[Inquiry] Re: Manifolds Of Diverse Impressions

[Jon Awbrey]

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MODI.  Note 5

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| Section 3.  Being
|
| When we can make a proposition, we 'understand' the subject of it so far
| as the predicate indicates.  Thus, when we say "man is intelligent", we
| have an understanding of 'man' in respect to his mind.  It is undoubtedly
| very confused in this instance, but the fact that it can only be made more
| distinct by predicating still more of man, shows that the unity to which
| the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of a proposition.
| This unity consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject;
| and introduces the conception of 'being', or that which is implied in the
| copula.  The copula has two meanings, 'actually is' and 'would be', as in
| the two expressions "There 'is' no griffin" and "A griffin 'is' a winged
| quadruped".  But as both these propositions afford understanding of their
| subjects, the meanings of the copulas should be comprehended under 'being'.
|
| 'Being' introduces nothing into the thought;  for "A griffin is or would be"
| means nothing.  Hence, this conception is not materially hypothetical.  It
| is rather the end of all hypothesis -- the accomplishment of that unity
| for which hypotheses are instituted.  If we say, "The ink is black",
| the ink is the 'substance', from which its blackness has not been
| differentiated;  and the 'is' while it leaves the substance just
| as it was seen, explains its confusedness by the application
| of blackness to it, as a hypothetical predicate.
|
| Though 'being' does not affect the subject, it implies an indefinite determinability
| of the predicate.  For, if one could know the copula and predicate of a proposition;
| as "--- is a tailed man", he would know that the predicate applied to something
| supposable, at least.  Accordingly, we have propositions whose subjects are
| entirely indefinite as "There is a beautiful ellipse", where the subject is
| 'something' merely.  But we have no propositions whose predicate is entirely
| indeterminate for it would be quite senseless to say "'A' has the common
| characters of all things", since there is no such character.  Hence, to
| say that a 'quality' has being or finds being, means something;  but
| to say that 'substance' has being is absurd for it must cease to be
| substance before being or non-being, in the present sense, are
| applicable to it.
|
| Thus substance and being are the two poles of thought.
| Substance is the beginning, being the 'end' of all
| conception.  Substance is inapplicable to a predicate,
| 'being' is equally so to a subject.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, 517-518
|
|["On a Method of Searching for the Categories"], MS 133 (1866), pp. 515-528 in:
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition, Vol. 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

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