as philosophy, pure or applied. []
   [End quote]

(See Ketner's chapter in _The Logic of Interdisciplinarity_).  
Elsewhere, in CP 8.305, Peirce said that logical analysis is 
phaneroscopic analysis:


   [] I shall undertake to show (still somewhat imperfectly) that
   concepts are capable of such phaneroscopic analysis, or in common
   parlance "logical analysis" []
   [End quote]

That it's applied means that it could be mistaken for reasons in physics 
or in psychology, etc., in the same sense that some calculus could be 
mistaken in physics: not automatically because it's mathematically bad 
calculus in the first place but because it's not applicable to physics 
in the claimed manner. It may be a misapplication, it may be a badly 
executed application, and so on. Of course, difficulties of applied 
philosophy in idioscopy might lead one, maybe sometimes ought to lead 
one, to generalized doubts of the philosophy that got applied, but 
that's another matter. I don't really know about this, but my impression 
is that statistics as a general theoretical enterprise sometimes learns 
from problems with idioscopic applications. It seems to me that one 
could get that sort of thing in cenoscopic philosophy (of which Peirce 
seemed to consider general inferential statistics a part).


On the other hand, some claims in physics could turn out to be based on 
bad mathematics. Some claims in sociology could turn to be based on bad 
statistical reasoning, and so on. That can be quite enough to overturn 
those claims.


Your second quote is indeed about the distinction between cenoscopy and 
Science of Review. Here's another 
http://web.archive.org/web/2005121054/http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm 
 
:


   CP 181. All science is either, A. Science of Discovery; B. Science
   of Review; or C. Practical Science.

   1.182. By "science of review" is meant the business of those who
   occupy themselves with arranging the results of discovery, beginning
   with digests, and going on to endeavor to form a philosophy of
   science. Such is the nature of Humboldt's _Cosmos_, of Comte's
   _Philosophie positive_, and of Spencer's _Synthetic Philosophy_. The
   classification of the sciences belongs to this department.
   [End quote]

It sounds as though many textbooks, for better and worse, would be part 
of Science of Review.


By the way, I've moved our posts to the correct thread.

Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 3:14 PM, Clark Goble wrote:



On Oct 29, 2015, at 9:06 AM, Benjamin Udell > wrote:


I think that I'd agree with Kant's remark "That philosophy which 
mixes pure principles with empirical ones does not deserve the name 
of philosophy" if by "philosophy" one takes him to mean pure 
philosophy, or pure cenoscopy in Peirce's sense, as opposed to 
applied philosophy/cenoscopy, which can get into questions such as 
that of the evolution of living beings from material systems as 
understood by the special sciences (a.k.a. idioscopy), and so on.


In one sense this seems almost true by definition. That is if we’re 
doing an analysis that depends upon keeping straight phenomena from 
necessary conditions. On the other hand as I’ve discussed here before 
I tend to agree with Quine that Kant’s division is deeply problematic 
in practice. By practice I don’t mean just applied philosophy 
(although I’m unsure what we mean by that). It seems to me that the 
very separation between logical supports and empirics is itself a kind 
of applied philosophy that breaks down when we consider philosophy in 
more abstract. That’s not to say the opposition isn’t frequently 
useful. It’s worth considering pure cenoscopy as a logical issue. Just 
that in more epistemological or even ontological senses the opposition 
doesn’t seem firm.


But maybe what I’m really questioning isn’t the “pure principles” vs. 
“empirical principles” so much as “applied philosophy” and “pure 
philosophy.”


Peirce discusses something related in “The Basis of Pragmaticism  in 
the Normative Sciences” (chapter 27 in EP emphasis mine).


/Two meanings of the term “philosophy”/ call for our particular
notice. The two meanings agree in making philosophical knowledge
positive, that is, in making 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8927] Re: Peirce's categories

[Matt Faunce]

Gary F.,

That was a wonderful explanation! From here on out I'm gonna hold to the 
standard you followed:


Secondness refers to the category or mode.

Second (capital S) is the referent which is in the mode of Secondness 
because of its relation to a relata (but no other relata).


second (small s) refers to the relata from above.

Matt


On 10/29/15 11:04 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got 
the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s 
about all I will have time for, until next week). I’m also copying to 
the Peirce list since this is more about Peirce than biosemiotics.


Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all /modes of being/. They are 
not entities or beings. These /modes/ of being are /defined/ by Peirce 
in terms of how a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to other 
beings makes that being what it is.


Let X = the being.

Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively and 
without reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a 
First,” but this X is by definition unrelated to anything else; there 
is nothing else in its universe, and consequently nothing we can say 
about it that will locate it in /any/ universe. So it is /not/ the 
first of a series.


If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any 
third,” then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an 
/effort/, it cannot be that without /resistance/; there is no effort 
without resistance, no resistance without effort. We can designate 
resistance then as Y. So we can say that each of them is Second to the 
other, or “a Second.” The presence of the other in its universe, /and 
nothing else/, makes each of them what it is. If we think of them as a 
pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which one we call 
X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary which of them is 
first or second in the series. /That/ use of the words “first” and 
“second” has nothing to do with Firstness or Secondness as Peirce is 
defining them.


Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and 
third into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a /gift/, it 
must be given by somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can 
say that X is what it is only because it brings Y into relation with 
Z. We can /also/ say that Y, as giver, brings X into relation with Z; 
/and/ that Z, as recipient, brings X into relation with Y (remember 
we’re talking about /logical/ relations, not human relations). X is 
what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation with Y 
and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the 
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of 
them is “a Third.”


But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining 
their mode of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count as 
first, or second, or third. What counts is that there are three 
/relata/ here, each of which is made what it is by its role in the 
triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what sort of commodity X is, 
or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z is. Thirdness is 
a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given being. 
And the same applies to the other two modes.


Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message 
below, hoping that the explanation is given above.


Gary f.


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Clark Goble]

> On Oct 29, 2015, at 1:20 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard  
> wrote:
> 
> Peirce draws on the distinction between pure and applied mathematics.  When 
> it comes to geometry, for instance, only topology is pure mathematics.  Both 
> projective geometry and all systems of metrical geometry import notions that 
> are not part of pure mathematics, such as the conception of a ray, or a rigid 
> bar.

(Trying to remember my math classes - it’s been too long)

That’s really helpful though. Thank you.

Where does Peirce talk about this?  It’s not in anything I have handy. The 
places I find him discussing topology seem more related to his logical diagrams 
and logic of relations. Admittedly that got connections to mathematical 
topology as I remember it from my undergrad years. That is the issue is over 
set theory and how within sets relations take place. Which does seem quite tied 
to his general semiotics. 

Most of the geometry I did back in the day involved metric spaces and so not 
pure mathematics in Peirce’s sense. I’m just trying to get clear in my mind the 
dividing line. Is it fundamentally between set theory (and its relations) as 
opposed to use of set theory? 

I’m familiar with the quote you give later where math is about possibilities. 
We make premises and trace out implications. It’s imaginary in that sense.

I just don’t see how that leads to a divide between topology and metric 
geometry. The latter seems mathematical in this sense.

Forgive my ignorance here. Like I said it’s been more years than I care to 
admit. The days when Nirvana and Soundgarden were fresh and new. Thanks for 
getting at this though. It’s extremely helpful to me.

> So, I wonder, what kind of observation is it when a person observes the 
> relations between the parts of the imaginary (or diagrammed) objects and 
> learns something about the system that was not evident from the hypotheses 
> and abstract precepts that the reasoning took its start?

That bit about observation seems key. Peirce makes similar points in many 
places. It’s that reason I think Peirce is closer to Quine than Kant in this.

However I can imagine many things - some tied closer to the regular world than 
others. Geometry is the best example of this since circles, lines, rays and so 
forth seem precinded from regular phenomenal objects. I’d go so far as to say 
that’s true even of sets or continuity. 
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RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Clark, List,

You ask:  I wonder how we deal with things like quasi-empirical methods in 
mathematics (started I think by Putnam who clearly was influenced by Peirce in 
his approach). Admittedly the empirical isn’t the phenomenological (or at least 
it’s a complex relationship). I’m here thinking of mathematics as practiced in 
the 20th century and less Peirce’s tendency to follow Comte in a fascination 
with taxonomy.

Peirce draws on the distinction between pure and applied mathematics.  When it 
comes to geometry, for instance, only topology is pure mathematics.  Both 
projective geometry and all systems of metrical geometry import notions that 
are not part of pure mathematics, such as the conception of a ray, or a rigid 
bar.

When it comes to pure mathematics, he is just as concerned about getting 
straight about the the kinds of observations we can draw on as he is concerned 
about getting straight on this question for the purposes of a pure science of 
cenoscopic inquiry. He makes the following point:  

The first is mathematics, which does not undertake to ascertain any matter of 
fact whatever, but merely posits hypotheses, and traces out their consequences. 
It is observational, in so far as it makes constructions in the imagination 
according to abstract precepts, and then observes these imaginary objects, 
finding in them relations of parts not specified in the precept of 
construction. This is truly observation, yet certainly in a very peculiar 
sense; and no other kind of observation would at all answer the purpose of 
mathematics. CP 1.240 

So, I wonder, what kind of observation is it when a person observes the 
relations between the parts of the imaginary (or diagrammed) objects and learns 
something about the system that was not evident from the hypotheses and 
abstract precepts that the reasoning took its start?

--Jeff




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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Benjamin Udell]

Jeff D., Clark, list,

I think it's important in this to get the quotes and dates. I recall 
Peirce's views as changing, and partly it's his acceptance of changing 
terminology. Earlier, he had regarded geometry as mathematically applied 
science of space; later he accepted the idea that geometers were not 
studying space as it is, but instead studying spaces as hypothetical 
objects. Digging those quotes up is another little research project.


Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 3:20 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:

Clark, List,

You ask:  I wonder how we deal with things like quasi-empirical methods in 
mathematics (started I think by Putnam who clearly was influenced by Peirce in 
his approach). Admittedly the empirical isn’t the phenomenological (or at least 
it’s a complex relationship). I’m here thinking of mathematics as practiced in 
the 20th century and less Peirce’s tendency to follow Comte in a fascination 
with taxonomy.

Peirce draws on the distinction between pure and applied mathematics.  When it 
comes to geometry, for instance, only topology is pure mathematics.  Both 
projective geometry and all systems of metrical geometry import notions that 
are not part of pure mathematics, such as the conception of a ray, or a rigid 
bar.

When it comes to pure mathematics, he is just as concerned about getting 
straight about the the kinds of observations we can draw on as he is concerned 
about getting straight on this question for the purposes of a pure science of 
cenoscopic inquiry. He makes the following point:

The first is mathematics, which does not undertake to ascertain any matter of 
fact whatever, but merely posits hypotheses, and traces out their consequences. 
It is observational, in so far as it makes constructions in the imagination 
according to abstract precepts, and then observes these imaginary objects, 
finding in them relations of parts not specified in the precept of 
construction. This is truly observation, yet certainly in a very peculiar 
sense; and no other kind of observation would at all answer the purpose of 
mathematics. CP 1.240

So, I wonder, what kind of observation is it when a person observes the 
relations between the parts of the imaginary (or diagrammed) objects and learns 
something about the system that was not evident from the hypotheses and 
abstract precepts that the reasoning took its start?

--Jeff






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Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [biosemiotics:8927] Re: Peirce's categories

[Matt Faunce]

Correction, /relata/ is plural. /Relatum/ is singular. So, take two:

The word/Secondness/ refers to the category or mode.
/
/The word /Second/ (capital S) refers to the referent which is in the 
mode of Secondness because of its relation to a single relatum (but no 
other).


The word /second/ (small s) refers to the relatum from above.

Matt

On 10/29/15 3:56 PM, Matt Faunce wrote:

Gary F.,

That was a wonderful explanation! From here on out I'm gonna hold to 
the standard you followed:


Secondness refers to the category or mode.

Second (capital S) is the referent which is in the mode of Secondness 
because of its relation to a relata (but no other relata).


second (small s) refers to the relata from above.

Matt


On 10/29/15 11:04 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:


Kobus, from this response, it seems to me that you still haven’t got 
the point I was trying to make. So I’ll try once more (but that’s 
about all I will have time for, until next week). I’m also copying to 
the Peirce list since this is more about Peirce than biosemiotics.


Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are all /modes of being/. They 
are not entities or beings. These /modes/ of being are /defined/ by 
Peirce in terms of how a being’s relation (or lack of relation) to 
other beings makes that being what it is.


Let X = the being.

Firstness is the mode of being of X if X is what it is “positively 
and without reference to anything else.” Such an X can be called “a 
First,” but this X is by definition unrelated to anything else; there 
is nothing else in its universe, and consequently nothing we can say 
about it that will locate it in /any/ universe. So it is /not/ the 
first of a series.


If X is “such as it is with respect to a second but regardless of any 
third,” then its mode of being is Secondness. For example, if X is an 
/effort/, it cannot be that without /resistance/; there is no effort 
without resistance, no resistance without effort. We can designate 
resistance then as Y. So we can say that each of them is Second to 
the other, or “a Second.” The presence of the other in its universe, 
/and nothing else/, makes each of them what it is. If we think of 
them as a pair, or a series of two, it is completely arbitrary which 
one we call X and which we call Y; and it is completely arbitrary 
which of them is first or second in the series. /That/ use of the 
words “first” and “second” has nothing to do with Firstness or 
Secondness as Peirce is defining them.


Now let’s take an X which “is such as it is, in bringing a second and 
third into relation to each other.” For example, if X is a /gift/, it 
must be given by somebody (let’s say Y) to somebody else (Z). We can 
say that X is what it is only because it brings Y into relation with 
Z. We can /also/ say that Y, as giver, brings X into relation with Z; 
/and/ that Z, as recipient, brings X into relation with Y (remember 
we’re talking about /logical/ relations, not human relations). X is 
what it is because of its unique role in the triadic relation with Y 
and Z; and the same applies to the other two. Each of them is in the 
mode of being Peirce calls Thirdness. So you could say that each of 
them is “a Third.”


But if you’re just counting these beings, rather than ascertaining 
their mode of being, it is completely arbitrary which one you count 
as first, or second, or third. What counts is that there are three 
/relata/ here, each of which is made what it is by its role in the 
triadic relation. It is also irrelevant what sort of commodity X is, 
or what sort of person Y is, or what the gender of Z is. Thirdness is 
a mode of being, it is not an attribute or quality of a given being. 
And the same applies to the other two modes.


Now to your questions: I’ve inserted brief answers into your message 
below, hoping that the explanation is given above.


Gary f.




--
Matt


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Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Benjamin Udell]

In 1897 CP 4.218, Peirce makes his remarks that projective and metric 
geometries are not pure geometry, but goes on to say that they are so if 
the plane is defined so broadly as to make those geometries into 
chapters in topics (topology).


in 1901 in "Truth (and Falsity and Error)" 
http://www.gnusystems.ca/BaldwinPeirce.htm#Truth in the Baldwin 
Dictionary, Peirce wrote:


   CP 5.567. These characters equally apply to pure mathematics.
   Projective geometry is not pure mathematics, unless it be recognized
   that whatever is said of rays holds good of every family of curves
   of which there is one and one only through any two points, and any
   two of which have a point in common. But even then it is not pure
   mathematics until for points we put any complete determinations of
   any two-dimensional continuum. Nor will that be enough. A
   proposition is not a statement of perfectly pure mathematics until
   it is devoid of all definite meaning, and comes to this — that a
   property of a certain icon is pointed out and is declared to belong
   to anything like it, of which instances are given. The perfect truth
   cannot be stated, except in the sense that it confesses its
   imperfection. The pure mathematician deals exclusively with
   hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he
   does not care. His hypotheses are creatures of his own imagination;
   but he discovers in them relations which surprise him sometimes. A
   metaphysician may hold that this very forcing upon the
   mathematician's acceptance of propositions for which he was not
   prepared, proves, or even constitutes, a mode of being independent
   of the mathematician's thought, and so a reality. But whether there
   is any reality or not, the truth of the pure mathematical
   proposition is constituted by the impossibility of ever finding a
   case in which it fails. This, however, is only possible if we
   confess the impossibility of precisely defining it.
   [End quote]

I can't currently find the passage that I vaguely remember, where Peirce 
describes geometry as partly empirical, or something like that.


Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 4:10 PM, Benjamin Udell wrote:

Jeff D., Clark, list,

I think it's important in this to get the quotes and dates. I recall 
Peirce's views as changing, and partly it's his acceptance of changing 
terminology. Earlier, he had regarded geometry as mathematically 
applied science of space; later he accepted the idea that geometers 
were not studying space as it is, but instead studying spaces as 
hypothetical objects. Digging those quotes up is another little 
research project.


Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 3:20 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:

Clark, List,

You ask:  I wonder how we deal with things like quasi-empirical 
methods in mathematics (started I think by Putnam who clearly was 
influenced by Peirce in his approach). Admittedly the empirical isn’t 
the phenomenological (or at least it’s a complex relationship). I’m 
here thinking of mathematics as practiced in the 20th century and 
less Peirce’s tendency to follow Comte in a fascination with taxonomy.


Peirce draws on the distinction between pure and applied 
mathematics.  When it comes to geometry, for instance, only topology 
is pure mathematics.  Both projective geometry and all systems of 
metrical geometry import notions that are not part of pure 
mathematics, such as the conception of a ray, or a rigid bar.


When it comes to pure mathematics, he is just as concerned about 
getting straight about the the kinds of observations we can draw on 
as he is concerned about getting straight on this question for the 
purposes of a pure science of cenoscopic inquiry. He makes the 
following point:


The first is mathematics, which does not undertake to ascertain any 
matter of fact whatever, but merely posits hypotheses, and traces out 
their consequences. It is observational, in so far as it makes 
constructions in the imagination according to abstract precepts, and 
then observes these imaginary objects, finding in them relations of 
parts not specified in the precept of construction. This is truly 
observation, yet certainly in a very peculiar sense; and no other 
kind of observation would at all answer the purpose of mathematics. 
CP 1.240


So, I wonder, what kind of observation is it when a person observes 
the relations between the parts of the imaginary (or diagrammed) 
objects and learns something about the system that was not evident 
from the hypotheses and abstract precepts that the reasoning took its 
start?


--Jeff








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Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Ozzie]

Ben U, List ~
This is a great discussion but I wanted to interject a practical/physical 
element that is missing. 

One issue touched on is the role of impatience or dissatisfaction as a trigger 
for deductive/predictive thinking.  Of course, one can whip up impatience or 
dissatisfaction at will, but that is an artificial element if it must first be 
"whipped up."  The more important question is how logic occurs naturally, 
across all of experience.   As general matter, we are constantly making 
predictions from the imperfect deductive model of reality that each of us 
carries around in our heads.  In the vast majority of our deductions, we are 
not propelled by any specific urge or sensation. 

Deduction is something we do because of our evolved brains, particularly the 
frontal cortex.  The frontal cortex is tasked with building the deductive model 
from birth, and works automatically like our hearts and lungs.  The frontal 
cortex evolved from survival (and success) factors in the human environment 
100,000+ years ago.  Its purpose is to predict, so avoiding risks and finding 
food are more easily accomplished. 

The evolved mechanism can of course be used for other purposes (forecasting 
stock prices, finding a wife, etc.), and in those cases the motive will vary 
along multiple dimension.  Impatience and dissatisfaction cannot be ruled out, 
but I don't see why they would be preeminent, either.  If one non-automatic 
motive for practicing deductive logic is predominant across the human species, 
I would expect to find it hard-wired into the mechanism, like the 
survive/thrive motive mentioned above.  So there should be some sort of 
evolutionary story to support the view that a certain motive that propels 
deductive thought is universal.  (If another general motive exists, I would 
guess it is emotional in nature.)

My second point concerns this comment posted earlier:  "In the deduction of 
further implications of the hypothesis once accepted (albeit on probation), it 
is not always so easy to find distinctive implications unimplied by competing 
explanations or by accepted theory." 

I agree with this empirical challenge, so here is my model to show how 
deduction occurs in everyday experience:  Suppose you walk into your darkened 
bedroom tonight and reach inside the door to flip on the light.  While you were 
away, however, suppose I entered your home and raised the light switch 3" 
higher.  Then, when you try to turn on the light tonight, you will fumble 
around to find the switch.  And you will know, even in the dark, that something 
is "wrong."  

This is a prediction issued from the deductive model of your world carried 
around in your brain.  Your prediction was made without conscious effort or 
motive.  The "surprise" of being wrong triggers your abduction that something 
is new, and you will update your deductive model -- though perhaps not until 
collecting more evidence from inductive activities.  Maybe you will continue to 
fumble with the light switch several more times before you can consistently 
forecast where to place your hand to turn on the light with minimal effort.  

Regards,
Tom Wyrick



> On Oct 29, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Benjamin Udell  wrote:
> 
> Dear Ben Novak, list,
> As regards an explanation A's implying the surprising phenomenon C, that 
> seems more on the level of implication than of an actual inference, which 
> would be the mind's moving from A as an accepted premiss to conclude at least 
> tentatively C. The mind already believes C and does not yet believe or 
> suspect A (that happens instead in the abductive conclusion). I'm not sure 
> that Peirce always thought that that implication had to be strictly deductive 
> (he just says "a matter of course") but I'll have to dig into "On the Logic 
> of Drawing History from Ancient Documents" where he goes into that relation 
> in some detail if I recall correctly.
> But let's say that it _is_ deductive, and that it is a deductive implication 
> even if not an actual deduction. Sometimes one needs to do a kind of proof of 
> concept. One thinks roughly that a certain hypothesis would entail the 
> phenomenon, but one needs to show the entailment clearly. This proof may take 
> mathematical form, and so on. It won't always be so comfortable and easy.
> In the deduction of further implications of the hypothesis once accepted 
> (albeit on probation), it is not always so easy to find distinctive 
> implications unimplied by competing explanations or by accepted theory.  
> Anyway, generally, the challenge of a heuristically worthwhile deduction is 
> to reach a new (or nontrivial) perspective without actually concluding in a 
> claim new to, i.e., unentailed by, the premisses. In seeking a new 
> perspective, one is trying to get something like information, news, even 
> though the deduction is uninformative in the Shannon sense. It is this sense 
> of seeking news that I'm magnifying into an (mild) 

[PEIRCE-L] Vol. 2 of Collected Papers, on Induction

[Franklin Ransom]

Hello list,

I just finished Vol. 2 of the Collected Papers, and had a couple of
questions, if anyone is interested in helping out.

Going through the material on induction towards the end of the volume, much
of it seemed to be from Peirce's earlier work on induction, where
hypothesis or presumption (or abduction) is conceived of as an inference
having to do with inferring that a character or set of characters apply to
an object or set of objects. However, the editors included a piece from
1905 that treats of crude, qualitative, and quantitative induction. My
understanding is that Peirce came to believe in his later years that what
he had originally identified as hypothesis is actually qualitative
induction, and hypothesis or abduction is something else. But in the
selected piece from 1905, Peirce is not clarifying that point and instead
has some other remarks about qualitative induction. I am wondering whether
Peirce was consistent about maintaining in his later work that the earlier
view of abduction really should be considered qualitative induction, or if
Peirce's views about this topic are more complicated. It strikes me as odd
that the editors might have purposely misled readers about this point
concerning hypothesis and qualitative induction, but I have difficulty
seeing it otherwise. Perhaps this point is clarified in later volumes of
the CP?

My second question is that I recall hearing at some point that Peirce
identified nine different kinds of induction, but I don't recall seeing
anything by Peirce about this. I was hoping I would find something in the
CP, but I'm not so sure I will find it now. Does anyone know anything about
this, and where I might look for it? I'm not sure if I've asked about this
before; please forgive me for not remembering if I have.

-- Franklin

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Re: [PEIRCE-L] induction's occasion

[Benjamin Udell]

Tom, list,

You wrote,

   In the vast majority of our deductions, we are not propelled by any
   specific urge or sensation.
   [End quote]

I wouldn't say that we are _/propelled/_ by an urge or sensation to 
deduction in the way that we are propelled by surprise or perplexity to 
an abductive inference. I'd say that we are _/drawn/_ to deduction, as 
to a goal. The impatience that prepares us to be so drawn is an 
impatience relative to the prospect of waiting for the unexpedited 
course of experience to tell us what the deduction could now tell us, 
insofar as deduction is predictive. One will not feel much of that 
impatience if the deduction is easy or if one doesn't seriously consider 
the prospect of waiting instead of deducing. Peirce speaks of abductive 
inference as occasioned by surprise. Yet he also holds that abductive 
inference shades by degrees into perceptual judgment. That's to say that 
surprise, or some mild or mostly potential kind of surprise, is an 
ongoing part of perception. I'm not trying to do psychology, but instead 
trying to make out logical patterns. Even if there's not an outstanding 
degree of surprise in it, a phenomenon is perceived that needs to be 
explained in abductive inference. Likewise, even if there's not an 
outstanding degree of suspense in it, in deduction a phenomenon is 
conceived whose ramifications need to be expedited to light; they're 
already there, in some sense, in the premisses.


You wrote,

   Deduction is something we do because of our evolved brains,
   particularly the frontal cortex.
   [End quote]

I'd say that it is something we do because our brains have been evolved 
to adapt themselves to deduction (and other kinds of inference). 
Aerodynamics constrains the evolutions of flying animals. Deduction is 
one of those things that constrain the evolution of intelligence.


Your example of deduction is actually rather suspenseful and thereby 
proves my point. One deduces that something is wrong, one very much does 
not want to wait to find out, in the unexpedited course of experience, 
that something is wrong. But what is it? In puzzlement, one guesses.


Best, Ben

On 10/29/2015 5:46 PM, Ozzie wrote:


Ben U, List ~
This is a great discussion but I wanted to interject a 
practical/physical element that is missing.


One issue touched on is the role of impatience or dissatisfaction as a 
trigger for deductive/predictive thinking.  Of course, one can whip up 
impatience or dissatisfaction at will, but that is an artificial 
element if it must first be "whipped up."  The more important question 
is how logic occurs naturally, across all of experience.   As general 
matter, we are constantly making predictions from the imperfect 
deductive model of reality that each of us carries around in our 
heads.  In the vast majority of our deductions, we are not propelled 
by any specific urge or sensation.


Deduction is something we do because of our evolved brains, 
particularly the frontal cortex.  The frontal cortex is tasked with 
building the deductive model from birth, and works automatically like 
our hearts and lungs.  The frontal cortex evolved from survival (and 
success) factors in the human environment 100,000+ years ago.  Its 
purpose is to predict, so avoiding risks and finding food are more 
easily accomplished.


The evolved mechanism can of course be used for other purposes 
(forecasting stock prices, finding a wife, etc.), and in those cases 
the motive will vary along multiple dimension.  Impatience and 
dissatisfaction cannot be ruled out, but I don't see why they would be 
preeminent, either.  If one non-automatic motive for practicing 
deductive logic is predominant across the human species, I would 
expect to find it hard-wired into the mechanism, like the 
survive/thrive motive mentioned above.  So there should be some sort 
of evolutionary story to support the view that a certain motive that 
propels deductive thought is universal.  (If another general motive 
exists, I would guess it is emotional in nature.)


My second point concerns this comment posted earlier:  "In the 
deduction of further implications of the hypothesis once accepted 
(albeit on probation), it is not always so easy to find distinctive 
implications unimplied by competing explanations or by accepted theory."


I agree with this empirical challenge, so here is my model to show how 
deduction occurs in everyday experience:  Suppose you walk into your 
darkened bedroom tonight and reach inside the door to flip on the 
light.  While you were away, however, suppose I entered your home and 
raised the light switch 3" higher.  Then, when you try to turn on the 
light tonight, you will fumble around to find the switch.  And you 
will know, even in the dark, that something is "wrong."


This is a prediction issued from the deductive model of your world 
carried around in your brain.  Your prediction was made without 
conscious effort or motive.  The "surprise" of 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's categories

[Jeffrey Brian Downard]

Hi Ben, Clark, List,

I'm working on an essay for the conference on Peirce and mathematics that 
Fernando has organized in Bogota, and the topic is those three questions at the 
start of "The Logic of Mathematics."  In order to provide a coherent 
interpretation of what Peirce is trying to do, my efforts are focused on 
writings from that same time period.  So, I'm drawing on the explanations of 
the relations between the parts of geometry in the last lecture in Reasoning 
and the Logic of Things and the definitions he provides of generation and 
intersection, uniformity and the like in his work on topology in the New 
Elements of Geometry and Elements of Mathematics.  If I am not mistaken, most 
of this of this is from the same basic timeframe (around 1896-1898).   

The discussion of the fundamental properties of space in the introduction to 
the latter work was rejected by the editor as being too "philosophical" in 
character.  It looks to me like Peirce is drawing directly from William 
Benjamin Smith's Introductory Modern Geometry of Point, Ray, and Circle.  
Peirce's copy of the text is available through Google Books online.  In the 
annotations in the introduction, Peirce fills in missing words, so we know he 
was reading this section.  It is interesting to compare Smith's account of the 
fundamental properties of space with Peirce's account in the New Elements.  
Here are some features that stand out when making the comparison.  Both are 
explaining how the mathematical conceptions of continuity, uniformity and the 
like are drawn from common experience by a process of abstraction.  In addition 
to refining the explanations of those two properties, Peirce's account lays 
emphasis on the perissad character of the mathematical space that is drawn from 
experience.  Both characterize the introduction of such things as a ray in 
terms of relations between the homoloids in the space.  When one set is taken 
to be dominant, we move from projective to metrical spaces.

The key idea for understanding the character of the hypotheses that lie at the 
bases of both number theory and topology is that Peirce starts with a set of 
precepts that tell us what to do in constructing a figuring and then putting 
the parts into relation with one another.  As the hypotheses are formulated, 
additional precepts are derived that tell us what we are and are not allowed to 
do next.  I wonder:  what lessons can we learn about the relationships that 
hold between math and phenomenology by reflecting on the character of these 
precepts?  In what sense does the analysis of common experience involve 
precepts that govern what we should and shouldn't do by way of making 
observations?

Here is a particularly interesting passage (from a different time period) that 
appears to bear on this kind of question:

We have, thus far, supposed that although the selection of instances is not 
exactly regular, yet the precept followed is such that every unit of the lot 
would eventually get drawn. But very often it is impracticable so to draw our 
instances, for the reason that a part of the lot to be sampled is absolutely 
inaccessible to our powers of observation. If we want to know whether it will 
be profitable to open a mine, we sample the ore; but in advance of our mining 
operations, we can obtain only what ore lies near the surface. Then, simple 
induction becomes worthless, and another method must be resorted to. Suppose we 
wish to make an induction regarding a series of events extending from the 
distant past to the distant future; only those events of the series which occur 
within the period of time over which available history extends can be taken as 
instances. Within this period we may find that the events of the class in 
question present some uniform character; yet how do we know but this uniformity 
was suddenly established a little while before the history commenced, or will 
suddenly break up a little while after it terminates? Now, whether the 
uniformity observed consists (1) in a mere resemblance between all the 
phenomena, or (2) in their consisting of a disorderly mixture of two kinds in a 
certain constant proportion, or (3) in the character of the events being a 
mathematical function of the time of occurrence--in any of these cases we can 
make use of an apagoge from the following probable deduction:... (CP, 2.730)

This provides a really nice example of what it is to observe something like a 
uniformity.  It also provides some sense of how an analysis of the phenomena 
might enable us to sort out--as competing hypotheses--the possibilities 
represented in 1-3.  What is more, the elements provide us with guidance (they 
support the development of the precepts) needed to imagine the kinds of 
experiments that could be run to sort through the competing explanations.  
Stepping back from the particularities of the examples considered in this 
passage, I think we get a nice articulation of how a phenomenological 

Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

[Gary Richmond]

Jeff, list,

It's VERY late on the East Coast, so I'll keep this quite brief for now: a
single question.

In what sense can phenomenology be said to draw "from both mathematics and
from logic"?


Certainly from the standpoint of
> Peirce's '
> classification of the sciences' phenomenology can be seen to draw from
> mathematics, especially from the simplest mathematics. the logic of
> mathematics (
> ​involving​
>  the understanding t
> ​hat
>  there are monads, dyads, triads,
> ​a kind of valency principle relating these, ​
> a reduction principle,
> ​ discrete, pseudo-continuous and
> ​continuous structures,
>  etc.)


 In addition
​. phenomenology can, as can all sciences, draw upon a logica utens. But,
except for its providing 'examples' and the like ('the like' including
logical lessons learned from it's formal study), again. from the standpoint
of the classification of the sciences, can phenomenology really be said to
draw from formal logic, logica docens? If so, how?

​Best,

Gary​

​R
​

[image: Gary Richmond]

*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 1:02 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <
jeffrey.down...@nau.edu> wrote:

> Hi Gary R., List,
>
> My aim was to draw on points that are developed in the context of the
> logical theory for the sake of understanding how he might be using the
> terms "firstness, secondness, thirdness" in the phenomenological theory.
> For my part, I take the aim of developing phenomenology as its own branch
> of philosophical inquiry quite seriously.  As such, I said "in the first
> instance" because that is how--historically speaking-- Peirce arrived at
> these notions.  He started from the side of a philosophical logic and was
> examining the ways that various predicates can stand in different kinds of
> relations.  On my reading of the development of his account of the
> categories, Peirce was working at the level of phenomenology, logic and
> metaphysics from the very start (e.g. in the Lowell Lectures and in New
> List).  Slowly, he gained a sense of the importance of separating more
> clearly between the goals guiding each kind of inquiry along with the
> methods that we should use in developing the respective accounts of the
> phenomenological, logical and metaphysical categories.
>
> When he finally decided to make phenomenology a major branch of
> philosophical inquiry in its own right, he made it clear that phenomenology
> draws from both mathematics and from logic.  When we are drawing from
> mathematics, it appears that were developing the account of the categories
> "from the inside."  That is, we are looking at examples of formal
> conceptions in math--such as that of generating a number series or
> generating a line by moving a particle--and then we are drawing on these
> conceptions for clarifying the formal elements that are part of common
> experience concerning positive matters.  When we are coming at
> phenomenology from the other direction and drawing from logic theory, we
> are asking:  what elements in experience are necessary for the very
> possibility of having signs that are significant and for drawing inferences
> that are valid?  We then ask--are these formal elements really found in our
> common experience?  If so, let us learn to see them more clearly in their
> many guises.
>
> Let me add a bit more.  One reason we need a phenomenological theory is
> that, for Peirce, as for other logicians of his generation, the science of
> logic should be based on observations.  All of the observations are drawn
> from our ordinary experience--including especially the phenomena associated
> with self-control and the phenomena involved in evaluating arguments as
> valid or invalid.  As such, we need to develop an account of the basic
> elements that are an essential part of all of the phenomena we might
> observe.  The account of the formal and material elements is designed to
> put us in a better position to analyze the phenomena we observe for the
> sake of seeing more clearly what is necessary, when it comes to forming
> hypotheses, to make sense of the phenomena that are calling out for
> explanation.  Before drawing such inferences, we need to correct for
> observational errors.
>
> So, to offer an example, Augustus De Morgan, makes the following point in
> Formal Logic, or, The Calculus of inference, necessary and probable.  The
> question he is trying to answer in this chapter on probability is:  how
> much confidence can we place in testimony provided by a number of
> witnesses?  Here is what he says about the fit between his theory and the
> phenomena that are part of our common experience:
>
> The student of this subject is always struck by the frequency of the
> problems in which the science confirms an ordinary notion of common life,
> or is confirmed by it, according to his state of mind with respect to the
> whole 

RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

[John Collier]

Gary, List,

This issue has been discussed before at least once. I don’t agree with Gary 
because I don’t think we ever experience phenomena as pure phenomena, so I 
don’t think we ever directly experience firsts. I see them as abstractions that 
must be there (both logically and psychologically) for us to experience 
phenomena in any way. My position is similar to that of a number of American 
pragmatists including Sellars (Myth of the Given) and C.I. Lewis (pure 
phenomena re ineffable), as well as Quine (whether or not you want to classify 
him as a pragmatist). Joseph Ransdell was able to convince me of the reality of 
firsts, including qualia and the like, partly because of his moderate view. I 
am unclear what Peirce’s view on the issue would be (perhaps he changed views, 
or maintained an ambiguity throughout), but he certainly said things that make 
Gary’s interpretation not unreasonable.

John Collier
Professor Emeritus, UKZN
http://web.ncf.ca/collier

From: Gary Richmond [mailto:gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sent: October 29, 2015 4:43 AM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

Jeff wrote:

If Redness is understood, in the first instance, as the result of an 
abstraction from the conception of red, why not think of Firstness, in the 
first instance, as the result of an abstraction from the conception of what is 
first?  In this way, we focus the attention not on this or that red thing, and 
not even on this or that feeling of red, but on the kind of relationship that 
obtains when the predicate is considered separately from the things that might 
stand in that relationship.

From the standpoint of logic, I would tend to fully agree with you. But from 
that of phenomenology, I have some reservations. There *are* in fact red 
things, and blue things, and snow may indeed appear much more blue than white 
in a given situation of light and shade. And there are, in addition, possible 
firstnesses which even modal logics can't really quite handle in reality.

This is to suggest that firstness, logically speaking, *is*, as you say, an 
abstraction, but that the "first instance" is *not* a logical abstraction, but 
a phenomenon. and even, for the sake of argument, a mere possible phenomenon.

So, from the conceptions of first, second and third, we abstract from the 
thought of any particular thing that might stand in relation to x--is first, 
y--is second and z--is third.  By pealing the things that x, x and z might 
stand for away from the relation, we get the notions of the relationships of 
firstness, secondness and thirdness considered in themselves.  Here, I am 
following Peirce's explanations of how we should talk about relatives, 
relations and relationships.

Again, I would tend to agree with you--and Peirce--when one considers the 
categories strictly from the standpoint of logic.

Btw. Joe Ransdell and I tended to disagree on this matter. He would, I think, 
be siding with you in this matter, in a sense suggesting that logic as semiotic 
was 'sufficient', not quite imagining that phaneroscopy could really be a 
scientific discipline--at least, not much of one.

Best,

Gary R




[Gary Richmond]

Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard 
> wrote:
Gary F., Gary R., List,

If Redness is understood, in the first instance, as the result of an 
abstraction from the conception of red, why not think of Firstness, in the 
first instance, as the result of an abstraction from the conception of what is 
first?  In this way, we focus the attention not on this or that red thing, and 
not even on this or that feeling of red, but on the kind of relationship that 
obtains when the predicate is considered separately from the things that might 
stand in that relationship.

So, from the conceptions of first, second and third, we abstract from the 
thought of any particular thing that might stand in relation to x--is first, 
y--is second and z--is third.  By pealing the things that x, x and z might 
stand for away from the relation, we get the notions of the relationships of 
firstness, secondness and thirdness considered in themselves.  Here, I am 
following Peirce's explanations of how we should talk about relatives, 
relations and relationships.

--Jeff

Jeff Downard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
NAU
(o) 523-8354

From: Gary Richmond [gary.richm...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 4:07 PM
To: Peirce-L
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: Peirce's categories

Matt wrote;

My uses of 'First', 'Second', or 'Third' are to denote specific instantiations 
of the categories of Firstness, Secondness, or Thirdness. This is similar to 
how I use 'a general' as a specific instantiation of