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Peirce's Arisbe - Charles Peirce MS L75 Ver. 1 Part 3

      An analysis and description of three irreducibly different kinds of elements found in experience and even in the abstract world of pure mathematics. This memoir rests upon observation of the experience of every day and hour, this observation being systematized by thought. It is proved, beyond doubt, that there are no more than the three categories. The list was first published by me in May 1867, but has since been repeatedly subjected to the severest criticism I could bring to bear upon it, with the result of making it far more evidently correct. The categories were originally called "quality", "relation", and "representation". The question of names and other terminology for them still somewhat perplexes me. I am inclined to call them "flavor", "reaction", and "mediation".

      [This memoir] will show that all that is before the mind as perceived, imagined, supposed, rejected, etc, has three kinds of elements and no more. These are the qualities of feeling, reaction, and mediation. [EDITORIAL NOTE: Notice that elements of the first kind are qualities of feeling and not simply feelings.] Great pains will be taken to make these three conceptions perfectly clear and vivid.

      My aim in this paper, upon which I have bestowed more labor than upon any other, beginning two years before my first publication on the subject in May 1867, is far more ambitious than that of Kant, or even that of Aristotle, or even the more extended work of Hegel. All those philosophers contented themselves mainly with arranging conceptions which were already current. I, on the contrary, undertake to look directly |103| upon the universal phenomenon, that is, upon all that in any way appears, whether as fact or as fiction; to pick out the different kinds of elements which I detect in it, aided by a special art developed for the purpose; and to form clear conceptions of those kinds, of which I find that there are only three, aided by another special art developed for that purpose.*

Editorial Note (by Ransdell):

Does anyone know what Peirce is referring to as regards these special arts? If you have any ideas on this let us know and we will post it here as an annotation. You need not have the "definitive" answer to this to post your comment here: the idea is just to get some cooperative work done on this and on other such questions as might arise, proceeding at a leisurely pace and in the manner of a scholarly dialogue.

Let me know at   ransdell@cspeirce.com   and I'll post your response here:

COMMENTS & RESPONSES:

(1) Bo Larsson:  August 15, 1998

(2) Jeffrey Downard:  June 19, 2007

      In my present limited space, I cannot make myself clear, still less convincing. Yet I will give such hint as I can of the three kinds of elements. I might name them "qualities", "occurrences", and "meanings". In order to get an idea of what I mean by a "quality", imagine a being whose consciousness should be nothing but the perfume of a damask rose, without any sense of change, of duration, of self or anything else. Put yourself in that being's shoes, and what of the universal phenomenon remains is what I call a "quality". It may be defined as that whose mode of |104| being consists simply in its being what it is. It is self-essence. Suppose next that the consciousness we have imagined should undergo the simplest possible experience; that, for example, the rose-odor should suddenly change to violet-odor. If it is to remain the same consciousness, there must be a moment in which it is conscious of both odors. It cannot in this moment be conscious of the flow of time; but the former rose-odor will appear as its ego, as its consciousness, while the new violet-odor will at that moment be its non-ego, the object of its consciousness. We have this sort of consciousness whenever we experience an event. The old, which has just come to an end, appears as an ego, with the new, which is just about to begin, over against it as a non-ego instantly passing into the ego. The sense of actuality, of present fact, is thus essentially a consciousness of duplicity, of opposition. When we have thus got the idea of an inner and an outer, we can |105| review our experience and place ourselves back to a moment when both the former and the latter states were non-egos, and thus we get the idea of a force acting between outward objects. I do not mean to say that historically we actually do so reflect; probably not. But I mean that that would be a logical reflection. Thus we might logically derive the notion of a thing, as something whose mode of being consists in a reaction against something else. This is my second category. The occurrence is essentially present. When it is not present its peculiar mode of being is gone. There is no time-constituent in it; for the flow of time involves a very different element. There is always a certain resistance to the unexpected. It is usually broken down so instantly that it can only be detected in cases in which peculiar circumstances cause its continuance. But that the new experience always has to overcome a resistance on the part of the old is proved by the |106| fact that we feel it to be irresistible. We feel its force. Now, there can be no force where there is no resistance. The two are but reverse aspects of the same phenomenon. This resistance is a counter-force. Hence the sense of actual fact is a sense of reacting efforts.

       So far, we have left out of account the staple element of the universal phenomenon. Since we have been considering things as temporal, we may as well continue to take the same point of view. The future grows into accomplished fact by a gradual unrolling; the new becomes gradually old. Its effects remain, but they dwindle in importance toward utter oblivion. According to legitimate physical presumption, the evidence certainly now is (although we may not think it likely that it is quite true) that all physical forces are at bottom conservative. Now conservative forces necessarily produce cyclical effects. It is true, that if two particles are attracted precisely inversely as the cube of their |107| distance, or by any law equivalent to that, the one will move in a spiral nearer to the other forever. This is an interesting point; and I have never seen it stated with precision. Formulae given on p. 878 of my father's Analytic Mechanics show that if P is the rate of description of area of the Boscovichian point moving round a fixed attracting center, then if we use a system of rectangular coordinates in which x shall be equal to the square of the reciprocal of the radius vector, and y equal to the square of the velocity, then the straight line whose equation is y = 4P²x will determine the condition of the moving particle reaching an apse; that is, a maximum or minimum distance. Another curve, dependent on the law of the variation of the attraction with the distance, will determine how u² will vary with 1/².   If the attraction varies less rapidly than the inverse cube of the distance, this second curve will be |108| concave downwards; if more rapidly, concave upwards. But if it ever crosses the straight line y = 4P²x the body will have at that distance been at a maximum or minimum distance. If it is tangent to that straight line, it may describe the circle at that distance. When it is below the straight line its velocity will be insufficient and the distance will diminish; so that x will increase.

      Although I cannot in my present limited space make myself clear, still less convincing, I will name the three elements which I find and give some rough notion of the significations of the names. They are called "qualities", "things", and "meanings". By a "quality" is meant a self-essence, or something which is what it is by and in itself alone. Such, for example, is any simple quality of sensation. Mind, I am not speaking of the occurrence of that sensation. What I mean can be understood by imagining a being whose consciousness should consist, we will say, in the sense of the perfume |135| of a damask rose, without any change, without any sense of time, without attributing the smell to any object, without any self-consciousness. I do not say that one can realize that in the imagination; but one can perceive that such a state of consciousness there might be. One can even suppose, however groundlessly, that the attar of roses has a consciousness which is just that. Now take away the consciousness in which there is an element of fact, of action, and in which there is an element of representation, and the very quality itself, which consists in its own peculiar self-being, and you have what I mean by the elements of quality in the universal phenomena. The element that I call a "thing" is more familiar; but the logical analysis of it which is given in the books is inaccurate, because it is colored by the peculiar ways of thinking of the Indo-European languages. It is true that there are proper |136| names in all languages; but common substantives, such as ours are, definitely not verbs, are certainly not necessary in a language, and in my opinion they do not fully exist in the majority of languages. In the Shemitic languages, for example, every common noun is regarded as a formation from a verb. Even if no such verb exists, it would seem that the Shemites cannot think of a noun except as a part of a verb; for they give it a form as if it were of that nature. Indeed, there are Indo-European languages in which the idea of the common noun is not completely hardened. For it is plain that with nouns, full nouns alone, one could not frame a sentence which should satisfy the mind as completely expressed. Now the majority of languages are destitute of any substantive verb "is". In ancient Egyptian, a pronoun "that" usually takes its place. In Greek there is little or no feeling that a sentence without a verb is elliptical. |137| It is, therefore, impossible that in those languages the common noun should be thought as a mere name, as we think it. In Ancient Egyptian, it seems that the pictorial way of thinking, so prominent in the hieroglyphics, was more influential in their thought than it is with us. The word "man" would then be replaced by what we can nearest express as "something is a man", the word "animal" by "something is an animal". Hence to express the idea that "man is an animal", the pronoun "that" would naturally be more appropriate than "is". They would think "Something is a man that something is an animal". It is our idea of a common noun as a name which has caused the logicians to regard a thing as something self-subsistent. There is no room for doubt that that is the way the idea arose. A proper name is always the name of something more or less familiar to both the utterer of the sentence in which it occurs |138| and the person whom he addresses. For otherwise the sentence would have no meaning. If I inform you that the first king of England was Arthur, and you had never before heard of Arthur, still my description of him as the first king of England gives you some acquaintance with him before I use the word "Arthur". If I say "Arthur was the first king of England" I am using a faulty inversion. But a common noun does not suppose any such familiarity. The sentence "Flying-fishes are common in the gulf stream" is sufficiently intelligible to a person who never heard of a flying-fish. That the idea of a thing or, as the logicians say, a substantia, not only does not consist in self-subsistence, which really describes a quality, but is downright repugnant to it, is seen by trying to imagine a universe in which nothing should exist but a single atom. It has been shown above that it is quite possible to conceive of a universe in which there |139| should be absolutely nothing but a rose-odor, without time, space, or anything else. But to suppose that nothing existed but a single atom would be absurd. Suppose it should exist and not exist every other day: what difference would there be between the odd and even days? The difference between an actually existing magnet and a phantasm of a magnet is that one actually pulls and the other does not. Actuality, or existence, consists in reaction. When I call a phenomenon a thing, I mean that it is an object, a something acting ob, or over against me.

      I will name these elements here, although I cannot stop to explain what the names mean. They are simple qualities, subjects of force, and mind. Mind, in particular, is a very different conception from that which is current. It is nearly the Hegelian Begriff. There are three points of view from which these elements have to be studied before they can be clearly apprehended. These are the points of view of qualities, of subjects, and of minds. From the point of view of quality, they appear respectively as quality, |141| reaction, and mediation. From the point of view of subjects they appear as quales, relates, and representations. This is [the] point of view most familiar to ordinary thought, and will appear the clearest to a beginner in the subject. Remembering that by "the universal phenomenon" I mean everything which has got into the mind in any way whatever, including every fiction and false notion, anyone can without difficulty see that there is an idea of a thing as it is in itself with certain qualities, however occult, which do not consist in its actual relation to anything else. In the next place, things are related to one another in pairs. That is, they are at distances from one another, attract or repel one another, etc. In the third place, finally, there are things which represent other things to some purposing mind; that is, they act as substitutes for those other things for some purpose; that is, again, they render the object represented available for the |142| purpose. Thus, to take an example where, at first sight, one does not perceive any element of representation, A gives B a present, C. As a consequence of that act, B comes into direct relation with C, and A has no more to do with the matter. But as long as A's act of gift is in process of performance, this act consists in giving B a consciousness of having a power over C. It is a particular kind of representation to B of the object C. In [the] third place, from the point of view of mind, the three categories appear as feeling or immediate consciousness, as the sense of fact, and as conception or mind strictly.

      These three categories are compounded in a multitude of ways which can only be apprehended through experience. They cannot be built up by an act of pure thought. Some of these forms of composition have to be carefully examined in order to obtain distinct conceptions with which to build a theory of logic.

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