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For purposes of comparison, the 1867 version of "On a New List of Categories" Is inserted, section by section, in shaded boxes just below the corresponding section in the revised version. Comparison works best if the paper is printed out in hard copy pages.
● The title for the paper (which is presented as a chapter in a projected book) is provided by Peirce himself.
● The division into sections is also by Peirce himself.
● The section numbers are editorially altered to match the corresponding numbering in the 1867 version of the New List to facilitate effective comparison with it. The grayed-out numbers following the section descriptions are those that appear in the manuscript itself, suggesting a missing 15-section introduction to the projected book as a whole.
● The section descriptions are given by the editor, signified by the superscript "E" following the description.
● Paragraphing is by Peirce himself.
● Emphasis is shown in the transcribed text by underlining, as in the manuscript.
● The grayed-out numbers between flanking right-slashes in the flow of the text are "ISP numbers", assigned to the copies of the manuscript pages at the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism at Texas Tech University. There is no correlation of these with any numbers assigned to pages by Peirce himself.
● Illegible words are signified by question marks within brackets: e.g [?----?].
● Anything within brackets is editorial in origin; otherwise the text here is as in the manuscript except for an occasional elimination of a functionless comma.
The one law of thought is the law of the association of ideas. The association of ideas consists in their blending and spreading over into one another. This is a process of unification. Kant, the father of modern philosophy, said that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity.
Sense is manifold in more than one way. It presents in the first place a multitude of qualities of feeling, originally (as the author will in another work show reason for believing) vastly greater than now. For feeling* acts like thought in unifying reducing this multitude. It presents, in the second place, a manifold of excitations of sense; and it presents, in the third place, a manifold of consciousnesses, now segregated into distinct persons, as it seems to us. And in this seeming there is some truth, much truth, although personality, on both sides, that of the unification of all of a body’s experiences, and that of the isolation of different persons, is much exaggerated in our natural ways of thinking,—ways that tend to puff up the person, and make him think himself far more real than he veritably is. A person is, in truth, like a cluster of stars, which appears to be one star when viewed with the naked eye, but which scanned with the telescope of scientific psychology is found on the one hand, to be multiple within itself, and on the other hand /403.3/ to have no absolute demarcation from a neighboring condensation.
There are distinguishable grades in the process of unification. That universal conception which is nearest to sense is the conception of the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. It represents the object of attention, in general.* But the act of attention does not think its object has any particular suchness; it only seizes a fleeting phenomenon, as one might catch a fly, and makes an It of it. We will term this conception, Substance. It is the making of an It out of a group of feelings.
* The author, as long ago as 1867, assigned this fundamental importance to attention, wherein he has been fully borne out by more recent psychological researches.
§3. That universal conception which is nearest to sense is that of the present, in general. This is a conception, because it is universal. But as the act of attention has no connotation at all, but is the pure denotative power of the mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any predicate of that object,—so the conception of what is present in general, which is nothing but the general recognition of what is contained in attention, has no connotation, and therefore no proper unity. This conception of the present in general, or IT in general, is rendered in philosophical language by the word "substance" in one of its meanings. Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical with the concept of substance.
In like manner, as Substance is the generalized idea of the excitation of sense, so we can generalize the quality of sense. The understanding of a phenomenon consists in pronouncing something to be true. To the occasion of excitation is joined a thusness; and the conception, not of the thusness, but of the junction, makes the conception we call Being.
If we say “The stove is black,” the stove is the Substance, from which its blackness has not been differentiated; the is, while leaving the Substance just as it was seen, declares that it is about to rationalize its confusedness, which it does, in a measure, immediately after, by applying to it blackness as a quality.
§4. 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, therefore, that which is implied in the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the work of conceptions of reducing the manifold to unity. The copula (or rather the verb which is copula in one of its senses) means either actually is or would be, as in the two propositions, "There is no griffin," and "A griffin is a winged quadruped." The conception of being contains only that junction of predicate to subject wherein these two verbs agree. The conception of being, therefore, plainly has no content.
If we say "The stove is black," the stove 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 to it of blackness as a 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 any proposition, as "…is a tailed man," he would know the predicate to be applicable to something supposable, at least. Accordingly, we have propositions whose subjects are entirely indefinite, as "There is a beautiful ellipse," where the subject is merely something actual or potential; 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," inasmuch as there are no such common characters.
Thus substance and being are the beginning and end of all conception. Substance is inapplicable to a predicate, and being is equally so to a subject.
The medieval doctors speak of praecisio, by which they mean praescissio, or forth-cutting; and thus we have in logic the word precision, as a name for the same operation which is otherwise termed abstraction, drawing away. What is meant, we are told, is that kind of mental separation which results from attention to one element of an idea, and neglect of the rest. It may be doubted whether that is a very successful analysis of the operation. It would be less objectionable to say that in abstraction we suppose one part of a phenomenon, without any particular supposition about another part. Thus, I may suppose the chair on which I am sitting to have no action whatever on light, so that it is quite invisible. Then I am said to prescind its rigidity etc. and abstract from its color and visibility. Again, I can suppose space has four dimensions. I do not, myself[,] believe it has four dimensions; and with all the habits of a life-time of contemplating three dimensions, perhaps I cannot clearly imagine four dimensions. But I know perfectly well, in consequence of having diligently studied the subject, how things would look in four dimensions; that is, I can rather slowly and painfully make out the successive appearances which would present themselves, if I had power to walk about in such a space. Pictures and models of how such things would look have been made. A very learned and able man, Zöllner, actually believed there were four dimensions. I can, therefore, abstract from the tridimensionality of space.
The process of abstraction, or precision, must be carefully distinguished from two other modes of mental separation, one of which[,] dissociation, is a more complete separation, while the /403.5/ other, discrimination, is a less complete separation.
Discrimination is a mere distinction of meaning. Thus, it is impossible to suppose there is color, without supposing there is a surface. Accordingly, although one can readily suppose the sensation of color to exist without any idea of space, yet color, as something objective, in the sense in which we understand it, cannot be supposed without three dimensions, at least. But one can perfectly well discriminate color from space; for this merely consists in recognizing that color involves something not necessarily involved in the supposition of space.
Dissociation is imagining one thing without imagining another; and the possibility of doing this depends upon the nature of our previous experience, upon our training in placing ourselves in imagination in novel situations, and other accidents of life. One man may be quite unable to dissociate elements of experience which a better trained mind can dissociate without difficulty. Very few people can imagine space without imagining color; but everybody can, and does, suppose uncolored spaces to exist.
Precision is not a reciprocal process. It frequently happens that while A cannot be prescinded from B, B can perfectly well be prescinded from A. The reason of this is as follows. Elementary conceptions only arise upon the occasion of experience; that is, they are produced according to general laws, the condition of which is the existence of certain impressions. Now, if a conception does not reduce the impressions upon which it follows to unity, it is a mere arbitrary addition to these latter. But if the impressions would be definitely comprehended without the conception, this latter would not reduce them to unity. Hence the impressions (or more immediate conceptions) cannot be definitely conceived or attended to, to the neglect of an elementary conception which reduces them to unity. On the other hand, has the conception once been obtained, /403.6/ there is, in general, no reason why the premises which have occasioned it should not be neglected; and therefore the explaining conception may frequently be prescinded from the more immediate conceptions and from the impressions.
§5. The terms "prescision" and "abstraction," which were formerly applied to every kind of separation, are now limited, not merely to mental separation, but to that which arises from attention to one element and neglect of the other. Exclusive attention consists in a definite conception or supposition of one part of an object, without any supposition of the other. Abstraction or prescision ought to be carefully distinguished from two other modes of mental separation, which may be termed discrimination and dissociation. Discrimination has merely to do with the essences of terms, and only draws a distinction in meaning. Dissociation is that separation which, in the absence of a constant association, is permitted by the law of association of images. It is the consciousness of one thing, without the necessary simultaneous consciousness of the other. Abstraction or prescision, therefore, supposes a greater separation than discrimination, but a less separation than dissociation. Thus I can discriminate red from blue, space from color, and color from space, but not red from color. I can prescind red from blue, and space from color (as is manifest from the fact that I actually believe there is an uncolored space between my face and the wall); but I cannot prescind color from space, nor red from color. I can dissociate red from blue, but not space from color, color from space, nor red from color.
Prescision is not a reciprocal process. It is frequently the case, that, while A cannot be prescinded from B, B can be prescinded from A. This circumstance is accounted for as follows. Elementary conceptions only arise upon the occasion of experience; that is, they are produced for the first time according to a general law, the condition of which is the existence of certain impressions. Now if a conception does not reduce the impressions upon which it follows to unity, it is a mere arbitrary addition to these latter; and elementary conceptions do not arise thus arbitrarily. But if the impressions could be definitely comprehended without the conception, the latter would not reduce them to unity. Hence, the impressions (or more immediate conceptions) cannot be definitely conceived or attended to, to the neglect of an elementary conception which reduces them to unity. On the other hand, when such a conception has once been obtained, there is, in general, no reason why the premises which have occasioned it should not be neglected, and therefore the explaining conception may frequently be prescinded from the more immediate ones and from the impressions.
The facts now collected afford a basis for a systematic method of searching out whatever universal elementary conceptions there may be intermediate between the manifold of substance and the unity of being. It has been shown that the occasion of the introduction of a universal elementary conception is either the reduction of the manifold of substance to unity, or else the conjunction to substance of another conception. And it has further been shown that the elements conjoined cannot be supposed without the conception, whereas the conception can generally be supposed without these elements. Now, empirical psychology discovers the occasion of the introduction of a conception, and we have only to ascertain what conception already lies in the idea which is united to that of substance by the first conception, but which cannot be supposed without this first conception, in order to have the next conception of the sequence through which reason must pass in retracing the way from the conception of Being to that of Substance.
It may be noticed that, throughout this process, introspection is not resorted to. Nothing is assumed respecting the subjective elements of consciousness which cannot be securely inferred from the objective elements. Some psychologists assume that that which is directly in the mind is the easiest possible thing to know. But this is a fallacy. Does the reader not know that it is possible to be angry without knowing that one is angry? There are different ways in which a thing may be in consciousness. It is not enough to be in consciousness; the impressions must be worked over into perceptions, before they can be utilized.
§6. The facts now collected afford the basis for a systematic method of searching out whatever universal elementary conceptions there may be intermediate between the manifold of substance and the unity of being. It has been shown that the occasion of the introduction of a universal elementary conception is either the reduction of the manifold of substance to unity, or else the conjunction to substance of another conception. And it has further been shown that the elements conjoined cannot be supposed without the conception, whereas the conception can generally be supposed without these elements. Now, empirical psychology discovers the occasion of the introduction of a conception, and we have only to ascertain what conception already lies in the data which is united to that of substance by the first conception, but which cannot be supposed without this first conception, to have the next conception in order in passing from being to substance.
It may be noticed that, throughout this process, introspection is not resorted to. Nothing is assumed respecting the subjective elements of consciousness which cannot be securely inferred from the objective elements.
The conception of Being arises when something is asserted; or judged true. When we make a judgment, we think in the first place about something; and then we think something to be true of that thing. That is, we think that Substance of which we are thinking to have a Quality.* Quality is thus the first conception in order in passing from Being to Substance.
* Quality is here used for a character not considered as relative to a second object. The word quality has several meanings so closely allied that it has become rather a vague term. It comes from the Latin qualitas, a word invented by Cicero to translate Aristotle’s Greek word ποιότης, “suchness”. Aristotle gives a certain definition of it, which is called the “predicamental” sense; since in that sense it was taken as a predicament, or category, by that Prince of Philosophers. Namely, he defines it as (1) a character, (2) having a contrary, (3) admitting of differences in degree, and (4) being a respect in which things agree and differ. This is the most proper sense of the word; but no writer ever consistently confined it to this meaning. Aristotle very often uses it for a character upon which a moral judgment can be passed; and good characters are oftener called qualities than bad ones. In French, this has come to be the most familiar meaning; and it is very common in the older writers of our language. This is one of the innumerable instances in which Aristotle is the author of expressions we hear in the streets. From meaning rank or excellence, quality came to be used in logic to express the excellence of apprehension of an idea, that is, its clearness and distinctness. Propositions are also said to have the quality of being affirmative or negative. Kant uses the term for degree of intensity. There was a scholastic dispute about the intension and [?]mission of [?---?], which concerned qualities.
Quality seems at first sight to be given in the impression, but such results of introspection must not be trusted. We judge one conception to be applicable to another, more directly experienced. But the other conception, which is less experiential and more ideal, that is, better known in the way in which an idea is known, this, I say, is regarded as having a sort of ideal being independent of its being embodied in that particular thing. For instance, upon watching a bee or an ant, I exclaim, what sagacity, what strange instinct. The bee or the ant which I judge to possess that semiunconscious mind, is experientially known; but like everything experienced it has something inscrutable about it which no description however elaborate can completely /403.8/ reveal. When I exclaim that I recognize a certain sort of mind in it, clearly I must have had already some idea of a mind. If I say, it has instinct, I must already have the idea of instinct. For if this animal were the only object which suggested that idea, I should not be able to separate the idea from that particular animal; and if I had no such separate idea I could not attribute, or assert, or judge it of that animal. I must then have an abstract thought, an idea of instinct; and that that idea, brought from my previous reflections, is applicable to this thing I see before me,—that is not seen, but is rather a theory to account for what I see. The same thing is true in the case of every judgment. It is not given in sense; it is a theory of the sense-impression. This is the case even with what are called qualities of sensation. I look at a black stove. There is a direct sensation of blackness. But if I judge the stove to be black, I am comparing this experience with previous experiences. I am associating the sensation with a familiar idea derived from former black objects. When I say to myself the stove is black, I am making a little theory to account for the look of it. Say the theory is quite empty, if you please; that is, that it is only the impression thought over again. Yet it has been put into another form of thought: It is in the way of thinking it, at least, a theory in form.
We see that in order to represent the relations of qualities distinctly we must treat those qualities as objects to which the things are connected. In the above diagram (and we could not make it simpler while making it show the same relations) we have ten separate objects between which 12 lines are drawn. Two of the objects are the things, gold and steel; two are the qualities, softness and brittleness; two are the intensities; and the remaining four, represented by black spots, are the facts.
A word which helps us communicate our thoughts is a good thing; but surely a word which helps us think is a better thing. Now “abstractions” help us to think clearly. An abstraction is a tool of thought.
The student must think this out for himself; and deep meditation is required. He will say: yes, “softness” and “brittleness” are convenient words; but there are no such things. They are convenient fictions. With just as much reason, you might say “chair” and “table” are convenient words, but mere fictions; and some writers there are, such as Ernst Mach, who do say just that. But to say that is to ignore the distinction between truth and fiction. I say that for a metal to be soft is for it to be connected with a single quality, that of softness. The student will say “You cannot mean that literally.” But that word implies that there is some truer way of thinking. On the contrary, no truer way of thinking is conceivable. The objector is fancying thoughts can be like things. Thoughts cannot be like things unthought. A true thought is one which answers to the natural thing, which leads to results thoroughly in harmony with nature. The perfect convenience of the expression is all the truth which is conceivable. You cannot conceive of a thought being like anything not thought. Likeness is thought. This is so true, that it is impossible any word should mean anything which contemplates anything else. Hence, when we talk of how things really are, we deceive ourselves if we fancy we possibly can mean anything more than how they are most conveniently and suitably thought.
We do not think objects are in themselves red or blue. We think red and blue are only our feelings, and that the things in themselves simply take up faster or slower vibrations from the ether. But when we think in that way, do you suppose that we have cleared away the element of feeling from our thought, and are thinking of things as they are unfelt? Not at all. If we were to expunge the sensuous element from our ideas, we should leave our minds a blank. If it be less true to think that things are red or blue than to say they are vibrating in /403.11/ a certain way, it can only be because the former way of thinking leads to some inconvenience to which the latter does not lead.
All this discussion is intended to show the student that it is perfectly correct to say that a quality is a single object with which a thing may or may not be connected, and that to object to this as not literally true of the things in themselves is like trying to tear off the peels of an onion in order to get to the onion itself.
The old Scotists,—or Dunces, as they were called,—brought abstractions into contempt in a way for which their master, Duns Scotus, was hardly responsible, by using verbal abstractions when positive theories were wanted. Thus, according to Molière, they would say that opium put people to sleep because it had a soporific virtue. That was mere verbiage, of course. But to jump from contemning such talk to contemning abstractions was to repeat the very same fault, namely, that of not distinguishing between useful abstractions and useless abstractions. To say that opium has a soporific virtue was a useful expression for some purposes; but it could not supply the place of a physiological theory. One of the lessons which logic has to teach us is how to make useful abstractions and how to limit them to those applications in which they are useful.
§7. The conception of being arises upon the formation of a proposition. A proposition always has, besides a term to express the substance, another to express the quality of that substance; and the function of the conception of being is to unite the quality to the substance. Quality, therefore, in its very widest sense, is the first conception in order in passing from being to substance.
Quality seems at first sight to be given in the impression. Such results of introspection are untrustworthy. A proposition asserts the applicability of a mediate conception to a more immediate one. Since this is asserted, the more mediate conception is clearly regarded independently of this circumstance, for otherwise the two conceptions would not be distinguished, but one would be thought through the other, without this latter being an object of thought, at all. The mediate conception, then, in order to be asserted to be applicable to the other, must first be considered without regard to this circumstance, and taken immediately. But, taken immediately, it transcends what is given (the more immediate conception), and its applicability to the latter is hypothetical. Take, for example, the proposition, "This stove is black." Here the conception of this stove is the more immediate, that of black the more mediate, which latter, to be predicated of the former, must be discriminated from it and considered in itself, not as applied to an object, but simply as embodying a quality, blackness. Now this blackness is a pure species or abstraction, and its application to this stove is entirely hypothetical. The same thing is meant by "the stove is black," as by "there is blackness in the stove." Embodying blackness is the equivalent of black. * The proof is this. These conceptions are applied indifferently to precisely the same facts. If, therefore, they were different, the one which was first applied would fulfill every function of the other; so that one of them would be superfluous. Now a superfluous conception is an arbitrary fiction, whereas elementary conceptions arise only upon the requirement of experience; so that a superfluous elementary conception is impossible. Moreover, the conception of a pure abstraction is indispensable, because we cannot comprehend an agreement of two things, except as an agreement in some respect, and this respect is such a pure abstraction as blackness. Such a pure abstraction, reference to which constitutes a quality or general attribute, may be termed a ground.
* This agrees with the author of De Generibus et Speciebus, Ouvrages Inédits d'Abélard, p. 528.
Reference to a ground cannot be prescinded from being, but being can be prescinded from it.
Thus, the occasion of the introduction of the conception of Quality is Relation; and thus Relation is the next conception in the passage from Being to Substance.
We cannot suppose things to be related without having corresponding qualities; but we may suppose them to have qualities without any particular relations. For example, if A attracts B, there are certain qualities A and B ipso facto possess; they must be movable, etc. But if A is blue, and B is sweet, though they must have, perhaps, some relations, they need not be supposed to have any particular relation.
§8. Empirical psychology has established the fact that we can know a quality only by means of its contrast with or similarity to another. By contrast and agreement a thing is referred to a correlate, if this term may be used in a wider sense than usual. The occasion of the introduction of the conception of reference to a ground is the reference to a correlate, and this is, therefore, the next conception in order.
Reference to a correlate cannot be prescinded from reference to a ground; but reference to a ground may be prescinded from reference to a correlate.
One thing cannot be related to another, without they are brought together by some mediating representation or reason. Suppose one man murders another by giving him a poisonous drink. This supposes that there is some regularity, or tendency to regularity, with which people who drink similar potions experience similar effects; otherwise, the drink and the death are mere coincidences. True, the coincidence itself is a relation, though another kind of relation. But one thing’s being subsequent to another implies a general system of relationship among events, constituting time. Even the relations of similarity and contrast imply regularities in the way the objects affect the comparing mind.
§9. The occasion of reference to a correlate is obviously by comparison. This act has not been sufficiently studied by the psychologists, and it will, therefore, be necessary to adduce some examples to show in what it consists. Suppose we wish to compare the letters p and b. We may imagine one of them to be turned over on the line of writing as an axis, then laid upon the other, and finally to become transparent so that the other can be seen through it. In this way we shall form a new image which mediates between the images of the two letters, inasmuch as it represents one of them to be (when turned over) the likeness of the other. Again, suppose we think of a murderer as being in relation to a murdered person; in this case we conceive the act of the murder, and in this conception it is represented that corresponding to every murderer (as well as to every murder) there is a murdered person; and thus we resort again to a mediating representation which represents the relate as standing for a correlate with which the mediating representation is itself in relation. Again, suppose we look out the word homme in a French dictionary; we shall find opposite to it the word man, which, so placed, represents homme as representing the same two legged creature which man itself represents. By a further accumulation of instances, it would be found that every comparison requires, besides the related thing, the ground, and the correlate, also a mediating representation which represents the relate to be a representation of the same correlate which this mediating representation itself represents. Such a mediating representation may be termed an interpretant, because it fulfils the office of an interpreter, who says that a foreigner says the same thing which he himself says. The term representation is here to be understood in a very extended sense, which can be explained by instances better than by a definition. In this sense, a word represents a thing to the conception in the mind of the hearer, a portrait represents the person for whom it is intended to the conception of recognition, a weathercock represents the direction of the wind to the conception of him who understands it, a barrister represents his client to the judge and jury whom he influences.
Every reference to a correlate, then, conjoins to the substance the conception of a reference to an interpretant; and this is, therefore, the next conception in order in passing from being to substance.
Reference to an interpretant cannot be prescinded from reference to a correlate; but the latter can be prescinded from the former.
The representation must itself have its reason, and so on in endless series. In fact, in the idea of regularity, the idea of endless multitude is involved. Nor is it possible to conceive definitely an endless multitude except by means of a regularity. Thus, from the idea of the rational representation we are carried, at once, to that of the manifold of substance.
§10. Reference to an interpretant is rendered possible and justified by that which renders possible and justifies comparison. But that is clearly the diversity of impressions. If we had but one impression, it would not require to be reduced to unity, and would therefore not need to be thought of as referred to an interpretant, and the conception of reference to an interpretant would not arise. But since there is a manifold of impressions, we have a feeling of complication or confusion, which leads us to differentiate this impression from that, and then, having been differentiated, they require to be brought to unity. Now they are not brought to unity until we conceive them together as being ours, that is, until we refer them to a conception as their interpretant. Thus, the reference to an interpretant arises upon the holding together of diverse impressions, and therefore it does not join a conception to the substance, as the other two references do, but unites directly the manifold of the substance itself. It is, therefore, the last conception in order in passing from being to substance.

References: §3

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