[Inquiry] Re: Manifolds Of Diverse Impressions

[Jon Awbrey]

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MODI.  Note 9

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| Section 5.  Method of Searching for the Categories
|
| Every conception is introduced for the purpose of bringing the manifold to unity;
| and in the case of an elementary conception this function is a condition of the
| possibility of the conception's arising.  A universal conception is one which
| is applicable to every aggregate of impressions.  The end of such a conception
| is either to unite the manifold of substance in general or to conjoin to the
| latter some conception necessary to its being brought to unity.
|
| These facts afford the basis for a mode of discovering all the conceptions which
| reduce the manifold of substance to the unity of being.  For if we begin with
| being and ask what it conjoins to substance, the answer will be easily obtained
| by observing the occasion of the introduction of being.  Then the application
| to substance of this conception, which being joins to it, is the immediate
| justification and condition of the introduction of being, and is, therefore,
| the first conception in order in passing from being to substance.  Now we
| may treat this conception in the same way in which we have treated being.
| That is, we may ask 1st what is the occasion of the introduction of this
| conception, 2nd What conception besides substance is required in such a
| state of cognition, which is joined to substance by the given conception.
| Then this second conception is the next conception in order in passing
| from being to substance.  And we may repeat this process until we get
| to a conception which does not unite anything to substance but only
| brings the manifold of substance itself together, and this will be
| the last conception.
|
| These conceptions between 'being' and 'substance'
| are termed 'accidents';  and universal conceptions
| are termed 'categories'.
|
|               ( Being
|               (           ( Quality
|    CATEGORIES < Accidents < Relation
|               (           ( Representation
|               ( Substance
|
| It should be noticed that throughout this process of finding
| the categories as well as throughout the book, 'introspection'
| is never resorted to.  Nothing is assumed respecting what is
| thought which cannot be securely inferred from admissions
| which the thinker will make concerning external facts.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Chronological Edition', CE 1, 520
|
|["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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