[Inquiry] Re: Blocks On The Road Of Inquiry -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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BOTROI.  Discussion Note 5

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BM = Bernard Morand
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: BOTROI 10.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/arisbe/2004-March/001882.html
Or: BOTROI 10.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-March/001294.html

JA: Peirce's Categories are categories of predicates, which is supposed
    to be one of the reasons that he revived the old word "Predicaments"
    as a synonym for his Categories.

BM: Probably inexact Jon.  Predicaments, a word which comes from the
    10 aristotelician categories seems to me to refer to what Peirce
    called the Long List, or classification of what can be predicated.
    CSP never did it.  I don't know if it is because he thought that
    it was unuseful or because it was premature.

Yes, I used to know the tetraktys by heart,
but my heart is in a different place today.
Still, I couldn't understand the remainder
of what you said here.

BM: Categories or Short List are the three modes of being of predication, 
    (according to a note by the editors of 'Essential Peirce', vol. 2,
    note 7, p. 517 which seems to me correct).

I cannot see the sense of this.

BM: I think this is not just a point of terminology.
    See CP 4.459, in an address to Royce:

This is at CP 4.549, and it is a passage somewhat familiar to me.
The "you" being addressed I assume is the Reader of 'The Monist',
the words from whose mouth were gratuitously put there by Peirce.

| I will now say a few words about what you have called Categories,
| but for which I prefer the designation Predicaments, and which you
| have explained as predicates of predicates.  That wonderful operation
| of hypostatic abstraction by which we seem to create 'entia rationis'
| that are, nevertheless, sometimes real, furnishes us the means of
| turning predicates from being signs that we think or think 'through',
| into being subjects thought of.  We thus think of the thought-sign
| itself, making it the object of another thought-sign.  Thereupon,
| we can repeat the operation of hypostatic abstraction, and from
| these second intentions derive third intentions.  Does this series
| proceed endlessly?  I think not.  What then are the characters of
| its different members?  My thoughts on this subject are not yet
| harvested.  I will only say that the subject concerns Logic, but
| that the divisions so obtained must not be confounded with the
| different Modes of Being:*  Actuality, Possibility, Destiny
| (or Freedom from Destiny).  On the contrary, the succession
| of Predicates of Predicates is different in the different
| Modes of Being.  Meantime, it will be proper that in our
| system of diagrammatization we should provide for the
| division, whenever needed, of each of our three
| Universes of modes of reality into 'Realms'
| for the different Predicaments.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 4.549.
|
| C.S. Peirce,
|"Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism",
|'The Monist', vol. 16 (1906), pp. 492-546.
|'Collected Papers', CP 4.530-572.

* The Editors insert a note about the "Modes of Being" (MOB):
"Usually called categories by Peirce.  See vol. 1, bk. III."

Do they really mean to say that the Categories
are Actuality, Possibility, Destiny?  I cannot
see the sense of that.

But maybe it is time to return to the fray.

BM: May be a good argument for Jean-Marc who thinks
    that you are doing Logics without Phenomenology? :-)

Perhaps I am just doing Logics with JM's Phenomenology.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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