MS 457-460 (1903) - Lowell Lecture III - 1st Draught

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of aught else. That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others. The mode of being a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility. And redness in itself even if it be embodied is something positive and sui generis. That I call Firstness. We naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that is we suppose they have capacities in themselves which may or may

Last edit over 7 years ago by jeffdown1
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not be already actualized, which may or may not ever be actualized, although we can know nothing of such possibilities so far as they are actualized.

Now for Thirdness. Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass without our making some kind of prediction; and in the majority of cases the predictions are fulfilled in the event. Yet a prediction is essentially of a general nature, and cannot ever be completely fulfilled. To say that a prediction has a decided tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the future events are in a measure really governed by a law. If a pair of dice turns up sixes five

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times running, that is a mere uniformity. The dice might happen fortuitously to turn up sixes a thousand times running. But that would not afford the slightest security for a prediction that they would turn up sixes the next time. If the prediction has a tendency to be fulfilled, it must be that future events have a tendency to conform to a general rule. 'Oh', but say the Nominalists, 'this general rule is nothing but a mere word or complex of words!' I reply, Nobody ever dreamed of denying that what is genera is of the nature of a general sign; but the question is whether the future events will conform to it or not. If they will, your adjective 'mere' seems to be ill placed. A rule which future events have a tendency to conform

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is ipso facto an important thing, an important element in the happenings of these events. This mode of being which consists, mind my word if you if please, the mode of being which consists in the the fact that future facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call Thirdness.

Now Lecture III, Vol 1 p 56 to p 70 in Vol 2.

Next define the sign and the three trichotomies.

The peculiarity of gamma graphs is that they make abstractions, or mere possibilities as well as laws the subjects of discourse.

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Now the Subject of a proposition is necessarily an individual or in relative [propositions??] a set of

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I have been in the habit of defining an abstraction or ens rations as something whose being consists in the truth of a proposition concerning something else. The definition is not exact; but it will answer tolerably (? our purposes) The proposition is that some description of things is possible, this is a roundabout way of describing Firstness. If If the proposition is that something always will be, it describes a Thirdness.

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