Elucidations Episode 81: Cathy Legg discusses what Peirce's categories can do for you
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Mar 15, 2016 Cathy Legg, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Waikato and Peirce scholar, introduces Peirce's idea that existence is just one of three modes of being. She explains firstness as pure quality, secondness as interaction and resistance, and thirdness as mediation, concepts, and interpretation. The conversation contrasts Peirce with Quine and situates the sciences within Peirce's hierarchy.
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Categories Are Modes Of Being
- Philosophical categories are modes of being distinct from properties and objects.
- Category errors (e.g., asking the color of the number eight) show this deeper misuse of concepts.
Quine's One-Mode Reduction
- Quine reduced being to a single mode: existence, which sidelines category inquiry.
- This move allocates substantive metaphysical questions to science and narrows philosophy's role.
Peirce's Threefold Revision
- Peirce reduced Kant's twelve categories to three he called firstness, secondness, and thirdness.
- Firstness is the intrinsic quality of something, like the pure feel of a deep red.
