Abstract
This chapter shows the Peircean concept of reality connecting it to its roots in the scholastic philosophy of Duns Scott. The ancient dispute, realism versus nominalism, is addressed, and it is highlighted that Peirce will embrace a realist ontological position, by which he claims that generality is an important feature of Reality. Reality, then, in this chapter, will be constituted by the same three Peircean categories, such as they were proposed in Chap. 1. Primarily founded of phenomenological nature, the categories in this chapter will be taken under an ontological face, considering them as a general response to a basic question: how would be a real world whose appearance is experienced phenomenologically in such three ways? Secondness is consequently founded by means of the concept of Existence, taking it as it appears in the scholastic period, namely, as the locus where beings define themselves as individuals and interact among themselves as mutually reactive. Real thirdness, in its turn, is the category of Law, taken in an ample sense, as generality that commands all ordered phenomena. Finally, spontaneity and irregularity are the main features of firstness. Such category acts through a principle of Chance. Chance, Existence, and Law, according to Peirce, will constitute the categorial principles that give shape to reality.
J’ai crée les fêtes, tous les triomphes, tous les drames. J’ai essayé d’inventer de nouvelles fluers, de nouveaux astres, de nouvelles langues. J’ai cru acquérir des pouvoirs surnaturels. Eh bien! je dois enterrer mon imagination et mes souvenirs! Une belle gloire d’artiste et de conteur emportée!
Moi! moi que me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu u sol, avec un devoir à chercher, et la réalité rugueuse à éteindre!
RIMBAUD, Une Saison en Enfer
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Notes
- 1.
Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics.
- 2.
CP, 5.39;EP, 2.144; see also CP, 2.197, 2.214, and 8.297.
- 3.
NEM, p. 193.
- 4.
NEM, p. 196; see also CP, 5.40.
- 5.
CP, 1.300.
- 6.
Regarding this matter, the reader may consult Manley Thompson’s definition of the word in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 2, NY, Macmillan, 1967, pp. 46–45. This is not the place to discuss the ontological character that also permeates the logic of Aristotle and Hegel, but solely to establish the distinction between the phenomenological genesis of the Peircean categories and the logical genesis of the categories of the three authors mentioned.
- 7.
CP, 1.282.
- 8.
See, for example, CP, 3.454 and 3.487.
- 9.
CP, 2.121.
- 10.
CP, 2.36; see also CP, 1.487, 1.624; EP, 2.30 and 1.625; EP, 2.31.
- 11.
CP, 2.168; Peirce at CP, 2.37–38 also shows how some philosophical systems base Logic on Metaphysics.
- 12.
CP, 7.526; my italics.
- 13.
CP, 4.176; see also CP, 2.191.
- 14.
CP, 3.428; my italics.
- 15.
On the “formal” aspect of thought, we shall comment in Chap. 7, “The Lesson of the Universe.”
- 16.
CP, 2.1.
- 17.
CP, 2.7.
- 18.
On the ontological nature of Peircean logic, see Chap. 6.
- 19.
CP, 1.487.
- 20.
CP, 6.2; my italics.
- 21.
CP, 7.91; my italics. See also CP, 2.511n, 5.597 and 7.203.
- 22.
CP, 6.2; my italics. See also CP, 3.406.
- 23.
CP, 6.3. Continuing in this paragraph, Peirce goes on to comment that the teaching of Metaphysics acquired in the course of History a dogmatic hue as it was in the hands of theologians, and thus distanced itself from the scientific process required for addressing their relevant issues. A practical man would be distinct from a scientific man in seeking a dogmatic conformity of a theory to his primary beliefs. True science establishes its beliefs from the analysis of experience in seeking an explanatory theory about it.
- 24.
CP, 6.6.
- 25.
CP, 4.28; see also CP, 6.495. Despite his criticism of theologians, Peirce shows, throughout various passages, great admiration for the work of Scotus in the realm of Metaphysics and Logic.
- 26.
CP, 5.565.
- 27.
CP, 8.12; EP, 1.87–88; W, 2.467–468.
- 28.
For the character of identification between reality and exteriority, see CP, 6.327–328.
- 29.
CP, 1.325.
- 30.
CP, 7.659; my italics.
- 31.
This will be discussed in Chap. 6.
- 32.
CP, 7.534; my italics.
- 33.
CP, 1.324.
- 34.
CP, 6.40.EP, 1.300–301; W, 8.113–114.
- 35.
See note 19 in this Chapter.
- 36.
CP, 5.429; EP, 2.341–342; see also CP, 3.612.
- 37.
CP, 8.191.
- 38.
For the sake of exactness of concept, the elasticity of a body is characterized by the full reversibility of its deformity after the action ceases, and not by its capacity of absorbing pressure.
- 39.
CP, 1.457; my italics.
- 40.
“Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the Universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.” In O Ensaiador, São Paulo, April, 1979, translated into Portuguese by Helda Barraco, p. 119.
- 41.
CP, 7.532; my italics.
- 42.
An excellent historical redemption of this issue can be found in C.A. Ribeiro do Nascimento “A Querela dos Universais Revisitada,” Cadernos PUC No. 13, São Paulo, Educ-Cortez, 1981.
- 43.
We mention here the Scotist content of Peircean realism, not only because Peirce insistently assumed this position on these terms, but also to distinguish it from the nuances that contemporary realism has acquired. Nowadays, a realist doctrine is one that presupposes an exteriority of objects independent of our modes of representation (see, for example, Karl Popper, Conhecimento Objetivo, São Paulo, Itatiaia-USP, 1975, translated by Milton Amado, pp. 45–51). Not an object of this book, the reader may examine the interface between Peirce’s and Scotus’ realisms in John Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism––A Study of Peirce’s Relation to John Duns Scotus (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1963).
- 44.
CP, 4.50; the treatise Peirce refers to is his never completed Grand Logic of 1893. The passage belongs to Chap. 6 of that work, “The Essence of Reasoning” (CP, 4.21–84).
- 45.
CP, 5.470.
- 46.
CP, 5.48; EP, 2.152–153.
- 47.
CP, 5.96; EP, 2.181–182.
- 48.
CP, 5.116; EP, 2.191–192.
- 49.
CP, 5.94; EP, 2.181.
- 50.
CP, 5.216.
- 51.
For the fallibilism of knowledge, see Chap. 3.
- 52.
CP, 7.535.
- 53.
CP, 5.431; my italics.
- 54.
Chapter 6 discusses the concept of meaning at the level of Peircean pragmatism.
- 55.
CP, 1.532.
- 56.
See Chap. 4.
- 57.
Chapter 4 provides a more in-depth analysis of the Peircean concepts of potentiality and actuality.
- 58.
CP, 6.349; see also CP, 6.495 and 5.503.
- 59.
CP, 1.161; see also CP, 6.553.
- 60.
CP, 7.521; my italics.
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Ibri, I.A. (2017). Realism and the Categorial Conception of the World. In: Kósmos Noetós. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 131. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66314-2_2
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