[Inquiry] Re: Actual, Existent, Real

[Jon Awbrey]

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AER.  Note 2

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Again relying on nothing more than densely compressed memories,
I think that Peirce emphasized the etymology of "existence" as
connoting "standing out", and hence "reacting against", making
it fall under the category of secondness.  To use the language
of gestalt psychology, it constitutes the "figure" of being,
over and above the "ground" of being.

I believe that the distinction between existence and reality is connected
with the relationship between empirical and rational concepts, where Peirce
distinguishes betweeen the comprehensions and extensions that are available
to a given interpreter under varying conditions of information.  We have the
idea that information about a concept involves "superfluous comprehension",
that we always have available more properties implied by the concept than
are necessary to determine its extension.  Though Peirce does not put it
exactly this way, a rational concept, for instance, a natural kind or a
grammatical category, involves "superfluous extension", in the sense
that it contains more instances than any empircial experience might
be able to enumerate.  So this forms a reason for splitting hairs
between real possibilities and actually counted existent data.

Jon Awbrey

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